Express anything as a number, a statistic, and it takes on the air of authority. The more apparently precise that number, the more digits after the decimal point, the more substantial it seems to people — even if that very precise figure was arrived at through a speculative and arbitrary set of calculations. Take, for example, "BMI" — the body mass index. The paper ran a story on obesity yesterday, including a sidebar explaining how to calculate your BMI. If... Read more
George W. Bush lied yesterday. There's no other word for what he did, no wiggle room for his defenders or for people like Nick Kristof who feel that we should never, ever say "the president lied" just because the president lied. It wasn't a misstatement. It wasn't mere exaggeration. It wasn't a matter of his naively accepting bad intelligence from the CIA or the British. The president conducted a public forum on Social Security and he deliberately, intentionally lied about... Read more
The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen report today on a lack of enthusiasm for President Bush's plans to dismantle Social Security in an article headlined "In GOP, Resistance on Social Security." The subhead reads "Bush Plan Raises Fear of Voter Anger," but the Republicans quoted in the piece by VandeHei and Allen aren't only talking about such political considerations. They also don't think the president's plan makes any sense. Here's Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn.: "Why stir up a... Read more
I would just like to state for the record that I think torture is wrong. And paramilitary death squads. I'm against them, thank you. And also cannibalism. And the vivisection of small children. Bad Things, those. Oughtn't to be done. Although, unlike torture and death squads, these latter two are not yet, to my knowledge, being considered/recommended/implemented by my government. And … Jesus God! I can't stand this. How in the name of all that is holy did I end... Read more
I live like a freshman I still have a roommate We walk to the Laundry — Jill Sobule, "Freshman" The National Low Income Housing Coalition has released the 2004 version of their annual report "Out of Reach" and found that … drumroll please … Poor people still can't afford to rent an apartment in America. "Out of Reach" takes an idiosyncratic, maybe even gimmicky, approach to the topic of housing affordability. They take HUD data on the fair market cost... Read more
Why does George W. Bush hate Alan Greenspan? And why does the Republican Party think it's most important domestic agenda item is to convince the American people that Ronald Reagan was a liar and a fraud? In the early 1980s Greenspan and Reagan put in place a plan to "save Social Security." Looking ahead, they realized that the demographic bubble of the baby boom was going to create a generation-long hiccup in the program's assumption of constant and gradual population... Read more
I've started to read Philip Gourevitch's book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families: Stories from Rwanda. It is the story of genocide, of the killing of somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million people in about 100 days. This mass destruction was carried out without weapons of mass destruction. It was performed by soldiers, militias and ordinary citizens by the thousands wielding guns, machetes and clubs. When I picked up the book I... Read more
The paper does a daily online poll question. Yesterday's concerned President Bush's still-vague proposals for privatizing Social Security: "Do you favor individual investment accounts as a part of Social Security?" The response — 42% yes; 47% no; 12% uncertain — was somewhat hopeful, but I still found the question less than helpful, prompting this e-mail suggesting future poll questions on the topic: As a followup to today's question on Social Security, how about these: * Are you aware that Social... Read more
Scenario 1: A massive tragedy strikes, centered on the world's most populous Muslim nation, but with effects felt in many other countries. The U.S. immediately and decisively pledges a substantial amount of assistance. The following day, as the full scope of the disaster is revealed, that pledge is increased tenfold and the American president publicly informs his counterparts in the afflicted countries that he is willing to offer "whatever we can." Scenario 2: A massive tragedy strikes, centered on the... Read more
Mother Jones has posted a lengthy excerpt of Peter Maass' eye-opening article on Teodoro Obiang, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang is probably the worst leader I'd never heard of — at least not in the kind of detail that Maass provides. Equatorial Guinea is a tiny rectangle, about the size of Maryland, carved out of the coast of West Africa. If it weren't for the name, I'd have trouble finding it on the map. Here's how the CIA World... Read more
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