Category: The Dish

Welcome to the occasionally unfortunate politics of metaphor.

I don’t know why I’ve stuck with AOL all these years. I guess I’m a traditionalist, and liked my old email addresses. But the past week I’ve hit a bit of a wall. The AOL online mail program is now so unreliable, slow and easily jammed that I’m stymied several times a day. I haven’t been able to access my mail for the past hour or so. Am I the only person this frustrated? Or do we all have to get Gmail in the end?

Ezra Klein swoons for Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris. RedState says it’s "insanely good." Continetti is somewhat more ambivalent.

"As far as I can tell, my politics, with regard to American foreign policy and projection of American power haven’t changed very much from what they’ve always been—what I would call revolutionary liberalism. I have always resisted reactionaries from the left or right, Democrat or Republican. At the moment, the reactionary forces on the left, the Democratic netroots and their supporters—Mickey Colitis from the Daily Cuss, MoveOn.org and the Moores and Sheehans—are more fearful to me than the traditional reactionary forces of the extreme right. And the Democratic Party seems to be listening to them," – Ron Silver, explaining why he remains a Bush supporter.

Among the candidates: Olivia Newton-John’s "Physical," Falco’s timeless "Rock Me, Amadeus," and Kenny Loggins’ "Danger Zone." Voting for the best is here, for the worst is here, and for the "best-worst" is here. One more teaser – one awful night in Bangkok:

Clinton’s potential future secretary of state – in 2001. More worries from Matt here.

Fareed echoes some of my readers’ testimony about the police state atmosphere that tourists and foreign visitors have to confront when entering the US. Tourism has declined markedly in the US these past five years, despite booming elsewhere. Here’s another anecdote from Lou Dobbs’ America: immigration agents stopping an ambulance for a second time across the Canadian border, even while a patient was fighting for his life inside.

He gets Amir Taheri to cite his Khomeini quote as existing in an out-of-print compilation of Khomeini quotes from 1981. It appears that Podhoretz originally used the quote without knowing of its provenance. Taheri, whose reliability has come under suspicion before, says the remark was purged or censored or removed in subsequent editions of the book. I have no independent way of confirming any of this. Taheri, it should be noted, was the source of the story that Iran had recently required that Jews wear yellow stars in public, a story that was subsequently debunked. Maybe other Iran specialists can weigh in on whether the original alleged Khomeini quote is legit or bears in any way on the current debate about attacking Iran.

Not a stone is unturned in her impressively relentless campaign.

Hip-hop with fewer boobies.