Category: The Dish

Well, I trawled through the various knuckle-dragging websites and there’s still no actual, you know, evidence that he fabricated anything. Maybe he did. First-person war-stories are always hard to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt, no? But if Malkin can’t dredge up something and fling it by now, no one can. Unhinged bigot Ace tries dredging through others’ private lives again. When in doubt, aim for the girlfriend. To reiterate: I cannot know if everything in the various Baghdad Diarists checks out. But I cannot know that about any number of pieces I read every day. I’m also a proud alumn of TNR. But it seems to me people should make actual allegations of factual inaccuracy or refrain from smears. Call me crazy.

Oh, and, by the way, the attorney-general has clearly been fingered for perjury by the evidence of the FBI director. Here appears to be a proven untruth under oath by the attorney-general. Now do you have an idea why the entire right-wing blogosphere is frothing at the mouth about a story whose primary controversial fact has actually checked out?

The Thompson campaign has had its first mini-implosion before it has even started. The wife is the problem, it appears. Ambers puts as good a spin on it as he can:

Thompson unwisely allowed tension to develop between his wife and the rest of the campaign staff. Ex-campaign-manager designate Tom Collamore did not mesh with Jeri Thompson and the friction between the two was evident to the rest of the staff. At times, Kehn Thompson would simply countermand Collamore’s instructions. She has final hiring authority — something that every campaign manager needs and Collamore never had. The Thompson presidential staff will be her staff more than Fred’s.

J.T. Mastranadi is one of the Republican Party’s best opposition researchers. His "ground" skill — his ability to unearth new information — is the envy of many competitors. He was hired two weeks ago, and when he began to plan for the campaign, he found it difficult to get his questions answered. He quickly concluded that Thompson had yet to get his affairs in order, friends say.

And time is running out.

(Photo: Evan Agostini/Getty.)

Well, she did apologize.

If they’re trying to jail you, you’ve probably stumbled on the truth:

Raja Petra Kamarudin, the editor of one of Malaysia’s most popular political websites, Malaysia Today, turned himself in to police on Wednesday, to answer allegations that he had mocked Islam and threatened racial harmony.

"I was alleged to have insulted the king, and also Islam and incite racial hatred, so I am going in there to reply to all these charges. I promise I’m going to give them a hell of a tough time," he told the BBC before he turned himself in.

David Whyte’s "What To Remember When Waking":

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live…

Continued here.

Some interesting new Gallup polling data of potential match-ups between four of the top tier candidates on both sides:

Clinton 44%, Giuliani 50%
Clinton 47%, Thompson 45%
Obama 52%, Giuliani 43%
Obama 56%, Thompson 36%

The poll also finds that Giuliani’s unfavorables have gone from 22 to 32 percent in the last six months. Obama’s have traveled a more modest 21 to 28 percent. Rudy’s favorables have gone backward the more people know him – from 65 percent to 60 in six months. Obama’s have only increased: 46 to 59 percent.   So in six months, Obama has closed a 20 point favorable differential gap on Giuliani. Remind me why any Democrat would back Clinton?

Rudy won’t bite, apparently. Romney’s decidedly cool to the idea. The others are getting iffy. Hewitt declares YouTube and CNN biased. Heh. For my part, the current old white men running for the GOP already seem from some other planet. Ducking YouTube after the Dems did so well will look like a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy. But then, we kind of knew that already, I guess, didn’t we?

The former speaker protests that Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon took his remarks about the "pygmies" in the GOP race out of context. Yeah, right.

Hey, it makes a change from Mike Gerson. The attacks here. Tyler Cowen defends him:

Brooks makes nine claims (or try this link), and to my eyes eight of them check out directly, based on material I am familiar with and yes I mean the original sources, not journalistic summaries of them.  (I should note it is not easy to estimate the total gains from globalization, and I wouldn’t put much weight on any particular number here; still those gains are likely very large, as Brooks suggests.)