Year: 2013

Greg Ip wishes there had been a Grand Bargain:

Permanently replacing the sequester and raising the debt ceiling will require intensive new negotiations likely to begin as soon as the tax deal is signed into law. Yet the last few months have shown the two key players to be incapable of making those sorts of deals. It’s telling that both Mr Obama and Mr Boehner were on the sidelines as the final deal was worked out between Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the senate, and Mr Biden, a former senator.

Scott Galupo sizes up the Senate bill:

On its face, the deal is a victory for the White House and Democrats in Congress. They didn’t get the revenue they’d been seeking—they’ll get about $600 billion, well short of the $1.2 billion compromise nearly reached with House Speaker John Boehner—but they gave up virtually nothing in spending and extended unemployment insurance for a year without offsetting the $30 billion pricetag. The key, as uneasy liberals have noted, is what it will mean for debt-ceiling negotiations. With taxes off the table, will the focus henceforth be squarely on cutting spending, as Republicans insist? Or will Obama extract more revenue for any cuts he agrees to, as he insisted in a press conference Monday?

Noam Scheiber worries that the deal will embolden Republicans:

If Obama will cave even when he’s got all the leverage, when won’t he cave? Never, the Republicans will assume. If Obama’s too scared to stop bargaining and let the public decide who’s right in this instance, when the polls appear to back him, then he must think our position is more popular than he lets on. Suffice it to say, these are not sentiments you want at the front of Republicans’ mind as they prepare to shake him down over the debt limit in another two months. The White House continues to maintain that it simply won't negotiate over the limit. After this deal, why would any Republican ever believe this? I certainly don’t, and I desperately want to.

Krugman agrees:

[W]hy the bad taste in progressives’ mouths? It has less to do with where Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

Chait echoes:

I expect instead that his willingness to bargain away his strongest leverage, and the central theme of his reelection, will make the next rounds harder, and embolden Republicans further. I suspect he will wish he had ripped off the Band-Aid all at once, holding firm on tax cuts and daring House Republicans to defy public opinion.

Ryan Lizza sees things differently:

Obama approached this phase of the fiscal wars as the fight over revenue and (seemingly) has reached a reasonable compromise. With a slew of previously temporary pieces of the tax code now locked in, the White House insists it will go into the next phase of negotiations with a stronger hand. Republicans will be stripped of the political power of calling for tax cuts, and instead will be in the unpopular position of mostly insisting on cuts to Medicare and Social Security, which they are often loathe to actually detail. And their response if Obama won’t reduce benefits to the two most popular government programs? They will allow the United States to default and perhaps plunge the world economy into recession.

Josh Marshall's perspective:

For all of you trying to figure out what the unseen force is that prompted President Obama to take this deal now rather than simply go over the cliff and be in an even better position post-cliff, I think I have a good answer for you. All the arguments about Obama caving and being a bad negotiator and all the rest leave out one simple and fairly sufficient factor — Obama really wants a deal. That means more than it sounds like it means. He doesn’t want a deal at all costs. That greatly overstates it. But a deal to some real degree for the sake of finding common ground and having a deal is a big consideration for him. That’s not my personal disposition or the way I meet the world. But it is his. And once you get that, the storyline starts to make more sense.

And Douthat reframes the debate:

Is a Democratic Party that shies away from raising taxes on the $250,000-a-year earner (or the $399,999-a-year earner, for that matter) in 2013 — when those increases are happeningly automatically! — really going to find it easier to raise taxes on families making $110,000 in 2017 or 2021? Color me skeptical: The lesson of these negotiations seems to be that Democrats are still skittish about anything that ever-so-remotely resembles a middle class tax increase, let alone the much larger tax increases (which would eventually have to hit people making well below $100,000 as well) that their philosophy of government ultimately demands.

Thanks to everyone who voted. The final tallies …

Malkin Award: With 26% of the vote, Charlotte Allen narrowly edged out Neal Boortz, who compared voters to worms. Allen's winning, reprehensible comment about the Newtown murders:

"There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the "reading specialist" — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza."

Mental Health Break Of The Year: With 17.54% of the vote, Dumb Ways To Die, a disturbingly adorable PSA, takes highest honors: 

Hewitt Award: Rush Limbaugh won a landslide victory, getting a commanding 55.48% of the vote, for this ludicrous remark about the president:

"I think it can now be said, without equivocation — without equivocation — that this man hates this country. He is trying — Barack Obama is trying — to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream. There’s no other way to put this. There’s no other way to explain this. He was indoctrinated as a child. His father was a communist. His mother was a leftist. He was sent to prep and Ivy League schools where his contempt for the country was reinforced. He moved to Chicago. It was the home of the radical-left movement. He hooks up to Ayers and Dohrn and Rashid Khalidi. He learns the ruthlessness of Cook County politics. This is what we have as a president: A radical ideologue, a ruthless politician who despises the country and the way it was founded and the way in which it became great. He hates it."

Chart Of The Year: A graphic by The International Institute For Strategic Studies showing how the US defense budget dwarfs all others takes the blue ribbon with 31.62% of the vote:

Yglesias Award: With 26.78% of the vote, Erick Erickson narrowly bested Chris Christie for highest honors. His winning comment:

"Too many people have spent the past four years obsessed with birth certificates. Now they are obsessed with voter fraud conspiracies, talk of secession, and supposed election changing news stories if only we had known. So let’s add dabblers in this latest nuttiness to birthers as a category of people we do not welcome at RedState. Our aim is to beat the Democrats, not beat a retreat to a Confederacy that Generals Grant and Sherman rent asunder well over a hundred years ago. Even here at RedState, while we may not much care for him, President Obama is still our President and we are still quite happily citizens of the United States. If we must drain this fever swamp that’s taken hold of a few people on the right over this past week before we can drain the swamp in Washington, so be it."

Dick Morris Award: With a majority of the vote, Dick Morris fittingly won the award named after him for this utterly wrong prediction:

"Here comes the landslide… The result was that the presidential race reached a tipping point. Reasonable voters saw that the voice of hope and optimism and positivism was Romney while the president was only a nitpicking, quarrelsome, negative figure. The contrast does not work in Obama’s favor."

Face Of The Year: The winner, with 30.69% of the vote, is Tony Nicklinson, who is reacting to a court decision against allowing him to ask a doctor to end his life. Nicklinson suffers from locked-in syndrome due to a stroke: 

Moore Award Nominee: With 36.38% of the vote, Jessica DelBalzo's love letter to abortion won by less than a point. Amanda Marcotte's claim that men who protest at abortion clinics later masturbate about it came in second. The far-left comment that won DelBalzo the prize:

"I love abortion. I don't accept it. I don't view it as a necessary evil. I embrace it. … [T]here is no need to suggest that abortion be rare. To say so implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided."

Hathos Alert: Fox News hunting for New Black Panthers on election day came in first with 21.17% of the vote. Jehovah's Witnesses warning deaf people about the perils of masturbation was the runner-up. As a reader noted at the time about the Black Panther video, "So let me get this straight – the guy is intimating voters by holding the door open for them?":

Poseur Alert: The award for bad and pretentious writing goes to Robert Stacy McCain, who got 30% of the vote for his reaction to Obama's victory: 

"Alas, as always, the duty of the Right is to manfully endure, to survive the defeat and stubbornly oppose the vaunting foe, and so this brutal shock, this electoral catastrophe, must be absorbed and digested. At some point next week or next month or next year, then, we shall recover our morale and plot some new stratagem for the future. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's debacle, however, it is difficult to see any glimmer of light amid the encroaching gloom. Surely, there are many Americans who now sympathize with that New York infantryman who, in the bleak winter of 1862, when the Union's Army of the Potomac was under the incompetent command of Gen. Ambrose Burnside, wrote home in forlorn complaint: 'Mother, do not wonder that my loyalty is growing weak.… I am sick and tired of the disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us'"

After looking at vacancy rates, Jeff Jordan argues that American malls are dying:

If I were thinking of starting a new retail brand right now, I would unquestionably start it online. And many very talented entrepreneurs are doing just this. I personally shop at Bonobos for pants, J.Hilburn for sweaters, Ledbury for shirts and Warby Parker for eyeglasses. All of these brands design and source their own goods. They historically would have started in the mall but they now are starting online, a trend that will undoubtedly continue. There clearly will be fewer new offline retailers to take the space vacated by the disappearing brick-and-mortar chains, further pressuring malls.

And in an ironic turn, many of these online brands are experimenting with offline stores—but typically with some important twists. Bonobos and Warby Parker have built showrooms in their New York offices where consumers can come in and try on samples. But if the consumer wants to purchase items, then the companies fulfill the product from their warehouses—they don’t stock inventory in their "stores."

The first trailer for To The Wonder came out last week:

Peter Bradshaw saw the film back in September:

Just two years after The Tree of Life – hardly more than an eye-blink in terms of his usual production-rate – Terrence Malick has returned with something which could be seen as a B-side or companion piece to that film. It is a bold and often beautiful movie, unfashionably and unironically concerned with love and God, and what will happen to us in the absence of either. … Malick goes unhesitatingly out on a limb and the branch creaks a bit. When To the Wonder ended, there was the now traditional storm of hissing and booing at the Venice film festival. Malick gets this treatment, while the most insipid, unadventurous movies here can fade to black and roll credits in respectful quiet. I can only say that I responded to its passion and idealism.

Rob Walker wonders:

Once upon a time, of course, it was a declaration: An authoritative statement from the experts about What (or Whom) To Talk About. But how often do you actually see the cover of Time these days, anyway? And what does the magazine’s cover choice communicate to you on any given week? 

He thinks it indicates an authority that we haven't quite figured out how to replace:

Arriving at some kind of replacement for that would involve a consensus not just about what has authority this second, but about what has authority that could plausibly endure. 

The two most Instagrammed locations in 2012 were in Bangkok – the Suvarnabhumi Airport and a mall – followed by Disneyland and Times Square. John Herrman zooms out:

What's happening to Instagram now is what happened to Facebook in about 2011: It's becoming a site that depends as much on the rest of the world than on the U.S., if not more. Southeast Asia is where the most growth is coming from …

Unlike Facebook, Instagram is an photo-based service, where language takes a backseat to imagery. Yet how many Bangkok residents do you follow on Instagram? How many new friends from Thailand have you made this year? If this teaches us anything, it's that nothing — not the gathered, American-service-using, largely English-speaking digital population of world — can prevail over the power of the filter bubble.

(Image: An Instagram taken by Kasama Poengkuna at the Suvarnabhumi Airport)

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian claims that "[e]very dietary preference has its corresponding political stereotype." For libertarians, it's the paleolithic diet:

Paleo-Libertarian logic maintains that the U.S. government is to blame for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and dozens of other ills by virtue of telling us to eat the state-subsidized fruits of Big Agriculture’s labor. It says the USDA’s nutrition guidelines were created with the food lobby, not the human body, in mind.

These are by no means implausible or even particularly radical claims. Some socialists and environmentalists have come to the same conclusions, at least nutritionally speaking. Still, this admittedly healthy distrust of government — not to mention the adoption of a diet that is the complete antithesis of the USDA’s recommendations — is innately libertarian. Gary Taubes, a science writer best known for his anti-sugar crusades, is widely cited in Paleo circles. When Reason magazine asked him why so many libertarians are drawn towards Paleo, Taubes responded that perhaps they simply "like the idea that government agencies and federal agencies can be just dead wrong."

This holiday season, the Dish continued to track the latest in politics and culture. Andrew wished readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and urged readers to support the Poetry Society of America with a rumination on verse. He also dissected the Pope's incoherence on gay marriage, provided further thoughts on the Zero Dark Thirty debate, relayed a personal anecdote about the "mutts of war," sounded off on marijuana prohibition, watched Bibi become even crazier, and charted Krauthammer's continued descent into Fox News absurdity. In a somber year-end meditation, he declared the American polity "broken."

The fiscal cliff loomed large, and you can read Andrew's evolving thoughts on it here, here, here, here and here.

Andrew also closely tracked opposition to Chuck Hagel possible nomination as Secretary of Defense. He told the President to grow a pair and face down the former senator's AIPAC-led critics, lamented the purity of neocon McCarthyism, evaluated the reasons for the anti-semitic slurs against the man, defended Hagel against Barney Frank, and followed the ridiculous Log Cabin Republican resistance to Hagel, including questions about who paid for the NYT ad they deployed against him, here, here and here.

– M.S.

Ask The Leveretts Anything

[Re-posted from yesterday with several questions added by readers]

During the Iranian uprising of 2009, the Dish continuously clashed with Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, the most well-known skeptics of the Green Movement. The husband and wife team continue to blog at The Race for Iran. In a recent post, they argue that the regime isn't the threat it's made out to be:

The most detailed, data-rich extensive study of suicide terrorism, done by scholars at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Air War College, concluded that there has literally never been an Iranian suicide bomber. … And so people like to talk about the Islamic Republic as run by these ‘mad mullahs,’ or even if the president is a layman, it’s this ‘crazy,’ ‘millenarian’ Ahmadinejad who just is waiting to get his hands on a nuke so he can turn the whole 70-plus million people in Iran into history’s first ‘suicide nation.’  And there is just absolutely no historical or even rhetorical support for that line of argument.  This is a country that, since its revolution, has basically been much, much more concerned about defending itself, defending the Iranian people, consolidating and maintaining its own independence in the face of hostile regional powers and hostile outside powers including, most notably, the United States.

To submit a question for Hillary and Flynt, 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 have a strong interest in seeing them answer the question or "No" if you don't particularly care. We will air their responses soon.

A reader writes:

I couldn't read this without remembering Don Becker, the bipolar Denver comedian who laid down on train tracks to cut off his own arms after becoming convinced his own hands were trying to kill him. At the time it was reported as a drunken accident. I saw the first show he did after recovering enough to perform. His opening joke: "I wanted to lose some weight and I thought 'How can I lose that weight and really keep it off?', so I joined the Amtrack weight loss program."