The Dish

Hanna Rosin notes a new study:

Divorce is officially a casualty of the Great Recession. Rates are down for the first time in five years, according to the newly released study of the National Marriage Project. Michael Gerson has called this shift a kind of “cultural renewal”; the idea is that when times are tough, people connect with their cherished values and stop indulging in the kinds of luxuries a fat economy allows. Divorce rates also dropped dramatically during the Great Depression. The reality is, however, that divorce is just expensive. People can’t afford to get divorced during a recession. Marriage rates are down as well; they can’t afford that luxury either.

Tyler Cowen argues against a government jobs program. His sense of the current economic climate:

Right now we’re looking at a double dip recession. Still, some parts of the stimulus have been useful, including the extension of unemployment insurance and the aid to state governments. Pretty soon, before we know it, those parts of the stimulus will run out. So if we feel we have more money to spend (a debatable proposition), let’s extend those programs.

They’re already in place and they can have an economic impact more or less immediately. A new direct jobs program will mean more bureaucracy, more delays, and a new and permanent constituency for a program, which, at best, should not exist for more than a few years’ time.

Yglesias makes some:

[If] you know someone who spent all of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 lambasting conservative economic policies for destroying the value of the dollar, and then who felt that good things were happening to the economy during the fall and winter of 2008, as reflected in the rise of the dollar, then you know someone who’s a crazy crank. But he’s a crazy crank who’s earned the right to complain about Obama! But if you know someone who never mentioned the falling dollar in 2007, and never mentions today that the Obama-era “plummet” merely reflects a reversion to where things were before the financial panic, then you know a partisan crank.

Today on the Dish we mostly monitored the latest protests in Iran. Tehran Bureau provided some history, the Newest Deal framed the day, Josh Shahryar showed the media constraints, Borzou Daragahi reported some of the first violence, Robert Mackey recorded increased violence, Enduring America warned that things might have gotten out of hand, Scott Lucas called out the state media, and Kalameh covered the attack on Mousavi's wife. We also compiled tweets here and YouTube clips here, here, here, here, and here.

In other coverage, Seton Hall researchers reconstructed a disturbing scandal at Gitmo, Scott Horton backed them up, Greenwald was aghast, and we provided some links. Kevin Drum discussed the politics of carbon taxing, Ambinder did the same with Copenhagen, James Hansen butted heads with Krugman over cap and trade, Larison looked at the anti-war right, and neoconservatives tried to derail Hannah Rosenthal.

In Palinpalooza, we took the pulse of her fans in Iowa, a reader pushed back, two others talked about her use of Trig on the trail, another proposed that her editor is hanging her out to dry, another rounded up her troubling record on ethics, Hitch tackled her scary style of populism, and Palin demonstrated a bit of it herself. Also, Sully chilled with Tank and Levi today.

In home news, readers received our window books to great review and the Atlantic blazed a trail with e-fiction.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

Got it this evening … what a gem of a thing. It's nice to have the dead tree edition, in square shape, I wonder are e-books up to the images?

Beautifully done … a perfect holiday gift.  Bravo!

Another adds:

It arrived today and is stunningly beautiful. It took my breath away so I extend my deepest thanks to you, Patrick and Chris for something so simple and wonderful. Just wow!

They're still selling briskly. Buy one or more here.

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Joy Behar show on HLN tonight after Levi Johnston at 9 pm. Johnston, his aide, Tank Jones, and I had a fascinating chat in the green room. It was all off the record but I hope at some point to be able to interview Johnston on the record as a way to get some first-hand fact-checks on the Palin book and public statements.

As I say on Behar, this really isn't about Palin. Or about Johnston.

It's about our democracy's apparent lack of interest any more in what is true and what is false. It's about the mainstream media's willful decision not to tackle a story that was integral to a major candidate's core integrity; it's about the Republican party elite's cynicism and condescension to millions of voters; it's about the decision of Harper Collins, Adam Bellow and Jonathan Burnham to publish a book so riddled with untruth without even a gesture toward ensuring its accuracy; and it's about the recklessness of John McCain, a man hollowed out by careerism and cynicism, selling out every scruple or principle he may have had to make his way in the modern GOP; and it's about the power of fundamentalist religion to blind everyone to the banal but vital details of secular politics.

In other words, it's about the core reasons this country has gone off the rails these past few years. That matters to the Daily Dish. If it doesn't matter to you, or if you think it involves details that really should not be aired in public, then take your blame to McCain, not me. Because he didn't do his job, I'm doing mine.

A reader writes:

As a lifelong Omahan, I couldn't help but notice that people from my city were quoted twice in the Politico piece you linked to.  I'd just like to point out that the congressional district that Omaha makes up, NE-2, was the only congressional district in the entire nation to split from its state and cast its electoral vote for Barack Obama.  (This is because Nebraska isn't a winner-take-all state.  The only other state that allows this is Maine, which did not divide its votes.)  I'd also like to point out that this was not expected to happen, and polls were taken throughout the election year showing McCain winning the district….that is until October when Sarah Palin visited here.  You can thus draw your own conclusion from that as to whether we're a hotbed of Palin love.

A pretty good way to contrast and compare the carbon tax with cap and trade. Hansen's core case:

A gradually rising carbon fee would be collected at the mine or port of entry for each fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas). The fee would be uniform, a certain number of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel. The public would not directly pay any fee, but the price of goods would rise in proportion to how much carbon-emitting fuel is used in their production.

At some point, the public decides to switch to cheaper, greener goods. Krugman's response is that cap-and-trade is a de facto kind-of-carbon fee (except with a mountain of regulation, speculation in selling pollution permits, and the possibility of just moving carbon emissions around – through dubious off-sets -  rather than reducing them). But Krugman's core point is political: cap and trade is all our system can achieve; it's that or nothing; so shut up.

I hope Hansen doesn't shut up. His proposal is simpler, clearer, fairer and more likely to wean us off carbon sooner.

Are there any Persian-speaking readers who can make out the words to this song?

Update: a reader says they are singing this patriotic anthem.