Category: The Dish

A reader begs:

If you can just relax a little on the Hillary-is-Satan crusade, I can stop grinding my teeth when I read your blog.  She’s probably my least likely choice for the nomination, but if I have to read any more about tips or plants, while FEMA is holding a press conference with itself, and the whole squad isn’t immediately fired for doing so, I may have to vote for her just for good old spite.

Perspective, priorities, eye on the ball. This current crowd can do a lot more damage before they leave office, and it’s all many orders of magnitude worse than anything that any administration has done at any time in the past, in my humble opinion.  These are your side’s renegades, so they’re your side’s special responsibility.  That’s your first job.  It’s not good enough to mention their horrendous transgressions and then go back to pantsuit fashion reviews.  You’ve got to clean your own yard first, and you’ve got to finish the job before you look over the fence.

JTA Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Kampeas, writes:

This is kind of sensitive for me. My colleague, Daniel Sieradski, posted the "takes money from Nazis, won’t take calls from Jews" comment on his personal blog. On the other hand, he describes his exchanges with the Paul campaign in his capacity as a JTA staffer.

The problem with all this, is that the Paul campaign WAS responsive, giving my intern here, Beth Young, an exclusive statement on where Paul stands on Israel for a story we posted yesterday (the day Dan posted his blog item.) (I have no idea why Dan was pursuing his own story when he should have known DC was pursuing a story, but that’s a boring internal JTA matter.)

I pointed this out to my boss, asking her the best way to address the anomaly; she suggested (and I think this is wisest), that I simply point out that Dan’s blog posting is wrong, Paul does talk to the JTA – and point out Beth’s story.

Which is what I’m doing.

This must count as a moment for national shame:

China will relax a long-standing rule that bars foreigners with HIV from entering the country, a health official said. The law will be revised but a date has not yet been set, said Mao Qun’an, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, according to a transcript of a news conference posted on the ministry’s Web site late Monday.

Under a 1994 law, foreigners applying for a residency permit in China must take an HIV test. Visitors to the country are asked to declare whether they have the virus — and can be refused entry or deported if they do. The law also affects those with other sexually transmitted diseases or tuberculosis.

But Mao said China’s attitudes have changed. "At present, we are considering, and we are changing the present regulation that stops foreigners with HIV and AIDS from entering the country, and this job is under way," he said. He did not give any details on how the law would be revised.

But the U.S. still has such a ban – making America a leading proponent of HIV-discrimination and stigmatization. There was no reason but hysteria to equate HIV with malaria and TB when Jesse Helms added HIV to blanket bans on HIV-positive tourists, visitors and immigrants decades ago. All this time later, treating this disease as worthy of panicked pariah-status is absurdly anachronistic – and deeply stigmatizing to people living with an illness that cannot be spread like malaria or TB. The Bush administration’s own commission on HIV wants the immigration and travel ban lifted. So why is the US now behind China in sane, civilized standards on this matter?

Alas, Mel Brooks isn’t the playwright. It’s a cartoonist from Denmark.

A testy exchange between two writers I admire tremendously. The animosity is fueled by smaller differences than exist in many of the debates on the war in Iraq. But in this war, and its disastrous implementation in Iraq, it is very hard not to become angry, and to be angriest at those from whom we expected better and with whom we otherwise have much in common. What is admirable about both men, even in their ill temper, is that they understand the stakes of the last few years, and take them seriously. I’d rather observe the anger that comes from that than the indifference, complacency and smugness of so many others.

New York, New York, 10.23 am.

Another nightmare of paranoia: a scientist sent to the slammer for two years for mailing something he shouldn’t have.

The Ron-Paul-Is-A-Closet-Nazi meme continues. It seems to me that there are a lot of reasons to oppose Ron Paul. Jamie Kirchick’s vision of US foreign policy is one of them. But to say that a single $500 contribution from a neo-Nazi crackpot is somehow "keeping company" with fascists is absurd. Michael Goldfarb asks:

Andrew, are you not troubled at all by the creeps who’ve signed on to the Paul campaign, or the fact that he is so completely unperturbed by their support that he has yet to distance himself in any way from it? Maybe not–Sullivan’s "simple message" to Ron Paul supporters: "You’re welcome here." That includes the Nazis, or no?

There are plenty of reasons to be perturbed when loons and hate-mongers support a candidacy. But this game of guilt-by-association can be played endlessly. I tend to place greater emphasis on loons and hate-mongers that candidates actively seek out. Pat Robertson is a loon and an anti-Semite and a vicious homophobe who blamed Americans for 9/11. Giuliani didn’t receive some unsolicited money from him; he actually stood on a platform and embraced him. Why one standard for Paul and another for Giuliani? If Obama embraced Louis Farrakhan as a supporter, you think Goldfarb and Kirchick would be silent? They’d have a cow because it’s unthinkable. But naked bigotry is more than thinkable in today’s GOP: it’s integral to it. What’s the difference between Farrakhan and Robertson? I can’t see any. Maybe Goldfarb and Kirchick can spell it out.

Giuliani also promoted and endorsed a seriously mobbed up man to be head of the DHS; he fully embraces and employs a priest credibly accused of sex abuse of a minor (and refuses to distance himself from him); and actively endorses torture as a foreign policy weapon. Jamie Kirchick actually supports Giuliani for president – but is hyper-ventilating about a $500 check that Paul hasn’t even decided what to do with! There you have the massive double-standards on the neocon right.

Here’s an idea: when Giuliani disowns his abusing priest, his mafia-consigliere and his anti-Semitic nutcase, Ron Paul should send back the $500. Deal?

(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty.)

I was wrong, misled by a left-wing blogger. Greenwald sets me right:

He only introduced those flag-burning amendments in order to dare his colleagues who wanted to pass a law banning flag burning to do it that way — i.e., the constitutional way. When introducing his amendments, he delivered an eloquent and impassioned speech on the floor of the House explaining why he considered anti-flag-burning measures to be "very unnecessary and very dangerous."

Here’s Kirchick-bait: Paul expresses admiration for Hagel and Kucinich.