Month: April 2011

Today on the Dish, Andrew mulled the problems in both Ryan and Obama's plans, parsed Obama's poll numbers, and considered what's at stake in 2012. Andrew considered liberals vs progressives, remembered He Who Shall Not Be Named by GOP candidates, and we kept tabs on the S&P with a full web reax here. Andrew raged against our inablity to stop looking at our devices while with friends, and seconded readers on Palin's bizarre birth. Roger Ailes remained creepy, and Palin's ghostwriter hit it big with otherworldly toddler stories.

Andrew countered Max Boot on withdrawing from Iraq, Andrew Exum defended cluster bombs, and the Libyan war hurts the West. Brandon Garrett illuminated why the innocent confess to crimes they didn't commit, and John L. Allen Jr. questioned the fast-tracking of Pope John Paul II's sainthood. The Giving Tree still made readers cry, readers talked smack about Greyhound's service, and Andrew didn't believe in perfection, or dieting, for God. We checked in on the Mancession, 60 Minutes exposed the story we tell ourselves about the Middle East, and Andrew wiled away time on Google Maps. Scott Adams wrestled with the real world as school's hardest subject, readers defended history, and Charles Fishman argued water shouldn't be free. Creativity flows in blue rooms, Conor and Andrew appreciated the noise in coffee shops, and Christian movies suffered the same problems gay cinema used to. Readers debated dating short men, Street Carnage gaped at a new drug that's uppers for your uppers, and Obama declared a no-fly zone for Angry Birds.

Typo of the day here, hidden lives of Barbie and Ken here, map of the day here, Sully bait here, dissent of the day here, quote for the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

Dan Ariely thinks the complexity of the tax system makes Americans feel richer than they are because "we all know the gross amount that we make a year, but it’s not as clear what our net income is." Will Wilkinson agrees:

People really are often surprised by the size of their tax bill or their return. I think this problem is especially acute if you have a regular gig and a regular paycheck from which various taxes are automatically withheld, but also a freelance side gig and periodic paychecks from which various taxes are not automatically withheld. At one level, you know full well that taxes eventually must be paid on freelance income. Yet the regular gig with automatic withholding trains you to think of your bank balance as what you have left over after taxes have been taken. If you're a bit dotty and/or you find money matters a stressful and exhausting hassle to be avoided unless absolutely necessary, it's very easy to forget that your checking-account balance is a lie and that you are but the temporary steward of a good chunk of "your" money, which really belongs to the state.

Chart on the number of pages in the tax code via Peter Suderman.

60 Minutes exposed Greg Mortenson’s memoir Three Cups of Tea, which chronicled him building schools across Afghanistan and Pakistan, as potentially fraudulent. The actions of Mortenson’s associated charity are also suspect. Macy Halford wags her finger:

[T]hough we might still be willing, as a memoir-consuming public, to put up with teensy white lies for a great “true” story, we are way past the point where we’re willing to put up with major fabrications, and we were never willing to put up with profiteering. There’s a tacit understanding between the author of a book that draws attention to a social injustice while proffering a solution and the buyer of that book: the understanding is that the purchase is akin to a donation. We don’t usually seek to know exactly how the money’s being spent, but we assume it’s serving the cause in some non-frivolous way (“60 Minutes” reveals that donations to the Central Asia Institute, the charity that Mortenson set up to run the schools, have gone toward luxuries like private jets for Mortenson).

Ed Kilgore fears it:

I certainly don't think [Trump is] in any danger of winning the nomination. But the real issue is that if he maintains or increases these levels of popularity among rank-and-file Republicans, the tolerance of GOP insiders for lower levels of craziness is bound to increase, giving them exactly what they do not need right now: another big push to the right.

Rich Lowry thinks Trump's run "is all an elaborate put-on," or at least he hopes it is:

Trump says he’d wage war [in Libya] only to take the country’s oil. And he’d take Iraq’s oil, too. Obama is groping for a doctrine in the Middle East. Trump already has one: Steal its oil. In Trump, Noam Chomsky will finally have met a Western imperialist truly bent on expropriating the Third World’s wealth.

Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman reported out the story:

[W]hile he is “serious” from the organizational point of view and appears very likely to emerge as a formal candidate for office, he will struggle hard to be taken seriously as a potential Republican nominee. Trump may not be in on the joke — he rarely jokes about himself — but he has been a punch line as long as he’s been a public figure. He’s still more of a sideshow than anything else, most Republican insiders are convinced, and his respectable showings in largely meaningless early polls reflect little more than his widespread notoriety.

Chait likewise doesn't buy Trump as a viable candidate:

Trump as a GOP candidate represents the easiest oppo hit in the history of primary races. He has advocated single-payer health care and called George W. Bush "evil." 

A boy stands outside a tent in the main refugee camp of the western Ivory Coast town of Duekoue on April 18, 2011. By Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images.

I'm way late on this, but it's such an outrage it really merits comment. I don't like my DC taxes going to fund abortions, but it seems to me this should be a debate for the inhabitants of Washington to resolve. I understand the strange historical contingencies that give the residents of the nations capital less representation in Congress than Mosul does in the Iraqi parliament. We are used to federal taxation without any representation, an outrage that seems strangely absent from Tea Party demands. But when a city council cannot even determine where its own funds are spent – because people from far away are playing culture war politics in a budget deal – it really does stick in one's throat.

Both sides are guilty of this. The way the Democrats smoothly traded away DC's autonomy to save Planned Parenthood is no less noxious than Republican non-residents dictating to us policies adult voters in a democratic society should be able to decide for themselves.

We are being used and abused. On tax day, especially, the core cause of the American revolution – being forced to pay taxes to a government that refuses to allow us any representation – remains unfulfilled. Since when were Americans colonial masters of their fellow citizens?

The effective tax rate for the 400 richest Americans is declining. Yglesias opines:

This is only 400 people so it’s not like you can balance the budget just by soaking them, but “If the richest 400 Americans simply paid the same effective rate in 1995 as they did in 2007, the government would have collected over $3 billion in additional revenue.” That’s not nothing.

Reihan sprinkles grains of salt.

A reader writes:

Your reader makes as compelling a case as I've seen for Palin actually having been pregnant, and barring other evidence I'd be inclined to think s/he is right. The kicker seems to be the conspiracy element. As with any conspiracy, one must ask how could people possibly keep quiet all this time?

Well, because it's not a conspiracy. In my view, it's just a sad, time-tested story of a very dysfunctional family, writ large.

If you really think about it, only three or four people would really have to know. If you'll indulge me a few paragraphs to offer a counter-theory, I'd be grateful.

Sarah Palin’s kids were typical Wasilla teenagers, partying a lot, more unsupervised than most because Palin was so busy and Todd was gone a lot. The Palin household was not close. Frank Bailey reported Palin telling him "Todd and I aren't like other couples. We don't talk." But the kids, like many kids in alcoholic or abusive families, were well trained to make everything look perfect to outsiders. This dynamic was enhanced by the Palin's celebrity and power and the fact that by all accounts Palin is secretive to an extreme, even to her parents. If Bristol is indeed the mother of Trig (which is by no means certain), she got pregnant when she was sixteen, but didn’t tell anyone until it was too late for an abortion, so the plan was to keep the pregnancy secret and adopt the baby out.

Palin’s ob-gyn, Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, founded The Children’s Place in Alaska for victims of sexual assault and molestation, and specializes in helping teenagers in trouble. In early 2008, Palin’s name was out as a potential VP nominee, so the national spotlight was already beginning to hit – Vogue magazine did a photo essay about her and Adam Brickley's "Draft Sarah Palin" website was getting thousands of page views. Really bad timing for a pregnant teenage daughter.

Bristol was sent to live with her aunt halfway through her junior year, transferring from Juneau to West High School in Anchorage in the winter of 2007-2008. Then, according to the principal of West High, she left that school after a couple of months, theoretically to be home schooled. I suspect Bristol had Trig in late February, at home or possibly in Anchorage as an anonymous teenager – perhaps under the care of Dr. Baldwin-Johnson. But she was one of the small but real group of teenagers to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome, which threw a wrench in the adoption plans.

Trig stayed in the hospital in Anchorage and Bristol came home. Palin began to see a political opportunity in having a baby with Down Syndrome. The Palins decided that Sarah and Todd would adopt the baby and raise him as theirs, but they couldn't let the public know Bristol had been pregnant. Maybe Sarah’s doctor did not know about her plans either. Palin began wearing scarves all the time in mid-February. McCain got the nomination on March 5, and the next day Sarah went for it and gave a press conference saying she was seven months pregnant. No one could believe it. Perhaps even, I suspect, Palin's doctor.

She was planning to announce the birth in the middle of April, the earliest she could conceivably have a healthy baby, and the latest Trig would be able to pass as a newborn. But she really wanted to give the high profile speech in Dallas. So she gave flew there and gave it. On April 17th, she called her parents early in the morning and told her dad her water had broken so she was coming back early. If Palin was ever actually at Mat-Su hospital that night, then Cathy Baldwin-Johnson would have arranged for privacy for her high profile patient (a scenario that numerous nurses have reported happens with regularity).

In any event, at noon the next day, Palin's parents were photographed by KTUU in the halls holding a very chubby pink baby … a baby that, according to Going Rogue, was a month premature with a hole in his heart and jaundice. No one would ever have been the wiser, except that in an interview three days later a reporter asked Palin if her water had broken while she was in Texas. Palin tried to deflect the question, and the reporter (the only reporter, I might add, who has ever asked Palin a pointed question on this) said "Well, your dad said that and I saw him say it so that’s why I asked." And out came the story of the Wild Ride.

After that, the doctor said "It was not unreasonable for her to fly back" with a lawyer present and then has refused all interviews since. And Bristol got knocked up sometime before April 1st with Tripp, which turned out to be very convenient for Palin as "proof" Bristol couldn't be the mother of Trig.

So. As the Internet heats up with arguments and counter arguments, I hope this will reinforce the difference between the Palin story and every other conspiracy I can think of. It's not a conspiracy.

I offer this as simply one possible explanation. A simpler one of inconsistent and improvised embellishment is also possible. Medical records would end this kind of speculation very quickly. But I would be remiss not to include an email making the same point I ha ve heard since I first publicly questioned this stuff:

Maybe Palin's been blessed with a blogger who just can't let go of his obsession the same way birthers go on and on and on about Obama just has to be hiding something. Of all the stupid, mean spirited, bigoted, homophobic, idiotic things Palin does and continues to do that justify giving a shit, this subject just isn't one of them. You will never, ever win.

I am sure Sara Palin is laughing at you just like Obama is laughing at Orly Taitz and Donald Trump. I am sure she is quite pleased at how you've blown a significant portion of your credibility on any number of subjects because you just can't let it go. A child has been born with a tragic condition and you go on week, after week, after miserable week making Sara Palin — Sara freaking Palin!!! — a victim and boring every one else because you can't accept that, no one cares, and no one is going to care about your, now quite pitiful obsession.

But I do this not to help one political side or another, or because I do not care about my "reputation." I do it because the story does not make sense to me; and it's the critical story about someone who has as good a chance as any Republican of being the nominee in 2012 and ran as vice-president last time around. I'd just like to know the truth about a public figure.

Bill Easterly questions the soundness of a new report on the number of stillborn births globally:

Despite the disinterest of the media, this is a serious problem. Research and policy based on made-up numbers is not an appealing thought. Could the irresponsible lowering of standards on data possibly reflect an advocacy agenda rather than a scientific agenda, or is it just a coincidence that Save the Children is featured among the authors of the new data?

A reader writes:

Did someone say "playing around with Google Maps"? Tying tangentially into the discussions about cutting defense, one of my favorite places to visit on Google Maps is the aircraft boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. A terrific reminder of just how much taxpayer money goes to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

More time-suck material here and here.