Month: May 2012

Damn.

Gustavo Arellano celebrates the Americanization of Mexican food:

Tortillas and tamales have long left behind the moorings of immigrant culture and fully infiltrated every level of the American food pyramid, from state dinners at the White House to your local 7-Eleven. Decades’ worth of attempted restrictions by governments, academics, and other self-appointed custodians of purity have only made the strain stronger and more resilient. The result is a market-driven mongrel cuisine every bit as delicious and all-American as the German classics we appropriated from Frankfurt and Hamburg.

Recent Dish on the origin of the taco here.

The Obama campaign responds to the Rovian onslaught line by line: 

The Romney campaign stays on message (money quote: "Wait a minute, is this still America?"): 

Meanwhile, the RNC dwells on energy issues: 

Gary Johnson's latest here. 

Previous Ad War Updates: May 16, May 15, May 14, May 10, May 9, May 8,  May 7, May 3, May 2, May 1, Apr 30, Apr 27, Apr 26, Apr 25, Apr 24, Apr 23, Apr 18, Apr 17, Apr 16, Apr 13, Apr 11, Apr 10, Apr 9, Apr 5, Apr 4, Apr 3, Apr 2, Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.

Picking stocks is among them:

Here’s the thing about picking stocks: You can’t. Hard evidence has demonstrated again and again that the human chances of outperforming the market by picking individual stocks is, if anything, lower than that of a random number generator or a chimpanzee, although conservatives argue that the chimp is merely concerned about the capital gains tax. People who think they’re stock-picking geniuses are either only remembering their good picks, or they’re just getting lucky.

Others myths include diets, lie detectors, and paying people to work harder.

Today on the Dish, Andrew worried that cultural panic made Romney into the frontrunner (follow-up here and related nastiness here), explained how a terribly sad story from a straight reader brought the need for marriage equality into full relief, got some interesting perspective on his debate with Glenn Greenwald, and wondered what the hell "homosexual behavior" was. We puzzled over evidence that most people thought Obama was going to win, put the odds of a Senate handoff at 50/50, looked over an odd proposal to attack Obama on Jeremiah Wright, poked a gaping hole in the latest Birther nonsense, noticed that Romney's best strategy was to hide, and aired more criticism of Obama's marijuana policy. Obama improved attitudes towards marriage equality, equal marriage rights benefitted straight couples as well, and attitudes towards marriage in Europe surprised. Ad War Update here.

Andrew also relayed a harrowing story about his dog Eddy and the economics of pet ownership, eulogized Mary Kennedy, Donna Summer, and Chuck Brown, and blamed Bibi for Israel's worsening international reputation. An Iran war looked likely to have far-reaching consequences, Turkey supplied a particular sort of Islamist capitalist, Europe looked to be in a position to make it past its current troubles despite Merde's awkward dance, and the dreaded Grexit didn't appear right on the horizon. Jonah Goldberg made hilarious faces and Piers Morgan's ratings scraped bottom. We listened to some pushback against attempting to explain politics with psychology, spotlighted another troubling execution in Texas, wondered if student debt was as much of a problem as we thought, and watched Occupy Wall Street receed. Sperm banks needed to screen donors, scopolomine creeped readers out, eating plants wasn't unethical, running hurt some of us, and there were tricks to catching liars. Newsweek had pretty pictures and Ken Burns told pretty stories. Ask Steven Pinker Anything here, Hewitt Nominee here, Quotes for the Day here and here, and VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

– Z.B.

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama signs his receipt for David Mazza and Casey Patten, Co-Owners of Taylor Gourmet, while visiting Taylor Gourmet, a sandwich restaurant May 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. By Win McNamee/Getty Images.)

A reader writes:

Some years ago our beagle – then about age six – started screaming in the middle of the night, so we let her in. The next morning her neck swelled up to about four times its usual size. We rushed her into a pet carrier and ran, in near-panic and barely clothed, out to the truck to rush her to the vet. Before leaving the driveway I called ahead so they would be ready to see her on an emergency basis, explained that she had probably been bitten by a snake, most likely a copperhead.

The vet assured us that they had treatment for that, they would be standing by in the parking lot to receive her and rush her in, and that they recover nicely in a couple of days, and that it would $800.00 + boarding for several days. I exclaimed "Eight hundred fucking what?" and turned to the then-10-year-old daughter and the wife, sitting in the back seat of the truck with the mutt.

I should probably tell you that my wife and daughter both know the value of a dollar. My wife is Asian and they eat dogs, so they sure as hell don’t spend $800.00 on them. All of a sudden we were all like, uh, yeah. OK. "Well, the vet says they usually recover.” "Yeah, dad, I read that, too. They recover on their own. I think." My wife was like “Oh, that’s horrible, thinking abut the cost, the poor, poor dog." And then I was like, "OK, we can go." And the wife was like "Well. What do you think?"

I was first to open my door, we weren’t really looking at each other too closely, then the girls slowly slipped out, and we took Bailey back into the house and made her comfortable, and well, that was it. She did recover – her swelling went down in about five days.

I dunno, man.

How Ken Burns understands the stories he tells:

The filmmakers reflect on the project:

Everyone loves a great story. Stories teach us things, move us emotionally, and form the basis of the way we understand the world. As filmmakers, we’ve been telling stories for a while now — but at a certain point we realized that it’s actually really hard to explain what makes a good story. We know it when we see it, but the recipe always proves elusive. Ken Burns has been telling incredible stories for decades, and we thought that if anyone would have a thoughtful perspective on this, it’d be him. So this project started as our own exploration to figure out what that magic dust is that brings his stories to life.

Noah Berlatsky explains:

Marriage has, in the past, been about one man/one woman, just as [Maggie] Gallagher says; it's been an assertion that gender and gender roles are as important as, or even more important than, what you feel in your heart. Gay marriage is a final, absolute refutation of that logic. If two men can get married, or two women, then marriage must really be not about power, but about love. Gay marriage, then, is radical in the best sense, in that it offers equality and hope not just to gay people, but to children, women, and men of every orientation—even to Gallagher, resist it as she will. Gay marriage is not just about straight people accepting gays into our institutions. It's about gay people teaching us what those institutions mean. The gay community has given straight people a lot over the years, but surely gay marriage is one of the greatest gift it has offered us.

Gay rights activist rally in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, on May 17, 2012. Christian activists led by Orthodox priests halted today a rare attempt to stage a small gay pride march in ex-Soviet Georgia, attacking participants and smashing their placards. By Vano Shlamov/AFP/GettyImage.

Massie appraises Romney's strategy:

Mike Crowley points out Romney is enjoying a mini surge in the polls at the very point his campaign disappears from widespread public consciousness. I fancy these things may be connected. Familiarity breeds contempt and it does so faster in the era of ceaseless chatter and blather in the 24-hour news-cycle. It's a rare politician indeed who does not discover that his or her half-life is shorter than was the case for their counterparts in generations past.

David Frum, meanwhile, has a delicious little post on how Romney manages to lie and get away with it.