Category: The Dish

Mark Blumenthal has new data:

The survey yields evidence that many of these voters like John McCain as much or more than Hillary Clinton. At the same time the Clinton Mississippi Republicans are nearly unanimous in their disdain for Barack Obama.

The Justice Department might have to approve new elections? I guess we’re lucky Gonzales isn’t still there.

Josh and Ezra think that Obama should seat Florida delegates based upon the prior vote so that Clinton doesn’t get a momentum boost off a re-vote. I’m not sure I see the wisdom of that strategy. It seems too defensive to me. You either bar them according to the current rules, or they should get a re-vote. There is also an argument over whether Florida and Michigan super delegates should count; Dylan Loewe says they shouldn’t since it was Florida and Michigan super delegates who created this problem in the first place. At some point, this clusterfuck has to be sorted out.

I’m still using my CPAP machine every night. Almost 10,000 hours now. My only problem is that when I sleep, the mask pushes into my right cheek and has formed a small dent in my face. Oh well. Not a big price to pay. A reader writes:

Long, LONG time reader here since your early days, but I don’t e-mail you much.

I’m 28 and I’ve been dealing with ‘not being a morning person’ for my entire adult life. I’ve suspected for years I had sleep apnea (girlfriends telling me how I stop breathing at night, etc) but for whatever psychological reasons, put off going to the doctor. Even after you blogged about it — a guy I read multiple times a day – I still didn’t find a good reason to go.

A month ago, my sleeping became worse and one night in particular I woke up in tears because I just knew I was gasping for air that entire night when sleeping and I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I made an appointment with the sleep doctor the next day, slept in the lab, and finally got my results back. 67 episodes an hour. Low blood oxygen. Barely any rem sleep. I’ve literally been robbed of good sleep my entire adult life.

I’ve been wearing a CPAP machine for the last few days, and I cannot begin to tell you what a difference it makes. I can’t get used to the feeling of waking up and actually not wanting to immediately go back to bed.

"This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name. Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late. Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth. Your only reaction has been to disagree, reject, and to call it regrettable. Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim, resign from your committee, and insist she will continue to speak. Unless you say something definitive, Senator, the former Congresswoman is speaking with your approval. You must remedy this. And you must… reject… and denounce… Geraldine Ferraro," – Keith Olbermann tonight.  

A reader writes:

I am getting a little sick of the meme that the “Republican Legislature” in Florida forced the early primary date down the throats of the Democrats.  This argument that the Dems had no say in this, and were just innocent victims, flies in the face of the facts.  The bill to move the Florida Primary earlier in the calendar was passed by a vote of 118-0 in the House and 37-2 in the Senate.  The Florida Dems were a willing party to this violation of DNC rules.

Florida’s Dems now want a June 3  mail-in ballot.

Usage is at a 50-year high.

Afghan track star Massoud Azizi, 20, runs along a dirt trail on a hill overlooking the country’s capital on March 6, 2008 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Azizi, who participated in the 2004 Olympics, is one of three Afghan athletes confirmed for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Aziz says he is faster and stronger now in the 100 metre and 200 metre sprints. His brother is also a former Olympic runner who now lives in California. By Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.

A reader writes:

I have a problem with your reader’s comment.  Astrology, as developed by the Babylonians and as practiced in the ancient and modern worlds, does NOT consider itself an irrational belief system. If you would like a nice summary of it from a rationalist point of view, I would suggest an essay of the late Isaac Asimov: "The Stars in Their Courses."  It’s in an essay collection with the same title.

So your reader’s argument is just plain WRONG.  Astrology argues that from the positions of the planets in the constellations and the date of one’s birth etc. valid predictions can be made about future events.  To equate it with religious beliefs is nonsense.  Every religion I know anything about always admits that at bottom that it is based on faith.  Astrology did not start out that way and does not make that assertion.  I will agree with your reader that astrology IS irrational.

The Ferraro flap has left me feeling queasy. Not just because racial polarization is always an ugly thing; not just because the condescension toward a minority is cringe-inducing; not just because these cycles of blame and counter-blame can go on and on and wound more and more … but because it is inherently corrosive of a multicultural polity, and will, in the long run, benefit no one but those who cannot appeal to the public beyond crass interest group grievance.

The one indisputably positive aspect of the Obama candidacy – to left or right – has been his remarkable ability to make a case for his nomination without relying on this kind of identity politics and victim-mongering. That he doesn’t shrink from minority status and pretend that his blackness doesn’t matter is not the same thing. His ability to both represent a black man and yet represent a figure beyond a black man is the core of the historic salience of his candidacy. It’s why a gay man living in many different worlds feels that Obama can and will move all of us forward. It is why so many with complex identities and revulsion for racial or gender groupthink have been given new hope this time around. It shows that he has actually moved beyond the kind of thinking that lay behind Ferraro’s original nomination and the toxic politics of the 1970s left.

I hope this stuff ends soon – and that the Obama camp does not degenerate into constantly being offended, however justified the offense is. Better to remind ourselves of the positive aspects that Obama has allowed for and that his enemies are trying to cloud and pollute. Here’s one from almost a year ago that is worth remembering again today:

My favorite moment was a very simple one. [Obama] referred to the anniversary of the March on Selma, how he went and how he came back and someone (I don’t remember who now) said to him:

"That was a great celebration of African-American history."

To which Obama said he replied:

"No, no, no, no, no. That was not a great celebration of African-American history. That was a celebration of American history."

Yes.

When this election is fought on their terms – on grievance and resentment and identity victim-mongering – the bad guys win. We mustn’t let them take this moment away from us.