The Dish

Rebecca Traister watched Friday’s show:

Weirdest, though, was that while Winfrey seemed perfectly willing to go after Palin for her coiffure, she didn’t challenge her when she described her new Fox job as an opportunity to get back to the “who, what, when, where and why of reporting, just stating the facts, gathering the information, providing it to the viewers and letting them decide what their opinion would be … ratcheting back to the simplicity of what journalism should be about.” Instead of pointing out that Fox News was probably airing a story about how un-American it was for the Obamas to keep a Portuguese water dog in the White House or something, Oprah just said, “Absolutely.”

I give up. (Except you know I haven’t.)

Today on the Dish, Steve Benen, Jon Cohn, Jonathan Bernstein, Nate Silver, Greg Sargent, Brian Beutler, Ed Rendell, and David Plouffe wanted to pass the damn bill already. A reader dissented. Zakaria was also critical. Jill Dorson presented a terrible case for independent outcry as Andrew and two readers piled on. Meanwhile, we saw positive results from the stimulus.

If you missed the weekend coverage, we posted a wrap and Andrew's column. More images from Haiti here, here, here, here, here, and here. Tyler Cowen and Michael Clemens insisted that we let in more of the victims while Schimmelpfennig said not to return the favor. Heather Horn checked in on the failure to close Gitmo and Marc Lynch covered the bin Laden tape. An excellent blog fight over the Gitmo "suicides" here. More reax on the SCOTUS decision here. Prop 8 update here.

In other assorted coverage, Olbermann continued his campaign to become the next Michael Moore while the LG of SC stood by an awful metaphor. Andrew blogged about blogging while a Gizmodo reader chastised the Pope for his lack thereof. Another reader shared his experience with meth, Andrew and a reader responded to an earlier account of coping with meth, and two other readers divulged their experience coping with sexual abuse. And we pointed to a cool ad confronting another kind of abuse.

On a very different note: How about a view from your window, Mr President?

— C.B.

AFP's Alex Ogle describes a harrowing scene:

When asked why there weren't greater numbers of UN troops to contain the hungry crowd, peacekeepers gestured that there weren't any more available to join them. "Uno! Uno! Uno!" the Uruguayans — part of the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) screamed in vain, holding up single fingers in a bid to form an orderly line. The crowd instead moved as one, pushed strongly from behind, toward trucks laden with rice sacks emblazoned with the US flag and gallon jugs of vitamin-enriched soy oil. A vomiting pregnant woman, still gesturing at her mouth to show hunger, was carried off by UN troops after collapsing out of the crush of bodies.

"In five minutes, we'll leave because they'll overrun us," a UN troop warned foreign press photographers. When they did withdraw the crowd wildly swarmed to get at the 50 rice sacks left behind. "It's all gone, they left nothing," wailed Geneve, an older Haitian woman clad in sweaty rags, when she finally reached the spot where trampled aid boxes laid empty. She joined dozens of others to kneel on the trash-strewn street to pick up the last rice grains.

Ogle is also tweeting:

Horrific tidbit for the day from Haiti? Orphaned four-year-old with cerebral palsy dumped at steps of overflowing hospital in Port-au-Prince

(Photo: A pregnant woman is helped by UN peacekeepers as an aid distribution point turns into chaos outside the Presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on January 25, 2010. Top world officials gathered in Montreal today for emergency talks to hash out plans to rebuild Haiti, nearly two weeks after a killer earthquake devastated the impoverished nation. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

Larison does a post-mortem on the special election:

Looking at what Brown’s voters want him to do with respect to health care, we see that they are divided right down the middle: 50% (47% strongly) do want Brown to work to halt Democratic health care efforts, and 48% (40% strongly) want him to work with Democrats to make changes to their proposals. Half of Brown’s voters want him to sink Obama’s agenda, full stop, and approximately half of them want him to collaborate with Democrats. That is what we might call a mixed message. Looking at Brown voters’ opposition to the health care bill itself, we see that two-thirds of them strongly oppose the bill, which is consistent with what we saw earlier, 14% “somewhat oppose” it and 13% actually support it. 26% of Brown voters believe government should be doing more “to solve problems.” 51% of Brown voters support MassCare. Perhaps most amusing, 52% of Brown voters approved of Ted Kennedy’s job performance.

A reader writes:

Like the RCP writer, I too am a small business owner that felt the effects of the downturn in the recession. Business ground to a halt in January/February…..we were still getting paid for some contracts that were ending, but by February, no more money was coming.

I endured 3 months without a paycheck from my business, my only income coming from the part-time job that I’ve held the last few years to help keep my head above water month to month (thanks Self Employment tax!). Luckily, my parents helped me out as well, and I was able to eat, and pay for basic services.

By the end of February, I saw the writing on the wall, and started looking for jobs. 3 months and 3 interviews later, I got lucky enough to land a position with a large publishing company. During the 3 months, I defaulted on my mortgage, and dug an ever deepening hole of debt, one that I’ve been trying to get out of for the last 3 years. Thanks to the legislation passed to help homeowners in trouble, I was able to modify my mortgage and keep my condo.

During the whole ordeal, I realized the place my business held in the hierarchy of the economy. An interactive marketing company, employing a handful of people, and using freelancers to get most projects completed. I’m not GM, whose end-product is dependent on hundreds of companies supplying all of the individual pieces of that product. I’m not Bank of America, AIG, or any other behemoth bank with billions invested in this economy. I’m small fish, and wasn’t expecting a bailout.

In the end, I had to bail myself out……ditch the pride….and find something new that would pay the bills. In the face of an economy that I can’t control, I waved my white flag. It was the responsible thing to do.

"I am disgusted to see Dos [Passos] said that writers should not write now. If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardized people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them." – Martha Gellhorn, 1941.

Brian Beutler on the latest parliamentary brain-storming.

Jon Lee Anderson is in Haiti:

Many, many people are grievously injured. So many broken limbs, so many amputations! I have been told in hospitals that amputations due to infected or untreated wounds are on the rise, not the wane; it is very worrying, since so many of the patients are being treated and housed in the open air, in conditions less than sanitary, and the medium and long term rehabilitation and recovery of so many people has the doctors and nurses seriously concerned. People have died, and continue to die, because the aid took so long to reach them. That is the sad and awful fact of what has happened in Haiti over the past eleven days.

Jay Newton-Small is also still reporting.