The Dish

Kids get it:

Calculated Risk breaks it down.

Andrew Exum interviews Deborah Amos on her new book, Eclipse of the Sunnis:

I couldn’t be on the ground in Baghdad in 2007, but I was in Damascus during the troop build up. There were more Iraqis fleeing the country in 2007 than had left in 2006. In Damascus, the UN refugee center was packed each day. By interviewing the newcomers I could document the explosion of sectarian cleansing that took place as additional U.S. moved into Baghdad neighborhoods. For many Iraqis, the price of the surge was quite high and some are still paying. Tactically, the surge contributed to the dramatic drop in violence, strategically, the surge failed to spark a political reconciliation in Iraq. Which means the refugee crisis could be with us for some time to come.

Van Jones and Andrew Morriss are debating green jobs. Morriss is against encouraging "green jobs" and cites the corn ethanol boondoggle as evidence:

In 1870, coal heated people's homes, natural gas provided light, electricity had little practical application and gasoline was a waste product from kerosene refining. The great energy policy debates of that era were concerned with whether the world would run short of coal. No one in 1870 would have predicted that coal would become almost entirely an industrial fuel in plentiful supply, that natural gas would be used primarily to generate electricity and provide residential heat, that electricity would be in widespread use in homes and industry, or that gasoline would become an expensive commodity. We know as little about our energy future as our predecessors did about theirs and so we must put a premium on strategies that can adapt to new information, circumstances and ideas. That is what entrepreneurs do best. We should let them do it.

The Tax Policy Center finds that Rep. Ryan's budget alternative falls short of its revenue goals. Also:

Top-bracket taxpayers would overwhelmingly benefit from Ryan’s tax cuts. By 2014 people making in excess of $1 million-a-year would enjoy an average tax cut of more than $600,000. To put it another way, their after-tax income would rise by nearly 30 percent.

By contrast, the average taxpayer making $75,000 or less would pay higher taxes if they  chose Ryan’s two-rate alternative. If they chose the tax plan more favorable to them, they’d do a bit better. For instance, people making between $50,000 and $75,000 would typically get a tax cut of $157 in 2014, while those making between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay $128 more on average.

Ryan responds here. Drum flags a report by Citizens for Tax Justice, a progressive tax group, that mocks the plan by writing  that "it’s difficult to design a tax plan that will lose $2 trillion over a decade even while requiring 90 percent of taxpayers to pay more. But Congressman Ryan has met that daunting challenge". Ezra thinks this shows that "even draconian, unthinkable limits on spending won't be enough to balance the budget."

Chris Blattman's reading of the situation in Uganda:

Homophobia is real and widespread. Yet Uganda boasts a vibrant gay rights movement, and nowhere else in Africa have I seen a more open and public debate. Gay men and women tell their stories in the newspapers; protests and legal battles get fair and often favorable coverage in the press. Every single editorial board of every major newspaper is solidly behind the gay rights movement.

The anti-homosexuality bill, simply put, is a backlash. A backlash from a group that, in the long run, is losing the battle of ideas.

That's my impression too from gay priests and aid workers in touch with Africa's gays.

And that is why the notion that Africa will somehow avoid the deep theological struggles over gay humanity that has engulfed the West is just untrue. The implosion of the Catholic church over homosexuality is coming. Everywhere. Until the Vatican hierarchs recognize this reality, and try to see it through the lens of the Gospels instead of their own fear and self-loathing, they are taking the church over a cliff.

The church will survive its current hierarchy, of course. It has survived worse. But something is rotten in the heart of Rome and the heart pf Christianism, which has supplanted Christianity in so many places. And more and more people are recognizing it.

Jeremy Rosner writes:

Yesterady, you attacked a poll and memo that Democracy Corps, Third Way, and our firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner released yesterday, and argue (by approvingly quoting “a reader”) that “the subtext of this poll is the same that Greenberg had been peddling for years: cede national security to the GOP, don’t make an issue out of it.”

Wherever your animus toward Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, and Stan Greenberg comes from, in this case, it’s not from any facts.

For nearly a decade, Stan, James, and I have been producing a steady stream of polls and memos advising Democrats and progressives to talk about national security more; attack the GOP positions more; spell out our own alternatives on national security more; and treat national security as an area where we can win public support, rather than approaching it from a defensive crouch. Every single poll and memo our firm and Democracy Corps have produced on this issue over the past decade has forcefully made that point, including polling memos published in September 2003, at the height of Bush’s post-9/11 popularity.

To wit: (“Voters are increasingly uneasy with Bush’s handling of foreign affairs and uncertain of his administration. A growing share believes he is alienating friends and allies abroad, failing to level with the public, ignoring key sources of America’s vulnerability, and setting the wrong priorities in balancing America’s foreign and domestic challenges. Voters are ready to listen to alternatives. When Democrats put out a clear message on national security, it now plays Bush’s post-9/11, post-Iraq message to a draw.”); in September 2006 (“Democrats continue to win the debate on Iraq and national security, even with the president’s current argument, and should speak out immediately and with confidence.”); in April 2008 (“Democrats need to go on offense on the national security debate. We have been making this point for over a year.”); and in May 2009, when we noted that President Obama’s strong leadership on national security had succeeded in closing the Democrats’ trust gap on national security (“This change signals a possible generational shift in attitudes that could have broad electoral consequences, depriving Republicans of one of their last remaining advantages just when their image has dropped to a new low relative to the Democrats.”)

These excerpts speak for themselves, and all come from publicly published memos, as a quick search of the Democracy Corps website would have revealed. After spending years as a senior staff member of the National Security Council and as a Special Adviser to President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright on national security issues, I have never, ever believed or advised that Democrats should “cede national security” to the Republicans, and neither has my partner Stan Greenberg, or my friends James Carville and Rahm Emanuel.

Today on the Dish we noted Jon Stewart's pwning of Thiessen, the Virginia governor's U-turn in favor of gay equality, and some unsettling footage from Israel. Andrew assailed the Cheneys, explained why he supported the Bush tax cuts, discussed his marriage status, and went another round with Clive Crook. Another odd lie here.

In other commentary, David Gibson offered a rationale for the pope's silence in Uganda, Lexington assessed the causes of homophobia in Africa, Orin Kerr picked apart McCarthy's McCarthyism, Samuel Goldman hit back at NRO's hypocrisy on Obama, Weigel tackled Rove's new book, Steve Lombardo wondered how big the GOP comeback will be, and a reader chimed in, The Leveretts reported from Tehran.

Particularly creepy Christianist here and especially crazy Beck here. Moore award here. Reader debate over Mo'Nique continued here. A reader dissented over Andrew's approach to Israel. And Lost got the Baywatch treatment.

— C.B.

Jonathan Bernstein interjects:

I strongly suspect that when the full history of the health care reform effort is written, it will turn out that the White House was highly involved, every step of the way.  And, yes, it is the job of the Congress to legislate…but it's also the job of the president.  As Richard Neustadt said, it isn't a government of separation of powers; it's a government of separated institutions sharing powers. The president absolutely has a role in legislating.  What he can't do is dictate to the Congress.  Again, I suppose at this point there's as much speculation as anything, but it sure looks to me as if Obama successfully found the "middle way" that Crook wanted.  Of course, to understand that requires understanding that Congress is not something for the president to "guide and supervise."  It's a co-equal branch, and it must be worked with, not supervised.

Earlier thoughts here.