The Dish

A reader writes:

Your disdain for Palin multiplied by your crush on Levi is affecting your fairness and objectivity.  First, it's clear from the article you cite that Palin's allegation of "mean spirited, malicious and untrue attacks" refers to Levi's current claim that Palin pejoratively calls Trig "retarded," not to — as you assert — future damaging disclosures.  Second, you appear so desperate for anyone to damage Palin that you suspend all skepticism about the credibility of an 18-year-old self-described "fuckin' redneck” who knows his 15 minutes are ticking.  The idea that "Levi has nothing to lose and a lot to gain by telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" assumes that Levi offers truth and that the truth is bad for Palin.  In reality, Levi has a lot to gain (and little or nothing to lose) by trashing Palin, whether his revelations are true or not.

Just compare his track record of truth versus hers. Then make your pick.

After a week of disarray and competing signals, it appears that Iran's government is backing away from a deal to transport almost all its enriched uranium abroad for processing. Khamenei wants to transport it bit by bit, which would keep Iran's potential for nuclear breakout just about where it is. We should wait for clarification. But what it signals to me is a classic attempt to avoid real compromise, to play for time and to try and spin all this as a victory for the coup government. Getting Tehran's intransigence clearly acknowledged, if this pans out, will be important. So will preparing sanctions to keep the pressure up. My sense is that the regime feels vulnerable – and could be pushed into further concessions. Stay tuned…

John Cole is upset. The bill does add gender identity to the roster of victims, and I should have noted that as well. But the inference that if you oppose the logic behind this bill, you support violence or discrimination against transgender people is repulsive. Here's Cole's moronic gibe:

What does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?

Of course I don't. What conceivable evidence do you have for saying so?

(And you'll get in trouble for calling them "transexuals".) I just believe in equality under the law – not special treatment. I've held this position for years. It's a lost cause, I know. But it's what I believe. Others differ and see all protections for minorities as a good thing. I don't. I think entrenching people as victims hurts them in the long run. I think accepting as a given discrimination in law-enforcement tells the cops that they don't have to apply the law fairly because the politicians will come in behind them to add special rights for various sets of victims. I think we should be focused on our own empowerment, not our own victimhood. And I think this entire process is, at root, an exercize in cynicism. But, again, let's check back in a year's time to see if I'm wrong.

NSFW, unless you're a douchebag (but wicked funny):

Vimeo:

Britta Johnson (video director for Andrew Bird, among others) brings Lusines gorgeous new single Two Dots to life, illustrating the songs relationships-as-trigonometry analogy in an intricately animated video. In the clip, a pair of marbles—one blue, one yellow—engage in the timeless dance of seduction on a horizontal plain, mapping the ups and downs of a courtship through pencil-drawn geometric principles. Like Two Dots, Johnsons video lives in the middle ground between technology and humanity, emotional immediacy and obsessive detail.

A reader writes:

An anecdote. My mother passed away in July, and I'm now selling her house. The realtor we're using is doing 20-30 foreclosures/short sales this year, and he sees lots of economic stimulation because of it. Foreclosed houses are usually in bad shape, partially due to owner negligence, and partially due to being empty for a long time. In any case, these houses usually require a great deal of work once they sell. It's either DIY, which stimulates the nearest Home Depot. Or they're hiring help, which gives work to installers, repairers, etc.

The low prices of the foreclosed properties are also a stimulus in a way.

Take my mother's house. We can probably sell it for $250K, but foreclosed/short sales in the area are around $175K. Because the prices are so depressed, the buyers now have the money to spend on refurbishing. They buy for $175, and immediately spend another $40K to fix it up, and this $40K has a pretty big stimulus multiplier. During the bubble, the same buyers wouldn't have any residual cash to spend on furniture, refurbishing, etc. They were cash poor. The money went into the mortgage, which didn't have as high stimulus multiplier. Yes, building a new home is probably a greater stimulus to the economy. But economic models of the past aren't necessarily relevant. Refurbishing 3 million foreclosed homes is bound to affect the gap.

Why has the debate over unemployment benefits been so muffled?

Roughly 400,000 folks exhausted their federal unemployment benefits in September, with another 200,000 projected to do the same by the end of October, according to a recent study by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group. By the end of the year, NELP estimates that 1.3 million Americans will have exhausted their benefits unless Congress steps in with an extension. Each day the Senate dallies, another 7,000 people go off the rolls.

But the Democrats – useless at politics as always – are not making hay out of this. DiA jumps in:

Republicans will vote against cloture because they want votes on two amendments, one to bar ACORN from receiving federal funds and one to do something or other about illegal immigrants. Since the House passed its version of the bill five weeks ago, over 125,000 people have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, however, there is bipartisan support for extending or even increasing the first-time home buyer's tax credit, implemented as part of this year's earlier stimulus package and currently set at $8,000. Johnny Isakson, a Republican senator from Georgia, wants to up the credit to $15,000 and extend it to anyone who buys a home…

[If] there's any bill that ought to be sailing through the Senate in the midst of the worst recession since 1945, it's the extended unemployment benefits bill; and if there's a form of stimulus spending that ought to meet with severe scepticism in the Senate, it's the tax credit for homebuyers, especially buyers who already own homes. But that's not how things seem to be working these days.

These, however, are the usual political lies. The Dish version – showing a clinical willingness to tell lies even when they are demonstrably untrue according to basic empirical evidence – is here. She’s so dishonest she has lost track of what honesty could possibly mean.

Check out the neck-and-neck referendum poll in Maine. A poll this close indicates a loss for marriage equality. Now check out Obama's 67 percent favorables in the state. He has a chance to help.