The Dish

Yglesias makes a fair point:

Their basic point, that the kind of carbon tax proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of cap-and-trade plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate, is very true. But by the same token, the kind of cap-and-trade proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of carbon tax plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate.

Drum interjects:

In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate.  Period.  If you believe otherwise, you're just not paying attention to things.  A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing.  There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you're being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere.  If you win, we're not going to get a carbon tax.  We're going to get nothing.

And when nothing is revealed as insufficient, maybe a better solution will emerge.

A disgruntled Obamaite writes in response to this post:

… and so the next morning the monkey trainer arrived with one half cup in the morning, saying: "Sorry, but the gorillas were threatening to stop lending nuts to the orangutans, so I gave the gorillas most of your nuts to placate them.  Oh, and there won't be any nuts this evening, because nut gathering takes time and you have to be patient. One more thing; I know I said that your babies wouldn't have to work gathering the nuts for me over in the scary part of the forest, but it turns out I'm going to have to send a bunch more baby monkeys over there, but it's just for a short time, unless I change my mind." 

Then the trainer arranged the monkeys in their cages, boy, girl, boy girl, because any other arrangement might upset the orangutans.

This is called selling one course, but delivering another.

It's that time of year again: O'Reilly waging a war on the war on Christmas.

Scott Lucas relays the spin from government-run Press TV:

Students in Iran gathered to commemorate the national Student Day as reports suggest a number of anti-government protesters have attempted to hijack the occasion…. The occasion…provided opposition protesters with an opportunity to stage anti-government demonstrations. However, their efforts were foiled thanks to the presence of anti-riot forces in several parts of the capital….

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that police arrested a number of the rioters who set on fire trash bins. The news agency added that a group of rioters wearing green clothes destroyed the Amir Kabir University’s entrance gate on Vali Asr street and attacked the students inside the campus. The rioters, IRNA said, also tore down the security station inside the university. They also threw rocks at a bank on campus. The report added that students in return chanted slogans, calling the rioters “traitors.”

The above video – labeled "Showing Money To The Basiji" – was shot at Amir Kabir University. Tehran Bureau recorded a related chant:

Pool naft chi shode/ Kharj basiji shode: "What happed to the oil money/ It was spent on the Basiji"

Larison questions Reihan's including Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) as part of it::

The trouble with Chaffetz’s brand of “antiwar” stance is that he conceives of a “withdrawal” from Afghanistan being a prelude to the perpetual use of air strikes and targeted assassinations. His alternative of “going big” and eliminating strict rules of engagement is a pose of “freeing” the military from constraints that the top commanders themselves insist on having to give their mission the best chance of success. Barring the deployment of an even larger force with few constraints on how they operate, Chaffetz advocates a “withdrawal” from Afghanistan that will be as non-interventionist as Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. In this approach, we will reserve the right to launch attacks on their territory with impunity whenever we wish, but otherwise we will wash our hands of the place and the consequences of our actions.

James Joyner doesn't expect the tea party movement to join forces with Code Pink any time soon: 

What strikes me as far, far more likely is that Iraq and Afghanistan will once again remind us of the limits of American power and cause Republicans to be more skeptical of future wars, both in terms of intervening to begin with and in setting realistic war aims.

The result wouldn’t be a significant Republican Dove movement — even on the Left, true pacifists are a fringe in America — but a much more traditional Realist bent.   As Andrew Sullivan wrote nearly three years ago, those people dominated the Republican Party until quite recently.

Tehran Bureau is rounding up videos from today. The website translates the above as: "Dictator, Dictator, this is your last warning! The Green Movement is ready to rise!" Enduring America's extensive collection is here and here. Scott Lucas notes something interesting:

[D]emonstrators in clips in our videos have been waving Iranian flags stripped of the Islamic “coat of arms” in the centre.

The Green Movement is radicalizing. It's beocming less Islamic, less a movement to restore the Islamic revolution and more one to destroy it. Whether this will hurt or help them I don't know. But Trita Parsi is edging toward a more confrontational stance on human rights as well:

The green movement — which represents a force for moderation in the

country — is turning increasingly skeptical about US intentions.

While opinions differ within the movement as to the wisdom of US-Iran diplomacy at this time, the neglect of human rights fuels pre-existing suspicions about the objectives of American diplomacy. That is, the fear that the US is solely interested in reaching a nuclear deal and may be willing to sacrifice the Iranian people's aspirations in the process.

Looking at Iran solely from a nuclear prism proved disastrous for the Bush administration. The Obama administration will fare no better. It needs to swiftly reinvigorate its human rights approach to Iran and begin giving significant prominence to this issue.

Look: it's from Rasmussen. When a less ideological polling outfit replicates the data, the Dish will comment.

Ezra Klein made a graph from a recent Vanity Fair poll. The question: "Could you confidently explain what exactly the public option is to someone who didn’t know?" The gap is worrying, but the Dish is forced to agree with this commenter:

Hitch continues his exploration of the life and work of Sarah Palin.

A reader writes:

You are asking repeatedly why Adam Bellow wouldn't have done some elementary fact checking of her book. I believe this reflects your viewpoint and bias – derived from academia and journalism – real journalism. I believe that you may not understand the nitty gritty of shafting someone politically.

I have thought about your question: Why wouldn't an editor find the errors in Palin's book and fix them? In the political world, when someone is a "rogue", the fastest way to marginalise them is to allow them to destroy their own credibility. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. I would ask the question: Is that what Adam Bellow has done?

He considers the "zealots" to be "a different species altogether" and says he and others "hold the zealots at arm's length". Having been in politics my whole life, and having buried plenty of bodies, or at least held the light while others did it… and having been involved in various ideological and political purges, the Palin book editing questions tinkled a few obsidian bells from the darker side of politics as I've seen it practiced.  I offer the following quotes from Adam Bellow on Becoming a Conservative.

"Brock had actually put his finger on something here, something that distinguished me and other New York conservatives from the zealous "movement" types down in Washington. New York conservatives – especially the branch called "neocons," to which I belong – are a particularly diffident bunch. We instinctively hold the zealots at arm's length, regarding them as not just a different branch of the movement but a different species altogether. And for those liberals who are dreading the descent of thousands of Republicans this week, it may be comforting to know that we conservatives are dreading it, too.. But there is yet another reason for our reluctance to embrace the assumed equivalence of "conservative" and "Republican" – one that's firmly rooted in our identity as New Yorkers, and that has to do with our dislike of intellectual conformity and with our emphasis on ideas over politics."