Month: June 2011

Today on the Dish, Andrew seized on Boehner's economic terrorism, compromise evaporated, Chait assessed the 14th Amendment option, and Mark Halperin was a dick and a hack. Suzanne Mettler examined tax expenditures for rich and poor, Americans were prepared to take the Tory route, and rich Americans were willing to pay $2,500 to find a job. Rick Perry spread prayer, Romney spread untruths about Obama making the recession worse, and Bachmann promised to boost Romney's chances.

Gay bars felt like church, and readers regaled us with their firsts. Robbie George stayed bitter, cops still raided gay bars, and Dan Savage sang Carl Kruger's praises. The progress of gay marriage awed us, and families, straight and gay, fled to red states for cheaper living, and readers argued the Catholic church does approve interfaith marriages. 

We parsed terrorists' use of the internet and tried to make sense of the surge, Beinart didn't foresee a happy ending for Afghanistan, and illegal immigrants may be better at their jobs than Americans. America aged, and remained more comfortable with violence than sex. Librarians defended their turf, law may be too important to leave to lawyers, readers attacked Douthat's position on sex-selective abortion, and violent sex helped one woman get over her PTSD. Carp got caught, nerds rode yachts, and we celebrated Independence Day early.

Sane conservatism watch here, hathos alert here, Yglesias award here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

(Photo: Speaker of the House John Boehner participates in his weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill, June 23, 2011 in Washington, DC.  By Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Jonathan Bernstein begins to worry:

[W]hat scares me is the strong possibility that a large percentage of Republicans in Congress have come to believe their own rhetoric about the debt limit: that somehow it just doesn’t matter. That default is an acceptable option. What scares me is that epistemic closure among Republican leaders is very real, and very difficult to puncture.

Chait defends the 14th amendment contingency plan.

Pivoting off the SCOTUS violent video games ruling, Brian Palmer asks why we are fine with showing kids violence but not sex. James Joyner chimes in:

American society simply places much stronger taboos on sexual content than violent content. Indeed, the fact that researchers have no compunctions about showing violent movies to kids or allowing them to playing video games where they pretend to kill and maim while at the same time they’re not only absolutely unwilling to show kids soft core porn and are extremely careful even about the questions they’ll ask on a bland survey demonstrates that rather clearly. For that matter, we allow kids to act in violent movies, even allowing them to commit acts of violence. But a 17-year-old sending a risque photo to his friends can be charged with a crime.

Weigel unpacks Romney's new ad:

[Allentown Metal Works] only chance for survival was an infusion of capital from the government into local projects, something Romney opposed. Its collapse was classic creative destruction — there simply wasn't business for the plant to do anymore. If you're against bailouts, as Romney is, and you're for bankruptcies and restructing in failing industries, as Romney is, how exactly were you going to save AMW? You weren't.

A reader spoils all the fun:

As this article from the NYT three years ago shows, those carp are neither a joke nor to be taken lightly.  Those kids in that boat could have been seriously injured (cf. broken jaw experience in the Times article).

From the article:

Though awesome and even unnerving to behold, the fishy fusillade is all too common on the Illinois River — and it is not good. These are Asian carp, a ravenous, rapidly multiplying invasive species that in the last decade has threatened the well-being of native fish, affected commercial fishing and transformed the typical workday for these researchers into a scene from “Apocalypse Now.”

A fire rages in Athens central post office at Syntagma square near the Greek parliament in Athens on June 29, 2011 during massive clashes. Greek lawmakers backed a stinging new austerity plan demanded by international creditors, enraging protesters fighting street battles with police firing tear gas. By Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images.

Sometimes, you just need Pareene:

Being a professional observer of the "horse race" is bad enough, but Halperin doesn't even understand the horse-race element of politics. He fails at being a hack. He's too dumb to correctly parrot conventional wisdom. He is pretty sure Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are 2012 front-runners. He thought "suspending his campaign" to fix the economy and not knowing how many houses he has were both huge messaging victories for John McCain. He wrote a book about how to win in 2008 that predicted everything Hillary did, but in his world it all worked. He thought Bush's political comeback would come any day now throughout the entirety of the years 2006-2008. He can't interpret polls or see through the spin of GOP consultants who are much smarter than he. If I were revising the Hack list I'd put him above No. 1.

Peter Beinart wants Obama to level with the American people:

There’s an honest way to advocate for withdrawal from Afghanistan and a dishonest way. The dishonest way is to suggest that we’ll leave behind a government that can secure the country and a political process than can end the war. The honest way is to acknowledge that the Afghanistan we leave behind will be a chaotic, ugly place where the Taliban rules large swaths of the country, and much of what we have built may be washed away.

Greg Scoblete snarks:

That's a winning message to take into 2012, isn't it?

Mike Murphy says "a two-way contest with Bachmann is a strategic dream come true" for Romney:

It would draw attention and money away from his two real rivals, Huntsman and Pawlenty, and give him a simple race against a candidate who would remove much of the ambivalence many big-league Republicans still harbor about him. Make no mistake: faced with the terrifying prospect of nominating Bachmann and handing the presidency to Obama, the Republican establishment would rally hard and fast behind Romney. And while a unified Republican establishment in full combat mode cannot compete with the Tea Party when it comes to making cardboard Uncle Sam hats, GOP Inc. can easily crush a candidate like Bachmann over the full series of primaries.

Kyle Kondik ponders this theory.

A reader writes:

I'm no fan of Maggie Gallagher's, but your reader is incorrect in assuming that an interfaith marriage is necessarily evidence of hypocrisy.  A marriage between a Catholic and a non-Christian is not considered the sacrament of marriage (understood positively, this means that the Church doesn't force a non-Christian into being part of a sacrament he or she presumably does not believe in) but such interfaith marriages can be recognized as valid by the Catholic church.  Gallagher is not necessarily "living in sin." From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

4.If a Catholic wants to marry a non-Catholic, how can they assure that the marriage is recognized by the Church? In addition to meeting the criteria for a valid Catholic marriage (see question #3), the Catholic must seek permission from the local bishop to marry a non-Catholic. If the person is a non-Catholic Christian, this permission is called a "permission to enter into a mixed marriage." If the person is a non-Christian, the permission is called a "dispensation from disparity of cult." Those helping to prepare the couple for marriage can assist with the permission process.

Another writes:

As a non-Catholic married to a Catholic, I have to dissent on your reader's assessment that the Catholic Church doesn't sanctify interfaith marriage. Interfaith marriage is allowed so long as the marriage is:

1) Approved by the priest/archbishop
2) Performed in the Catholic Church
3) Procreation is expected and you agree that any resulting children will be raised Catholic

Now, the reader isn't entirely wrong, because I doubt there's any priest that would approve of a Catholic marrying a non-Christian, but it's not a cut-and-dry rule that Catholics can only marry Catholics.