Month: April 2012

Ask Manzi Anything

[Re-posted from earlier today, with several more questions added by readers. If you have 30 seconds to spare, please help us answer them.]

Jim Manzi, perhaps most sane and thoughtful voice at National Review, has had a regular presence on the Dish for many years. A primer for those less familiar with his work:

Manzi's writing focuses on science, technology, and economics, and he generally advocates a conservative point of view, though with libertarian leanings, and has criticized some conservative positions and the current direction of the Republican Party. David Brooks identified him as one of the "reformers" within the Republican Party,^[3] and later noted Manzi's National Affairs article Keeping America's Edge as one of the best magazine essays of 2009.^[4]

To submit a question for Jim, simply enter it into the field at the top of the Urtak poll (ignore the "YES or NO question" aspect and simply enter any open-ended question). We primed the poll with questions you can vote on right away – click "Yes" if you are interested in seeing Jim answer the question or "No" if you don't particularly care. We will air his responses soon.

This isn't 'Nam, Donnie. But for some reason, the courtesy flush didn't make the cut.

James Landrith says it's very unclear:

While the stats most often quoted show extremely low numbers of female predation, the reality differs. Quite often the same act committed by a female as by a male is counted separately or not included in official tabulations at all depending on the statistical model. These models, with all of their obvious built-in bias, are then parroted around as if they are apples to apples comparisons of male and female predation. As such biases and outright distortions are often used to eliminate them from from data sets or intentionally isolate such data in lesser or hidden categories, we have no real idea of just how many female predators exist today.

The Dish featured Landrith's account of his own rape here.

It's getting brutal, as emails reveal that the Cameron cabinet secretary, Jeremy Hunt, assigned to preside over the question of the Murdochs' full take-over of BSkyB, was in constant contact with James Murdoch, to keep him up to date. Money quote:

News Corp executives were even given private briefings on Mr Hunt’s confidential discussions with regulators and other media organisations. At one point, News Corp's chief lobbyist emailed James Murdoch to say he had “managed to get some info” on what Jeremy Hunt would announce to Parliament the next day "although absolutely illegal!". The same lobbyist suggested an agreed "plan" between News Corp and the Government would lead to "game over for the opposition".

Hunt should obviously resign ASAP. And today, for good measure, the former editor of the Independent, Simon Kelner, recounts the day Rupert James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks came to see him two years ago. Money quote:

I sat on a sofa, Brooks perched on the arm of another sofa, and Murdoch walked and talked. He was excitable and angry. "You've impugned the reputation of my family," he said at one point. He called me "a fucking fuckwit" and became furious at my bemusement that he should find our campaign so upsetting, given that one of his newspapers famously claimed that it did indeed decide elections.

Brooks said very little, but, when her boss's rage blew itself out, chipped in with: "We thought you were our friend". Their use of language and the threatening nature of their approach came straight from the "Mafioso for Beginners" handbook.

Paul Waldman thinks HBO's new show accurately depicts the most unpleasant denizens of the political world:

[T]here's Dan, the operator who's always looking past the job he's in to see how he can climb over other people to get to a more important job. That particular species is like a permanent DC locust colony, covering every available surface and clicking their forelegs together as they say "Who do you work for?" to everyone they meet, which actually means, "Can I use you to advance my career?" They are the most awful people you'll ever encounter, and this town is crawling with them and always will be.

Matt Zoller Seitz differs somewhat. HBO has the entire first episode online for free. Previous Dish on Veep here.

Jamelle Bouie reiterates the reality:

According to the latest national survey from Public Policy Polling, Rubio’s favorability with Hispanics is 35/42, a deficit of seven percentage points. What’s more, Romney’s support among Hispanics is virtually unchanged, regardless of whether Rubio is on the ticket. With the Florida Senator as a running mate, Romney wins 32 percent of Hispanic voters to Obama’s 67 percent. Without Rubio, Obama’s margin grows to 68/30. In other words, at best, Rubio holds Obama to his (outstanding) 2008 performance among Latino voters.

Larison considers the hype surrounding both Rubio and Paul Ryan as VP nominees: 

Having Ryan as VP loses eight points among somewhat conservative respondents, and Rubio loses five. Moderate voters are a bit more likely to support Obama against either pairing. … It is useful to remember just how relatively unpopular and nationally unknown these two politicians are when so many Republicans are certain that one or both of them would be a great addition to the presidential ticket. 

Relatedly, Silver finds that veeps are unlikely to swing a state:

[I]t seems likely that the vice presidential nominee’s effect on his or her home state is normally quite modest — perhaps two or three percentage points on average, if a little more in some cases and a little less in others. To be sure, two or three percentage points in the right swing state is not trivial, but it is probably not enough to outweigh the other strengths and weaknesses that a vice presidential candidate could potentially impart onto the ticket.

A reader writes:

I saw you on Fareed Sunday morning. It was refreshing to see you fighting the same battle I have been fighting for 11 years. The issue is further complicated by income and education. I am an American and worked in Telecommunication Wireless for 17 years. I met an Israeli 11 years ago in Florida where I was living. Six months later I moved to NYC to be with him. He advised me of his immigration problem and I began doing research, met with Immigration Equality in Manhattan, met with one of the best immigration attorneys. I quickly realized there was nothing that could be done except to live in fear – quietly under the radar, which we have done for over a decade, always afraid that a traffic stop could end my wonderful life with my partner.

I am happy that you, being more educated, were able to finally solve this and obtain a green card. Here is the sad story for my partner and I: we are both uneducated.

No college degree, so we were even more discriminated on than you and your partner. I still live in fear and hiding. Everything is in my name. He is unable to travel to Israel to see his brother's four children. I have flown to Israel twice to see his family there without him. You know the pain and fear we live in and still have no hope until DOMA is gone or PPIA is passed.

Another writes:

I feel like giving up. My Domestic Partner and I have been together for 11 years, raising my son together. He is HIV Positive from Ecuador. If he could only work legally we would have had a secure and dignified life. I stand with you hoping it will someday change. Please keep fighting for equality. We live in fear that he will be deported. If we could just marry and enjoy the same liberties as straight couples. People have no idea what suffering the Defense of Marriage Act has caused.

They don't. But we will overcome this. You can reach Immigration Equality if you need them or want to help them here. (Full disclosure: I'm on the board.)

There's a strong case to be made for the constitutionality of Obamacare, but if the individual mandate is struck down, it will not be against the will of the democratic majority, as measured by polling. From the latest Kaiser poll:

Overall, half of Americans (51%) believe the court should rule the mandate unconstitutional, identical to March.

In a dialogue with Will Saletan, Ross tries his hardest to make the case that Christianity shouldn’t accept gays:

Gay relationships may be unitive in some sense, but they are not unitive in the male-female, difference-reunited sense that the Biblical narrative strongly suggests that God intended sex to be. Gay people can bear and rear children, but they cannot bear and rear them in accordance with what the Biblical narrative suggests is God’s original intention for the reproduction of the human race. Homosexuality may be innate, but recall that one of the core doctrines of Christianity is that sin itself is innate—that our innermost being is in some sense broken and fallen and turned from God’s desires for us. What a traditional Christian morality asks of gay people seems impossibly difficult, but the Jesus of the New Testament asks the near impossible of people quite frequently.

Saletan sighs in response:

I’m watching an intelligent, compassionate writer torture his intellect and his values to fit a dogma that can no longer be justified by anything outside itself.

Your argument requires you to believe that God’s natural order inflicts on hundreds of millions of people a sexual orientation they can never consummate or solemnize in a way that would honor His purposes. That these people, regardless of sin, “cannot bear and rear [children] in accordance with … God’s original intention.” That Jesus demands celibacy of them, but not of you or me. That every marriage must be heterosexual — not to be virtuous or to benefit children, but to represent a “microcosm of humanity.” You even end up downplaying marriage. Now it’s you, not the sirens of the sexual revolution, proposing “alternative ways of life besides marriage.”

And as a practical matter, how do you tell 2 percent of the population that in this culture they have to be chaste and invisible? In this culture? And if you cannot, what is your actual social policy toward these people? Or do you simply not have one – except to wish we did not exist?

Let me use an obvious analogy which really gets to the heart of the unfairness at the center of this. Modern America is full of divorced couples. Unlike homosexuality, Jesus spoke unequivocally about divorce. Does Ross insist that our civil laws return to banning divorce on all grounds? No. Does he back a constitutional amendment to ban civil divorce? No. His reason would be to say that it simply cannot be done democratically. But that precisely reveals the church’s discriminatory position on gay people. Unlike divorcees, the gays’ position is not a choice. But unlike divorcees, they alone are the target of a massive campaign by Christianists to deny them any right to marry at all – not just twice but ever! This is where the current hierarchy is.

Notice too how they are not threatening to shut down services for the poor and homeless because one of their civil employees might be re-married or divorced (and thereby violating church doctrine). And yet they apply that standard to gay people – who have not chosen any lifestyle, but are guilty purely of being as God made them. They do it because we are few in number and they can deploy the power of religion to demonize us.

This deliberate tolerance of heterosexuals and deliberate intolerance of homosexuals on the same issue is on its face discriminatory. And don’t get me started on annulments. Newt Gingrich gets to marry his third wife in church, but the Vatican wants a constitutional amendment to prevent my having one civil marriage with no church involvement. What else can this be rooted in but animus? And total panic.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)