The Dish

Budget expert Sarah Binder explains the reconciliation process:

[K]eep in mind that when/if the House and Senate pass different versions of a reconciliation bill, Republicans could still filibuster the three motions to go to conference (even if they couldn’t filibuster the actual conference report that might emerge). If it gets to that point, expect the House and Senate to play a little ping pong as they try to get to a final agreement. So, no, nothing regarding reconciliation is as simple or as fast as it may be seem. “If you want something done quickly, don’t send it to the Senate.”

I think the House Dems should have enough balls to pass the imperfect Senate bill as is.

Or the Sex Positive Journalism Awards, the winners of which were just announced. From the News/Features category:

Second Place: "Red Sex Blue Sex," Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
Judges said: “An intelligent compare and contrast of the sexual cultures in the red vs. blue states that reminds you that 'family values' are often more aspirational than actual descriptions of daily life among evangelicals. Professed abstinence often leads to teen pregnancy, STDs, early marriage-and early divorce. And lots of shame. Talbot is too much the mainstream journalist to come out and say it, but her article shows us that religiously motivated sexual repression leads not to happy families but instability and sadness.”

Greenwald is always worth reading, agree with him or not. His review of Citizens United is most stimulating.

Dana Goodyear profiles writer Neil Gaiman, the author of Coraline:

Gaiman’s books are genre pieces that refuse to remain true to their genres, and his audience is broader than any purist’s: he defines his readership as “bipeds.” His mode is syncretic, with sources ranging from English folktales to glam rock and the Midrash, and enchantment is his major theme: life as we know it, only prone to visitations by Norse gods, trolls, Arthurian knights, and kindergarten-age zombies.

“Neil’s writing is kind of fey in the best sense of the word,” the comic-book writer Alan Moore told me. “His best effects come out of people or characters or situations in the real world being starkly juxtaposed with this misty fantasy world.” The model for Gaiman’s eclecticism is G. K. Chesterton; his work, Gaiman says, “left me with an idea of London as this wonderful, mythical, magical place, which became the way I saw the world.” Chesterton’s career also serves as a warning. “He would have been a better writer if he’d written less,” Gaiman says. “There’s always that fear of writing too much if you’re a reasonably facile writer, and I’m a reasonably facile writer.”

From later in the article:

Comics, science fiction, and fantasy conventions are nowadays something of a hardship for Gaiman—“like being a maggoty log at a woodpecker convention,” he says. A few years ago, he was at a convention with Angelina Jolie, who played Grendel’s mother in the movie “Beowulf,” for which Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. “When I try to explain that I attracted more attention than she did, people say, ‘Oh, ho, he’s being funny.’ I’m not.”

From an unsettling series of sculptures by Kate Clark.

You have few better guides than Jim Fallows.

Ted Genoways heralds the death of fiction:

[T]he less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.

Roxane Gay is tired of hearing about fiction's long death.

No, that’s not just me. It’s a headline in Moscow:

Nearly one in every three policemen in Russia is likely a psychopath or an alcoholic, the result, a leading specialist says, of the attraction that police service has for such people, the end of psychological screening of applicants, and the sense among many in the service that, as militiamen, they are beyond the reach of the law.

It's like something by Michael Bay:

Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba has acquired more than 50 para-gliding equipment from Europe, setting off alarm bells in the government that these could be used to carry out air-borne suicide attacks in the country.

The intelligence input which came barely days ahead of Republic Day celebrations has prompted authorities to ensure a tight air security around all vital installations, official sources said here on Friday.The input about movement of overground workers, owing allegiance to LeT, in Europe led the sleuths to find out that they were on a shopping spree for para-gliding equipment, the sources said. 

This kind of attack has happened before in Israel, but fifty at once?