The Dish

MightyGodKing got there first:

Alternate caption: "I has a bucket." Another Dish fave after the jump:

And yet behind this absurdity, it is so important to remember the vastness of the cruelty and evil this creature imposes on so many. Sometimes I wonder if the funniness of Kim Jong Il is sometimes a shield for his evil in the West.

He is a monster.

From the NYT health care blog:

The number of uninsured adults and children in California swelled by 25 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to a new report by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. One quarter of the state’s population is now uninsured, according to the analysis, and less than half of those with insurance receive it through employers.

Yesterday marked the fire festival of Chaharshanbeh Suri, an annual celebration that precedes Norooz, the Persian New Year. The Iranian government frowns upon the ancient Zoroastrian holiday because of its non-Islamic roots. Shirin Sadeghi explains why this year is different:

[A]midst what has become a people's movement for fundamental change in Iran, authorities went one step further than their usual disapproval of all things Norooz, and the Supreme Leader outright banned the fire festival with a fatwa. The fatwa states that the fire festival "has no basis in Sharia and is a requisite for much harm and corruption."

A heavy security presence and arrests kept large crowds under control, but many small-scale protests shone through.

Today on the Dish we saw Netanyahu refuse to back down while McCain and Lieberman joined him. Kevin Sullivan was stunned by the situation, Greenwald challenged ultra-Israel loyalists, Roger Cohen got to the crux of the conflict, Chait defended the administration, and Walter Russell Mead offered his advice. In a must-read post, Goldblog reported Obama's intentions.

In other news, Ezra Klein discussed "deem and pass," Petraeus sounded off on DADT, and scientists discovered some cool creatures under Antarctica. Andrew reviewed the pope controversy, a gay reader shared his experience with Catholic culture, another challenged Andrew on "social justice," and others chimed in over school choice. Diane Ravitch made her case against NCLB, Bernstein countered Saletan over politicians catering to polls, TNC tackled the obesity stigma, and Wehner deliberately distorted Tom Ricks.

MHB here and cool ad here. Window from Pakistan. Another installment of Andrew's Princteton speech – this time on gay Republicans – here.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

Thank goodness that, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and arm bears has never been abridged.

Marc Lynch checks in on the Iraqi election:

Over the last few years, most American analysts have argued that these elections would offer a path to power through the ballot box for the leaders of the Awakenings.   Their evident washout in Anbar suggest that they won't, which may trigger a lot of the fears of those analysts (including me) who for years warned about the dangers of not accommodating Sunnis in the political system or integrating the Awakenings and Sons of Iraq into the state.  But the response thus far suggests reasons to be less worried than in the past.  During last January's provincial election, when it appeared that Abu Risha's list had lost,  he threatened to turn Anbar into a "graveyard" for the Islamic Party if his List was not declared the victor.  Despite mounting claims of fraud, I haven't yet been seeing many such threats this time, and don't see any reason yet to anticipate that it will trigger the much-feared resurgence of the insurgency.

Video from Wonk Room:

"it doesn't matter how the Munich case develops–it shows how deep and existentially the church has fallen into crisis… The church is not in a crisis of trust because it is a club of abusers. It is in crisis because it tends ever more towards self-pity instead of helping victims, for example with reparation money. It is in crisis because it will not admit that the priests and brethren attract sexual identity problems. It is in crisis … because until now a closeness and warmth was possible in the church that had disappeared elsewhere in society. This rare quality could now be lost. The pope has to answer for that now as well," – Matthias Drobinski, Süddeutsche Zeitung.