Long Game

Obama now has two options in terms of domestic strategy.

Regardless of the scale at which we explore the biosphere — whether we delve into the global ocean or the internal seas of individual organisms — bacteria are now known to be larger players than humans ever imagined.

Strictly by the numbers, the vast majority — estimated by many scientists at 90 percent — of the cells in what you think of as your body are actually bacteria, not human cells.

Guggenheim presents the popularized version of an account of American public education that is promoted by some of the nation’s most powerful figures and institutions.

An example of a policy that would apply to all citizens is gay marriage, and we have all encountered religious reasons for banning gay marriage, such as, “Leviticus 18:22 tells us that homosexuality is an abomination before God.”

It is critical for our society that we get this normative debate right, for the stakes are high. We face increasing religious diversity. Liberal theorists, like Rawls, say that unless we keep religious reasons out of the public sphere, we could descend into a religiously motivated civil war similar to the Thirty Years’ War of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, critics of liberal theorists, like religious ethicist Charles Mathewes, say that unless we allow each other to talk about our deep differences, such as our religious beliefs, we could descend into the same nightmare that concerns the liberal theorists.

for all of Krauthammer's harping about the importance of independents, there's really no such thing. The vast majority of self-identified "independents" lean strongly one way or another, though they might be more inclined than strong partisans to punish the incumbent party for a poor economy.

The two groups have different economic and social interests, but they are coming together in their angst toward the government and in their anger toward President Nicolas Sarkozy. This presents a dangerous situation for Paris, as it has the potential to spark wider societal unrest unless the government moves to satisfy one of the groups.

The origins of the French welfare state go back to the 60-year period of nearly constant turmoil following the 1789 French Revolution. The revolution was followed by the 1793-94 Reign of Terror; the White Terror of 1794; Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule from 1804 to 1814, which included an almost uninterrupted period of pan-European warfare; another White Terror in 1815; and two more revolutions, in 1830 and 1848. The 1848 Revolution took on a particularly socialist tinge, as a nascent working class that was growing amid the country’s industrialization united with the peasantry in protest of their conditions.

To describe Peter Thiel as simply a libertarian wildly understates the case. His belief system is based on unapologetic selfishness and economic Darwinism. His most famous quote—borrowed from Vince Lombardi—is, "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." In a personal statement produced last year for the Cato Institute*, Thiel announced: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." The public, he says, doesn't support unregulated, winner-take-all capitalism and so he doesn't support the public making decisions. This anti-democratic proclamation comes with some curious historical analysis. Thiel says that the Roaring 20s were the last period when it was possible for supporters of freedom like him to be optimistic about politics. "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron," he writes.

What differentiates Thiel's Silicon Valley style of philanthropic libertarianism from Glenn Beck's screaming-raving-weeping variety is a laissez-faire attitude toward personal behavior and the lack of any demagogic instinct. Thiel, who is openly gay, wants to flee the mob, not rally it through gold-hoarding or flag-waving.

Mr Waldman is right to suggest that today's Republican alarm and Democratic light-heartedness are partisan phenomena. But one is no sillier than the other. The majority of Democrats who saw government as a threat in 2007 were right to do so, and nothing truly significant has changed since then. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of Republicans who were at ease with the state in 2007 were profoundly misguided; one wishes they had been roused from their oblivious slumber for better reasons.

During the three decades after World War II, for example, incomes in the United States rose rapidly and at about the same rate — almost 3 percent a year — for people at all income levels.

The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent.

The rich have been spending more simply because they have so much extra money. Their spending shifts the frame of reference that shapes the demands of those just below them, who travel in overlapping social circles. So this second group, too, spends more, which shifts the frame of reference for the group just below it, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. These cascades have made it substantially more expensive for middle-class families to achieve basic financial goals.

First and perhaps most important of all, Popper doesn’t support free will and oppose determinism in order to support a view of human nature that goes against the wisdom of human experience and the evidence of experimental and evolutionary psychology.

Since 1989 the population of the Russian Far East declined by 14% to 6.7 million in 2002; shorn of subsidies from the center, it is now dependent on the rest of East Asia for food and consumer imports. It sits next to Chinese Manchuria (the provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin), an environmentally-strained rust belt of 108 million souls. Thus it is not surprising to see American geopolitical jockeys, Russian xenophobes and anti-Putin "liberals" alike (i.e. Radio Free Europe's Aleksandr Golts and Echo Moskvi Radio's Yulia Latynina, etc) claiming that a stealth demographic invasion of Russia is well underway which will in a few years result in a Chinese Far East.

The issue of Chinese migration to Russia and its political consequences starts with one main question - how many of them are there? All reputable estimates are in the range of 200,000 to 400,000, with 500.000 as the absolute maximum, most of them shuttle traders or seasonal laborers. The academic Gel'bras first came with these figures in 2001, based on adding up numbers from separate towns and regions.

Most migrants come from cities or small towns, and only 20% from villages - although the latter figure is higher in Moscow. Only 5% were employed in agriculture back in China. 38% were "workers" and 11% were "worker-peasants". Although only 6% admitted they had been unemployed, the real figure is much higher since 70% of workers and 68% of worker peasants said they migrated because they couldn't find a job in China.

What are these candidates hiding from? The Politico story subscribes to the sports metaphor, explaining that the candidates are "running out the clock." If they say nothing, they won't get caught saying anything stupid, the theory goes.

But when politicians beat this sort of a retreat, they're not signaling that they fear the questions but that they fear the answers.

But filter-free media are self-limiting. To begin with, anything that Sarah Palin tweets goes out unfiltered. That's all well and good, but within seconds, the uber-media will suck it up, interpret it, fact-check it, and spit it out, making a mockery of her unfilteredness. Second, because the nonpress media speak primarily to supporters, they simply preach to the converted. To win, candidates must speak to more than the congregation, which requires conventional media exposure. Third, appearing on a friendly soundstage comes at a cost. A Tea Partier speaking on Fox News is just as prone to committing a campaign-debilitating gaffe as one taking a pummeling from aggressive reporters.