Chait reads tea leaves:
I’m guessing Romney’s economic plan would have, alongside traditional Party favorites like long-term, debt-financed regressive tax cuts, a heavy dose of stimulus. And I’d bet the Republican opposition to stimulus woud melt away under a Romney presidency. Once their Party has its political skin in the game, Republicans would probably abandon their newfound hard-money, anti-Keynesian beliefs as quickly as they took them up under Obama.
Gretchen Carlson and friends arm themselves:
So the FDA has opened up now a formal inquiry into salt reduction, so what is that going to mean? Will we now see that you can't eat salt in your own home, potentially? I mean, you know, they've already done that with smoking, et cetera. Not really sure.
As Roger Ailes put it:
I like Bloomberg, he's a friend. But fuck him and the salt. I like salt.
Chelsea Rudman dismantles the Fox News hysteria:
[Steve Doocy's] use of the words "the science is not settled" is an immediate red flag to anyone who knows Fox's relationship with science. Fox often uses similar language to describe climate change, even though the science is settled; Media Matters revealed a leaked email in December 2010 that showed top Fox official Bill Sammon ordered news staff to cast doubt on climate change. And, indeed, it's "settled" that most scientists agree a high salt intake is bad for you. While experts still debate what level of salt intake is appropriate, and who is most susceptible to its negative effects, most agree that high-salt diets can lead to increased risk of hypertension, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular disease.
Kate Sheppard also pushes back:
Keep in mind that even if the FDA came out with rules, it wouldn't be deploying salt cops to your local Big Boy to confiscate all the salt shakers. It would merely be setting guidelines about the amount of salt in processed, packaged foods—the kind of foods where people unknowingly consume all kinds of sodium currently.
A Palestinian activist talks of nonviolent ways to resist the segregation Israel enforces on the occupied West Bank. One option: insisting on getting on buses Palestinians (but not settlers) are forbidden from. Sound familiar?
Now listen to the inspiration for this young man in history:
Know hope.
From rugby's world cup a new word to me: Baardenfreaks.
Provoked by the latest "Christianism Watch," Dreher asks me to abandon the term "Christianist":
[D]oes Andrew realize who Johann Christoph Arnold is? He is a pacifist whose grandfather led the Bruderhof community driven out of Nazi Germany by persecution. His writings are usually about peace-making and forgiveness. He is by no means part of the Religious Right. But because he holds to the Bible’s clear teaching about marriage, Andrew vilifies him as a "Christianist." If Johann Christoph Arnold earns that designation, then it belongs to everybody who professes Christianity but who disagrees (as most Christians in every time and place, until the last 20 years, have done) with Andrew’s position on marriage equality. In which case, how useful is it as a descriptive term?
It’s not. It’s only a term of abuse for Christians Andrew dislikes. I wish he would withdraw it.
It's a term designed to describe a Christianity that seeks to coerce others by force of law, rather than a Christianity that seeks to liberate oneself from the illusions of wordliness. Those who wish to force me into a divorce through legislative or judicial action are about controlling others, not liberating themselves. Arnold may have much better motives than others but the move toward political oppression and marginalization of others is what I'm talking about. A reader also took issue with the post:
I'm not going to defend the sentiment, but I'm not so sure that "Christianist" is a good description of Johann Christoph Arnold, or the Bruderhof. I grew up near Rifton, and went to high school with many of their kids in the '80s. It's a remarkable community: think Amish, but less distrustful of modernity. As a sect, they have a very strict orthodoxy, but they are not of the same fundamentalist nature as the evangelicals. Indeed, even much of Arnold's writing would be considered heresy in the red states (focusing as it does on peace, love and forgiveness).
While their intolerance of homosexuality is common to the Christianists, it springs from a markedly different place, and I simply can't lump them in together. The hypocrisy at the heart of the Christianists simply doesn't drive the Bruderhof, who may be misguided, but are far more pure in their intent and motives, for what it's worth (as an avowed atheist, I'm not sure much, myself). The end result may be the same, but is there not a difference between Arnold being driven by a sincere fear of offending one's god, as opposed to the more earthly fear and ignorance that drives the Christianist homophobia?
The Straits of Florida, 1.45 pm
A reader personalizes our post:
When my wife and I first starting sleeping together, she warned me that she couldn't have orgasm through vaginal intercourse. It was a combination of being a late bloomer and the way she was "shaped", but not to worry about it because she still enjoyed sex. Fast forward 10 years and two kids later. We were still enjoying our sex life, but I had still never gotten her there. Then she took up 20 minutes of yoga before bedtime to relieve stress and keep her core toned to head off bone-loss problems as she approached middle age. Remember the scene in the Network when they parody feminism by having Fay Dunaway's character develop a problem with coming too soon? Yeah it's like that!
Another reader, as Pareene once put it, gets all oversharey:
How funny! I just finished a yoga workout and gave myself some orgasms with my magic wand, when lo and behold I turn on Andrew and read about yogasms! I have never experienced one during yoga class or practice (I still have a hard time keeping the mula bandha lock), but I can do it with the magic wand. Squeezing the perineum muscle helps bring up deep-trapped energy in my legs and feet, often painful memories that the more I accept, the more I can release them into a powerful orgasm. It beats therapy by a mile. Thanks for the link! Made my day!
And they say blogging is onanistic.
My thoughts here. Glenn Greenwald is furious that al-Awlaki was killed without a trial:
What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.
Stephanie Carvin demands evidence that Awlaki was involved in operational planning. Greg Scoblete is unsure about the legality:
The counter-argument here is that Awlaki effectively lost whatever constitutional protections citizenship affords when he took up arms against his country and was found on a battlefield. … in this specific case, it looks like Awlaki was a traitor to his country and had given aid and comfort to its enemies. But is executive decree of guilt enough to have Americans – even loathesome ones – killed?
Ackerman hopes the government will explain itself:
Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials have spent the early morning vouching for Awlaki’s death. The big questions facing them now: will they release any evidence confirming Awlaki’s “operational” role in al-Qaida? And will they explain their legal rationale for killing a vile, noxious propagandist who was nevertheless an American citizen? When the ACLU — where, full disclosure, my wife works — sued to learn why targeting Awlaki is legal, the government shut the case down by arguing that very rationale was a state secret.
I agree that explaining the rationale would be a good thing. But my broader take on Obama's remarkable conduct of the war against Jihadist terror – in stark contrast with his hapless, incompetent predecessors – is here.
A Euroskeptic sees the end of the euro in Germany's vote yesterday.
The Dish 