Live-blogging the first major Republican debate of the 2016 presidential race

I'll be live-blogging the debate here. Keep reloading for more updates.

Any quotes in this post will be written down on the fly, so they might not be verbatim, but I'll try to make them reasonably accurate.

[You can watch the whole thing here.]

[Here's a transcript of the debate — except with Jeb Bush's answer about belonging to an organization that funded Planned Parenthood mysteriously removed!]

[I missed about the first 8 minutes, so I went back and non-live-blogged it, with time stamps as if I had been watching live:]

9:03 — After introducing the candidates, the moderators in Cleveland remark that John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio, has a "home-field advantage."

9:04 — Brett Baier starts with a "hand-raising question": Is anyone unwilling to pledge support for the eventual Republican nominee, and not to run as an independent? Donald Trump is the only one who raises his hand, and he's loudly booed. Baier comes back: "That would virtually hand the presidency to the Democratic nominee." Rand Paul says: "This is what's wrong. He buys and sells politicians of all stripes. . . . He's already hedging his bets because he's used to buying politicians."

9:06 — Megyn Kelly asks Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with no political experience, about his past errors in talking about world affairs. Carson says: "The thing that is probably most important is having a brain, and being able to figure things out, and learn things very rapidly." America didn't become a "great nation" by being "filled with politicians."

9:08 — Marco Rubio tries to tamp down concerns about his inexperience by saying the election "cannot be a resume competition . . . because if this election is a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton's going to be president, because she's been in government longer than anyone on this stage tonight."

[Here's where I started actually live-blogging:]

9:09 — Rubio: "If I'm the nominee, how is Hillary Clinton going to attack me for not understanding people living paycheck to paycheck? I grew up living paycheck to paycheck! How is she going to lecture me about student loans? I owed $100,000 just 4 years ago!"

9:10 — Jeb Bush: "They call me Veto Corleone, because I vetoed 2500 separate line items in the budget." [I went back and corrected the number of line items.]

9:11 — Megyn Kelly asks Trump about how he calls women names like "fat pigs." Trump: "Only Rosie O'Donnell." Trump segues into saying the country has a "big problem" with "being politically correct." He doesn't have time for "total political correctness." Trump adds that he's been very nice to Megyn Kelly — "although I could probably not be based on the way you've treated me."

9:16 — Megyn Kelly asks Scott Walker if he'd really let a woman die rather than have an abortion, which he's suggested is his position. Walker doesn't directly answer the question, but bears down on his pro-life credentials.

9:18 — Mike Huckabee says he'd invoke the constitutional rights — equal protection and due process — of fetuses. We need to stop "ripping off their body parts and selling off their parts like they were a Buick."

9:20 — Megyn Kelly asks John Kasich why Republican voters should trust him after he accepted Obamacare's Medicaid funding. Kasich focuses on his program for prison inmates to treat their addictions and reenter society. Then he adds a flurry of facts about how he's actually shrunk government.

9:23 — Chris Wallace asks Bush about his past statement that illegal immigration is "an act of love." Bush says he still agrees: "They have no other options." Predictably, he pivots to talking about the need to secure the border and crack down on "sanctuary cities."

9:25 — Wallace asks Trump to "share your proof" of his assertion that Mexico is sending criminals to the US. "We need to build a wall, and it needs to be built quickly. And I don't mind having a big, beautiful door in that wall for people to immigrate legally." He doesn't give any proof, but repeats that "they send the bad people over."

9:30 — Kasich admits: "Donald Trump is hitting a nerve in this country. They're fed up with what's happening in this country. For people who just want to tune him out, they're making a mistake. . . . Mr. Trump is touching a nerve because people want to see a wall being built."

9:32 — Rubio notes that most people crossing the Mexican border aren't Mexican. "This is the most generous country in the world when it comes to immigration. We feel like despite our generosity, we're being taken advantage of." This seems like a smartly moderate way to frame the issue.

9:34 — Walker says what everyone has been saying: we need to secure the border, not allow amnesty, and promote legal immigration.

9:35 — Ted Cruz claims that most of the other candidates on the stage have "supported amnesty."

9:38 — Rand Paul: "I want to collect more records from terrorists but less records from innocent Americans." Chris Christie retorts: "That's a completely ridiculous answer. How are you going to know the difference?" Paul interrupts him: "You fundamentally don't understand the Bill of Rights!" Christie comes back that Paul likes to give speeches on the floor of the Senate to be able to put them on the internet to raise money for his campaign, while putting American lives at risk.

9:40 — Ted Cruz says President Obama won't even say the words "radical Islamic terrorist." Obama is "an apologist" for terrorism.

9:42 — Megyn Kelly asks how Bush can say "your brother's war was a mistake." He bears down: "Knowing what we know now, . . . it was a mistake. I wouldn't have gone in." He pivots to criticizing Obama for "abandon[ing] Iraq" and allowing ISIL to flourish.

9:44 — Megyn Kelly asks Ben Carson about waterboarding. "Well, thank you, Megyn, I wasn't sure I would get to talk again." To answer the question, he says: "I wouldn't necessarily broadcast what I'm going to do." He focuses on using the military's "tremendous intellect to win wars." Subtext: Don't worry about Carson's lack of political experience — he's really smart and would know how to delegate to smart experts.

9:46 — Trump is asked about some of his liberal views. He emphasizes that he was the only one on the stage to oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. Then he actually praises "single-payer health care," at least as it exists in other countries. Trump suggests that single-payer might have worked at one point in this country, but says that now he wants to reform the system in other ways. Paul: "I think you're on the wrong side of this if you're arguing for single-payer." Trump: "I think you misheard me. You're having a hard time with that."

9:49 — Trump is asked what he got from his donations to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. What he got from Clinton: "She came to my wedding."

9:50 — Brett Baier notes that Republicans keep promising to shrink government, but government keeps growing, even under Republican leaders.

9:52 — Carson would have "a proportional tax system" based on "tithing."

9:55 — A dull back-and-forth between Bush and Rubio about Common Core.

9:59 — Chris Wallace points out that Hillary Clinton is probably going to be the Democratic nominee, and he asks Kasich how he'll respond to her predictable attacks — that the Republican nominee wants to take the country backward. Kasich: "Economic growth is the key to everything. But once we have economic growth, it is important to reach out to people in the shadows — people who don't think they ever get a fair shake. And that includes minorities." (Our internet connection cut out at this point, so I didn't catch his whole answer.)

10:03 — Wallace asks Bush how he'll accomplish his plan of 4% economic growth and 19 million new jobs, which would be triple the number of new jobs under his dad and his brother combined. As with most of Bush's performance tonight, his answer seems solid and fact-filled but isn't particularly memorable.

10:05 — Walker: "Hillary Clinton thinks Washington creates jobs. I think most Americans understand that people create jobs."

10:08 — Huckabee absurdly declares that no one is on Social Security because they decided when they were young that they wanted to "entrust some of their money to the government."

10:10 — Wallace asks Trump about his statement: "I used the laws of this country to my advantage." Trump repeats: "I have used the laws of this country . . . to do a great job for my company." He admits that he did this four times by declaring bankruptcy. "I have a great, great company . . . and I am very proud of the job I did . . . and frankly, so has everybody else in my position." Wallace bears down by focusing on how lenders complained that they lost billions in the most recent bankruptcy of one of Trump's companies. Trump zeroes in on that reference to lenders: "These lenders, they're not little babies, these are not the nice, sweet people you think they are, Chris. They're killers. You know, you're living in a world of the make believe, Chris."

10:14 — Rubio, who hasn't gotten to talk for a while, reels off a lot of standard conservative positions: reduce taxes on small businesses, reduce business regulations, repeal and replace Obamacare, repeal and replace Dodd-Frank. Rubio has been giving a fine performance but doesn't seem to be doing anything to really stand out tonight.

10:16 — Walker would repeal the Iran deal on day 1, then put even more crippling sanctions in place. I'd say the same thing of Walker that I just said of Rubio.

10:17 — Paul on the Iran deal: "You should negotiate from a position of strength. President Obama gave away too much too early. . . . I would have never released the sanctions until there was evidence of compliance."

10:18 — Huckabee says Obama's approach to Iran, instead of "trust but verify," is "trust but vilify — trust our enemies, and vilify anyone who disagrees with him."

10:23 — Kelly asks Bush about the fact until late 2014, Bush sat on the board of the Bloomberg Foundation, which donated to Planned Parenthood. Bush denies knowing what the foundation was doing, then says: "My record as a pro-life governor is not in dispute."

10:25 — Kelly asks Rubio about his support for exceptions to abortion bans for rape or incest. Rubio has a deer-in-the-headlights look, and says he's "not sure" that's an accurate representation of his position. [ADDED: Politico says Rubio voted for a bill with those exceptions.]

10:26 — Kelly asks Trump about his past statement that he was pro-choice. She asks the elephant-in-the-room question: "When did you become a Republican?" "I've evolved on many issues. And you know who else evolved on many issues is Ronald Reagan."

10:28 — Trump responds to Bush's past attacks on his tone: "We don't have time for tone. We have to go out and get the job done."

10:31 — Paul: "I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington."

10:32 — Walker is asked about racial bias in policing. "It's about training . . . particularly when it comes to use of force." There need to be "consequences" for the "few" who engage in misconduct. Walker is the only candidate who's asked about that issue. It's as if Fox News didn't really want to have a discussion about it but wanted to prevent people from saying they didn't talk about it.

10:38 — Trump: "If Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it, because it will quadruple."

10:40 — Baier asks Carson about Obama's infamous "red line" comment about Syria. Would Carson have taken military action against Syria? Carson avoids answering the question. "I would shore up our military first."

10:41 — Walker: "It's sad that the Russian and Chinese governments know more about Hillary Clinton's email server than the US Congress."

10:42 – Huckabee is asked about transgender people in the military. "The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things."

10:45 — Paul is asked why he used to want to cut foreign aid to Israel, then changed his mind. "We shouldn't send money to countries that hate us. Israel isn't one of those." But "we cannot give away money we don't have."

10:55 — Carson, asked about race relations: "When I take people to the operating room, I'm operating on what makes them who they are. Their skin doesn't make them who they are, and their hair doesn't make them who they are."

Notice: before the debate, everyone was worried that Trump was going to ignore the rules and talk over everyone. But he didn't. That was the dog that didn't bark.

11:00 — Cruz's closing statement: "My father fled Cuba, and I will fight to defend freedom because my family knows what it's like to lose it."

11:01 — Carson: "I'm the only candidate to take out half a brain, although if you've been to Washington, you might think someone else beat me to it."

11:02 — Walker brags that he's been called "aggressively normal."

11:03 — Bush complains that "we're not protecting and preserving our entitlement system." So he's positioning himself as the clearly moderate, establishment candidate.

11:04 — Trump predictably uses his closing statement to attack America's status quo: "We can't do anything right!"

Nicholas Kristof says:

I thought Trump was a loser in the Republican debate (though it's also true he got particularly tough questions) and lost stature. I thought Jeb Bush did okay. I thought two people did better than expected. One is John Kasich, who had two of the freshest answers of the evening, about poverty and about same-sex marriage. I doubt Kasich will be the nominee, but since he's from the swing state of Ohio he's a strong contender for running mate. Then I thought Marco Rubio also did well, speaking smoothly and articulately. The other candidates I thought mostly seemed to shrink on the stage. Actually, the people I was most impressed with were the questioners--bravo to them for asking tough, smart, provocative questions.

Here's a fact check of the debate.

Alex Knepper's take:

Winners: Kasich, Rubio, Christie, Trump, Paul

Losers: Jeb!, Walker, Carson, Huckabee, Cruz

Kasich was energetic, thoughtful, and also intriguing, since he still feels 'fresh,' as the last candidate to announce. I could see him drawing support away from the underwhelming and boring Jeb!, who at one point seemed like he actually lost his train of thought.

But no one was more boring than Walker, who mostly just blended in. Christie was the one who brought the fireworks -- but he also showed a willingness to distinguish himself from the others by promising to tackle entitlement reform. That could have been part of a winning message had he not imploded last year!

Paul actually got the better of the exchange with Christie over the NSA, much as it pains me to say. Paul did well for himself because he, too, distinguished himself from the others -- he owned his heterodox foreign policy stances proudly. Carson, on the other hand, looked amateurish not only on foreign policy but on policy generally. He really had no business being on that stage.

Neither did Trump, but he answered his questions about as well as he could have while still being true to his personality. He didn't shine, but he didn't say or do anything that would alienate his current supporters. If he did anything obviously wrong, it was that he too often seemed like he was yelling. Sure, he evaded his questions, but so did everyone, at some point. This was Trump's first time in the ring with successful national politicians and he held his own.

Rubio delivered solid answers to most of his questions, but did himself a disservice when he decided to fully own his Huckabee-style social conservatism, ranting about "murdering babies" and the "barbarism" of our age. Cruz was surprisingly restrained and felt increasingly irrelevant as the debate went on -- which is a good way to describe his campaign generally, so far.

Surviving the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima 70 years ago

"There were the shadowy forms of people, some of whom looked like walking ghosts. Others moved as though in pain, like scarecrows, their arms held out from their bodies with forearms and hands dangling. These people puzzled me until I suddenly realized that they had been burned and were holding their arms out to prevent the painful friction of raw surfaces rubbing together."

"How on earth did that crow do that?"

You can also watch a crow figuring out water displacement.

One of those products that shouldn't exist

Onion ring mints.

Is Donald Trump a serious candidate?

Some might say he isn't serious because he doesn't have any experience working in government. But I doubt many conservative Republicans would subscribe to that view. And I'm not hearing anyone say that Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina aren't serious candidates.

Corie W. Stephens seems to think she's found the smoking gun that shows Trump isn't serious. She says:

Perfectly showcasing the depth of his candidacy is DonaldJTrump.com, his official campaign website. It contains no issues page, but helpfully informs you that “Mr. Trump has over 7 million followers on social media.”

One can read about how much expensive property he owns and learn all about his foray into reality TV. You’re out of luck however, if you’re curious about how he would handle diplomatic relations with Iran or reform our nation’s healthcare system.

But wait a second . . .

As far as I can tell, Jeb Bush's website "contains no issues page."

And Scott Walker's website also "contains no issues page."

After looking around those websites, I'm not seeing any clue as to how those candidates "would handle diplomatic relations with Iran or reform our nation’s healthcare system."

[ADDED: The same is true of John Kasich's website.]

The websites of Trump and Bush and Walker all look like they could have been designed by the same person. They all have a bio of the candidate with vague references to their political ideologies but no concrete plans. Those websites all feature "news" stories and social-media links instead of "issue" statements. So are the three Republican candidates who've been doing the best in the polls all unserious about vying for the presidency?

I can think of two better explanations. Either (a) they plan to add an "issues" section later in the campaign, after their positions have had more time to jell, or (b) they've decided that a continually updated "news" format is a more dynamic, effective way to engage potential supporters than a static list of policy statements.

Personally, I don't think that's the best approach. I prefer Marco Rubio's website, with its clear "issues" section.

But should we really write off a whole campaign for taking the Bush/Walker/Trump approach, in the very early stages of the race? I don't think so.

UPDATE: Walker doesn't even know his website is missing policy proposals.

UPDATE: Trump now has a "positions" section on his website. It only has 1 issue. But that's more than Bush, Walker, or Kasich have on their websites.

UPDATE (September 18, 2015): Now Trump has 2 issues under "positions." This seems like a smart tactic to get more media attention every time he unveils a new issue.

"You don't know my name, do you?"

A translator's struggle to export Seinfeld to Germany.

The hardest joke to translate, out of 180 episodes, was the one where Jerry doesn't know the name of the woman he's dating, but only knows it "rhymes with a female body part."

Nazi jokes were also dicey:

Seinfeld’s Jewish references posed a unique challenge: as Sebastian explained, "The Germans have a certain you-know-what with the Jewish." Her editor was worried about some of Seinfeld’s Jewish jokes. "We better not say it like that," she remembered her editor saying, "because the Germans may be offended." She added later, recalling the incident to me, "They should be offended, in my understanding. They did it!"

Sebastian appreciated Seinfeld’s direct approach to Jewish history. She wanted to use jokes in direct translation, but the editor wouldn’t let her. She lost several battles. It was a fine line: Der Suppen-Nazi? Sure. . . . An entire episode based on George being mistaken for a neo-Nazi was problematic. So were references to the TV miniseries Holocaust and the film Schindler’s List. Take Elaine’s voiceover narration in "The Subway" episode when her train gets stuck: "We are in a cage. . . . Oh, I can't breathe, I feel faint. Take it easy, it'll start moving soon. Think about the people in the concentration camps, what they went through."

Occasionally, Sebastian triumphed in her conflicts with editors — the practicalities of the show demanded an authentic translation. In an early episode, one of Jerry’s comedy routines addresses the fact that Nazis in World War II movies had "like two separate ‘heils.' They had like the regular ‘heil,’ and then when they were around the offices, they had like this casual ‘heil.’" There was no way to avoid a faithful translation . . .

Why do Americans use so much air conditioning?

Megan McArdle explains:

Any American who has spent much time around visiting Europeans has probably had some version of this conversation: "Why do you use so much air conditioning?" they ask. "Your buildings are ridiculously cold. I have to wear a sweater inside in the summer! And it's bad for the environment. You shouldn't do that." . . .

For Europeans reading this, I may actually be able to clear up this baffling issue: Americans use air conditioning more because America is a lot hotter than Europe is. . . .

I've lived through heat waves in Northern Europe, which cause much the same hysteria that we see in Washington when two inches of snow is forecast. Because we have air conditioning, Americans do not have to panic when the mercury rises. Nor do we have incredible fatalities among the old and vulnerable when they happen. . . .

You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. . . . On average, the move from cold areas to warm ones has actually saved energy, not caused us to use more.

Penn Jillette on Donald Trump

Penn Jillette makes an uncommonly nuanced and respectful argument against Donald Trump's run for president during a radio interview (video below):

Thelonious Monk, the great jazz piano player, . . . said, "The genius is the one who is most like himself." And that's what I love about Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim — they were completely like themselves. And Trump, for better or worse, is in that category. I have talked one-on-one with Bob Dylan, and I have talked one-on-one with Trump, and they do not have filters. They speak honestly and from the heart.

Unfortunately, when you move into the political arena, when you're speaking from the heart, if your heart has some really dark, wrong areas, and that comes out too, that becomes very, very unpleasant. When someone who's a comic says something about immigrants in this country, it's in the category of a character; it's in the category of context. But when a person who is telling us — we don't know how seriously he's really taking it, but let's . . . give him the respect of saying he's taking it seriously — when he says that what I'm saying is going to have some policy implications, then all of a sudden, we have to be our better selves. It is perfectly OK for you to be personally a little uncomfortable with certain immigrants. It is not OK for our country to be that way.

So if you say that to your friends, or in the context of a radio show, or just speaking, I will defend that. But if you say, "Now, I'm going to take these prejudices that I have, and say them in your name, in the international arena," I'm going to go, "Oh — baby! If you're going to be our spokesman, you've gotta be better than you are personally. You've gotta be better." And Trump . . . the very honesty that I respect him for so much — if you're going to be president, we can't have that. . . .

When you go out there, you've got to be the best of us. And I mean that on everything. It's the way I feel about capital punishment. People say all the time, "But if your family — these monsters — don't you feel like they should be put to death?" And the answer is: of course I feel that. But as a society, as a culture, we want to be better, you know? What we want out of the United States of America — what we want is to be better than we are individually. I want to be proud of our country because our country is better than me.

You know, I don't want "the guy that I'm going to have a beer with — he's just like me." If the guy is just like me, don't be ____ing president! You know?

And I can talk to Donald Trump really comfortably. He's really smart. He has a lot of interesting things to say. But I want somebody that's one notch up, for president.

Deconstructing "privilege"

Econ prof Don Boudreaux writes:

One challenge that I encounter often when writing is that of finding an accurate adjective for describing the typical upper-middle-class American (and typical rich American). A common convention is to use the adjective “privileged” – as in, for example, “A disproportionate number of minimum-wage jobs will be filled by privileged teenagers raised in affluent suburbs.” As used in this now-conventional way, the word “privileged” describes the state of being more prosperous economically and better connected socially than is the typical working-class or poor American. . . .

I resist using “privileged” in this way. The reason is that the word “privilege” still conveys also a sense of undeserved special treatment. And so while someone might be made economically more prosperous and socially more well-connected because he or she receives undeserved special treatment, becoming economically more prosperous and socially more well-connected does not require undeserved special treatment. Many prosperous people (indeed, in America, still the vast majority of prosperous people) achieve their success through hard work, economic risk-taking (using their own money), prudent behavior, and honest dealings with others. . . . To call such successful people “privileged” . . . wrongly, if subtly, suggests that they’ve been granted some unusual special treatment that accounts for their success.

Many people are tempted to assert that it is a “privilege” in modern America to be born white, or to be born into a loving two-parent family that instills bourgeois virtues, or to be born without any significant physical or mental disabilities. It’s true that people so born are dealt a better starting hand in life than are many other people. But such a use of “privilege” is too expansive and, hence, runs the risk of verbally papering over important distinctions that should be kept visible. Such an expansive use of the word “privilege” has no obvious boundaries. If we accede to this use of the word “privilege,” then we can say also that it is a privilege to have been born in the U.S. to start with – even, perhaps, regardless of one’s skin color (post-1865) or ethnic background. Even the poorest American today is, by this expansive use of the word “privilege,” privileged in comparison to at least a couple of billion people living today throughout Africa and south and central Asia. So, too, then is anyone born in the modern world “privileged” compared to the vast majority of people born just a few centuries ago and earlier. Such an expansive use of the word “privilege” is misleading.

The etymology of the word “privilege” is obvious if you think about it: “privi” – private; “lege” – legislation. Private legislation. (“Special privileges” is, therefore, a pleonasm.) A person who is truly privileged, therefore, is a person who benefits from a special use of government force wielded in his or her favor. This use of force is not generalizable beyond the individual (or small, closed group) for whom the privilege is created. A genuine privilege is a benefit that government bestows on only an individual or on a small select group with the intention of benefiting that individual or members of that small group even if such benefits come at the greater expense of the general public.

According to this correct understanding of the word “privilege,” the vast majority of upper-middle-class and rich Americans are not privileged. While some of these people attained their wealth through favors conferred illegitimately upon them by the state (and, hence, are indeed privileged), the vast majority earned their prosperity without any such favors. . . .

Such a use also strongly suggests . . . that the best, or only, way for “underprivileged” people to become more prosperous is for them to manage to get for themselves some privileges. That suggestion is widely mistaken, as well as one that, if accepted, creates social strife rather than encourages social cooperation.

Obama on prison rape

President Obama said:

We should not tolerate conditions in prison that have no place in any civilized country. We should not be tolerating overcrowding in prison. We should not be tolerating gang activity in prison. We should not be tolerating rape in prison, and we shouldn’t be making jokes about it in our popular culture. That is no joke. These things are unacceptable.

(Click through for video.)

I'm glad Obama is taking prison rape seriously, but the president shouldn't be telling comedians what kind of jokes they are and aren't allowed to tell. Would he tell comedians not to joke about murder? How about drone strikes that kill innocent people?

I wish he had just said: "We should not be tolerating rape in prison — that is no joke." In other words, his serious point isn't a joke, and too often people act like prison rape is purely a joke. That doesn't mean comedians aren't still allowed to joke about it — comedians are allowed to joke about all kinds of very serious topics. (The Onion has joked about the Holocaust, and I don't object to that!)

Happy belated 85th birthday to Thomas Sowell

The economist Thomas Sowell reflects on his 85 years. An excerpt:

After my 85th birthday last week, I looked back over my life and was surprised to discover in how many different ways I had been lucky, in addition to some other ways in which I was unlucky.

Among the things I did not know at the time was that I was adopted as an infant into a family with four adults, in which I was the only child.

All sorts of research since then has shown how the amount of attention and interactions with adults a child gets has a lot to do with the way the child develops. But of course I knew nothing about such things back then.

It was decades later, when I had a son of my own, that I asked one of the surviving members of the family how old I was when I first started to walk. She said, “Oh, Tommy, nobody knows when you could walk. Somebody was always carrying you.” . . .

Although I was raised by people with very little education, they were people who wanted me to get an education. They praised my every little accomplishment when I was very young, and I was taught to read by the time I was four years old, taught by someone with only a few years of schooling herself.

Years later, when I was promoted to the seventh grade, I was surprised by what a commotion it caused. Then I was told: “You have now gone further than any of us.” You don’t need a Ph.D. to help your child get an education. . . .

Not everything was wonderful in my family or in the world where I grew up in Harlem. But, as I learned from later research, the homicide rate in New York when I was growing up was lower than it had been in the years before, and much lower than it would be in the years afterward.

I cannot recall ever hearing a gunshot, or even having to think about gunshots when I slept out on the fire escape on hot summer nights.

The New York City schools were among the best in the country in those days, better than they had been for the European immigrants before me and much better than they would be for the mass influx of blacks from the South after me.

As for bad luck, there were years of that, too. But I learned a lot from that bad luck, so I am not sure that it was all bad luck in the long run. And 85 years is a very long run.

What it's like to have prosopagnosia, or face-blindness

New York Magazine interviews an anonymous 47-year-old woman about her condition:

It doesn’t matter if I know the person: I’ve walked right past my husband, my own mother, my daughter, my son, without being able to recognize them.

It can be very embarrassing, and it can offend people. I once had to drop a sociology class, because I told the professor, to her face, that she was a horrible lecturer. I thought I was complaining to a fellow student! It’s as if I have a missing chip — you feel like you’re just not trying hard enough. Faces are so important to humans that we have a special part of our brain dedicated to recognizing them. Most people remember them as a whole piece, but I don’t. . . . Good-looking people are the most difficult to recognize. . . .

The other thing I have discovered is that there is a specific expression people have when they see somebody they know. I call it the “I know you face” — it’s sort of a surprised micro expression. I’m convinced that it’s completely involuntary. It looks a little like surprise. The eyebrows go up, and usually the mouth opens like they're about to say something. When I see it, I say hello, and then when I start interacting with them, I’ll remember who they are. That’s just one of a whole set of observational skills I’ve developed. Another is when I’m meeting somebody in public, I’ll arrive early so they'll approach me.

I'm always looking for visual hooks. My daughter has a particular thing she does with her mouth. If there’s several people who could be her, I look for the mouth thing. If she's nervous, or she's irritated, one side of her mouth goes up. She's done it since she was a baby. She doesn't like having her photograph taken, so when I look at a group photo, I look for the kid with the smirk and I know it’s my daughter. . . .

My son had a distinctive blue and white camouflage hat that he wore for five years. It was great for me when we were in the playground because I could track him. The rule was that my kids had to keep me in their line of sight. If there was a crowd of kids and mine weren’t wearing anything distinctive, I was totally lost. . . .

I’ve had to say to friends of mine, “Is that a picture of me? Who is that?” If I unexpectedly see myself in a mirror, I might think it's somebody else. It's like, Why is that woman staring at me? . . .

When I worked at a homeless shelter, I was often praised for the way I interacted with my African-American clients. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing differently from the other white workers, but I was allowed into their circle and they bonded with me. When we lived in Louisiana, I was always being asked by African-American women if my husband was black. When I was tested at Dartmouth, I scored low on unconscious racism. Apparently babies show a preference for their own race at about nine months because that’s when they start being able to recognize faces. My head doesn’t do this.

Peter Koechley of Upworthy on comedy, politics, and "making the world a better place"

Peter Koechley​ talks about going from a high-school satirical newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin (in which I also played a part), to the Onion, to Upworthy. You Won't Believe What Happens Next.

A thought-provoking line: "I actually think most people are pretty good and pretty sensible — and that the higher you get up in a political hierarchy, the less sense you are encouraged to have." (43:20)

The comedian Jack Carter has died at 93.

The New York Times reports:

Jack Carter, a motor-mouthed comedian who became one of television’s first stars in the late 1940s and continued working, as both a comic and an actor, well into the 21st century, died on [June 28] at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. . . .

Early in his career Mr. Carter filled in for Milton Berle, television’s biggest star at the time, who was taking a three-week vacation from his hit show. Asked then about his ambitions as an entertainer, Mr. Carter simply said, “I’d like to last.”

He succeeded. Mr. Carter was appearing on television into his 90s, with roles on “Desperate Housewives,” “Parks and Recreation,” “New Girl” and other shows, most recently “Shameless.” Until late in life he was also still working the condo circuit in South Florida, as he had been since the 1980s, tailoring his jokes to an audience of his contemporaries.

He was hilarious on Shameless, playing the irascible, racially insensitive owner of the neighborhood bar, which is the only time I've seen him. Spoiler alert — it's poignant to think that his last significant performance, shortly before he died, was in Season 4 of Shameless, playing his character's dead body.

UPDATE: More from my mom, Ann Althouse.

Yes bassist Chris Squire has died at age 67.

Chris Squire founded Yes with singer Jon Anderson in the late '60s. He died of leukemia today.

Squire was the only member to appear on all 21 Yes albums, from 1969 to 2014.

Wikipedia says:

He was widely regarded as the dominant bass guitarist among the early seventies British progressive rock bands, influencing peers and later generations of bassists with his incisive sound and elaborately contoured, melodic bass lines.

Here's a live performance of "Roundabout," from their classic 1971 album Fragile.




You can more clearly see Squire's instrumental prowess in this 2003 performance of "Heart of the Sunrise," from the same album:




A fan comments on the band's Facebook page:

Sick to my stomach. I ordered a signed copy of the "Fish out of Water" CD [Squire's only solo album] and when it was held up due to a postal strike in the UK he personally called me on my cell phone to apologize. That's the man Chris Squire was.

A weird sentence from Chief Justice Roberts's dissent in the same-sex marriage case:

People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide.

My mom (Ann Althouse) responds:

But this does seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide. And I think people will accept it quite readily. In fact, I think the overall reaction will be one of relief that we don't have to keep chewing over this issue. Let people get back to their personal relationships that were always going on anyway. The country wasn't collapsing because gay people love each other and seek the legal aspects of permanence.

What I'd like to know is: how did Roberts decide that this is not the kind of issue "courts usually decide"? That itself is a decision. What's the standard for saying the Supreme Court shouldn't decide an issue? Is it just based on whether the Justices have a bad feeling about the whole thing? And aren't issues of minority rights exactly the kinds of issues that are often very important for the Supreme Court to decide?

Now that the Supreme Court has recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, does it follow that there must be a right to polygamy?

Of course, some people are quick to make that argument today — like Fredrik deBoer, who writes in Politico:

Now that we’ve defined that love and devotion and family isn’t driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to just two individuals? The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy . . . .

In Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissenting opinion, he remarks, “It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.” As is often the case with critics of polygamy, he neglects to mention why this is a fate to be feared. . . .

[P]rogressives who reject the case for legal polygamy often don’t really appear to have their hearts in it. They seem uncomfortable voicing their objections, clearly unused to being in the position of rejecting the appeals of those who would codify non-traditional relationships in law. They are, without exception, accepting of the right of consenting adults to engage in whatever sexual and romantic relationships they choose, but oppose the formal, legal recognition of those relationships. They’re trapped, I suspect, in prior opposition that they voiced from a standpoint of political pragmatism in order to advance the cause of gay marriage.

In doing so, they do real harm to real people. Marriage is not just a formal codification of informal relationships. It’s also a defensive system designed to protect the interests of people whose material, economic and emotional security depends on the marriage in question. If my liberal friends recognize the legitimacy of free people who choose to form romantic partnerships with multiple partners, how can they deny them the right to the legal protections marriage affords?

Polyamory is a fact. People are living in group relationships today. The question is not whether they will continue on in those relationships. The question is whether we will grant to them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults: that love makes marriage, and that the right to marry is exactly that, a right. . . .

Conventional arguments against polygamy fall apart with even a little examination. Appeals to traditional marriage, and the notion that child rearing is the only legitimate justification of legal marriage, have now, I hope, been exposed and discarded by all progressive people. What’s left is a series of jerry-rigged arguments that reflect no coherent moral vision of what marriage is for, and which frequently function as criticisms of traditional marriage as well.

Well, I'm sorry, deBoer, but you're missing something. Oh, I admit your argument has a certain appeal on the surface: how can we say a policy that excluded people from the institution of marriage based on their gender or sexual orientation was unconstitutional discrimination, without saying the same thing of a policy that excludes people based on their number? If it doesn't matter whether you're male or female, straight or gay, then how can it matter whether you're 2, 3, 5, 10, or 50 people?

But polygamy is significantly different — even assuming for the sake of argument that we have no concerns about coercion or power disparities within any given polygamous relationship. As my mom, Ann Althouse, explained 9 years ago:

Legal marriage isn't just about love, it's an economic arrangement. Having the state authorize your union is not the same thing as having your friends and neighbors approve of you and your religious leaders bless you. It affects taxes and employee benefits -- huge amounts of money. A gay person with a pension and a health insurance plan is incapable of extending those benefits to his (or her) partner. He (or she) can't file a joint tax return. That's not fair. A polygamous marriage, however, puts a group of persons in a position to claim more economic benefits than the traditional heterosexual couple. That doesn't appeal to our sense of fairness.

The law doesn't assess how much two people love each other. Two persons of opposite sexes can marry for all sorts of reasons. If there were a device that could look into their souls and measure their love, we wouldn't accept the outrageous invasion of privacy it would take for the government to use it. Excluding gay couples from marrying does generate the complaint that society does not sufficiently respect homosexual love, and by harping on this point, proponents of gay marriage activate their opponents who think that's a good thing.

But it's not all about love and who respects what. It's also about economics. And in that dimension, it's easy to distinguish polygamy.

UPDATE: My mom sees a problem with her own argument from 9 years ago, in light of the majority's reasoning in Obergefell.

ADDED: Judge Richard Posner points out another important distinction:

[P]olygamy imposes real costs, by reducing the number of marriageable women. Suppose a society contains 100 men and 100 women, but the five wealthiest men have a total of 50 wives. That leaves 95 men to compete for only 50 marriageable women.

MORE: Jonathan Rauch observes:

[T]he case for gay marriage is the case against polygamy, and the public will be smart enough to understand the difference.

Gay marriage is about extending the opportunity to marry to people who lack it; polygamy, in practice, is about exactly the opposite: withdrawing marriage opportunity from people who now have it. Gay marriage succeeded because no one could identify any plausible channels through which it might damage heterosexual marriage; with polygamy, the worries are many, the history clear, and the channels well understood.

UPDATE: My mom responds to those quotes by Posner and Rauch:

I've got a problem with that! Talk about a male perspective! What about the women who want to choose to share one man? They should be denied to preserve a pool of marriageable women for all the extra males that would otherwise have scarce pickings? Are women some kind of natural resource to be conserved for the benefit of males?

As the old saying goes: Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. If women think they are better off as multiple wives to one high-quality male, why should they be cut off from that way of life so that some less-desired male will have better odds of getting a woman for himself? Is this everybody-gets-just-one theory of marriage some kind of welfare program for undesirable males?

I can see that society fears its renegade young male and would like to tame them through marriage, leveraging the power of their sexuality lest they expend that energy in acts of violence and dissolution. I can see the idea of using women for this purpose and rejecting polygamy because it takes women out of commission in that service. . . . But if you use that as your overt argument, you're going to run up against ideas about women's autonomy and freedom. We're not society's tools.

UPDATE: Jonathan Rauch expands on his argument against polygamy.

Obama sings "Amazing Grace"

I already knew President Obama was a good singer from when he sang a line of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" in 2012, but I was still impressed by his performance in a much lower register during his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who died in the mass shooting in Charleston, SC. While keeping his rendition of "Amazing Grace" simple, solemn, and weighty enough for the circumstances, he did more than singing the familiar melody — he added blue notes and other tasteful embellishments.

The Supreme Court just recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

I'm disappointed that the decision was only 5-4, with a majority opinion by Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

Still, today is a great day in American history.

The majority concludes:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

My mom, Prof. Ann Althouse, writes:

There's a distinct absence of doctrinal particularity about the levels of scrutiny. There's no discussion of the government interest to be served and how closely connected it is to the policy that's supposed to serve that interest. The focus is on the gravity of the burden imposed. . . .

It's notable that the due process analysis predominated and drove the equal protection analysis. I think the inequality is easier to explain and understand, but there are reasons to prefer to frame things in terms of fundamental liberty. Equality is, perhaps, a cooler matter than liberty. There's more passion in liberty and more to disagree about. There's no end to demands for liberty, and which liberties get to be fundamental? That question sets us up for the dissenting opinions, and for those, I'll do separate posts.

Much of Justice Kennedy's opinion is workmanlike and dull, piecing together precedents in an earnest effort to show us that the right found today was really always already there and nothing to do with feelings and political preferences. But there were some glimmers of passion. My favorite example:

"Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there."

Alex Knepper writes (on Facebook):

When I was first realizing I was gay, I was scared: I figured it would preclude me from full participation in society, and for that reason I fiercely resisted admitting my orientation to myself. It's still unbelievable that in just ten years since that time, the nation has moved from -- at best -- tolerance, but often outright hostility -- to widespread acceptance. This ruling will mean millions of people will be relieved of a part of the struggle and self-loathing that so often accompanies self-discovery and coming out, and will instead live with the awareness that same-sex relationships are viewed with legitimacy by their nation. Of course, no law can erase all of the difficulties that accompany being gay -- but gays and lesbians can rest easy knowing that now, at least, the government has done its part to secure our equal treatment under the law.

How Zimbabwe is ending its currency

"For anything up to 175 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars the bank will offer $5 in return. After that $1 will be paid for every 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars. Bills printed before 2009 are slightly more valuable and can be exchanged at a rate of $1 to 250 trillion Zimbabwe dollars."

Former President George W. Bush makes over $1 million for a homeless shelter . . .

. . . by charging a $100,000 speaking fee.

“We paid his regular fee,” Lynne Sipiora told Politico. She’s the executive director of the Samaritan Inn, a homeless shelter in McKinney, Texas. “Which is $100,000.” . . .

Sipiora, the executive director of the Samaritan Inn, called Bush’s fee of $100,000 a “bargain.”

“We looked at many entertainers and political figures, and they were much higher,” she said. “Hillary Clinton was, like, $250,000.

“We’re a homeless shelter, so it was a hefty fee for us, but we ended up netting over $1 million,” said Sipiora, who identified herself as one of the few Democrats in her area. “It was not a very political conversation. I’m sure he’s answered the same questions a million times. But he was very popular and charming and pleasant.” She said Bush sent her a prompt thank you note in which he mentioned her father by name.

What are non-Muslims really doing when they refrain from drawing Muhammad?

Jeet Heer writes in TNR:

Art Spiegelman’s comic strip commentary on the Charlie Hebdo controversy, “Notes from a First Amendment Fundamentalist,” delves deeply into these issues. In the cartoon, Spiegelman (limning himself in his stylized rodent form, developed for his graphic novel Maus) is holding two magazine covers (images within an image). One, titled "No Problem," features a standard smiley face and says, “Have a nice day.” The other, titled "Problem!," features the same smiley face wearing a turban and identified as “Mohammad.” As the contrasting images show, it takes just a few squiggles and a label to turn a smiley face into a blasphemous provocation. The offense isn’t so much in the image as in the intent. To say you are drawing the Prophet is the scandal, more than what is drawn. A drawing of Muhammad is an idea or an assertion more than it is a physical thing. . . .

Adherence to a rule that Muhammad should not be depicted is a very curious thing. Abiding by the prohibition can’t be an act of belief, since these publications aren’t run by Muslims who believe the prohibition is crucial to their faith (and in any case these publications have a secular mission and identity). Nor can the prohibition be just about displaying sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities since there is no consensus among Muslims that the prohibition should be adhered to or is binding among non-believers. In fact, certain strands of Islam, notably those in Iran, have a rich history of depicting the Prophet. A thorough prohibition on depicting Muhammad would, if followed by all, mean the banning of a rich vein of Islamic art.

Worst. Condolences. Ever.

Pat Robertson, to a woman whose 3-year-old child had just died:

As far as God’s concerned, He knows the end from the beginning and He sees a little baby and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease. God sees all of that, and for that life to be terminated while he’s a baby, he’s going to be with God forever in Heaven so it isn’t a bad thing.

(But if he would've been the next Hitler or a serial killer, why would he go to Heaven?)

On Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's political comedy

". . . tendency to affirm its audience’s pre-conceived notions about morality and politics in order to win their views and wallets . . ."

". . . convinces those in the center that they’re on the vanguard, which severely delimits their view of the range of political possibilities . . ."

This, coming from . . . the New Republic.

"[A] stunning example of feminism devouring itself"

Natasha Vargas-Cooper writes, in the feminist blog Jezebel, about the case of Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis: "As feminist student activists fight to expand their circle of vulnerability in collegiate life, Title IX has gone from a law designed to protect college students from sexual misconduct and discrimination to a means by which professors are put on trial for their tweets. . . ."

One solution to the problem of too many Republican candidates and not enough Democratic candidates

Put some of the Republicans in the Democratic debates!

Headline Writer Forgets to Consult Dictionary

"Harrison Ford Flies Again After Fatal Plane Crash"

What do David Letterman and Kurt Cobain have to do with Hillary Clinton?

Matt Lewis explains:

A girl I went to high school with spent a semester in Australia. She must have blossomed there, for when she returned home, she magically had an Australian accent. Predictably, we would have none of it. Kids might be cruel, but they also have great bullshit detectors. Nobody likes a phony — not even in Middletown, Maryland. The accent receded; the mockery endured.

This, I suspect, has always been the case. But at least since the invention of Holden Caulfield, phoniness has been the unpardonable sin. Meanwhile, authenticity has become our greatest virtue. . . .

We just spent a week celebrating the career of David Letterman, a man whose entire raison d’être consisted of being the first post-modern late-night comedian — a guy whose humor hinged on being in on the joke and ironic (not like all the phonies on TV at the time!).

This, of course, brings us to Hillary Clinton, and her fake Southern accent. There might have been a Southern accent where Tom Petty came from, but there wasn’t one in Illinois or New York (you know, the places where Clinton grew up and represented in the U.S. Senate?) . . .

The revolt against the phoniness of American life goes back to at least the 60s, which is why it’s odd that Hillary Clinton is so transparently engaging in “show business.” But for Generation X, in particular, the ethos of authenticity practically defines our generation. It’s why Kurt Cobain in a cardigan was cooler than KISS in makeup. It’s why single camera sitcoms with laugh tracks (once wildly popular) now feel so damned cringeworthy. It’s even why John McCain, with all his flaws, seemed much cooler than George W. Bush in 2000. . . .

[T]he GOP (should they nominate someone like, say, Marco Rubio) has a chance to actually “out-cool” Hillary.

(That video is from 2007.)

The only NYC subway station without rats

"The Second Avenue subway is the only line in the city that doesn’t have rats — yet. They move in when the people come and leave trash."

(Warning: That's a New York Times link which could affect how many NYT articles you can read this month.)

Vice President Biden's son has died at 46.

The New York Times reports:

Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has died of brain cancer. . . .

Mr. Biden’s death marks a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived." . . .

In a short, emotional speech introducing his father at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Mr. Biden recalled the tragedy that had touched his family, describing the moments after the crash.

“One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about,” Mr. Biden said. “He decided not to take the oath of office. He said, ‘Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can’t get another father.’ However, great men like Ted Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey — men who had been tested themselves — convinced him to serve. So he was sworn in, in the hospital, at my bedside.”

I remember being touched when Vice President Biden, in the 2008 vice presidential debate, alluded to the fact that he, Sarah Palin, and John McCain had sons who'd been deployed to Iraq (transcript):

We measure progress in America based on whether or not someone can pay their mortgage, whether or not they can send their kid to college, whether or not they're able to, when they send their child, like we have abroad — or I'm about to, abroad — and John has as well, I might add — to fight, that they are the best equipped and they have everything they need. And when they come home, they're guaranteed that they have the best health care and the best education possible. . . .

May God bless all of you, and most of all, for both of us, selfishly, may God protect our troops.

Joseph "Beau" Biden kept serving as Delaware's AG while serving in Iraq.




(Photo via Brian Frosh, cropped by Wikipedia.)

The federal government's investigation into "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen

The FBI and a few other federal agencies spent almost two years on a bumbling investigation of whether there was "obscenity" in the lyrics to "Louie Louie."

This is a good reminder that government restrictions on free speech are bad not only for all the obvious reasons, but also because enforcing those restrictions uses up a lot of money that could have been spent on something more important.

The singer, Jack Ely, died last month at age 71. The New York Times reports:

Jack Ely would later insist that as a 19-year-old singing “Louie Louie” in one take in a Portland, Ore., studio in 1963, he had followed the original lyrics faithfully. But, he admitted, the braces on his teeth had just been tightened, and he was howling to be heard over the band, with his head tilted awkwardly at a 45-degree angle at a single microphone dangling from the ceiling to simulate a live concert.

Which may explain why what originated innocently as a lovesick sailor’s calypso lament to a bartender named Louie morphed into the incoherent, three-chord garage-band cult classic by the Kingsmen that sold millions of copies, spawned countless cover versions and variations, was banned in Indiana, prompted the F.B.I. to investigate whether the song was secretly obscene, provoked a legal battle and became what Frank Zappa called “an archetypal American musical icon.” . . .

The F.B.I. began investigating after an Indiana parent wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1964: “My daughter brought home a record of ‘LOUIE LOUIE’ and I, after reading that the record had been banned on the air because it was obscene, proceeded to try to decipher the jumble of words. The lyrics are so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter.”

The F.B.I. Laboratory’s efforts at decryption were less fruitful. After more than two years and a 455-page report, the bureau concluded that “three governmental agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were, even after listening to the records at speeds ranging from 16 r.p.m. to 78 r.p.m.”

[Richard] Berry’s words, with a first verse that begins, “Fine little girl she wait for me/Me catch the ship for ’cross the sea,” are in fact completely benign. . . .

Asked to account for the song’s popularity, [Peter Blecha, a music historian,] replied, “You could dance to it, and as kids, with the rumors that there was something nefarious going on, you couldn’t grab our attention with anything better than that.”

(Note: That video shows a different singer, who replaced Ely — but he's lip syncing to the original recording with Ely's vocals.)

Does this song remind you of anything?

It should . . .



(The answer.)

Warren Buffett has a better economic plan than raising the minimum wage

Buffett writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In my mind, the country’s economic policies should have two main objectives. First, we should wish, in our rich society, for every person who is willing to work to receive income that will provide him or her a decent lifestyle. Second, any plan to do that should not distort our market system, the key element required for growth and prosperity.

That second goal crumbles in the face of any plan to sizably increase the minimum wage. I may wish to have all jobs pay at least $15 an hour. But that minimum would almost certainly reduce employment in a major way, crushing many workers possessing only basic skills. Smaller increases, though obviously welcome, will still leave many hardworking Americans mired in poverty.

The better answer is a major and carefully crafted expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which currently goes to millions of low-income workers. Payments to eligible workers diminish as their earnings increase. But there is no disincentive effect: A gain in wages always produces a gain in overall income. The process is simple: You file a tax return, and the government sends you a check.

In essence, the EITC rewards work and provides an incentive for workers to improve their skills. Equally important, it does not distort market forces, thereby maximizing employment.

The existing EITC needs much improvement. Fraud is a big problem; penalties for it should be stiffened. There should be widespread publicity that workers can receive free and convenient filing help. An annual payment is now the rule; monthly installments would make more sense, since they would discourage people from taking out loans while waiting for their refunds to come through. Dollar amounts should be increased, particularly for those earning the least.

Adam Sandler on David Letterman

"'Cause you're the king of comedy, our best friend on TV."

Norm MacDonald drops his usual deadpan and says an emotional goodbye to David Letterman.

Norm MacDonald closed his standup on the Late Show last week by saying this (via):

Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental. If something is true, it is not sentimental. And I say in truth, I love you.

Conan O'Brien explains why David Letterman matters.

Conan O'Brien writes:

[I]n 1980 the comedy world was a very different place. Yes, we had Saturday Night Live, but the original cast had departed and, strange as it sounds now, I felt as if that show had spent its explosive force. My early teen hero Steve Martin was done performing electrifying stand-up and was making movies—still hilarious but now an established show business franchise. Johnny Carson was only two thirds through his reign and at the time it felt as if he would always be with us—charming, poised, and stylish. Johnny was comforting and enduring—the guy you watched with your father.

And then it happened. It was a sunny morning during my senior year in high school. I was late for a 10 a.m. class, and I ran out the door of my parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts to jog the quarter mile to Brookline High. Just before the screen door slammed behind me, my sister Kate shouted from inside the house for me to come back. I dashed back inside and into the den, where Kate was sitting on the couch. “You have to see this guy,” Kate said, gesturing to the garish, wood paneled Zenith television from that era that looked more like a casket than a TV. I looked at the screen and immediately everything was wrong.

The guy didn’t look right. His hair resembled an ill-fitting vintage leather motorcycle helmet. His front teeth had a massive gap that looked almost painted-on as a joke. He was wearing the requisite broadcaster’s tie, but khaki pants and Adidas sneakers. His set looked wrong, as if he had thrown it together minutes before the show—strange photos of dogs decorated the wall behind him. And then there was his manner. His smile was not ingratiating, but mischievous and ever so slightly malevolent. He was not comfortable in his own skin at a time when everyone on television, by definition, was comfortable in their own skin. And on top of it all, he was doing a comedy show in the morning. What the hell? Who does a comedy show in the morning? What’s wrong with this guy? Who let this happen?

Like every comedian of my era, I watched Dave’s subversive, untamed morning show with delightful incredulity. The show didn’t last long, but quickly morphed into his late night program—and then Dave was really off to the races. Throughout college, everyone my age watched Dave and discussed his show the next day. The late night talk show had existed at that point for 30 years in more or less one form, but Dave and his writers completely re-invented the format.

Dave’s show was that rare phenomenon: a big, fat show business hit that seemingly despised show business. Dave didn’t belong, and he had no interest in belonging. He amused himself, skewered clueless celebrity guests, and did strange, ironic comedic bits that no one had seen on television before. Everything about that show was surreal and off-kilter. Where late night television had once provided comfort, this man reveled in awkwardness. Cher called him an asshole. Andy Kaufman ran screaming from the set. Chris Elliot lived under the stairs. Throughout one episode the entire show rotated a complete 360 degrees, for no reason whatsoever. By 1985, when I graduated from college and was ready to try my hand as a comedy writer, Late Night with David Letterman had been the Holy Grail for several miraculous years.

With time came those insipid Late Night wars and the ensuing media obsession over ratings and guests. Personally, I never cared about any of it. I never saw late night comedy as a cockfight—someone makes me laugh or they don’t, and whoever won Tuesday night is irrelevant. Similarly, when Dave became tabloid fodder because of his personal life, the whole story felt pointless and dreary.

So let’s keep it simple: Not one single writer/performer in the last 35 years has had Dave’s seismic impact on comedy. Every day, I read that a new comic has ‘changed the game,’ and admittedly there is an absurd abundance of talent and creativity out there right now. But in today’s world of 30 late night programs, it’s tempting now to take Dave for granted. Do not. Dave was a true revolution—and I believe his innovations are up there with the light bulb and the Twix bar. Like all revolutions, it was such a seismic shift that it was disorienting and a bit messy at first, and it has taken us time to realize the sheer magnitude of the shift.

And so, as Dave departs, I can’t help but remember that strange vision on my television way back in 1980. Immediately, everything was wrong, wrong in every way—and because it was so wrong the world since has been a better place.

(Photo by US Department of Defense Mass Communication Specialist, 1st Class, Chad J. McNeeley, cropped by Wikimedia Commons.)

Harper's on Obama: "What Went Wrong"?

I can only read the first paragraph of this article since I don't subscribe to Harper's, but I'd just like to say that this sentence captures something I've often thought about Obama, which has seemed so glaringly obvious to me that I've wondered if I'm crazy or everyone else is missing this or not willing to say it:

He has spoken more words, perhaps, than any other president; but to an unusual extent, his words and actions float free of each other.

Eddie Vedder will be David Letterman's second-to-last musical guest.

I'll bet I know what song he's going to sing . . .



(Correction: I originally said he'd be the last guest — he'll be the second-to-last musical guest. Also, no guests have been announced for the last show, so there might be surprise guests.)


UPDATE: I was wrong:

B.B. King (1925 - 2015)

The New York Times reports:

B. B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American blues, died Thursday in Las Vegas. He was 89.

It was reported on Mr. King’s Web site that he died in his sleep.

Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love.

“I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (1996), written with David Ritz.

In performances, his singing and his solos flowed into each other as he wrung notes from the neck of his guitar, vibrating his hand as if it were wounded, his face a mask of suffering. Many of the songs he sang — like his biggest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (“I’ll still live on/But so lonely I’ll be”) — were poems of pain and perseverance.

The music historian Peter Guralnick once noted that Mr. King helped expand the audience for the blues through “the urbanity of his playing, the absorption of a multiplicity of influences, not simply from the blues, along with a graciousness of manner and willingness to adapt to new audiences and give them something they were able to respond to.”

B. B. stood for Blues Boy, a name he took with his first taste of fame in the 1940s. His peers were bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, whose nicknames fit their hard-bitten lives. But he was born a King, albeit in a sharecropper’s shack surrounded by dirt-poor laborers and wealthy landowners.

Mr. King went out on the road and never came back after one of his first recordings reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1951. He began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs, playing 342 one-night stands in 1956 and 200 to 300 shows a year for a half-century thereafter, rising to concert halls, casino main stages and international acclaim.

He was embraced by rock ’n’ roll fans of the 1960s and ’70s, who remained loyal as they grew older together. His playing influenced many of the most successful rock guitarists of the era, including Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Clapton and King play his signature song, "The Thrill Is Gone":



King with John Mayer ("Every day I wake up, I put B.B. King on, just to remember how to do it right. . . . It's like stealing something from somebody right in front of them!"):



A sample of King's "How Blue Can You Get?" provided the chorus for the enigmatic 1996 song "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand" by Primitive Radio Gods:



Here's King playing it at Sing Sing Prison on Thanksgiving:



Now some videos for guitarists — King shows how he achieves his famous vibrato:



How his string bending was inspired by T-Bone Walker:



How he was influenced by two early jazz greats, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt:



King's "ambiguous third":



More from the NYT obit:

In addition to winning more than a dozen Grammy Awards (including a lifetime achievement award), having a star on Hollywood Boulevard and being inducted in both the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame, Mr. King was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, awards rarely associated with the blues. In 1999, in a public conversation with William Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mr. King recounted how he came to sing the blues.

“Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon,” he said. “I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.

“I’d have me a hat or box or something in front of me. People that would request a gospel song would always be very polite to me, and they’d say: ‘Son, you’re mighty good. Keep it up. You’re going to be great one day.’ But they never put anything in the hat.

“But people that would ask me to sing a blues song would always tip me and maybe give me a beer. They always would do something of that kind. Sometimes I’d make 50 or 60 dollars one Saturday afternoon. Now you know why I’m a blues singer.”

Anti-circumcision activists are anti-science

A Slate article from a couple years ago explains how they're like anti-vaxers:

Like most fringe groups, the anti-circumcision faction is almost comically bizarre, peddling fabricated facts, self-pity, and paranoia. The intactivists also obsess about sex to an alarming degree. Still, some of their tactics are shrewd. The first rule of anti-circumcision activism, for instance, is to never, ever say circumcision: The movement prefers propaganda-style terms like male genital cutting and genital mutilation, the latter meant to invoke the odious practice of female genital mutilation. (Intactivists like to claim the two are equivalent, an utter falsity that is demeaning to victims of FGM.)

Anti-circumcision activists then deploy a two-pronged attack on some of humanity’s most persistent weaknesses: sexual insecurity and resentment of one’s parents. Your parents, you are told by the intactivists, mutilated you when you were a defenseless child, violating your human rights and your bodily integrity. Without your consent, they destroyed the most vital component of your penis, seriously reducing your sexual pleasure and permanently hobbling you with a maimed member. Anti-circumcision activists craft an almost cultic devotion to the mythical powers of the foreskin, claiming it is responsible for the majority of pleasure derived from any sexual encounter. Your foreskin, intactivists suggest, could have provided you with a life of satisfaction and joy. Without it, you are consigned to a pleasureless, colorless, possibly sexless existence.

Intactivists gain validity and a measure of mainstream acceptance through their sheer tenacity. Their most successful strategy is pure ubiquity, causing a casual observer to assume their strange fixations are widely accepted. Just check the comment section of any article pertaining to circumcision. When Slate’s Troy Patterson wrote a piece thoughtfully weighing circumcision’s pros and cons, he was attacked for supporting a “barbaric practice” of “mutilation” that “ought to be illegal.” A lighthearted Dear Prudence column suffered the same fate. Intactivists pummeled the Amazon rankings of a book about the history of AIDS that mentioned circumcision as a proven preventive measure. Check any Internet message board and you’ll find the same ideas peddled as unimpeachable fact: Circumcision is amputation, a brutally cruel and despicable form of abuse. It damages penises and violates human rights. And it irrevocably, undeniably ruins male sexuality for life.

The problem with these arguments is that they’re either entirely made up or thoroughly disproven. None of intactivists’ cornerstone beliefs are based in reality or science; rather, they’re founded in lore, devilishly clever sophistry dressed up as logic. The facts about circumcision may be hard to find on an Internet cluttered with casuistry—but they are there. And they prove that even as intactivists dominate the Internet, the real-world, fact-based consensus on circumcision is tipping in the opposite direction.

Take, for example, the key rallying cry of intactivists: That circumcision seriously reduces penis sensitivity and thus sexual pleasure. Study after study after study has proven this notion untrue. Some men circumcised as adults actually report an increase in sensitivity, while many report no appreciable difference; virtually none noted any notable decrease. Men circumcised as adults also almost universally report no adverse effect in overall sexual satisfaction following the procedure. (That fits with what my colleague Emily Bazelon found when she asked readers for their circumcision stories a few years ago.) And genital sensitivity in response to erotic stimulation is identical in circumcised and uncircumcised men. Don’t trust individual studies? A systematic review of all available data on circumcision came to the same conclusion. Intactivists, then, aren’t disputing a few flimsy studies: They’re contradicting an entire field of research.

So much for circumcision’s supposedly crippling effect on sexual pleasure. But what about its effect on health? Intactivists like to call circumcision “medically unnecessary.” In reality, however, circumcision is an extremely effective preventive measure against global disease. Circumcision lowers the risk of HIV acquisition in heterosexual men by about 60 to 70 percent. And circumcision reduces HIV risk over a man’s lifetime, unlike condoms, which must be used during each sexual encounter. It’s no wonder that the World Health Organization has pushed circumcision as a key tool in the fight against HIV.

But that’s not circumcision’s only benefit. The procedure also protects men against a variety of other STDs, significantly reducing their odds of contracting herpes and syphilis. Moreover, circumcision is highly effective in preventing transmission of HPV in men, which in turn reduces their risk of penile cancer. And circumcised men are far less likely to contract genital warts* or develop urinary tract infections. Fewer circumcisions mean more STDs and infections—and billions more in health care spending.

As both a personal and public health matter, circumcision is clearly in men’s best interest. But intactivists, predictably, aren’t having any of it. Like anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, anti-circumcision activists reject all science that doesn’t fit their angry, victimized orthodoxy.

* I added this link to replace a dead link in the original article.

Harry Shearer is fired from The Simpsons

"Not excellent."

I wonder how many people in the world are practicing their Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, and Flanders voices today.

Best. Reason for anonymity. Ever.

Measles leads to other diseases through "immune amnesia"

New Scientist reports:

Measles is often painted as a trivial disease by the anti-vaccination movement. It is not – it kills or causes brain damage in two or three out of every 1000 cases, even in wealthy countries. Here's another reason it isn't trivial: having measles destroys your immunity to other diseases – and some of those are far more deadly. The upshot? Getting your child vaccinated will protect them from much more than just measles. . . .

The measles virus is known to kill the white blood cells that have a "memory" of past infections and so give you immunity to them. It had been thought that those cells quickly bounce back, because new ones appear a week or two after someone gets over measles. However, recent work in monkeys that have recovered from measles shows that these new memory cells only remember measles itself; the monkeys lose cells that recognise other infections. If humans get similar "immune amnesia" after measles, childhood deaths from infectious diseases should rise and fall depending on how many had measles recently, and how long the effect lasts. . . .

The prospect of a child losing its hard-won immunity to a host of threatening diseases might be the nudge some parents need to recognise that the measles vaccine is essential.

The "soft bigotry" of "lazy abstraction" or "indifference to the specifics of Baltimore's problem"

Will Wilkinson writes:

On Friday David Brooks argued that costly big-government efforts to alleviate poverty haven't done much to improve conditions for those living in Sandtown-Winchester, the Baltimore neighbourhood where Mr Gray lived. "Saying we should just spend more doesn’t really cut it," Mr Brooks writes. "[T]he real barriers to mobility are matters of social psychology, the quality of relationships in a home and a neighbourhood that either encourage or discourage responsibility, future-oriented thinking, and practical ambition." Ingrained codes of behaviour have "dissolved", he argues, leaving residents of impoverished areas "without the norms that middle-class people take for granted."

Paul Krugman is very annoyed by this line of thinking, though he does not mention Mr Brooks by name. "It has been disheartening to see some commentators still writing as if poverty were simply a matter of values," Mr Krugman writes, "as if the poor just mysteriously make bad choices and all would be well if they adopted middle-class values." According to Mr Krugman, thinkers like Mr Brooks have it back to front. The decline in values Mr Brooks laments is plainly a response to a hopeless lack of economic opportunity for the working classes. "[I]t should be obvious," Mr Krugman avers, "that middle-class values only flourish in an economy that offers middle-class jobs."

This is an important debate, but it is not the debate to have now.

As much as they bicker, Messrs Krugman and Brooks both agree that just about any occasion can be used to mount a favourite hobbyhorse. Mr Brooks is ever on the lookout for a chance to push the all-important role of culture. Mr Krugman scans the horizon itching to point out "the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality". Culture and inequality certainly have something to do with the Baltimore riots, but Baltimoreans did not suddenly take to the streets to protest their poverty. They rose up to protest an apparently fresh instance of a very specific pattern of injustice. . . .

It is, in fact, a problem of both culture and inequality, but not as Messrs Brooks and Krugman are in the habit of discussing it. It is the problem of an insular, truculent police culture and the grievous harm it has done to the citizens the police were meant to protect. It's a problem of inequality under the law. In 2005 more than half of Baltimore's black men in their twenties were either in prison or on parole, according to one study. This is largely the consequence of tactics in the "War on Drugs", including changes in sentencing guidelines, which have disproportionately hurt young black men. . . .

So why are Messrs Brooks and Krugman using the occasion of Baltimore’s protests to squabble over whether values explain material conditions or material conditions explain values? There's a soft bigotry — let's call it the "soft bigotry of lazy abstraction" — in their indifference to the specifics of Baltimore’s problems.

A moral rule of thumb

Be good enough so that if everyone in the world were as good as you, it would be a major improvement. That should be a low bar!

An orchestra with an audience of one whale

Ben E. King (1938 - 2015)

Ben E. King has died at 76. He was the original singer of "Stand by Me" (later covered by John Lennon), which he cowrote with the famous songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller.




But my favorite of his songs is "Spanish Harlem" (sung but not written by him):




The New York Times obituary quotes him:

“I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.”

Trigger warnings

Remember, sometimes your trigger warning needs a spoiler alert.