Politics

Paul Krugman, fearless economist, explains liquidity traps for the non-economists among us. Interesting stuff. He gets political towards the end, but I happen to think he’s mostly right. The extra few hundred bucks parents get on their taxes may make more of a difference than he claims, though. Parenthetically, I am a bit baffled as to why more liberal commentators don’t address that aspect of the tax cut. It’s very hard to convince people that the tax cut mostly benefits the rich when you completely ignore the increase in the child credit. 400 bucks per child is not chump change. It is a pretty small percentage of the total cut, but that doesn’t mean middle and lower class parents won’t notice it, and you just look like a complete idiot if you pretend it doesn’t exist. ...

The Telegraph has partial confirmation (original) of the earlier Gitmo capital punishment story. It seems fairly likely, at this point, that there are plans for a camp that include an execution chamber. Talking about this is not being alarmist; it’s part of the system. Which is to say, it’s citizens expressing their opinions when (as may well be the case here) some military personnel let their enthusiasm get the better of them. The reason abuses like that don’t happen is because people speak up. It is not sufficient to simply say “Well, we’d never do that.” It’s our job to remind our government that we don’t do that.

The Economist has a very good report on the Congo (via Gary Farber, who would like as many bloggers as possible to raise awareness of the situation). 2.5 million have died in the Congo over the last four years; the death toll makes Saddam look like a piker. If humanitarian motivations suffice to justify the war on Iraq, then the Congo ought to be next in line. If they don’t — we still ought to do something about this. ...

Then: “I don?t think there is any role for the U.N. in the short term in searching for, or identifying, or securing weapons of mass destruction, but we do not necessarily rule out some kind of U.N. role down the road.” That’d be U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Today, things are different: “The United States has started discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency to make arrangements for IAEA teams to return to Iraq to determine what may have been stolen from nuclear sites, a State Department official said yesterday.” ...

Bruce R. is just destroying the initial responses to the Jessica Lynch story over on Flit. It’s the kind of impressively completist work that makes blogs look good. Start at the top and work down. Best quote so far, from Rumsfeld: “We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant, correction PFC Jessica Lynch who was being held by Iraqi forces in, in what they called a ‘hospital.’” ...

The UN Security Council will approve a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq today. This resolution is the result of a fair bit of negotiation and back and forth; it’s not the resolution the US wanted, and it’s not the resolution France, Germany, and Russia want. But everyone’s fairly happy with it. Lo, the art of compromise. It gives the UN more of a voice in the post-war reconstruction, and extends the food for oil program for six months. Probably most importantly, from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t give Iraq permanent immunity from claims by creditors, which means that Russia and France have some leverage to encourage Iraq to enforce the pre-war contracts. ...

You know, it might be dangerous to let kids play violent videogames. In this case, Washington State just made it illegal to sell videogames to teenagers if they contain violence against police. Good work, y’all! Now let’s take care of those icky books that tell stories in which there’s violence against policemen. Nasty things.

If you’re inclined that way, you may want to buy one of these Killer D’s (original) T-shirts, which commemorate the current Texas Democrat House of Representatives walkout. (See, the last time anyone did this in Texas, they were called the Killer Bees. Get it?) Did what, right. 50-odd Democrats just walked out of the Texas House of Representatives in order to block a redistricting bill proposed by Tom Delay, which would have gerrymandered Texas federal districts in such a way as to increase the number of Republican Congressmen from that state. By leaving, they deprive the Texas House of quorum and since Thursday is the last day to introduce new bills (edit: not the last day of the session), the redistricting bill will not get passed. (Thanks to Ginger for the correction there; she has a good piece (original) on this too.) ...

OK. this post is just beyond the pale. The backstory: Kelley Ferguson is a stupid idiot who faked a terrorist threat in order to get out of a cruise with her parents. Missed her boyfriend. Totally stupid. But how do you get from there to blaming Bush? “And many people, wavering between fear of the unknown and the all too casual attittude eminating from the White House, can treat a terrorist attack as a prank.” ...

Just for reference, this map shows the proposed Texas federal districting, and this map shows the current Texas federal districting. I can see some pretty weird looking districts in the latter (check out 15, for example), but the former certainly doesn’t do any better. In fact, 15 is worse. You can’t see it at this scale, but the proposed district 15 has a mile wide strip along the bottom of the state that connects it to a little bubble of territory under district 23.