For some reason I only today became aware of Spinsanity, a seemingly non-partisan site that flags the use of “manipulative and subrational rhetoric in American politics.” The site is very well done, and the analysis is really spot on.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times: An Alternate Reality

From an economist’s point of view, the most revealing indicator of what’s really happening is the post- Sept. 11 fondness of politicians for “lump-sum transfers.” That’s economese for payments that aren’t contingent on the recipient’s actions, and which therefore give no incentive for changed behavior. That’s good if the transfer is meant to help someone in need, without reducing his motivation to work. It’s bad if the alleged purpose of the transfer is to get the recipient to do something useful, like invest or hire more workers.

So it tells you something when Congress votes $15 billion in aid and loan guarantees for airline companies but not a penny for laid-off airline workers. It tells you even more when the House passes a “stimulus” bill that contains almost nothing for the unemployed but includes $25 billion in retroactive corporate tax cuts

MEMRI’s executive director, Steve Stalinsky, has written an article for the National Review about hostility toward the United States in the Egyptian media. I’ve been reading everything MEMRI translates for the past month or so, and have been shocked at the depth of hostility and ignorance in the Egyptian pieces that they’ve translated. Granted, MEMRI doesn’t translate every article in every Middle Eastern media outlet, so I don’t know how pervasive this hostility is, but there are a large number of Egyptian publications that have no problem printing anti-American crap that’s almost completely false.

There’s been a lot of concern lately about Burhanuddin Rabbani, the political leader of the Northern Alliance. He was quite belligerent after Kabul was occupied by the NA, telling the British to stay the hell out, rejecting the idea that Zahir Shah would return to lead the country, and generally being uncooperative with efforts by the UN to bring all the players to the table. Since then, though, he seems to have moderated his approach significantly. First he said that he would be OK with stepping aside if the Bonn conference reached a consensus on a government that didn’t involve him, and now saying that individuals who were associated with the Taliban can be part of a new government. The book on Rabbani all along has been that he’s not interested in being a power monger, and his recent statements lend credence to that assessment.

Even though I detest the members of Al Qaeda who are fighting in Afghanistan (simply for the fact that they’re religious fanatics who want to impose their screwed up ideals on everybody else), I feel like their basic human rights ought to be respected. As such, much as I loathe them, I don’t think it’s right that they be summarily executed, regardless of what Donald Rumsfeld wants. That said, these guys make it really hard to excuse not just shooting them on the spot. There were rumors that the hundreds who were killed in the school in Mazar-i-Sharif were shot after they killed Northern Alliance members who went in to accept their surrender. Then the same thing happened in Kunduz – they gunned down the Northern Alliance soldiers after radioing that they were surrendering. And now, hundreds of these guys revolted after surrendering and being taken prisoner and were all killed. If you attack people after surrendering, it makes it extremely unlikely that they’ll be willing to accept your surrender in the future. I don’t expect people to take many Al Qaeda prisoners from this point on, and truthfully, they’ve brought it on themselves.

New York Times: Swept Up in a Dragnet, Hundreds Sit in Custody and Ask, ‘Why?’