Photo of the day

From In Focus photos of the week:

A male chimpanzee, Chacha, screams after he was darted following an escape from nearby Yagiyama Zoological Park, in a residential area in Sendai, northern Japan, on April 14, 2016. The chimp was eventually caught after being shot with a tranquilizer gun and falling from the power lines, Kyodo news reported. #

Kyodo / Reuters

Quick hits (part I)

1) Ryan Lizza makes the case that Paul Ryan is actually still running for president.

2) If Sweden and Denmark were US states they would be among the poorest.  And yet who really doubts that they are superior places to live than Alabama and Mississippi.

3) Jim Rutenberg on the squeeze on modern media outlets.

4) Jon Cohn on the difference between Clinton and Sanders:

Keep in mind that many experts think the Sanders plan, as currently written, would actually require a lot more money than he has said — so asking him to go back and find yet more revenue, to cover the exposure these low-income Americans would face, is no small thing.

This is the point that the liberal wonks have been making. (And, yes, I am one of those wonks.) Sanders is holding up his healthcare plan as an alternative to the status quo. But the status quo is a result of real-world compromises and sacrifices. If Sanders became president and had a chance to push his plan through Congress, he’d quickly discover all kinds of other complications — like the fact that many people with employer-sponsored insurance don’t want to give it up, or that severely ratcheting down payments for doctors and hospitals would reduce access and threaten real economic disruption.

To address these issues, Sanders would have to make painful concessions. What came out of the other side of the legislative process would look very different, and less attractive, from what he’s proposing now, in much the same way that Obamacare looks very different, and less attractive, from what Obama sketched out as a candidate in 2008.

5) When it turns out the bully is your kid.

6) I’ve come to enjoy vexillology as Mike Pesca is always plugging it on the gist.  Here’s a pretty cool flag infographic to warm the hearts of vexillologists everywhere.

7) Hey, look, I’m in Mother Jones about Ted Cruz and NC’s HB2.

8) Really interesting, thoughtful, interview on free trade.  I think this part is especially revealing:

ZB: So the US policies like permanent normal trade relations with China only accelerated something that was ultimately going to happen?

GH: It was inevitable.

Once China became part of the global economy, what was going to happen was the US getting out of the really labor-intensive stuff as China moved into that, and that’s specializing, and more skill- and technology- and capital-intensive industries. It didn’t happen earlier because, for many complicated historical reasons, China just wasn’t part of the global economy. Latin America wasn’t that much part of the global economy either until the 1980s and 1990s.

9) John Oliver’s year in criminal justice.

10) Satisficing is so important.  I need to work harder at it.

11) Andrew Prokop on Kasich’s strategy for winning the nomination.

Indeed, Kasich’s actual plan seems to fit perfectly into the classic South Park“underpants gnome” framework, in which step 1 is “lose every primary and caucus except Ohio,” step 2 is “???” and step 3 is “party turns to Kasich at a contested convention.” He really does not seem to have even the slightest plan to get from step 1 to step 3.

12) Liked this list of “podcasts for grownups who still dig learning” as I already listen to most of them.  Oh, I still really dig learning.

13) Enjoyed this post from my good friend (and great promoter of my research), Matt Shipman, on how his role as a dad makes him oppose HB2 all the more.

14) Speaking of HB2, N&O editorial on the Republicans just digging in their heals come hell or high water.  It takes a big person to admit when they are wrong.  Not even any modestly-sized persons in sight.

Now it seems the Republican schisms and blind zeal that let this law pass will also obstruct its necessary repeal. Until HB2 is repealed, jobs will continue to be lost.

“We’ve had some companies choose to suspend their site selection search in North Carolina and consequently in Wake County,” said Adrienne Cole, executive director of Wake County Economic Development. “Some have said they’re taking North Carolina off the list, others have said they’re postponing things to see what happens.”

Unfortunately, Berger and Moore represent districts in less-populated areas of the state, and although their constituents might well benefit from economic development in cities (Moore’s Kings Mountain isn’t that far from Charlotte, and Berger’s Eden is fairly close to Greensboro), they have such antipathy for cities they just don’t care. They are putting an anti-urban ideology ahead of the best interests of North Carolina, a reprehensible position for two supposed leaders.

15) Being rich (or comfortably middle class) means having more money to spend to perpetuate that with your kids.

16) Dahlia Lithwick’s excellent take on the 4-4 Supreme Court and the recent immigration case.

17) Given how much I hate extended fight scenes in movie, I love this analogy about Hillary Clinton from Drum:

For some reason this got me thinking about fight scenes in movies. Bear with me here. If you watch a movie from 50 years ago, the fight scenes will mostly strike you as ridiculous. The staging is weak, the sound effects are amateurish, and the choreography is slapdash. Things improved over the next couple of decades, but then they went overboard. Fight scenes began to devour blockbuster movies, with directors all trying to one up each other. But really, a fight is a fight. After a while, there’s little new you can do, and all the CGI in the world can’t hide that. Anyone who saw the most recent Star Trek movie knows what I’m talking about. The final fight scene was absurd, tedious, and completely unnecessary. But JJ Abrams put it in because he figured his audience demanded it. And I suppose they did. But those of us who have been watching movies since the 60s or 70s found it boring and predictable.

Now on to politics. To me, Bernie is like one of those fight scenes: I’ve seen it all before. On the Democratic side, primaries have specialized in having at least one bold truthteller like Bernie in every cycle since the 1960s. Sometimes they’re lefty truthtellers, sometimes they’re “hard truths” truthtellers, and sometimes they’re a bit of a mishmash. But the one thing they have in common is that they can afford to tell the truth—in the beginning, at least—because they’re mostly running as rebels who don’t really expect to win. And if you’re not seriously trying to win, there’s no downside to being entirely candid. Who cares if you’re going to lose a few important demographics in the process?

18) Sub-hunting drones.  Cool!

19) Really enjoyed the “Steve Jobs” movie, but totally agree that with David Edelstein that there’s way too much focus on what kind of a father Steve Jobs was.

20) Damn straight buying a car should be more like buying an Apple product.  You’ll be hearing more on this from me.

21) Progressively fewer ear infections in each of my children.  My family is representative of a larger, and very good, trend here.