Category: The Dish

Rare footage of "systematic infanticide."

Suspended between the past and the future, like the rest of us.

Francis Fukuyama takes a stand.

"You’ve heard of plain vanilla? Plain vanilla is like tabasco sauce next to this speech," – JPod on the SOTU.

Despite massive borrowing and spending, a comparatively anemic few years.

A polling expert sees signs for optimism.

"I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that,’" – Bill Richardson, currently weighing whether to back the Illinois senator.

It’s alive and well among African-Americans as well.

A Florida poster – unaffiliated, of course, with the campaign – spins the primary.

A reader writes:

I am right-wing policy wonk, and pro-war at that, but what is going on transcends partisan politics.

I hear people call the comparisons to Camelot romanticized, but are they? Obama doesn’t cheat on his wife with movie stars, nor did he come from any familial wealth, especially that gained by (the equivalent of) drug dealing. It would seem an improvement over JFK, or more appropriately, a real human being that can match up to the image of the martyr JFK became.

The main reason I am voting Obama: maybe, if he is elected, people could go back to talking to each other about things that matter; and it might even be socially acceptable for people to change their mind upon reflection.