Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

Thanks for your provocative Gathering Storm post, which was scary and sad but a great assessment. An exhausting fight between Sunni and Shia thugs with their Al Qaeda and Iranian allies will set some of our enemies upon one another. The tragedy, of course, is that thousands more innocent Iraqis will die in the process, and we‚Äôll be partly culpable. 

Still, we have to recognize that Zarqawi (remember him?) succeeded in his goal of preventing our preferred outcome in Iraq, by provoking a civil war. And, we should take solace from the fact that this strategy came at a price for Al Qaeda. By bringing the sectarian schism within Islam to the forefront, Zarqawi demoted Al Qaeda from an almost mystical movement that stood up to the west in a fight for an idealized Islamic world, to just another brutal, sectarian faction killing Muslims in Iraq.  He’s also taken the Islamic jihadist focus off the United States and even made a Syrian-Iranian alliance more difficult over the long term.

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, 2 pm.

Chris Orr has a good review of the movie, now out on DVD. We watched it the other night, after Aaron had insisted I sit through the "Donner cut" of Superman II. (He’s a purist). I’ve never been a big fan of comic book movies, but if you’re going to do one, Bryan Singer is obviously the go-to guy. My only quibble with Chris is his assessment of Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane as "a sprightly presence." She was bland and dreadful. But who can rival Margot Kidder? Or is that the gayest sentence I’ve written in a long while?

I splurged the book advance on a 46" LCD TV. So we’ve been slumped in front of it recently. Two DVD highlights: Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Ice Age: The Meltdown." Yes: vastly different. But technically both masterpieces, I think. Kubrick’s vision remains ravishing, untainted by the passage of time, the most spiritually absorbing movie I have seen in ages. I was a big fan of "A.I.", as well, but irritated by Spielberg’s sentimental meddling.

This is a great Drudge story. It’s up there with my all-time favorite: "Pig Flies in First Class." By the way, I have a recommendation for those with similar problems. In our household, it works like a charm.

He was 109. Here’s the Brit obit. Money quote:

At his 109th birthday celebrations, for which he said mass in the convent chapel where he spent his last years, Fuchs joked about his fragile start in life. "My mother told my father: ‘Let’s just give him your name ‚Äî he’s only going to die anyway’," he recalled. The baby was so tiny and frail his mother was convinced he could not survive…

On his last birthday, his eyesight failing, he expressed his sadness to the local newspaper that he was no longer able to read the Bible from beginning to end "one last time".

It’s a parody, actually. Spinal Tap’s Hell Hole. It made my day.

Move over, Chris Rock. Here’s Steve Jobs from 1984.

This one from Chris Rock about O.J. is creepily prescient.

Here’s some more information, related to my post earlier. Bill Clinton did sign the travel ban into law in 1993, but it was first proposed by (drum roll) Jesse Helms in 1987. A reader remembers the timeline better than I do:

I started working on this issue when it first surfaced – after the ban was created by the Reagan Administration in 1987. (I started working in the House, for then-Rep. Norman Mineta, earlier that year.) A little research on your part would have shown you this history:

The Reagan White House pressured the Public Health Service to include HIV on the list of excludable conditions in 1987. They did. There were protests about that, as the vast majority of public health experts believed that only active tuberculosis belonged on the list. In response, and in order to make sure the PHS’ decision was protected, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) authored an amendment in the Senate to put HIV on the list statutorily. The Senate adopted it on a voice vote, with Democrats thinking that because HIV was already on the list, the amendment was redundant.

We tried to get rid of it in the 1990 immigration bill by mandating that the list would henceforth be maintained by the CDC, and that it would include only conditions with a solid medical justification. To his credit, President Bush (41) signed it into law, and his CDC issued a rule in 1991 knocking everything off the list except tuberculosis. There was a revolt in the Republican Conference in the House, led by then Rep. Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA). The CDC pulled the rule and the INS kept the old list in place.

Clinton campaigned on a promise to remove the ban. Shortly after he got to the White House, in February of 1993, Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) offered an amendment to the NIH reauthorization to keep the old list. Ted Kennedy tried to offer an alternative, but it failed 42-56. The Nickles Amendment then passed 76-23.

(All 23 “no” votes were Democrats. Notably, Joe Lieberman was one of the “yes” votes – one of the many early examples of his cozying up to Jesse Helms on gay rights and AIDS/HIV issues.

When the House and Senate went to conference on the bill, then-Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA) offered a motion to instruct conferees to agree to the Nickles Amendment.  It passed 356 to 58. Again, all 58 who voted ‚ÄúNo‚Äù were Democrats (plus Bernie Sanders). At that point, both chambers of Congress had voted to block Clinton’s planned executive order by veto-proof margins.  When Congress sent Clinton the NIH authorization in June of 1993, he signed it.

The countries that have a similar ban on all HIV-positive tourists, travelers and immigrants are Armenia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldavia, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Sudan and the U.S. Great company, no? This president has an opportunity to finish what his father started, and remove the irrational stigma that treats HIV like TB for immigration purposes. Let’s hope Mark Dybul continues the great start he has made.

Why not give a personally-dedicated copy of "The Conservative Soul" as a present this Christmas? If you’re a liberal who’d like to provoke a Republican into a rethink of where the conservative movement has gone, it’s a fun gift. If you’re a conservative who ‘d like to remind a liberal that not all conservatives are intolerant, pork-laden big spenders, then the gift works as well. Of course, there’s a product warning. As the Washington Post review put it, "[If you] have ever read anything by Ann Coulter, this is not a book for you."

Here’s the gimmick. I’m also happy to sign the book personally to whomever you want and add a personal greeting or inscription of any nature you decide. Just email theconservativesoul@gmail.com, tell me your mailing address and the precise inscription you want, and I’ll inscribe an adhesive, formal book-plate you can stick in the front of the book, and mail the book-plate back to you. Voila – a personalized Christmas gift. If you have a friend who’s a Dish-reader, it’s a nifty gift idea. If you’d like to challenge a conservative or liberal friend or family member, you can’t go wrong. No limits on the number of books or dedications. I’ve already done this for scores of readers and givers – and the final book-plate looks great. You can buy the book here or here. Once again: the email address for mailing addresses and inscriptions is theconservativesoul@gmail.com. Email soon so we have penty of time to deliver before Christmas comes around. Cheers. And Merry Christmas.