The Dish

Courtesy of Ezra Klein:

 "There are a few things economists believe in our souls so strongly that we have a hard time actually explaining them," [MIT economist Jon Gruber] said. "One is that free trade is good and another is that health-care costs come out of wages." To put it another way: Economists are pretty united on this point. A firm's compensation for its workers is pretty static, and if relatively more goes to health-care costs, relatively less will go to wages, and vice-versa. But this isn't just a matter of theory. The [above] graph charts the percent growth in the median household income versus the percent growth in health-care costs since 1990.

Ambers is already gaming Iowa:

The congealing conventional wisdom is that if ex-Govs. Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin run for president, the best way to dilute their support is to cede them the Iowa precinct caucuses, which are dominated by social conservatives voting on social conservative issues. For this strategy to work, the candidate would have to set the expectations bar quite low and publicly admit, very early on, that Huckabee and Palin are likely to win. The candidate has to accomplish this without alienating social conservatives. (Mitt Romney won't attribute his loss in Iowa to anti-Mormon bias, but plenty of his advisers are willing to go there.)

Kathleen Parker takes aim at the stoner stereotype:

[T]he shift toward a more sensible national policy is no longer confined to the left. Nor is the long-haired stoner the face of the pro-pot lobby. Today's activist, more likely, doesn't have facial hair, but she does have kids. Lately to the smallish conservative crowd, notably once led by anti-prohibitionist William F. Buckley, is Jessica Corry of Colorado, a married, pro-life Republican mom, soon to be "freedom fighter of the month" in High Times magazine.

Her kicker:

In 1929, the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform led the movement to end alcohol prohibition. Might women lead the next revolution in personal autonomy?

(Hat tip: DrugWarRant)

J. E. Dyer of Commentary asks everyone to suspend judgment:

This was a sting operation, not the interdiction of espionage solicited by a foreign government. The FBI affidavit alleges no act of targeting Nozette or his information by a foreign spy agency.  Nozette’s own behavior was what alerted the FBI to his potential susceptibility. Anyone who has had clearances has secrets to sell, but nothing in this episode indicates that the Israelis were looking for the particular ones Norzett has.

Nozette will probably deserve whatever he gets. But let’s wait until espionage involves actual evidence of initiation by a foreign government — as with Cuban spies in the State Department, Chinese spies in an NSA facility in Hawaii, and cyber-espionage by Russia and China against the U.S. power grid — before attributing interests to that government in a specific incident.

Agreed. But what will be interesting will be this guy's politics and social circle. And that we are only beginning to find out about.

With Congress finally approving the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the US for trial, the debate over where to try and imprison them is sure to heat up soon. Underblogger Bodenner reports on the likeliest location:

Standish, a town of 1,500 people, is the seat of a county with an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent. It is one of the most impoverished counties in Michigan–the state hit hardest by the recession. In June, two months before my visit, things had gone from bad to worse: Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that the town's main economic engine–the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, which funds about one-quarter of the city's budget and is the county's largest employer–would be shuttered.

More here.

As gay people and our families are forced to address core anxieties and concerns about marriage equality, the truth is our best ally. Defensiveness and euphemism suggest self-doubt. There is no reason for that. Tell the truth. As this family does:

To help get this spot on the air in Maine, click here.

What Andrew Exum sees as the most likely endgame in Afghanistan (he also provides worst-case and best-case scenarios):

The most likely scenario in Afghanistan..is one in which the United States and its allies gradually tire of a costly counterinsurgency campaign and transition to a more limited engagement that, while not meeting many of the strategic goals articulated by the president in March, allows the United States and its allies to still influence affairs in Central Asia and prevent a total return of the Taliban and its allies to power in Afghanistan.

In this scenario, most U.S. allies withdraw their forces from Afghanistan in the next 18 months as the war becomes more exclusively a concern of the United States and its Afghan partners. Spurred by popular displeasure with the war in his own party, the president directs the commanders in Afghanistan to reduce the presence of U.S. general purpose forces and to shift the mission away from a large-scale counterinsurgency campaign to foreign internal defense (FID) making better use of U.S. Special Forces and other special operations forces. A limited and short-term “surge” into Afghanistan precedes this transition, with the goal of rapidly training more ANSF. A combination of U.S. and allied airpower and direct-action special operations support this limited surge.

Stephanie Tatel explains the danger of not vaccinating:

Ordinarily I wouldn't question others' parenting choices. But the problem is literally one of live or don't live. While that parent chose not to vaccinate her child for what she likely considers well-founded reasons, she is putting other children at risk. In this instance, the child at risk was my son. He has leukemia.

What does any of this have to do with vaccinations? While the purpose of chemotherapy is to kill the cancer, it also kills the good cells—most notably the infection-fighting white blood cells. That means my son has limited ability to fight off anything. A single unimmunized child in an ordinary child care setting is the equivalent of a toddler time bomb to him.

A game to kill the rest of your workday.