The Daily Wrap


Today on the Dish, Andrew took apart Joe Scarborough over his anti-math hackery, then believed in the therapeutic potential of MDMA, and applauded Ken Mehlman’s attempt to course-correct Republicans on same-sex marriage.

In continuing coverage of the crisis in Gaza, while last night’s cease fire fell apart, today it finally arrived and we rounded up reactions. Also, more readers joined the exasperated fray over perpetual Israeli-Palestinian unrest, while Greg Scoblete imagined the fruition of Walter Russell Mead’s Shermanesque plan for Israel, The Economist offered a numerical take on the ongoing violence, Beinart pointed out that the “real” Obama still supports Israel, and Gaza started running out of drinking water. Elsewhere internationally, we wondered if Nate Silver-like models could predict world events, Massie reminded us that Europe needs America’s help with Syria, and Seema Shah took a look at the upcoming Kenyan elections.

In political coverage, Michelle Cottle offered some helpful advice for avoiding Thanksgiving’s conversational minefield, Chait highlighted JPod’s toxicity, Larison anticipated future GOP moderation, and Daniel Gross professed his desire to Thelma-&-Louis off the fiscal cliff. Also, John McCain won’t make an apology tour, but he did finally acknowledge reality with regards to Susan Rice, while Adam Ozimek wanted more immigrants in our melting pot, and Bill McKibben told us it might be too late to stop global warming, but not too late to make it a lot less worse.

In assorted coverage, the wonderful reader thread about America’s over-medaled servicemembers went another round. We also met the cross-dressing grandfather-model of the year, learned six new ways to hack open a beer bottle, and Charles Kenny killed us with the stress of security theater, even after Air Canada gave up its seats to the obese. Rod Dreher’s son connected with yesterday’s remarkable video defining Aspergers, Virginia Hughes made sense of how dogs smell, Maria Konnikova celebrated the logical empathy of Sherlock Holmes, and turkeys got bigger and bigger, but according to Tom Jacobs they might not be as tasty as guilt. We also tried to diagnose the strawberry-haggling wackiness of Mary Todd Lincoln, Andrew P. Smiler shattered the stereotype of sex-crazy men, and Jonathan Rauch warned us to never give up being offensive. An obliviously-lucky turkey heard Obama joke around in our FOTD, we saw San Fran in the VFYW, and SNL took us home for the holidays in our MHB.

– C.D.