The Dish

A reader writes:

The problem with your reader's simplification of the AGW deniers' argument is that he's speaking very generally and generously about one small battalion in a broad coalition of deniers.

We have the supposedly literate folks like George Will who don't understand what a trend is, and therefore they think the Earth has been cooling since 1998, ergo AGW is a hoax. Then we have the folks who think that the Earth may indeed be warming, but it's not because of human activity, or if it is, the absolute proof hasn't been found yet. Then we have the folks who think that it's too late, too hard, and too expensive to do anything about it, so, oh well, we'll deal with it and we'll "evolve." Then we have the Christian right, which thinks that God sets the thermostat, period, and scientists are evil ghouls who bring about things like the Holocaust. Then there are the worshipers of "common sense" who think it's a stroke of genius to say things like "carbon dioxide only makes up a tiny percentage of the atmosphere." And let's not forget the paranoid viral email forwarders who think that the East Anglia story is evidence of a genuine conspiracy fronted by Al Gore that seeks to make money by setting up carbon offset programs. And on and on and on.

It's a vast army of millions that is supported by the apathy of millions of others who, understandably, don't know what to think. The common bond is denial, and the common goal is to do absolutely zilch to change our habits.

The full truth of Winston Churchill, the greatest Briton of the 20th Century, is more complicated than most want to believe. He was not good at economics and had little grasp of what was happening in the Great Depression. It was this record of haplessness that contributed to his stunning defeat in 1945 when Brits wanted a peacetime leader, not a wartime one. They knew Churchill's astonishing strengths, but also his real weaknesses. Clive Davis notes:

The newsreel comes from that wonderful Great Depression documentary, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” – one of David Puttnam’s early productions. I remember watching it on BBC2 one Sunday night back in the Seventies, when I was about 16. The NY Times reviewer was a little sniffy about director Philippe Mora’s subtext, but I still think it’s a brilliant piece of archaeology, intercutting news footage with scenes from Hollywood films, some famous, others long-forgotten. Feel free to interpret the dance marathon sequence as a metaphor for the Establishment’s response to the Wall Street Crash.

Now watch Winnie flail and meander in New York when trying to explain the impact of the 1929 crash and incipient depression:

Conor Friedersdorf deconstructs how Matt Continetti defends Palin. He sides with those criticizing Palin's climate op-ed:

Contra Mr. Continetti’s implication, none suggest “outrage” at the mere fact that she is opining. The disagreement is with the substance of her argument. Put another way, Mr. Continetti has shown us examples of three people disagreeing with Sarah Palin about the argument she makes in an op-ed, and he has written a blog post asserting that this is an outrage. This does a disservice to everyone who bought his characterization without clicking through to the linked pieces.

Continetti: so much promise. And yet the craziness of this moment and the farce of the Palin candidacy can derail anyone.

"You could imagine a lot of presidents more dogmatically liberal than Obama, but I wonder whether there are a lot of plausible hypotheticals in which they amass more liberal achievements than Obama. At the executive level, it might be the case that being too liberal is a liability to, well, liberalism," – Ezra Klein.

Sam Roggeveen has an idea – offer to buy North Korea's nuclear materials:

Snyder admits there are moral hazard problems with this approach, in that it seems to reward North Korea's bad behaviour. But the proposal does play to one of America's great and largely unexploited strengths in this dispute: its wealth.

Frustratingly, Snyder never suggests a price for North Korea's plutonium, so can I suggest $1.2 billion per year? That seems rather exorbitant, but it's not a random figure. It comes from noted game theorist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who has used predictive models to come up with an annual amount that might persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

One key religious leader has spoken out forcefully against the unchristian Ugandan law to inform on, arrest, forcibly "cure" and execute homosexuals. But where is the Pope in a country where 40 percent of the people are Catholics. When will Benedict speak out to prevent this bill? Or is his silence eloquent enough?

Mike Crowley reacts:

Obama is a man trapped amongst the contradictions created by America’s awkward place in the post-Bush world. Last week, Obama’s address on Afghanistan both escalated and promised an end to the war there. Today, Obama opened his Nobel Peace Price acceptance speech with a long disquisition on the nature of war and its necessity–complete with a brief survey of “just war” theory. (He even threw in a passage about the necessary role of coercion against states like Iran and North Korea that mess around with nuclear weapons.) I suppose it was the honest way to take such a prize at a time when America has about 200,000 soldiers occupying foreign countries. But it was something of a surreal exercise.

Ross was mostly impressed:

In a sense, this was one of the clearer statements of foreign policy principle that Obama has delivered to date: An extended defense of using realist means in the service of liberal internationalist ends. It’s an approach that fits at least some of the challenges we face, and the turn toward modesty and pragmatism, in particular — toward the pursuit of “a more practical, attainable peace,” to quote Obama quoting John F. Kennedy this morning — makes sense as a corrective to some of the more hubristic elements of Bush’s foreign policy. (Thought that corrective had already largely taken hold in Bush’s second term.) But of course, it’s also an approach that hasn’t borne any significant fruit as yet, in a presidency that’s only just begun to face its hardest challenges. Which is why an air of the ridiculous still hung about the ceremony, with its jazz interludes, defensive introductory remarks, and cutaways to Will Smith in the audience. As effective as the speech was in certain ways, it still should never have been given.

Unsurprisingly, John Bolton hated it.

A reader notes:

This is a video from University of Ghazvin on Dec. 7th, a city 3 hours west of Tehran. There is an amazing chant at the first 20 seconds that is very nostalgic for Iranians. During the 1979 revolution, in response to Shah changing Prime Ministers every other month to calm the revolutionaries, the chant went like this: “We are saying we don’t want the Shah himself, he changes Prime Minister" … Now they are saying: "We are saying we don’t want the Shah himself, they changed the name and call it Rahbar (Supreme Leader)" ..

Rick Warren disowns the new Uganda bill designed to inform on, round up, imprison, forcibly submit to "psychological cures", and execute homosexual Ugandans:

This is an extremely positive if overdue development. I remain deeply concerned that Uganda's public policy is based on the "curing" homosexuals rubric, but that sure is better than executing them. The Ugandan bill should be abandoned. And Warren's call on pastors to disown the bill is a real step forward.

I'm not the only person welcoming this:

"We applaud Rick Warren for speaking out with force and clarity on a bill that would lead to the persecution and prosecution of gay and lesbian Ugandans," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "Today, Warren showed true moral courage and stood for what is right and just. We urge other leading pastors and world leaders to stand up and condemn Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill."

What I think is most significant is that Warren called this bill "extreme, unjust and unchristian towards homosexuals". It is absolutely and unequivocally unchristian to demonize a whole group of people and to threaten them with execution simply because of their sexual orientation and their need for love and sex and intimacy and companionship like every other human being. And for Warren to deploy Christian arguments in defense of the dignity of homosexual persons is a big step forward in this debate. I am grateful to him for staying true to the Gospels.

A new poll:

The survey, by Jim Gerstein, asked Israelis (both Jewish and Muslim) whether a series of terms describe President Obama well, and 39% of respondents said the term "Muslim" describes the president, who is Christian, well. Of those, only 15% said the term described him very well.