Today on the Dish, we capped off a week of controversies. In NYC mosque coverage, Noah Millman defended Muslim Americans, readers pounced on Newt, and another reinforced the absurdity of the whole situation.  Limbaugh let his racist flag fly and FNC was close behind. Journo-scandal updates here and here. Commentary on the Israel rape scandal here, here, and especially here.

In Palin coverage, she whined about the press asking her questions, Cillizza noted a big challenge in New Hampshire, and Bernstein sounded off on the horse race. Bristol made a creepy ad. Internet fun here and here. The Trig thread continued here and here.

Andrew cornered Douthat on gay marriage, called out anti-Semitic smears, and agreed with Brooks about balancing the budget.  Iraq update here. Recession update here and a reader in China chimed in on wages. Glimpse at the impact of DOMA here.

MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here. Best places in Provincetown here.

Thursday on the Dish, Argentina sealed the deal for marriage equality. Andrew took a step back from the Breitbart-Sherrod scandal to revisit Obama's long game. Remaining race commentary from Josh Marshall, Adam Serwer, Conor Friedersdorf, E.D. Kain, and Ron Radosh. Drum pointed the finger at Fox. Andrew also shook his head at the latest Journo-list revelations and Fallows weighed in. 

Newt slithered into the NYC mosque mess, Yglesias smacked him around, and Larison found higher ground. In other Palin coverage, readers pounced on her NYC/Real America hypocrisy, Friedersdorf took a turn, Roger Simon concurred with the Dish on 2012, and Noah Millman shivered. Chin-scratching Trig posts here and here.

Sharron Angle continued to embarrass herself in the face of the press. Richard Silverstein went to bat for Andrew over Tablet's smears, a reader dissented over his take on the rape-by-deception case, and Frum reminded us (with reader feedback) of Israel's strengths to the US. Andrew held up the Cameron-led coalition as a model for Republicans.

Kinsley revived the estate tax debate and Glenn Reynolds stood up to the police state. Another, broader look at the WaPo series here. Dreher engaged Rauch on the move towards marriage equality. Andrew played with conversation. 

Mike Tyson talked shit about his tattoo. Crazy campaign ad here and a fun new blog here. MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here.

Wednesday on the Dish, coverage and commentary of the Breitbart-Sherrod controversy continued here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and a reader dissent here. (Meanwhile, POTUS signed a major bill.)  On the Journo-scandal, Andrew challenged Chait, doubled down, and Ezra defended his defunct forum. Andrew also kept on the Hollywood scandal (multiple dissents here), defended himself from Tablet's charges, and meep-meep'd over the GOP. Scott Horton dug into the WaPo series and Ray Sanchez reported more on the police state.

In Palin watch, Goldblog sounded an alarm over her stance on Israel, her group blog peddled a revolting ad against the NYC mosque, readers rushed to defend religious freedom, another underscored the absolutism of her base on Trig, and Larison betted on Romney. Her latest mama grizzly surged in the Georgia governor's race.

In assorted coverage, Hitch grappled with the US-Israel problem, Christopher Papagianis and Reihan wonked out on homeownership, and Jonathan Rauch sees marriage equality as a foregone conclusion. Vice magazine shot a short doc down in the Gulf while Dan Ariely reminded us about the rainforests.  A look at a uniquely Green skyscraper here. A love letter to the Old Spice Guy here.

MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here.

Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew sized up the congressional elections, glanced at the Angle-Reid race, shook his head at Journo-list's latest scandal, and cautioned against Breitbart's scoop on supposed racism in the USDA. (That caution proved prescient.) Some troubling rhetoric emerged from Netanyahu. Rahm watch here.

In Palin coverage, her political clout grew ever-stronger, the AP corrected her facts, Ambinder parsed her press strategy, readers pushed back against her bigotry on the Ground Zero mosque, Mark Liberman studied up on "refudiate," Doonesbury defended McGinniss, Andrew circled back to Weigel's Trig criticism, readers sounded off on the same, and another juxtaposed lil' Andrew and lil' Sarah.  Lots of drama from Wasilla here.

More on the WaPo police-state series here and here. Hitchens unloaded on supporters of Mel Gibson and a reader dissented over his and Andrew's criticism. Cali cannabis coverage here and Social Security here. In assorted commentary, Kornacki looked at Romney's record against female opponents, Bagehot checked in on Cameron's coalition, Drezner scrutinized smart sanctions, Brad Plumer perused what's left of the energy bill, TNC rubbed his brow over journalists blaming blacks for Prop 8, Balko backed gambling, and Douthat examined American meritocracy.  E.D. Kain and Timothy Lee added to the liberaltarian thread.

Anti-capitalist art here and funny dog video here.  MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here. The latest window winner here.

Anchorage, Alaska, 11.41 pm

Monday on the Dish, bloggers reacted to the WaPo's big feature on the police state. Andrew's take here. He also tackled the Christianists over Mel Gibson, replied to Frum on the state of the conservatism, threw up his hands at the GOP over spending, and kept his eye on Israel's campaign against Turkey.

Palin coined a Bushism and inspired a Twitter meme. Gallup had her in the lead for 2012, Blumenthal explained disparate polling, and a reader illustrated her immense clout in congressional races. Levi and Bristol made bank. More Palin drama here, here, and here. Andrew responded at length to Weigel's refudiation of Trig-gate, noted Cameron's wife's refusal to fly pregnant, and offered a belated take on the Levi-Bristol engagement. Sprung countered Weigel on Palin's need for policy chops, Chait realized the GOP can't contain her, and Goldblog glowered at her assault on the Ground Zero mosque.

Chris Good and TNC covered the departure of racist Mark Williams, the Brits leaked the latest withdrawal date from Afghanistan, Marc Lynch discussed our ever-possible bombing of Iran, Greenwald kept the heat on the NYT over "torture," and Bruce Bartlett dropped his jaw at the GOP's fantasy over the Bush tax cuts. Surge fail update here and here. California cannabis update here and here. Alex Ogle reported on a cash incentive program to lower AIDS in Africa and Chris Blattman worried about the drug trade there.

Noah Millman came around on marriage equality and Virginia Postrel talked glamour. Cailey Hall watched soldier music videos and Alexis Madrigal meditated over a YouTube bullying case. MHB here, VFYW here, and a young Sully face here.

-- C.B.

Timothy Lee bemoans the urban planning decisions made in St. Louis, and elsewhere:

Carving up St. Louis with freeways didn’t just undermine individual neighborhoods, it permanently changed the region’s culture. By undermining walkable urban neighborhoods while simultaneously making it easier to commute in from the suburbs, planners effected a massive transfer of wealth from from cities to suburbs. It’s not surprising that many people responded to these incentives by moving to the suburbs. But it was hardly a voluntary choice.

A reader writes:

Thought the Dish might get a kick out of the insight into the mind of Charlie Rangel in this clip. "Deference, Please" isn't a partisan issue; both parties seem to feel they are entitled to kid glove treatment from the portion of the media that is "theirs".

Bernstein applauds Millman's analysis:

I do think that things are more fluid than [Millman] implies...there's still plenty of time for someone other than Mitt Romney to play the Romney role he imagines (Rick Perry?).  We don't have a good sense yet of whether Sarah Palin's appeal within Republican primary electorates is capped...well, we do have a sense that it is capped, but whether that's at 70% (not much of a problem) or 40% (very big problem) doesn't seem clear to me right now.  Some numbers: the current YouGov/Economist poll gives her a 77/17% favorable rating among Republicans...but we don't really know how many of those 77% are thinking of her as a presidential candidate.  For what it's worth, YouGov/Economist has her leading the horse race with 28%; that doesn't strike me as a very impressive total for a candidate with excellent name recognition against a bunch of unknowns.  Of course, there's also the very solid possibility that she bails anyway for any one of a thousand reasons.  But I think Millman's piece is very nicely set in the real-life world of nominations, with its interactions between various party elites and the voters.

An Internet user looks at a Facebook page dedicated to Anna Chapman in Paris on July 23, 2010. Two weeks after 10 Russian spies flew back from the United States to Moscow, the buzz of interest around the ring's most photogenic member, the feisty redhead Anna Chapman, shows no signs of receding. While Chapman remains in an unknown location since her arrival in Moscow, reportedly being debriefed, she has apparently found time to write enigmatic Facebook updates and negotiate with journalists on her first interview. By Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images.

Dave Roberts watched Reid pull the plug yesterday. His prediction:

Big Coal will be back begging for cap-and-trade: No, really. Right now there are EPA rules in the pipeline that are going to shut down a third or more of the existing coal fleet. No new coal plants are going to get built -- they're not cost-competitive with natural gas or wind, and every one runs into a buzzsaw of grassroots opposition. In other words, carbon caps or no carbon caps, Big Coal is in trouble. Sooner or later, the industry will realize that the funding it can get from cap-and-trade, to support carbon capture and sequestration, is its only path to survival. Robert Byrd tried to tell the industry the truth before he died. Byron Dorgan tried to tell it the truth just the other day. By 2012, certainly by 2015 when many of the rules kick in, the industry will be forced to acknowledge this basic truth. And they'll come begging Congress for cap-and-trade.

Bradford Plumer makes the same point.

Fred Kaplan reflects on the series and defends the WaPo against all criticism:

One thing to say on behalf of the Post series is that nobody in the government could have produced the data its reporters put together. No office has such data on hand. That says it all.

Every year, some readers ask me what I recommend if you're coming to the end of Cape Cod. I'm conservative so stick with what I know, and there may be new joints worth exploring that I haven't found yet. But here goes.

Entertainment: Dina Martina is in a class of her own, in my opinion: total, dark, hilarious performance art. I'm going for the third time tonight. Slap And Tickle is a new play at the Provincetown Theater (tix here). Aaron is in it so discount this as bias if you want. But it's rare to see such a candid, and funny take on gay men's pathologies and vulnerabilities. The play is too dark, I think, for today's gay world and needs a less trivial title, but it is not Kushner-style propaganda or gay drama dreck. And some of the performances stay with you. Great reviews. One act: just an hour and twenty minutes.

Food: Devons, Edwige, Victors, Sake, Cafe Heaven for sit-down; Frappo66 for amazing fast but gourmet food, served cafeteria style.

Coffee: Wired Puppy.

Bakery: Relish.

Deli: Far Land and Angel Foods.

Weekly mass: Showgirls at the Crown and Anchor.

Browsing: Tim's Used Books

Clothes/Tchotchkes: Rogue's Gallery, All American Boy, Wa, Pulp, Southstream Design, and, of course, the legendary Marine Specialties.

Let's call it what it is, shall we? And God bless Shep Smith and the honest, decent people who work at Fox who resist this and try to do a decent job:

Catherine Rampell compares people unemployed for more than six months to people unemployed for under six months:

Perhaps those who were unemployed longer were less desirable job candidates to begin with, which would explain both why it took them so long to find work, and why, when they did found new work, the job was relatively crummy. Or perhaps people who have been job-hunting for a long time are more desperate to take any job that becomes available, so they end up in less attractive positions. Or maybe the gaping holes on their resumes start to look more and more suspicious to employers, so the job options become narrower and narrower.

Or perhaps those who’ve been out of work longer have become so embittered by the experience of unemployment that any new job they take will be viewed as a disappointment.

Jay Cost looks to November:

The best case scenario for Democrats at this point is a nominal majority where the median member is not a terribly reliable ally of the party's liberal leadership. Something similar is set to occur in the Senate, where a Republican gain of at least five seats will push the filibuster to more conservative ground, from Brown/Collins/Snowe to Alexander/Cochran/Murkowski. Barack Obama ran for and won the Presidency in 2008 based upon a pledge to pursue bipartisanship, and the results in 2010 are effectively going to force him to do just that, at long last.

Not just him.

Physics never looked so cool:

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 - Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

An Israeli reader writes:

A point which is rarely mentioned in the coverage of the "rape by deception" case - either by Israeli or foreign media - is that the case started out as a regular rape case. The woman claimed she was forcibly raped by Kashour. Once on the stand, however, the defense demolished her story and she admitted she lied and that they had consensual sex. She admitted that after learning Kashour lied to her, she felt humiliated and went to the police. It was at that point the prosecution came up with the plea bargain. A normal court would have just acquitted Kashour, but this court decided to convict.

Several further points:

Couldn't resist:

David Brooks shares his view:

My view is data based. The international evidence shows that if you want to balance the budget, something like 66 percent to 80 percent of your effort should go into cutting spending and something like a third to a fifth should consist of tax increases. If you rely on tax increases too much, you end up messing up the incentives for people who save and invest. Also spending cuts on entitlement programs have been the most enduring way to change long term fiscal trends. Cuts in other spending are too trivial to make a difference and don’t last because politicians reverse themselves.

Agreed on all counts. But can the GOP accept even this degree of compromise? And could Obama bring Pelosi along? It seems to me that next year will be the acid test of "Goodbye To All That." If wrecking America's finances was Bush's legacy, restoring them should be Obama's.

It seems to me simply wrong to ascribe the bile of flocks of angry commenters that appear on any site that tackles contentious topics to the blogger himself. You can criticize him or her for not deleting them and providing a platform to hate (Ann Althouse's readers routinely mock me for having HIV, for example, and she does nothing) but you can't criticize someone for attracting such creatures on the internet - let alone convict him of the same views. To further convict him on the basis of anti-Semitic emails sent entirely independently of him to a third party - and to describe them as "Stephen Walt's Mailbag" when in fact, it's Jeffrey Goldberg's in-tray - strikes me as deeply unfair. But that's what my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg has done with Stephen Walt in his latest post. He has every right to lambaste Walt for things he writes and has written (although I think "Jew-baiter" is an ugly and absurd excess) - but this guilt-by-association is perverse. As Walt notes,

If we judge bloggers not by what they write but by what some of their readers write in response, we would be giving opponents of those bloggers an easy way to discredit them. If you don't like what a particular blogger says, write an anonymous comment praising him or her, add some bigoted statements of your own, and then send Smith an anonymous email and tell him to check out the comments thread. Voila!

It also violates a core Internet etiquette - and seems remarkably defensive - not to link to a post you criticize. 

And if raising questions about Israel's policies inflames anti-Semitism (and how can it not among the fever swamps of hate out there?), should that therefore prevent us from airing such questions? The chilling implications of this kind of argument are profound - and inimical to free discourse. Look: I know it's awful to read bigoted emails. And relatively new bloggers may be unused to the routine bile. But you need to accept it as part of a new media with no filters. 

Powerline, comparing Breitbart to Buckley!:

With the hounds baying, Andrew deserves the support of conservatives in his struggle with the Democrat-Media complex.

Yes, they're that insane. Limbaugh goes after Shep Smith for using basic journalistic ethics, and repeats the Big Race-Baiting Lie:

“This regime is tribalizing this country. They are dividing this country. It's not just enough to say that they are dividing us. They are tribalizing this country. We aren't Americans anymore. We're all members of different racial tribes, and we are to be pitted against each other: Black Americans, White Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans. We're all being divided up racially, by tribes.”

The pure projection is staggering. Breitbart won't apologize and the amoral pageview machine Politico puffs him up. I suspect the small, sudden moment of some ethics and honesty on the right scared the bullies.

A reader writes:

Although I agree that you have every right to be suspicious, I suggest you change tack on the Trig stuff and just keep publicizing the story exactly as Palin presents it. Because I think the facts of the story as she presents them show her in even worse light than if it were proved that Trig was not hers.

From what I’ve read the facts as she presents them show her to be either monumentally stupid, monumentally hubristic, or monumentally cavalier with another person’s life. Why, it’s almost as if she didn’t want her special needs child to be born safely.  Anyone who has ever had a child, knows someone who’s had a child or is part of the medical profession (which I would imagine covers a fairly significant proportion of the electorate) would, if they fully knew the story Palin herself recounts, either think that she was acting in a grossly irresponsible, dangerous way or else being in some way ‘economical with the truth’.  All the other women I’ve talked to who’ve been through labor and birth are far more shocked by her version of events than by the notion that she may have adopted her own grandchild.

The reason Palin hasn’t made more of a song and dance about the Trig stuff is that every version of the story reflects incredibly badly on her.

A reader writes:

Here’s what I find most ironic about Palin’s staunch opposition to the Cordoba House: there are already at least 10 mosques in Manhattan, including Masjid Manhattan, which has been a mere 4 blocks from Ground Zero since 1970.  Palin is worried about Muslims taking over area near the Ground Zero site even though they’ve been there for decades.

Chris Cillizza points to a major hurdle for her in the first primary:

New Hampshire has an open primary system, meaning that independents can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary for president. ... With Obama almost certain not to be challenged for his party's nomination in 2012, independents are likely to play a very influential role in determining the Republican nominee. Palin has struggled mightily to court independent voters since the 2008 campaign; a recent Quinnipiac University national poll showed just 33 percent of independents viewed her favorably, while 50 percent saw her in an unfavorable light.

But Romney is next door and gives her an alibi. It's way too early to game this, but I see no real impediments to her taking over the party completely. She already has, in so many ways.

I love Dish readers:

A reader writes:

If you read the fine print under the graph (which you can only find on the original post you linked to, but not on your own post,) you see that the incomes represented are post-tax. In 1979, the highest marginal tax rates were 70%, double the current 35% rate. Looking at pre-tax income, you'd see a much flatter curve. More importantly though, at 70% marginal tax rates, there's a huge incentive for high-income earners to utilize tax-avoidance strategies, or just plain defer their cash income to a later date. Talk to any tax planner who's been around for a while, and I'm sure they'll tell you that there were a lot more tax loopholes back in 1979 than there are now. In fact, one of the main goals of Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986 was to close many of these loopholes.

Look, I think that income inequality is a big issue that needs to be addressed, but that chart is comparing apples to oranges. The chart doesn't prove that income inequality is increasing; rather, it proves that higher taxes mean lower post-tax income.

Sedona, Arizona, 4.07 pm

I'm stretching things a bit, I know, but it's interesting to see Ross praise what he calls David Cameron's "pro-family" impulses - especially by supporting married couples in the tax code, something I also support. The Lib-Dems have largely quashed this for now. But Cameron's pro-family agenda specifically and emphatically included gay couples. In fact, his entire argument was that we should not distinguish between gay and straight, but focus on core values - like commitment and responsibility. This is the argument I've been making for twenty years - and is directly opposed to the Republican Christianism which seeks to support family life by discriminating against and, in some states, seeking to recriminalize gay relationships.

So does Ross back, like David Brooks, Cameron's approach? Or the position of Robbie George, Maggie Gallagher, et al? Or is his evasion of this to continue?

Ezra emailed the Dish yesterday and wrote the following:

I set two rules for members: Center to left, and not working for the government, I didn't exercise discretion beyond that because I didn't want to be in the position of selectively choosing people.

He now concedes in another email that this is untrue:

I should say that I did make a few discretionary decisions. I didn't allow the Media Matters people on Journolist. I thought that was a conflict of interest.

He now says he also determined whether invitees were too interested in media coverage to join and also moderated spats between existing list-members and possible new members. This is is how Glenn Greenwald was first invited and then disinvited by Klein. It's also how much of the Firedoglake crowd never got on the list. Klein says he wasn't doing this on the basis of who he liked, and that is borne out by the evidence. He also tried to be as hands-off a moderator as possible.

But, contrary to his initial spin, he did act as a gatekeeper for a liberal list of journalists and did make decisions as to who would be included or not.

Now the respected judges have to be asked: If the man was really Dudu posing as Sabbar, a Jew pretending to be an Arab so he could sleep with an Arab woman, would he then be convicted of rape? And do the eminent judges understand the social and racist meaning of their florid verdict? Don't they realize that their verdict has the uncomfortable smell of racial purity, of "don't touch our daughters"? That it expresses the yearning of the extensive segments of society that would like to ban sexual relations between Arabs and Jews?

It was no coincidence that this verdict attracted the attention of foreign correspondents in Israel, temporary visitors who see every blemish. Yes, in German or Afrikaans this disgraceful verdict would have sounded much worse," - Gideon Levy, Haaretz, on the jailing of an Arab man for pretending to be Jewish while sleeping with a Jewish woman.

I didn't realize that as soon as the miscegenation-deception complaint was issued, the man "was placed under house arrest for two years, an electronic cuff on his ankle." He is now jailed for eighteen months.

Now she tells us she simply couldn't handle the pressure of being asked, you know, basic questions like what she reads (nothing), what she knew (next to nothing), and why none of her substantive political claims (Bridge To Nowhere My Ass) passed muster. She is telling us that she resigned from the governorship because the mama grizzly.barracuda couldn't handle the heat in the political kitchen. Altogether now: awww. Can you imagine a Thatcher or Meir or Merkel quitting because the press was too mean? Please. And if she becomes president or even nominee, she will presumably refuse to engage what's left of the media at all. Why should she? They ask questions she doesn't want to or cannot answer. Then this:

Regarding a television interview with Katie Couric widely seen at the time as a turning point in the public’s perception of Palin, which critics argued illustrated Palin’s inexperience, Palin said the interview was selectively edited.

“It didn’t help, either, that the hours and hours of interviews with the likes of Katie Couric resulted in a few minutes here and there of selected snippets of my annoyed answers. (I naively had not believed at the time of some of the badgering questions [for example, questioning my pro-life position] that the editing process would fulfill their biased purpose),” Palin said.

A Mudflats reader writes:

I keep thinking about her son in 15 years or in 20 years. If he looks at this ad campaign or searches magazines and newspaper articles/blogs for his family’s bizarre behavior and commentary about his birth—it just makes me sad to think how he will feel. Its just so twisted.

But to comment specifically on the imagery. I’m a cultural historian (meaning, I used alot of art and objects during my studies and work) and the image of Bristol with the baby on her lap is very “Madonna and Child.” I find it pretty creepy that on the one hand she’s calling herself a statistic (which is ridiculous considering how completely different her life is from the other 749,000 young girls out there) and on the other she’s being presented in an iconographic pose. There is just so much here that is screwed up, contradictory and sad … ugh.

In other words: ruthlessly exploit the babies for money, fame, and power. That's what mama grizzlies do.

Tyler Cowen worries:

At some sufficiently high debt-GDP ratio, it becomes a foreign policy issue and a big one.  Postwar UK had a high debt to GDP ratio, and to this day it is a fine place, but that debt meant the end of England as a world power, for better or worse.  The U.S. for instance used financial issues to push England around and they basically had to give up on their overseas commitments.  A very high debt ratio here would mean the end of the U.S. as a global world power, again even if GDP does OK.  A global power needs the option of spending a lot more, quickly, without asking for anyone's permission.  Your mileage on a U.S. retreat from the global policeman role will vary, but it's the elephant in the room which hardly anyone is talking about.

Well, the Dish has been talking about it for a while. It's one other legacy of the Bush-Cheney years: by both bankrupting the country and grinding the US military into the barren dust of Iraq and Afghanistan, those two fools did more to weaken America internationally than any administration in modern times. So much of power lies in the imagination of others. Before Iraq, the US military had immense soft power. After Iraq, where the whole world saw a military incapable of curtailing an insurgency for four years, morally tainted by torture and abuse of prisoners, and now leaving a fractured, fragile tinder box more friendly to Iran than ever before, the deterrent effect has been lost. After Afghanistan, the world has seen the greatest military all but defeated by a bunch of goons and thugs and corrupt election-stealers. A super-power should guard its reputation carefully. Bush recklessly threw that reputation away.

It would not be the first time the desire to project power revealed its limits. Neoconservatism began with a Project For The Next American century. It's achievement is a new century with a newly empowered Iran, Pakistan (the two Islamist states with WMDs) and China. And still they write and act as if nothing - nothing - in their worldview needs changing.

A reader writes:

Your reader's excellent email describing the dialogue between Palin and her doctor reminded, oddly, of that recent video that went viral about the stupidly insistent person that wanted an iPhone 4.  I imagine Palin's dialogue with her doctor sounding more like that video:

Palin:  My water broke, and I'm having contractions.  I want to give this speech, then fly to the hospital in Wasilla.
Doctor:  You should stay in Texas and go to the hospital.  Due to your age, your pregnancy is considered high-risk and you could have complications during delivery.
Palin:  I don't care.
Doctor:  Your baby has been diagnosed with Down's Syndrome and could have other problems, and it's very important that you be in a facility that handles high-risk deliveries when he is born.
Palin:  I don't care.
Doctor:  If your water broke, your baby is at risk of infection until he is delivered.
Palin:  I don't care.
Doctor:  Since this is your fifth pregnancy, labor could progress very quickly and you could have the baby at any time.
Palin: I don't care.
Doctor: If you went into labor on the flight, you could disrupt all the other passengers by forcing an emergency landing.
Palin: I don't care.
Doctor:  Okay, if you don't care about any of that, tell me, what the fuck is so great about the hospital in Wasilla?
Palin:  It's in Alaska where there are mooses and bears.

And where no one will ask any questions.

A reader writes:

Did Newt really claim that the Cordoba House mosque would "overlook" the World Trade Center site? Rubbish. It is three blocks away and has no line of sight.

And 3,000 Americans? 3,000 human beings, mostly but by no means entirely American, as anyone in reality-based discourse knows. Another writes:

I live two blocks from Ground Zero in a six-building apartment complex with an active tenant association. As best I can tell, Cordoba House is a non-issue among local residents. I haven't heard a word from anybody on the subject - not in the elevators, not in the lobby, not at the neighborhood bars or restaurants. Nada.

Here are the facts. The proposed Cordoba House is not a mosque. It's to be a community center modeled after the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center, with most of its 13 floors devoted to classrooms, fitness and recreation - open to the entire downtown community, not just Muslims. There is to be a "prayer space" that can hold up to 2,000 people. I'll aver that "prayer space" could just be a PC term for "mosque," though I confess no knowledge of what procedures must take place to consecrate a facility as an official mosque. The group's leader, Imam Abdul Rauf, has held services in a small mosque in the neighborhood since 1983. It isn't as though the group materialized out of nowhere or has no history in the neighborhood.

Another

I think Gingrich has a point. 

Dana McCourt makes a distinction:

Apparent consent can be invalid is if the person has been deceived.  If a prankster serves you a delicious brownie telling you that it’s made of chocolate, and neglects to tell you about the secret ingredient, it’s fair to say that you didn’t consent to getting high.

In this case, the woman argues that she was deceived, and if she was, her consent would be meaningless.  Lack of consent means rape.

So, I’m still not convinced.  I think that the difference lies in whether we read the deception as warranting the assertion, “Yes, I consented, but I wouldn’t have if I’d known the truth” or “No, I really didn’t consent, because I was deceived in such a way that I couldn’t consent.”   I think that there are two categories, and that this case falls in the former category, and that to hold that this is an instance of rape, it has to be in the latter category.

Dan Savage is less restrained:

A reader writes:

I don't see how you can be disgusted with Breitbart for what he did on one hand, while at the same time calling out people on the Journo-List because of some selectively edited emails posted on the Daily Caller. (Tucker Carlson has told Greg Sargent he won't publish the full emails.) You're not making sense here. I know you say this is about liberal group think, but you don't know what was discussed on the list. You're drawing conclusions based on nothing but some selectively edited emails published by someone whose agenda at the very least to boost traffic to his site.

I am not defending the Daily Caller, but you need little context to understand an email headlined "The Line On Palin" or Kilgore's call to arms. Tucker addresses the concern:

We reserve the right to change our minds about this in the future, but for now there’s an easy solution to this question: Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself. Every member of Journolist received new threads from the group every day, most of which are likely still sitting in Gmail accounts all over Washington and New York. So feel free to try to prove your allegations, or else stop making them.

In response, Ezra Klein publishes the emails from Tucker asking to join Journo-list two months ago:

At every turn, he's known about evidence that substantially complicates his picture of an international media conspiracy.

Kate Gosselin, Sarah Palin will allegedly go camping together. What's next: a Martini summit with Danielle? But this I had to love:

Sarah Palin has even reportedly said that she will “teach Kate how to avoid bears” during the visit.

Joel Wing explains the diplomatic withdrawal:

The U.S. currently has a series of branch embassy offices throughout Iraq that would be closed down by 2014. The State Department is also due to take over the police training program in Iraq from the military, and that too will come to end in 3-5 years. The 16 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) would also be consolidated into three offices and two consulates, before being phased out as well. After five years then, the U.S. diplomatic presence in Iraq would consist of the American embassy in Baghdad, an office in charge of military sales, and a consulate in southern Iraq and one in the north based upon the PRTs.

Still: no government; al Qaeda able to score a major attack deep in the Green Zone; and the Awakening movement is being left out to dry. But repeat after me: the surge worked. If you say it often enough, as every Washingtonian does, you may even come to believe it.

Thank You For Your Call from Shawn Nee / discarted on Vimeo.

Noah Millman says it well:

Some of “them” are “us.” There are American Muslims. There is an – there are various – American Islam(s). That’s just a fact. There are certainly Muslims (mostly non-American) who deny that fact – who want to argue that Muslims in America can have no true loyalty to America, but must be loyal to some imaginary global Islamic communal interest. And there are certainly non-Muslims who would deny that fact in similar terms. But a fact it is. The problem with this Republican line is not so much that it discourages moderate Islam – though obviously the message “no Muslims wanted” is a terrible one – but that it quite blatantly writes American Muslims out of the American people.

A reader writes:

That graphic is interesting, but it seems a bit misleading. 100 million hours may have been spent creating Wikipedia -- but a great many articles are based off the fact that people spent 200 million hours watching TV, updating pages on LOST, updating pages on The Golden Girls, writing biographies for M*A*S*H actors, etc.  And I wrote some of my finest theological writing last year because I'd spent 50 hours watching Battlestar Galactica and doing some reflection in response on the nature of humanity and what constitutes a human person.

So while I'm sure a great many of those 200 million hours weren't spent on deep thinking, I'm equally sure that labeling the entire 200 million hours as a waste of cognitive time isn't accurate either.  And I'm also certain, after many hours spent vegging by following endless Wikipedia links and editing in trivial information, that not every hour spent creating Wikipedia was time well spent.

Brendan Nyhan counters Matt Bai:

What Bai doesn't seem to realize is that elections do not ever indicate the will of the people in some well-defined sense (there is a vast technical literature on this point). The best political science research to date convincingly argues that mandates should be viewed as a social construction. Moreover, it's not clear that presidents enact legislation intended to make them more popular. Contemporary presidents tend to pursue the agenda of their party, not the median voter. Finally, the public mood tends to shift in the opposite direction of the party in power. For all of these reasons, the appealing notion that presidential candidates will propose an agenda, enact that agenda in office, and be rewarded by the electorate for doing so rarely occurs in practice.

Jacob Hacker et al project that economic insecurity is reaching news highs. Drum summarizes:

Basically, [the Economic Security Index] measures the number of people who have experienced a major loss in income (25% or more) — either due to a decline in income or large out-of-pocket medical expenses or both — and who lack adequate financial wealth to buffer the drop. By their projection, the number of Americans in this category is now over 20%, far higher than in any previous recession.

From a reader in Shenzhen, a Chinese export hub:

There's two issues with that China "wage" graph. The first is that it compares wages using PPP, purchasing power parity, which is a number adjusted for cost of living. While this is a fine chart to show the relative average buying power of Chinese vs. Vietnamese, it doesn't do anything to show the actual GDP per capita, which could potentially tell you something about wages ($3678 for China, $1060 for Vietnam). Why not just compare real wages, or even minimum wages?

The second issue is the assumption that wages are really all that important.

Today on the Dish, Argentina sealed the deal for marriage equality. Andrew took a step back from the Breitbart-Sherrod scandal to revisit Obama's long game. Remaining race commentary from Josh Marshall, Adam Serwer, Conor Friedersdorf, E.D. Kain, and Ron Radosh. Drum pointed the finger at Fox. Andrew also shook his head at the latest Journo-list revelations and Fallows weighed in. 

Newt slithered into the NYC mosque mess, Yglesias smacked him around, and Larison found higher ground. In other Palin coverage, readers pounced on her NYC/Real America hypocrisy, Friedersdorf took a turn, Roger Simon concurred with the Dish on 2012, and Noah Millman shivered. Chin-scratching Trig posts here and here.

Sharron Angle continued to embarrass herself in the face of the press. Richard Silverstein went to bat for Andrew over Tablet's smears, a reader dissented over his take on the rape-by-deception case, and Frum reminded us (with reader feedback) of Israel's strengths to the US. Andrew held up the Cameron-led coalition as a model for Republicans.

Kinsley revived the estate tax debate and Glenn Reynolds stood up to the police state. Another, broader look at the WaPo series here. Dreher engaged Rauch on the move towards marriage equality. Andrew played with conversation. 

Mike Tyson talked shit about his tattoo. Crazy campaign ad here and a fun new blog here. MHB here, VFYW here, and FOTD here.

-- C.B.

Noah Millman takes her seriously. His fear:

If Sarah Palin wins the Presidency, then she reshapes her party to suit her preferences. And anybody who came out strongly against her will be in the doghouse for years. She is not a “with malice toward none, with charity for all” type of Republican.

Razib Khan gives her a 25% chance at the nomination while Larison continues to believe that "Palin has no chance of winning."

Building off analysis by Myriam Benraad, Joel Wing estimates the terrorist group's staying power:

Benraad believes that Al Qaeda in Iraq will still be around for the foreseeable future. One reason is that the group is largely Iraqi now. At first, it was mostly made up of and led by foreigners like Zarqawi and Masri. Today it is almost all locals.  Another factor is that in June 2009 U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq’s cities. That gave more room for the Islamists to operate in. The Americans are due to drawdown to just 50,000 troops by August 31, 2010 as well, which could increase Al Qaeda’s opportunities to sow mayhem. The group also plays upon the lingering resentment amongst some Sunnis that the United States is an occupier. That wont end even when the U.S. withdraws as Al Qaeda has painted the new Iraqi government as American puppets and the new occupier. The United States has also been emptying its prisons as it pulls out. Some of these detainees came into contact with or were recruited by Al Qaeda while they were incarcerated. The American military claims that the recidivism rate amongst these former convicts is low, but the Iraqis claim otherwise.

Friedersdorf extends Palin's logic:

The closest strip club to Ground Zero happens to be two blocks away, a fact that has nothing to do with our reverence for the place where so many Americans were killed by terrorists. As you've probably noticed, it doesn't even make sense to call it The Ground Zero Strip Club.

But it makes no less sense than naming an Islamic community center "The Ground Zero Mosque"--as much of the media have done--because it's going to be located a couple blocks away.

Dreher, who is opposed to marriage equality, praises Rauch's article on the social forces fighting for and against same-sex marriage:

Gay marriage is the final act of the Sexual Revolution, the thing that institutionalizes it. If you think the Sexual Revolution (which Rauch cannily defines as global information culture + birth control) was on balance a good thing, you're happy with this; if not, not. What's so insightful about Rauch's analysis -- and he's quite clear which side he's on -- is that he explains why conservative first principles on the meaning of family in society lead logically to opposing gay marriage. I have never read a more clear, cogent, fair-minded explanation of why social conservatives oppose gay marriage.

It's the same reason they oppose modernity as a whole. Which means they are not social conservatives. They are religious reactionaries.