Author Archives: Doug Badger

Putin And Islamists Aren’t Living In Another World

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Weeks after Rus­sia seized Crimea, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin con­tin­ued to insist that Rus­sia had­n’t seized Crimea.

Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, with whom Putin had enjoyed a rea­son­ably good rela­tion­ship, final­ly despaired of con­vinc­ing him to back down.  “He’s in anoth­er world,” Merkel report­ed­ly told Pres­i­dent Obama.

Merkel was wrong. Putin is very much in this world and doing quite well. So are rad­i­cal Islamists, as they remind­ed us again with the Char­lie Heb­do atroc­i­ties. It is West­ern lead­ers who seem to be liv­ing in anoth­er world.  Read more.

“Episodes,” Hollywood And Reverend Al

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Season 4 of "Episodes," premieres tonight, a funny, smart and dead-on satire of Hollywood. [Credit: Showtime]

Sea­son 4 of “Episodes,” pre­mieres tonight, a fun­ny, smart and dead-on satire of Hol­ly­wood. [Cred­it: Showtime]

MATT LEBLANC’S EX-WIFE: You were arrest­ed for dri­ving drunk with our kids in the car!

LEBLANC: Yeah, well, when you say it that way, it sounds terrible.

Scene from Sea­son 3 of “Episodes”

The fourth sea­son of “Episodes” pre­mieres tonight on Show­time, promis­ing anoth­er sump­tu­ous feast of Hol­ly­wood send-ups. David Crane’s (“Friends,” “Joey”) hand­i­work has it all: self-obsessed actors, self-impor­tant exec­u­tives, mawk­ish phoni­ness and blood­less betray­als, all set among ubiq­ui­tous lies and decep­tions.  Crane’s satire is pitch-per­fect: over­drawn enough to be fun­ny, but real enough to be (almost) true. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Debt And The New American Exceptionalism

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Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen plans to increase interest rates. Can government and households survive the shock? [Credit: Huffington Post]

Fed­er­al Reserve Chair­man Janet Yellen plans to increase inter­est rates. Can gov­ern­ment and house­holds sur­vive the shock? [Cred­it: Huff­in­g­ton Post]

The Amer­i­can econ­o­my is back.  After years of tepid growth and a first quar­ter con­trac­tion, GDP grew by a robust 4.6 per­cent in the third quar­ter of last year.  The unem­ploy­ment rate remained at 5.8 per­cent in Novem­ber, and ana­lysts expect the Labor Depart­ment to announce tomor­row that the econ­o­my added sub­stan­tial­ly more than 200,000 jobs in Decem­ber.  Infla­tion is low, the dol­lar is strong, oil prices have tum­bled, and fed­er­al deficits are low­er.  Near­ly six years after the reces­sion end­ed, the long-await­ed recov­ery appears at last to have arrived.

That recov­ery has in part been dri­ven by a force that could be its undo­ing: debt.  Near­ly $46 tril­lion of it, or more than 2–1/2 times our annu­al eco­nom­ic out­put. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Paying Bud Selig To Go Away

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Bud Selig will retire as baseball commissioner later this month, but not before doing the game irreparable harm. [Credit: CBS Sports]

Bud Selig will retire as base­ball com­mis­sion­er lat­er this month, but not before doing the game irrepara­ble harm. [Cred­it: CBS Sports]

Bud Selig is sched­uled to step down as base­ball com­mis­sion­er lat­er this month, but the efflu­ence of his 23 years of mis­rule con­tin­ues to pol­lute.  On Tues­day, his sludge will flow into Coop­er­stown, when the results of this year’s Hall of Fame bal­lot­ing are announced. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Tsunami And The Triumph Of Hope

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Ten years after a tsunami ravaged villages like this on the Indian Ocean Coast, towns have been rebuilt, lives repaired. [Credit: endignorance.org]

Ten years after a tsuna­mi rav­aged vil­lages like this that line the Indi­an Ocean coast­line, towns have been rebuilt, lives repaired. [Cred­it: endignorance.org]

A decade has passed since a tsuna­mi dev­as­tat­ed vil­lages in 13 Asian coun­tries, which remind­ed me that some­where I have a plas­tic sand­wich bag filled with rupees.

The rupees are among the memen­toes of a woman I cher­ished.  She went to Kudanku­lam, a fish­ing vil­lage on the south­ern tip of the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent, ten years ago to pro­vide med­ical care to the tsunami’s sur­vivors. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The Black Year Of Italian Olive Oil

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The black year of Italian olive struck those who farm these verdant Umbrian slopes, a metaphor for the challenges facing Italy's variegated traditions. [Credit: italianfoto.com]

The black year of Ital­ian olive struck those who farm these ver­dant Umbri­an slopes, a metaphor for the chal­lenges fac­ing Italy’s var­ie­gat­ed tra­di­tions. [Cred­it: italianfoto.com]

Months before the har­vest, Enri­co sus­pect­ed the worst.  His grove of 700 olive trees had been sub­ject­ed to an unusu­al­ly cool and wet August, ide­al breed­ing con­di­tions for the Bac­tro­cera oleae, a fly that deposits its eggs beneath the skin of olives.  The late Octo­ber har­vest con­firmed his fears: the flies had laid waste to his crop.

Enri­co didn’t press any olive oil this sea­son.  He wasn’t alone.  Pro­duc­tion in Enrico’s region of Umbria is off 45 per­cent, slight­ly worse than the nation­wide 35 per­cent decline. La Repub­bli­ca has dubbed 2014 “the black year of Ital­ian olive oil.”  In a coun­try where each inhab­i­tant annu­al­ly con­sumes an aver­age of more than 26 pounds of the gold­en nec­tar, it is a seis­mic cul­tur­al event, one more reminder of the exis­ten­tial threats con­fronting Ital­ian tra­di­tions. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Inequality: Has The Income Gap Narrowed?

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Two icons of the Left -- economist Thomas Piketty and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) -- talking about rising inequality last June. But by some measures, inequality is shrinking. [Credit: National Review]

Two icons of the Left — econ­o­mist Thomas Piket­ty and Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑MA) — dis­cussing ris­ing inequal­i­ty dur­ing an event last June. But by some mea­sures, inequal­i­ty is shrink­ing, not ris­ing. [Cred­it: Nation­al Review]

“The game right now in Amer­i­ca is rigged. It is rigged so that those at the top keep doing bet­ter and bet­ter, and every­one else is under increas­ing pres­sure, is under increas­ing eco­nom­ic strain…And that is the pro­found dan­ger that we see from great inequal­i­ty.” Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑MA)

Democ­rats are still sting­ing from last month’s epic defeat at the polls.  Some of them attribute that unhap­py out­come to ide­o­log­i­cal tem­per­ance.  The par­ty would do bet­ter, some argue, if their can­di­dates took a more stri­dent tone, denounc­ing the rich, preach­ing that Wash­ing­ton gov­erns in the ser­vice of Wall Street, and call­ing for more aggres­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of income and wealth to damp­en ris­ing inequality.

But a new study pub­lished in the South­ern Eco­nom­ic Jour­nal pulls at a crit­i­cal thread of that nar­ra­tive.  It found that, at least accord­ing to one mea­sure of income, the gap between rich and poor actu­al­ly nar­rowed between 1989 and 2007. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Winning By Not Winning In Iraq and Syria

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U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islamic State fighters, but the war may drag on for years. Why that's good for us. [Credit: Telegraph]

U.S. airstrikes have slowed the progress of Islam­ic State fight­ers, but the war may drag on for years. Why that’s good for us. [Cred­it: Telegraph]

The Pres­i­dent was asked a sim­ple ques­tion a few weeks ago: are we win­ning the war against the Islam­ic State?

He wouldn’t answer the ques­tion direct­ly, so I will.  We’re win­ning in Iraq and Syr­ia by not win­ning.  The net effect of our actions has so far been to keep extrem­ist Mus­lims of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties and sec­tar­i­an pas­sions engaged in war against … each oth­er.  And that may be the best pos­si­ble out­come in the cir­cum­stances. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

What We Know And Don’t Know About Obamacare

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The White House spent billions last year on efforts like this to promote Obamacare enrollment. How will they do this year? [Credit: Washington Post]

The White House spent bil­lions last year on efforts like this to pro­mote Oba­macare enroll­ment. How will they do this year? [Cred­it: Wash­ing­ton Post]

If you are a law­ful res­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and you lack health insur­ance today, it’s almost cer­tain­ly your fault.  You can’t blame your employ­er, the gov­ern­ment or the insur­ance com­pa­nies.  It’s on you.

That is the last­ing achieve­ment of Oba­macare, whose sec­ond open enroll­ment peri­od began yes­ter­day. Gone are the days when peo­ple with pre-exist­ing med­ical con­di­tions could not find afford­able cov­er­age.   Whether the ends of this achieve­ment, which are unde­ni­ably good, jus­ti­fy the means its sup­port­ers employed to win its enact­ment remains a mat­ter of con­tro­ver­sy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →