Category: The Dish

Or even Fox News, for that matter. The Onion has the scoop.

And a vicious drag-queen fight has broken out. In Drudge’s inimitable words:

"the wigs and faces have come off on morning television — and the nails are out …"

Girl, hold my gold.

(Photo: Dima Gavrysh/AP – squished sideways by me to fit the space and make her look even scarier.)

A reader writes:

Have you noticed:

1. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal ran the finance-tracking story on the same day and in the same spot in their respective papers – upper right-hand column.

2. Only the New York Times is getting heat.

3. The NYT has been out there defending itself. The WSJ has said not a word – it’s been hiding under its desk.

I’m afraid I’m underwhelmed by this story. The program seems fine enough (unlike illegal wiretapping and torture); I can’t believe that key terrorists were unaware their finances might be watched and frozen until the NYT and WSJ told them; and, er, Rove needed a third week of p.r. offensive. After Zarqawi Week and "Cut and Run" Week, we are now almost through "Kill Keller" Week. He says jump. The blogosphere has sadly learned to ask: how high?

Mark Blumenthal’s conclusion:

While attitudes on withdrawing troops from Iraq appears to be hardening, Americans are more closely divided on whether to withdraw than they were in 2004.

More poll parsing here. I don’t see a recent surge in support for premature withdrawal. Americans are smarter than that.

Josh Muravchik tries to understand the Bush administration’s apparent volte-face on democracy in Egypt.

A reader reminds me:

This kind of stuff has gone on for a while. Frank Sinatra’s fourth – FOURTH! – marriage was performed by New York’s Cardinal Cooke.

I rarely agree with you on matters religious, but the double standard practiced over the years with regard to marriage and annulments definitely has been pretty appalling for a religion priding itself on its internal consistency.

Another point about the Kidman farce. If the church is utterly indifferent to marriages conducted by other churches or the state, then why has it devoted so much effort to demonizing civil marriages for gay couples? Shouldn’t they be as irrelevant to the Vatican as, say, civil divorce or re-marriages in other churches? The double standards abound. Some of them can be explained by catering to the rich and powerful (the Kidmans and Sinatras and Kerrys); some can be explained by Orwellian-speak (calling divorces "annulments"); but some can only be explained by bigotry and fear. None of it speaks that well of the Church, it seems to me.

"Among the core values we Republicans share with President Reagan is a passion for free market principles such as lower taxes and opposition to unnecessary government regulation; and, very importantly, belief that the government that governs best governs least. I don’t think any Reagan Republican would disagree that fiscal restraint and small government are bedrock principles of conservatives.

So why has my party, the party of small government, lately adopted the practices of our opponents who believe the bigger the government the better? I’m afraid it’s because at times we value our incumbency more than our principles. We came to office to reduce the size of government. Lately, we have increased the size of government in order to stay in office," – John McCain, our only hope, blogging at Porkbusters.

I’m fine with Porkbusters, but it needs to be said again and again that pork is not our real problem. Middle-class entitlements are. If pork-obsession becomes a way of denying our real fiscal calamity, rather than addressing it, it will do more harm than good.

She has a blog. It’s great stuff. Money quote:

Hello Everyone! First, I would Like to thank everyone for the opportunity to blog. I am currently staying with my friends Laurie and Arianna in Bel Air or some such place. The guest room is dark, and the television is not a flat screen of any such kind.This is the moment when the hand of the Merciful Allah strikes down my son’s enemy, which I believe is anyone who canceled the Golden Girls to show the England game yesterday. I am a big fan of Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur, who i hope to meet while I am here. I am very tired of having to discuss politics with these eater of pigs, although Anderson Cooper seemed very handsome. He only said hello, and then he began to flirt with my bodyguard Ahmed. Cursed be he then – Allah has no place for such violators of human nature. Plus, he smelled better than me. Like lilacs of some such kind – oh once the Merciful One is done with the Bush one, cursed be he, then he must smite the Body Shop. I was given a complimentary basket of soaps there, and which gave me a full-body rash. This burqa is making it worse … Oh wait, Arianna says Al Gore is here. We are going to see his movie with Janeane Garofalo. I hope there is popcorn or may the Merciful one strike them down. I prefer the caramel kind.

There’s more. It made my day.

The Brits innovate.

Max Boot speaks my mind. Money quote:

By now it should be obvious that the "light footprint" approach has not worked. It has increased, not decreased, resentment of the United States because Iraqis are aggrieved by the breakdown of law and order. Yet there appears to be no serious rethinking of this flawed strategy at either the Pentagon or the White House.

The administration may think it doesn’t have any more troops to send. It’s true that the armed forces are overstretched and need to be enlarged, but there are still just 150,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq out of 2.6 million in the active-duty ranks, reserves and National Guard. More soldiers could be found to police Baghdad if this were deemed a top priority.

Some in the administration may think that increasing troop numbers, which may bring more casualties, would be political poison. But what’s really hurting Republicans politically is not the number of troops in Iraq, or even the continuing casualties. It’s the perception that we’re not winning. If a heightened troop presence could establish security in Baghdad, the president and his party would reap a reward at the polls.

Rumsfeld won’t allow it. He’d rather lose a war than concede a point. And he knows too much to be fired.