Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Summer Glau, 31. OK, I'll try to get off Whedon tomorrow. Depending on who shows up.

The good stuff:


1. Mona Yacoubian on Syria. Not cheerful, at all.

2. See also C.J. Chivers on the military situation there. Via Drezner.

3. I'm really impressed with Chris Cillizza. He had a column all about how the local economies in swing states would affect the election yesterday morning. Later, he became aware of the political science findings that in fact impressions of the national economy, rather than what's happening close to home, is what makes the difference...and he not only ran an item about it over at The Fix, but he reprinted an entire John Sides post. Really: I can't blame anyone for getting it wrong sometimes, but the difference between the good ones and the bad ones is whether they're open to admitting mistakes, or at least presenting evidence to the contrary. I don't know anything about how this all came about, but there are a lot of reporters who wouldn't even come close to doing that. (And of course, kudos too to John for writing about all this so well).

4. And Matt Yglesias takes on Michael Jordan and taxation. As usual, I claim no knowledge of the NBA. The obvious point to make is that (1) it's absolutely true that Jordan's success made lots of money for people in and around the Bulls, but (2) all of that probably is exactly the same if Jordan was taxed quite a bit more than he actually was, which was also higher than what he'd be paying now. I was not, however, aware that Wilt Chaimberlain is an example in a classic argument against progressive taxation.