The Dish

A reader writes:

Last night the DADT issue kept me awake as I lay in bed.

Specifically, it was the “small minded” phrase from the ““Protecting” Homosexuals” reader/writer that jumped out at me.  I actually consider the writer responded to, in “Why the Ban Remains,” to be much closer to the unpleasant truth of the situation, and I would definitely not characterize him/her as pessimistic or gloomy.

“Gloomy” reader/writer pointed out that the military has a disproportionate number of middle- and lower-class (financial, of course) members, but he/she neglected to also point out the enormous number of them who are (using your term here, because it seems so appropriate) Christianists.

Further, the military integrates religion — Christianity, of course, not other religions — into the military in insidious ways, thereby reinforcing anti-gay feeling and rhetoric. Repealing DADT will certainly go some way toward seeing that some in the military will set up some as gay servicemen & servicewomen as heroes and role models, but others, likely the majority, will never feel that way.  They will allow the government to dictate how they tie their shoes, dress, and behave in public, but there is no way in hell that they will allow the government to dictate whether or not they accept gays or work along side them.

I agree with both writers, but, unlike you, I believe that because the writer in “Why the Ban Remains” left out the religious aspect of the situation, it is even more discouraging than it appears in his post, and far more discouraging than you believe it to be.  I have many gay friends who I look up to in many ways, and certainly I’ve met a (very) few in the military who are open-minded enough to respect and admire gay servicemen and servicewomen, but gays are a minority, and as such will never get the much-deserved respect and admiration of their fellow servicemen and servicewomen under any circumstances.  As our country simmers with barely-veiled racial and religious hatreds and tensions directed toward non-whites, non-Christians, and gays, it seems to me to be fairly obvious that repealing DADT at this moment in time could be setting a spark to the tinder that exists in the US.  Doesn’t that play right into the hands of the GOP noise machine, the Tea Partiers, the hate-mongers?

At some point, you have to face down the fear. Then it will dissipate. End the ban now.

They built it in the 1980s, and it's still around. Nicholas Thompson explores the paradoxical nature of nuclear weaponry:

[O]ne obvious question that people ask when they learn about this system is “Why didn’t the Soviets tell us?” As we all know from Dr. Strangelove, the point of a Doomsday Machine is to convince the other side in a conflict that attack is futile. The answer to that question is the most interesting thing I learned in my research. Yes, the Soviets were extremely secretive; and, yes, they were worried that, if they told us, we could disable it. But the more interesting reason is that they also built the system to deter themselves.

Robert Reich is still bearish:

Corporate earnings are up — mainly because companies have been cutting costs. Payrolls comprise 70 percent of most companies' costs, which means companies have been slashing jobs. In the end, this is a self-defeating strategy. If workers don't have jobs or are afraid of losing them, they won't buy, and company profits will disappear.

I have no doubt that the recovery is still fragile; but I do think it's worth noting that very few people expected a Dow 10,000 any time soon last January. Obama has done the critical – and largely overlooked – thing. He has restored confidence in the markets and the economy after what came close to a total panic and meltdown. That is not easy. It is not sufficient, but it was necessary. And he did it.

Is there an iPhone app that actually places a call reliably? Or are we stuck with AT&T?

Judah Grunstein gets lost in "the fog of politics" surrounding Afghanistan:

[T]he debate, as it's unfolding in the media, is riddled with misinformation and false propositions. Remember how last March, al-Qaida was a grave threat, and drone strikes targeting its leadership in the Pakistan FATA were exacerbating a catastrophic situation that, if not urgently reversed, could lead to the imminent takeover of Pakistan, nukes and all, by the Taliban? Now it turns out that, for all that Afghanistan is on the brink, things aren't so bad in the FATA, after all.

I suppose it makes as much sense to complain about opinion shaping as it does about the weather. But there's still some value in pointing it out as it happens.

The debate in Washington now boils down to political optics — namely, of whether or not to send more troops, itself an area of some opaqueness. Generating public support, of course, is an important component in a democracy's conduct of war. But the current battle for American public opinion obscures the ways in which the answer to many of the questions we're confronted with in Afghanistan is that we simply don't know. The only thing that's certain is that none of the proposed approaches is free, and none offers an iron-clad guarantee of success. They all come with costs and risks attached. It would be refreshing to see that more forthrightly acknowledged as the debate moves forward.

Yglesias makes the best of it. Sigh.

Greenwald notes what he calls "most despicable domestic political event of the year." For the GOP to target Muslim Hill interns seems particularly unhinged to me.

Steve King's letter to the president for asking Kevin Jennings to work for him repeats the debunked claim that Jennings counseled a 15-year-old to use a condom if he had sex with another man. Here's the letter:

Equally troubling is Mr. Jennings' self-described history of ignoring the sexual abuse of a child. In his book, One Teacher in Ten, Mr. Jennings recounts a 15-year old student confiding in him that he had a sexual relationship with a much older man. Mr. Jennings' only response was to ask if the underage boy used a condom. As a mandatory reporter, Mr. Jennings was required by law to report child abuse, including sex crimes. Mr. Jennings cannot serve as the "safe schools" czar when his record demonstrates a willingness to overlook the sexual abuse of a child.

But we now know that a) the boy was 16 years old, i.e. of legal age at the time; b) that he never had sex with anyone; and c) that he has nothing but good things to say about Jennings in retrospect (and at the time). Perhaps the advice was wrong, as Kevin (a friend and political sparring partner of mine since our Harvard days together), has himself suggested. But to send a letter to the president that repeats what is clearly untrue strikes me as a classic part of the usual strategy of trying to accuse gay people of child-abuse. And King knew the charge was untrue, because we know Greg Sargent told his office, and even Fox News corrected its smear.

A curiously moving auto-tuned Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking – already a viral sensation: