The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Monday, February 8, 2010

08 Feb 2010 11:55 pm

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Cohn and others reacted to the news of Obama's HCR summit - just as his support among Independents was slipping. Andrew countered the claim of fiscal conservatism among the tea-partiers, called out the crazy side of the Tea Party movement, and took another look at Palin's convention speech. He also highlighted another bit of odd evidence related to her pregnancy. Frum and DiA scrutinized her speech, NIAC confronted her Iran rhetoric, and Continetti still had starbursts. Samberg pwned Palin and the Dems. Weekend recap here.

In other coverage, Douthat examined Paul Ryan's sensible plan for fiscal reform, Andrew sounded off on the Hoyt-Keller spat over Ethan Bronner, and a reader challenged Totten over The Hurt Locker. Ana Marie Cox took on Rich Lowry over DADT while FNC displayed some admirable opposition to the policy. Jane Mayer, backed by Horton, put the spotlight on Rahm Emmanuel over torture policy. We highlighted the right way to interrogate. And there was a shocking report of an American soldier waterboarding his own daughter.

Green Movement update here. Recession update here. Images from the snowpocalypse here and here. Creepy ad here. Another children's masterpiece from Herzog here.

-- C.B.

08 Feb 2010 09:55 pm

Face Of The Day

On February 8, 2010 a man bathes at one of the many tent cities that have sprung up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The death toll from the Jan. 12 earthquake has reached 212,000 people with 300,000 injured and over one million homeless. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.

08 Feb 2010 09:16 pm

What Sort Of Politician Do You Want?

TNC has one answer. Jonathan Bernstein another:

I want Members of Congress to lose sleep if they think they're doing something that their constituents wouldn't approve of. I want them to want reelection. If I was to really pick one thing that might be seriously wrong with the contemporary Congress, it's that the reelection incentive might not be strong enough -- if it was, perhaps Republicans during Bush's second term might have bailed on his unpopular policies. My guess, however is that the Republicans defeated in 2006 and 2008 (and the Democrats defeated in 1994) are doing just fine for themselves. Those Republicans may sleep well, but they ran their country into the ditch.

But one overwhelming reason they did was precisely because they worried about being out-machoed on the Iraq war and torture or pummeled by opposing the Medicare Prescription Drug Act, to name just three. I prefer Edmund Burke's advice myself. It's called representative - and not direct - democracy for a reason.

08 Feb 2010 08:25 pm

Palin Emails I

Check out a very rare piece of third party documentation of governor Palin's long plane-trip back to Alaska, in labor with her fifth child, many hours after her water broke. It's an eye-witness account of her state of mind in an airport lounge. Several readers have noted that the interaction seems to have taken place in the Seattle airport lounge, not Dallas. So she was even closer to giving birth at that moment than I previously believed. Thanks for the eagle eyes. Use them to peruse the rest if you're stuck in the snow like we are.

More contemporaneous emails on this subject from this period in Palin's life to come. Stay tuned.

08 Feb 2010 07:53 pm

Watching The Snow Fall

A time-lapse:

08 Feb 2010 07:52 pm

Palin's Modi Operandi

E.G. at DiA watched Palin's speech:

Politics is intrinsically adversarial and successful politicians have to know how to win an argument. Although Mrs Palin often attacks other politicians and says that her policies would be better than theirs, she doesn't welcome debate, and her preferred oppositional strategy is abrupt withdrawal. Think about the resignation from the Oil & Gas commission and from the statehouse, or her choice to "go rogue" rather than convince the McCain campaign of the merits of her approach. That's how you get 30% of the vote, not 51%. And it goes without saying that it wouldn't be an effective way to govern.

Frum dead-blogged it on YouTube:

Continue reading "Palin's Modi Operandi" »

08 Feb 2010 07:33 pm

The Tebow Ad

It was much tamer than the controversy around it suggested:

Basically a rather touching, funny way for Focus on the Family to airbrush its image. And nothing wrong with that. Amy Davidson reflects on it.

08 Feb 2010 07:10 pm

Why We Tip, Ctd

A reader writes:

I try to tip well, because I have been in the service industry, and often you are getting minimal pay for very busy and sometimes stressful work. I've noticed that friends and family who have put years in the service industry are generally more likely to tip better than those who didn't. This isn't a hard rule cut in stone, it isn't something I've conducted a scientific study on, and I'm likely bringing my own prejudices to the table, but it's how things appear to me. People who haven't worked in the service industry much, or it's decades behind them are more likely to tip less and explain to the party that they are doing so because service didn't meet expectations. I don't use low service to dock a tip (I start off at 18%), since everyone has a bad night and I'd rather not make it worse. I will use good service to increase my tip though.
Some businesses don't even pay minimum wage, at least in Colorado, since the law allows for tips to be rolled into the server's hourly wage.

Continue reading "Why We Tip, Ctd" »

08 Feb 2010 06:55 pm

Green Shoots Of Sanity On The Right, Ctd

E.D. Kain explains:

I don’t think the debate is really between “moderates” and “conservatives” so much as it is between reasonable people and people who are in it entirely to win.
In this sense, the reasonable people may be very conservative – Paul Ryan, for instance, is hardly a “centrist” but he is in every sense of the word a reasonable man whose politics are well grounded in first principles. Bruce Bartlett has added to the conversation not by being a “moderate” but by coming up with new and relevant ideas. Conversely, there are those on the right with very little grounding in conservative first principles who take so well to the rightwing populism of the day that no one would ever consider them to be “centrists”, even if philosophically they are anything but principled conservatives. A certain former governor of Alaska leaps to mind.

Bruce notices a revealing shift in the WSJ editorial page that begins to drag them back to fiscal sanity as well.

08 Feb 2010 06:34 pm

The View From Your Window

Ellicott City, Maryland, 9.45 am.

The book, The View From Your Window, with 200 of the best window views published by the Dish over the last three years, beginning at dawn and ending at dusk with a foreword by Andrew Sullivan, can be previewed here and ordered here.

08 Feb 2010 06:24 pm

Totten On The Hurt Locker, Ctd

A reader writes:

I have to take issue with Totten’s judgement on "Hurt Locker.” I was in Iraq in 2004, and the movie gets SO MUCH wrong. But most important, it gets things wrong that are timeless, like military culture. I just watched it, and the essential message is that of “Top Gun.” It’s that military and unite cohesion are boring, and the maverick lead character gets a great deal of praise for channeling his inner Sarah Palin. This, I think, is the main reason its getting slammed by a number of vets and journalists who were there. But the details also shred it:

Continue reading "Totten On The Hurt Locker, Ctd" »

08 Feb 2010 06:02 pm

Force As Slot Machine

From Andrew Bacevich's article in The American Conservative:

An alternative reading of our recent military past might suggest the following: first, that the political utility of force—the range of political problems where force possesses real relevance—is actually quite narrow; second, that definitive victory of the sort that yields a formal surrender ceremony at Appomattox or on the deck of an American warship tends to be a rarity; third, that ambiguous outcomes are much more probable, with those achieved at a cost far greater than even the most conscientious war planner is likely to anticipate; and fourth, that the prudent statesman therefore turns to force only as a last resort and only when the most vital national interests are at stake. Contra Kristol, force is an “instrument” in the same sense that a slot machine or a roulette wheel qualifies as an instrument.

John Quiggin follows up:

Continue reading "Force As Slot Machine" »

08 Feb 2010 05:39 pm

Creepy Ad Watch

(Hat tip: BF)

08 Feb 2010 05:17 pm

The Tea Party's Weimar Tinge

One of the weirdest aspects of TP ideology is that Obama deliberately created and facilitated an economic and financial crisis in order to allow the government to take over the entire economy to turn the US socialist. Bush, of course, did TARP - as any responsible president would have. A stimulus package which even AEI concedes help put a bottom on the economy and a bank bailout during a potential financial crisis that, if allowed to spiral down, could have begun a Second Great Depression: these are obvious, debatable but mainstream measures to cope with crisis. Somehow Tim Geithner does not come off as a Leninist to me. But the invaluable Weigel - a sane libertarian last time I checked - noticed something truly disturbing:

On Friday night, Andrew Breitbart introduced “Generation Zero,” a splashy documentary that argues that the financial crisis was deliberately engineered by radical 1960s ideologues.

Continue reading "The Tea Party's Weimar Tinge" »

08 Feb 2010 04:57 pm

Green Shoots Of Sanity On The Right

Last week Douthat parsed Rep. Paul Ryan's moment in the sun:

[T]he size of Ryan’s proposed voucher could be increased, to accommodate political realities, without doing violence to his overall vision of what government should be doing, and where it could be cut. And that vision is more appealing, I think, than many liberals are giving it credit for. What Ryan is proposing, ultimately, is a comprehensive blueprint for a conservative welfare state.

Continue reading "Green Shoots Of Sanity On The Right" »

08 Feb 2010 04:41 pm

How Americans Interrogate

We all know that the US never tortured prisoners of war before Bush and Cheney adopted Gestapo and Khmer Rouge techniques in secret torture camps, kept from the Red Cross. That doesn't mean legal - and often frightening - ways to get people to talk were not very much part of the tool-kit. From an obit today from the days when America was a beacon of human rights:

Continue reading "How Americans Interrogate" »

08 Feb 2010 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

(Hat tip: Wooster)

08 Feb 2010 03:44 pm

The "President's" Budget

Bruce Bartlett offers a brief history of the budget:

Ironically, the portion of the budget over which Congress actually has meaningful control has fallen sharply over time. In 1970 the discretionary portion of the budget--those programs and operations subject to annual appropriations, was 61.5% of all spending. The rest consists of mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt that are not subject to annual appropriations. Their spending is automatic and cannot be reduced just by appropriating less money to them. In 2009 the discretionary portion of the budget was down to just 35.2% of spending.

Continue reading "The "President's" Budget" »

08 Feb 2010 03:17 pm

The Real Cameron?

Johann Hari interviews David Cameron:

David Cameron is a hazy cloud of charm and platitudes: no matter how hard you peer into him, you cannot find anything solid to focus on for long. There are flickers of apparently real pro-gay feeling, but they are soon followed by excuse-making for some of the most anti-gay politicians in Europe. Which is the real Cameron? On this issue, I suspect even he doesn’t know. But over the next four years, we are all going to find out: the beaming lights of power will part this mysterious and contradictory fog.

I'm not so convinced he's going to win a real majority. The electoral math is very, very hard, given the way the constituencies are constructed. I side with WIlliam Hague on guarding against complacency. But read the whole thing. The Dish intends to cover the British election with almost as much scrutiny as an American one. Our British readership keeps growing - and the evolution of the Tory Party toward the pragmatic center might help bring the GOP back from its increasingly deranged brink.

08 Feb 2010 02:56 pm

Palin And Iran: NIAC Reacts

The National Iranian-American Council notes a congruity:

Forgetting for a moment that it is the Congress, not the President, that is empowered with the authority to declare war, this is a pretty brash statement, even for Palin. It is rare that a public figure would call for military action against Iran so explicity — and to call for such drastic action as a purely political ploy breaks an even stronger taboo in Washington circles.

So it cannot be a coincidence that Palin’s advice to President Obama comes just days after prominent anti-Islam activist Daniel Pipes wrote nearly the identical thing in the National Review. “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” was the title of the article, which my colleague Jamal picked apart well enough that I don’t have to here. But I thought it interesting that Palin would so casually align herself on foreign policy issues — by all accounts her political Achilles Heel — with such a divisive figure as Pipes.

Interesting, but not surprising. Palin, however, attributed this idea to Pat Buchanan. Pipes and Buchanan are not exactly buddies. My view is that, until you understand the depths of Palin's Christianism - she explicitly called for "divine intervention" in her Q and A - you can't understand her foreign policy. It's about the End-Times. And how to follow God's will.

08 Feb 2010 02:43 pm

Starbursts Watch

Continetti is still standing on the sinking ship:

"We are the loyal opposition, and we have a vision for the future of our country, too," Palin said. She repeatedly said the Tea Party movement does not need a leader. But is there an American politician who inspires such enthusiasm from her supporters (and her detractors)? And isn't that a unique strength in a polarized age in which the ideological stakes are so high?

Oh, yes, she'll end polarization all right.

08 Feb 2010 02:25 pm

"Like Watching A Public Execution In Slow Motion"

Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel gets the Herzog treatment:

In case you missed Curious George, go here.

08 Feb 2010 02:17 pm

The Christianist Core Of The Tea-Partiers

An important thing to note from the weekend:

While Rick Scarborough was scheduled to host a Friday session titled, "Why Christians Must Engage," at Thursday evening's Tea Party kick-off he conducted the "Organized Prayer Session for the convention & our nation." As Time described it:
By the end of the night, much of the room knelt in prayer - one of the pastors, Rick Scarborough, went after homosexuals several times to choruses of amens -- before watching a Tea Party video.

Then there's Republican candidate for governor and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore.

More on Moore here. If you're a fiscal conservative rightly outraged at the sending and borrowing binge in DC, know who these people are, and that they have no plans to seriously tackle the debt at all.

08 Feb 2010 02:16 pm

There's An App For That

The XXfactor women debating Grindr, the gay GPS-equipped hook-up app, is oddly fascinating:

If the virtual world has been good for anything besides the spread of grammatically disabled cat photos, it's been forging a new utilitarianism for sexual relations. There are already Web sites for casual hookups and forums for finding someone to play out your sexual fantasies. You don't have to take off your wedding ring at a hotel bar Don Draper-style to have an affair—you can just log on to AshleyMadison.com and find another, no-strings-attached, willing adulterer. When I was 16, a girl in my math class asked me what "blue balls" were. I thought it was an ice-cream brand. (I was thinking of Blue Bell, obvs.) Now teenagers outfitted with iPhones are hardly misinformed about anything anymore. This isn't wholly good, but it's definitely not wholly bad, either. There's going to be a Grindr-esque app for everyone sooner or later, and it's going to rock boatfuls of social-moral milieus. It's just inevitable.

Follow up here.

08 Feb 2010 02:02 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Being brave in the battlefield has nothing to do with how you go to the bathroom or how you have sex. … If you volunteer to serve this great country, we should welcome you, not push you away because of some arcane attitude about sex," - Col. David Hunt, a hawkish FNC military analyst. And the Fox host agrees, calling DADT "absolutely absurd." The whole 3-minute segment is worth watching.

08 Feb 2010 01:47 pm

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In

A reader writes:

I don't have really much to update on my view of the recession (one company did reopen the position I applied for, but they are taking their sweet time to look at my application). That said, Ash Wednesday is soon. In regards to what I intend to give up for Lent, I decided to stop reading my political blogroll, including your blog. It's not that I have anything against your blog, especially since you and Chris's and Patrick's work is a testament to the good a blog can do. But in the recent weeks, as everything is getting drearier, it's becoming more and more of a distraction than anything else.
And honestly, why should most of these things you report on matter to me anyway? Or, as my friend put it bluntly in his own case, "Why should I give two shits about healthcare if I don't have a fucking job?"

Continue reading "The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In" »

08 Feb 2010 01:26 pm

The President Makes His Move, Ctd

Andrew Sprung praises the health care summit:

The Feb. 26 date creates a deadline for Democrats to get their negotiation for a "reconciliation sidecar" the Senate bill finished, while the summit itself sets the stage for them to pass that fix after Obama demonstrates Republican bad faith to the country one more time. It's been increasingly plain that Democrats are not going to pass HCR legislation before then. With the meeting between Obama and House Republicans as template, Obama has structured this "exchange of ideas" as a debate he can't lose. He's going to show that nation that that "plan" Republicans have been waving around is an empty book.

Brendan Nyhan is less sure:

Continue reading "The President Makes His Move, Ctd" »

08 Feb 2010 01:14 pm

Obama Loses Independents

The barrage against "his" debt has gotten through. For a long time I've been arguing that Obama desperately needs to to take on both his own party and the Republicans and propose a serious plan to cut the long-term debt. I think he needs to go on and on and on about this - and mean it - if the Independents are going to come around.

08 Feb 2010 12:51 pm

The Palin Emails I

You may recall that MSNBC managed to get the state of Alaska to release them and they showed a deep enmeshment by Todd Palin in the affairs of state. Dish coverage here. MSNBC story here. And Christian Science Monitor story here. Andrew Halcro gave his interpretation of the role Todd Palin played in state politics here. In the best traditions of the Internet, I invite you to peruse them at will and send me anything interesting you find. I'll post any of salience.

Some, of course, give a glimpse into the Palins' lives around the birth of Trig - about which we have almost no independent confirmation or records. Here's an email that gives an independent glimpse into those hair-raising hours before her trans-continental flight half a day after her water broke. It's from an eye-witness in the waiting lounge for Alaska Airlines as Palin was ready to go back to Alaska because giving birth at world-renowned Dallas Childrens Hospital (with Down Syndrome experts on hand) would have violated her husband's insistence that the child be born in Alaska. You may recall that when the Anchorage Daily News asked Alaska Airlines how they allowed a woman eight months pregnant with a child with special needs get on a trans-continental flight, they got the following response:

Alaska Airlines ... leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said. "The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," Boren said.

My italics. In Going Rogue, she tells us her state of mind as she realized she was in labor earlier that day:

Desperation for this baby overwhelmed me.

Please don't let anything happen to this baby.

It occurred to me, once and for all. I'm so in love with this child, please God protect him! After all my doubts and fears, I had fallen in love with this precious child. The worst thing in the world was that I would lose him.

Her italics. Half a day later, preparing for a long two-plane flight trip all the way back not just to Anchorage but to Wasilla, she was sitting in the Seattle airport lounge in a lay-over when recognized by a fellow passenger. All her earlier anxieties appeared to have disappeared, as she delivered her fate - and Trig's - into God's hands. What an incredibly cool and collected woman - someone with amazing reserves of steel. A day later, the stranger emailed to congratulate her on her birth and amazing composure. This seems to confirm Palin's version of the flight:

It was a calm, relatively restful flight home.

Since I long ago committed to publishing any evidence I could find related to Palin's remarkable pregnancy stories (she steadfastly refuses to provide any), I post it below:

Continue reading "The Palin Emails I" »

08 Feb 2010 12:23 pm

The Revolutionary Guards Prepare For Thursday

One of our Iranian sources writes:

So much is happening in these last days before Feb 11th. The internet is almost not working in much of Tehran or it is so slow that most people cant even open their Gmail or Yahoo. The Greens have announced alternative routs to Azadi sq. if the Gov. blocks all the entrances to the main street. But the Gov. has installed 100s of massive speakers alongside the street of the march so people's chanting cannot be heard. They also have called on Basijis from other cities to come to Tehran and have assigned a major intersection to each group to prevent the Greens from entering the official protest. This video shows city workers taking away the garbage cans to prevent people from blocking the roads with them in case of clashes. The Green girl is explaining how funny it is that the Gov. has started a garbage bin campaign out of fear. She and her friend laugh at them.

Evgeny Morozov looks closer at the online obstructionism. The LA Times offers a comprehensive view of the run-up to Thursday.

08 Feb 2010 11:40 am

In Defense Of Ethan Bronner

The test of a journalist is his work. I haven't detected a shred of bias in Bronner's pieces from the NYT on Israel and the Middle East, even though his son is now in the IDF. I agree with Goldblog on this for the most part. I do believe, however, that it should have been clearly disclosed without pressure from the outside forcing the NYT into a disclosure that clearly would not have happened without a public editor. Keeping such a potential conflict of interest under wraps - even as questions of war crimes are being debated in a military in which Bronner's son is now fighting - was a clear lapse of ethical judgment on Bill Keller's part, not Bronner's, who rightly informed his editors.

Hoyt also makes a fair point:

Continue reading "In Defense Of Ethan Bronner" »

08 Feb 2010 11:36 am

Palin's Triumph

Michael Wolff has an insightful piece on Palin's opening campaign speech for 2012 on Saturday night, but seems to misinterpret my analysis. I think it was quite brilliant as a political speech, just as her convention speech was extraordinarily effective.

It was and is pure sophistry - a string of crowd-pleasing slogans with no content whatever, except for an endorsement of a global war on Islam, tax-cuts, populist attacks on Wall Street, a subtle but scary attempt to politicize the military as belonging to one party, cooptation of one religion in America, and, with the exception of nuclear power (I'm with her on that) a desire for more carbon energy, not less (as long as it's developed in the US). She has literally no serious plans commensurate with the health care crisis and no plans to cut spending in any serious way at all.

But she sure can make a speech. It was the most electrifying speech I have heard from a leader of the GOP since Reagan.

Continue reading "Palin's Triumph" »

08 Feb 2010 11:14 am

Rahm Apologizes

08 Feb 2010 10:43 am

In The Bunker

Ana Marie Cox debates Rich Lowry on ending the persecution of gay servicemembers in the military. It's a very pleasant and honest chat. I always learn something from hearing straight people talk about us.

I repeat my firm belief that the day after this ban is fully lifted ... nothing will happen publicly. The closet will not burst open; these many patriots, often from the heartland, have absolutely no desire to inject their sexual orientation into combat or military culture. They want to do their jobs without fear of others targeting them, and to do so with integrity. The big change will happen in the minds and souls of gay servicemembers, who will fight without fear. I ave known countless of these men and women. They are among the best in our community. It pains me deeply for years to see them endure this kind of stress and fear, let alone the incidents of intense cruelty and humiliation when they are outed, sometimes days before they are due pensions for a lifetime of service.

Rich says that it's no big deal to live hiding one's sexual orientation. If you're straight, try it for one day.

Continue reading "In The Bunker" »

08 Feb 2010 10:39 am

Debating A Fantasy

Jane Mayer reports on the heat Eric Holder has taken, the fight over KSM's trial, and the controversy over the handling of the undie-bomber:

Holder told me that he was frustrated by much of the criticism over the handling of Abdulmutallab. “What we did is totally consistent with what has happened in every similar case” since 9/11, he said. “There’s a desire to ignore the facts to try to score political points. It’s a little shocking.” Without exception, he noted, every previous terrorist suspect apprehended inside the country had been handled as a civilian criminal. Even so, critics such as Krauthammer were denouncing Holder for failing to send Abdulmutallab directly to Guantánamo. As a senior national-security official in the White House put it, “It’s a fantasy! Under what alternative legal system can Special Operations Forces fly into Detroit, and take someone away without court oversight?”

Scott Horton praises the article:

The article is essential reading for those who want to understand why the Holder Justice Department has shut down all efforts to secure accountability for serious crimes committed during the war on terror, potentially including homicides. Mayer gives us a step-by-step explanation of the process and the roles played by each. It leaves little doubt that the man in charge is Rahm Emanuel.

08 Feb 2010 10:21 am

A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child

The British Daily Mail - a populist right-wing paper - reports:

Continue reading "A US Soldier Waterboards His Own Child" »

08 Feb 2010 10:20 am

Why Has Obama Indirectly Endorsed Bush-Cheney Torture?

Two words, according to Jane Mayer's must-read: Rahm Emanuel:

Emanuel adamantly opposed a number of Holder’s decisions, including one that widened the scope of a special counsel who had begun investigating the C.I.A.’s interrogation program. Bush had appointed the special counsel, John Durham, to assess whether the C.I.A. had obstructed justice when it destroyed videotapes documenting waterboarding sessions.

Continue reading "Why Has Obama Indirectly Endorsed Bush-Cheney Torture?" »

08 Feb 2010 10:04 am

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Clive Crook has a very thoughtful post on why and if the bill remains unpopular.

08 Feb 2010 09:52 am

The Next Industrial Revolution?

Chris Anderson thinks small:

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3-D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more.

Continue reading "The Next Industrial Revolution?" »

08 Feb 2010 09:21 am

The Tea Partiers: Fraudulent Fiscal Conservatives

Jonathan H. Kupitsky attended the tea party convention:

I think the one thing that really did surprise me was the high level of explicitly Christian social conservatism on display here. One of the “breakout sessions” featured a speech from Pastor Rick Scarborough — who is most famous for trying to get America’s preachers more politicized. (“I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I’m a Christocrat.”)

After his speech, a middle-aged female delegate with a twang stood up and said, during the Q&A, “All the media types are asking us why we’re here. Here’s what I say. We’re all here for a little R&R — revival and revolt. If you’re not a Christian, and a person of faith, you just can’t understand what we’re doing!!” She got a standing ovation.

I think the MSM is missing the real focus of this movement. We keep describing the tea-partiers as fiscal conservatives. But this is patently untrue on its face.

Continue reading "The Tea Partiers: Fraudulent Fiscal Conservatives" »

08 Feb 2010 09:00 am

The Weekend Wrap

Andrew live-blogged Palin's speech here and here. His immediate take-away here, and further analysis here, here, and here. Later on, she essentially announced her candidacy, called for full-scale war with Iran, and kissed Limbaugh's ring. Weigel corrected her false history, moderated a fratricidal spat, and scooped up other details from the Tea Party Convention. Mark Leibovich profiled her in the NYT.

In Levi coverage, his pistachios are huge but his Playgirl cover is lacking. Fox edited Stewart and O'Reilly to make the latter look better, Oliver North played the NAMBLA card, Theissen topped himself, and DiA delved into the disturbing use of torture treaties to torture.

In science coverage, we learned how to survive a fall from 35,000 feet and the many uses of nano glass spray. Nick Carr informed us how unhip blogging has become, Ryan Sager examined tipping, Totten reviewed Hurt Locker, and Jake Weisberg told us to quit our whining. Andrew meditated over Montaigne, friendship, and time. His column this week focused on the Gitmo "suicides."

Super Bowl coverage here, here, here, here, and especially here. The snowpocalypse drove a weatherman crazy. Our window book is a big hit in the bathroom. Action-movie rap-ups here and ugly furniture here.

-- C.B.

08 Feb 2010 08:46 am

Chart Of The Day

The drug war lives:

We're still spending twice as much on the war as we are on treatment for the actual people our drug policy is supposed to help. The urge to describe this as "balanced" is just the trademark dishonesty we've come to expect from the drug czar's office anytime they're required to sum up their agenda in one sentence.

This waste of resources never really shifts from president to president. It's like defense spending in the war on terror, structured so that it never ends, and can never be cut. It's true, however, that under Obama, the most insane aspect of this - the war on marijuana - has been greatly ameliorated through the sanity of federalism. But you know that under president Palin, the feds would swoop back in.

08 Feb 2010 08:17 am

The President Makes His Move

Obama is going to hold a health care summit with the GOP. Cohn's reaction:

Republicans have been complaining that Democrats locked them out of the process. And large swaths of the public seem to agree, even though the argument seems plainly untrue, given the exhaustive efforts Obama and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus made to accommodate Republicans. The public forum will give the GOP one more, high-profile opportunity to air their views--and, no less important, it will give the public a chance to see which approach to health care they really prefer.
My only complaint about it: Democratic leaders will apparently be joining Obama and the Republicans at the public forum. To be perfectly honest, I think Obama can make the case for Democratic reforms on his own. Then again, if there's going to be a truly open discussion, I suppose both parties have to be present.

I agree with Jon. Keep the Dems out of it. Just looking at them makes me ill. And call these GOP phonies' bluff. GOP leader Palin's only solutions to soaring healthcare costs and 40 million uninsured and millions more denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions on Saturday night were: being able to purchase insurance across state lines and tort reform. That's it. Seriously, that's it.

Sargent's thoughts here. Ezra's here.

08 Feb 2010 07:41 am

Testing Too Young

Jennifer Senior carefully explains why IQ tests for toddlers are worthless, or worse. David Shenk highly recommends the article:

Intelligence is a process, not a fixed, gene-determined, thing. This process begins very early on, before we can even really see it, and we therefore often confuse these early, invisible stages with some sort of innate giftedness. Then we test kids and report the results as innate differences -- this one is gifted, this one is not. This one has extra promise; that one does not. We send the "gifted" ones to good schools with small class sizes, better-trained teachers, better infrastructure, better relationships with parents, and higher expectations. We send the apparently-unpromising kids to under-funded, teach-to-test schools with minimal expectations.
And then we tell ourselves that we live in an educational meritocracy. Jennifer Senior's piece helps expose that fallacy.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

07 Feb 2010 11:14 pm

Face Of The Day

By artist Walee, for Beaux Arts Magazine. Via LikeCool.

07 Feb 2010 11:00 pm

Not Crossing Limbaugh

Of course she won't:

PALIN: I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel has been reported, did say that. there is a big difference there. Again, name-calling, using language that is insensitive, by anyone, male, female, Republican, Democrat, is unnecessary. It’s inappropriate. Let’s all just grow up.

So how about Coulter, Ms Fox Contributor only being interviewed on Fox? Or is it okay to call the first female Speaker of the House "mentally retarded"?

07 Feb 2010 10:23 pm

Three "Suicides" At Gitmo: The Story So Far

My column this week in the London Sunday Times is on a story the US MSM has so far decided not to delve into more deeply. I believe the weird lacunae in the Pentagon report on the alleged suicides, carefully examined by the Seton Hall Study, and reported in extreme detail by Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine, merit much more scrutiny than they have so far gotten - and it remains instructive to me that, apart from one small AP story, only the foreign press is interested:

During the night of June 9-10, 2006, something nightmarish happened in the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three prisoners, we were told, had committed suicide simultaneously by hanging themselves in their cells. Rear Admiral Harry Harris explained it thus: “This was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us.” A Bush administration official said the suicides — one by a man captured at 17, charged with no crime and scheduled for release — was “a good PR move”. At the time I remember thinking how off-key that sounded in response to three suicides. But then I moved on.
The US Naval Criminal Investigative Service took two years to complete an inquiry which came to the same conclusion as Harris immediately after the event. There have been many suicide attempts at Gitmo and hunger strikes. And collective suicide by terrorists is not unknown. Members of the Baader Meinhof gang killed themselves in Stammheim prison in 1977. But that was accomplished by gunshots, impossible in such a tightly controlled jail as Gitmo. And the Alpha Block where their bodies were allegedly discovered is supposed to be closely monitored, with guard checks of every cell required every 10 minutes.
There were five guards for 28 prisoners. And yet the NCIS report found that the bodies were not discovered for two hours. More to the point, none of the guards on duty was ever disciplined for negligence, a baffling decision after such a massive and embarrassing breach in protocol.

Continue reading "Three "Suicides" At Gitmo: The Story So Far" »

07 Feb 2010 09:32 pm

The View From Your Window

Wellington, New Zealand, 6.50 am.

07 Feb 2010 09:18 pm

A Superbowl Alternative

For my readers - male and female - who are not into the Superbowl, but like looking at hot guys not on so many steroids they look like cattle in lycra, this has to be the coolest ad I've seen in months. It's for Wrangler's Blue Bell fashion brand. If you're a gay man or heterosexual woman, it's particularly awesome. You get to interactively toss Tony Ward around and even rip his shirt off. Ward, if you recall, is Madonna's former baby-daddy. And the one thing you can say about Madonna is that her taste in men is flawless.

Seriously, seriously: way hot and fun. And the music is awesome.

07 Feb 2010 08:30 pm