Category: The Dish

According to the Obama campaign, his extemporaneous reference to his uncle’s being a part of liberating Auschwitz yesterday was a small error:

Aides said his grandmother’s brother, Charlie Payne, helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp in April 1945 as part of the 89th Infantry Division.

This was the RNC’s Alex Conant:

Unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true. Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief.

I have a feeling Conant wishes he hadn’t been quite that aggressive. The chorus of Republicans trying to gin up a new meme about Obama’s honesty and fitness to be commander-in-chief has not been pretty these past few days.

You’d be surprised:

A brilliant little essay. Money quote:

Sexual love is, sadly, what we need, but is it what we want? It is hard to imagine a more bitterly subversive and countercultural question.

If you’re unaware of Bryan Appleyard’s blog, you shouldn’t be.

Some dude with a lot of time on his hands has grown as many variations of facial hair he could research and photographed them all. Itchier than stamp collecting, but a role model for some of us.

"UNAIDS recognizes that States impose immigration and visa restrictions as a valid exercise of their national sovereignty. However, in imposing any restrictions on entry and stay relating to HIV or health, UNAIDS calls upon States to adopt non-discriminatory laws and regulations which rationally achieve valid objectives through the least restrictive means possible.

UNAIDS would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that HIV-related travel restrictions have no public health justification.  It is also our view that, where such restrictions are based on HIV status alone, they are discriminatory.  There is no need to single out HIV for specific consideration as an exclusion criterion.  All comparable health conditions should be treated alike in terms of any concerns about potential economic costs relating to the health care of the individual involved," – Statement of the UNAIDS Secretariat to the Sixty-First World Health Assembly, May 21, 2008.

Did anyone think they’d tolerate an unmarried moderate? From Brody:

"There would be an open revolt. We would just not put up with it. He’s not one of us and McCain pretty much needs to get somebody that is going to make people happier if he seriously wants to hold the base to being supportive…There’s a general assumption that McCain is not stupid enough."

"Not one of us" could mean not pro-life enough, too single, or too gay. No use in beating around the bush on this at this point.

Tom Coburn thinks Republicans are in denial:

Compassionate conservatism’s starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the "other" is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives are conservatives because our policies promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government.

Compassionate conservatism’s next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor’s possessions. Spending other people’s money is not compassionate.

The power of Google.

Photographer James Whitlow Delano was in Burma when the cyclone struck:

Starting the next day, before the government excluded foreign eyes and hands from heart of the disaster, Delano traveled to the Irrawaddy Delta area. Leaving Yangon, he saw military troops clearing trees rather than rushing toward the human crisis.The further he traveled the more bodies he saw and the fewer government troops.

His black and white photographs capture something I haven’t seen before: immediate terror and flight. The full series of photos is here. Some are hard to look at.

"One of the main reasons John McCain is facing such an tough job today is that we are now in the sixth year of a war that the president of his own party started by mistake.  That’s a major headwind when you’re running for president; an error of that magnitude will exact a political price.  Would anyone be surprised if voters say that they’ve had enough?" – Byron York, NRO.