The Dish

Chait's analysis of this story:

I see two potential explanations. Either Obama doesn't know what he wants to do, and his deputies are spreading conflicting stories in order to see what takes, in which case he needs to make up his mind pronto. Or else he wants to do what he says he wants to do, but his chief of staff is out there subverting his agenda and making Congress doubt his seriousness, in which case Obama needs to shut up Emanuel or fire him.

Yep and yep.

Sonny Bunch raises an eyebrow:

Let me see if I understand Andrew correctly: President Obama engages in an unprecedented attack on the judiciary, botches the facts of the case at hand (or willfully distorts them for partisan political purposes), and has yet to correct himself…and Justice Alito is at fault for politicizing the judiciary? Seriously? Did that just happen?

A reader is less restrained:

I can’t help but think if Sarah Palin had mischaracterized a ruling you agreed with and if a Supreme Court justice you liked had done what Alito did, you’d be raking Palin across the coals for lying about the Supreme Court’s decision, for ignoring the separation of powers and you’d be lauding the counter-Alito.

Really Andrew, you’ve gone so far over to the other side, it’s now comical.  Your sense of balance and fair play, your objectivity have been eroding for years.  Now they’ve fallen completely apart.  I still visit your site just to stay current on the cocoon you live in.

I guess I am part of the great unwashed, those ignorant ya-hoo’s who just don’t appreciate all the fine work our president and congressional majorities are doing for us.  Damn me all to hell, I read everything you say and I still don’t get it.  I must be crazy.  Of course I should trust fully a process where senators are openly bribed and where we are assured endlessly that a program that exempts unions and congress, that doesn’t go into effect until Obama has run for office a second time, that “will save us money” (our government’s track record in that regard is surely comforting) and that will cap our costs but provide everything we had before (sure, doctors and hospitals work more for less money: who wouldn’t, given the opportunity?).  And when the president pumps his numbers of ‘jobs saved’, clearly misstates a Supreme Court opinion and other mistakes already documented by the NYT, among others, I should just sit still and realize that I am a nihilist, vicious dumbass.  Please.

Many conservatives were furious with Bush for his profligate spending.  He had no choice on the bank bail out, nor did Obama (although Obama obscured his mere continuation of Bush’s policy, taking undue credit for his own role).  But the continued spending is ridiculous.  New programs are ridiculous and his fake freeze fools only those who were buying his BS in the first place.

Another reader makes the same point with somewhat less malice:

Judge Alito's reaction was an honest response to a lie told about him, to him. It was no more a departure from protocol than Speaker Pelosi's jack-in-the-box glee every time Obama proposed a vast new expenditure. Had Obama spoken honestly about a technical interpretation of a legal point, Alito should have been a statue. But that was not the case: Obama made up a fantasy–one which could easily cause a reasonable and learned judicial mind to have a reaction of revulsion. Had Alito sat stone-faced, the after-action report would have been that he "got told" and had to take it like a wayward toddler.

You betray your hero-worship of Obama when, in times when he is behaving in a ridiculous and ineffective manner, you run pictures of him from the campaign when he was standing around looking thoughtful, or speaking to his favorite kind of audience: tearful worshippers. Now you betray yourself further when you seek to make him immune to opposition.

Even with the new SCOTUS ruling, Doritos can't sponsor his 2012 run.

Tonight is the best night in two years to gaze at the Red Planet:

Astronomers call this event an opposition because, if you could look down on the solar system from above, you’d see Mars, the Earth and the sun in a line, with Earth in between. In other words, when we pass between Mars and the sun, Mars appears opposite the sun: in opposition to the sun, according to the language of astronomy.

(Image source: NASA)

A reader writes:

I watched the ad. Not only was it stupid but as a single gay dad, I would prefer my children and the rest of the nation not see it anyway. The reason? Their logo which states "Where many, many, many men come out to play". This sounds like a sex hook up site and visiting the site confirmed that. Just what the gay community needs is something else to reinforce the BS that all we are about is promiscuous sex. CBS did the average gay person a favor and protected our image by rejecting it.

Bring back the UCC ad and see if they reject that again. Then I'll have a problem with CBS.

A reader, among many, writes:

That obit was not dyspeptic. It was a loving parody of Salinger's style! The dead giveaway is the spelling of 'crumby'. Come to think of it, Salinger's style could be kind of dyspeptic, I suppose. But still, I think a clarification is in order…

TNC pipes up:

The right strategy isn't to restrict the other side's room to speak, it should be to expand our own. Don't like Tim Tebow's ad? Salute his right to speak his mind. Bring out all the usual homilies about how great it is to live in a country where we're free to respectfully debate heart-wrenching issues. And then after you've done that, cut your own ad and make your case. What's the use of having all these effete Hollywood liberals if can't cut a better ad than James Dobson?

But when they do cut an ad tackling anti-gay stereotypes, CBS turns it down! A reader adds:

I point you to this post – it appears that Pam Tebow didn't have a choice because in the Philippines, where she was living, abortion is illegal. The only reason she may have had a "choice" (to do something illegal in terminating her pregnancy) is because she was white, (relatively) rich and privileged over there – which is what tends to happen when you criminalize abortions – rich women still have a "choice" and poor women don't.  So that's why the ad is wrong – because it's deceitful.

Weigel reports on the GOP response to Obama's spending freeze:

“Ninety-five percent of Republican candidates, officials, staffers and advisers do not give a rat’s ass about fiscal restraint or government size,” one strategist told TWI. “At the end of the day, 95 percent of them believe people want to hear about fiscal restraint, but ultimately want government to give them stuff. This is how we default to talking about tax cuts, not spending, because everyone is afraid that if you criticize a spending item, you’ll offend someone. Well, you will. But when you bankrupt the whole country, which Obama’s proposal is not going to stop, you offend millions.”

The cynicism is so so so so deep, isn't it? But just remember that the GOP is utterly uninterested in cutting any spending at all. They are fiscal frauds.

James O’Keefe tells his side of the story. Chris Good corrects:

At first impression, the New Orleans escapade looked to everyone in the media–myself included–like an attempt to wiretap, or at least damage, the office's phone lines. That the event was "apparently" a wiretapping attempt was noted consistently on this blog; that aspect wasn't asserted as fact in posting on O'Keefe's arrest. Still, I'll cop to having misread this event (assuming O'Keefe is telling the truth here, and that the unnamed law enforcement official who spoke to reporters has accurate information) before more information came to light, along with pretty much everyone else.

Along these lines, the Dish shouldn't have written "wiretapping" in the title of this post.