Matt Lewis interviews Thatcher biographer Claire Berlinski about the Iron Lady's alleged parallels with Sarah Palin:
Money quote from Berlinski:
[Palin is] obviously a talented politician … [T]here's something so ridiculous, however, about Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for the presidency. It's really a case, almost, of mass psychosis — that anyone could ever have been seriously considering this.
(Hat tip: Palingates)
Drum wonders how serious Republican health care repeal efforts are:
Republicans are loudly proclaiming right now that they want to eliminate the part of the law that forces everyone to buy insurance. But that's exactly the part of the law that insurance companies like. In fact, they want to see it strengthened. At the same time, they want to get rid of the popular parts of the law that keep insurance companies from figuring out ways to screw patients. But those are the provisions that Republicans say they'll keep if we turn over Congress to them.
And yet, the insurance companies are massively funding Republicans this cycle anyway. Why would that be? It's almost as if they're sure that Republicans are just blowing campaign smoke and will support their agenda once they're safely in office.
It almost is, isn't it? Ezra Klein has more.
Kincaid guides us through the new report. Its conclusion that 4.2 percent of men are gay seems roughly accurate to me. But only 0.9 percent of women as lesbian? But then you see among women another 3.6 percent calling themselves bisexual, and an extra 2.3 percent "other." Male sexuality does seem more fixed than women's.
Iowa's judges face electoral Christianist wrath.
Frustrated House still waiting for Senate action on 420 bills. Dudes, chill.
Massie evaluates the British government's attempt to means-test the Child Benefit, a tax subsidy for having children:
[A]s Tyler Cowen says, these are interesting times: the UK is the first Western country in recent memory to attempt a comprehensive overhaul of its welfare state. This means it's going to be a messy, protracted, sometimes piecemeal and sometimes unfair business. Anomalies will abound. (Of course they also abound at present but, by virtue of being customary, established anomalies are much more acceptable than new ones.)
Nevertheless, if you were starting from scratch would you really take the view that what the country needs to do is collect its taxes and then use those taxes to send child-support cheques to every family in the country, regardless of need?
If you want to see what real fiscal conservatives look like, and not the nutjob fiscal frauds now running as Republicans, go to Britain. Makes me proud to be a Tory. And, yes, defense is on the cutting block. And some taxes will be raised. Because they're not a bunch of dishonest loons and are actually taking responsibility for their country rather than demonizing Kenyan anti-colonialists.
"please sir jeffrey goldberg you glimpsed cuban president fidel I castrate and preguntele because he does not let enter the cuban ferrymen so that they can enter to see its families is an injustice which the cuba government hase that does not let enter the ferrymen is necessary to denounce the injustice that I castrate hasen them with not allowing that the cuban ferrymen only enter because they left illegal," – from Goldblog's intray.
Yay for auto-translate!
What if the United States were ruled by intelligent yogurt? John Scalzi has a short story that provides all the answers. He says it's just as realistic as Atlas Shrugged.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney… has a capacity for intellectual dishonesty that can take your breath away… If he thought there was some political advantage in asserting that two plus two is five, Romney would be out there within minutes with a speech about how business had taught him a thing or two that these government bureaucrats will never understand and promising that in his administration two plus two will equal six.
The Dish 