I can’t get any takers on this discussion over at OTB, presumably because there’s no partisan advantage to be gained from it, but why is Ukraine a country at all?

If your answer is “self-determination”, why should Ukraine be a country by virtue of self-determination but Crimea shouldn’t? How about Donetsk? How about the southwest corner of Valutina Avenue in Donetsk?

Once we’ve got that nailed down we might be prepared to tackle why we should support the present Ukraine.

Without providing any links (they’re easy enough to find) I’ve seen quite a bit of long overdue rumination over whether we really would want to foment a world war over Estonia or Ukraine. It might have been better to have thought about that before admitting former Soviet republics to NATO but I guess better late than never.

There’s an interesting post by Nicholas Eberstadt at RealClearMarkets on just how little data the federal government collects any more:

In the fifteen fiscal years between 1998 and 2013, overall federal spending, after adjusting for inflation, rose by about a sixth (16%) for each man, woman and child in our country-notwithstanding the “budget sequester”. But for the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)-the agency that doesn’t have the money any more to calculate national marriage and divorce probabilities-real per capita spending went down approximately 7%. It looks to be down 15% for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, the unit that follows U.S. employment conditions ) and by over 25% for our most celebrated statistical organ, the U.S. Census Bureau. Though real per capita funding has also risen over the past decade and a half for some of our statistical agencies, most of the main ones appear to have been squeezed-if not starved.

Talk about false economies. Do we really want our government to be a blinded giant?

Unless the public and our leaders commit to reversing the decay of our government information systems, Americans must be willing to accept the certain degradation of the quality of democratic governance in our country for years to come.

I think that the increasing retreat by our political parties into ideological strongholds exacerbates the problem to which he draws attention. What do you need with data when you’ve already decided on the solution?

It doesn’t make any difference how many columns George Will writes on the subject. We will not amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget or even according to his preferred formula. At best such an amendment would merely make lawbreakers of Congressmen who would simply ignore the amendment when expedient.

This subject is like term limit amendments. When waste perfectly good column space in a valuable property like the Washington Post over something that will never happen?

I also wonder how he thinks the present budget could be balanced without cutting military spending (unacceptable to Republicans), Social Security spending, or Medicare spending, the last of which appear to be unacceptable to both political parties. You can’t cut enough so what sort of tax does he think might raise the necessary revenue?

Update

Glenn Reynolds takes not of Mr. Will’s column and implicitly supports an Article V Constitutional convention. Who does he think the delegates to such a convention would be?

The message that I took away from Nicholas Kristof’s most recent column is that we need two major political parties, both of which are interested in governing. Neither side has all of the answers and the interplay between the parties is potentially a source of strength rather than a destructive one.

Unfortunately, I find some of his proposed preferred solutions to problems strike wide of the mark. Black families did not deteriorate because of the lack of availability of abortion services and greater availability of abortion has not strengthened black families despite black women receiving abortions on a wildly disproportionate basis. I think quite to the contrary that the reason for the deterioration of black families has been that black men have been shut out of the labor market due to racism, over time many women lose respect for men without jobs or, indeed, who earn less than they do, the nurturing sectors of the economy have prospered enormously over the last several decades which inevitably improves the job prospects for women, and for sixty years a perverse public policy actually discouraged family formation.

If your solution to problems as diverse as poverty, juvenile crime, and improving education in the inner city is stronger families, you would think that the strategies you prefer might actually strengthen families.

Meanwhile, Democrats were wrong about AFDC and are continuing to fight on the wrong side in that struggle. Republicans have been persistently wrong about racism.

Sometimes not only does no one person or party have all the answers but sometimes no one person or party has any answers. For wicked problems emergent solutions, while emotionally unsatisfying to those who demand problem solution in a single masterstroke, may be the best solutions available.

Wow. No wonder income inequality is a more important issue among Congressional Democrats. As you can see from the chart above, income inequality is a bigger factor in many of the districts represented by Democrats than among those represented by Republicans.

The graph is from a genuinely interesting article by Michael Zuckerman at The Atlantic which considers issues of income inequality, political party, Congressional seniority, and ideology.

That is, the most senior Democrats in Congress—and their constituents—seem to have far more direct experience with income inequality than the most senior Republicans in Congress. It’s not surprising that they see the issues differently.

None of this is to say that income inequality isn’t a big problem. I believe it is. But then again, I live in the Massachusetts 5th, the 74th most unequal congressional district in the country. It’s no wonder I’m more alive to the problem than a resident of Bachmann’s Minnesota 6th, which comes in 436th place (D.C. included).

While true, none of that establishes the actual objective significance of income inequality. It does go a long way to explaining why individual Congressional representatives may or may not think it’s important.

Last week my cable provider had something they called “Watchathon” during which they offered full runs of a few premium cable programs at no charge on demand. I took the opportunity to check out Game of Thrones.

After watching a few episodes, I can understand how people could become obsessed by it. As some have characterized it, it’s sort of a mash-up between The Sopranos and The Lord of the Rings. Like any soap opera, you get involved in the characters and want to know what will happen next. It’s very lurid.

It has high production values, a mostly British cast and, consequently, solid acting, and great locations in Ireland, Scotland, Malta, Iceland, etc. The cast of regulars and extras is huge.

Although I can understand people becoming obsessed by it, it didn’t strike me that way, personally. Maybe I didn’t watch enough. Honestly, my tolerance for sex and violence in movies or television isn’t particularly high. I have a bit more tolerance for violence than for nudity and sex, simulated or otherwise, and there’s plenty of simulated sex in it of practically every variety.

My main issue with the program is that I just don’t care about the characters much. What some critics have characterized as “moral ambiguity” I see more as with few exceptions the characters are all shnooks. Either that or shlemiels. I have to care about the characters to watch episode after episode. I can’t imagine subscribing to HBO just to watch GoT.

It did make me more interested in reading the first novel in the series, though.

I wonder if David B. Rivkin Jr. And Lee A. Casey recognize the irony of the conclusion of their op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

More than arcane legal principles are at stake. Western failure to champion a narrative of international rights and wrongs, rooted in the language of law and legitimacy, would be tragic. Meeting Russia’s aggression with passivity undermines already weakened domestic support for a robust and engaged foreign policy in the U.S. and other Western countries, and it promises to make the world a more lawless and violent place.

Sadly, the failure occurred long hence. Without entering into an exhaustive catalogue of our own violations of international law they include:

• bombing Yugoslavia
• invading Iraq
• torturing prisoners
• bombing Libya

I completely understand realist protestations of national interest. However, once you’ve cut your path through the laws, it takes at least a short while before you can stand behind them to protest the actions taken by others in what they see as their own national interests.

It’s hard for me to read James Taranto’s catalog of instances of wishful thinking overwhelming Paul Krugman’s undoubted reasoning faculties without relating the inability of Congress to arrive at even commonsense compromises with its becoming increasingly sorted into opposing ideological camps with the most liberal Republican more conservative than the most conservative Democrat.

There’s nothing like questioning your own conclusions and your own views to enable you to see the other side’s point of view and arrive at workable compromises.