11 year-old interviews Obama

This is pretty cute. They’re homeboys:

Oh Republicans

Only one answered the “birther” question directly:

Speaking of polls

A corollary to the last post. These trend lines are probably worse for Obama than the approval trend lines.

Cherry picking

Greg Mankiw thinks “the honeymoon is over“:

From Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. That’s the first time his ratings have reached double digits in negative territory….The President is now seen as politically liberal by 76%. That’s up six points from a month ago, 11 points since he was elected, and the highest total to date. Forty-eight percent (48%) now see him as Very Liberal, up 20 points since he was elected.

Maybe it is time to invite the Blue Dogs over to the White House for a beer.

Mankiw’s trouble started with the words: “From Rasmussen”. A more balanced look at how things are going for Obama (which includes Rasmussen’s 7/24-26 Approval Poll):

Good for Obama? No… the trendlines are converging. Damning, with a -11% spread? Certainly not.

Late budget

The midsummer budget update is going to be released a bit tardy. Greg Mankiw thinks this means Obama is skirting accountability. Matthew Yglesias counters:

Now it’s true that this “usually” happens in mid-July. But it’s also “usually” the case that the President in any given July is the same President you had the previous July. In transition years, it’s normal for the budget process to be pushed back in time. The 1993 budget review came out at the end of August and the 2001 budget review came out on August 22. There’s no conspiracy here.

Past the point of no return?

This is probably accurate:

In fact, there is a perfectly good reason developing countries are unwilling to act on climate change: What they are being asked to do is more awful than climate change’s implications–even if one accepts all the alarmist predictions.

Consider what would be necessary to slash global greenhouse-gas emissions just 50% below 2000 levels by 2050–a far less aggressive goal than what the enviros say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe. According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce calculations, even if the West reduced its emissions by 80% below 2000 levels, developing countries would still have to return their emissions to 2000 levels to meet the 50% target. However, Indians currently consume roughly 15 times less energy per capita than Americans–and Chinese consume seven times less. Asking them, along with the rest of the developing world, to go back to 2000 emission levels with a 2050 population would mean putting them on a very drastic energy diet.

The human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes–for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach–would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.

I think I may agree with this point: we are too far down the slippery-slope of climate-change for curbing consumption to be enough to effectively combat the changes. We might be past the point of no-return here.

To avoid calamity, I believe we will need a technological revolution (coming in the form of a multi-front effort to increase carbon-free energy production, geo-engineering global cooling efforts, &c.).

But what we can do with consumption-curbing efforts is buy ourselves more time. If we can slow the pace of warming, we increase the chances of finding technological resources to help our efforts.

Her conclusion, which essentially amounts to sitting on our hands, is utterly backwards and false:

So what should climate warriors do? Right now the only certain way to save lives is by calling off this misguided war on climate change. If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding their calls. If, however, these climate-change casualties don’t materialize, there would have been no need to act in the first place. Either way, the world has far more immediate and scarier problems than climate change to address right now.

We cannot abandon pushes to slow/stop climate change. That is suicide. To say we have to stop all efforts on this huge issue because there are other huge issues going on in the world simultaneously, is both misguided and cowardly. We can rub our stomach and pat our head at the same time–and in this case, we need to.

The real issue here is a failure to acknowledge that, going forward, our economy and our environmental policies and outlook are going to be intertwined. For example, examining the real cost of burning carbon on society as a whole. One of the ways to address this problem is to tie the real cost of carbon to the way it is priced in the market place.

The issues of poverty, food production/dispersion, and the environment are more intertwined than Dalmia acknowledges. And a failure to acknowledge this, and to address it as a three-headed but singular problem (there are actually more heads on this hydra than that–foreign policy, for example), is to failure to form the comprehensive, cohesive strategy necessary to take a crack at these globally-scaled issues.

(Danke: Patrick Appel)

Whose neighbor?

This is really an excellent post by Ta-Nehisi. I have to say I have very little experience with race issues and their complexity, and he has opened up a new world for me with his blog. It’s been a pleasure to read and learn: especially after moving to the South (the NW doesn’t seem to have the same attitudes or concerns as exist elsewhere in the country… I don’t know the post off the top of my head but TNC himself said while on a trip out West that the feeling was so different: that he wasn’t constantly reminded and confronted by race). Anyway… give it a read.

A commenter on his site, JH, sums up my interaction with TNC’s blog quite well:

Every now and then I think you’re starting to fall off, and then you write something like this. Damn good post. Thanks.

And another:

JH: Agreed. TNC: I knew you were circling around something really good in the past couple of days with this train of thought, watching you get at the words is always a pleasure. Absolutely nailed it. Mental tastebuds are TINGLING.

That last one, by kekemen, really hits it, I think. That’s what the whole point of blogging versus other mediums is: that you get to play with the ideas, out loud, in public, until they coalesce into something substantial.

Gradually getting rid of the bomb

Obama’s done some good this weekend. Yglesias:

The numbers announced Monday, Mr. Cirincione notes, amount to a 30 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

In other words, that’s a roughly 28 percent reduction in the total number of nuclear weapons in the world. It’s also a powerful signal to the French, British, and especially Chinese that the United States and Russia are serious about reducing arsenals and that the Obama administration really wants to pursue a nuclear-free world. The fact that the US and Russia contain such a large proportion of global nukes is, after all, a bit of an anachronism as in pretty much all other respects China has clearly replaced Russia as the number two geopolitical player and in some domains the European Union has set itself up as a more-or-less independent great power. It would be very plausible for the Chinese (and much less plausible, though still possible, for the Europeans) to decide they need to react to this situation by “leveling up” and building their own arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Steps that give the Chinese confidence that they don’t need to do that, that the US and Russia are prepared to level down, will do an enormous amount to help build a more peaceful, more secure world. Not only in terms of the US-China relationship, but also in terms of India’s thinking about its nuclear needs and therefore Pakistan’s thinking and therefore the general problem of proliferation around the world. These reductions, if they come to pass, will be a huge deal.

Presidential

The Big Picture has a photo-summary of Obama’s first 167 days. This one, Number 14, is the epitome of “Presidential”.

…this one, is not. Heh. (Of course, that’s not to say I don’t like it.)

A profile in courage

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I don’t just accept that Obama has to represent more than black people–I think it’s essential. Likewise, I don’t just accept that Obama has to lead more than black people to a deeper more humane understanding–I think it’s essential. I am unimpressed by a black man, with the political gifts of Barack Obama, who is supported by 90 percent of the black community, who believes gay marriage to be against the tenents of Christianity, going to a black church and saying the following:

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.

I appreciate it. But I’m not impressed. Take it to rest of the country. Take it to that vast 87 percent that you now rep for, and tell them the good news. That would be a profile in courage.

Jon Stewart tackles Obama (lack of) transparency

John Hodgman at Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner

The power of empowering

Sullivan points to a thoughtful piece by Aziz Poonawalla:

The point here is that saber-rattling and stern lectures about freedom and democracy are one approach, which give the appearance of “support” for reformists’ cause but in fact make things much worse. What does work is direct engagement of the people, giving them resources they can use as they take their own destiny in hand. This is a simple lesson that the ODS-afflicted Republiican warriors would do well to understand, if they truly value the welfare of the people of Iran, not to mention of the United States, over their short-term political fortunes.

This is not about us. It’s about them.

The whole thing’s worth a read (it’s a quick read, too… so no excuses).

Follow up

Packer follows up his previous post and Obama’s statement:

Just when Obama seemed to have fallen a step behind events, he emerged from his silence to do what no politician in our time could have managed: emphasize American respect for Iranian sovereignty and yet, in measured terms, make it clear that the U.S. cannot be indifferent to the tragedy unfolding in Iran. He spoke with calm eloquence to the millions of people who have filled the streets at great risk—spoke to their hopes and their courage. He proved that an American President can lend his voice to “universal values” without sounding like a self-righteous fool. And he showed the emptiness of the eternal argument between realism and idealism. When foreign policy is articulated by a thoughtful politician in the middle of an intense and unfolding drama, the abstractions melt away. It’s actually possible to be pragmatic without being indecent. Why shouldn’t it be?

Obama on Iran