The Dish

A local news team reports on the real-life consequences of "Kick A Ginger Day."

A reader writes:

I agree wholeheartedly. As you also said recently, we have a president. He’s doing what I wanted him to do — think, take his time, take the long view. I don’t and won’t agree with everything, and he’ll be limited by reality at every turn, but I have faith that he’ll do his best, and faith that his best is very good.

He also, to my admiration, has faith in the democratic process, however messy it gets. While I’ve been pretty aghast at what the debate over health care has looked and sounded like, I’m very glad we’re having it.

John Cronin, who’s spent his life doing environmental work, made an excellent point a few years ago.

He compared the environmental movement to the civil rights movement. The latter convulsed the country. Everyone was thinking about it, debating it, yelling at someone else, throwing rocks, marching, weeping, going to jail. No one missed it! And in the end, the Civil Rights Act was passed. It didn’t solve a lot of problems right away, but no politician since has ever dared run on a platform of returning to segregation. And, slowly, it did make a difference, though we are still on the path.

The environmental movement never had that convulsive argument. The EPA was established in the Nixon era (still something of a surprise) and the government began to regulate in a piecemeal fashion. Because there was never a cultural defining of what we want our environmental policies to do for us, they are always at the mercy of the next round of polemics.

So, yes, there’s been some real insanity in the health care debate. Not as bad as murdering little girls, mowing down people with fire hoses, or stoning school buses full of children, however. And we’ll come out of it thinking about what health care in our modern society should look like. And I’m willing to bet this is just what Obama wants.

The point is: it's been so long that we had this kind of politics we cannot quite absorb it. But history will judge it in ways our current frenzied moment cannot.

Health care reform meets the Christianists.

Christopher Orr doesn't understand the Palin-Johnston feud:

The obvious, immensely easy play here would be for [Palin] to make up publicly with the boy. But even if that's too much–as it obviously is–you'd think she could manage some high-road blather when asked about Johnston ("We've had our disagreements, as you all know, but he's  good kid and I hope it all works out for him in the end") and could avoid bringing him up altogether when she's asked about something else, as in this case. But, no, she somehow seems to believe–and no one close to her can evidently dissuade her–that if she can win a war of words with a semi-employed, 19-year-old high-school dropout, it will amount to an actual victory for her.

Austin Frakt wants to wants to change how we think about health insurance:

Charging copayments that vary with the efficacy and cost-efficiency of the service is an important concept in benefit design. A “benefit-based” or “value-based” cost-sharing system sets copayment levels lower for therapies proven effective and higher for costly benefits with little or no clinical value. Today health insurance plans do a poor job of aligning cost incentives with benefits of therapy.

I don’t blame insurers. It is a genuinely hard problem, and there is a lack of data on what therapies are more effective compared to substitutes. Moreover, even when data exist attempts to change provider practice and consumer utilization patterns based on it can be controversial. Nevertheless, in time and with more research health plans and the health system in which they operate can, should, and must do a better job of aligning incentives with efficacy. Part of the solution is to think of health plans not only as insurance but as health incentive plans.

From Charles Franklin:

Claims of abandonment of Obama by independents (or lib-Dems or con-Dems) are substantially exaggerated over the past three months. Significant decline from May through August, yes indeed among Inds and Reps, but that trend halted in August.

Nate SIlver checks out a new poll:

I don't particularly expect a boost in the Democrats' numbers if they pass a health care bill: the plan, after all, has become somewhat unpopular. Their numbers might even get a little worse. But I'd expect a larger drop in their numbers if they fail to pass health care. Then, you're getting something close to the worst of both worlds: the people who don't like health care are still going to blame you for making the effort, but the people who do like the plan will become despondent and wonder what the whole point of electing Democrats to the Congress was in the first place

Today on the Dish was a particularly mixed bag. Andrew restated his support for the president and debated Frum over Iranian sanctions. Frum also defended himself to Palin supporters. Althouse sniped at our "odd lies," readers wondered whether Palin is a bullshitter or not, and another character in Going Rogue spoke out. More Palin fodder here, here, and here.

Kirchick put a spotlight on Uganda's homophobia, Goldblog sent a dispatch from the Rapture, Greenwald fisked Republicans over terrorism trials, Nate Silver rolled his eyes at global-warming denialists, Douthat looked forward to the 2012 race, and Ambinder looked back to 2008.

Andrew meditated to Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu and we all meditated to this MHB.

— C.B.

For reasons that took me quite by surprise, the View From Your Window feature is easily the most popular on the blog. There is no right or left to it, except visually. It can be red or blue. But it is always somewhere quite specific, where someone lives, and it seems to tell a kind of empirical truth in a very truthy world. The Dish gets emails with window views all the time. On the occasion of the publication of the "The View From Your Window", we thought we'd share a few emailed this year:

I love the feature on your site and always try to hide the place and guess where the photo was taken. I'm more often that not at least in the right ballpark. Funny how much info a picture can convey. The attached window is in Ellensburg, Wa, taken about 9:45 am.

I grew up in Telluride before the ski area went in. The photo you posted today literally caused me suck in my breath in surprise and release it with a deep smile. I've always thought these photos were neat; now I know they can also grab the heart. Thanks.

I was recently in Aksai, Kazakhstan, on business and took a picture out of the offices we were using. It's not particularly … descript, but there's always a home for mundanity on the internet!

From Nashville on, all the recent View From Your Window pictures make my heart clench in a way that when it lets go, I feel relaxed and at peace, if only for a moment. Please stick with this feature. I do like the non-traditional (read foreign) views which challenge my idea of what a liveable neighborhood is.

I love this feature! Hope to see my backyard on your page!

Submission guidelines here. You can buy the book version here.

A reader writes:

How interesting that she wades through so many lies to settle on the most innocuous of the bunch.  And how fortunate that this lie (originally number 23 in your list) was so easily Googled that she could reference your admission of its tameness on the original source post rather than tackle one of the more illustrative and damaging examples.

Here's a very simple one for Ann to ponder: why has Palin herself admitted she lied when she told Sean Hannity that she asked the girls (but not Track) for their permission to accept the vice-presidential nomination – and that they unanimously agreed? How could she recall the specifics of the event when she now says it didn't happen at all?