Rethink.

• “Not at Home in Ger­many: Almost Half of Turk­ish Migrants Want to Leave” (h/t Ario) — from the arti­cle: …more younger Turks want to return to Turkey than their elders. This is despite the fact that almost two thirds of respon­dents to the study (61 per­cent alto­gether)– one of the first polls to com­pare the world views of around a thou­sand indi­vid­u­als from Turkey, Ger­many and the Turk­ish pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in Ger­many — had been born in Ger­many or had been liv­ing in the coun­try for over 30 years. Turks are the largest eth­nic minor­ity in Ger­many and make up almost 4 per­cent of the country’s pop­u­la­tion. Yet only 21 per­cent of those polled feel happy to call Ger­many home.
• Edward Nie­der­meyer, “Tak­ing Tax­pay­ers for a Ride” (h/t Josh) — from the arti­cle: Mr. Bloom’s clear sig­nal that the admin­is­tra­tion is jump­ing ship is espe­cially galling in light of the frothy opti­mism gen­er­ated by G.M.’s “repay­ment” announce­ment. If tens of bil­lions in lost tax dol­lars is sim­ply the inescapable price of pre­vent­ing a sys­temic eco­nomic col­lapse, the White House should tell us so. Instead, it seems to be allow­ing the per­cep­tion to set­tle that G.M. will repay its oblig­a­tions, while all the while plans are for­mu­lated to sell off the taxpayer’s por­tion of the com­pany at any price.
• Fred Barnes, “What Obama Accom­plished in Asia” — from the arti­cle: Noth­ing much.
• Jay Cost, “Tomorrow’s Anti­cli­max in the Sen­ate” — a timely and inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of what incen­tives Sen­a­tors have for vot­ing to dis­cuss or not dis­cuss the cur­rent health care bill. I wish I could ana­lyze sit­u­a­tions this well.
• Megan McAr­dle, Pars­ing the Sen­ate Debate on Health Care — from the arti­cle: John McCain was on fire, in full on “flam­ing sword of right­eous­ness” mode.  He was prac­ti­cally shak­ing with anger as he called out the gov­ern­ment for nego­ti­at­ing with the pharma com­pa­nies, and yelled at the phar­mas for rais­ing their prices this year.  Pharma seems to have fol­lowed a stan­dard “Memo­r­ial Day Sale” strategy–they’ve raised prices by about 10% this year, in prepa­ra­tion for the deep dis­counts they’ll have to offer in the future.  John McCain thought that this was ter­ri­ble, and said so, to awk­ward silence from his col­leagues.  They bright­ened up con­sid­er­ably when he said “Shame on the AARP” for endors­ing this plan that does its mem­bers no good, accused them of get­ting paid off, and told peo­ple to tear up their AARP cards.  He and Bob Corker were pretty much the high points.

• Mostly Polit­i­cal Links, 11/20/09
• Links, 3/25, and a Brief Note on C-Span
• Links to My Right­ist Rants at The Irate Nation
• Links, Super Right-Wing Edi­tion, 7/18/09
• Links, “Crit­i­cal of Pres­i­dent Obama Edi­tion,” 11/19/09

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