Month: October 2009

Kristol augments the significance of this Gallup poll making the rounds on conservative blogs. Allahpundit:

Good news, but a tad underwhelming when you look at the numbers. Right now it breaks out at 40/37/20 among conservatives, moderates, and liberals, respectively. Between 2006 and 2008, when the left was routing us at the polls, it was roughly … 37/37/22, a testament to how toxic progressives’ brand is even at the best of times.

James Joyner explained this polling effect last week:

Essentially, virtually all Republicans self-identify as “conservative” whereas many Democrats think of themselves as “moderate” or even “conservative.”  While this is partly a function of the greater size and therefore diversity of the Democratic coalition at the moment, it’s also the power of branding.   Liberal has been a dirty word for decades, despite views considered ultra liberal in my boyhood now being moderate, if not conservative.

Reason chimes in:

This data is broadly consistent with the Harris Poll, which has shown for the past 30-plus years that self-identified independents and conservatives far outnumber self-identified liberals. Interestingly, this is independent of party affiliation, which has consistenly been more Democratic than Republican.

Bradford Plumer looks beyond global warming:

The National Research Council just estimated that burning coal and oil imposes at least $120 billion in hidden costs on the United States each year in the form of health impacts from air pollution. And that's only a partial estimate of the full toll: "The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security." To set this in context, the health-related costs from coal and oil alone are steeper than what the CBO projects the House climate bill would cost the U.S. economy—and that's before taking the dangers of global warming into account.

Drum adds his two cents:

For the next four years Republican state legislators all over the country will be teaming up with the universally loathed insurance industry to try and deny their citizens access to a program that, for most of them, sounds like a pretty good deal.  I don't know if Harry Reid was deviously thinking exactly that thought when he decided on this, but I'll bet someone was.  It's hard to think of something that could force the GOP to make itself even more unpopular than it already is, but this might be it.

Jonah Lehrer profiles the neurotransmitter:

The caricature of dopamine as the chemical of hedonism and pleasure – it's what drives us to enjoy sex, drugs and rock and roll – was always mostly misleading. While dopamine does predict the arrival of rewards, the neurotransmitter is much more important that. Many dopamine researchers, for instance, refer to the chemical as our "neural currency," since it allows us to quickly assign a value to the multitudes of things and ideas in the outside world. (In other words, dopamine is the price tag of sensory information.) When we see something we want – and it doesn't matter if it's a chocolate cupcake or a glass of water – the mere sight of the object triggers a wave of emotional desire, which motivates us to act. (Emotion and motivation share the same Latin root, movere, which means "to move.") The world is full of possibilities, and it is our dopaminergic feelings that help us choose between them.

Alex Massie provides one:

Muddling through doesn't sound very heroic and it's not a very noble thing to die for. But our Afghan policy is, in some ways, defined by negatives: it's hard to say what victory looks like, but defeat is easier to recognise. We may hope that our troops in Helmand can do some good but perhaps their main role is to prevent things from getting worse. As I say, none of it is satisfactory and much of it is pretty grim. But that's where we seem to be and it's not clear, to me at least, that the choices are quite so clear as some suggest, nor that, as others argue, the act of chooing is more important than the actual choice that's made.

At least that's what this ad seems to be saying: give gay couples full domestic partnership rights. They must have realized the "they're coming to rape your kids" argument was wearing a little thin.

How to costume your effeminate son:

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son

Today on the Dish, Andrew spelled out the shrewd politics behind the opt-out public option, with reader input here, here, and here, and further input from Josh Marshall and Megan. Warranted Wiretaps’ take was especially short and sweet. On Lieberman’s veto threat, Ambinder analyzed, Beutler reported, and Chait proposed a threat of his own.

Exum, Greenwald, and Yglesias ruminated over Matthew Hoh’s big resignation. John Kerry gave his version of what the Afghan surge should be while the Iraq government continued its dysfunction. Andrew chastened Anita Dunn (and others) for quoting a Chinese dictator, which spurred the most dissent of the day. Sully also made sense of the GOP civil war erupting over NY-23.

In other assorted coverage, some homophobes spewed some hate, some Californians were charged with torture, someone spotted more drug hypocrisy, and we spotted some hilarious hathos.  And Levi looks like he won’t be wearing these – or anything else.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

This Sunday, I volunteered with Equality California and the No On 1 Campaign to make calls to Maine residents to inform them about the measure and urge them to vote (No) early if they can. There was one call in particular that I thought was interesting. I introduced myself by explaining that I volunteered for the campaign to vote No on Question 1 and the first thing the lady said to me was “look, I don’t think this stuff should be taught to 1st graders.”

Not knowing what kind of ads the opposition had been running, I assured her that the purpose of the call was only to inform her that the measure intends to overturn an equality law that is already in place. I told her that I personally feel it should be up to the parents to talk to their kids about sexuality, and that the law has no bearing on the school system, that the law is about marriage equality and nothing else. Next thing she says is, “well yeah, I think anyone should be allowed to marry the person they love. If they’re in love, who am I to say to them that they can’t marry, right?”

So this was someone who believed in marriage equality but was being harassed by those insidious ads into possibly voting against her own instincts. I hope that I’ve convinced one person not to pay any mind to them, but I do hope that others realize what the real issue at stake here is.

Reacting to yesterday's news, Drum sticks by a prediction:

A few years ago I was on a panel discussion and the moderator asked us all how long newspapers distributed on newsprint would last in the United States.  My guess was 20 years: that is, the last newspaper in the country would shut its doors in 2025.

Megan is equally gloomy.