Author: Andrew Sullivan

"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke," – Alvin Greene, joke Democratic nominee for US Senate in South Carolina.

The execution of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, an Iranian mother of two accused of adultery, is imminent:

She was forced to confess after being subjected to 99 lashes, human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei said Thursday in a telephone interview from Tehran. She later retracted that confession and has denied wrongdoing. Her conviction was based not on evidence but on the determination of three out of five judges, Mostafaei said. She has asked forgiveness from the court but the judges refused to grant clemency. Iran's supreme court upheld the conviction in 2007.

NIAC has more:

In order for Ashtiani to have received the punishment of stoning, her adultery case must have been reopened, human rights activists say. Moreover, it is possible that Ashtiani had trouble understanding the court proceedings due a language barrier, said human rights attorney Mohammad Mostafaei. She speaks Turkish, the court proceedings were held in English.

The EU is putting last minute pressure on the Iranian government to spare Ashtiani.

Frum notes that class mobility in the US is not what it is sometimes imagined to be:

This is not an argument in favor of the European way of doing things. I agree with Lowry and Ponnuru – and Charles Murray too – that American freedom and individualism are important national values to be celebrated and defended.

But let’s not flatter ourselves: Those values exact a social cost – and they would be easier to defend if the cost were less high. And the fact that this cost is not being paid by my children or (probably) yours does not make the cost less real to the one-third of America whose children do pay it.

Chait marvels at Frum's increasing willingness to confront conservative shibboleths. Reihan disputes some of Frum's conclusions about child poverty.

(Hat tip: Massie)

Chait answers my question:

Congress is representing the generalized pro-Israel feelings of the public, which are strong, as opposed to their ambivalent views of the Flotilla incident, which are weak. In an environment where public opinion is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and when asked about a specific incident involving Israel, two-thirds of the public is either favorable to Israel or uninformed, the expected outcome is for Congress to support Israel.

And when the US public was clearly divided over the assault on Gaza – even Rasmussen found a 44- 41 split in general and opposition to Israel's assault reached 51 percent among Democrats – the Congress backed Israel in a resolution by unanimous consent in the Senate and with only 5 dissenting votes in the House. That was a function of Congress' reflection of popular opinion? Please. While half of Democratic voters were against the war, Democratic senators were unanimous behind it? Can Chait offer another example of such a massive discrepancy? There was more Democratic opposition to the Iraq war than to the Gaza war, which even Israel now concedes was beset with war crimes on its side as well as Hamas's. Chait is second to none is seeing through bullshit, except on this question.

I don't doubt that in any abstract conflict between "Arabs" and "Jews", Americans are likely overwhelmingly to back "Jews," and given the nature of Israel's democracy and the autocracies in most Arab states, I don't disagree. But the overwhelming nature of Congressional majorities on this question needs explanation. It's obviously a function of an extremely committed and affluent lobby – which distorts US foreign policy on Israel (and, via a different lobby in a different context, Cuba) against the interests of the US. My view is that we should try to avoid that kind of distortion. On Israel, Chait doesn't. 

Chris Good explains why the news is significant:

Because Levi Johnston represented a liability to Sarah Palin. He made repeated claims about her home life, representing her as a genuinely awful and selfish person. Regardless of whatever axe he had to grind, Palin's critics don't think she has any credibility either, and his claims were probably, mostly, believed by the people who don't support her. Even if you think he was lying, his public spat with the Palins added an unwanted bush-league, Jerry-Springer, soap-opera aspect to their private lives, and apparently it's one that Sarah Palin won't have to deal with anymore in her career as a public figure/politician.

Because she threatened to keep him from his child and longtime girlfriend. Taegan Goddard notes:

There was no mention of the book Johnston was supposedly writing that would "air the true story of the Palin household."

She's nothing if not brutal in defense of her own interests and lies.

Yesterday struck me as a humiliating spectacle for the president of the United States. What did he get out of the meeting? Netanyahu did not utter the words "Palestinian state" and made no pledge to continue even the freeze on new settlements in the West Bank after September. For this, he was feted and personally walked to his car. Maybe, as the NYT suggested, there has been a private deal to extend the settlement moratorium on the West Bank. If so, that makes this explicable. Or maybe Obama realized he has no ability to leverage Israel on anything, and was just desperately trying to get pro-Israel Democratic donors to pony up in time for the mid-terms. He didn't even publicly call for continuation of the moratorium! He also caved on Israel's 150 nukes:

In another gesture to the Israelis, Mr. Obama emphasized that there had been no shift in American policy on Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, despite the United States’ signature on a recent United Nations document that singled out Israel for its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, binding 189 countries.

Beinart sums up my feelings:

What kind of schmuck does Netanyahu think Obama is? He wants Obama to push the Palestinians into direct talks with Israel—talks the Palestinians are wary of because they fear that Netanyahu isn’t serious about negotiating a Palestinian state. The Netanyahu-Obama meeting was meant to help jumpstart those direct talks, and yet Netanyahu wouldn’t even utter the words “Palestinian state,” let alone outline what its borders should be. (Something Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has done in detail). The bald reality is this: Netanyahu has zero interest in birthing a Palestinian state until Hamas is crushed and the Iranian regime is disarmed, if not overthrown. And he can’t seem to grasp that movement towards a Palestinian state might actually further those goals. If this is what Obama gets for playing nice, perhaps he should consider going back to tough love.

But tough love didn't work either. We are discovering that in a struggle between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel, it really is no contest. Somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

Some hopeful signs of a bipartisan consensus on raising the social security cap and the retirement age. The Dish will support anyone of any party who has the balls to tackle this. And so far, the GOP's Boehner and the Dems' Hoyer and Clyburn are on the right side of the struggle.