Category: politics
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The defining feature of modern Republicanism
It’s not small-government. It’s not anti-tax screeds or culture war crusades. It’s not being pro-big business or pro-gun. It’s not being anti-choice or anti-gay. It’s not suport of “traditional marriages” or of non-traditional “special interrogation”. It’s not being pro-Gitmo or anti-drone or pro-Keystone or anti-FEMA. It’s not even being sexist or being racist. It’s a…
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Time to put away childish things
Update (2013 Feb 4): Noah Smith has an awesome response to the attack on Prof. Krugman, too. Paul Krugman today discusses a post on “How to Debate Paul Krugman”, which by all appearances is a serious piece. The answer can be boiled down to “Ask questions like a child”: This seems to me to be…
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The Better Nation We’ve Become
In his post today (“Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall“), Paul Krugman links to a graph showing growing acceptance, over time, of interracial marriage in the United States: I like this for the chart that indicates that 86% of the country agrees that it was OK that I married my wife. That trendline — and all the…
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De-tuned
I wrote this nearly five years ago. I was mad then; now I’m more or less just resigned. The intellectual commons is being fenced off, now more than ever. I think we’re losing more than outlets for creativity or profit; we’re losing the shared language to remember who we were, who we are. ============== De-Tuned…
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Newshound explains: The Curious Case of the Silent Filibuster
http://newsbound.com/the-silent-filibuster/ This is a really good, really clear, and (mostly) nonpartisan explanation of the rise of the silent filibuster in the US Senate — where it came from, the damage it does, how it might be fixed.
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Noah Smith on the Rise of the Machines
Here’s a worthwhile read from Noah Smith on the future of an economy where most work is done by robots. I’ve actually thought about this for a long while. How can a democracy survive if all the economic oomph lies in the very few owners of capital? As much as he was (justifiably) derided, President…
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Sure, but just imagine how sorry you’ll be if the British invade…
Kellermann found people turned those guns on themselves and others in the house far more often than on intruders. “In other words, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense,” he says. (Source: NPR)
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Stay classy, guys
Well, it only took a month for the NRA to forget that gun massacres are the result of violent videogames. Now they’ve released an app allowing you to take target practice. On coffins. With a Mk11 sniper rifle (but that’ll cost a a buck). Way to stay classy, Mr. LaPierre and company.
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Why they’re called “gun nuts”
So in Arizona, the NRA is mad that guns turned into the police at a buyback are going to be destroyed rather than, say, put back into circulation. Let’s unpack that: For these people, the Union is ephemeral, to be abandoned when the people elect someone the NRA doesn’t like… But the physical guns are…
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Raw Deal
TR had the Square Deal. FDR had the New Deal. Harry S has the Fair Deal. Barack Obama will have the Raw Deal. So a debt-ceiling “deal” has been reached. Going in to this, the President was willing to compromise but had a few lines in the sand: What did he get? None of these. …