Camille Paglia and Deficits

It is not that often that I agree with Camille Paglia, but I think she gets it mostly right on Sotomayor; if her record supports it, confirm her, but the "wise latina" statement is indefensible. Paglia describes the line as a "vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism", but I think it's more a vestige of the ethnic identity politics of the 60's-80's, where some attributed special wisdom or spirituality to one group or another. The fact that Sotomayor said it to what seems like a predominately (and maybe) solely latino audience makes me even more comfortable, making it a little too self-congratulatory.

Also, the New York Times has an interesting piece on exactly what has created the looming deficits; Obama's stimulus plan makes up a tiny fraction of it, though author Leon Steinhardt doesn't let Obama off the hook for not doing enough to fix the deficit.

Debt

There's a good article at Fortune on the crushing debt we're headed for, and they correctly note that the big problem isn't the stimulus or even the war, but entitlements. It's nice to have an administration that actually has a plan to reduce the deficits, rather than just proclaim deficits don't matter, but there are going to have to be severe structural changes in how entitlements work. And we're going to have to raise taxes.

As bad a job that I think President Bush did handling the economy, it's quite possible that 50 years from now historians will see that the main villains were Grover Norquist and the rest of the anti-tax fanatics. There has got to be a way to make tax increases more palatable to most of the country, but I can't think of it right now.