Should Obama face a primary challenge?

Well, that's the discussion at Huffington Post today

The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.

I don't have a problem with primary challenges. The more democracy, the better! But angry liberals should understand this: sitting presidents who face in-party election challenges always lose. Always: LBJ, Carter and Bush I all left the presidency after serving a single elected term. Mount a primary challenge to Obama and you're probably conceding the presidency to the Republicans. If you think there's *no* difference between the parties, then it's no big deal. But while I'm frustrated with the Barack Obama presidency, I feel reasonably assured that President Sarah Palin would be worse. Really.

Macworld: Frenzapp updates with new Facebook, Twitter features

An app-recommendation service for the iPhone has been updated with deeper Facebook integration and, for the first time, the ability to suggest apps to friends via Twitter.

via macworld.com

My latest, small contribution to Macworld.

Today's coffee thought

Today's coffee mugs - like everything else in American life - are huge. But I've started using some old (much smaller) hand-me-down cups that take about have half as much coffee as my newer mugs. Sure, it means more frequent trips to the coffee pot, but it also means that the coffee at the bottom of the cup is more likely to be warm.

Weigel on Obama's surrender on taxes

Dave Weigel, via slate.com:

And this is why liberals can't stomach a compromise on tax rates. They were promised by Obama -- by every Democratic candidate, really -- that the tax rates would be restored to pay for social programs. They thought they proved in the 1990s that these were fair tax rates under which the economy could grow wildly, and that Bush proved in the 2000s that lower marginal tax rates for the wealthy didn't spur real economic growth. It was an important debate, and they won it. They have polls telling them they won it, and most Americans are find with restoring the top rates. And here's Obama, about to throw the game, affirming the conservative line that tax cuts of any size at any time are good for the economy.

Monday morning Prokofiev

This is what Pandora is offering me this morning:

Long live the Bush tax cuts!

Just so we're clear: Democrats, currently in charge of Cong and WH, are about to ratify single defining domestic policy of W.

Christopher Hayes, via twitter.com

I'm not going to say there's no difference between the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration, it terms of the policies that have come from each. We did get (flawed) health care reform, after all. But the differences aren't really big enough -- not in terms of hopes of dreams, but in terms of what actually is accomplished -- to merit much celebration by people who supported Obama in 2008.

Yale study: Gay teens punished more often at school

Gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts, according to a study published Monday, which finds that girls are especially at risk for unequal treatment.

The research, described as the first national look at sexual orientation and teen punishment, comes as a spate of high-profile bullying and suicide cases across the country have focused attention on the sometimes hidden cruelties of teen life.

The study, from Yale University, adds another layer, finding substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct, the study says.

via washingtonpost.com

Depressing.

Afghanistan quagmire watch

Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

But residents of two key southern provinces that have been the focus of U.S. military operations over the past year say aspects of their security and living conditions have improved significantly since last December.

The new poll - conducted by The Washington Post, ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and ARD television of Germany - found a particularly notable shift in public opinion in Helmand province, where Marines have been conducting intensive counterinsurgency operations. The number of people in Helmand describing their security as "good" jumped from 14 percent in a December 2009 poll to 67 percent now. Nearly two-thirds of Helmand residents now say Afghanistan is on the right track.

via washingtonpost.com

Lots of stuff here for people on both sides of the U.S. political divide to use to advance their cases. For me it's telling that most Afghans A) want to see a political deal with the Taliban and B) want to see the U.S. and NATO start to leave.

How the recession is killing radio culture

But as colleges across the country look for ways to tighten budgets amid recession-induced shortfalls, some administrators — most recently in the South — have focused on college radio, leading even well-endowed universities to sell off their FM stations. That trend was felt this summer at Rice and Vanderbilt, among the most prominent of Southern universities, stirring debate about the viability of broadcast radio, the reach of online broadcasting and the value of student broadcast programming.

“We play music that you won’t find on any other Houston radio station” said Joey Yang, a junior at Rice and station manager for KTRU. “KTRU’s mission is to broadcast exactly what you can’t find elsewhere on the dial.”

via nytimes.com

Lots of places around the country where college radio is the only -- or the best -- music alternative to the heavily formatted playlists of corporate-owned stations. (The exceptions tend to be in really big cities like Seattle or New York. Even in Philadelphia, Drexel's WKDU gives the local stations a run for their money, and we have WXPN here.) In that sense, those stations don't offer great training for the post-college world -- hey DJs, you're never going to have this much freedom again! But the rest of us would be immeasurably poorer without their work.

Bad sign for the New York Times?

The "Letter From Washington" has long been a staple of the Monday New York Times. It's usually a step back for a little perspective -- or perhaps even just a bit of lighthearted observation -- on a big issue facing the capital, written by one of the paper's correspondents. This week, though, it's a reprint of a nationally distributed column from Bloomberg News, one that can be found in papers and websites around the world. It's unusual the Times would use wire copy for a standing feature, or so it seems to me. I hope this isn't a sign that layoffs and financial problems are starting to take a real toll on the journalism the paper delivers. 

Wikileaks on Iraq's Neighbors

The Iranians, who waged a bloody eight-year war with Mr. Hussein, have no desire to see a strong Iraq emerge from the ashes of his regime, especially one that has ties with the United States.

So they have sought to influence its politics by funneling cash to Iraqi political factions, ordering assassinations and shipping arms to militants, some of which an Oct. 23, 2008, cable from Dubai warned might be disguised as medical supplies. The Saudis, who see Iran as the chief threat in the region, have used their satellite television stations and deep pockets to support Sunni groups. Syria, which Iraqi leaders have repeatedly complained to American diplomats is dominated by a Baathist regime sympathetic to the ousted Baathists in Iraq, has allowed insurgent fighters to sneak into Iraq. Even Turkey, which has good relations with the Iraqi government, has secretly financed nationalist and anti-Kurdish Sunni political parties.

via nytimes.com

This shouldn't be a surprise. Before the United States invaded Iraq, I'm not sure the general public that supported the invasion gave much to Iraq's context in the region's politics. Or, to the extent they did, they A) got mad at Turkey for not letting us use their territory as an invasion route and B) hoped the example of knocking over Saddam Hussein would scare other regimes into line.

It didn't work that way. We Americans aren't very good at understanding politics on the other side of the world, didn't really grasp how Iraq's neighbors might use our actions to try to strengthen themselves -- or, at least, forestall a similar reckoning by the United States. On domestic policy, conservatives are quite good (and even quite smart) about recognizing the "unintended consequences" of laws designed to make our lives better and safer. On foreign policy, though, many -- Bill Kristol being, perhaps, the most prominent example -- seem to assume the world will fall into place via overwhelming force and fiat of the United States. It's a good deal more complicated than that, and I expect we'll be dealing with the fallout from this for the rest of our lives.

Deal close on Bush tax cuts

What Kevin Drum said:

If they've finally backed themselves into a corner where they're forced to extend all the Bush tax cuts, then OK. I'm resigned to it. But they're seriously planning to extend the tax cuts for two years, even though that means restarting the fight during the 2012 campaign season, "because they see it as politically helpful to them in painting Republicans as defenders of the rich"?

And they think this why? Because they all stuck together so well this time around? Because they wowed the American public in 2010 with their argument that Republicans were defenders of the rich? Because two years from now centrists and Blue Dogs will suddenly decide to grow a spine in the face of tea party competition? Because they think Republicans will cower in fear and Fox News will suddenly embrace sweet reason the next time Democrats try this tack? Because they think that vilifying the rich only failed this year because it was so soon after an epic financial meltdown caused by the rich?

Stu Bykofsky's TSA Math

Stu Bykofsky does the math:

Since Nov. 19, when TSA began counting complaints about screening, it registered a little more than 1,000. During the same period, TSA screened 22 million passengers, I was told by TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis. Do the math and tell me this is a major issue.

This seems a little misleading to me. I had my own unpleasant encounter with a TSA screener last year -- documented in the pages of Philadelphia Weekly -- and skipped reporting the dude to his supervisor because I had a plane to catch. I've got to wonder if complaints about TSA abuses don't reflect any number of similar schedule-driven decisions by other passengers.

And in any case, the real debate isn't about abusive TSA screeners. It's about the procedures the TSA applies to passengers in the normal course of things. The bodyscanners and junk patdowns might not generate a ton of official complaints, because they're part of the normal procedure and everybody knows that. That also makes them far more irritating--and threatening to the country's overall sense of liberty and freedom of movement--than the occasional rogue agent.

The Ben and Joel Podcast: Daniel Okrent on Prohibition

Daniel Okrent, the author of "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" joins the podcast to talk about the book -- and about his stint as the first "public editor" of the New York Times. He'll speak at the National Constitution Center on Monday night in Philadelphia; see the center's website for details.

via blog.infinitemonkeysblog.com

Just a reminder. Click on the Infinite Monkeys link above and you can listen to Ben Boychuk and I interview Okrent about his book.

Deep grammatical thought of the night

My first editor once told me that if I was going to use a comma, I could probably use a period. It's been a long time since I thought about that — obviously, if you read my stuff. It occurs to me that if he saw my writing now, he might say the same thing about my use of semicolons.

La vie en rose

Tonight's Pandora selection:

Wikileaks has all the right enemies. Right?

Mr. Assange doesn't mail bombs, but his actions have life-threatening consequences. Consider the case of a 75-year-old dentist in Los Angeles, Hossein Vahedi. According to one of the confidential cables released by WikiLeaks, Dr. Vahedi, a U.S. citizen, returned to Iran in 2008 to visit his parents' graves. Authorities confiscated his passport because his sons worked as concert promoters for Persian pop singers in the U.S. who had criticized the theocracy.

The cable reported that Dr. Vahedi decided to escape by horseback over the mountains of western Iran and into Turkey. He trained by hiking the hills above Tehran. He took extra heart medication. But when he fell off his horse, he was injured and nearly froze. When he made it to Turkey, the U.S. Embassy intervened to stop him being sent back to Iran.

"This is very bad for my family," Dr. Vahedi told the New York Daily News on being told about the leak of the cable naming him and describing his exploits. Tehran has a new excuse to target his relatives in Iran. "How could this be printed?"

via online.wsj.com

Part of the problem -- for me, at least -- of our political tribalism is that I've been very often tempted to defend the Wikileaks revelations based on the fact that they're making all the right people (like Sarah Palin, National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, above) very, very angry. It's very, very difficult not to take some satisfaction in that.

So honesty compels me to acknowledge that there is not unvarnished good in the Wikileaks disclosures. I'm not certain if the damage will merely be to the American government's internal information-sharing systems, or if it will be broad enough to cause pain, suffering and death for people around the world. I hope the latter, at least, doesn't happen. It might. And those of us who are biased towards letting information be free should acknowledge that such freedom isn't always entirely without consequence.

Still, on balance, I'm happier seeing the information out in the public than locked behind closed doors. And it's difficult to take seriously people who wring their hands about the "collateral damage" caused by Julian Assange when so many of them are the same folks who root on needless American military actions that are far more costly in terms of innocent foreign lives. Collateral damage is apparently only *really* bad when the bad guys cause it.

Family no-computer time

We're attempting to spend an hour or two of computer-free time with our son every night -- reading, playing, singing songs and other activities, sometimes together and sometimes each doing our own thing. I broke the rule by using my iPhone to get a picture of it.

Jayson Werth agrees to the Nationals?

Right fielder Jayson Werth has agreed to a $126 million, seven-year contract with the Washington Nationals.

via sports.espn.go.com

Yikes. As a budding Phillies fan, I hate to see his grit and beard leave town. On the other hand: the Nationals? Kinda makes you wonder about his passion for winning, doesn't it?

Me on Posterous

via joelmathis.posterous.com

I'm going to experiment for the next week with primarily blogging through Posterous. The advantage it gives me -- from what I can tell -- is that it will automatically post links to my content to Twitter and Facebook, saving me the excruciating effort of pimping my own stuff. That's five minutes of the day I could use to ... do something, I'm sure. In any case, everything will also publish directly to joelmathis.blogspot.com, so if you want to continue to follow me there, fine. But if you like joelmathis.posterous.com, that's fine too. Please feel free to give me feedback if something is or isn't working so well with this setup.