Why Is The President Rebounding?

Kyle Leighton says the above chart explains Obama's comeback: 

The short-lived bump from the killing of Osama bin Laden was countered by a strong trend downward toward the politically poisonous summertime fight with Congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling. No one got out of that one unscathed — but, there was ample evidence that the GOP hobbled itself even more going into an election cycle when they were supposed to have the upper hand, with more voters blaming them for the sorry affair than Democrats. After a debt agreement was done, Obama immediately made a successful pivot to jobs, and the public responded. ... Those factors led to an uptick over the last three months, just as the Republican presidential primary process began in earnest.

Joe Weisenthal and Jon Terbush offer a different interpretation: 

Read On »

Our Sugar Problem, Ctd

Aaron Carroll argues that that sugar shouldn't be treated like alcohol:

Any regular reader on the blog knows of my interest in obesity, and my concern that we are failing to address the problem adequately. But this seems to go a bit too far. There are legitimate reasons that we don’t allow children to purchase and/or consume alcohol. Sugar (as glucose), on the other hand, is necessary for life. It’s in lots of food, not just processed foods. And just because something “can” be abused doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be allowed to have it.

There are data that show immediate and serious consequences of drinking. As far as I know, no such data exist for sugar, teased apart from other unhealthy nutrients.

Face Of The Day

Ice covers the fountain under the Alfred Escher memorial statue on February 3, 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland. The country is currently in the grips of a cold snap which has seen of temperatures of minus -27C in mountainous areas and -10C in Zurich. By Harold Cunningham/Getty Images.

Would Defeat Transform The GOP?

Not if conservative entertainers have anything to say about it. Friedersdorf expects Limbaugh & Co. to resist reform:

[A]ll the commentary you see about the right and its future takes as its starting point the notion of 2008 as a historic defeat. For folks whose highest priority is conservative governance, that's what it was -- eight years of frustration, betrayal, and disillusionment, culminating in a huge defeat. But the period from 2000 to 2012 has been lucrative as hell if you're Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin or Andrew Breitbart or Sarah Palin. That isn't to say they don't earnestly want Republicans to win, or that they're faking their preference for conservative governance. It's just to say that advancing their careers or enterprises is seemingly their priority. As swimmingly as that project is proceeding, why would anyone expect them to change course?

The Profound Lameness Of Glitter Bombing

J. Bryan Lowder feels that anti-homophobic "glitter bombing does not speak the same language as a march, occupation or even a petition—it’s just an angry tweet in comparsion to those actions’ grand manifesto":

[W]hat does glitter mean, exactly? When animal rights operatives throw fake blood on fur coats, the symbolism is clear: this life-giving fluid was spilled out of the desire for extravagant clothing. But when gay or trans people are injured by society, do they shed meaningless confetti? Glitter: a party accessory, Ke$ha’s drug of choice, the stuff children dump all over garbage-destined handicrafts; is this superfluous material really appropriate for the protest of such crucial issues?

What Facebook Owes Google

Daniel Grossman explains:

Seven-plus years into its life as a public company, Google is healthy and thriving. This is the lens through which we now view Facebook. We’re looking at the hot company through Google goggles. In 2004, people feared Google might be the next Webvan. In 2012, they’re hoping Facebook will be the next Google.

The Power Of Pink

The controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to revoke and then restore funding to Planned Parenthood could politically charge the ubiquitous pink ribbon. Rod Dreher finds the "whole Conspicuous Compassion thing" unsettling: 

While I have, or hope I have, compassion for those who suffer from all sorts of maladies, I don’t get the appeal of Moralistic Therapeutic Bunting — that is, ribbons that make you feel that you’ve done something to fight a disease, and allow you to preen moralistically in front of people whose lack of beribbonment perhaps indicates that they aren’t as enlightened as you are, but which ultimately means nothing. I have never worn a Conspicuous Compassion ribbon for any cause, and I never will, simply because it strikes me as a vulgar and emotionally manipulative practice.

A new film Pink Ribbons, Inc. (trailer above) takes this a bit further in a polemic broadside against the Komen foundation's relentless marketing machine:

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Will Romney Do Conservatives' Bidding?

Jonah Goldberg hopes so: 

A President Romney would be on a very short leash. ... Moreover, Romney is not a man of vision. He is a man of duty and purpose. He was told to “fix” health care in ways Massachusetts would like. He was told to fix the 2002 Olympics. He was told to create Bain Capital. He did it all. The man does his assignments.

Larison finds this expectation ridiculous: 

Read On »

"Totes Cray-Cray Abbrevs" Ctd

A reader writes:

Why do teenagers abbreviate everything? Because, for the most part, they can’t spell. Schools stopped teaching spelling years ago. I am the parent of a near-teenager, and I can say with certainty that while she is certainly the world’s cutest kid, she can’t even correctly spell words that are written on the same page she is writing on. We were horrified in second and third grade when her teachers told us that the school was "de-emphasizing" spelling. I guess the idea is that everyone writes on computers these days, and we all know how infallible spell check is. As good old Trudy Stein would have said where she to have been edumacated in the USA these days, "Their iz no thar there."

Another writes:

There's an interesting twist to this phenomenon in Switzerland.

Read On »

The End Of Nation Building?

Tight budgets simply won't allow for it right now:

Nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan was very expensive, and many of the funds were lost due to corruption and waste. The governments of both nations are a very long way from being stable or democratic—and their alliance with the West remains untested. The Obama strategy calls for any future nation building to draw on large conventional forces; in effect, it seeks to rely on offshore balancing of the kind that worked well in Kosovo and Libya and is now attempted in Yemen. Some in the Pentagon will keep fighting for a counterinsurgency approach, which includes a strong element of nation building rather than counterterrorism, but given the budgetary pressures this plank is most likely to survive—and for good reasons.

Mental Health Break

Perfect timing for my arrival in London:

Oyster Hunt from Garreth Carter on Vimeo.

Romney Overdoes It On American Exceptionalism

Oops. 

What Happened To All The Polls?

There have very few polls for Nevada, which caucuses tomorrow. Blumenthal says we're "seeing fewer polls because of constrained budgets":

National media and polling organizations knew that attention would focus on the first four primary and caucus states in January and spent their money accordingly. A few invested in the expensive task of surveying Iowa's likely caucus-goers using live interviewers, but in an era when many media organizations have cut back on polling, these upcoming caucus states are simply a lower priority. As with other aspects of campaign coverage, polling in the February caucus states will be no match for what we saw last month.

Washington And Weed, Ctd

Above is an AAA from October on the topic of legalization. A reader writes:

You are correct that the continuing national support for cannabis prohibition is almost entirely about symbolism (i.e. we know weed ain't a big deal, but we can't admit it publicly for the sake of The Children), just like it was in the early 1980s when the so-called "parents movement" brought marijuana-focused drug intolerance back from its decade-plus public policy exile. But however much the stats on MJ-related enforcement from the NYPD and other big city police departments might make for good anti-drug war propaganda for Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU, what's actually driving these policies has nearly nothing to do cannabis per se.

Continuing to pretend like the NYPD is on a "marijuana arrest crusade" for the purpose of stamping out pot smoking is muddying the debate over the very real, very serious, and much more important issue of how minority neighborhoods are policed.

Read On »

Chart Of The Day

Pivoting off Romney's gaffe, Larry Bartels looks at how the recession has impacted income classes:

The average real income of middle-quintile households declined from $50,766 in 2008 to $49,309 in 2010, while the average real income of households in the top five percent of the income distribution declined from $298,437 to $287,686. The latter change is larger in percentage terms, and much larger in absolute terms, but may not entail nearly as much human cost. The average real income of households in the bottom quintile declined from $11,803 to $11,034; that sounds like struggling to me, with or without a safety net.

Why We Need Tax Reform

Rosanne Altshuler makes her pitch:

We seem to have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of our tax system is to raise revenue to fund government. The current system is riddled with tax provisions that favor one activity over another or provide targeted tax benefits to a limited number of taxpayers. Whether permanent or temporary, these provisions create complexity, impose enormous compliance costs, breed perceptions of unfairness, create opportunities to manipulate rules to avoid tax, and lead to an inefficient use of our economic resources. The tax code has become less stable, increasingly unpredictable, and more and more difficult for taxpayers to understand.

A reform that broadens the base would not only raise revenue but would also simplify the system, increase transparency, make it less distortive by reducing tax-induced biases towards certain activity, and improve the fairness of the system.

Ebooks vs Democracy? Ctd

Previous AAA video on the topic here. Readers continue the discussion:

I read an interesting article on why software piracy is so important to the preservation of art and history on Technologizer.com, available here, that I was reminded of after reading your latest post on ebooks and democracy.  Short version: unsanctioned copying of books throughout history has saved many works of art that would have been lost in time; electronic applications, unlike books, die as fast as the hardware used to create them; and software piracy can help to preserve original forms of art that may otherwise vanish without anyone noticing.

Another writes:

Many complain about ebooks being more malleable, but frankly, people are not powerless in the face of DRM.

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The Trump Endorsement, Ctd

Philip Klein believes that yesterday's Trump event was a "colossal blunder" that will haunt Romney: 

[S]eriously, Romney wants to be president and he’s so afraid of what Trump will do that he goes to his Las Vegas hotel to publicly kiss his ring? As Tony Blair once said, “Weak. Weak. Weak.” Of course, there’s something more important at stake here. Regardless of whether or not Trump has a following, his statements questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate were disgraceful. It’s an embarrassment for Romney to elevate him like this. That shouldn’t be seen as within the bounds of acceptable discourse in the Republican Party.

More reax here. 

Can One Treat Breast Cancer And Perform Abortions?

The breast cancer foundation responsible for those little pink ribbons has recently caused controversy by withdrawing its financial support for Planned Parenthood - and then promptly restoring it after a furious backlash from pro-choicers. Jeffrey Goldberg, who first reported strong evidence that defunding was probably about abortion, calls the Komen Foundation's reversal "a case study in what not to do in a controversy." Daniel Foster is furious:

Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money. And I don’t care why that decision was made, frankly.

Ezra wonders if the decision to restore funding is secure. Before the reversal, Amanda Marcotte explained why Komen's donations were such a priority for pro-choice advocates: 

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How Does Romney Run Against A Real Recovery?

Chait says he can't:

[Romney's] only real winning scenario involves winning on the back of a bad economy. While it’s improving, the economy remains very weak. And there remain any number of scenarios that could derail the fragile recovery — a European implosion, an Israeli attack on Iran, or something else we’re not thinking of.

The "Mormon Mask"? Ctd

Althouse and Reynolds accuse me of bigotry for merely raising the issue. The notion is preposterous. Althouse, who apparently doesn't even read the posts she attacks as well as the articles, asks:

Is it a special thing reserved for Mormons? ... Test yourself out, Andrew. Imagine some friend of yours told you something like that about some other religious group. Test it with every religious group can think of, referring to political candidates that you like and dislike. Hold yourself to a neutral standard. Are you satisfied with what you’ve put out there?

Well, yes. In my post, I made a direct analogy to Catholicism, my own faith:

Think of a pastor who has a game face, or after-Mass cheeriness, because it's impossible for a human being truly to relate to so many different needs and individuals all the time without some kind of defense mechanism; some set of phrases to get him through a confession or consultation when he may be having an off day; some way to remove himself from the emotionally draining responsibilities of so many pastoral duties.

I'm actually sympathizing with the need for such a mask in that kind of situation in all denominations, not attacking it in one. Yet Reynolds and Althouse accuse me of bigotry, and charge that I am attacking Mormons as a whole. They need to apologize. To accuse someone of bigotry when the evidence they provide disproves it is disgusting character assassination. 

Actual Mormon readers - and not partisan propagandists like Reynolds - saw no bigotry and addresses the question from personal experience:

Your post on the "Mormon Mask" does have a ring of truth to it.  Once a Mormon reaches a certain level within the church hierarchy there is a tendency to start interacting with others in the manner you describe.  For a male, it usually begins at the Stake President level (a stake is similar to a Catholic diocese).  It is not so obvious at the Mormon Bishop level as the local congregations (called wards) are smaller (400 to 700 people) and more intimate in their interactions.  At the stake level there are 3,000 to 6,000 members that necessitate the need for the "mask".  Additionally, most often, the position of Stake President is filled by a successful businessman or professional who finds the same "mask" useful in business dealings.  If they serve long enough it does become a part of the person. 

(Trey Parker and Matt Stone partially allude to this Mormon trait in the Book of Mormon song, "Turn It Off".)

Read On »

Romney's Hollow Campaign

Karl Rove prods the former governor to be "bolder in his prescriptions." Fred Barnes worries that many of Romney's lines on the stump are "essentially meaningless": 

Romney has an unsolved issue problem: He needs a big issue or vision to give purpose and a framework to his campaign.  As things stand, his overriding issue is himself. He’ll revive the economy. Why? Because he says he will. That won’t cut against Obama. "My vision for free enterprise is to return entrepreneurship to the genius and creativity of the American people," Romney said in his victory speech. Fine, but how will he do that? He didn’t say.  

Along the same lines, John McCormack is disappointed that Romney has distanced himself from serious entitlement reform. Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin wants conservative critics to "chill." 

Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality TV

Kate Aurthur was transfixed by "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills":

Critics I respect wanted Bravo to axe the entire season before it even aired, and others were repulsed throughout its run. I’ve felt the opposite; to me, scripted television has never done anything this enthralling.

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it enthralling, but it sure took reality television into a zone it is designed never to enter: reality. The obvious goal of the fantastically successful Bravo series - a personal addiction to which I blame entirely on Aaron - is to create petty squabbles between rich, pampered women, preferably about inane things like where Lisa Vanderpump will hold her daughter's bachelorette party in Las Vegas. The second feature is classic Depression era porn: such fantastic obscene luxury and wealth paraded like a 1930s movie set in aristocratic New York apartments with massive sweeping staircases and near-mandatory black tie.

But on the Beverly Hills season, two things actually happened beyond orchestrated pissing matches. First, one of them was clearly on some sort of drugs and was deteriorating in front of our eyes. Second, and much more dramatic, one of the more fragile of the golden female parakeets got progressively more disturbed and panic-stricken and volatile.

Her husband, a very tightly wound and humorless executive, gave me the creeps from the start. And then halfway through this season, in one compelling scene, in a conversation in which Taylor demanded total honesty from her friends about their views of her increasingly unraveling personality, one of them blurted out that she had already told the group that her spouse was beating her, even breaking her jaw. Suddenly, the subtext became text.

Bravo clearly panicked. Reality shows are not supposed to be about reality. There's usually more reality in scripted sitcoms and cartoons. So they removed any footage they might have had revealing the abuse, kept the sub-plot off-stage, built tension, and then simply cut the period after Taylor finally quit her marriage after one last bruise on her face and her husband committed suicide. We got a bewildering swift mention of the suicide in the beginning of the final episode before we got on to the more serious question of whether the outside air-conditioning was sufficient for a Beverly Hills marriage tent.

But then we had the first of a three-part reunion. It pole-axed me. They read aloud some of the truly horrific texts Taylor's clearly disturbed husband had sent his wife on her birthday. The emotional abuse in the words was somehow more upsetting than the off-stage physical threats and bruises. It reflected what was a poisonous, awful, destructive marriage - the kind that liberalized divorce laws saved so many women from. And then Taylor spoke these words (I paraphrase):

I almost wanted him to hit me during these fights just to get it over with.

It was the reallest moment I have ever witnessed on reality television. It gave you a glimpse into the mindset of battered wives in abusive relationships and marriages - and the living hell that follows them every day. So why on earth go on a reality show? The wife suggested that she did it in order to stop the abuse - to get a third party to intervene and understand. The husband's motive? I have no idea. But being a wife-beater on national television must have been an ordeal. But here's what's unforgivable: they have a 5-year-old daughter exposed to all of this, a daughter who was with her mother when they found her father's body: "She knew something was bad. The first thing she said was, 'Did Daddy do something dumb?'" Armstrong recalled.

I find marital abuse so horrifying I cannot express my feelings. That simple sentence - "I almost wanted him to hit me during these fights just to get it over with" - stuck with me for days. The show trod a very fine line between brutal exploitation of these people's lives and absurd glorification of them.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the combination took one life, arguably saved another, and took on a toll on a five year old whose longterm consequences we will never know. Pray for her.

(Photo: Kennedy Armstrong, Taylor Armstrong and Russell Armstrong attend the Lollipop Theatre Networks 3rd Annual Game Day at Nickelodeon Studios on May 7, 2011 in Burbank, California. By Todd Williamson/Getty.)

Romney's Afghanistan Dilemma

He says he hates the accelerated drawdown in Afghanistan. Ackerman ponders Romney's spin:

Remember, a major part of Romney’s foreign policy critique of Obama is that Obama callously mistreats and neglects U.S. allies. The allies, however, want the 2013 timetable. Romney surely had to bash the change in the timetable; that’s all in the game. But Mitt doesn’t seem to have thought through the angles here. 

Larison tries to square the circle:

Read On »

The View From Your Window

Machado, Brazil, 12 pm

The World Withdraws From Afghanistan

James Joyner says our allies will welcome the early exit from Afghanistan:

Whether NATO's goals are achievable with unlimited time and resources is debatable. It's also moot. Most of our allies were going to have, at most, a token force in Afghanistan through the end of 2014. They were there largely at America's urging and they'll be happy to leave.

The Economist's Clausewitz columnist suggested that the report is overly pessimistic, fearing that Panetta's announcement "may have triggered an unseemly rush to for the exit." Alas, it began years ago. The United States supplies 90,000 of the 130,386 troops in ISAF and only a handful of members supply as many as a thousand. France had already beaten Panetta to the draw, announcing it would speed up its withdrawal after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers, deflating already abysmal public support in France for the war effort.

8.3 % Reax: "That Sound You Hear Is Champagne Corks In The West Wing"

Felix Salmon celebrates today's strong employment report:

You thought the December jobs report was great? I certainly did — but it’s been revised, now, and it’s even better than was first reported. And the January report is positively glowing. Unemployment was just 8.3% in January, marking three successive months where it fell by 0.2 percentage points. This time last year, there were 13.9 million unemployed; that figure has now dropped by 1.2 million people, or 8.3%. That’s really impressive for an economy which is hardly booming.

 Yglesias also cheers:

State and local layoffs continue to be a drag on the economy, and it continues to be true that at this pace it will take years to get us back to full employment, but these are the kind of numbers I'm looking for when I talk about an accelerating recovery. This is still a crappy labor market and there are still a dozen way policymakers could screw us in 2012, but if they avoid new disasters we are on the road to recovery.

Joe Weisenthal is excited about the revisions:

[R]evisions are important for what they tell us about where we are in the cycle. Because initial reports are based on some combination of survey and model, the BLS has to extrapolate the "real" number in part based on cyclical trends. If past reports keep getting revised up, it means the BLS is still behind the curve in measuring how fast the economy is growing.

Derek Thompson worries about the long-term unemployed:

[L]ong-term unemployment is still an extremely sticky problem.  (Who are the long-term unemployed? See here.) The share of the jobless who have been out of work more than six months is stuck at 43 percent, roughly the same share as it was two years ago. There are still 5.5 million people who have been out of work for more than six months. As the recovery accelerates, long-term unemployment's share of the total could rise if these people are truly frozen out of the labor force and while the short-term unemployed find work.

Floyd Norris fears that the seasonal adjustments are off:

A reason to doubt the [jobs] number is that there has been a tendency in this cycle for the seasonal factors to overstate moves, in both directions. Labor mobility is down, as fewer workers quit to seek better jobs and employers both hire and fire fewer people than they used to do. If the seasonal adjustment was too large, then the gain should be smaller.

Jamelle Bouie considers the political implications:

Earlier this morning, Nate Silver argued that 150,000 was President Obama’s “magic number” for job growth, in part, because 150,000 is the dividing line between a bad report—where the economy isn’t growing fast enough to keep up with population—and a decent one, where it is. If the economy could generate that many jobs on a monthly basis, then Obama is on okay footing for the election in November. Today’s report blows that magic number out of the water.

Ezra Klein echoes:

The bottom line is that this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report. It’s showing the sort of numbers that win elections. As my colleague Neil Irwin tweeted, “That sound you hear is champagne corks in the West Wing.”

And Ross Kaminsky wonders how Romney will respond:

The political issue here, if this sort of economic trend were to continue, is how Mitt Romney will make his case, which is primarily an economic one, if the economy seems to be on a solid recovery track. I do not believe this pace of improvement is sustainable. Nevertheless, the argument that "this is the weakest recovery in modern American history" is somewhat too subtle for the average voter to understand.

(Chart from Calculated Risk)

A Parting Gift To Iraq And Afghanistan: Toxic Waste

Terry Allen fears that we've trashed both countries:

The little media attention that has been paid to this massive pollution has dimly illuminated its potential impact on U.S. troops. Left in mephitic darkness are the contractors, often impoverished South Asians, who did the dirty work at the bases, as well as Iraqi civilians who live and farm nearby. The Times of London reported that “open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland,” causing people to sicken and rats to die “next to soiled containers.”

The toxic air echoes with the Vietnam War’s Agent Orange fiasco. Victims of that war’s dioxin suffered for years before the United States took limited responsibility – but only for its troops, and not for the countries it poisoned.

What Makes A Snob

Sam Wilkinson challenges our understanding of the term:

Because the snob presumes that other preferences are of a lesser value than their own, snobbery is often assumed to come only from those in a superior position. But wade into almost any debate between almost any two people about the relative value of a thing ... and you’ll find people dismissing each other’s preferences ... these preferences are not always bound up by class considerations. Listen sometime to people debating Fords and Chevys; the form of those arguments is the same as the one between two people debating Fords and Bentleys. “My thing is better than your thing for these reasons.”

(Image via tumblr user tangerine18.)

Our Sugar Problem

Laura Schmidt, coauthor of a new study outlining the health hazards of sugary treats, wants to set an age-limit on them a la alcohol or cigarettes. Her reasoning:

The reality is that unfettered corporate marketing actually limits our choices about the products we consume. If what's mostly available is junk food and soda, then we actually have to go out of our way to find an apple or a drinking fountain. What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making a wider range of healthy foods easier and cheaper to get.

Tim Treacher mocks the idea:

Read On »

The Gold-Plated Social Nework

The Facebook IPO is near. An incredible fact:

The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person in 2011. Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others. 

Ezra Klein asks:

Has any major company — let’s say with a valuation of $50 billion or higher in today’s dollars — ever had a lower ratio of employees to customers than Facebook does?

What The State Can Make Us Do, Ctd

Noah Millman reframes the contraception and religious liberty debate:

Ultimately, the source of the conflict here is in holding simultaneously that health care is a right and that health coverage will be provided primarily by private employers. If you believe both of those things, then you have to coerce private employers into providing coverage that meets some kind of minimal standard.

Read On »

Why Have Monogamous Societies Flourished?

Razib Kahn ponders a recent paper on the subject:

In the abstract they declare that “normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses.” Seems superior to me. As a friend of mine once observed, “If polygamy is awesome, how come polygamous societies suck so much?” Case in point is Saudi Arabia. Everyone assumes that if it didn’t sit on a pile of hydrocarbons Saudi Arabia would be dirt poor and suck. As it is, it sucks, but with an oil subsidy.

Online Piracy: The New Radio?

Neil Young recently made the analogy. Mathew Ingram agrees:

Comparing piracy to radio is a smart way of looking at the issue: in the early days of the music business, when live performances and record sales were the main revenue generator for artists and publishers, radio itself was seen as a form of piracy (as sheet music was before that). Musicians fulminated about radio stations playing their music for free, and some record labels made their acts sign waivers saying they would not appear on the radio. In the end, of course, radio became a huge revenue driver for music — although it did so in part because record labels and publishers pushed for licensing fees.

Matt Peckham counters:

Read On »

Do Palestinian Christians Exist?

Haroon Moghul sees major problems with Republican responses to questions about Palestinians and Arab Americans:

The percentage of Christians among the Palestinian population is about the same as the percentage of African Americans in the U.S.A. For a party so concerned with America’s Christian identity, Romney and Gingrich’s dismissal of the Palestinians is part of their broader disinterest in the Muslim world, and its diversities and differences. Namely, most Muslims aren’t Arabs, and most Arab Americans are Christians. You read that correctly.

Which Democrat Is Romney?

James Poulos fits Mitt into a Bill Clinton-sized suit. Jacob Weisberg, in contrast, pushes the Gore and Kerry comparisons:

Gore and Kerry both suffered from the same characterizations that get applied to Romney—too wooden in person while too flexible in their views. Their supporters often argued that qualifications were what mattered. But ominously for Romney, both Gore and Kerry lost winnable races because of their flawed personalities. George W. Bush, on the other hand, got elected and re-elected, despite his enormous, substantive shortcomings, because ordinary people found it easy to relate to him at a personal level. They felt he wasn’t trying to be someone different from who he was.

Ad War Update

The Romney campaign launches OneTermFund.com ("What is a one term Obama presidency worth to you?"): 

The Obama campaign responds by creating TwoTermFund.com, which is comfortably outraising the Romney camp. Capitalizing on the "not concerned about the very poor" controversy, the DNC shoots out an insta-ad: 

 

First Read makes a good point about Mitt's latest foot-in-mouth moment:

[Romney] really can’t complain about being taken out of context. Why? Because one of his very first TV ads took President Obama out of context (quoting him as saying back in ‘08, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose” – when Obama was actually quoting a McCain aide). You reap what you sow… [A]s for the quote IN CONTEXT, it is a little less bad but still awkward, frankly. 

Alex Burns adds: 

Romney's campaign didn't just take Obama's words out of context and hope viewers wouldn't notice. They argued that the ad was in-bounds as a form of tough politics aimed at contrasting Obama's message four years ago with Obama's message today. Even if you find that argument persuasive, you have to wonder at this point whether it was really worth giving up the right to complain about context in a very long campaign.

Here's the latest from Santorum's PAC, running in Minnesota:

Read On »

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew wrote a paean to Obama's handling of the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan in an election year and tracked the conservative crackup over, respectively, Romney's "very poor" comment and Obamneycare. We followed the broader reaction to the former, wondered if Romney was too perfect, marvelled at his endorsement from the Donald, and (reality) checked his polling against Obama. Romney jumped ahead in Nevada while Paul looked in position to land a second-place place. Ron's segment of the GOP might have become critical to the party's hopes (certainly if the online primary is any guide), Newt had an awkward history with Paterno, Santorum entered the Bad Lip Reading contest, and veep speculation began. Self-deportation remained ridiculous, Super PACs conquered the election, Presidential races weren't worth your money, and it didn't look like killing bad guys helped the President much. Ad War Update here.

Off the campaign trail, Andrew slammed the absurd legal regime and institutionalized hypocrisy surrounding marijuana in NYC and DC (follow-up here). Assad's grip on power slipped, the Muslim Brothers betrayed the revolution, our money hurt Afghanistan, NATO enlargement got debated, global war wasn't coming, and aliens complicated global politics. American history hamstrung our bureaucracy, interest in tinkering with Obama care might (fingers crossed) have been piqued in the GOP, Eric Cantor shielded congressional insider trading, new voter ID rules hurt disadvantaged inner-city blacks, and segregation may (or may not) have declined. The power of the state over religious institutions proved contentious, vegetarianism felt passe (to some), college went global, Groundhog Day got a detailed treatment, Parks and Rec was all over abbrevs. VFYW here, FOTD here, and MHB here.

- Z.B.

Read On »

What Will Become Of The Paulites?

Scott McConnell wonders if the GOP will make room:

While it is surely too soon to speak authoritatively about "Ron Paul Republicans," as we do about Reagan Democrats or evangelicals, such a voting bloc appears to exist. Whether they become part of the GOP coalition is critical to the party’s future. ... When in Iowa and New Hampshire a young crowd cheered a liberty-based campaign with chants of "Bring them home," it was hard to imagine more full frontal repudiation of the Bush/Cheney vision of the party.

(Photo: A Ron Paul supporter joins Gingrich supporters to cheer their candidates at Florida's largest intersection in the Wesley Chapel area of Tampa, Florida on January 21, 2012. Wesley Chapel is part of the greater Tampa area that has boomed in the past decade or more, making it one of the nation's Sunbelt 'Boomburbs'. This intersection has 10 lanes across to pump traffic through area. Essentially Boomburbs here are filled with people who've come from other states and with differing political views. It's expected to be a swing vote area in the upcoming primary. By Linda Davidson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Why We Couldn't Fix Afghanistan

Matt Steinglass reflects on our failed attempts:

We were willing to spend a lot of money as long as it produced results. What we've learned is that development aid doesn't work this way. You can't get more definite results, or speed up the process, by spending more money. In fact, spending more money will most likely screw things up. We already learned this once, in Vietnam; now we've learned it again. Development aid will be successful where it takes a lower profile, doesn't spend so much money, and sets goals for itself that are modest and achievable within the constraints of what the locals actually want to do and what they're capable of doing. One other suggestion: it may seem sexier and more noble to develop a country that's in the middle of a war, but it might work better if you try a country that isn't.

Kevin Drum chips in his two cents.

The Fast And Furious Scandal, Ctd

Ben Smith says that today's congressional hearing was "not Eric Holder's best day". Ed Morrissey focuses on the above exchange between the attorney general and the oversight committee chair, Darrell Issa:

Holder responds that he’s prepared to hold people in his organization accountable right now … for whistleblowing on the wiretap applications. Er, really?  The ATF sent thousands of high-powered weapons across the border into the hands of the cartel, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, including a US Border Patrol agent, and Holder is ready to act right now against the people informing Congress of what actually took place in Holder’s organization?  Well, it is accountability of a sort, I suppose, but it’s more useful as a peek into Holder’s priorities.

Weigel highlights another tense exchange, sparked by a bitter question from Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY). Robert Beckhusen zooms out:

Read On »

Why Don't Millions Of Americans Have ID?

Several key states are introducing tighter voter ID requirements this year, which many see as a thinly-veiled effort to suppress voter turnout. Corey Dade explains why more than three million Americans don't own a government-issued picture ID: 

[T]he first thing to look at is to look at who actually drives. The most common form of government-issued ID are driver's licenses and so the people who are most unlikely to drive, as it is, is elderly, the poor, people who live in big cities, like African-Americans, especially young people, too, especially if they attend college. They may not have need for a car at the moment. And then people who are in rural areas. The other challenge for them is they are not near the Department of Motor Vehicles offices, etc., where you would get these IDs. 

Debbie Hines has more: 

The Brennan Center estimates that 18 percent of all seniors and 25 percent of African-Americans don't have picture IDs.

Read On »

The End Of Segregation?

Edward Glaeser's research indicates that racial segregation has declined for the fourth consecutive decade: 

The dissimilarity index measures how uneven the black population is within a metropolitan area. ... As the figure shows, as of 1970, almost 80 percent of either whites or blacks would have had to move neighborhoods in order to achieve an even distribution of whites and blacks within the average metropolitan area. By 1990, that dissimilarity measure had dropped to 66 percent; it is 54 percent today.

Jonathan Rothwell is unimpressed: 

Read On »

Might Republicans Improve Obamacare?

Frum hopes they are coming to their senses:

Because of the Affordable Care Act, near-universal health coverage is coming at last to the United States. That's not a clock that can or should be turned back. The conservative task ahead is to reform that new social commitment so that it is affordable and sustainable, so that it is financed in ways that do not discourage work, saving and investment. It's unexpected but welcome to see Ann Coulter enroll among those who favor that kind of pragmatic conservative reform. Could the ideological fever that has gripped the right over the past three years at last be breaking?

The Brothers' Betrayal

Khalil al-Anani explains growing dissatisfaction with the Muslim Brotherhood among Egypt's revolutionaries:

The conformity between the MB and the [Army] in dealing with the revolution comes as no surprise due to their mutual interests. The MB seeks to consolidate the extraordinary gains it attained since Mubarak's disposal without risking its internal coherence. And the junta wants to maintain their unusual privileges without any civilian oversight. Clearly, both are exemplifying an obsolete mindset. They promote "reform" over "revolution," "stability" not "change," and "procedural" instead of "genuine" democracy. Not surprisingly, they are involved in negotiating, compromising, and brokering the future of the country behind the scene.

(Photo: Eyptian anti-government protesters (R) clash with members of the Muslim Brotherhood group (L) as they prevent them from reaching the parliament in Cairo on January 31, 2012. Hundreds of Egyptian protesters demanding the end of military rule were prevented from reaching parliament by backers of the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds the majority in the assembly. Activists had called for a march from Cairo's Tahrir Square -- the epicenter of the uprising that toppled veteran president Hosni Mubarak last year-- to parliament. By Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images.)

Lessons Not Learned

National Journal has already started running down VP picks for Romney. Jennifer Rubin wants a fire-breather:

Romney, as I have argued before, should resist the urge to go boring and to play it safe. Such a running mate will project timidity and accentuate concerns in the base. That does not mean selecting an unqualified candidate. The Romney camp, rather, should be looking for conservative fighters, not safe nothing-burgers.

Face Of The Day

Those crazy kids on the Internet are forcing animals' heads through pieces of bread, taking pictures, and posting the results. Adrian Chen has more:

There's an official Facebook page with more than 9,000 likes, and a popular post on the hip blogging platform Tumblr. So, it is now an official meme according to Internet Law.

(Photo of a breaded dog, named Bernard, from a Gawker reader)

Does Killing America's Enemies Win Elections?

Maybe not:

The harsh reality of taking down bogeymen is that once they’ve been removed from action, Americans may turn to judge the president on other issues. As with Bush in 1992, Obama’s 2012 fate hinges on how voters think he’s handling the economy, not his vanquishing of the nation’s most despised enemy.

Mental Health Break

The guys from OK Go swing by Sesame Street:

More MHB hits from the band here, here, here and here.

The Trump Endorsement

Republicans are less likely to vote for a candidate who gets The Donald's endorsement. Jennifer Rubin, who calls Trump a "political grenade," can't believe Romney is accepting the blessing:

Trump is certain at some point to say outrageous and embarrasing things, which then become messes for the Romney team to clean up. He is all risk and no gain. 

David Corn suspects that Romney is trying to prevent Gingrich from becoming the Tea Party candidate:

This shows that Romney cannot escape the gravitational pull of GOP craziness. The longer Gingrich remains in the race, the more Romney will have to pander to the Obama-hating extremists who make up much of his party.