Category: The Dish

A reader notes:

There are two candidates that are still in this race despite having zero chance of winning the nomination- Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton. The difference between the two is illustrated by why each remains in the race.  Paul remains to remind the Party of what they should stand for, to reignite the Goldwater Conservative grassroots, and to spread ideas.  Hillary remains because she realizes if Obama wins she will never become president.  I do not know if this illuminates the difference between two people or two generations.  All I know is it is about time those in the Democratic party finally see what wretched people the Clintons are.

There’s a great piece on Ron Paul enthusiasm in the NYT today. Increasingly it’s all about his ideas. My favorite of the slogans around him: "Why Not Freedom?" Why not indeed?

And one begins to sense she knows it:

After a day like Friday, it is hard to imagine how she keeps going, not just with her campaign, but emotionally. Even if she wanted to let off steam, she can’t, at least in public. She may have little heart for carrying her race forward, but she has committed many times to doing so, at least through June 3. She told her audiences in South Dakota that she and her husband and daughter would be back before the primary.

But the day obliterated the arguments she had made in an earlier part of her interview with the editorial board — that she was “more progressive” than Mr. Obama and would be a stronger candidate in the fall.

And it may have shattered any strategy for trying to win over superdelegates. The question is, did this episode alienate those who would have helped her to find a graceful way out.

The veep slot is now unimaginable, I think. And she made it so.

What this campaign has revealed about the characters of Obama and Clinton.

A helpful guide to Clinton’s derangement.

An Atlantic article from 1870.

A boy stands in the FEMA Diamond travel trailer park May 23, 2008 in Port Sulphur, Louisiana. FEMA federal trailer parks that house many Hurricane Katrina victims are set to close May 31, prompting fears that people will be forced into residences they can’t afford or will be left homeless. Most residents will receive a federal subsidy to move to apartments, but affordable rental housing is scarce in some areas like New Orleans and Baton Rouge. By Mario Tama/Getty Images.

"No disrespect to the other candidates, but if anyone else had been nominated we’d be toast," – GOP pollster Glen Bolger.

Gregory McNamee on the world’s funniest joke:

…according to research conducted a few years back at the University of Hertfordshire, the funniest joke in the world, the one that most easily travels across cultures, is about death. It goes something like this:

Two hunters are out hunting. One of them falls over and seems not to be breathing. His friend calls 911* and cries, “What do I do?” “Well, first, let’s make sure he’s dead,” says the operator. There is silence, and then a shot rings out. The hunter returns to the phone and says, “Okay, now what?”

It’s a good joke, to be sure. But curiously, the jokes that seemed to work the best on the cross-cultural charts were just over 100 words long, with the optimum number being 103. The full version of the hunters joke tips in at 102 words, lending credence to the notion that a strange numerology is at play. Couple that with linguistic studies that suggest that velar consonants are funnier than alveodentals and sibilants and such (thus “kayak” is a funny word, “yellow” and “sassy” not so much), and we have the beginnings of a formula. Back to the drawing board, then….

A good enough reason to link to this Monty Python classic.

Ten optical illusions in two minutes:

A nifty idea from an editorial in TNR on conservation:

…we’re pleased by the recent trend in the automobile industry, in which it’s become increasingly common for carmakers to include fuel-efficiency gauges that display prominently the number of miles per gallon a car is getting at each instant. Toyota’s Prius, among other models, comes with such a gauge, and Nissan announced last year that all new vehicles will be equipped with one. In trials, the gauge has prompted smoother and more efficient driving, which can increase fuel efficiency by 10 percent or more. Conservation, which was once, in the words of Vice President Cheney, merely a "sign of personal virtue, " becomes something far more appealing: a sign of personal superiority. It would be even better if the gauges displayed one’s fuel-efficiency percentile, putting Americans in direct competition with each other for gas-sipping bragging rights.