Month: March 2011

Today on the Dish, Andrew ripped apart Obama's blatant disregard for the War Powers Act, and then Obama accepted his transparency award. Andrew wasn't patting Hitch on the back for Iraq, resisted thinking of warfare as good welfare, and urged the boots to stay off the ground. Frum considered BP's stake, cracks appeared in Qaddafi's regime, and Ackerman mocked Qaddafi for resorting to mines on his own people. Koussa's defection could yield new revelations about the Lockerbie bombing, Paul D. Miller differentiated Libya from Rwanda, women in foreign policy wanted war, and Freddie considered the news cycle. Assad's car got rushed, Christopher A. Preble wasn't optimistic about defense spending cuts, and the anti-war movement was way too partisan. Rand Paul believed in Congress and Bob Gates spoke truth.

Ezra Klein blamed Congress for Obama's weak energy policy, jobs remained dismal, and Uncle Sam subsidized sugar. Reihan debated Rob Horning on capitalism, Fox followed Trump down the birther rabbit hole, cap and trade used to be right wing, and Giffords got shuffled towards candidacy in an uneasy way. Gays schooled Newt in respect for marriage, and service in the military, and beefy lady superheroes could scare little boys. TNC discovered King Lear, the Dish challenged VFYW maniacs to an encryption test, Tim Lee stood up for serious web journalism, and Dish readers gave us the dirt on eating Kenya's good soil.

Charts of the day here and here, fear the beard here, quotes for the day here and here, cool ad watch here, VFYW here, Yglesias award here, dissent of the day here, MHB here, FOTD here, and adventures in Arabic here.

–Z.P.

Gabby Giffords, who is still recovering, is being talked about as a potential Senate candidate. Balko is uneasy:

I of course wish Giffords the best. And if, after making a full recovery, she then wants to run for higher office, more power to her. And for all I know, she may make a darned fine senator.

But that isn’t what’s going on here. Giffords has become an immensely more attractive Senate candidate because she got shot in the head. And, frankly, because she’s still recovering. These whispers actually started weeks ago, before it was even clear that she’d be able to talk again. Try to think of another profession where something like that would immediately make you more qualified for a promotion, before your colleagues even knew what sort of recovery was even possible.

(Photo: An autographed portrait of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a makeshift memorial outside the hospital in Tucson, Arizona where she is in critical condition on January 10, 2011. By Shaun Tandon/AFP/Getty Images)

Sorry. I just couldn’t resist:

TNC discovers King Lear. As of next week, we will no longer be colleagues. But I will always be a reader.

Freddie DeBoer makes a shrewd point:

Our news cycle moves fast, our attention span is short, and nobody cares about yesterday's news. I think anyone can imagine a situation where the rebels defeat Qaddafi and a new government is put into place, and the western world congratulates itself on a job well done, as Obama's approval ratings soar. Liberal hawks and neocons get even more entrenched in their views and self-satisfied. Meanwhile, Libyans will continue to wrestle with the consequences for decades to come.

And the results could be all kinds of bloody and terrible– perhaps we might even call it humanitarian disaster. With Iraq, we were temporarily forced to deal with the long-term consequences because we were occupying the country. Now, even though we still have 50,000 troops there, our attention has gone elsewhere– while the constant violence and near total political breakdown continues.

This is a very frightening turn for democracy, when long-term human consequences of our actions are so divided from long-term political consequences.

Shani O. Hilton's theory:

My suspicion is that live-action women superheroes aren’t buff because in order to be traditionally sexy and feminine, they just can’t be. A Wonder Woman with powerful muscles would be intimidating to fanboys, not attractive.

A reader writes:

Craving dirt or rocks (or sometimes chewing on ice) is a sign of iron deficiency.  The reason it's a sign of pregnancy in Kenya but not in Northern Europe is that Kenyan women are much more likely to be anemic due to malaria, hookworm and less meat in their diet.  During pregnancy the body's demand for iron increases, thus pica (this type of craving) increases if a woman is already iron deficient.

Another writes:

Yes, I am Kenyan. Yes, I have eaten soil (I have never liked the word dirt). No, I have never been pregnant and no, it wasn't because I was hungry! (You westerners … we are not all starving!) It is because I am very anemic. The very red rich volcanic soil will do that to you. Especially after the rains. It smells divine.

Cord Jefferson scoffs at BP's new sustainability report:

BP didn't think it important to include [the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill] in the report because, according to the fine print, there's been "no accurate determination" of how much oil actually leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. And so because there's no exact measure, they didn't think they should include it.

Just to be clear, coming up with a perfectly accurate measure of how much oil BP spilled in 2010 would be impossible. However, a team of scientists worked diligently to come up with an estimate, the massiveness of which blows away the above totals combined: 205 million gallons, or about 776 million liters.

Fabio Rojas studied the anti-war movement and found that it collapsed after Obama's election:

Bottom line: Social movements and parties rely on each other. Movements benefit when partisans appear because they can bolster their numbers. Parties use movements as platform for partisan grievances. But there’s a drawback, electoral victories mean that the rank and file will stop showing up.

A Yemeni anti-government protester prays during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on March 31, 2011 as Saleh and his opponents prepared for another tense Friday in a two-month-long showdown with calls for rival demonstrations. By Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images.