Najib Tun Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, addressed the United Nations General Assembly yesterday about, among other things, growing Islamophobia and the Cordoba House controversy: The real issue is not between Muslims and non-Muslims but between the moderates and extremists of all religions, be it Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Across all religions we have inadvertently allowed the ugly voices of the periphery to drown out the many voices of reason and common sense. I therefore urge us to...

Jonathan Chait at TNR argues that the health care reform legislation turned out moderate in substance (a point that I tried to make in yesterday’s post here): Obama’s plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within their party’s mainstream: The first is the 1993 Senate Republican health plan, which is compared with Obama’s plan here, with the similarity endorsed by former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger here. The second...

The health care reform debate of the past year has highlighted a growing gap between our politics and actual policy-making, and the misplaced emphasis on the former. Politically, health care reform sparked one of the most partisan and radical legislative debates we’ve seen in years. But paradoxically the resulting policy is about as centrist and moderate as you can get while actually achieving substantial reform. It completely retains the market-based insurance system and expands coverage...

Correlation does not equal causation, and all that, but this is a pretty interesting graph. This comes from an in-the-works book about authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. Here’s the explanation from one of the authors: In states with lower percentages of people that endorse spanking and washing kids’ mouths out with soap, which is the case in New England and much of the Middle Atlantic, Obama did very well. In states with higher percentages, like Wyoming, Idaho, and...

Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen wrote a good column based on an interview with Stephen Landrigan, a US aid worker who has spent five years working on humanitarian projects in Afghanistan. Landrigan supports the surge of troops, but recognizes that there isn’t a military solution to Afghanistan’s problems. Money quote: “It’s 99 percent economics,” Landrigan said. “You want to beat the Taliban? It costs $1 million to keep a US soldier in Afghanistan for a year....

A group of nongovernmental organizations recently polled 704 randomly-selected Afghans about how decades of conflict has changed their lives. Andrew Sprung has a summary: 1 in 5 say they’ve been tortured, three quarters have been forced to leave their homes at some point in the endless civil war, 43% have had property destroyed. The survey also has what would seem to be some moderately encouraging findings regarding the counterinsurgency: 70% see unemployment and poverty as a key driver of...

I don’t have a whole lot to add to the discussion of the torture memos that doesn’t echo what has already been said. Of the two debates currently taking place about the implications of the memos—one about whether preventing another terrorist attack justifies torture and another about whether or not to bring those responsible to justice—I am only really interested in the latter. To borrow a quote from On Torture, a compilation of essays about torture that I’m currently...

Here’s why I can’t take these “tea party” protests seriously: In an op-ed in the WSJ, Glenn Reynolds’ first sentence declares that thousands of taxpayers are taking to the streets “to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending.” If government spending is your pet peeve, then fine, protest the Obama administration’s spending projects, but please try to offer an alternative, reasonable way to stimulate the economy. But to protest taxes...

A Republican legislator in Texas, Betty Brown, is refusing to back down after suggesting Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with” during House testimony on voter identification legislation. Specifically, she said: “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily...

Is it just me, or are those lines getting awfully close to each other?

I don’t think his approval ratings ever dropped low enough to call this a second honeymoon, but Obama’s non-State of the Union on Tuesday boosted his job approval ratings back near all-time highs. Overall, his approval went from 59% before to 67% after—a respectable jump. But the most interesting result from the Gallup survey was the change in Republican support: Before the speech, 27% of Republicans approved of Obama, and that had held steady for a couple of polling cycles; after...

Joe warned that Bobby Jindal was headed for trouble if comedians latched on to his poor performance following Obama’s Tuesday address, and it looks like the comparisons to the “Kenneth the Page” character from NBC’s 30 Rock aren’t going away. Here’s “Kenneth” responding to the comparisons:

So far, the reactions to Obama’s speech last night have been very, very positive. Unlike the post-debate snap polls, where pundits saw a weak performance but the public rated Obama highly, everyone seems to agree that Obama was at the top of his game. Some numbers: 63% approved of President Obama’s plans for dealing with the economic crisis before the speech; 80% approved after, according to a CBS poll. A CNN poll found that 68% of speech-watchers had a “very positive” reaction,...

Wil Robinson has an interesting report on a new effort to convince Afghan farmers to switch from growing opium poppies to pomegranates to export to world markets. The man spearheading the effort thinks that, not only does Afghanistan produce “best pomegranates in the world,” but sales of pomegranates on the global market could outstrip the value to Afghanistan of the opium industry. Robinson sees problems, however: First we must put aside the obvious economics behind supply and demand,...

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to...

How many times do sentient killer robots have to turn against and enslave the human race in science fiction books and films before we realize that building killer sentient robots is generally not a good idea? The guy quoted in this article thinks half the U.S. military will be “half machine, half human” by 2015. Haven’t the people working on this technology watched The Matrix? Terminator? I, Robot? This will not end well: “We are at a point of revolution in war, like the...

Cities in Italy have begun banning kebabs and other foreign foods, in what they say is an attempt to “promote local specialties from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines.” To be more specific, new ethnic food outlets are not allowed, and existing establishments are pressured to use only Italian ingredients. The recipe for this ridiculousness is simple: Mix a little anti-immigration hysteria with a helping of excessive economic protectionism, add a dash of stupidity and just a smidgen...

“We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. They don’t get it. These people are idiots. You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses.” - U.S. Senator Claire McKaskill, after introducing legislation that would cap salaries in companies that receive federal bailout money at $400,000. “If you somehow take that bonus out of the economy, it really will create unemployment. It means less spending...

Al Qaeda is coming after Obama hard, not with missiles or rockets, but with a PR campaign designed to turn moderate Muslims against the new President. I predicted this when al-Zawahri released a tape calling Obama a house negro. Before he even took office Al Qaeda was blaming him for the violence in Gaza and calling him a “hypocrite,” a “killer” of innocents, an “enemy of Muslims.” The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a...

Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings points to a very important phrase in the comments President Obama made as he signed an executive order to close the Guantanamo detention facility within a year: “The message we are sending around the world is that the US intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism and we are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals … We...