Category: The Dish

Why does he still do better against Republicans in the polls than Clinton or Obama? Ross tries to explain.

A parody of a Huckabee ad in Iowa.

Yes, the holiday season is at our throats again. Clive Davis posted the following poem by Wendy Cope. I know what she’s talking about:

Why is the baby crying
On this, his special day,
When we have brought him lovely gifts
And laid them on the hay?

He’s crying for the people
Who greet this day with dread
Because somebody dear to them
Is far away or dead,

For all the men and women
Whose love affairs went wrong,
Who try their best at merriment
When Christmas comes along,

For separated parents
Whose turn it is to grieve
While children hang their stockings up
Elsewhere on Christmas Eve,

For everyone whose burden
Carried through the year,
Is heavier at Christmastime,
The season of good cheer.

That’s why the baby’s crying
There in the cattle stall:
He’s crying for those people.
He’s crying for them all.

Of all the weirdnesses of YouTube, this proposal for an anti-hurricane ship has to be up there. But this blog truly does it justice. Only a blog called Pruned could recommend giving one to David Beckham.

I posted on this potentially world-changing research this afternoon. Here’s a helpful, chatty, specialist blog with lots of extra links if you’re scientifically literate and curious.

A reader writes:

That’s nothing. The 97 pages of Amazon TUSCAN WHOLE MILK reviews are legendary.

I see why.

This story in the WaPo has aroused my Kausian fears:

At least 1,035 Americans in four states have been infected so far this year by the virus, known as an adenovirus. Dozens have been hospitalized, many requiring intensive care, and at least 10 have died.

Health officials say the virus does not seem to be causing life-threatening illness on a wide scale, and most people who develop colds or flulike symptoms are at little or no risk. Likewise, most people infected by the suspect adenovirus do not appear to become seriously ill. But the germ appears to be spreading, and investigators are unsure how much of a threat it poses.

I’m still not recovered from this flu. Every time I think it may be abating, it kicks back in. My lungs rattle, my sinuses are plugged, fever comes back and forth. Today, I had three bouts of insane breathless coughing. A round of anti-biotics – to deal with my usual bronchitis/asthma – didn’t help; and I’ve spent much of the week resting physically – if not mentally. I’m going in to the doc as soon as I can get an appointment. I’m not anywhere near as sick as some of the people in the article, but I’ve rarely felt a virus refuse to give up like this one. Except, of course, you-know-what.

"The executive action we have here originates in the will of the President and represents an exercise of authority without law. No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role," – Justice Robert Jackson in his concurring opinion, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952.

Now we find out his previous views on gay servicemembers:

"I believe to try to legitimize that which is inherently illegitimate would be a disgraceful act of government. I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

Inherently illegitimate: the person I am; the people I love; the man I married.