Worth Reading, 20060726

Worth reading, July 27, 2006:

Talking Points - The Rise of the Super-Rich by Teresa Tritch - New York Times: [I]n the United States today, there’s a new twist to the familiar plot. Income inequality used to be about rich versus poor, but now it’s increasingly a matter of the ultra rich and everyone else. The curious effect of the new divide is an economy that appears to be charging ahead, until you realize that the most of the people in it are being left in the dust. President Bush has yet to acknowledge the true state of affairs, though it’s at the root of his failure to convince Americans that the good times are rolling...

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: What makes someone a "chicken hawk"?: Jeff Jacoby launched an impassioned attack in The Boston Globe on Sunday against what he calls "the chicken hawk slur."... Jacoby completely distorted what it actually means.... [T]he "chicken hawk" criticism is not typically made against someone who merely (a) advocates a war but (b) will not fight in that war.... Something more than mere support for a war without fighting in it is required to earn the "chicken hawk" label. Chicken-hawkism is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness...

Clear Enough | TPMCafe: Clear Enough. By Matthew Yglesias: Kevin Drum writes a bit about the considerable evidence that environmental factors play a large role in reducing the IQs of poor children and says "it's still unclear what to do about this. Intensive educational interventions are the most obvious possibility, but results on this front haven't been very promising."I think it actually is rather clear what to do. Evidence suggests that across a broad range of criteria having poor parents is bad for children in ways that are very difficult to mitigate through child-targeted interventions. The best way to cope with this would be to take steps to enhance the material living standards of poor adults. That would be a nice favor to the adults and would significantly reduce the challenges facing their children. Unfortunately, while the electorate has a reasonable willingness to try and do things to help out poor kids (because it's "not their fault" that their parents are poor) there's a lot of reluctance to providing serious assistance to poor adults who are deemed to "deserve" their fate. This is a significant political challenge, but I think the policy issue is reasonably clear -- the best way to help poor children is to help poor people generally...

Andrew Sullivan lies about Al Gore: Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: "I finally saw the Gore movie yesterday. It's thoroughly persuasive about the reality of global warming and the contribution of carbon dioxide emissions to it. I'd recommend it strongly to anyone. Its blindspots were, however, obvious. No mention is made anywhere of the fact that Al Gore was a very powerful vice-president for eight years in a critical period for this issue. His fulminations against others' indifference would have been a little more credible if he'd at least addressed and explained his own failure to do anything when he was able to.... I think a serious gas tax and a tough increase in mandatory fuel economy standards in the U.S. are essential to prompting the technological breakthroughs that alone can ameliorate this. And yet Gore balked. Just like he did when he was in power..." Shame on you, Andrew Sullivan. Shame. Al Gore worked like a dog to try to get an energy tax through the Congress in 1993--and got remarkably far given the united opposition he faced from the Republican Party and the American Petroleum Institute. Al Gore then switched gears, and spent the rest of the Clinton administration trying (a) to get a push for new, cleaner technologies in gear, and (2) to mobilize world civil society to commit to fight global warming via the Kyoto negotiations. I think his switched-gears strategy was mistaken--I am a card. But it was his best judgment, he did work very hard at it, and in his willingness to place his political career on the line in order to mobilize the country and the world for action against a truly serious, serious problem...

[The cry of the chickenhawk[(http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/25/may-war/): Cliff May, another National Review blogger and prominent right-wing pundit, objected. May insisted that Lopez, by blogging for the National Review was “fighting a war” and this war was “equally consequential” with the wars that are fought by the U.S. military. An excerpt: 'There is a war of arms. And there is a war of ideas. They are not just inter-related, they are interdependent. They are equally consequential.... Let’s take just one example: In the 1930s, Churchill fought a war of ideas. He tried to warn the world about Hitler; tried to warn Europe and America that Hitler’s hatred and ambition had to be checked. But most people did not listen. Churchill’s ideas did not prevail. They called Churchill a “war monger.”... So yes, Kathryn, you are fighting a war. And your e-mailer is ignorant about how wars are fought, about how wars are won and lost, and about the way the world actually works."... [B]logging on the National Review (or ThinkProgress, for that matter) is not the equivalent of Churchill warning the world about Hitler. And blogging is not “equally consequential” to the wars fought by members of the United States military, who put their lives at risk every day....

A Tiny Revolution: We're Making Real Progress!: Here's the famous story of George Packer's from March 2, 2003: "Bush is a man who has never shown much curiosity about the world. When he met with [Kanan] Makiya and two other Iraqis in January, I was told by someone not present, the exiles spent a good portion of the time explaining to the president that there are two kinds of Arabs in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites." Now, here's a Newsweek story about the recent G-8 Summit: "[Bush, Blair and Chirac] quickly agree on how to proceed against Hizbullah, while keeping the pressure on Syria and Iran. "Chirac was very strong in recognizing that Hizbullah and Syria and Iran are part of the Shia arc in the Middle East," Bush says later." You see, he's learning! True, according to the CIA Factbook, Syria is 74% Sunni, 16% Alawite, Druze, and other Muslim sects, and 10% Christian. So Bush doesn't know who or where different kinds of Muslims are. But still, after a brief 5 years of our "war on terror," he has learned they exist! This is exactly the kind of effort that should be praised in three year-olds and the president of the United States. Yes: Russia is big and China is big. That's very, very good. Tomorrow, we will move onto tying your shoes...

Stop now, immediately - Haaretz - Israel News : Stop now, immediatelyBy Gideon LevyThis war must be stopped now and immediately. From the start it was unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified, and now is the time to end it. Every day raises its price for no reason, taking a toll in blood that gives Israel nothing tangible in return. This is a good time to stop the war because both sides can claim they won: Israel harmed Hezbollah and Hezbollah harmed Israel. History shows that no situation is better for reaching an arrangement. Remember the lessons of the Yom Kippur War. Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds and with foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hezbollah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. It has gotten most of what it could have out of this war. The aerial "target bank" has mostly been covered. The air force could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighborhoods and empty offices and could also continue dropping dozens of tons of bombs on real or imagined bunkers and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it. Those who want to restore Israel's deterrent capabilities have succeeded. Hezbollah and the rest of its enemies know that Israel reacts with enormous force to any provocation. South Lebanon is cleaner now of a Hezbollah presence. In any case, the organization is likely to return there, just as it is likely to rearm. An international agreement could be achieved now, and it won't be possible to achieve a better deal at a reasonable price in the future...

Bob Sutton: Strong Opinions, Weakly Held: I’ve been pretty obsessed about the difference between smart people and wise people for years. I tried to write a book called “The Attitude of Wisdom” a couple times. And the virtues of wise people – those who have the courage to act on their knowledge, but the humility to doubt what they know – is one of the main themes in Hard Facts. We show how leaders including Xerox’s Ann Mulcahy, Intel’s Any Grove, Harrah’s Gary Loveman, and IDEO’s David Kelley turn this attitude into organizational action. Perhaps the best description I’ve ever seen of how wise people act comes from the amazing folks at Palo Alto’s Institute for the Future. A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.” They've been giving this advice for years, and I understand that it was first developed by Instituite Director Paul Saffo. Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”...

Blood & Treasure: sinister Sefton: his legacy: This sounds like a typical application of airpower theory. Squadron A is told to drop leaflets on homes urging civilians to flee by any means tat heir disposal. Squadron B is told to attack anything on the roads that just might conceivably be capable of concealing troops or weapons. The contradiction in terms is carefully never discussed, and the apologists get to work...

A Sound Marketplace For Recorded Music: A Sound Marketplace For Recorded MusicBy Steven PearlsteinWednesday, July 19, 2006; D01: Here in Washington, there is nothing more amusing than watching business interests work themselves up into a righteous frenzy over a threat to their monopoly profits from a new technology or some upstart with a different business model. Invariably, the monopolists (or their first cousins, the oligopolists) try to present themselves as champions of the consumer, or defenders of a level playing field, as if they hadn't become ridiculously rich by sticking it to consumers and enjoying years in which the playing field was tilted to their advantage. A recent example is the political and legal attack mounted by the music-recording industry against the upstarts of satellite radio. You'd think an industry that has managed to turn out so much mediocre music for so many years, done so much to lower moral standards and lost so much business to illegal file-sharing would have something better to do than attack some of the few distributors that are actually expanding the market and charging for music. But the prospect that the industry might not extract every last penny out of the new satellite radio services and their customers is simply unacceptable to the Recording Industry Association of America...

Eric Umansky: Look Out: July 22, 2006 Look Out Tom Ricks, the Wash Post's ace military correspondent, has a book coming that details "the American adventure in Iraq." The title: FIASCO. Among the revelations cited in a press release for the book: * U.S. policies and tactics helped create the insurgency. * Abuse of Iraqi prisoners was far more widespread than just a few "bad apples" at the Abu Ghraib prison, and was, in fact suggested by senior military officers. * U.S. military leaders failed their troops by sending them to Iraq unprepared for the task at hand. * One of the most abusive units was the 4th Infantry Division. The general who led this division, Raymond Odierno, is scheduled to become the no. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq later this year. * The U.S. military was frequently at odds with U.S. civilian officials, resulting in internal friction that undermined the American mission. * The U.S. military didn't launch a counterinsurgency campaign until August 2004-some 17 months after the fall of Baghdad and a full year after the insurgency began. The generals and officials involved in abuse might be damned good at their jobs. That's why they're always getting promoted. Anyway, the book is out Tuesday...

High-ranking officer: Halutz ordered retaliation policy: By YAAKOV KATZ: A high-ranking IAF officer caused a storm on Monday in an off-record briefing during which he told reporters that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa. The officer said that the equation was created by Halutz and that every rocket strike on Haifa would be answered by IAF missile strikes on 10 12-story buildings in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya, a Hizbullah stronghold. Since the beginning of Operation Change of Direction, launched on July 12 following the abduction of two soldiers during a Hizbullah cross-border attack, over 80 buildings in the neighborhood have been destroyed. After the officer's remarks were published on The Jerusalem Post website as well as other Israeli news sites, the IDF Spokesperson's Office released a statement insinuating that reporters had misquoted the senior officer and claimed that the publications were false and that Halutz had never issued such a directive. The IDF Spokesperson's Office later retracted its accusation that reporters had misquoted the officer and issued a second statement claiming that the high-ranking officer had made a mistake and was wrong in claiming that Halutz had issued such a directive...