The Dish

The Economist has a helpful summary of Glass-Steagall lite.

Karen Tumulty argues that incremental health care reform won't work:

[Say] you pass a bill that makes it impossible for the insurance companies to discriminate against sicker and older people. "You're going to make it expensive for young people to get insurance, especially with the inefficient individual insurance market we have today," says Starr. "Basically, health insurance becomes just a very bad deal for young people." And without healthy people in the pool of those covered, it also becomes unaffordable for sick people, too.

Chait has more along the same lines, and Douthat thinks Obama should have tried for Medicare expansion from the start.

Manzi approves of Obama's bank proposal:

Make no mistake, many banking executives right now are benefiting from taxpayer subsidies…The “populist” observation that the fact of a bunch of well-connected guys each pulling down $10 million per year while suckling on the government teat constitutes almost certain evidence of self-dealing is accurate, and all the fancy finance talk in the world can’t get around it. President Obama has a clear political incentive to pursue this proposal. I assume Republicans will see that they have a clear political incentive to go along, rather than standing up for such a situation. Hopefully, this will create the political dynamic that will allow real, positive reform.

Hopefully. (Repressing despair, anger and cynicism all at once.)

Re-enacted.

Tom Ricks gets an e-mail from a friend in Iraq:

I'm afraid things are coming to a tipping point here. If  the Chalabi-Iranian faction succeeds in keeping those 15 pro-Alawi Sunni parties off the ballot all bets are off. I can see a Shiia-on-Shiia civil war (with the Sunnis backing the Alawi faction) or a military coup as real possibilities. At this point, the best thing to happen would be to postpone the election. If they go ahead toward March the way they are heading, all bets are off. I don't think Washington is fully engaged with Haiti and Afghan distracting them. A lot of bad vibes here.

I fear my belief that the surge failed is being borne out by events. Even worse, you know what the GOP is about to do: blame Obama for the failure they set up. It's their new line: everything we screwed up over eight years is Obama's fault. Blame him. Re-elect us.

But we have known for quite a while that there has been no profound sectarian reconciliation within Iraq, and that the surge's success in tamping down violence was not equaled in its core goal: a united polity that could resolve its sectarian differences peacefully. A year and a half ago, I believed that Iraq would be the real nightmare for Obama, despite all the neocon reassurances that everything would be fine and that "victory" was already won. For a while, there were grounds to hope that this might not happen. And then the entropy of understandable mistrust and bitterness returns.

So what do we see now?

Purging of key Sunnis from the electoral process, growing restiveness in Anbar, no solution in Kirkuk, and a population armed to the teeth and trained by the US for another round of civil war. And at that point, of course, the neocon right will insist on staying there for another five years, because the alternative is so awful. And we will have this discussion as frequently as we discuss how to reform healthcare and entitlements, with the same result: nothing will ever be done because the US system cannot agree on what should be done.

Maybe we can avoid this fate. Maybe Iraq's Sunnis can come to terms with a Shiite government. Maybe the Kurds can come to some deal over Kirkuk. Maybe the election can be rescued. Maybe. I sure hope so.

But doesn't this feel like a chapter from a text book on how empires implode? Paralysis at home, over-reach abroad, mounting debt, and the disappearance of any political center. And we remain trapped in mistakes we cannot undo and yet cannot abandon.

Until even the borrowed money finally runs out.

Tyler Cowen has a theory:

Political jobs would be torture for most people.  You have no freedom.  You are underpaid and over-bugged.  You lose a lot of your privacy.  You have to stop writing emails or saying what you think.  You don't get to read many good books or go for many quiet walks.  It's hard to be a non-conformist.  And so on.

Yet it's really hard to get top political jobs.  So who gets them?  People who truly, deeply love the power.

Jay Newton-Small reports from Haiti:

There are thousands of destroyed buildings and hundreds of rescue teams in Port-au-Prince. But a potentially bigger humanitarian disaster is rapidly approaching. Without drinkable water and food, many more people will die, and there's a rising tide of anger at all the aid bottlenecked at the airport, with the U.N. and the Haitian government incapable of distributing such vast quantities. Search-and-rescue teams ignore sheets painted with pleas hanging on nearly every other street corner. "Comite Tamanoir. We need help. Food, water, medical. Many children," read one sign in English and Spanish, hanging on the side of a bottled-water shop in Delmas.

A reader writes:

My experience closely matches TNC's.  Growing up in a strict but fair Catholic home, my father had the ultimate, final word.  I found myself resenting him at times during my upbringing – and no more so when he came down on me (or my sister), or argued with our mother.  His persuasive arguments – coupled with his at-times combative tone – made it difficult to win an argument against him.  He was of course simply doing what he thought best as head of the his family but we all – Mom included – bristled under that power at times. 

Things changed when I came out to my family at 22. 

I was terrified to tell him and had already set up accommodations for that night if I was no longer welcome in their home.  But that evening, December 26th (as I didn't want to 'spoil' Christmas), as we sat around the dining room table and eating apple pie, I told my family who I am.  Mom began to cry and Dad did what he could to calm her.  "You're still my son, right?" he asked.  I assured him I was.  "Then nothing's changed," he said, making sure the point was heard by both of us. 

But of course everything changed.  My relationship with Dad has grown deeper than I knew possible.  Those many years living under this watchful eye became the foundation for an honest, rewarding, adult relationship with Dad.  He is my mentor, my soundboard, my biggest fan and an honest critic.  I cherish his perspective and relish our frequent conversations.  He is still my Dad – but that word means so much more to me now as an adult then it ever did when I was living in his house and answering to him.  I love him madly.

Today on the Dish we continued to mop up commentary over the Coakley clusterfuck. Chait reported the remaining options for healthcare, Fallows showed how Congress is held captive by an electoral minority, and Andrew rallied the troops against Rove (with some help from YouTube). Larison, Manzi, Benjamin Zycher, and Jonathan Bernstein put in their two cents. Wendy Kaminer called out Massachusetts Dems for their identity politics and Alvin Felzenberg took the critique to an absurd level.

James Surowieki assessed Obama's electoral expecations, a reader gave up on him, and another got fired up. Frum picked apart the president's proposed bank tax and Amanpour pwned Thiessen. Felix Salmon slammed the NYT paywall while Ezra wondered what's in it for the blogs.

We featured a fantastic clip of survival from Haiti. Prop 8 update here, here, and here. White supremacy took to the court, Scott Brown's wife was discovered in a bikini, and John Mayer enjoys himself – a lot. 

— C.B.