Category: The Dish

Republican voter mail and list consultants. His campaign is helping the Rovites to figure out where the Christianists are. All the easier to pander to them.

Attagirl:

The old-guard feminist establishment has also rushed out of cold storage to embrace Hillary Clinton via tremulous manifestoes of gal power that have startlingly exposed the sentimental slackness of thought that made Gloria Steinem and company wear out their welcome in the first place. Hillary’s gonads must be sending out sci-fi rays that paralyze the paleo-feminist mind — because her career, attached to her husband’s flapping coattails, has sure been heavy on striking pious attitudes but ultra-light on concrete achievements.

The smoke filling it up can no longer be deemed a reason for arrest in Canada:

"The smell alone can’t constitute the grounds because the smell of burnt marijuana – as opposed to raw marijuana – gives an inference that the material is gone, it’s dissipated into the atmosphere. So how can you say you’re in possession of something that doesn’t exist?" said Ronald Piche, Janvier’s lawyer.

"Last week, in his 10-thumbed attempt to prevent his wife’s Louisiana loss, Bill Clinton said that Obama has made "an explicit argument that the ’90s weren’t much better than this decade." The phrase "explicit argument" was an exquisitely Clintonian touch, signaling to seasoned decoders of Clintonisms that, no matter how diligent the search, no such thought could be found, even implicitly, in anything Obama has ever said," – George Will, on good form.

Without him, GOP fund-raising would be far behind the Dems:

In the fourth fundraising quarter of 2007, Republicans finally outraised Democrats among individual donors — but only based on the strength of Paul’s donors.

Without Paul’s $20 million raised from individuals, Republicans would have totaled $45 million for the period from October through December, compared with Democrats’ $58 million.

Paul also set the standard among candidates in both parties last year for tapping into average Americans. He raised 61 percent of his funds from small-dollar donors, defined as those who gave $200 or less, compared to just 14 percent of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s funds, 12 percent of Mitt Romney’s funds and 8 percent of Rudy Giuliani’s 2007 campaign funds.

After eight years of big-spending, nation-building, torturing, phone-tapping, and debt-acquiring, it doesn’t surprise me that most small conservative donors would rather give to an old-style Taftite than to the new authoritarians.

It was an art project.

If I weren’t already decided …

A reader writes:

About three weeks ago, I was in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe, having dinner with about a dozen Zimbabweans, all black, and they were fully informed about Obama and their excitement was incredible.  These were educated people — some of the few professionals left in that part of Zim in the wake of the Mugabe-induced economic and political meltdown — and they were grilling me on how it could be that a man of African ancestry could be elected in Zim. 

When I told them that to almost all Americans under 40, a candidate’s race wasn’t of any consequence, they nodded in agreement — "what a great country," one said "that can ignore such things as race and prosper."   These were all people, though, who have learned the bitter lesson of the consequences of reverse racism — Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms and businesses that has led to Zim’s collapse, and to widespread hunger in the  formerly most prosperous African country.  One thing Mugabe has done in Zim- he has made whites and blacks all brothers, united in hatred of bad government.  

A reader from South Korea writes:

Koreans, like almost everyone else in the world, want to see a change in American government.  For just about everyone, that means a Democrat in the White House.  From my own experience, I’d say that Koreans prefer Hillary.  That’s partly because they look back fondly on the Clinton years, but also because Obama is an unknown quantity over here.  Many of them know who he is, but they don’t know what he stands for. And his speaking skills are hard to appreciate if English isn’t your first language. Most who are aware of him are skeptical of his ability to win the general election.

Another reader from South Korea adds:

My Korean coworkers, middle class but highly educated women, most of whom have lived and worked in the states, all despise Bush, admire Hillary and have virtually no idea about my man Obama.  It’s quite odd, I can only assume there’s a media blackout.

A report from inside NPod’s posse.