Speaking of which, the post below reminds me that I want to get a proper requests thread going now that the holiday weekend is coming to an end.
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Requests Thread
06 Jul 2008 11:35 am
Comments (49)
I request you break Marc Ambinder's fingers and keep them broken until November.
Any thoughts on the Sonics moving to OKC?
I'm officially requesting your thoughts on Wittgenstein's legacy in Western philosophy.
1981: the best year to be born... ever?
What do you think about Gates as Obama's Sec. of Defense (apologies if you covered this already)?
Critique David Brooks: thoughtful, open-minded conservative, or a wolf in sheeps' clothing?
I wonder what your thoughts are on the impending (or not) ratification of the US-India nuclear deal, given your concerns around nuclear proliferation and maintaining the integrity of the NPT.
What can be done about the epidemic of obesity in the U.S. (and other countries)?
Do something on the state of Iraq! It seems like there is a great deal (relatively) of political progress going there and let's be honest, was the blogosphere right or wrong to oppose the "surge" or whether the surge was just one factor coinciding with other changes in US tactics to change stuff.
That article is a good place to start (only).
http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=51468&comview=1
You need to update the verb tenses in your biography.
Anything on the impact of Civics no longer being required in order to graduate from High School? (I figure it must not be, else people would know that having at least one parent who is a US citizen is sufficient to be a "natural born" citizen. And so the nonsense about where Obama and McCain were born would not have started.)
What is John McCain's plan for Iraq?
I'm a decent consumer of news.
I think I have a handle on Barack Obama's plan for Iraq: he wants to leave but is willing to pause and asses the gains made from what I can tell. But overall: he wants to get out of Iraq, finish Afghanistan, and focus on terrorism in an Isreal model. These are just my impressions in my words after this kickass primary season. Helpfully, he's got a pdf of his plan on his site.
But McCain: all I know is he wants to stay. He wants to win. I have no idea what that means, but he wants to have a long term presence in the region a'la Germany. How this works tactically given our constraints and without a draft, I have no idea. His plan seems to be tying up resources we need at a critical juncture, but I've seen no one question him about this. He mouths a lot of platitudes, but it seems to me he has no vision on what needs to get done.
Now, he's getting a lot of credit for supporting the surge and Obama is being painted as short-sighted for not seeing how this works. But really, Obama was right in that once again the military has come through but no diplomatic progress has been made. At the same time, gains in Afghanistan has receded and the Taliban seems to be coming back.
I feel like the administration plan has devolved into wack a mole: they hit the insurgents and the insurgency pops up somewhere else and no political accommodations seem to be occurring.
I'd like to see more about McCain's plan and how it either differs or expands on the current situation.
I'd also wish someone somewhere would articulate a clear endpoint to our entanglements in the region.
Water and the West
I wondered if you heard anything about water concerns while you were out West. I don't suspect it'd be that big of a deal in lofty Aspen, but many parts of Colorado are caught in the fight for water resources. Its town against town against farmer against industry, with some armed conflicts thrown in for good measure. With Shell buying lots of water rights for processing shale into oil, it's only going to get worse. The principle culprits in the water debacle seem to be sprawl and climate change, but you don't hear much about the issue here in the Northeast.
Explain to the world that Lebron is going to be far better than Kobe.
I'm going to reiterate a question I asked in an earlier post: If the fundamentals of the country are the true predictors of Presidential races, why have there almost always been huge swings in public polling from say, July to November?
I second Reality Man's request for a post about Douthat's link to white supremacist Steve Sailer's website and his frequent use of Sailer as a source.
A somewhat detailed explanation of how corn ethanol is a waste of energy. The impact on the price of food is obvious, but I keep hearing it said that as much (non-solar) energy goes into ethanol as we get out of it without any description of how this works. Talk about Brazilian sugar ethanol too of course.
I second Robotghost's question about water shortages here in the south west. I live in San Diego and I don't hear much about shortages.
Is this issue on the radar at the think tanks? Down here in San Diego the hot political topics seem to be the charger's stadium deal, pensions, and the city budget. But water's assuredly looming as a crises. Are we going to be as prepared for this issue as we are for say, global warming? And when will this crises turn into a scandal due to political malfeasance or inaction? 2010? 2013?
I second Robotghost's question about water shortages here in the south west. I live in San Diego and I don't hear much about shortages.
Is this issue on the radar at the think tanks? Down here in San Diego the hot political topics seem to be the charger's stadium deal, pensions, and the city budget and housing prices and renter's rights. But water's assuredly looming as a crises. Are we going to be as prepared for this issue as we are for say, global warming? And when will this crises turn into a scandal due to political malfeasance or inaction? 2010? 2013?
Now it looks like your pet issue of mass transit's bumping the water debate even further down the road. You're not a cog in any anti-water conspiracy, are you Matty?
A reminder that in times of inflationary global markets causing internal suffering in exporting nations, they can opt out of the "one price for all" global commodities market and subsidize essential commodities they produce for the general public's benefit.
Argentina just slapped 30% export tariffs on grain, 44% on soybeans to hold the price of food for people and livestock down. This will hurt farmers profits, but will help the standard of living of the public, and give Argentina economic advantage in other areas that the increase in disposable income, of the people and state, is directed to.
A reminder that "free markets" are not an immutable fact of nature.
In war and economic crisis, it is sometimes reasonable and rational for a nation to opt out of Globalist pricing.
A reminder to those who say that making the USA self-sufficient in oil will not lower prices because that is only tied to global demand.
Not so.
If we end our present voluntary dependence on imports rather than making our own from unfound oil deposits, plus shale and coal programs and set reasonable domestic prices, not only do we stop bleeding half a trillion a year in our wealth away, we may find ourselves like the Argentinians, free to protect the public from massive price shocks.
Ending yearly loss of half a trillion in accumulated wealth, including to some pretty bad nations - and we insure that domestic producers still have reasonable profit and growth incentives, block price shocks from wrecking the whole economy, while we can use the disposable income gains to other, more productive purposes.
I've always been curious as to how black evangelicals, ensconced in the Democratic Party, handled the evolution/creationism public policy debate.
After another Sunday morning watching the political talk shows, I find myself in my usual Sunday depression about the state of political coverage. What, in your opinion, is preventing the networks from hosting a weekly round-table in which, rather than discussing the Iraq "issue" as it might influence the election, they discussed Iraq as a complex real situation -- they could describe what makes it so thorny, how other occupations have ended up, what would likely happen to our oil situation under various scenarios, etc. Instead we get surrogates arguing about "flip-flopping" (fast becoming my least favorite verb). Is there any hope? Is there some great, substantive show that I'm simply overlooking?
1. Corn based ethanol and devastating effects of the same. Is there any chance, anything can be done to stop/revert it? Impression is Obama is completely in the pocket of Iowa corn farmers in this regard. Is there any chance Obama would change his policies and help Congress move in the right direction? What needs to happen so that American Politicians come to senses? Or there is nothing wrong with corn based ethanol and everything is honky dory?
2. Why are people bend to stop honest efforts to root out speculation in oil prices? From Secretary Paulson to Web loud mouth JJ Crammer to Paul Krugman and Economists; everyone is saying there is no speculation. But what truth is there? WB came out with the study contrary to Congressional members that corn based ethanol does cause high food prices. So why all these advocates of 'no speculation' in oil prices will be right? Why there is no general agreement among Economists about speculative component in Oil Prices? Is Economics such a poor discipline that it cannot withstand ideological influences?
1. Corn based ethanol and devastating effects of the same. Is there any chance, anything can be done to stop/revert it? Impression is Obama is completely in the pocket of Iowa corn farmers in this regard. Is there any chance Obama would change his policies and help Congress move in the right direction? What needs to happen so that American Politicians come to senses? Or there is nothing wrong with corn based ethanol and everything is honky dory?
2. Why are people bend to stop honest efforts to root out speculation in oil prices? From Secretary Paulson to Web loud mouth JJ Crammer to Paul Krugman and Economists; everyone is saying there is no speculation. But what truth is there? WB came out with the study contrary to Congressional members that corn based ethanol does cause high food prices. So why all these advocates of 'no speculation' in oil prices will be right? Why there is no general agreement among Economists about speculative component in Oil Prices? Is Economics such a poor discipline that it cannot withstand ideological influences?
Back in January, you wrote:
"one important driving force behind the sophisticated right's praise of Obama is a simple belief that he'll probably lose in the end. Then, when Clinton is nominated, having praised Obama to the skies they can lament that once again -- sigh -- the Democratic Party has let them down and they have no choice but to vote for the Republicans."
One of the people you were specifically talking about was Andrew Sullivan. As someone who is also libertarian-leaning, and who campaigned for Obama in two primaries, I found this an odd charge to lay at Sullivan's door. There is a much more straight-forward explanation: Obama is clearly the most appealing candidate to someone with those politics.
You tend to think people who say libertarian-sounding things are acting in bad faith. But that is exactly why people (including - I feel - Sullivan) who actually have those views aren't just pretending when we say we don't want to vote for the Republicans this time out. They have abandoned small government as anything but a talking point. And even if we wanted to waste a vote, the LP is running a social conservative.
Now that Obama has won the primary and Andrew is still on his side (well, technically he says he's making up his mind, but if you've been reading his blog...), have you rethought this prediction/analysis? I would think the reason that he, and the vast majority of libertarianish folks I know, were and are supporting Obama, is that he is the best candidate on the merits, from where we're standing. Would you now agree with that?
Hi Matt. It's my first time here although I have been reading you for more than a year now.
I want you to read the following piece by Thomas Sowell from realclearpolitics July 01, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/does_patriotism_matter.html. I found the piece extraordinary. I, like many of your readers, am somewhat partial to European History in the first half of the 20th century. I find many of the claims in the article remarkable by having never encountered them before anywhere.
Was there a concerted effort by the French Teachers Union after WW1 to suppress patriotism and promote internationalism in France? Was the heroic sacrifice of the French Army in the charnels of western front deglamorized? I find this deeply uncharacteristic of one of the most vocally nationalistic people on the world.
Mr Sowell claims that Hitler didn't study the french army but the French society? Anybody care to say from where this nugget came from? He said nobody expected the French to collapse so quickly except Hitler. Given that the plan was concieved by Manstein it seems to give Hitler undue prescience.
It is a common refrain that the quarelling democracy in the 30's lay behind the French debacle. Those who have studied the war cannot but see that in the early years of war, the German land Army was simply far better than the western Armies. The British lions suffered defeat after defeat until 1942. Had there been no ditch between England and France, what chance was there to stop the wehrmact in 1940?
Could anyone care to inform about Mr Sowell's latest contribution to patriotism?
Based on your earlier post on judicial review I wanted to recommend Governing With Judges as an interesting book for thinking about the role of constitutional courts.
I found two things particularly helpful about it, one the fact that it's about European constitutional courts offered a range of examples that I wasn't familiar with, and made it easier to abstract the arguments from the US debates over the Supreme Court. Secondly, it's very clear on the idea that legislative and judicial powers are not as neatly separated as commonly described.
In his telling the debate between the legislature and judiciary can be helpfully viewed less as a debate over the "natural" powers of each branch, and more as a debate between two different source of power and "legitimacy" -- the claim to representative legitimacy by the legislature, and the claim to fairness and precedent by the judiciary.
zimbabwe. what can be done. (as a side note, joetrippi.com has turned his blog into a hammer on the subject...)
Any thoughts on BHO's "GlobalTax"?
Details:
peekURL.com/zibjx5p
Text:
thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:s2433:
I repeat; a comment on the status of Australian basketball and ZZ Top's latest tour.
the (insane) hizbulah-israeli prisoner exchange.
I've asked this before, but any followup to this post regarding the bike racks in front of your building? You said you'd be interested in what they came up with. So what did they come up with?
This situation demands immediate discussion and attention:
From an article by Eric Margolis in the Toronto Sun:
"Intensifying activity is evident at U.S. bases in Europe and the Gulf, aimed at preparing a massive air blitz that may include repeated attacks on 3,100 targets in Iran. Other sources say Iranian Revolutionary Guard installations will be barraged by cruise missiles.
In Washington, Congress, under intense pressure from the Israel lobby, is about to adopt a resolution calling for a naval blockade of Iran, an overt act of war.
Pro-Israel groups have been airing TV commercials claiming Iran is attacking American troops in Iraq and threatens the U.S.
The Bush administration’s last desperate act, its Gotterdammerung, could be war with Iran. UN weapons inspectors concur with U.S. intelligence that there is no proof Iran is working on nuclear arms, but the neocon war party in Washington is determined to loosen a final Parthian shaft by striking Iran."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/06/10160/
With a tip of the hat to ChrisHorton at Common Dreams:
"The resolution is Continuing Resolution 362. It was introduced around May 22, and as of June 19, when it was mentioned in Daily Kos, it had over 100 co-sponsors (it has over 220 now) and there had been NO media coverage, none!
It specifically calls on the Bush Administration to “initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program;”
This would clearly constitute an act of war, both logically and as defined in the UN Charter, to which the US is a signatory. And it clearly could and would be used by Bush to claim that Congress had authorized this act of war. It is getting some buzz now on the web, including an article and an action alert from Antiwar.com, and there have been a scattering of news stories in the mainstream press, including an opinion piece in Newsday and a column by Rep. Ron Paul in the Baltimore Sentinal. CBS ran an article by Rep. Ackerman from Politico on its website denying that the resolution means what it says, but there is no indication that they aired this story.
It is being speculated that H. Cont. Res. 362 will come to the floor this week, and will be acted on under rules governing “non-controversial” resolutions which allow for only 20 minutes of debate. Yet EVEN AT THIS LATE DATE IT HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED OR EVEN MENTIONED on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, PBS, NPR, BBC, AOL, msn, USA Today, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald or The Los Angeles Times! The American people simply don’t know about what may well be a pivotal action by Congress! We were never given the opportunity to organize and speak against it."
If the US Navy imposes a blockade (a definite act of war), Iran is almost certain to retaliate. WHAT THEN??
Talk about PUMA.
Hey Matt,
What are your thoughts on the death penalty? I'd be interested to hear.
If I were American I would be a stalwart Democrat, yet as a student of history I am particularly taken with the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, who seemed to make science and technology and infrastructure hallmarks of his term in office. I was therefore interested to see Chuck Hagel refer to himself as an "Eisenhower Republican" last week. Even though I think he did so incorrectly (Hagel seems much more fiscally conservative than Eisenhower, and his isolationism makes him more of a George Norris for our generation), I'd be interested to hear your take on his use of the term, and perhaps why he ever thought such a Republican would be welcome in the post-Goldwater GOP.
Second Chet's request. This Resolution authorizes Bush to start a war with Iran. It's what Cheney's been waiting for, short of an Israeli strike on Iran - something to cover his and Bush's asses from the consequences.
And the Democrats have signed off on this without any debate whatsoever.
What does Obama think, eh? Well, he's for "aggressive sanctions" now, isn't he? Will he support the upcoming war on Iran? And how will that get him elected President over McCain?
One thing I read over at Drum's everyonce in awhile is a critique of unions. Since our economy is more dependent on service than production, what alternatives to unionizing do workers have?
Waitresses can hardly afford union dues or time off to strike, along with many over service sector jobs that are either tips/commission reliant. Thus the only leverage they have is a transparent bluff. yet these jobs often are the most in need of basic life-necessities that only corporate budgets can afford, such as vacation time, healthcare, sick time, business related expenses like travel and uniforms, etc. etc.
How do service sectors mobilize and organize? Is the answer technology based - does the web afford laymen to tap into mobilizing, p.r., and legal tactics and strategies that have long only been accessible to counterproductive hierarchal structures?
What's the future of labor in this country for its people and democratic politics?
thanks for any input.
Why so little about Cheney's hopes for starting a war in Iran before leaving office? When Packer's article on the topic became available last week, I assumed the blogosphere would have a lot to say about it, but there seems to have been very little reaction. I realize nothing in there is too radically different from what we already knew, and that you and others have certainly mentioned this worry before. But the more I think and read about it, the more it seems that this is far and away the most pressing question for the rest of Bush's term. These lunatics might be able to do more damage to our country in the next few months than they've done with any single act thus far. That is pretty terrifying. Shouldn't more be being said about this?
Whoops, I meant Hersh, not Packer, obviously.
I posted this before, but not a requests thread, so here goes: if you're against judicial review, what would you replace it with? How would we go about invalidating unconstitutional laws, if not through the courts? (This is assuming we should invalidate them -- if not, why not?)
I've heard you (and other pundits) mention offhand that judicial review isn't so great, but I've never heard any better ideas. Impress me.
Has there been a thread on Barack Obama's endorsement of funding for religious organizations providing social services?
As someone critical of America's public school system I think the obvious qualm is that government will ultimately be forced into deciding what constitutes an official religion and what does not. Do the satanists get faith-based funding? What about the Scientologists? It's a Michael Moore-short-in-the-making now but what happens when a radical-but-one-day-possibly-legit religion comes along and is deemed ineligible for faith-based funding? Then you're into a Roman type deal.
Can you please explain to those of us who've never been a part of the DC culture, or the press culture, or the pundit culture, or any kind of political culture, just what is going on with John McCain's relationship to the press? Everyone's always talking about how gaga the press have always been over him, but I truly don't understand it. What does he do that makes them love him so much? How is this different from what other politicians do? Can you offer some perspective that we non-insiders just don't have to help make sense of it?
Much obliged!
You've consistently maintained that newspapers are in a death spiral, and perhaps they are. What then should the thousands of newspaper journalists across the country be doing right now? Starting online ventures? Looking for a new line of work? Doubling down and working harder?
What do you think of Brian Schweitzer as Obama's VP pick? It probably won`t happen but kos, Jon Tester and others have mentioned it, and I know I would like it as a way to signal a fairly libertarian Obama administration.
Matt
Does the support which Jesse Helms gave to Bono's inititative to boost aid to Africa in any way invalidate or mitigate your criticism of him?
I just watched the first two episodes of the new program "Greensburg" on Planet Green last night. I was surprised by how much of the second episode focused on intelligent city planning. I'm curious whether you've seen this show yet.
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/greensburg/greensburg-episode-guide.html
Comments closed July 20, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
How about your thoughts on Douthat linking approvingly to known racists?
Posted by Reality Man | July 6, 2008 11:48 AM