Today on the Dish, the dust settled and Andrew stood by his support of the stop-gap deal, especially since it would finally force the GOP to make tough defense cuts. Readers reacted to Obama's pyrrhic defeat, some heard a liberal screech and rose to defend Obama while putting it in perspective (read: he also got bin Laden). Andrew revisited the white conservative South's deathgrip on American politics, we kept an eye on the super committee to the rescue, and McConnell insisted it's never personal. Congressional Republicans appeared to bear the brunt of it, Josh Barro deflated Republicans' anti-tax ideology, Frum tried to talk some sense into Republicans, and the right grew outraged when Biden called them terrorists even though they embraced it first. Chait looked on the bright side for liberals, but Kevin Drum admitted that liberals have largely lost the public opinion battle on high government spending. Scott Galupo missed the conservative George Will of yore and Will Wilkinson wasn't impressed with the results of whole debt ceiling charade since spending was still on the up. Andrew Exum didn't believe less military spending would mean less war, and even with defense cuts our spending blows the Cold War figures out of the water. Seth Masket raised concerns over Obama's reelection due to the economy, but as both sides attacked, with readers dissenting, Obama remained the best man to support.
On the foreign policy front, Breivik's bad Christianity made at least one man realize that the 9/11 guys don't represent all Muslims. The US still wasn't accepting our Iraqi allies as immigrants into the US, China could be positioned to be al Qaeda's next target, and those chanting for sharia law in Egypt couldn't agree on what that means. An Israel-Hezbollah war may be heating up, Goldblog cringed at the Judeo-Christianist alliance in the US, and Netanyahu followed Obama's lead on the 1967 lines which made us wonder what all the original fuss was about.
In national affairs, readers refuted Andrew's claim that real ex-gays don't exist, and Miley Cyrus tweeted her support of marriage equality to 1.8 million tween followers. New photos of Palin's one-month pregnancy emerged, and we parsed the politics of "free" birth control. Nate Silver wasn't your average academic, the slow bike movement could democratize biking beyond hipsters, and enforcing patents for streaming music doesn't make sense. Smart phones could let us make purchases with our faces, mammals can't mess with our big brains, and meat moves after it's dead when you add salt.
FOTD here, MHB here, VFYW here and VFYW contest winner #61 here.
–Z.P.
The Dish 