Author: Andrew Sullivan

No Frills, Please. We’re British.

David Frum compares America’s political conventions to their British equivalent:

When I spoke to British politicos about their conference, they would speak with wistful envy of the grander, gaudier spectacle of the U.S. conventions. And who doesn’t like a tiger-striped cocktail? But there is this to be said for simplicity:

The fantastic expense of the American convention has to be paid by somebody, and that “somebody” usually turns out to be a corporate sponsor with an agenda of his own. The low-cost British equivalent pays its own way, by charging a hefty fee of all attendees, especially media. I paid 600 pounds for my press credentials. It’s a cleaner way of doing business, I grant. And the combination of higher charges for unlavish proceedings is as good a way as any of preparing the media and the delegates for the forthcoming era of British budget austerity.

Perhaps Americans will be ready for an austere convention by 2012.

Is Secretariat A Stalking Horse?

In an unexpectedly dark review of Secretariat at Salon, Andrew Ohehir says that it is "a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, and all the more effective because it presents as a family-friendly yarn about a nice lady and her horse."

Roger Ebert gives that assessment two thumbs down:

Say what? We saw the same movie. I am a liberal who has found more than his share of the Dark Side in seemingly innocent films. But in my naïveté I attended "Secretariat" and saw a straightforward, lovingly crafted film about a great horse and the determined woman who backed him against a posse of men who thought she should get her pretty little ass off the horse farm and get back to raisin' those kids and darnin' those socks.

One of them is wildly wrong! Go see it and let us know.

The Pain Of Fiscal Prudence

James Poulos insists that small goverment advocates have a coherent view of the world, which isn't the same as being consistent:

Americans want to break our national addiction to entitlement spending. But they know that'll restore some burdens. And they're already feeling pretty burdened. It's not incoherence at work. It's a recognition that things have gotten so bad that it's going to hurt to steer our federal governance back toward our founding principles. Who wants to volunteer to feel that pain?

Presumably not the Tea Partiers. That's why some of us are worried that we'll get the odious parts of their belief system without even getting fiscal conservatism in the bargain.

Show Me The Note

John Carney tells us everything we need to know about why banks are having trouble proving that they own mortgages on the houses they're trying to foreclose upon: mortgage-backed securities were being sold so fast at the height of the housing bubble that financial institutions weren't even bothering to go through the normal steps that ensure it's clear who owns what.

I had one small glimpse of this trying to buy a distressed property from Bank of America. The incompetence was staggering.

The longer, still comprehensible version of Carney's piece is here.

“Armageddon” Will Happen If We Don’t Attack Iran

But no harm will come from attacking a third Muslim country in a decade. Sarah Palin really is the Christianist wing of AIPAC. But we knew that already. She is also to the right of Avigdor Lieberman when it comes to settlements on the West Bank. But we knew that already too.

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XCV: The Return Of “The Death Panels”

The first time she went off on this tangent, it did not count as an odd lie, as the Dish defines it. It was a political smear and untruth of a classic variety, known to unscrupulous pols since time began. Money quote:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

It was factually debunked, as the Pulitzer winner Politifact noted:

We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's "level of productivity in society" to determine whether they are "worthy" of health care.

This time, however, she has repeated it, despite the demonstrable fact that it is untrue.

Now you can legitimately worry that a healthcare system that will one day have to control costs may resort to some kind of rationing. But that is light years from a "death panel" assessing your productivity and whether you can live or die. As Dish readers know, this is a classic Palin odd lie because it restates something that everyone in reality knows to be untrue:

I was about laughed out of town for bringing to light what I called death panels because there's going to be faceless bureaucrats who will based on cost analysis and some subjective ideas on somebody's level of productivity in life—somebody is going to call the shots as to whether your loved one will be able to receive healthcare or not: to me, death panels. I call it like I saw it, and people didn't like it.

Yes, she calls it like she sees it; and she is clinically delusional and incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality.

(Hat tip: Corn)

A Showdown With The Pentagon?

Peter Beinart analyzes a new appointment:

James Jones is out as national security adviser; Tom Donilon is in. What does it mean? Among other things, that we may be headed for one of the greatest civilian-military showdowns in decades.

Here's part of his reasoning:

Throughout Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, Donilon makes cameos as the guy who screams at generals for trying to trick or push Obama into a deeper commitment to Afghanistan than he wants to make.