From Pew. In the ten years since the Dish started, the web has gone from the least popular to the most popular source of news for the under 30s. And its rate of use among the under-50s has gone from last to second – double that of newspapers. But notice how sluggish the pre-boomers are.
"I enjoy the sensation of my boot connecting with the other bloke’s groin. Perhaps it’s an English thing," – John Derbyshire, via Chait, who is tragically maligned.
Avent grapples with Freeland's article:
[T]he interesting policy questions continue to be, first, what are the sources of the wealth and, second, what distortions result from it. On the first, it seems to me that we should obviously think differently about money earned from superstar effects and money derived from access and rent-seeking. Rich [growing] wealthy from the invention of Google or bets against an unsustainable housing bubble are in a different category from those who happened to know the people doling out government contracts or mineral rights.
But the second issue is actually the more important, and it's the one for which we currently lack a firm grasp. What does this concentration of wealth mean?
Like The Dish and Jonathan Bernstein, Nate Silver takes a closer look at Obama’s approval numbers. Silver shows that “there has been almost no relationship between a President’s approval rating following the midterms and how he eventually fared at the next presidential election”:
Franklin Roosevelt in 1943 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1955 had the highest approval ratings at this point in time and indeed won their elections fairly easily. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan was tied with Gerald Ford for having the lowest one — 37 percent — and he won in a blowout. Bill Clinton’s approval rating was 47 percent, and he won. George H.W. Bush’s was 58 percent, but he lost. His son George W. had a 63 percent approval rating and won, but only barely.
As you can see, there’s not much of a relationship there.
"Allowing for the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation, [Tucker Carlson] said, “there is a line of several million rehabilitated people I’d like to see the President congratulate before he congratulates Michael Vick.” But Obama didn’t congratulate Vick, exactly: He just cited his second chance as a high-profile example of the kind of opportunity that “many people who serve time” deserve once they’re released from prison, and all-too-rarely get," – Ross Douthat.
A different take:
There seems little doubt to me that psilocybin is a very queer substance. Whether its effect on the brain merely simulates profound spirituality or whether it actually recreates it chemically is a philosophical conundrum we won’t solve very soon. But that we recognize it somehow as transcendent, that it can be measured in brain scans as indistinguishable from genuine meditative calm, and that it seems, more than any other chemical, to alert one to the divine: well, these seem to be part of the universe as we find it.
What frustrates me is the cultural baggage of the Leary era, the easy ways of dismissing it, the abuse rather than use, the social utopianism rather than the internal peace. It’s too interesting a subject for that kind of treatment. And too important.
"It was, I think, as smart a speech as I've seen a politician give — in part because it was savvy about what it didn't say, which is a rare virtue in Washington. Of course, the speech is the easy part … Many speakers before Boehner have entered the House promising more openness and cooperation and given up on those promises when they began to conflict with more action. And Boehner himself has not always been able to "disagree without being disagreeable." It's when the going gets tough that speakers turn hard.
So we'll see. But thus far, Boehner's political instincts have been quite impressive. The White House may have a more able opponent in him than they thought," – Ezra Klein.
The calm, adult behavior today of Minnesota's new governor, Mark Dayton, strikes me as worth noting. Boorishness always leads the news; sometimes, civility should.
The Pew survey of the new Congress finds little too surprising about the religious make-up of the new bunch, but this is still remarkable:
The greatest disparity between the religious makeup of Congress and the people it represents is in the percentage of the unaffiliated — those who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Only six members of the 112th Congress (about 1%) do not specify a religious affiliation and none say they are unaffiliated. By contrast, about one-sixth (16%) of U.S. adults are not affiliated with any particular faith.
This group has also been growing very strongly – but the public political culture closets it.
Leonhardt notes that “ADP is forecasting a gain of 297,000 private-sector jobs in December, which would be the biggest monthly gain since early 2006.” Macroeconomic Advisers says there are reasons to be skeptical of this number but also reasons for hope:
[T]he weakness in November retail payrolls (and services more generally) did seem out of place, in light of robust holiday sales and other indications that labor markets are improving (e.g., declining initial claims). If the December figure for growth of private service-sector employment is as far above the recent, improving trend (call it 150 thousand) as it was below it in November, we could get growth of private service-sector employment in the range of 200 thousand to 250 thousand. Add some growth in the goods-producing sector and we’re there.
I’ve been trying to gauge the new year mood and have to say I’m a little at a loss. But I do feel that anger is no longer the mood; it’s almost as if the third of the country that simply couldn’t cope with an Obamanation have insisted on their relevance and have had their say. The face of Boehner is now their lodestar, as Palin seems a more exhausted and over-exposed media fad. What’s left is a piecemeal recovery under a president whose favorable and approval ratings have so far held up rather well – and could deter serious GOP rivals in 2012.
Yeah, that’s what I got. Until the SOTU, it might be all we’ve got.
The Dish 