Megan McArdle has written a superb post on her decision (driven largely by the increasingly invasive TSA security measures at airports), to substitute train or automobile travel for air travel whenever possible.
The entire post is worth reading, but here’s a highlight:
But don’t feel too bad. It’s not you, it’s me. Or rather, it’s the TSA.
I’m not going to lie. It’s come between us. If I have to let someone else see me naked in order to be with you–well, I’m just not that kinky. And deep down, I don’t think you are either. I think it’s the TSA making you act like this. Frankly, you haven’t been the same since you started running around together.
Caffeine and alcohol have been consumed together for centuries. It’s probably a safe bet that ever since coffee and distilled alcoholic beverages have been available in the same place, people have been mixing the two.
Now comes an FDA ruling that caffeine is an “unsafe food additive” in alcoholic drinks. The maker of an alcoholic beverage called Four Loko (apparently popular among the college kids these days) has already announced it will remove caffeine from the beverage.
Rather than finding any inherent toxicity or mind-altering effects of these drinks, the FDA seems to have based its decision on the fact that caffeine “can mask some of the sensory cues individuals might normally rely on to determine their level of intoxication.” Of course, this is equally as true for someone consuming caffeine and alcohol in separate beverages, or in an Irish coffee.
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Incumbent Lisa Murkowski takes a lead over Joe Miller in the Alaska senate race. But there’s a catch. Murkowski has about 92,000 votes to Miller’s 90,000, but about 7,600 of Murkowski’s votes have been challenged by the Miller campaign as improper due to spelling mistakes. So Murkowski leads by 2K if you included all the votes intended for her, while Miller leads by 5K if you use the stricter standard where only votes spelling Murkowski correctly are included. A federal judge is expected to rule on the admissibility of those votes soon, but there may be enough Murkowski votes still outstanding that the whole issue is moot.
The New York Times has little online gadget that lets you take a wack at eliminating the federal budget deficit. It’s actually not that hard if you’re willing to countenance some tax hikes along with spending reductions. I’m willing to cut the military and bring back the estate tax, for example, but I doubt any Republican in Congress would join me. The program also illustrates how silly concerns over earmarks are; they are a pittance compared to the where the real money is: in the military and in healthcare. Of course that’s probably why politicians are content to rail against them—attack the enemy that’s the smallest threat.
Urbanophile writes a profile of the city of Pittsburgh, with a lesson for the rest of the nation. The city’s long economic collapse of the 1970s and 1980s (85,000 jobs, or 1-in-10, GONE) gave the city the opportunity to re-invent itself from the ground up. Literally dieing and being reborn (more deaths than births within city limits), it now competes “with Washington D.C. for the largest proportion of young adults aged 25-34 with post-graduate degrees.” The take away from the article seems to be a message to policy makers of don’t be afraid to fail:
Like Pittsburgh did, the country needs to realize that failure is an option. Failure can be a catalyst for movement and for action. Failure can be a paradoxical assertion of American greatness. It is time for great structural changes that reinvest in our national attributes—granted, of which America has many, in its beautiful architecture, old establishment money, intact communities and ethnic organizations, and cultural trusts and universities—rather than band-aiding failed foreclosure prevention policies….
There are many, many intriguing, innovative and encouraging ideas floating out there, and our collective fear of failure is the only thing preventing the nation from remedying itself anew. Maybe it’s time to look towards Pittsburgh, a magnificent failure that now seems to be a wondrous place to do business in, a place to create in, a place to live. Riding the steep funicular incline to rest atop the city’s Mt. Washington neighborhood, and taking in the vista of its Golden Triangle, some could even say a place of magic.
Researching my previous post, I discovered six years ago today was the first ever post at ITA. Joshua Claybourn and Paul Musgrave (Paul Musgrave!) gave the official welcomes on November 13th and 14th respectively, but the first ever ITA post came from our own Eric Seymour on November 10, 2004. Titled “What I’ve learned since 11/7/2000,” it’s still worth quoting in full:
I am of the opinion that all politically active people should take time to listen to (and read) their opposition. Not just to analyze their arguments and come up with rebuttals, but to understand their point of view and especially to take note of the image they are projecting.
In this way, I’ve learned a lot from the left side of the blogosphere these past four years. By observing the boiling pot of anti-Bush animus, I have realized just how unhinged conservatives must have appeared at times during the Clinton years. I was a sophomore in high school when Bill Clinton was first elected, so I have youth and inexperience to blame for being partly drawn into the crowd that not only disagreed with Clinton’s policies, but believed he was intentionally leading our country into socialism, or worse. (I never believed the more extreme allegations, by the way, such as that Vince Foster was murdered and Clinton was involved.)
I wonder how many liberals realize that when they prattle on about Halliburton or Enron they are doing exactly the same thing as the conservatives who couldn’t finish a sentence without mentioning Whitewater. As for me, when a Democrat moves into the White House again, I aim to remember the images and words of the angry left and resolve to avoid these (often counterproductive, even for partisan purposes) “gotcha” political games and focus instead on arguments that center on policy.
Gotcha and outrage politics certainly seem to have returned to the right-wing mediasphere now that a Democrat is back in the White House. Of course, the left still plays this game with gusto when talking about Tea Party conservatives. Nevertheless, I’d like to think we’ve avoided the worst of the outrage games on this blog. We even had a term for it—PASWO blogging—that I’m sure was either a Claybourn- or Musgrave-ism. But I’ll let the readers judge.
I also like this from Paul’s welcome:
I’ve long thought that paying too much attention to politics drains the interest from the rest of life—Drudge and blogs can turn the news into an addiction not unlike heroin, where we’re all craving the next scandal so we can get another punditry fix. But there are topics in life that aren’t political, at least to a first approximation. I find it’s productive to talk about—or at least contemplate—those topics every once in a while.”
We do talk a lot about politics here, but also about faith and life matters, Indiana trivia, pop culture, and so on. Thanks for being a part of ITA these six years.
*My official involvement came somewhere around the first anniversary, right before Ed Brayton (Ed Brayton!!) left, but I was a pseudonymous commenter here and at Josh’s personal site long before that.
I watched the Matt Lauer interview with former President George W. Bush last night. Although there were no significant revelations from his time in office, it was interesting to hear his perspective on events during his administration, now that it’s been nearly 2 years since he left office.
I found Bush much more candid last night than he was during his time in office. In contrast to the “defensive crouch” that characterized his stance toward the media, particularly in the later years of his administration, Bush both admitted mistakes and pushed back on some points. For instance, on the question of whether he should have accepted Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal:
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I usually note these things as soon as they come out, but Fishers, Indiana has been named the #8 best place to live in the United States by Money magazine, which ranked small cities this year (looks like 50-250k residents). Fishers is in Hamilton county near Indianapolis and has about 77,000 residents according to Wikipedia. Money writes, “True, Fishers will never put anyone in mind of a quaint New England village. But thanks to its myriad advantages, including lots of community spirit, residents aren’t complaining.”
Thoughts?
How odd is it that Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Rolling Stone are doing better political journalism than our newsweeklies? This profile of presumptive new Speaker of the House John Boehner is pretty good, and actually makes me think quite well of the guy. Despite the decided liberal slant, Boehner comes across as an old fashioned political leader, who despite his reputation knows when to cut a deal with the opposition in order to get things done. His position—caught between the Obama administration and the Tea Party—is definitely not enviable.
Megan McArdle writes an apt analogy explaining why, even if Obamacare were really deficit-neutral as its supporters claim, it is still fiscally irresponsible:
Imagine that you are a household with some real problem–a lot of kids in a small house, say. Imagine, too, that your expenses are larger than your annual income–say, outflow exceeds inflow by 5% a year, or $2,500 for the average household. The credit card bills are mounting up, and you are starting to worry about bankruptcy.
Now imagine that your spouse comes to you and says he has a fix for the space problem–you can trade down one of the cars to a beater to get chunk of cash, take out a home equity loan for the rest, and build an addition. The cost of servicing that debt will add $1,000 a year to the budget, but don’t worry–he’s figured out that if you take lunches, deliver pizzas once a week, and cancel cable, you can just about make that extra payment. Indeed, you’ll actually be able to put another $7 a month towards those credit cards!
Would a “fiscally responsible” household do that? To me, that’s obviously not fiscally responsible, $7 a month notwithstanding. The family has taken the most obvious cuts to their budget and used them to fund new spending, rather than close their budget gap. They still have $2500 a year to go, and now it will be harder, and more painful, to find ways to make ends meet. Moreover, if anything in the plan goes wrong–say, the pizza place closes, or the beater breaks down and needs to be replaced–you’ve actually added hundreds of dollars to the household’s already looming financial problems.
