David Corn pushes back against the Boehner-fed WaPo story. Chait has a different take:
The facts in the Post’s account support a different and far more disturbing conclusion: Obama was even more desperate to cut a deal than previously believed — dangerously desperate, in fact.
I'd prefer to believe Chait's view than the WaPo's own bottom line.
One way to buffer against boycotts:
[S]ix months after his Glenn Beck TV launched, it’s relatively clear that Beck’s efforts to build a stand-alone television channel have been successful: 300,000 people are paying either $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year for access to the network, which they can access on their computers, iPads and iPhones, and on their televisions through streaming players like Roku. Between subscriptions and advertising, GBTV is going to make $40 million in its first year.
Thanks for the all words of support from female readers in the in-tray. Unfiltered feedback on our Facebook page. A reader writes:
I am a stay-at-home mom and a political junkie, two things that don’t always go together. You are one of my main sources of political and international news (and not “just the political stuff”, as your love of the Pet Shop Boys is one of my favorite things about you). I don’t know why your site skews more male than female. Many women my age (mid-40s) seem so overwhelmed with kids, jobs, carpools, care of elderly parents, that they just don’t seem to take the time to delve deeper than listening to NPR on the way to the next soccer practice, or watching a snippet of the Today show while making the kids’ sack lunches.
Another writes:
Keeping with stereotypes, your blog is perfect for people at office jobs to take breaks during their monotonous day. Maybe a majority these types of workers are men? I am a student now, but I was the most well-read on current events when I worked in investment banking and consulting (ugh – talk about monotony).
Another dispenses some tough love:
I am a woman, and I have been following you for many years – chasing you, more like – from the New Republic, to your original blog, to Time, to the Atlantic, and now to the Daily Beast. I love you, and I do not say that lightly. Your impact on my short-term thinking and long-term world view is more influential than that of my parents, my women’s college BFFs, and my husband. I would love to meet you someday, but I know it would be sort of like meeting Barack Obama – I probably just start to weep and embarrass myself, so let’s don’t, I guess.
All of that said, if you truly have no awareness of why most women are not as taken with you as I am, then I believe you lack some critical self-awareness.
Andrew, you can be really mean, and your rhetoric concerning certain prominent women – however dreadful they can be – is not the kind of language that most women appreciate. When I think of how you have described the likes of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, and Ann Coulter over the years, I cannot believe the names you have called them. The words that come to mind now are “monster” and “unhinged” – but you have used far worse. And though you have sheepishly come around regarding Hillary, you have done so only mildly. I can’t think of any women, beyond Margaret Thatcher and Tina Brown, perhaps, about whom the nice things you have to say match in degree the venom you have directed at those others (perhaps you give them extra credit for being British).
Also, the pains that you have taken to distinguish gay men from lesbians seems a bit fraught. My impression is that, as a group, the lesbians are not sufficiently attentive to their looks, in your opinion, and so you don’t care to be compared to such a dowdy bunch. And have you ever called attention to a great popular song performed by a woman? Maybe, but I can’t think of one. You like the dudes. These are just some examples.
I think you should just admit it: You just aren’t that into women.
Marriage equality, my two-decade crusade, has been supported by female couples more fervently than by male ones. And my venom is obviously gender-neutral. Think of what I have said about Dick Cheney for example compared with Condi Rice. But I think being somehow nicer to women in public life is condescending. Another reader:
I don’t think the lack of female readers has anything to do with the site’s content or your own sensibility. I think it reflects a very common pattern in the political blogosphere. It is a surprisingly male world, with a few notable exceptions. I am an avid consumer of political news on the net. It is clear that male voices dominate the political discourse on the web. But that is not surprising. Male voices dominate the media and politics itself, although not as much as in the past.
I also tend to spend more time than I probably should reading the comments threads on the various sites. I can assure you that men dominate these threads too. If you do have a large percentage of women who contact you, that’s a good sign. Interestingly, it might be because you DON’T publish comments.
I don’t want to generalize from a single example – me – but I often start to write a comment on a thread, but then, about halfway through, I say, nah, I don’t think this is “good enough” or “original enough” or “interesting enough” or something or other. This hesitation does not seem to affect the largely male commentariat.
Please don’t think I’m a shrinking violet. Indeed I am a retired professor who went to an Ivy League school in a male dominated field at a time when women didn’t go to graduate school. And I have always had a reputation for speaking my mind. But I wonder if many women are still not as interested in being controversialists, if they just don’t think it’s worth the nastiness that can sometimes accompany putting their ideas forward in the wild and wooly blogosphere.
Your blog is so very personal. I really hope you keep it that way.
The above screenshot was taken from the results of our reader-centric survey (the exact percentage of surveyed females is 22 percent, from a sample of 26,000 readers). Some interesting findings: 50 percent of female readers have emailed the Dish, compared to 58 percent of male readers; 18 percent of female emailers have had something posted, compared to 21 percent for men; 66 percent of female readers read the Dish as their primary blog, compared to 71 percent of male readers; 69 percent of female readers agree with me most of the time, compared to 75 percent of men; 20 percent of female readers have been so mad at me that they stopped reading the Dish for a day or more, compared to 17 percent of male readers; 61 percent of female readers have cried in reaction to a post, compared to 34 percent of male readers; 27 percent of female readers watch South Park, compared to 46 percent of male readers.
Paul Pillar gleans an important tidbit from the papers captured in the Abottabad raid:
The one issue that bin Laden evidently stressed to his associates should be emphasized publicly above all others was Palestine.
He criticized affiliates and followers for justifying their actions as responses to local matters rather than being performed on behalf of the preeminent cause for all Muslims, which was Palestine. In making such admonitions, bin Laden was recognizing the enormous salience the Palestinian issue continues to have for for Muslims generally. It has all the ingredients for a cause well suited for exploitation by extremists. … That bin Laden was issuing such instruction is a further indication of the power of Palestine as an extremist cause célèbre. Bin Laden's first wish probably would have been to overthrow the House of Saud in Arabia.
For years now, neocons have argued that Israel-Palestine was irrelevant to most Muslims, and that resolving the issue was not a priority for the US. I bought that for a while. No longer. And the notion that it was invented as a way for tyrants to keep their subjects in line will soon be tested in Egypt. What happens when America's relations with the democratic Muslim world cannot progress without a resolution of Israel-Palestine? I predict what we are already seeing: neocons lining up to bemoan an Arab winter rather than an Arab spring. Their support for Arab democracy will hit a wall of their own construction.
Not so long ago, and repeatedly, Jeffrey Goldberg relayed the desperate seriousness of Binyamin Netanyahu's threat to strike Iran unilaterally, and the intensity with which the Israelis viewed Iran's nuclear development as an existential threat like the Holocaust. I took his reporting very seriously, just as I absorbed his dire warnings about the existential threat the West Bank occupation posed to the Jewish state itself.
Now he tells us he has begun to suspect (but doesn't yet quite believe) that it might all have been be a big Israeli bluff to pressure the Iranians via spooking the Americans. And if it was a bluff, it was one that cynically used the memory of the Holocaust and was obviously intended to persuade the Obama administration (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to move their own red lines to the Likud's, and go to war sooner rather than later. Well, isn't that something: a government prepared to lie to its ally, risk escalation of what would be a global war, cynically exploit the Holocaust in a bluff, and do so via a journalist at the Atlantic.
But what's striking to me is how Jeffrey reacted to the rumors that he could have been lied to by the Israeli prime minister in order to promote the bluff:
"If [Netanyahu] has been bluffing the whole time (even in concert with good-cop Obama), it's been a bluff that has so far worked magnificently well."
Three cheers for being used! Maybe at the end of this, we'll get the full scale US-led war against Iran that so many neocons want. I'm not saying Jeffrey was in on the bluff. I am saying that his reaction to the idea of being misled is not exactly outrage, which troubles me. And Goldberg's detailed deadly serious description of the possible bluff was not just an aside. It was a cover-story for the Atlantic two years ago (see left), when Goldberg predicted a unilateral Israeli strike in the Spring of 2011. The piece was called "The Point of No Return." Geddit? As you can see, the cover was not hedged. Netanyahu's message was loud and clear on the cover of one of America's great magazines as a fact – and a warning.
And it's from this Olympian height that Goldblog will not even deign to review the content of Peter Beinart's new book challenging the internal contradictions of Goldberg et al:
And to be completely blunt, I'm not that interested in debating Peter's new book, which I've just finished reading, because I find his recounting of recent Middle East history one-sided and filled with errors and omissions. The Middle East crisis is complicated, except in Peter's telling. It's hard to argue with Peter's work precisely because there's so much missing.
This is the classic, condescending "You Don't Get The Complexity" bullshit he has used on countless others when he is ever faced with actually taking a stand on the relentless settlement and de facto annexation of the West Bank, with all its hideous moral and human consequences – not least to Israel's soul and existence as a Jewish state. Notice the de haut en bas smear: "filled with errors and omissions" which he will not produce or cite so they can be aired and debated. He is above that. Presidents and prime ministers call him on the phone. And the headline is another swipe at Peter of a purely political, rather than intellectual, nature:
J Street Big Takes a Serious Shot at Peter Beinart's Call for Boycott
See! Even those lefties don't actually think this will work. Repeat after me what the Greater Israel Lobby and its acolytes will be chanting for the next few weeks:
Ignore. Peter. Beinart.
What would work to stop and reverse the settlements and forcibly remove the religious fanatics now upping the ante in a global religious war into which the US would inevitably be dragged? Nothing Israel or AIPAC is prepared to do, of course, as everyone who is aware of the profound "complexities" already knows. Even though Goldberg has argued that staying the current course could mean the end of the Jewish state, it's all far too complicated to tackle or undo now. Always later. Always too complex. Until – bingo – the occupation cannot be undone, and the only options for Israel are ethnic cleansing or an apartheid state. At which point we'll have another round of sighs, jibes and public hand-wringing. We may, in fact, already be there.
But Goldberg's latest formulation on the settlements is such a beaut it's worth unpacking:
I don't have much good to say about Beinart's call for a boycott, because I find economic warfare targeting Jews so distasteful, for obvious historical reasons. (As readers of Goldblog know, I would like to see the settlers out of the West Bank as well, but this is a very bad way to go about achieving the goal.)
First the intimation (but not outright accusation) of anti-Semitism by summarizing Peter's views as "economic warfare targeting Jews" and referring back to the 1930s. And then in the parentheses the sentence deserves, he again retiterates his opposition to the settlements and – surprise! – finds Peter's proposal to change things insufficient.
I repeat: What would be a very good way to remove those settlements? We await Goldberg's next high-profile missive from the prime minister's office – but shouldn't hold our breath. A boycott of settler goods would not work, Goldberg avers, because they are fanatics and fanatics resort to doubling down when pressured. So Goldberg thinks these maniacs or state-subsidized settlers will leave eventually because … of what, exactly? A seminar with Deepak Chopra? A visit from the Pope? If pressure cannot work, and persuasion is impossible, and a settler fanatic is Israel's actual foreign minister … then we are left with continued support (and aid!) for a demographically doomed Greater Israel, permanently dragging the US down in global power and credibility – and possibly a world war of unknowable consequences.
Finally, the veiled personal threat at anyone questioning the AIPAC line:
Here's David Frum, by the way, on the call for a boycott. He thinks Peter is being destructive. And here's Ami Eden on how Peter's call for a boycott targeting Jews will inevitably lead to Jewish boycotts of Peter Beinart.
To threaten an honest writer in this fashion – without even addressing his book in any detail – is, sadly, unsurprising. It remains an act of a bully.
A reader writes:
I have my four kids with me (11, 9, 7, 1). We're guessing Dublin, Ireland:
1. Cars parked on left side of street – not US, likely Europe.
2. Weather looks non-summer like – implies Northern Hemisphere.
3. My wife and I traveled to Dublin once, and it looks like one of the main streets where my sister-in-law worked. Maybe Grafton street, where the Molly Malone statue resides?
4. Today is St. Patrick's Day … maybe too easy, but a reasonable guess.We've never won, and my kids love playing! If wrong, we'll keep trying.
Another writes:
Kiev, Ukraine? I think that because the scene looks cold, stark, and surprisingly well constructed. Please tell your American readers that Kiev is great – it is a beautiful surprise that offers Old World culture and delicious food, while still qualifying as a "foreign land" – kind of like how Prague and Budapest felt 20 years ago.
Another:
I don’t know if this disqualifies me because I live an hour away, but I believe the VFYW is taken in Syracuse, NY – the black tower in the back is one (of the two) AXA Towers. The crane is part of the ever-present construction at SU. I am not too sure of the street – either Lafayette or State, looking onto Salina Street. It is near the Armory Square neighborhood. (I was so tempted to cheat with Google, but I stayed strong.)
Another:
Well, the charming early-20th century architecture and the empty streets makes it pretty clear that this is the Rust Belt. And after a whole lot of Google map and image searches of the cities of the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Mississippi River, I got frustrated with my inability to find this building, so I'm just going to go with my gut reaction that this is Buffalo. Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, and Kansas City are too densely built up, and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have too many hills.
Another:
Portland, Oregon? I just feel it viscerally. Has to be the SW near Pearl District somewhat close to Burnside. I don't see the distinctive water fountains but they are not on every street. I miss my rainy hometown.
Another:
Really, how the hell can anyone get this without having been there?
That said, the buildings scream turn of the century America, and the scale screams Midwest cowtown, along with the empty streets. I'm going with Cheyenne, Wyoming on a recent Sunday.
Another:
It sure looks like a building I remember in my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. I've been away long enough that I can't be sure if all the details are right. If I am right, the camera is facing east onto the intersection of 13th and N Streets. Also, it looks like the picture was taken from inside one of the "sky-walks" connecting various buildings downtown.
Another:
I'm almost certainly wrong, but that red building kinda sorta maybe looks like the Taft in New Haven, so that's my guess. The only other time I've had an intuition about a View was when I saw this one and immediately thought of my summer in Nice, France. I shrugged it off and figured your ridiculously good readers would get it. I would have won! I've been kicking myself ever since. Never again.
Another:
I know my "guess" is wrong, but the architecture, the gauzy effect of the screen window, and the fact that I just finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 immediately made me imagine this was the View From Oswald's Window.
Another:
Fort Worth, Texas? Looks like the old Hotel Texas where John F. Kennedy spent his last night on earth, in the foreground. I grew up in the city and know that one as the grand old hotel. Then again, that building could be in almost any midwestern or southwestern city – KC, Albuquerque, Des Moines, Tucson, Denver, OKC.
Another:
I almost spit my coffee back in my cup when I saw the picture. It is of my office building in which I am currently sitting! This picture is of 4th Street in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. The building in the foreground and to the right is the 320 S. Boston Building. The intersection in the picture is of 4th Street and Main Street. The first floor of the building with the red overhangs above the window in the background is an Arby's fast food restaurant. The picture was likely taken from a window in the First Place Tower, which sits at the corner of 4th Street and Boston Avenue.
I don't know how to do all the fancy graphics most winners do to show from where the picture is taken, but I have attached a screen shot of Google Maps:
Another:
A flood of memories just came rushing back to me. The intersection in the photo is 4th and Main in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma where I went to college. Something about the combination of the style of the brick building and the red awnings instantly triggered my memory, plus it doesn't hurt that my first real job was across the street from where the photo was taken. The ground floor of the brick building with the large arched windows used to be a beautiful bank (I am fortunate to have been inside) when Tulsa was booming with oil riches, but it has sat empty for easily over a decade as energy companies migrated to Houston starting in the early 1980s and the city grew away from downtown.
Another gets close to the right window:
At first I thought: Surely not! There is no way that is my hometown on the Dish. A quick Google Map search turned up nothing promising, so I put it in the back of my mind and carried on with my day. But after my two year old finally went to sleep, I thought I'd try again. Sitting in the quiet, my wife enjoying The Hunger Games before the movie comes out, I had that sudden rush of excitement that other Dish readers know: I found it! Tulsa, Oklahoma! Specifically the Boston Building – 400 S Boston Ave – 10th Floor – Suite 1002.
I wish I knew more of the history of Tulsa so I could write a page and a half on why the buildings in the picture are significant. I have enjoyed reading up on some of them as I did my research and struggled over what to write you. Can I come up with a story that will get me in the "Another" category? Should I talk about how this is my first contest, yet I read each and every one with gusto on Tuesdays. Or how getting this one right will lead me to now participate in the contest rather than watch from the sidelines?
Or I can just say thank you for showing a corner of my world to the world at large. Usually when I hear Oklahoma in the national news I can't help but cringe. From Inhofe to Sally Kern, there are some here who seem to want to make life miserable for those of us who are tolerate and open minded. So thank you, Andrew.
Another gets closer:
Long time reader, first time contest answer-er. I have always wanted to play this but just am not very good, but I instantly recognized this as my hometown. I am a few blocks from it right now. The Disher was on the 10th or 11th floor of this building that I have attached a picture of, and their window faces west. It is in Tulsa's deco district downtown – the oil boom brought some amazing art deco architecture to our city. The first building is the Beacon Building, and I am not sure what the name of the white building is, but there is an Arby's on the first floor.
The winner nails the right floor:
Looking west down Fourth Street from the west side of The Boston Building (400 South Boston Avenue). I will guess the 11th floor.
Another reader also zeroed in on the 11th floor, and there was no way to break the tie (both were first-time players), so we'll have to send out two books this week. The second winning entry:
Holy crap! That’s my city. I have no idea why, but I always just assumed I was the only person in Oklahoma who read the Dish every day.
The picture was taken in Tulsa, Oklahoma from the Boston Building on the southwest corner of 4th and Boston downtown. The window it was taken from faces west and we’re looking sort of northwest toward where the Arkansas River passes downtown Tulsa. The crane in the center of the photo is part of construction on a new office building going up a few blocks over. The brown building in the forefront is the Reunion Center, and, given the photographer’s relative height in comparison, I’d say this photo was taken from the 11th floor of the Boston Building. This would likely put the photographer in the Street Law Firm. I work across the street at the 320 South Boston Building. Here’s the view from my window of the building from which this photo was taken:
These two buildings are crawling with lawyers … beware!
(Archive)
[Re-posted from yesterday]
As regular readers of the Dish know, one of our favorite bloggers, Jonah Lehrer, just came out with his third book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. Adapted excerpts can be read at The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal. A portion highlighted by Jonah:
For most of human history, we’ve pretended that the imagination is inherently inscrutable, an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we’ve clung to a series of false myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. These myths aren’t just misleading – they also interfere with the imagination. In addition to looking at elegant experiments and scientific studies, we’ll also examine creativity as it is experienced in the real world. We’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing method and the drug habits of poets. We’ll spend time with a bartender who thinks like a chemist and an autistic surfer who invented a new surfing move. We’ll look at a website that helps us solve seemingly impossible problems and we’ll go behind the scenes at Pixar. We’ll watch Yo Yo Ma improvise and we’ll unpack the secrets of consistently innovative companies.
Here's your chance to ask him about the book, the science behind creativity, or anything else related to his writing in the past. The format is exactly that of the "Ask Andrew Anything" series, but with other people in public life or just interesting figures we thought you might be interested in interviewing. We have primed the Urtak poll with some questions but feel free to add any of your own. Answer "Yes" if you are interested in seeing Jonah answer the question or "No" if you don't particularly care. We'll air the answers in daily segments soon.
Think of this as a crowd-sourced interview. More to come.
Andrew Kacyzinski digs up a doozy of a quote from a 2004 interview. Senate candidate Obama echoes the speech we just heard at AIPAC:
In light of the fact that we're now in Iraq, with all the problems in terms of perceptions about America that have been created, us launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in. … On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse. So I guess my instinct would be to err on not having those weapons in the possession of the ruling clerics of Iran.
Silver expects a Romney victory today:
Illinois had appeared to offer Mr. Santorum a chance at a breakthrough. Instead, unless the polls are very wrong, it may represent a breakthrough of sorts for Mr. Romney – by far his biggest delegate grab and margin of victory in a Midwestern state so far.
Well, it's worth remembering that Santorum tends to outperform his polling – but this time, the gap seems too large, and PPP and Rasmussen are aligned. Cassidy looks ahead:
Once Louisiana is out of the way, the primary timetable becomes more favorable to Romney. On April 3, there are votes in Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. Santorum will be hoping to win the first two states, although he’s far from a sure thing in either place. In D.C., he’s not even on the ballot. Then there is a three week break before the primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. If Romney could sweep the Northeast except for Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania, he would be looking very good.
Alex Massie calls it:
This race is over. Readers know this and so do journalists. There's just a reluctance to admit that it's over while there's any speck of hope it might not be. Primary season is a habit it's tough to break but at some point you gotta do it and admit that all the fancy ploys and plots spun to keep it going are so much hokum in a season already amply supplied with the stuff.
(Illinois projection from 538)
Peter Staley can wait till after November for Obama's final evolution on marriage equality:
We all hope that those wishy-washy independents will start voting our way on gay marriage, but we have very little evidence that they've done so in the past (quite the opposite, actually). Are we willing to bet that enough of them will vote our way this time — enough to outweigh all the votes from the poked Christianist hornet's nest?
I've been an AIDS activist most of my adult life, and the most important thing any of us can do right now for people living with HIV/AIDS in this country is to get Obama re-elected. The single most important piece of legislation for their lives in the years to come is Obamacare, which is under vicious assault from a misinformation campaign led by FOX News and the Republican Party.
Weigh that against hearing Obama say he loves us even more than he already does. I can wait for his final kiss.
The Dish 
