The Dish

Today on the Dish we saw Harry Reid make a move on a federalist public option. Ezra reax here and here. On Afghanistan, Judah Grunstein endorsed a time-bounded surge, Roger Cohen gleaned some perspective from Miliband, Paul McGeogh was pessimistic about the McChrystal report, a reader in Afghanistan shared that pessimism, and both Tony Karon and the Economist were not optimistic about the run-off election. But in a bit of good news, the HIV travel ban appeared on its last leg.

Andrew looked at a new study on sensory deprivation while Craig Murray looked back at the torture he witnessed in Uzbekistan. Friedersdorf and called for an end to prohibition on pot while George Will gestured toward the same. McHugh talked some sense on DADT, Dreher talked rednecks, and apostate Paul Haggis shamed the Super Adventure Club.

The prowess of newspapers and cable news continued to wane. Damon Linker lamented fast publishing while a reader praised slow reading. Aaron Renn seemed to think diversity only means poor black people – a perception countered by readers, but somewhat defended by Will of Ordinary Gentlemen. We also got emails from several Irish readers and a Scandinavian.

— C.B.

Ezra:

First, as Frates's unnamed lobbyist points out, [Reid] can lose this vote but credibly claim that he went to bat for a pretty good compromise on the public option. Second, it creates consequences for those who want to vote against the public option. Rather than killing the proposal in a back room, moderates who won't vote for cloture will actually have to vote against cloture. That makes them a target in their next election, and ensures a lot of harassment from the left. Reid is, in other words, making it harder — not impossible, but harder — for them to oppose the public option. Procedurally, it's a big win for public option advocates.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

A counter-blast to the death-watch for newspapers. Money quote:

Doing worse doesn't mean doing badly. Until recently, many newspapers had profit margins exceeding 30%. By 2008, the industry's average margin had fallen to the mid-teens. The speed and magnitude of this decline have resulted in wrenching changes in the way these historically stable businesses must operate.

The continuing drama shouldn't distract from real earnings power. Many newspapers still have almost double the profitability of other media sectors, such as movies, music and books — which have long struggled to achieve margins of even 10%.

Some amazing "amateur" photography of the Anterior Median and Anterior Lateral Eyes of an adult female Phidippus putnami. I.e. a jumping spider. The photographer is Thomas Shahan who is interviewed here. His Flickrstream is here. Money quote:

After experimenting around with various ways of taking high magnification macros, I realized that nothing man-made is really all that exciting up close. I realized pretty quickly that bugs were one of the only things worth the effort. Nothing compares to the complexity, color, and intricate detail of arthropods up-close. Also, there is a seemingly infinite number of subjects when it comes to bugs.

(Hat tip: Insta.)

This, apparently:

In his meetings with his war council, the president is insisting on knowing what are achievable goals and what are the actual abilities of US troops — and most especially the Afghan government — to achieve those goals.

More dithering, please!

It turns out the Dish has quite a following over there. Thanks for all the emails. My favorite:

He's a Cork man, Donal Og. The accent is one of the "thicker" ones in Ireland, at least to an American(or even a Brit/American) ear.  But having lived here now for 8 years, and having met and worked with so many Irish people from every county, the accent doesn't worry me much anymore.  What worries me is the attitude still prevalent here regarding gays…it's downright shockingly neanderthal.  I witness this almost every day as someone who works for an Irish airline…I am the "Cabin Crew" manager in one of our bases and there are two gay men among my charges. While most of the rest of the crew are excellent with them, if they are out of earshot, or sometimes even within, "gay" jokes are made.

Socially, Ireland is a bastion of ignorance on this matter.

It pains me, as the American mother of a gay son (who lives in Boston) to hear the incessant nasty jokes and chatter on this subject.  The Irish are still very uncomfortable with gay people. It is, I believe, a result of the mores of this still very Catholic country, but with the enormous change the Irish have experienced in the last 15-20 years one would think, or at least hope, that the bigotry would change, too.  Donal Og has done a great service for his country.

By the way, "Gaelic" is a collection of  languages which include Irish, Scots-Gaelic, and Manx-Gaelic.; Irish is the native language of Ireland.

And Tom Humphries is a brilliant sportswriter.

Tony Karon:

It is fanciful to imagine that a run-off election, or even forcing Mr Karzai to share power with his former foreign minister, will substantially improve the prospects for victory in Afghanistan. From a security perspective if nothing else, trying to avoid the run-off seems more sensible.

The Economist is almost as pessimistic:

The outlook for a successful second round is so bleak that most analysts believe it will in fact not take place at all. Some still cling to the hope that Mr Karzai and Dr Abdullah will make peace and form a coalition government, though both men have ruled this out. Or Dr Abdullah might withdraw in return for promises from Mr Karzai about enacting the constitutional reforms he wants, which would take power away from the presidency. That might indeed warrant praise as a piece of statesmanship.

Over the weekend, George Will remarked:

Eighty percent of the revenue of the Mexican cartels is marijuana. If you really want to go after the Mexican cartels—and I’m not saying that’s the only criterion for public policy— you’d legalize marijuana.

Jacob Sullum sees this as a small step forward:

It's not clear that Will welcomes legal gambling, legal prostitution, and legal pot, but at least he understands how prohibition strengthens organized crime. And even if he doesn't support legalization yet, at least it's in his vocabulary. Unfortunately, Will did not stop there. "There is one problem," he said later in the discussion, reporting that he had learned from a recent conversation with drug czar Gil Kerlikowske that "marijuana is getting much better." He did not explain why that's a problem.

A reader writes:

As a native Scandinavian, (not to mention loyal daily reader and fellow European-American transplant) I wanted to point out some things about the article about Tingbjerg to which you linked. The article is nothing more than an entirely one-sided portrait of an issue, albeit a well-written one. Mr. Bawer describes

Copenhagen as something resembling a war zone, adding that "things are considerably worse in many other European cities (such as Bradford and Malmö)." I have lived in both Copenhagen and Malmö, and I can assure you that this is pure hyperbole.

In linking to Human Rights Service, I think some context regarding the organization is needed. 

While there is little doubt that failure of integration is a major problem in Europe, and one that is rarely adequately discussed with enough honesty, I would not rely on HRS for my information. The organization has strong links to Fremskrittspartiet, the Norwegian anti-immigration party. According to Norwegian Wikipedia, HRS has been criticized by anti-racist organizations as "a clearly immigrant-hostile organization" and "a right-populist, muslim-phobic interest group" My translations from Norwegian). HRS has also called the Norwegian government ombudsman for anti-discrimination and equality "the ombudsman for Islam and discrimination" (I'm assuming against white Norwegians).

The articles on the HRS web site describe a Europe that does not exist. Europe is no more being taken over by millions of extremely violent fundamentalist Muslims than the United States is being taken over by drug-dealing, Communist Black Power radicals intent on . Sure, all of those people exist, but they are not seizing power. You frequently comment on why the Republicans have moved from small government conservatism to white, right wing populism. Why do you not apply that same analytical approach to the sometimes hateful propaganda supplied by Mr. Bawer and HRS?

Again, I'm not doubting the facts of the case in Tingbjerg, but if I described my neighborhood in Brooklyn, or my old one in Oakland, California, with those same black-tinted glasses, you would think that the United States is in immediate danger of succumbing to gun-wielding, crack-smoking African Americans who only speak ebonics and non-English-speaking Latinos who are invading, one border jumper at the time.

Also, it's "Tingbjerg", not "Tinjberg."

From Washington, it's very hard to know for sure the details of any particular case. But Bruce Bawer is not in any way a racist or Islamophobic. He's concerned about core civil equality and toleration. And I'm happy to post alternative views of the same set of facts. Pnce the HV ban is lifted, I hope to be able to visit Europe again to see for myself in so far as I can.

Dreher pivots off Ta-Nehisi’s post on race, class, obesity and shame:

Reading Coates’s piece made me reflect on the love-hate relationship I have with the South, which is my native culture. It’s not that I carry around with me a burden of shame and an “I’ve got to show them” competitive mentality, as Coates does with reference to blackness. Living in the North for so long — and culturally speaking, Washington DC and South Florida are the North — made me appreciate what was deeply good about the South. That’s something I didn’t see when I was a young man, and could only see its flaws. Maybe I came to terms with my inner redneck; in any case, I came to see rednecks with a lot more nuance than I did before.

And being around Northern white people, so many of whom were full of self-congratulation about their social progressivism, not realizing how provincial and bigoted they were, made me profoundly identify with Randy Newman’s famous satirical song “Rednecks.” It really is true, I think, that the only kind of person its perfectly safe to piss on in smart company is white working-class Southerners. “Sweet Home Alabama” is the classic, anthemic f-you by people who don’t think they have a damned thing to be ashamed of. I love this song because it makes me forget that I chose to leave, and am something of a fraud and a poseur because of it.

And yet, when the South keeps coming up last in many quality of life measures — health, education, unwed births, etc. — it’s hard to deny that there’s something particularly wrong with us. It’s redneck culture — white rednecks and black rednecks both, people who live chaotic lives, dwell on grievance and resentment, and despise boring bourgeois standards of sobriety, order and respectability. It seems like we can’t overcome it.