Hilzoy writes:
A member of Andy Olmsted’s family has just written me to say that if people want to do something in honor of him, they can send donations to a fund that has been set up for the four children of CPT Thomas Casey, who served under Andy and was killed while trying to help him. The address is here:
Capt. Thomas Casey Children’s fund
P.O. Box 1306
Chester, CA 96020
If there’s one thing this Pope cannot stand, it’s free thinking. Rocco reports from the "Black Enclave" which just opened in Rome.
A heart-breaking story – and a very atypical one, it should be said. But there is a real difficulty in creating a disciplined national Iraqi army without including many people whose loyalties are ultimately elsewhere. Sometimes those loyalties trump everything. Sometimes they deliberately target American soldiers. And many of those the US is now training once targeted Americans for annihilation.
Drum roll, please:
Romney senior adviser Ron Kaufman said Obama “demolished three senators” in Iowa and will “demolish” Clinton in New Hampshire, “so clearly having a senator against him is not a good idea.”
I guess it was worth a try.
The gadget we’ve all been waiting for:
Today at CES, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH — the first combination hand-held music player and Taser. The player, which has a 1-GB capacity that can hold about 150 songs, is embedded in a holster that slips on your belt. Feel the need to zap someone and you can unholster the Taser, use the built-in laser pointer to aim, and blam — a couple of darts carrying 50,000 volts hits your victim.
Hat tip: Poulos.
Tim Lee doesn’t see why he’s so unelectable.
The self-pitying, victimology of an old leftist like Gloria Steinem. It’s this kind of victim politics we have finally begun to move past: that anyone should vote for a candidate "because she is a woman" and "has no masculinity to prove". Clinton is comfortable aroound this kind of victimology. Obama transcends it.
Arianna nails it:
When it started, Clinton’s poll-tested candidacy came down to telling voters, "Whatever you like, that’s what I am."
But it turns out that, so far, what voters like is Obama. So now her sputtering campaign strategy has shifted to telling voters, "Whatever you don’t like, that’s what Obama is."
And so the questions are: will McCain beat Romney; and will Ron Paul beat Rudy Giuliani? Both questions seem harder to answer than Clinton-Obama.
The question to be asked is this: should women in public life be treated exactly the same as men? If so, is it not relevant to note that any male candidate who cried in public about the stresses of his campaign would essentially be finished? When we don’t hold her to that standard, are we being sexist or just humane? I mean, I have long felt her to be one of my least favorite national politicians, but I can still see she’s hurting, even if her bewilderment is inextricable from her sense of entitlement. I’m okay with politicians weeping occasionally in public. Churchill did it all the time.
On the other hand, I can see why Clinton can get frustrated. When she went tough on her opponents in the last debate, she was deemed "vicious" or "shrill" rather than simply aggressive. Maybe she can’t win either way. My own view is that on both occasions, weeping a little and snapping a little, she was at the very edge of certain emotions: infuriated and exasperated. I think it must be all the more exasperating to know, somewhere in her psyche, that he is winning it fairly and positively. There’s a small current of Salieri-Mozart syndrome going on here.
(Photo: Stan Honda/Getty.)
The Dish 