The Dish

An AIDS
(Hat tip: Flowing Data)

Free Exchange joins the debate:

Focus on the small business analogy. Like a home, a small business is an illiquid, undiversified, highly leveraged investment, the performance of which is likely to be highly correlated with the owner's personal economic welfare. And we encourage small business investments, do we not? With good reason! But the risk inherent in entrepreneurialism is widely understood.

Everyone knows the factoid that half of all businesses fail within the first four years (this statistic is not necessarily accurate, but people understand the risk involved). Starting a small business—even just buying an investment property to operate as a landlord—is not part of the standard advice given to people looking to save for retirement. No one is looking to make three-fourths of the American population small business owners

Josh Marshall has a sensible take on climate science:

I can't say that I really have any sophisticated understanding of the science of climate change. I don't think that most people I know who are pro-cap and trade do either. For me, the fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me.

Put baldly like that, perhaps it suggests a certain incuriousness. But I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all.

I would not be terribly shocked if the predictions we're getting today about the climate turned out to be dramatically off. (Of course, it could be dramatically worse as well as dramatically better.) For political reasons, because there's so much nonsense in the air, you're not supposed to say that I guess. But there's inevitable uncertainty about how such a complex system as the global climate functions. But in our own lives, in the real world, we live in a science based world.

Today on the Dish we had a small reax of the president's Nobel speech.  Social conservatives Rick Warren and Tom Coburn came out against the Uganda bill, and Andrew wondered when the pope would do the same.  A reader thought they took too long.  Another social conservative helped gay rights by moving marriage equality along in New Jersey.  Meanwhile, Iranians dressed in drag out of solidarity for a leading dissident, and a reader flagged another inspiring video of dissent.

In other coverage, Sam Roggeveen called for bribing the North Koreans, Chait knocked the new plan for fixing the budget, Editor and Publisher bit the dust, Alberto Gonzales reinserted his foot in mouth, Friedersdorf chided Continetti over Palin coverage, Frum fumed over Republican strategy, Weigel sighed over the same, Boaz called out Santorum's anti-liberty M.O., Clive Davis discussed Churchill, and Andrew took a shot at HRC.

Reader discussion of climate change continued here, here, here, here, here, and here. Our thread on the Greatest Generation continued here and here. Today's MHB and VFYW were particularly great.

— C.B.

Anup Kaphle just put up a video profiling the British Gurkha fighting in Afghanistan. Kaphle embedded with British forces in June and July:

A reader writes:

As a conservative Christian, I'm glad the Rick Warren and Tom Coburn finally got around to speaking out against the Uganda bill, but at the same time I'm disappointed that it took so long, and I'm disappointed that there are so few voices condemning the bill among those leaders who claim to speak for people like me.  Having grown up as part of the politically active religious right, I've seen religious conservative leaders put their vast networks of contacts to use time and again for issues large and small even back in the days before email when they got people to start making phone calls to their friends to make sure information spread. The silence of the religious right social networks is deafening.

Religious conservatives need to be hearing about Uganda from sources like James Dobson and Focus on the Family and the American Family Association because like it or not, those are the sources that they trust. As much as I'm glad that people like you and Rachel Maddow are continuing to draw attention to what's going down in Uganda, I fear that it's mostly preaching to the choir and I worry that people like the friends and family I grew up with aren't going to take it seriously until they hear it from their leaders. Those leaders know that as much as anybody, but they're still mostly silent. I think it's time to start putting pressure on them to speak out too.

Then again, the silence on what seems like it should be obvious to everyone is a basic human rights issue is yet another reason why I'm increasingly reluctant to identify myself as a conservative.

E.D. Kain watches Colbert's interview with Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly and winces:

Watching Schlafly try to reconcile free markets and Christianity is just sad. It’s exactly why thoughtful proponents of free markets run into such jaded and hostile reactions from people on the other side of the fence. I think Christianity and free markets are reconcilable but only with the addition of some form of safety-net-state. The Christian Democrats understand this concept over in Europe. Americans like Schlafly think Jesus was the first coming of Milton Friedman.

A reader writes:

I only caught a few minutes near the end of this piece from Minnesota Public Radio on Monday but it included some "man-on-the-street" type interviews from December 7, 1941. What I found most interesting has been echoed by your commenters: people were a bit ambivalent about the war, even after the attack. Most of the interviewees said things like "I'm sure we'll win" but there was a quavering in their voices. That and the fact that most of the enlisted men had been drafted and you could sense a general "oh, boy, we didn't sign up for this but now we have to deal with it" in the interviews. Yes, the "Greatest Generation" stepped up in the long run, and won the war, but they weren't gung-ho from day one.

Interviews start at the 37:00 mark.

A reader writes:

I would abandon the word 'denialist'. it is too close to 'deniers'. There are lots of (disparaging) ways to describe those who agree that warming is going on but that man is not the chief cause without using a word coined specifically to describe those who cast doubt on the fact of the Holocaust. Call them idiots or flat-earthers or morons. Call the apostates or dissenters. Call them Palinenetologists. Saying that questioning AGW or the degree to which it is responsible for warming or beyond that the entire approach favored by the environmental mainstream to deal with it is akin to those who denied the camps goes beyond innocent provocations as when conservatives delight in calling the Democratic Party the 'Democrat' party. That is just childish. Those willing to use it demonstrate either their own insecurity or (as in Gore's case) that they are arrogant to a grotesque degree and unaware of it.