Thursday
Assignments
I'm frequently unsure about how to write my blog posts, because my (tiny) readership is very heterogeneous in its reading habits, and it's always important to mind who you're writing for. That is, a couple of readers are inveterate political-blog readers, and won't gain anything by me just pointing out other blog posts (or news articles which have already generated other blog posts) which I think are valuable in terms of staying informed, because they already saw them just about at the same time I did. But, my understanding is that some of you (mostly people who know me personally) don't read other political-blogs (I hyphenated "political-blogs" above because I was worried the sentence could be read as describing the readers, rather than the blogs, as political. I have no such worry in the sentence this parenthetical is appended to, but probably should still hyphenate for consistency), and I feel like I should point out important things for them to read. I don't know how to resolve this generally, but I'm going to just list a couple of posts that the less political-blog inclined of you should read, let's see how much ground I can cover:
A City on A Hill: Hilzoy posts on the release of new photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. One very unsettling photo is part of the linked post. I wish I'd never had reason to learn to spell "Abu Ghraib".
Selling Healthcare: Kevin Drum ponders why anyone would find a Health Saving Account more appealing as a political matter, temporarily leaving aside their failings as policy.
Mystery Waste: Matt Yglesias riffs on Bruce Willis explaining his political views to make some important points about misconceptions of federal spending. The interview with Willis isn't bad in general, but I also used to think he had an uncanny instinct for role selection, (I actually still think this is true for the period between Die Hard and The Jackal, inclusive at the start of the range and exclusive at the end, despite at least two of the films he was in in that period being notable box-office disasters) so what do I know?
Wage Wedge: Sam Rosenfeld discusses both policy and political issues involving the minimum wage, with lots of valuable links if you're interested. The links are actually there whether or not you're interested.
A Political Framework For Security Discourse: Michael O'Hare says smart things about how Democrats should think about, and talk about, national security. The letters "N-S-A" don't appear in that order anywhere in the piece but it's very useful for thinking about issues involving their illegal spying on Americans as well. See especially the part about Patrick Henry, it's excellent rhetoric.
Civil War Scenarios: Like the one above it, the title of this post pretty much tells you what to expect in it. In response to a terribly stupid treatment for a new TV show about a second U.S Civil War, Rob Farley suggests two more interesting scenarios. In the film version of the post, Rob will be most likely be played by Chris Walken.
That's all I got, hope those of you who hadn't seen these before got something out of them.
|
A City on A Hill: Hilzoy posts on the release of new photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. One very unsettling photo is part of the linked post. I wish I'd never had reason to learn to spell "Abu Ghraib".
Selling Healthcare: Kevin Drum ponders why anyone would find a Health Saving Account more appealing as a political matter, temporarily leaving aside their failings as policy.
Mystery Waste: Matt Yglesias riffs on Bruce Willis explaining his political views to make some important points about misconceptions of federal spending. The interview with Willis isn't bad in general, but I also used to think he had an uncanny instinct for role selection, (I actually still think this is true for the period between Die Hard and The Jackal, inclusive at the start of the range and exclusive at the end, despite at least two of the films he was in in that period being notable box-office disasters) so what do I know?
Wage Wedge: Sam Rosenfeld discusses both policy and political issues involving the minimum wage, with lots of valuable links if you're interested. The links are actually there whether or not you're interested.
A Political Framework For Security Discourse: Michael O'Hare says smart things about how Democrats should think about, and talk about, national security. The letters "N-S-A" don't appear in that order anywhere in the piece but it's very useful for thinking about issues involving their illegal spying on Americans as well. See especially the part about Patrick Henry, it's excellent rhetoric.
Civil War Scenarios: Like the one above it, the title of this post pretty much tells you what to expect in it. In response to a terribly stupid treatment for a new TV show about a second U.S Civil War, Rob Farley suggests two more interesting scenarios. In the film version of the post, Rob will be most likely be played by Chris Walken.
That's all I got, hope those of you who hadn't seen these before got something out of them.
