Category: The Dish

She used the N-word. Not safe for work.

Dan Savage is the guy you want to read after the Sudanese outrage:

This whole mess cries out for a Teddy Roosevelt. Enough with the “expressions of displeasure” from the diplomats. Someone in the British government needs to deliver a “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” speech on Gibbons’ behalf. And mean it.

Before I go home tonight I’m going to pop across the street to the new Crypt, buy myself a buttplug, and name the fucking thing Mohammed.

The spirit of Pim Fortuyn lives on.

The Labour party is missing Tony Blair already: the Cameron Tories are now 11 points ahead. Reihan explains why here.

David Brody writes:

The part of Huckabee’s answer that probably resonated with Evangelicals is when he said, "There are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their god is too small". Folks, that’s called speaking the language of Evangelicals because that’s exactly what many of them think and feel. It was spot on and at the same time a nod to moderates to say "Hey, we Christians don’t have everything figured out either!"

Except the Bible tells them that no one should have a right to an abortion under any circumstances, and gay couples should be stripped of all legal protections for their relationships. And neither is literally taken from the Bible.

That’s Rove’s version of history. Enjoy:

A reader writes:

Four guys are standing on a street corner: an American, a Russian, a Chinese, and an Israeli… A news reporter comes up to the group and says to them:

"Excuse me…What’s your opinion on the meat shortage?"

The American says: What’s a shortage?

The Russian says: What’s meat?

The Chinese man says: What’s an opinion?

The Israeli says: What’s "Excuse me"?…

A reader writes:

You know, I’ve always been willing to cut the Human Rights Campaign the benefit of the doubt, both because of that cool bumper sticker (you know the one), and more importantly. because of their support for ENDA, which I’ve always thought of as more important than marriage. Hearing about this poll, though, really gives me pause. I have been out for 25 years now, and in all that time, I’ve met exactly two men who have consistently described themselves as bisexual. The rest of the handful of “bisexual” men I have met were in the middle of coming to terms with their sexuality and quickly dropped the term “bisexual” in favor of “gay.”

There is no possible way that that poll could be representative of reality. None. And I say that as somebody who has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, where we used to spend many a happy hour proving this kind of thing mathematically. If you tried to waltz this kind of sample past your dissertation committee, you’d be laughed at. Calling this a “poll” is like Vladimir Putin calling the exercise they’re currently engaged in in Russia an “election”—there are superficial similarities, but unlike the real thing, the outcome is too certain and the intent quite transparent.

I’m sure you could somehow find enough bisexuals to fill half a sample and call it the "LGB community", but it would be no more representative of any actual gay population than a bunch of Zoroastrians. Still, the poll managed to back Clinton, so it served its purpose.

Maybe not so much Rick James as Roger Troutman.

Firefighters are being recruited to report on people who appear "hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States." Discontent?

Deeper and deeper:

A top aide was unable to say why Giuliani’s administration and his successor’s rebuffed questions from the city’s top fiscal watchdog in 2001 and 2002. City Comptroller William Thompson said Thursday his auditors were “stonewalled” by the Giuliani administration when they inquired about the unusual billing procedures, which he called "disturbing."

In itself, this doesn’t strike me as a big deal. But it’s a sign of what may well be coming with the Giuliani candidacy: so many skeletons from so many New York City closets that he begins to become a liability. People talk of how Huckabee could weaken Romney and allow Rudy to win. But what if Rudy and Romney so destroy one another that Huckabee comes up between them. He’s been rising in South Carolina all year as well. And Giuliani has been sliding there constantly in the past nine months.