Dan Drezner is relieved to see that the great recession hasn't hit Africa and Latin America that hard. In addition, while the countries that did best often weren't Washington Consensus nations, they weren't really Beijing Consensus ones either. On the other hand, they were propped up by Chinese trade which is propped up by Chinese exports to the developed world.
Yglesias notes that while some charter schools perform well, most are about average. But that's okay because bad charter schools can be shut down and new ones can be started, a kill mechanism lacking in normal public schools. The absence of a means to handle failing weapons programs is a big problem in Defense acquisition, so I like that line of argument. Yglesias also notes that sports preferences doesn't seem to say a lot about the character of a country (see: baseball, Cuba, U.S.) Also there should be some awesome Sino-U.S. basketball games in the future.
Jason Sigger defended setting a deadline for leaving Afghanistan, in essence saying that the deadline wasn't just a bluff to get the Karzai government to cooperate, it instead reflected a strategic calculus that it wasn't in the U.S. interest to stay beyond July 2011 if things weren't improving. Ackerman responds to a different Sigger post discusses Afghanistan as a staging ground for supporting Pakistan against Al Qaeda. On another war note, Ta-Nehisi Coates chides a reporter who knocked Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings for not having served in the military. He then goes on to note that the media seems to be following what the audience wants. I fear this also explains a chart Kevin Drum posted from a study that found that the media referred to waterboarding done by other countries as torture but didn't when we did it.
And for sheer amusement value Medium Large today provided alternatives to seeing terrible films.
Hm.. that was a bit longer than I wanted. Perhaps I'll stick to bullet points next time.
[Update: I'm standardizing the naming of these.]
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