Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2818

How Divorce Spreads, Ctd

Douthat brings the melancholy. Ezra Klein reads the study differently.
















Ezra Klein - Republican - Washington Post - Health care - Socialism

Wastes Of Space

Tom Vanderbilt illustrates his case against too many parking spots by noting that Purdue University researchers found that if "all of the vehicles
in the county were removed from garages, driveways, and all of the
roads and residential streets and they were parked in parking lots at
the same time, there would still be 83,000 unused spaces throughout the
county." Felix Salmon agrees:

For me the biggest and most invidious cost of parking lots is also themost difficult to measure: the way that...

Map Of The Day

Global debt broken down nation-by-nation. Britain's is staggering, after the Blair-Brown splurge and the recession.
















Tony Blair - Labour - Financial Services - Business - Financial Planning

Von Hoffman Award Nominee, Ctd

A reader writes:

These are a little old in internet years, but they dovetail nicely with this thread: 11 Predictions That Back to the Future Part II Got Right / Got Wrong

Back to the Future Part II - Future - Predictions - Marty McFly - Back to the Future

How Do We Spend Our Time?

Laura Vanderkam, who wrote a new book on time management, delights in the release of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). Lots of interest at the link:

Nearly a quarter (24%) of employed persons did some or all of their work at home, and 84% did some or all of their work at a workplace. By my calculation that would mean that about 16% of workers are pretty exclusively operating out of the home-office (unless the ATUS found a huge contingent operating out of Starbucks!). Men and women are...

Less Liberal Than You Think

Hmm:

This paper suggests that there are consistent patterns in how different groups of individuals perceive their relative ideological position..for example, the more educated on average believe themselves to be more left wing than their actual beliefs on a substantive issue might suggest.

Left-wing politics - Politics - Tony Judt - Sarah Palin - United States

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew continued to wring his hands over the post-McChrystal situation in Afghanistan. He also sparred with a dissenting reader. More analysis from Fred Kaplan, Reihan, and two readers in the military. In other news, police raided an archbishop's home, polls showed that the American public is divided over the flotilla, KIPP charter schools saw some success, and Conan got the last laugh. Team USA update here and coverage of the North Koreans here, here, and here.

In assorted ...

Fearing The Ego

 


A reader writes:

I am writing from Afghanistan as a Special Forces operator.  I have a staff job at the moment, so I'm working a desk that has allowed me to follow the fallout from the McChrystal article.  I have to say, this whole thing has been absolutely baffling. It is all everyone - and I mean everyone - is talking about here.  I read your initial response, and although I know you are blogging in the heat of the moment, I think your initial reaction - in particular the extrapolation...

How Powerful Is The President? Ctd

Yglesias joins the fray:

The White House's failure to engage in a maximum, 100 percent
for each item on the Obama agenda doesn't demonstrate that it's a
House that's time and again betrayed progressive values
demonstrates that even though in each case you can always do more, you tend to decide to leave some arrows in the quiver because there are so many legislative fights and you can't just be going nuclear thirty times a year.

Now it is true that I think one problem with...

"The Death Valley Of Housing"

Now that the homebuyer tax credit has run out, housing has fallen off a cliff. Howard Gleckman reflects:

The hardest bit to swallow is not so much that the homebuyer tax creditis a boondoggle. It is that it was a totally predictable waste ofmoney. Economists warned Congress in 2008 that the credit would dolittle more than shift timing decisions by a few months. But lawmakersignored the advice again and again. Remarkably, the Senate may be aboutto give buyers still more time to close on...