Grasping Reality with Both Hands

CFP Panel on the Transparent Society: David Brin's Book Ten Years Later: There are all the—call them Little Brothers—the people who want to sell you things that you may need to be persuaded against your better judgment to buy. And then there are the people who want to figure out whether you will be a more expensive customer to serve... so that they can decide not to let you be a customer.... David Brin wrote, I think, a wonderful book. And complaining that his solution—turn the cameras around—doesn't solve all problems is like complaining that the portions of the free ice cream aren't large enough. Nevertheless, I do complain...

DeLong on the Dollar—and Other Things—on Bloomberg Radio

Engagement in Foreign Affairs: Matthew Yglesias on our two examples of following wingnut-McCain policies of not negotiating: "The United States really only has two experiences with a sustained effort at the Bush/McCain approach.... One would be our effort to deny recognition to Communist China during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations... a strategic fiasco... of such enormous proportions that Richard Nixon's role in undoing it actually manages to stack up in a non-trivial way against his otherwise terrible record in office. The other is our fifty year effort to starve the people of Cuba into rebelling against Fidel Castro. McCain actually defends continuing this policy, but everyone with a functioning brain understands that it's been a ludicrous failure..."