The Dish

The AP gets the scoop:

[T]he 19-year-old father of Sarah Palin's grandchild will pose nude for Playgirl, his attorney said Wednesday.

Thank God he can still speak out. I always loved the guy, endorsed him in 1996, admire his midwestern Toryism, and his Gen-X sense of humor. He's right about this:

"This is one of the most important measures members of Congress will vote on in their lifetimes," the former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate told an audience in Kansas City today. "If we don't do it this year I don't know when we're gonna do it."

Once you put this together with the CBO report arguing that the Baucus model will actually save money and cut the deficit (and with a fair public option could cut it some more), I think Obama is winning this argument, as the polls increasingly show. And if the reform proves popular, then the GOP will for ever be tarred as the party that refused to help more people get health insurance or to tackle healthcare costs.

Or as the Dish has sometimes said: beep beep.

Remember that

It wouldn't work, would it?

To New Zealand and Samoa! So we now have the slogan that sums up the Obama record on gay rights: Not much worse than Bush:

Obama's announcement is a gesture just days before he speaks to a gay rights fundraising dinner on Saturday and gay activists march on Washington on Sunday.

Look: I'm not a one-issue person and I respect a great deal of what the president is trying to do and have supported him on many issues and will continue to. I also know that the real action is in the states; and I know that we gays have to change the world ourselves and work harder to make our case for equality. But a lot of us have done all of that for a very long time, at great personal cost, and in sickness and in health. We have moved public opinion very quickly toward understanding how discrimination still operates and how equality will help all of us. And yet the Democratic party which takes our money and counts on our votes still thinks we can be fobbed off with gestures and symbols and a nice speech. And, of course, HRC loves nothing more than that and they will milk this for more money and even plusher buildings and higher salaries for their professional Washington careerists, even as they get nothing done or passed. They like it that way. It keeps them in business. And the love-fest Saturday night will be sick-making.

But the president needs to know that speaking to HRC, a tool of the Democratic establishment, and appointing Democratic donors and machers and suck-ups to jobs and sinecures … well, we all could have backed the Clintons again if that's what we were hoping for.

Some of us didn't back the Clintons (which cannot be said for most of the HRC board) when it was very unpopular to do so. Some of us went out on a limb for him, worked our asses off for him, and expected not miracles, but certainly not what we've gotten. And what we've gotten is not change we can believe in on civil rights, but the tired old Democratic party interest group cynicism that some of us thought he had left behind. On these issues, Obama reeks of fear. And he acts as if it's still 1993.

At best, gays are still safe victims in the Democratic party, protected from "hate crimes" by benevolent straight people, who love to brag about their gay friends and get us to decorate their homes. But we're not equals to this president or his party, whatever he says and however well he puts it. I'd much rather a president who stiffed the HRC and gave no speeches at all but actually did something for the non-coopted, non-elite, non-Washington, non-celebrity gay folks who actually voted for him and backed him when it was hard. He knows what to do. And he refuses to do it. That's more eloquent than any speech ever could be. 

Jesse Walker questions my prediction that the anti-war right could make a comeback in the near future.

Juan Cole argues that Iran isn't pursing a nuclear bomb, just nuclear latency:

Those who insist that Iran is trying to get a bomb have a difficult time explaining why Khamenei forbids it as un-Islamic and why the president and others all deny it. It is possible that they are lying, but their denials at least have to be noted and analyzed. The skeptics also have to explain away why the 16 US intelligence agencies say after exhaustive espionage and investigation that there is no weapons program now and that there hasn't been one for some time.

Before the Iraq fiasco, I would have dismissed this as naive hooey. I still suspect it is. But anyone not open to debate on the basic thesis has not learned from history. His hypothesis:

Those who agree with the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as with the International Atomic Energy Agency, that there is no evidence for Iran having a nuclear weapons program have to explain Iran's insistence on closing the fuel cycle and being able to enrich uranium itself.

The answer I propose, which explains all the anomalies elegantly and concisely, is that Iran is seeking nuclear latency. Latency is the possession of a nuclear energy program and of reactors, which would allow the production of an atomic bomb on short notice if an extreme danger to national autonomy reared its ugly head. Nuclear latency is sometimes called the 'Japan option,' because given its sophisticated scientific establishment and enormous economy, Japan could clearly produce a nuclear weapon on short notice if its government decided to mount a crash program.

This is surely the smartest move Tehran can make. It doesn't cross the trip-wire of international sanctions; it bolsters national pride; yet it does act as an implicit guarantee if it is attacked. And it could then be used, if inspections are allowed, to highlight Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region, and engender wider support for Israel to live up to the NPT. Quite shrewd actually. But we need a through inspection regime and full engagement with the coup leaders to find out.

The Internet has at him.

New York passed a law requiring restaurants to post caloric information. A new study on fast food establishments in New York suggests the information is not helping individuals make healthier choices and may be doing the opposite. Jonah Lehrer wonders why:

[T]he brain…receives rewarding input from metabolic processes that have nothing to do with the tongue. When you eat at McDonald's, or order that venti mocha latte, a big part of the pleasure comes from the fact that the food is sustenance, fuel, energy. The end result is that even mediocre food is a little rewarding. In fact, I wonder if part of the reason the calorie information led to the consumption of more calories (and not less) is that people subconsciously chose items that would give them more pleasure. If that's the case – if we are implicitly aware of this second reward pathway in the brain – then nutritional information will often backfire, as people are drawn to the precise foods they should avoid.

Further thoughts from Drum, Sager, and McArdle.

David Frum is all sunshine and rainbows:

1) Those in the Obama administration betting on a roaring Reagan-style recovery seem to be heading for a nasty surprise, economically and politically.

2) The horrifying unemployment numbers will not improve soon. Unemployment hit 9.8% in figures released Friday. Job-seekers are finding it takes more than 26 weeks to gain a new job, the worst number since record-keeping began in 1948. Unemployment among those 16-24 now exceeds 50%. And the number of those who have lacked work for more than six months has also hit a post-Second World War high.

3) With the private economy remaining so weak so long, U. S. tax collections will not improve any time soon — meaning more terrible budget deficit numbers and more accumulated government debt.

4) The next U. S. “up” cycle will look very different from the growth cycles of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Taxes will be higher, to repay the big accumulated debts from this crisis. Young workers will begin their careers with a nasty scare — and therefore probably much less optimistic expectations than previous generations. Look for more saving and less consumption.

5) Slow recovery for the economy means slow recovery for America’s troubled financial institutions. Government support for –and control over –banking will not end soon.

6) Those of us who criticized the Obama stimulus plan for stretching into 2010 may have to eat our words. Government looks likely to be the only source of increased economic demand for at least the next half year.

Politically, the months ahead will be unhappy times for incumbents. Look for Democrats to lose seats in Congress in 2010 and for President Obama’s poll numbers to decline further.

Economically, however, the impact will be even greater. The great era of private sector achievement and confidence that opened in 1983 abruptly ended in 2008. America has entered a very different era, in which government predominates — and will continue to predominate for months and maybe years to come.

I have no idea if he's right. But if he is, does David really think the American public will be up for ten more years in Iraq and Afghanistan?