The best obits are always the British ones. Here’s the Guardian’s. Two great quotes:
"He always seemed on the verge of some sort of eternal defeat."
That’s from Elliott Gould. This is from Pauline Kael:
"Altman’s art, like Fred Astaire’s, is the great American art of making the impossible look easy."
"That’s not bedhead I have. It’s a perverse and juvenile form of hathead," – the sweetly nerdy Mickey Kaus.
Slate reviews the Bush administration’s new head of HHS family planning:
This is a guy who takes a neuropeptide and a prairie vole and spins from them science fiction.
It’s growing. A reader writes:
In a Redstate.com discussion thread about the prospects of a Senator Brownback bid for the Republican presidential nomination, I posted the following comment, which got me banned:
"It’s funny how everyone likes to position themselves as a True Reagan Conservative. It’s always the other guy who is betraying Reagan’s conservative legacy. Too funny. Both parties need moderates and Independents to win national elections. Until the Republican party deals with the theocracy wing of the party (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, etc.), moderates/Independents will likely fall in favor of the Dems. It’s really that simple. If you think Brownback is the guy to bridge that gap, you need to stop smokin’ that Bible and get back to reality.
The lesson from 06 is that moderation wins general elections and offers the best hope for sustained governability through the art of political compromise. Rigid uncompromising devotion to ideology may feel good but it usually accomplishes little and ultimately undermines the ideology."
I was subsequently banned from the site for using the term "theocracy" in relation to a faction within the Republican party. The denial is deep and perhaps even pathological. I fear it will take more than one election cycle to shock the party back to reality.
Scotland may soon be a separate country.
And Bob Reich’s breach of Green Room etiquette.
The latest polling in Iraq shows something interesting. Even while a large majority of Baghdad Shiites believe sectarian violence would increase after U.S. withdrawal, 80 percent across the country still want foreign forces out within a year. Moreover, clear Shiite majorities now support attacks on U.S. forces – up from around 40 percent support in January. The question is not, it seems to me, whether we redeploy our forces out of or within Iraq, but how and when.
A reader writes:
Now you went and did it, now you have just gone too far! "Love is a Battlefield" is a classic, you owe Patty and the rest of us twisted children of the 80’s an apology! I mean the video has hookers, pimps; dancing hookers, dancing pimps; dancing hooker and pimps together … does it get any better than that, I mean really, does it?
I’m not a Republican so I really wouldn’t know, would I?
It’s no longer small-scale sectarian hatchet-jobs. It’s civil war.
In case you were unaware, it’s Mitt Romney. As with most Christianists, the idea of allowing different states to try different solutions to the same problem is dispensable when moral absolutes are involved. In other words, the fundamentalists have no interest in federalism. If federalism means that California can have marriage equality and medical marijuana, today’s GOP base wants none of it. Here’s Romney’s discussion of John McCain’s approach:
Romney was less charitable to McCain, who on Sunday told ABC News: ‘I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states.’ McCain also said, ‘I believe that gay marriage should not be legal.’ Romney seized on the remarks. ‘That’s his position, and in my opinion, it’s disingenuous,’ he said. ‘Look, if somebody says they’re in favor of gay marriage, I respect that view. If someone says ‚Äî like I do ‚Äî that I oppose same‚Äìsex marriage, I respect that view. But those who try and pretend to have it both ways, I find it to be disingenuous.’
It’s now disingenuous to have a position on a matter but believe it should be decided by indidividual states rather than by federal control? Disingenuous? Of course, Romney knows better. He’s smart, he’s aware of the important principle of federalism – but he’s going for the Christianist wing, the wing that only supports states’ rights when states support Christianist policy prescriptions. And so another conservative principle gets inverted by the allegedly "conservative" candidate.
(Photo: Paul Sancya/AP.)
The Dish 