The Dish

I was recently informed by an insider about how Mark Halperin and John Heilemann had a fantastic scoop in their upcoming election book about how Palin repeatedly couldn't get Joe Biden's name right in prepping for her high-wire debate performance. Mike Allen leads with the scoop today. But it isn't a scoop. Palin, with characteristic canniness, got in her own version of this story first. If Schmidt really wants to tell his side of this story, he needs to get real. But to get real, of course, he has to confess that he was guilty of near-criminal professional negligence in selecting Palin without knowing anything about her. And so Palin gets to tell her lies and spin with impunity. Because the GOP establishment is both so cynical and condescending to Palin's base (she was absolutely right to smell elitist contempt in the mindset of McCain), they will never take the Palinites head on. And because the professionals are busted, Palin gets to define the party and perhaps divide it more profoundly. The ridden tiger keeps burning brighter.

In many ways, these are perilous populist times for the Democrats. But when you see Palin stiffing CPAC, embracing the fringe Birther WND right, and when you see Rubio and Brown embrace torture, and when you witness the increasing clout of fundamentalism, and the extremity of the anti-government rhetoric … you wonder if McCain's massive blunder did not just destroy what hope he had in 2008, but was actually a slow-fuse detonator of the entire Republican coalition.

What a loser McCain is. His soul has been sold so many times now it's a wonder it's not on eBay. And yet he is so useless as a politician, so incapable of winning any national election, and so desperate to do so, he may also have destroyed his career and party in the process.

Really thorough and insightful analysis from Daniel Indiviglio:

Even though December's national unemployment rate was unchanged, I found this report to be surprisingly negative. I would have thought that December would be a very slow month for layoffs, given the holidays. But the economy still lost 85,000 more workers in December, reversing direction from November's gain of 4,000 jobs. And the soaring number of discouraged workers is also quite bad news. You won't be able to have a legitimate decline in unemployed Americans until that number comes way down. Of course, for that to happen, the national unemployment rate will first have to go up, with those Americans re-entering the workforce.

The Leverett's respond to critics, including the Dish:

Others, including Andrew Sullivan and Scott Lucas, criticized our comparison of the December 27 and December 30 crowds by discounting the larger numbers who turned out to support the Islamic Republic on December 30 on the grounds that some of the participants in the pro-Islamic Republic rallies were reportedly ordered to take part and received free transport, cake, and tea.  From a strategic perspective, the most important point here is the comparison between Iran today and in 1978-1979:  when protests started against the Shah, there was no level of state coercion or any amount of tea, cake, or free transportation that could bring significant numbers of people into the street to rally for the Pahlavi regime.  By contrast, the Islamic Republic retains an obvious and demonstrable capacity to elicit such manifestations of support—and that reinforces our argument that the Islamic Republic is not imploding.

Juan Cole thinks the Leveretts underestimate the opposition but agrees "that Iran gives no evidence of being on the verge of revolution." Goldblog charts Hillary Mann Leverett's evolution over the years. But here, for visuals, is evidence of the alleged strength of support for the Khamenei junta. It's a pro-Khamenei demonstration in Karaj, a city of a million and a half. Look at the numbers who showed up:

That was the structural analytical error that gave us the undie-bomber. John Brennan takes responsibility for that:

"I told the president today I let him down.  I am the president's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism. And I told him that I will do better and we will do better as a team."

Ken Silverstein interviews Gregory Johnsen, who writes for the Yemen blog Waq al-Waq:

I don’t support the idea that if U.S. makes gains against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, then Al Qaeda will just pop up somewhere else, like a whack-the-mole game. Failures of U.S. and Yemeni policy are responsible for Yemen’s instability, not our successes in other areas of the globe. There are individuals that travel back and forth between these countries all the time, and Yemenis have been active in Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we haven’t seen a huge mass of individuals moving from Pakistan or Afghanistan to Yemen. We did see in summer of 2008 an influx to Yemen of Saudis who could be involved with Al Qaeda. But my knowledge about this is limited to open-source Internet sites that inform Al Qaeda.

Hooman Majd argues that the Iranian opposition is not trying to overthrow the regime:

What is evident is that if we consider Iran's pro-democracy "green movement" not as a revolution but as a civil rights movement — as the leaders of the movement do — then a "win" must be measured over time. The movement's aim is not for a sudden and complete overthrow of Iran's political system. That may disappoint both extremes of the American and Iranian political spectrums, left and right, and especially U.S. neoconservatives hoping for regime change.

He also says that violence is not widespread among the green movement:

The radical elements claiming to be a part of the green movement only speak for a small minority of Iranians. The majority still want peaceful reform of the system and not necessarily a wholesale revolution, bloody or otherwise. That’s why, in the most recent Ashura demonstrations, for example, large groups of peaceful marchers actually prevented some of the movement’s radicalized elements from beating or attacking security forces. Although accurate polling information is not available, based on what we hear and see of the leaders of the green movement and many of its supporters, radicalization is still limited to a minority of protesters.

(Hat tip: RaceForIran)

Heather Horn rounds up reaction on the right regarding Palin's role at the Tea Party Convention:

Lonely Conservative writes of being "torn," sympathizing with the Tea Party movement but thinking "all this talk of a third party … is counterproductive," and likely to lead to Democratic victories. Instead, "I'm hoping the GOP will learn something from the Tea Party movement and behave accordingly." Also, Lonely Conservative isn't nuts about the report of Palin taking a hefty sum for speaking at the event–while a big Palin supporter, the blogger says that being paid $75,000 for the event, as rumors are having it, makes her seem "fake."

Weigel reports that Palin will be sharing the stage with WorldNetDaily's editor:

I was surprised that Sarah Palin, who has twice passed on chances to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, agreed to keynote the National Tea Party Convention. Undoubtedly the Tea Party event has more to offer her financially–tickets for her speech, as I reported last month, are selling for $349. But while CPAC is a well-established event with a filter for extremism, the Tea Party event is an unknown quantity. And right on cue, the conspiracy-minded site WorldNetDaily is joining the program, with Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah getting a plum Friday night speaking slot.

Bruce Schneier takes another look at airport security after the underwear-bomber:

To the extent security failed, it failed before Abdulmutallab even got to the airport. Why was he issued an American visa? Why didn’t anyone follow up on his father’s tip? While I’m sure there are things to be improved and fixed, remember that everything is obvious in hindsight.

After the fact, it’s easy to point to the bits of evidence and claim that someone should have “connected the dots.” But before the fact, when there millions of dots — some important but the vast majority unimportant — uncovering plots is a lot harder.

Despite this, the proposed fixes focus on the details of the plot rather than the broad threat. We’re going to install full-body scanners, even though there are lots of ways to hide PETN — stuff it in a body cavity, spread it thin on a garment — from the machines. We’re going to profile people traveling from 14 countries, even though it’s easy for a terrorist to travel from a different country. Seating requirements for the last hour of flight were the most ridiculous example.

Today on the Dish we saw a US president accept responsibility for a disaster (imagine that), but it appeared his boldness was just words. The first transgender appointee got unwanted attention from both the fringe and the mainstream (will Drudge hit her next?) and Palin made a deal with the Tea Party. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime continued its comical cover-up, though we did see signs of cracking.

In Iran commentary, Kevin Sullivan and Larison defended the Leveretts. On torture, Andrew used both barrels on Cheney and saved plenty of ammo for Thiessen.  Ross, a reader, and Reihan joined the Chait-Manzi debate. Charles Murray demonstrated an awful approach to race while TNC had the best. Hitchens took on the Dutch cartoonist attack, Kinsley went after newspapers, and a reader dissented with Andrew over Israel. Also, we heard more from "Jew Town" and were reminded of South Africa's progressive strides on gays.

Finally: eff you iPhone.

— C.B.

I love this:

I generally support more sunshine in all government proceedings. But the judge’s unusual method of securing video coverage is extremely troubling. This isn’t a sincere educational effort to provide transparency to the public. It’s a flagrant attempt at making Prop. 8 a show trial — and intimidating Prop. 8 backers who will be called to testify.

Huh? How is something a show-trial because it is televised?

The trial, in fact, would be an excellent occasion for the anti-gay right to demonstrate the cogency of its arguments with respect to the second class status of gay couples under the law. And this lawsuit, remember, was brought in part by old-school conservative Republican Ted Olson. The truth is: in a legal proceeding, you have to rely on evidence, not scary television ads about gays coming to get your kids. On that level, on the level of rational argument, the anti-gay right is afraid.

Well: they're not stupid. Transparency kills them. Bring it on!