It's a great show. I love it and watch every episode and wait for the next one. I thought it was interesting, maybe this was mentioned on the podcast last year, but some organization surveyed Conservative and Liberal homes and found that among Cons, Modern Family was the the most watched series; among Libs... Dexter, a show about a serial killer killing serial killer (that's a twister) with a fetish for blood in the name of "justice." That's all when he has all the means to convict them under the rule of law and there's no need for vigilante in the first place. He's a psychopath. It's a real window into Conservative and Liberal psyches I think.

I'm in college now, your alma mater actually (if I remember my first post correctly), and while I'm not working a full 40, I'm working far more throughout the year than most of my peers and consciously decided on a state school over a private one for this reason precisely and opted to commute from home rather that stay on campus.

Obama was just on campus a week or two ago and I cringed as everyone around me talked about how "Obama is going to keep interest rates low for our tuition" - how magnanimous. Blech. No, you, me, all of us, are paying for that subsidy and we're going to pay even more dearly when we see entrepreneurship stifled by "assetless-backed mortgages" carried by an ever growing proportion of the population and the necessary reduction in risk taking that will imply.

Ironically, this may not really be a reaction to a fear of coming inflation insofar as it affects the security of their T-Bill holdings directly. Instead, it might likely be to counteract future US inflation.

As I'm sure you've heard rumblings of, US and Chinese currencies are in a fight to the bottom. Both nations’ policies have been geared towards keeping their respective currencies weak. This boosts exports (e.g. a relatively weak USD makes our goods relatively cheaper).

How is this accomplished? The Fed buys up treasuries with the “printed” money. This new money gets dumped into the economy, purportedly lowering interest rates and increasing liquidity. As this increase in the money supply ripples through the economy, inflation rears it's ugly head, which weakens the USD thereby making our goods relatively cheaper… Unless, it is "soaked up" by the Fed selling off T-Bills and taking the money paid for them out of the money supply.

Here's the kicker: the sell-off of T-Bills doesn't have to be done by the Fed, China can do the same in an effort to keep our goods relatively more expensive and theirs relatively cheaper.

It's not the protests that bother me, it's the media attention and treatment they get. In the case of OWS, the media ignores many unseemly aspects of it and constructs the arguments for them, which they can't construct themselves, and glosses over the ugly. In the case of the TP, the media glosses over the substantive complaints and exaggerates, in not invents, the bad. If they were to be taken at face value, I wouldn't have any issue with them at all.

1) Gingrich @ 56.3% 4/11 issues

2) Huntsman @ 56.3% 5/11 (not sure why he is ranked second... must be the weights)

3) Perry @ 52.2% 4/11

I played with the weights a few times as I really thought about the issues and Gingrich/Huntsman/Perry were perennially in the top three with an occasional upset by Santorum.

Notably, and a bit worrying, was that in every instance, Romney underperformed Obama by a noticeable margin.

I think something to note here is the either/or proposition it rates candidates on, you either are completely aligned on an issue or you are not.

In some cases I'm 80% in agreement with one position on an issue, and 90% with another candidate, but the marks aren't distributed that way. The first candidate gets 0% and another 100%. Gingrich would have gotten nearly all ~80-100% for the a very high score in my book, but other candidates stole them away here and there. Still, those gains were distributed among them so none out performed Gingrich significantly.

Claire, I was in France just last summer and I'm glad that you noticed the same thing. I'll vouch for it being a national trend, I spent most of my time in and around Marseille/Toulon. What also was surprising to me, and my surprise may be cultural, were the number of relatively young mothers, most probably about 23. They were also not Islamic, even in the south.

Isn't the recession only a prediction for 2012? Or am I misinformed?

So, what's the underlying risk that Mitt ends up ideologically bankrupt like Greece? Or that Newt's corporate governance is AWOL, and by that I mean, can he keep focused and from making any blunders?

To continue with the metaphor, I think Newt responds to incentives just like a firm. Before his campaign, Newt was on the speaking circuit and in think-tanks, where nuance, and provocative pragmatism are very highly valued. As he transitioned into his campaign, he had to adjust his business model to demand. Demand for solid, articulate conservatism. Naturally, there were bumps in that transition. Those blunders have slowed since and haven't really cropped up again. I think it will stay that way - Newt does what's best for Newt. Stirring up trouble isn't in his interest now. During a Gingrich presidency, our task would be to keep up the demand for that articulated conservatism.

Mitt, on the other hand, is low-risk and fixed rate, and if events in his presidency demand that we cash in early on having a steadfast conservative in office, there's no guarantee but his word that he'll pay out - that's sovereign individual debt.

This could be accomplished by a drop-down menu with tags. Then you could filter by tag, as Cutlass suggested below that way we wouldn't have the clutter of link-buttons like on NRO, I like the clean look of Ricochet.

Great!

Seconded on all accounts.

You're not, it's my favorite one!

I believe that there is little to no hope for the traditional national newspapers, or at least the nationally distributed papers, in the number that we maintain them today. The fact is that the fixed costs and barriers to entry that once existed which enabled the formation of such massive establishments like the Grey Lady are no longer present.This does not necessarily have to be a bad thing though.

A basic economic fact is that the lower fixed costs are, the smaller and more numerous the competition will be. There was a nice article that appeared in the Atlantic about this. The points I took away from it were that the fear that our democracy is in danger is largely hyperbolized and that we are, in fact, returning to a media environment much more similar to that of pre-revolutionary America than into the abyss. Mssrs. Baker and Ferguson do have a point in that the demand for well researched and edited papers will remain, but as the industry exists today, it cannot be preserved.

Well received, it was rather late, I ought to make a rule of no posts between 10 and 10 for myself. Thank you for setting me straight.

Russ Roberts of the Econtalk podcast (best of '08 and Cafe Hayek, he has a conservative/libertarian core and may appreciate being able to fully express it here - Econtalk tries to remain pretty balanced if not at least center-right. Michael Spence too, Hoover Fellow, though he may be a better guest than host. For Dr. Spence, Peter Robinson must have a slight connection to him if not more. See him here.

Genferei, I actually started that thread, they answered it nicely. Find it here.

I am Catholic, but have been out of practice since leaving high school, everyday I hear the call to come back to the Church and it's growing louder.  You've voiced a concern I recently posted a few weeks ago asking how other Catholics on the site reconcile their allegedly dispassionate conservatism with the "social teachings" of the Catholicism. The fact is, the Catholic social teachings aren't. They're conclusions and policy recommendations drawn from the true teachings of the Church, dogma. But as we see nearly everyday in our judicial system, many contradictory and frankly absurd conclusions and policy implications can be drawn from our Constitution, but that does not invalidate it. So too with the bible, the Church, and her Catechism can truth be twisted. Nancy is right to point you in the direction of George Weigel, he often dispels the myths propagated by an ill informed media.

As for those who claim that there is a disproportionate representation of Catholics or Mormons, you're all falling prey to the intellectually dead-ended theory of identity politics used so often by the left to justify categorically denying opportunities to one class to favor another.

I very much like all your proposals, Douglas.

I haven't gotten into Radio Free Delingpole, though. The first one's audio quality wasn't great and I prefer a conversation rather than a monologue (just my taste, no hard feelings). I'll give it another listen though, a sample size of 1 isn't very representative. That said, I like the idea of the podcasts being more regular, and I adore the idea of some other topical podcasts; I'd be extremely enthused about an economics podcast.

As for the contributors being more present, I've been very pleasantly surprised by their level of interaction.

I second the email idea about post comments, however, one caveat is that you very likely might end up with a barrage of emails cluttering your inbox. Maybe a limit could be set, e.g., an email could be sent 15 minutes after the first reply and every 30 minutes after that summarizing recent activity if there was any. 

As for chat, I would worry that we would lose some of the carefully edited and thought-out comments we love.

A 250 word limit.

Drum circle. Yes. Rob Long could meditate with us too.

Is this a good thing? In short, yes. It's confirmation of something I've been thinking about for a few weeks. There is a problem in this country and the Tea Party and OWS are tuning into it (we've known that for a while). The good is that we know now that the whole country feels it. The danger is that, unfortunately, the entire basis of OWS's logic is prima facie. They don't bother to think about the cause of a problem. They just assume the system is the problem. It's like saying "the car's broke" and selling it, instead of saying: "sounds like the fuel pump" and fixing it. Hence, I heard a protester saying today on NPR, "if the system isn't changed, we're going to smash it." Of course, if queried, I'm sure the protester couldn't have articulated what the problem with the system is or what change she would she would want to see. Enter the Tea Party, the weekend mechanic, fix it if it's broke kind of guy. We'll be alright, he'll vote this time, most of the freshmen philosophers won't.