Amazing NYTimes infographic showing how different groups spend their day: http://bit.ly/lxTqy (RT @planetmoney)
Congrats to @annalthouse, who married one of her commenters yesterday, here in beautiful Colorado. http://bit.ly/MPwyj http://bit.ly/15NJoK
Many years from now, when historians look back on this decade, which day will they say “changed the world” more: 9/11/01, or 9/15/08?
Perhaps the answer is 9/11 simply because it was more of a self-contained event, which, all by itself, set enormous changes into motion — whereas the collapse of Lehman Brothers was merely one catastrophic event among many in the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009. On the other hand, Lehman’s collapse was the specific event that had the near-term effect of virtually shutting down the world financial system, which in turn led quite directly to a variety of medium-term and long-term consequences, notably the passage of TARP, a variety of changes in the way Wall Street does business, and, quite possibly, the election of Barack Obama. (Though, of course, no one will ever be able to definitively prove that last one.)
A broader — though to me, slightly less interesting — version of my question would be: which series of events changed the world more, 9/11 and the foreign policy events it helped trigger, or the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 as a whole and the changes it caused (and will yet cause)?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but they’re the sort of thing I’d love to hear a bunch of smart people argue about.
Glenn Reynolds, advancing the conservative talking point du jour, asks: “Is it representative government when your representatives don’t read the bill?”
Perhaps not. But if not, then it also wasn’t “representative government” when the Republican Congress passed the 342-page-long Patriot Act, or the 415-page-long Medicare prescription drug benefit bill, or the 1,700-plus-page-long Bush/Cheney energy bill of 2005, without reading them.
Because if you think each and every member of the GOP actually pored over each and every word of those bills, not to mention all the countless others they passed during the reign of Gingrich/Hastert/Dole/Lott/Frist between 1995 and 2007, then I’ve got a shovel-ready bridge-construction stimulus project in Brooklyn to sell you.
And yet, I don’t remember Reynolds & co. shouting “READ THE BILL!!!” when it was Republicans in charge. Which, I hasten to add, is not actually a defense of the practice of voting for legislation without reading it. It’s merely an attack on the credibility of many of the practice’s current critics.
That most of the present criticism is partisan hackery and hypocrisy is clear. However, even hacks, hypocrites and broken clocks are occasionally right. So… if I were going to mount an defense of the practice itself, what would I say? Well, I’d start with the snarky comment: “Um, that’s why they have staff.” And then I would proceed along these lines:
Two years ago today, the great Tommy Makem, the Irish folk singer whose voice has a place of high honor on the soundtrack of my life to date, died at age 74.
In Tommy’s honor, I thought I’d post a few videos of his live performances over the years decades. The first clip above is of “Brennan on the Moor,” one of my favorites, sung by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at their reunion concert in 1984. The second clip above is of “Four Green Fields,” the great Irish nationalist ballad composed by Tommy himself, performed by Makem & Clancy (i.e., Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy) in 1983.
Immediately below are two clips I’d never seen before, though they’re from an occasion I’m well aware of: the March 12, 1961 “Ed Sullivan Show,” which launched Tommy and the Clancies to national fame. The first clip is of (again) “Brennan on the Moor” and “Balliderry”; then come “The Rising of the Moon” and “Portlairge”:
Much more after the jump.
