Month: November 2011

No, says Lisa Margonelli:

Talking about our oil predicament in terms of scarcity and abundance doesn't get at the real problem we face: High gas prices are causing the U.S. economy to hemorrhage money, and U.S. consumers are paralyzed to do anything about it. This year, American drivers are on track to spend $490 billion on gasoline alone. A study the New America Foundation released last month found that many middle class Americans simply can't respond to higher gas prices by reducing the amount of gasoline they use, and are caught in an energy trap as gasoline whittles away disposable income. If we help U.S. workers reduce the number of gallons of gasoline they buy, we'll free up more money to circulate in our economy while reducing the hidden costs of oil: pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and oil security. But we need to stop dreaming of gushers of oil and concentrate instead on finding profits in reducing the gallons we consume.

Today on the Dish, Andrew live-blogged Sharon Bialeck and Gloria Allred's press conference (more here), and we collected reax here. The accused employed an unusual media strategy, successful non-politicians are an anomaly in politics, and the GOP turned away another major demographic. Andrew parsed Romney's plan to reform entitlements, conservatives openly resisted the former governor, and the Onion's Jon Huntsman was happy to be rejected by a "terrifying" GOP. The Obama campaign asked "what if," we took an early look at electoral math, and in our video feature, Andrew discussed whether Obama's "evolving" views on marriage equality matter.

We checked in on Arab Christians, the stakes keep getting higher for the EU, and Pakistan’s national security establishment is at war with the US. Core issues have yet to be resolved in Iraq, we met the Iraqi team tasked with making bombs safe, and George Will demanded intellectual honesty from Republican candidates on the withdrawal of American military forces ("dryboarding" update here).  

MTV took to OWS, the Oakland police doubled down, and Republicans in Congress are acting in the interests of nobody at all. Dream jobs are not a right, the generational wealth gap is widening, and progressives aren't against hard work and personal responsibility. The black market is the world's biggest employer, nature makes poisons, and the border is littered with blackened water bottles and caffeine. We addressed mobility and the high costs of moving, were introduced to climate skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton, and asked what America should be the best at. Mississippi is prepared to give an undeveloped embryo legal rights, straight guys did without a certain kind of extreme pleasure, and readers weighed in on fantasy and spirituality. Andrew extolled the uselessness of a classical education, WFB's charm made conservatism palatable, and celebrities have been imposed on animation since Aladdin. We spend more on prison than college, some crap technology actually works, and coffee should really be chased with napping. 

Dish check update here, future app of the day here, poseur alert here, cool ad watch here, VFYW here, FOTD here, MHB here, and "ninja squirrel vs. stoners" here. 

— M.A.

(Photo: Sharon Bialek arrives for a news conference where she accused Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment more than a decade ago on November 7, 2011 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.)

Reviewing MTV’s new show on OWS, Stephen Deusner concludes that the network has sold out:

MTV is eager to cover Occupy Wall Street; it just doesn’t know how, at least not in any substantial or meaningful way. MTV News’ “True Life: I’m Occupying Wall Street” debuts today, following a protester named Bryan who works on the sanitation team and fights to keep the city from evicting the occupiers. And as part of its O Music Awards — which have noting to do with Oprah — MTV plans to bestow former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello with a special award for Best #Occupy Wall Street Performance, for his strolling rendition of “This Fabled City.” This is how MTV covers OWS – with a reality-esque documentary and an awards show. Which is fitting, since that’s about the only thing the network does anymore. 

Robert Farley is unpersuaded. Troy Patterson reads the episode as, in part, an argument that social change is hard. NPR recently examined the history of MTV’s zeitgeist interventions. 

Will Wilkinson recently pointed out that liberals tend to emphasize luck's role in success while conservatives focus on the role of hard work. Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias countered that liberals do support an ethos of hard work and personal responsibility. Tyler Cowen moderates the debate:

I would not quite say that progressives are "against such an ethos," but where does it stand in their pecking order?  Look at fiction, such as famous left-wing or progressive novels, or for that matter famous left-wing and progressive movies.  How many of them celebrate "an ethos of initiative, hard work, and individual responsibility"?  Is there one?  Maybe as part of a broader struggle against a corrupt system or against "The Man," but that tripartite of values is not celebrated in its own right. 

Matt Steinglass finds few real-world examples:

The only non-politician candidate I can think of who became a successful president was Eisenhower, and he was drafted not to clean up a mess in Washington but to end the war in Korea. Few non-politicians have been elected; in relatively modern history, only Herbert Hoover had no electoral experience, though he was hardly a Washington novice, having served two terms as commerce secretary. In any case, we all know how well he turned out. Further back, William Howard Taft had never run for anything, but he'd been in both of Teddy Roosevelt's cabinets and was hardly viewed as an "outsider", and his term was politically disastrous for the GOP. Then further back you've got General Ulysses S. Grant, whose administration was a corrupt mess. General Zachary Taylor's administration was clumsy and fortunately brief. And most non-politician white-knight candidates never make it that far. 

Chris Cillizza thinks our electoral system gives Obama an edge:

Obama won three states — Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia — that no Democrat had carried at the presidential level in at least two decades, and he scored victories in six other states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio) that George W. Bush had won in 2004. …with the exception of Indiana and its 11 electoral votes, Obama is very much in the game in those states. In several, even Republicans acknowledge that he is favored.

Jonathan Bernstein rolls his eyes:

States are not units which move independently of each other. They just aren't. Instead, when Obama is more or less popular, or generically whenever one party becomes more popular, it produces more-or-less equal shifts across all states. If Obama wins by five points nationally, he's going to win Pennsylvania and Michigan and Iowa and Wisconsin and, basically, the Al Gore states from 2000 plus a few others, and he'll win easily. If he loses by five points nationally, he's going to win what John Kerry won in 2004 minus a few states, and he'll lose easily. He's not going to run the same in most states but surge or drop dramatically in a handful of battleground states. It doesn't work like that.

Pew says it's widening:

People generally accumulate wealth as they age, so it is not unusual to find large age-based gaps on this measure. However, the current gap is unprecedented. In 1984, the age-based wealth gap had been 10:1. By 2009, it had ballooned to 47:1.

The Charleston Post and Courier follows up on this theory about the three Gitmo "suicides."

"What is the candidates’ objection to Obama implementing the status-of-forces agreement that his predecessor signed in 2008? The candidates should answer three questions: How many troops would they leave in Iraq? For how long? And for what purpose? If eight years, 4,485 lives and $800 billion are not enough, how many more of each are they prepared to invest there? And spare us the conventional dodge about “listening to” the “commanders in the field.” Each candidate is aspiring to be commander in chief in a nation in which civilians set policy for officers to execute," – George Will ahead of Wednesday night's debate.