Weigel profiles GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who has been dubbed the next Ron Paul. A potential hangup:
The problem is that [Ron] Paul still wants to run for president. At last check, his advisers said he was 60/40 on a new presidential run. He's RSVP'd to the first Republican primary debate, scheduled for May 5 in South Carolina. He has already raised millions of dollars. The last report for Johnson's PAC, Our America, reported only $205,000 raised, and most of it spent, in the last quarter of 2010.
If President Johnson were to end the Drug War and that were his sole achievement in office he'd have done more good than any President in 40 years. Not since Milton Friedman helped end the draft has there been a better cause. That alone demands one welcome Johnson's decision, announced at some point today, to enter the race for the Republican party's 2012 presidential nomination.
As Romney campaigns to be CEO of the USA, his conventional GOP opponents—Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, and the others—can be expected to question his claim that he's the best choice to revive the American economy. But they'll be doing so as politicians, without much personal history to back up their charges. Trump, despite a past that includes a string of failed deals (he lost money in the casino business?), will be confronting Romney as a tycoon: businessmano-a-businessmano.
Well, Mitt Romney is a basically small business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund. He was a fund guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn't create. He worked there. He didn't create… Well, but, look, he would buy companies, he'd close companies, he'd get rid of jobs… I'm a much bigger businessman. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney.
Two things: this mockery of a child with Down Syndrome is despicable. And this CNN dismissal of any legitimacy to the questions about Palin's pregnancy stories is so thin it's contemptible. And this reader explains why the whole affair is directly related to the core question we all have to grapple with when we assess public figures seeking high office – judgment:
Let us, for the moment, assume that everything Palin has said about the circumstances around Trig's birth is Bible-truth: her water broke early in the morning in Texas, she gave her speech, she flew many many hours back to Alaska, yadda yadda. Well and good.
Let's go.
#1. You are a pregnant woman. Your water breaks. What do you do?
If the answer is anything other than "get my ass to a hospital, stat," I'm going to question your judgment.
#2. You are a woman pregnant with a special needs child. Your water breaks a month prematurely. What do you do?
If the answer is anything other than "get my ass to a hospital, hopefully one with an NICU, ASAFP," I'm going to really question your judgment.
#3. Assuming the situation from #2 above, if you bypass several hospitals with NICUs, get on a plane for an hours-long flight (with layover), land in Alaska, bypass other hospitals with NICUs to drive for another 45 minutes so your premature special needs baby can be delivered in your local hospital by your GP rather than a specialist… You have no judgment.
The only options I can conclude from the facts as Palin reports them are either:
* She's dangerously stupid and/or reckless, even with the life of her own at-risk unborn child in the balance.
* She's lying about something. Doesn't matter what: could be when her water broke (maybe it happened after they touched down in Alaska), could be the whole pregnancy. But the story does not add up, to anyone with any common sense or basic concept of logic.
And the lagniappe of "demanding Obama's birth certificate while refusing to release Trig's" thing just stinks of hypocrisy.
It should have been the straw that broke the MSM's back. But they doubled down on not knowing. Because conservatives don't want to know; and liberals are afraid of the backlash for asking. Where are the journalists, one wonders?
The Dish reader who sent in a photo she claimed to have taken of the Trump portrait we posted last week appears to have pilfered it from journalist-blogger (and book self-publisher) Joan Gage. Full explanation here. Apologies to Ms. Gage.
Oh geez guys, I am so very very sorry about that Trump photo. I really have been at Mar-a-Lago and seen the portrait. The photo was sent to me by a friend who was with me that night. I should have been more careful. I should have asked for the source of the picture.
The Dish is reeling today from the news of the untimely deaths of two extraordinary journalists – killed in Misurata by Qaddafi's forces (Beast homage here). Tim Hetherington's Restrepo is easily the finest film on the US intervention in Afghanistan. If you haven't seen it, stream it, rent it, Netflix it. It was far too good to win an Oscar. And its magnificence comes from its directorial restraint. Somehow, Hetherington and Sebastian Junger managed to take themselves out of the picture altogether, and allowed the events, the faces, the human beings to tell their own story with the cumulative power that actual reality television or film-making requires. There's a good interview with Hetherington here, and a book of photographs, Infidel, available here. Chris Hondros's work has been a staple of Dish coverage for the past few years. The great privilege of a blog like this one is being able to scour the output of photo-agencies and find images that cannot fit into a daily newspaper, but which sear into one's consciousnessness.
Some believe that the role of old-fashioned being-there reporters is antiquated with the emergence of citizen-journalism, YouTube, Twitter, and blogging in general. I certainly think these new media and ways of bringing the truth about the world to light are amazing. That's why I do what I do. But I have never believed there is a replacement for on-hand reporting. Citizen journalists witness and broadcast. Men and women like Hetherington and Hondros do that but with professional skill, the eye of an outsider, and the capacity to edit. And they exhibit in some ways more courage than those in the midst of their own lives and conflicts because they do not have to be there. They choose to be there, and to bear witness to the struggles of others. A human being is a human being and journalists' live are not more worthy than anyone else's. But when men like these perish, there is a special darkness in our hearts. Because we know less, can care less, and can turn away from less because these men are gone.
(Photo: A paratrooper in the First Brigade of the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division stands in summer heat after a parachute training jump August 6, 2010 at Camp Mackall, a training ground of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The First Brigade, which just returned from a year-long tour in Iraq, were required to take the parachute jump as part the 82nd Airborne regulations in keeping all paratroopers' jump training current. By Chris Hondros/Getty Images.)
As current Libya policy is failing, support for fighting in Libya to topple Gaddafi receives a whopping 32% of the American public’s support. I should add that this is not 32% support for escalating the U.S. role in the war: just one in four of Americans supporting the goal of regime change want U.S. involvement to increase.
Many readers want to nominate this reader for a Poseur Alert. One writes:
That email has to be a parody. No one seriously uses terms like "meatworld interactions" or "social super-organisms" or "shared brain." But "I am to be shared" really put it over the top. This reader makes your case better than you ever could, whether or not he or she intended to do so.
Another:
Your reader wrote, "that my behavior becomes more acceptable all the time (especially with the 35 and under crowd) indicates there's something to it." What a load of crap. Telemarketing calls at dinner time came to be considered "more acceptable all the time" by telemarketers. Find a person getting the call who think its frequency indicates its acceptability.
Another:
Just this past weekend, I had the occasion to sit alone at a table with a friend of mine for 5 – 10 minutes. We hadn't had a lot of one-on-one conversation, but share the same group of friends. While I politely inquired about her family, her work, her hobbies, etc., she repeatedly whipped out her Blackberry to check the score of a hockey game and respond to Facebook messages. Every time she would put it back, she would say "I'm sorry, what? I had to check the score." After repeating my inquiries a number of times, I just settled for silence. After a few seconds of this, she went back to her Blackberry.
I found it less offensive than I found it contemptible. At the same time, the reason we found ourselves alone at the same table was that the rest of our party went outside for a smoke break. I found this equally offensive, for the same reasons. It shows that you are so lacking in self-control that you cannot police your behavior for one hour in which you should be a consummate guest and dinner companion.
And for the record, I am a constant texter, Wikipedia checker, and cigarette smoker. But when I go out to dinner, I respect that my companions' time is valuable and that I should endeavor to show them this respect by being interested, interesting, and engaging. And because I am an adult, and not a small child who cannot resist my baser urges, I keep my cigarettes at home or in my coat pocket, and I turn my phone off.
Another:
I have enjoyed the opinions on the ever-changing "social media" and manners. It all comes down to how you define a genuine relationship. You can connect with hundreds at one time, or you can connect in real conversations with people you actually care about.
I used to have a Facebook account and enjoyed it. It was a fun time-suck and I enjoyed knowing what my friends and acquaintances were up to. After about a year and a half I realized that I was actually losing more of a connection with these people than I was gaining. I knew when they graduated college, went on vacation, got married, etc. based on their Facebook status. But I missed feeling that excitement when they would tell me those things in an actual conversation.
I decided to delete Facebook. If I want to know how someone is doing I will call them and find out. It has been amazing to see the difference. I lost touch with lots of people, but relationships have been stronger because I have made genuine connections with those I truly care about.
Another:
Upon reading the post about online interaction supplanting real in person communication I came upon a stunning revelation that completely monopolized the rest of my day…. The Easter edition of Angry Birds is now available!
The Dish 