The Dish

I’ll be on WBUR radio in Boston tonight from 7 till 8 pm on marriage equality. And I’ll be on Aaron Brown’s Newsnight on CNN at 10 pm. The marriage wars are now fully engaged. So to speak.

It’s a classic bubble phenomenon. People are backing Kerry because others are backing Kerry. Will it burst? Noam Scheiber and Jon Chait weigh in.

The Onion has the scoop.

Confused about the budget picture? Here are some very helpful stats and graphs, courtesy of the Cato Institute. If you’re not worried about the spending explosion after looking at these, you’re Dennis Kucinich.

Unlike the New York Times and even Time, the Washington Post has finally realized what the religious right amendment to the constitution really means. Or at least they are fair enough to present the conflicting views about its impact:

The amendment’s authors say it is a compromise that would not stop state legislatures from allowing civil unions. Gay rights groups disagree. Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, which supports marriage rights for gays, said the White House and “the Christian right” are “being deliberately deceptive.” He said the “vague and sweeping language” of the proposed amendment’s second sentence “is intended to deny any other measure of protection, including civil unions and domestic partnerships.”

Exactly. This is the real fight. If the religious right were only interested in preventing any state from having marriage rights for gays, they would propose an amendment that would simply say: “Civil marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” That would do it. But their second sentence is a stealth bomb aimed directly at gay couples, stripping them of any rights or benefits or protections. If the president endorses the Musgrave Amendment, he will be declaring war on gay couples, in order to boost his political fortunes. That’s the reality, however they want to dress it up.

In both primaries yesterday, Kerry won close to a half of the votes and Edwards won around a quarter. But more interestingly, as Will Saletan points out in a must-read, Edwards beat Kerry on the question of the issues and among those in the more moderate wing of the party, i.e. those who were less angry with Bush and more in the “satisfied but not enthusiastic” camp. Edwards wins more pro-war voters as well. I infer that most Dem voters so far have been conned into voting for the idea of Kerry, not the reality. And the idea is that he is more electable. And that has become almost self-fulfilling. Edwards is therefore absolutely right to stay in. More Democrats like his views than like Kerry’s (whatever they are as of 1.25 am today), and more middle-of-the-roaders support him. The vast majority of delegates has yet to be decided. In a clear two-way race, it could get very interesting. Now we’ve gotten rid of Clark (see below), the media needs to create a new dynamic. I’m with the Economist on this: give Edwards a chance. Kerry is far less than meets the eye.

CLARK DEPARTS: We can all now heave a huge sigh of relief. The man had no political experience, had been on every side of a critical issue (the war against Saddam), believed in preposterous conspiracy theories, and backed any left-liberal cause regardless of his previous positions. The sole rationale for his candidacy was his military record – a record which ended in his being fired for being unstable in the Kosovo war. But what amazed me even more was how many otherwise sane Democrats seemed to take him seriously. “You’re really scared, aren’t you? I can see it” was the refrain from many liberal friends. Yes, I was scared. Not that he was a formidable figure bestriding the political scene like a colossus. But that he was a nut-case who had a shot at becoming the nominee of a serious political party. Now he can go back to what he was planning all along: raking in the usual lobbyist dough. See you at the Palm, Wes.

One more reason to be worried about the U.S.’s increasingly perilous fiscal future is that it could well jeopardize the war on terror – which will need real resources for the foreseeable future. I like Bush’s new spending on defense and homeland security (which is not to say that all of it wisely used). But that’s precisely why I think we need to cut back elsewhere. My agenda: means-test social security, scale back Medicare, abolish agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare and move toward a flat tax that the super-rich cannot evade. That’s one good answer to the Dems’ itching to raise taxes again. We can do it all – if only we stop wasting so much on people and special interests (of left and right) who do not need the help. Fareed Zakaria gets the idea. The one thing you learn from history is that inattention to national finances is the surest sign of decay in global power. No one can be for long-term deficits and the war on terror. They negate each other. When people tell me to forget the debt because the war on terror trumps everything else, they are missing the fact that the deficit will kill this war sooner than any Baathist insurgent. The struggle abroad desperately requires reform and sacrifice at home. I just hope this president (and future ones) understand this. I fear he doesn’t.

This time between a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi doctor. Ignore the Guardian’s anti-war spin. This is a real Valentine’s Day story:

“It was kind of funny, I kind of flustered her,” says Blackwell, at home outside Pensacola, Florida. “She was telling me [a story], like: ‘They want to kidnap me’ [referring to the fundamentalists in Qud] and I just kind of smiled and said, ‘Well, I can’t blame them.’ She said: ‘What?’ and I said, ‘I’d kidnap you.’ I was just flirting with her. She got a little flustered and forgot how to speak English, and started talking to my interpreter in Arabic and he was translating for her, and then she started speaking English again. She was a little embarrassed. Open flirtation like that… well, it’s a big no-no actually over there. But… it happened to work. That was basically it about how we met, and she just continued to visit every two to three days for the next four months.”

He’s out of the military and she’ll soon be out of Iraq, headed for a wedding in Florida.

BETTER DEAD THAN GAY: Even corpses can marry in France, it seems.

EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA: Why isn’t there more attention to the fact that the split is far from simply caused by the U.S.? A good Euro-blog notes one German finding her compatriots culpable.

“Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he went to the United Nations seeking a diplomatic alternative to war. In fact, the United States rejected all diplomatic alternatives at the time, severely damaging relations with some of its most important and loyal allies.” – New York Times editorial. February 9 2004.

“Yesterday’s unanimous vote at the United Nations Security Council sends the strongest possible message to Baghdad…This is a well-deserved triumph for President Bush, a tribute to eight weeks of patient but determined and coercive American diplomacy…Only if the council fails to approve the serious consequences it now invokes — generally understood to be military measures — should Washington consider acting alone.” – New York Times editorial, November 9, 2002.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I’m a 17 year-old high school student. I just want to let you know that your recent article in the TIME Magazine really changed how I thought of myself and my “situation.” Your lines, addressed to a ‘young kid’ – “I want to let him know that he doesn’t have to choose between himself and his family anymore…I want him to know that his love has dignity, that he does indeed have a future as a full and equal part of the human race…” – truly opened my eyes. I live in a Protestant home. I have NOT told my family that I am gay … I feel like it will crush them. My older brother is an evangelical Christian, and when the news about the Massachusetts Court Ruling came out, my brother talked of how homosexuality is unnatural and is an abomination of God. He said that homosexuals were generally perverts and did not have a genuine attraction to the same sex, but simply desired “to feel good.” My brother is intelligent, but his views and the views of my parents make it difficult for me to “come out.” I have become depressed because of this … I am terrified that my family will find out my secret and denounce me. After reading your article, I felt a sense of hope. You’re right … I no longer have to choose between myself and my family anymore. Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that your article did make a difference in one ‘young kid’s life.” If people want to know why I will never stop writing about this, this email is the answer. More feedback on the Letters Page.

A recent Rasmussen poll of 1000 likely voters found the following:

[O]nly 60 percent of Republicans say their party leader is better at controlling government spending than the Democratic contender. Democrats and unaffiliated voters say that Kerry is better. Fifty-three percent (53%) of conservative voters say Bush is better on controlling spending while 21% name Kerry. Among moderates, 20% think the President is better while 54% name Kerry. Self-identified liberal voters overwhelmingly say Kerry is better.

21 percent of conservative voters back Kerry over Bush on this. That’s amazing to me. But it’s the moderates that should have Bush worried.