My Small, Car-less World

I took a train the the Philly suburbs on Saturday to watch the (damnit) concluding game of the NLCS, passing by a lot of interesting little Philadelphia sub-communities that I probably would've explored by now ... if I had a car. So I relate to Atrios' thoughts on what car-lessness does to your world:

"Obviously cars are useful things in that they let you basically go 'anywhere' at relatively low perceived marginal cost (one problem with the way we pay for cars is that a lot of things which are really marginal costs are perceived as fixed costs by people). I think I've been car free for about 6 years now, and where I can go reasonably is dictated by where I can walk, where there's decent public transportation access, where is accessible by a cab ride I'm willing to pay for, or what's accessible by a carshare car that I'm willing to pay for. While there isn't a perfect mapping, carshare costs make perceived fixed costs (insurance, maintenance, car payments) into marginal costs to some degree. All that makes the accessible world quite a bit smaller."

This is all true. I live in Center City, and 95 percent of what I do in town is generally in Center City. That's not all bad: There's lots to do in Center City! I like my neighborhood, and I like the neighborhoods that I can walk to in 20 minutes or less -- which is quite a huge chunk of town. But it is limited. I mostly enjoy living without the car -- and I really appreciate not having the expenses -- but the limits of my travel sometimes make me wonder if living in a big East Coast city has made me more provincial than when I was living in Kansas.

SEIU Thugs in Action!

Sorry. Wrong thugs!

Victor Davis Hanson is Wrong About Wikileaks

Hanson: "We are engaged in a great experiment to see whether the U.S. military can still persist in a conflict when it knows that any and all of its private communications can become public — and will be selectively aired and hyped by people with a preconceived bias against it. Had the public known in real time from periodic media leaks about operational disasters surrounding the planning for the D-Day landings, intelligence failures at the Bulge or Okinawa, or G.I. treatment of some German and Japanese prisoners, the story of World War II might have been somewhat different."

Perhaps, but the release of the the Afghanistan and Iraq documents by Wikileaks has been done in something less than real time. Is there a D-Day operation that has been compromised by the leaks? Not that's been publicly demonstrated, at least. Learning about things years later is not the same as "real time."

And the United States at least had a clearly defined mission in World War II. We knew who we were fighting, what a victory would mean and what a loss would mean. We're nearly a decade post-9/11, having meandered through a pair of quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only thing we really know is that we're supposed to keep fighting. The Wikileaks documents bring some clarity, at least, to the question of the results of that fighting.

Mother Jones and Sarah Palin

Here's the new cover of Mother Jones:

I don't like it. Hey, I get it: Sarah Palin's an attractive woman. I even think so. But I'm trying to think how folks on the left would react to, say, a National Review cover with Hillary Clinton or Kathleen Sebelius in a bikini top, engorged with rage and lust. I think Sarah Palin is a destructive force in American politics, but I hate to see ostensible feminists resort to objectification just because it's somebody on the other side.

Somewhere, Fans of 'Rambo III" Weep Gently To Themselves

Who honestly thinks this is a good idea?: "Russia's military could return to Afghanistan for the first time since the Red Army was forcibly expelled by US-backed mujahideen fighters in 1989. The proposal is part of plans now being discussed by Nato officials ahead of a landmark alliance summit next month, to be attended by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev."

I know things aren't going well in Afghanistan. But if a big part of our problem there is that we're seen as occupiers -- and it is -- then maybe inviting in the occupiers we once helped kick out of the country sends the wrong damn message. This war is making our leaders stupider and stupider.

Cato: Let's Cut the Defense Budget

I know the Cato Institute is just a "glorified PR firm for Koch Industries," but this paper defies easy labeling as lockstep Republicanism. Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble make the case for reducing defense spending by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

They write: "Concern about deficits has prompted greater scrutiny of all federal spending. But the cuts here would be prudent even in an era of surpluses. The United States does not need to spend $700 billion a year — nearly half of global military spending — to preserve its security. By capitalizing on our geopolitical fortune, we can safely spend far less."

That's deficit-busting I can handle!

Gay Marriage and Activist Judging

Reason's Jacob Sullum offers the strict-constitutionalist case for gay marriage: "I realize opponents of same-sex marriage think they have good reasons for denying gay couples the rights and privileges that straight couples enjoy, and they would argue that homosexuals and heterosexuals are not “similarly situated.” But you know what? Screw them. I am tired of defending the constitutional principles that social conservatives use to restrict liberty, because they so rarely return the favor by supporting those same principles when the effect is to expand liberty. When a supposedly principled originalist like Antonin Scalia can endorse a ridiculously broad reading of the Commerce Clause because the case involves pot, why should I stick my neck out by arguing that the original understanding of equal protection precludes its use in gay marriage cases?"