The Dish

Chait furrows his brow:

The striking thing about this debate is the degree to which Republicans have devoted the bulk of their energies to putting forth disingenuous arguments. The have deep-seated reasons to oppose health care reform, but they spend an enormous amount of time on arguments that they would never were the situation reversed. I don't doubt that there's some political benefit to this — the GOP base already opposes health care reform on the merits, so the way to keep them whipped into a state of outrage is to produce a stream of new process arguments about how the Democrats are doing violence to the beloved system of the Founding Fathers. Swing voters, meanwhile, do favor both the general proposition of health care reform and most of the provisions of the plan, but have recoiled at the process. So there's a logic behind the constant stream of process complaints from the right. It's just created a stupid debate.

From a press release:

Tyson has a deep passion for the birds and raised pigeons all his life. In fact his first-ever fight as a child was in defense of his birds. But this show will follow his first foray into racing them competitively… “I’m honored to be a part of this monumental show on Animal Planet,” said Tyson. “I feel a great pride acting as an official representative for all the pigeon fancier’s out there.

Warming Glow:

Wait a second, did I just read the phrase “pigeon fancier”? Of course! How could I forget the magazine cover that helped launch his career:

Dale Kildee's vote is much more critical than Kucinich's and is, in my view, a sane pro-life position, as the Catholic magazine Commonweal eloquently explains here.

A reader writes:

I don't know Breitbart well enough to comment on him personally, but anytime I read about a man who 1) has not dealt with death, and his own fear of death, 2) violently suppresses his emotions, beginning with his deep grief ("I've created a horrific buttress of protections"), and then 3) apparently specializes in a war of rage against those "others" he considers "wrong", I can't help but suspect a case of arrested development, fueled by fear, marked by displacement and projection, and perpetuated by the inability or unwillingness to face himself. I might have every sympathy for the guy — in fact, even the short quotes you featured were moving — but I have to ask, why do we all have to suffer his rage while this man works his neurosis out publicly? As Rumi said:

"You're crazy and numb.
You're drinking our blood,
and have no experience

of the nearness."

Don't we have enough of this everywhere we turn now?

We have a world in serious trouble, and a country that's become almost ungovernable. We need people now who are constructive, not destructive: sane adults who are fueled by a sense of responsibility, by courage and by love, not adolescents looking for the nest excuse to throw a neurotic tantrum. Rage can be very satisfying — temporarily. But what gets "satisfied"? The whole man or woman, the adult? Or the fearful, angry child? Or the neurosis itself?

As I understand it, Breitbart is a "conservative"; whatever that now means, I've always understood conservatives associate it, above all, with taking responsibility for yourself, with being accountable. It might do Breitbart (and all the rest of us) a world of good if he'd put aside his rage and his war against the 'other' until he's dealt with his own issues. Then he might have something to say — something real, something worth listening to.

This note was hardly worth writing — especially, as I say, since I don't know Breitbart well — except that our entire political discourse, national and international, now seems swamped by this kind of displaced fear and rage. We need to get a grip.

We need to start calling out those — left, right or middle — who are 'crazy and numb', and make their living (and perpetuate their 'horrific buttresses of self-protection') by 'drinking our blood'. We do not have to live lives, and govern a world, based on the mental illnesses of the most angry, the most fearful, the most self-absorbed. There are alternatives — and we'd better start finding them, or we will all pay the price. The 'satisfaction' of rage is not free.

It's pretty even in the polls lately but liberals have come around and, as Mark Blumenthal notes, the trend in public opinion this year has been clearly in the  

Now look at the trend in opposition:

Pass. The. Damn. Bill.

Dreher continues the conversation:

I push back hard against well-meaning people like Harriet Brown, not because I think Fat People Are Bad, but because I want to push back against this culture that tells me I can't overcome my own sloth and gluttony, that I ought to settle for the spiritual disorder that results in my being overweight. Weight loss really is hard, and as TNC says, you have to push back against this permissive, indulgent culture at every turn. I have never done it to a satisfactory degree, and any progress I've made has never been permanent. But if I weren't determined to hold the line as best I can, I would be a lot bigger than I am, and a lot less healthy.

I had a great time gabbing with her today for her reality show. She's certainly a lot gayer than I am. But she's also doing something important, rallying support for repeal of the military gay ban. There's a rally in DC tomorrow at noon in Freedom Plaza to end the persecution of gay servicemembers. Be there, straight and gay.

What else? Yeats:

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

(Photo: Paul McErline/Getty.)

Bernstein analyzes.