Category: The Dish

"I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist," – Leonard Simpson, a West Virginia Democrat. Then this:

Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. "I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president," he said.

Meanwhile, I get an email like this:

This guy is a muslim trying to take over religion, rights, gunns, and lastly our country.

Does anyone remember 911. He’s cunning and a racists. He is connected with dirty money and bad connections in the rest of the world.

Obama’s got his work cut out with these people when he gets the nomination. A summer of engaging and listening with rural non-college educated white folk would help – why not hold a series of town hall meetings in rural America? I don’t think any region should be written off by any candidate, especially if the major objections seem racial or religious.

(Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty.)

From Ezra Klein’s article on the future of reading:

The true promise of the Kindle, and its inevitable descendants, is in creating a product that goes where the book cannot. Printed text is fundamentally limited. Once on the page, nothing more can be done with it. With digital text, everything is a draft, to be edited, altered, broadened, remixed, and redirected. As better conveyors of electronic text are developed, the big question is how content itself will change to take advantage of the new opportunities.

Rebutting the myths.

I’m so proud of the Republican nominee. Whatever happens in this campaign, he has single-handedly wrested the GOP from its pro-torture position, which is a huge, by no means inevitable, advance over Bush-Cheney. Yes, he has made a few compromises that were disappointing – and more disappointing for those of us who admire him. But he took on the issue when it could have hurt him badly – against demagogues like Giuliani and say-anything opportunists like Romney – and stood up for American and Western values. Because of McCain, we now know that the next president, unlike the current one, will not be a war criminal. That’s an immensely important part of winning the propaganda and intelligence war against terrorism. We get better, more reliable intelligence and we regain the moral highground from the Islamists (however maddening it is to think we lost it).

I am still open to McCain’s arguments for the presidency, and want to listen carefully to the Obama-McCain debate in the coming weeks and months. But McCain’s imperfect but still vital leadership on this core, fundamental question – the most fundamental question in our politics for the past seven years – will not be forgotten by future generations, whatever happens in November. I’m grateful.

How to store e-mail effectively.

The NYT reports on an alleged truce between Maliki and Sadr, brokered by the Iranians, who now seem as influential with the Baghdad government as the US. But combat continues. As with several such deals, the details appear murky and subject to the usual constant revision:

Under the terms announced by Sadr’s lead negotiator, Salah Obeidi, the cleric’s Mahdi Army militia would put down their weapons and allow government forces to pursue individuals wanted in attacks, provided there is a warrant. In return, the government forces would stop what Obeidi called "random" raids and open blocked roads into the cleric’s Baghdad stronghold, Sadr City.

Obeidi said the document made no mention of the government’s demand that the militia disband and surrender its medium- and heavy-grade weapons — issues that the cleric’s representatives were not prepared to discuss.

But Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, said all sides had agreed that only the government is authorized to maintain an army and enforce the law.

Meanwhile, a major attack has begun on the Jihadists in Mosul. Did Maliki blink in the battle with Sadr to free up troops in the North? Abu Muqawama airs possible interpretations here. Juan Cole is skeptical about the the Maliki-Sadr ceasefire and new Mosul front here. I wish I knew what was going on. It appears as if the Maliki government is very slowly gaining in strength and legitimacy. But all its gains are fragile and reversible.

Ticked off by the indignities of flying these days? The police state atmosphere, the delays, the status anxiety, the food, the rudeness, those people on their fucking cell phones? Jerry Weinberger reminds us that the bus used to be much worse:

In 1963, I took a Greyhound bus from San Francisco to New York. Though it was the cheapest way to get from coast to coast, the fare was about a hundred bucks; adjusted for inflation, that would be nearly $700 today, one-way. I’ll never forget that trip—my nose won’t let me. It took weeks for my clothes to give up the reek of intestinal flatus that suffused the atmosphere of the coach. The whores who plied their trade from stop to stop smelled like goats. And from the winos, sitting in the back with their brown bags of Ripple, came long, deep, rumbling burps that reminded you of rotting vegetables. The food—you had to buy your own in the dumps the bus stopped at—had all been fried in grease that came in hard blocks in boxes labeled HAZMAT. The trek took almost three days, and it was hard to get more than a couple of hours of sleep at night. So if you think flying is so tough, try taking a bus instead: though they’re much nicer nowadays, they still take a long time to get you where you want to go.

Scrub that elitism away.

Isn’t that another word for life? Kinsley has a spot-on column, with one more reason to love Ron Paul. Money quote:

Is it unfair that Yo-Yo Ma can play cello better than I can? Or that people hire Frank Gehry instead of me when they want a beautiful building, or that Warren Buffett is a better stock picker? Sure, it’s unfair. And it’s unfair in precisely the same way the results of a genetic test are: my lack of talent at playing the cello is something I was born with and beyond my control. Could I have overcome my lack of talent through discipline and hard work? Maybe, but not enough to scare Yo-Yo.

Martha Bayles discusses the Hollywood-Washington axis.