The Dish

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver finds an interesting correlation:

Earlier this year, the World Bank ranked countries according to their vulnerability to five particular harms from climate change: drought, flooding, storms, sea-level rise, and agricultural impact. Some 20 nations ranked either in the top 12 in at least two categories or the top five in any one category and were included in the Gallup survey.

In those countries, on average, just 47 percent of the residents in the survey said they knew something about climate change at all. This compares to 61 percent for all countries worldwide, and 93 percent in the highly-developed G8 countries.

by Chris Bodenner

Health Insurers Caught Paying Facebook Gamers Virtual Currency To Oppose Reform Bill

(Hat tip: TDW)

by Andrew Sprung

As Chris noted earlier today, Glenn Greenwald extended his grudge match with Joe Klein today:

Over the weekend, Time's Joe Klein, undoubtedly reciting what his hawkish government sources told him, trotted out a brand new "justification" for the war in Afghanistan:  we have to stay in order to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war with each other.  The U.S. government excels at finding brand new Urgent National Security Reasons to continue fighting wars once the original justifications fail or otherwise become inoperative:  no more Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Still have to stay, otherwise India and Pakistan will fight.  As part of his stenography services, Klein explained:

[S]ome of the best arguments about why this war is necessary must go unspoken by the President.

I can see contesting the swallow-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly logic of the U.S. fighting a war in Afghanistan to keep Pakistan from imploding and to keep it from going to war with India.  But there is nothing new or really covert about this argument, though the Administration is not exactly trumpeting it. It's been aired for some time, and it's central to the Administration's calculus. Here's Steve Coll — a net supporter of the Administration's AfPak policy but no "stenographer" –  testifying before the Senate on Oct. 1:

The success of Pakistan—that is, its emergence as a stable, modernizing, prosperous, pluralistic country, at peace with its neighbors and within its borders, and integrated economically in South and Central Asia—is obviously important, even vital, not only to the United States but to the broader international community.

One obstacle to the emergence of such a Pakistan is the deeply held view within the Pakistani security services that the United States will abandon the region once it has defeated or disabled Al Qaeda. Pakistani generals correctly fear that a precipitous American withdrawal from Afghanistan would be destabilizing, and that it would strengthen Islamist radical networks, including but not limited to the Taliban, who are today destabilizing Pakistan as well as the wider region.

Alternatively or concurrently, sections of the Pakistani military and civilian élite also fear that the United States may collaborate with India, naïvely or deliberately, to weaken Pakistan, by supporting governments in Kabul that at best are hostile to Pakistani interests or at worst facilitate Indian efforts to destabilize, disarm or even destroy the Pakistani state.

The problem lies in how the Taliban and the Pakistan Army will read the explicit use of a calendar. Ahmed Rashid, on NPR’s Morning Edition, speaking from Lahore, voiced the same fear that seized me when I heard the President be so explicit about 2011: No matter how nuanced the invocation, Pakistani liberals fighting against the Army’s hedging strategy of support for the Taliban and Al Qaeda will be demoralized by the use of a specific date. They will interpret it as evidence that the United States has already made a decision to leave the Afghan battlefield and that it will ultimately repeat its past pattern of abandoning Pakistan periodically. This may be unfair, but the perception is inevitable…

The question of Pakistani perception turned Coll's mind toward Rashid because that is Rashid's brief. In November 2008, Rediff India Abroad picked up this bit of transition news:

In fact, Petraeus has reportedly nominated Ahmed Rashid and Shuja Nawaz, author of the recently published book on Pakistani Army called Crossed Swords, as members of a brains trust to advise him on a new strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ahmed Rashid has been arguing for some months now that the Pakistani Army cannot be expected to co-operate wholeheartedly with the US Armed Forces in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban unless there is a forward movement in settling the Kashmir issue and India is pressured to cut down its presence in Afghanistan. There were not many takers for his arguments in the Bush Administration. But they have already started influencing the thinking of many who are close to Obama.

Those who worry about Pakistani paranoia over India's intentions in Afghanistan, and the impact of U.S. Afghan policy, are not making it up.  Last week, the Pakistani columnist Mohammad Jamil, who writes regularly for the Daily Times in Pakistan, wrote a sprawling response to Obama's speech that retailed much of the policy discussion in the U.S. but also included this unfamiliar (to us) note:

Obama ordered deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and defied predictions that in his new strategy, India would be given a pivotal role in Afghanistan. One did not hear a single word about India during his speech; however, it could be a deliberate attempt to keep certain things under wraps on the pretext of addressing Pakistan’s concerns.

 Jamil's piece ended with this burst of blended paranoia:

However, the real threat is from the US, because the Jewish lobby and the Indian lobby have not been able to stomach Pakistan’s nuclear capability.

Klein's reporting is spot-on. Concern about Pakistani-Indian relations is central to the Administration's thinking about Afghanistan.  You can argue with the policy; you can argue, as Greenwald does, that it's unwise to escalate a war without strong domestic support (though Obama's speech seems to have boosted support somewhat); you can argue that the Administration should itself air these concerns more fully.  But it makes no sense to hit Klein simultaneously for airing the "secret" rationale and for implicitly supporting it. If it were secret, and Klein supported it, why would he air it?

by Chris Bodenner

Splicing together Christmas lights and Guitar Hero (it gets better and better):

by Patrick Appel

One of the larger cognitive biases we fall into when discussing politics is we often act like politicians mostly rely on ideological principles and the strength of arguments when deciding how to vote. This is part of the equation, but I view politicians as vessels for interest groups first and influenced by ideology only at the margins. I share some of Daniel Larison's perspective on Obama and on Taibbi's article:

Some progressives are just as invested in the idea that Obama has “sold out” to corporate and financial interests as neoconservatives are committed to the fantasy that Obama’s foreign policy has recently undergone dramatic change. The reality is that Obama never had to “sell out” to these interests, because he never challenged them in any serious way in his national political career before he became President. We are not witnessing “one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history.” We are seeing Obama do pretty much exactly what he did during the general election and the months before his Inauguration: he has been careful to position himself squarely as a conventional center-left politician, and he has done this most of all as far as it concerns the financial sector.

Larison undersells conventionalism to some degree. Special interests are a vital part of the system and bowing to said interests is a sometimes necessary evil. 

Unwavering ideological voting, of the sort Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich exhibit, is the exception in politics for good reason. It is impossible to separate wealthy or powerful groups from the centers of government. And trying to do so can make a country less stable. Opposition movement must enlist opposing powerful elements in order to achieve success, which means one group of powerful individuals is replaced with another. Look at the relationships between the wealthy, the military, and the government in any number of anti-democratic or marginally democratic states. That Goldman Sachs, to take Taibbi's favored boogeyman, is able to influence the political process through lobbyists is far preferable a government where the most powerful interests might need stage or threaten a military coup in order to influence the stewards of government.

This is not to say that we should always capitulate to powerful interests, but that these interests will always have a say in government and that our system of lobbying is an alternative to much less desirable arrangements. Pretending that if Obama were more liberal that the government would suddenly have to tools to oppose these interests is wishful thinking. These problems are systemic and not attributable to any individual.

by Conor Friedersdorf

If any public official in America deserves the contempt of all citizens, it is Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County lawman who has forced innocent men to march down the street in pink underwear, reportedly forced a Latina woman to give birth while shackled to a bed, and is now trumping up bribery charges against a local judge. That Arizonans repeatedly elect this man is a mark against their polity.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

He recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure. On Thursday night, the Arizona Court of Appeals issued an emergency order forbidding the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from searching the home or chambers of a Superior Court judge who was named in the racketeering case.

Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office demanded to see Gordon's e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars.

When the police chief in one suburb complained about the sweeps, Arpaio's deputies raided that town's City Hall.

A local television station, KPHO, in a 10-minute-long segment last month, documented two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions.

The most notorious case involves county Supervisor Don Stapley, a Republican who has sometimes disagreed with Arpaio's immigration tactics. Last December, deputies arrested Stapley on charges of failing to disclose business interests properly on his statement of economic interest.

Stapley's alarmed supervisor colleagues had their offices swept for listening devices. Arpaio contended the search was illegal and sent investigators to the homes of dozens of county staffers to grill them about the sweep.

And see the tireless Radley Balko here for another example of this man's penchant for obstinate lawlessness.

Given all that, can a reader from Arizona please explain this to me: "PHOENIX — The most popular choice for governor among Republicans is someone who isn't running now — and may not run at all: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio." There is no instance I know of in America where the grassroots of the Republican Party could do more damage to liberty than to elect this man governor.

by Chris Bodenner

"“It is ironic how [the] headscarf, which was traditionally seen as a symbol of women’s oppression … is now being used by men to show membership in a liberation movement," – Peter Tatchell, a commenter on The Spittoon, an Islam-focused blog.  (Tatchell notes that it's illegal to cross-dress in Iran.)  Dish coverage of the headscarf protest here.

(Hat tip: CNN)

Update: A reader passes along this link to an intense mosaic of head-scarfed portraits.

by Patrick Appel

Taibbi's recent Obama rant must be cathartic for some liberals upset with Obama, but the article is misguided. The kicker gives the gist:

What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.

Yglesias partially understands the problem with this view:

The implicit theory of political change here, that pivotal members of congress undermine reform proposals because of “the White House’s refusal to push for real reform” is just wrong. That’s not how things work. The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

There are a few ways to change the votes of politicians: 1) kick them out of their jobs and hope for more progressive or conservative candidates, which isn't very easy to do and might backfire 2) sweeten the pot – most likely by cramming a bill full of pork carefully tailored to interests in the politician's district or state 3) make the bill align with the politician's principles.

Numbers two and three are often used in tandem with substantive changes to a bill serving as political cover to let a politician vote for the pork. The Lieberman analysis this morning focused on Lieberman's character and his desire to settle old grudges. That's part of it, but he is also protecting major contributors to his office. Ben Nelson might get a bigger percentage of donations from the health care industry than Lieberman, but Lieberman doesn't have the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's money to rely on or worry about. Nelson is less likely to openly flaunt his differences with the party because he can't afford to offend the DNC to the same degree Lieberman can.