Category: The Dish

A list.

While actual voters in 22 states split their votes 50-50 between Clinton and Obama, Gallup’s daily tracking now shows Clinton leaping into a 13 point lead. The polls have really been all over the place this year – but Gallup isn’t usually this volatile. The poll of polls gives her a 4 point national lead.

It’s twenty minutes but interesting:

A reader writes:

Times have changed. I’d swear that the Republicans are having an on-line version of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. No one’s getting his skull thudded by a police baton, but in a virtual sense, it’s turning out just a bloody.

Actually, the parallels are interesting:  the President is unpopular and is leading an unpopular war. The nominee is tied to the war and can’t break free. The opponent is promising some vague way out. And the factions in the President’s party are far more pissed at each other than the factions in the opposition.

The Clintons gave their own campaign $5 million last month. Since the polls closed on February 5, according to the Obama campaign, donors have contributed $5.2 million to the Obama campaign. Staggering. The page for donations is here.

Palestinian boys play along the mangled border fence between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt, on February 6, 2008 in the divided town of Rafah. By Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty.

From Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Now, the questions will start and investigative reporters have a job to do. A reader writes:

Whatever you think about candidates’ self-funding, this has always been done with funds generated in a  business career (Romney), or through marriage/inheritance. The Clintons’ case is so different — their wealth is derived in large part from those seeking access and proximity to power, and they know that whatever the outcome of this race, she will still be a Senator and he will still be an ex-President, so the sale can go on.

It is not comparable to the Romney situation, and it’s kinda sleazy, and certainly unprecedented.

Kinda sleazy? The Clintons?

A helpful corrective to excessive Obama-fandom.

"The Washington Post reports that 44 persons died yesterday in storms that swept throughout the South, mostly in the states of Tennessee and Arkansas just hours after those states finished voting for Mike Huckabee to be the Republican candidate for President… If I was a Christian, I’d think twice before pressing that little button for Mike in the future primaries." – Peter Nuhn.