Link Banana

Ross Douthat’s been on the editorial page of the New York Times for a few months, and while none of his columns have been out-of-the-park exceptional, most are rather good. Yesterday’s example:

When it comes to divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, Americans with graduate degrees are still living in the 1950s. It’s the rest of the country that marries impulsively, divorces frequently, and bears a rising percentage of its children outside marriage. Indeed, if you’re looking for modern-day Percy Shelleys or Mary Wollstonecrafts (to pluck a pair of Nehring’s romantic risk-takers), you’re more likely to find them in Middle America than among the environmental lawyers and documentary filmmakers who populate Tsing Loh’s depressing social world.

He’s exactly what I thought he could be — a Brooksian conservative who’s not afraid to venture deep into the personal, religious, and moral weeds that Brooks himself mostly avoids.

The LA Times has an interesting Flash thing (game seems too generous): devise a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to balance California’s famously troubled budget. For some reason I can’t seem to devise a solution that no one would be upset about…

(via Mr. Arment)

It’s been too long since I read The Onion:

“Once you let go of the need to express your thoughts to your family, you suddenly feel much lighter,” Wilmot said. “You just float along blissfully, finally liberated from the burden of having any presence at all. It’s sort of like getting to return to the womb. Which is way more enjoyable than trying to explain to a tableful of Celine Dion fans why you can’t stand her.”

(via kottke)

Ross Douthat, who to little derision or attention has started having his column published in the New York Times, has a good summary of Obama’s apparent plan for “winning” America’s culture war:

Engage on abortion, punt on gay rights.

And just to say, if the first two weeks are any indication, Douthat’s going to be a great compliment to Brooks. The two most conservative columnists at the paper are very probably the best.

With it’s governor having mentioned secession, Nate Silver poses a more interesting scenario: what if Texas made itself into five states, as is its legal right? (A fact I hadn’t known.) I was rather surprised by the result.

Today’s Big Picture series is something that’s been banned for 18 years. And while it’s certainly somber, I’m not sure I understand what all the hubbub was about.

It’s wonky and probably — to most — pretty boring, but I think Nate Silver makes a good point:

The question, of course, is why there isn’t a millionaires tax bracket now … or even a multi-millionaires tax bracket. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’m guessing that if you established a new tax bracket at, say, 40.5 percent, that started at incomes of $1,000,000 or more, this would bring in as much revenue to the government as restoring the $250K tax bracket (which is really $360K now given indexing to inflation) to 39.6 percent, as it was under Clinton.

I liked this point from Paul Graham:

I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people’s identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that’s part of their identity. By definition they’re partisan.

And I find it hard to disagree with his conclusion:

The most intriguing thing about this theory, if it’s right, is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. If people can’t think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.

Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

(via Give Me Something To Read)

An interesting chart from Nate Silver. I’m impressed that the numer of people who hadn’t even held state-level office is so high (at 20%).

David Brooks worries, in a troubling coherent piece, that the incoming President may have already bitten off more than he’ll be able to successfully manage. The conclusion sent chills down my spine:

By this time next year, he’ll either be a great president or a broken one.

Interestingly, Paul Krugman’s piece (also from Friday’s paper) argues that the incoming administration needs to do even more.

If there’s any logic behind the embattled Illinois govenor making a pick of US Senator, I think Edward McClellen may have captured it:

You don’t like Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick for the U.S. Senate? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see another black guy in the World’s Most Exclusive Club?

From the “surprising at first but obvious thereafter” category: in America, people at both ends of the political spectrum are more likely to pray than those in the middle.

(via Patrick Appel)

I, like most of Clay Shirkey’s students, hadn’t seen this video from the election season. His explanation of it’s power is interesting:

Dear Mr. Obama was a trifecta. For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems — nothing. The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video’s sole speaker can’t be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.

(via Chris Bodenner)

If like me (and 98.9% of Americans) you only pay attention to Canadian politics for about two seconds a year, Karim Bardeesy explains what you’ve been missing.

A royal appointee shutting down Parliament; national cross-country protests; bloodthirsty accusations of treason and sedition. All the frictions of a new democracy. I hope they work it out in Thailand!

No, welcome to Canadian politics in 2008.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this doesn’t capture everyone, but this seems like a reasonable explanation of most of the opposition to the auto industry bailout:

Most Americans simply no longer identify with the domestic auto industry (or with the states of Michigan and Ohio). To the Southerners who now make up the core constituency of the Republican Party, it’s a bunch of coddled, unionized workers trying to get handouts that the South’s auto industry (Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW …) doesn’t need. To the coastal urbanites and suburbanites who now make up the core constituency of the Democratic Party, it’s an industry that makes crappy big cars and fights against higher fuel efficiency standards. And to the business press it’s the worst thing of all: a trio of companies that are neither exciting nor financially successful.

(via Passport)

Truly living up to it’s name, Strange Maps offers the stunning overlay of those areas that were the greatest cotton producers in 1860 — and thus had the largest slave populations — and those areas most strongly for the election of Barack Obama. Proof that if nothing else, history lives on.

Also, I’d love to hear some theories about that high-producer on Tennessee’s southern border that’s now solidly red. Is that a city? — my geography of the South is pretty bad.

I was about to post to Twitter my displeasure with the Democrat’s indefatigable plan to give money to Detroit, when I saw that David Brook said it much better than I would:

Not so long ago, corporate giants with names like PanAm, ITT and Montgomery Ward roamed the earth. They faded and were replaced by new companies with names like Microsoft, Southwest Airlines and Target. The U.S. became famous for this pattern of decay and new growth. Over time, American government built a bigger safety net so workers could survive the vicissitudes of this creative destruction — with unemployment insurance and soon, one hopes, health care security. But the government has generally not interfered in the dynamic process itself, which is the source of the country’s prosperity.

But this, apparently, is about to change. Democrats from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi want to grant immortality to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. They have decided to follow an earlier $25 billion loan with a $50 billion bailout, which would inevitably be followed by more billions later, because if these companies are not permitted to go bankrupt now, they never will be.

This bit, further down the page, was also good:

It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It’s C.E.O.’s. It’s politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state.

Mr. Contenetti’s logic is so straight-forward that I’m ashamed to have been oblivious to it while the campaign unfolded:

It’s worth revisiting why this has been a long campaign. The reason has nothing to do with when the primaries were scheduled. The early primaries were a symptom, not a cause. The cause is Bush. Starting with Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the country simply wrote off Bush’s presidency. That grew worse as the Iraq war worsened and the Democrats took Congress in 2006. As Jeffrey Bell has pointed out, Bush’s dismal popularity has driven all politics ever since. It is the country’s desire to move beyond Bush, as well as his lack of a successor, that has made this election last so long and propelled Barack Obama to the edge of the presidency. For these reasons alone, George W. Bush is one of the most consequential presidents in history.

… The next campaign will not be as long as this one.

And to quote Ross Douthat, “Not that this wasn’t fun and all, but here’s hoping he’s right …”.

Bob Greene asks voters to say something nice about the man they’re not voting for in the presidential election. (This would have made a good video.)

(via Waxy)

Timothy Noah’s hardly the first person to claim that the Democrat’s go-to economic wise men, Bob Rubin, should have to shoulder a piece of the blame for the current financial mess. But his arguments are clearly laid out, and worthy of a perusal for anyone with a faint interest in the topic.