ROTTEN EGGS. After those words of warning from Bossman Tomasky, Brother Pierce will no doubt take heart in an assessment of the president's speech delivered this afternoon at the very podium from which our commander-in-chief promised Bossman's neighbor to the people of Darfur.
THE PARTY OF MORE STUFF. I'm not sure whether this is funny or sad, but at the end of a David Leonhardtcolumn arguing that middle-class growth and improvement is deeply understated by the inflation rate, Leonhardt admits:
BUY THIS BOOK. Last week, Brookings held a great book launch event for Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France by Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse. The book hit the Prospect�s office today, and it appears to be an exceedingly important read for anyone trying to understand how governments can help promote (or stunt) the integration process of Muslims immigrants to Europe.
EZRA -- STILL A WRITING FELLOW IN NEED. As we said yesterday, the Prospect depends on reader donations. Do consider helping out Ezra, the writing fellowship program, and the magazine with a donation.
UPDATE: Just to be clear: You'll notice Ezra's reading a plain, old dead-tree book in today's picture. Might he have been forced to sell his laptop due his dire financial situation? What's next, we ask you?
WATCH IT, PAL. Listen, Pierce: Andrew Natsios is my next-door neighbor. I�ve never met the man, but I consider an attack on him to be an attack on all of Woodside Park. And those rumors that he wants to build a $312 billion vehicular tunnel under Clement St. are just that!
MAKE YOU FEEL SAFER? One of the recurrent questions I get on panels, call-in shows, and e-mails is "What will be required to change the health care system? What can be done?" It's not a query I'm particularly well-equipped to field, but I think a good start would be photocopying this article on retroactive cancellations by insurers and handing a copy out to each and every American. No other piece I'm aware of exposes the absurdities and cruelty of the system as clearly, and so irresistibly signals the need for reform.
MISSING MICHAEL BROWN. Yesterday, at the United Nations, the president sought to reassure the world that he really has its best interests at heart. Here�s the speech. Now, there was a passage in the speech's late innings that caused the ol' head whiparound in a lot of us here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) It was that moment when the president spoke to the people in Darfur and told them that he would send one Andrew Natsios there as his own super-special presidential envoy.
ALLEN'S QUICK TURNAROUND Senator George Allenembraced his Jewish ancestry only yesterday. And it took him precisely 24 hours to play the anti-Semitic card.
Yesterday, Wadhams accused Webb's campaign and liberal bloggers of anti-Semitism for raising the issue of the senator's religious background�
EUROPE WORKS. Whatever the European social policy you may be advocating for, the almost inevitable, and usually instant, response from ill-disposed interlocutors is to bring up Europe's apparent unemployment problem and wonder if that's the future you're securing for the United States. Well, let them. The latest round of OECD employment data shows (PDF) that Europe has almost entirely closed the employment gap with the United States: The difference is now 1.1 percent, attributable entirely to low female workforce participation among women in Italy and Spain. Indeed, if you factor out the disadvantage conferred by our massive incarceration rate, they may well be ahead.
