Month: November 2009

Biden gets in on the act.

A military wife reflects:

I remember the year we celebrated Thanksgiving on a Sunday evening in October. It was the fall of 2007, the night before my husband, Scott, left for his seven-month deployment on an aircraft carrier. Other military wives, far more seasoned than I, gave me the idea to whip up one giant festive dinner to mark all of the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones that my husband would miss while his squadron was in the Persian Gulf. It was a long list: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Ethan’s fifth birthday, Estee’s third birthday, and our wedding anniversary, to list just a few.

San Francisco, California, 8 am

Today on the Dish, Andrew and a reader studied the president's cool demeanor while Massie and another reader wondered whether Obama is a liberal Reagan. Packer discussed his disappointed supporters.

Just as news broke that Israel is legalizing medicinal pot, David Knowles explored its potential to treat ADHD. Jason Zengerle explained why Palin will never shut up, Ben Smith rolled his eyes at Susteren's latest softballs, and several readers debated whether Palin should be used by her enemies.

A reader took Andrew to task over his coverage of the Sparkman scandal, Matt Welch went after the Weekly Standard, a reader revealed the emptiness of the GOP's purity test, and Sully tackled the selective morality of Christianists.

— C.B.

Jennifer Reese raised her own turkeys this year:

The heritage bird runs very fast around the yard first thing in the morning, flapping his wings and trilling musically while the factory-bred girl stands there, calm and blinking. They nuzzle each other, and when one moves out of sight, the other whimpers. How can I kill one or even both of them when they're just settling into their marriage, into their new home? Can't. As I type, it's Nov. 23, I've spent $75, driven all over northern California, and I still don't have a damned turkey.

"The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything," – Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.

A reader writes:

I respectfully disagree with your reader who spells out what they describe as the cynical and political thought process behind the argument in very honest fashion. But that's why I disagree. Palin's entire entree onto the political stage was cynical and poltical. John McCain was a cynical old politician – sure. (And should be drummed from office for risking the country to his jaded ambitions in my personal opinion.) But it was an easy move because Palin herself is a cynical and political stunt who thinks she's a real politician.

But the dangers now are the cynical and political powers that keep her narrative going. The neocon interests, the Armeys and Murdochs, the moneybags who control the MSM, who probably believe that McCain's mistake wasn't in fact his choosing this hackneyed hack – but in not using her effectively. I'd venture from comments she's made that Palin believes that herself. She and they long for a chance to really pull out the stops and get down to dirty business.

If the Democrats need a straw woman or an eejit for the Republicans to throw away their electoral capital on – let them get stuck with someone else. Because with their limitless ability to destroy the democratic process – we could get stuck. With her.

Another writes:

It seems to me that everything that the emailer highlights–Afghanistan, health care, gay rights, the financial crisis–would fall into the basic categories of complex, difficult realities with which the Obama administration is, I believe, trying very hard to grapple with a parallel degree of complexity and nuance. To my mind, the single biggest difference between the modern Democratic and Republican parties–and I'm not trying to make this into a difference between liberalism and conservatism more broadly, necessarily–is the difference between such an attempt to grapple with reality and, quite honestly, a willingness to over-simplify and distort and, yes, lie about it on a consistent basis. For me that's why Sarah Palin is (along with Fox News and esp. Glenn Beck therein) probably the best single representative of that party and movement, and why Obama is her opposite number (literally and figuratively) in every way in these terms.

Even when I disagree with his administration's decisions and policies–and that has, I'll admit, happened more than I would like, which I suppose puts me in that unhappy base that the emailer was referencing; although my unhappinesses have more been with the terrorism and detainee and secrecy/transparency policies than the ones highlighted in that email–I try to keep this basic distinction in mind. Not only because of how much more preferable the reality-grappling is to the over-simplifying and distorting and lying, but also and even more relevantly because the reality-grappling is, by its very nature, going to be messier and trickier and more give-and-take than the kinds of (untenable and destructive but often more attractive on the surface) policies and positions for which the other perspective allows.

Manzi weighs in on "Climategate." His sane point:

The root problem here is not the eternal perfidy of human nature, but the fact that we can’t run experiments on history to adjudicate disputes, which makes this less like chemistry or physics than like economics or political science.

In human terms, the scandal is obviously a PR disaster for those who believe that climate reconstruction is “science” in the sense we normally use the term, but what it does not change is the basic physics of how CO2 molecules interact with radiation. As I have always argued, this is the real basis for rational concern about greenhouse-gas emissions, and is a key reason that all the major national scientific academies agree that the greenhouse effect is a real risk. Recognizing this risk, however, does not entail accepting the political conclusion that we need laws to radically reduce emissions at enormous cost.

(Photo: Wind turbines spin near the cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station, which is owned by Vatenfall, on November 24, 2009 in Janschwalde, Germany. The CO2 emission will be one top of the agenda and will be discussed at the summit in December in Copenhagen. By Carsten Koall/Getty Images.)

Matt Welch takes aim:

Forget Palin; let's talk about The Weekly Standard. What kind of journalistic pathology yearns so nakedly to provide the brainpower to supplement politicians' animal magnetism? And when are we going to get the mother of all internal magazine stories, the one that describes just how the same lot who breathed ideology into an emptyish vessel called John McCain 10 years ago turned on their own creation when he finally neared the finish line and doubled-down instead on the unqualified veep candidate they helped foist upon him?

The answer is that they need someone to bring the populist plebs along for the neocon ride. Reagan did it for a while and so did Bush II (until the entire project crashed and burned under its own contradictions). But McCain never had that – so he was a place-holder for the forever war against the Arabs/Muslims. His acknowledgment of climate change, his comfort with Democratic party wonks, his support for campaign finance reform, his visceral discomfort with the holy-rollers: all this made him an imperfect tool.

But Palin? The perfect tool if you think Bush II was a rip-roaring success story. More controllable. Until, of course, she wasn't.

As for Continetti, he wouldn't be the first young man in a hurry in Washington. You'd be amazed at what ambition can get people to write, even in earnest.

Jason Zengerle on why Palin won't be going away:

The reason for Palin’s staying power will be the same thing that keeps a celebrity like Richie’s old running partner, Paris Hilton, in the spotlight. No, not a sex tape, thank God, but something related: shamelessness.

These days, once someone has attained a certain level of celebrity (as Hilton and Palin have), if that person is willing to say or do anything (as Hilton and Palin are), then it’s pretty much impossible to lose it (which Hilton and Palin won’t). New technologies like Facebook and Twitter have made that even easier, rendering it impossible for the media to ignore these celebs even if it were inclined to. Now, celebs can circumvent the media filter and communicate directly with the public. It’s no coincidence that Palin has taken to issuing all of her big pronouncement over Facebook. Granted, the press would probably cover whatever she’s saying at the moment. But when the day comes that the press isn’t interested, that won’t stop Palin from getting out word of her doings.