Opinions Change With The Weather

Sager studies a PEW release on why belief in global warming has dropped in the US. An unusually cool summer in some parts of country is one suspect:

The effect is most prominent among low-education voters and those not strongly attached to a party identification. If someone has high education or is a committed partisan, on the other hand, the weather has little effect on their beliefs.

“If I Wanted To Crush ‘Em, I Could”

Levi keeps upping the ante on what he says he knows about Sarah Palin. At this point, it's obviously a way for him to get access to his son, Tripp. But he makes several insinuations: that whatever he knows, it implies abuse of power, and "maybe" could destroy someone's political career. He sticks by his claim that Sarah called Trig "the retarded baby," denies any domestic violence in the house, and continues to lobby for access to his son that he says Palin is denying him. 

"I think she's the one who should be worried. I'm not scared of her." He's asked, "Why should she be worried?" He responds: "Things I know, things she knows." He's also asked, "Is Trig Sarah's baby?" His answer: "So far as I know, yes."

This was all on The Insider last night, a widely watched tabloid TV show. Tonight, Levi is on again. This tabloid drama is clearly coming to some sort of a head. Just in time for his photo-shoot and her "book".

It's either a brilliant, win-win publicity fest for both, or some kind of impending blow-up. Or something, as always with Palin, utterly unexpected. I'm as befuddled as ever, but totally helpless in the face of my own fascination.

The Sarah And Levi Show, Ctd

Readers react. One writes:

What has happened is that Palin has been drawn into a public battle with an unwed father and high school dropout. Worse, she's losing. I don't see how you can embarrass yourself so thoroughly and remain a national political figure, much less a credible candidate for President.

If there were any grownups left in Palin's circle, I'm sure they'd be telling her this. But if she were capable of listening, she would have figured it out for herself months ago.

I think the support for Palin among the GOP base is now a matter of identity and religion, so that no actual data could hurt her chances. In some ways, the worse she does helps her. The base sees her failings as proof that the libruls and the establishment is out to get her. I'm not sure that any revelation would hurt her now with this group. Another writes:

Is it really riveting?  You appear to be the biggest fan.  You're a hysterical queen.

Enough with the flattery. Another:

You actually think this kid has some real dirt on Palin? He's a 19 year old knucklehead who, at his best, looks confused and none too deep. What actual damage can he do to Palin? That she was rude? That she put politics in front of family? Big fucking deal. You don't actually think this kid has any insight into the inner workings of the whole Palin operation? All he is is the dumb kid than knocked up her daughter. Anyone expecting more from him is as dumb as he is.

Another:

I think your obsession with Sarah Palin is getting just a touch out of hand. She is a washed up political hack at this point and the polls show she is going nowhere. If she tosses her hat into the ring for the 2012 presidential campaign then cut lose the dogs and go after her anew.  Otherwise it's time to get on with life and other abstractions.

In my view, Palin is the unofficial head of the GOP right now and the favorite to win the nomination next time and her hand and influence is being felt in every race today. If she is even more of a fraud than now appears, it is the job of the press to ferret it out.

Eating Dog

Matt Steinglass, who lives in Vietnam, explains why Jonathan Safran Foer’s canine-based argument about meat eating doesn’t play in East Asia or Africa:

The philosophical underpinnings needed for the argument don’t exist here; they’re not present in people’s brains. I think we need to start out with the “humane practices” argument, first in the developed world — stop torturing pigs in our own slaughterhouses, etc. Then we can start making the case to East Asian farmers that you shouldn’t stuff 12 dogs into a wire cage, put it on the back of a motorbike and drive down to the market to sell them off, with the wires slamming into their paws and chests at every pothole; that you shouldn’t tie two ducks together by their feet and drape them over the handle of your motorbike, then drive along as they flap to try to keep their heads out of the spokes of the wheel; that you shouldn’t splay a pig upside-down, feet trussed, across the metal carrying rack of your motorbike; and so on.

Deeper vs. Broader

Massie on today's off-off-year elections:

[N]o-one thinks it impossible for the GOP to win. The argument in conservative circles is what kind of conservatism is needed to give conservatism the best chance of winning on a regular basis. That is, what kind of conservatism is best-placed to counter some of the structural advantages that, right now and for the foreseeable future, will run in the Democratic party's favour?

It may be that the conservatism of Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and all the rest of them is the best bet for a conservative revival. I'm unconvinced by that, to put it mildly. Republicans need to be broader, not just deeper. Conservatives will have their victories but they may also have fewer of them to celebrate than need be the case the longer they insist that the old tunes, played more loudly, are all that's needed.

When Languages Die, They Stay Dead

John McWhorter defends his recent article on whether dying languages should be saved and spoken:

I write that within a context: of the 6000 languages on earth, it is estimated that only about 600 will exist a hundred years from now. The big languages are edging the tiny ones, and even the medium-sized ones, out. In recent centuries, this has been first because of active extermination – Native Americans were often forbidden to speak their home languages in school – and later because of “globalization”: children raised in a city by migrant parents are unlikely to learn the language their parents spoke back in the village…

[In] 2009 the simple fact is that there is a single example of a language brought alive from the page and now used as a native language by a massive population of users: Hebrew, and that was a very unusual story driven by a unique confluence of religious commitment, a sudden mixture of people speaking many different languages, and arrangements such as children early in the experiment that became modern Israel being removed from their parents and raised on kibbutzes where only Hebrew was spoken. This kind of thing can’t ever happen in, say, Ireland.

Hewitt Award Nominee

"No one but the President and members of his inner circle know the real reason that President Obama has refused to go to Berlin. It’s hard not to suspect, however, that his reluctance springs both from a misplaced sensitivity to the feelings of our former Soviet adversaries – and worse yet, from a misguided sense of shame about America’s Cold War triumph," – Carol Platt Liebau, Townhall.com.

The Tea-Leaves Of Off-Year Elections, Ctd

Kristol, who is always wrong, parrots the same line as Jonah Goldberg:

Now, obviously, there are times when divisions in parties can be damaging. But what's happening in the GOP right now looks to me more like healthy turmoil than destructive recklessness, more like vigorous competition than bitter fratricide.

Chart Of The Day

USAScanPrices

Ezra Klein passes along some striking charts (pdf):

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same — the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need — but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.