Category: The Dish

My Sunday Times column on you-know-who.

Check out this YouTube. It was an emotional week, as any perusal of this blog will show. But one reason I am drawn to Obama is because he attracts people like Samantha. Maybe a political rookie. But a class act. It is very hard to believe Hillary Clinton herself would ever issue a statement as sincere and honest as Samantha’s – in either content or tone:

The beginning of a potential fall race:

Hilzoy:

Some enterprising reporter should ask her whether she would support Barack Obama if he were nominated. If she would, then she should be asked why she would be willing to support someone she does not believe is qualified to be commander in chief.

Call her out. Flush her out. Stop giving her a pass. Karen Tumulty makes the same point here. Shouldn’t a potential veep be "ready on Day One"?

Mexico City, Mexico, 11.58 am.

A reader writes:

Like you I’ve been down since Tuesday. A long time ABC (Anyone But Clinton) Democrat, I have decided that the best possible outcome of this horrible situation is if Clinton wins the nomination.

The Clinton’s hold on the Democratic Party will continue until they lose an election. Obama has had three shots, New Hampshire, California and now Texas to beat Clinton and he failed. Although he overcame large polling margins to make all three close, she still walked away as the popular vote winner.

He can’t beat her. He can maintain his delgate lead but what he needs is a large margin of victory in a key battleground state and all that’s left is Pennsylvania. With demographics similar to Ohio it’s unlikely he can acheive  a 5-10 point margin that he would need to stop the Clinton machine.

Let her win the nomination and go down in November. No one that can count believes she can take down McCain. She needs every single Democrat to vote for her and pick up a  number of independents to win. McCain doesn’t have to pander to his base if she’s the nominee. He can run as a moderate and let Rush, et al. bring back the 1990’s scadals update it with whatever it is they are hiding in this year’s tax returns.

Democrats are an unforgiving bunch when you lose a general election. Just ask Mondale and Kerry. Even Gore was treated badly after 2000 until Iraq sprialed out of control. When she loses in November, neither one of them will have any kind of standing in the party. Good. Only then can the Democrats move away from this toxic relationship.

A few excerpts from James Alison’s article:

How often have you ever been addressed by the word “you” in a Catholic publication? I don’t mean the word “you” in the weak sense as when advertisements ask “Have you considered a vocation to be a priest or sister?” Because those advertisements don’t really mean “you”. They really mean “someone who is like you in every way, but happens not to be gay, or at least is good at hiding it”. Normally whenever there is a discussion about matters gay in Catholic publications, the style very quickly becomes stiff, and a mysterious “they” appears. This “they” seems to inhabit another planet from the one you inhabit. Whoever is talking about “they” is, in fact, on another planet, one where a strange lack of oxygen makes it impossible to use the pronouns “I”, “you”, “we.” […]

I don’t want to pretend that being an openly gay Catholic is something easy or obvious. It isn’t. For a start, merely the fact of your wanting to read a letter like this at all is a sign of how many obstacles you must have overcome already. You may have faced hatred and discrimination in your own country, from family members, at school, at the hands of legislators eager for cheap votes, through shrieking newspaper headlines that sear your soul, and in the glare of which you are speechless in your own defence. And you’ve probably noticed that at the very best, the Church which calls itself, and is, your Holy Mother has kept silent about the hatred and the fear. While all too often its spokesmen will have lowered themselves to the level of second-rate politicians, lending voice to hate while claiming that they are standing up for love. The very fact that, through and in the midst of, and despite, all these hateful voices, you should have heard the voice of the Shepherd calling you into being of his flock is already a miracle far greater than you know, preparing you for a work more subtle and delicate than those voices could conceive.

A public art project.

A reader writes:

I’m seriously sick-and-tired of hearing that “no serious person takes the get out argument seriously.”

The very hallmark of Iraq is the unseriousness with which the “serious” have approached literally every aspect of the fiasco.  You note we sent too few troops “to prevent the disintegration of Iraq.”  Heck, Andrew, we failed to send enough troops to secure the weapons Saddam DID have much less the WMDs he didn’t have.

Along with that was the unseriousness with which we were promised that the entire effort would cost $60 billion and be paid back by Iraqi oil, and that we could afford to cut taxes during wartime for the first time in American history.  This ensured that the trillion-plus cost of our fiasco would be handed off to the same generation that’s inheriting our Social Security and Medicare D bills.

It takes a manifestly unserious person to declare that we must wreck our military in order to keep America safe, and bankrupt our nation in order to keep America strong.

So let me throw down the gantlet to all the “serious persons” out there.  How do you propose rebuilding our armed forces to sustain a long-term commitment in Iraq and still defend our shores?  How do you propose paying for your military rebuilding and occupation prescription?

When they propose raising taxes and instituting a draft, we’ll know who’s really serious.