The Dish

One more time: the data doesn’t support the notion that banning marriages and civil unions for gay couples made any difference at all in Bush’s victory. Money quote:

In states that voted on the gay-marriage ban, Bush increased his vote share from 53.33% in the 2000 election to 54.17% in the election just past. That’s an increase of 0.84%. In states where gay-marriage bans were not on the ballot, Bush increased his vote share from 48.82% to 50.78%. That’s an increase of 1.96%. Bush’s vote share rose more than twice as much in states where voters didn’t have a chance to ban gay marriages.

Rove’s smart enough to know this.

Mike’s encounter with the new world of the collective blog-brain can be read here. Thanks for helping. I particularly admire this observation:

What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to the editor. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement — mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession — with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.

Yep. You guys are the real stars of the blogosphere – the interlocutors and readers and writers who were once consigned to relative silence, but now have a medium all your own. The bloggers are conduits, forums, niches, designed to unleash the broader wisdom of the online crowds. That’s one reason a Hayek-Oakeshott Tory like me loves the blogosphere so much. Not so much spontaneous order as the endless pursuit of a million intimations – a constant conversation, with peaks and lulls, discourtesies and jokes, outbursts and rants, meditations and quips, and all going nowhere in particular. And in the end, some truths do emerge, if you have the balls to acknowledge them. It’s the purest form of democratic discussion yet devised. It’s a big fucking deal. But if you’re reading this, you probably know that.

ALI’S BOMBSHELL: Ali quits the Iraq The Model blog, with dark warnings about his shift of political agenda:

My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it’s the act of some Americans that made me feel I’m on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won’t lack the mean to do this, but I won’t do it here as this is not my blog.

Troubling. But having spent the last few days immersed in the various official government reports on the conduct of some U.S. personnel in Iraq, I cannot say I’m terribly surprised.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This is the disheartening tale of a noble people ignobly led. The Administration is both author and protagonist of that tale, and to the Administraiton must be read this indictment and this prophesy:
You have deceived once: now you must deceive again, for to tell the truth would be to admit having deceived. If your better judgment leads you near the road of rational policy, your critics will raise the ghost of your own deception, convict you out of your own mouth as appeaser and traitor, and stop you in your tracks…” – a critic of George W. Bush? Nope. Oxblog reveals the author.

Very sorry to hear of Michael Gerson’s health problem. He’s a wonderful person, principled, eloquent and sincere – one of the president’s greatest assets and one of the best presidential speech-writers of modern times. Here’s hoping he’ll be fine soon enough. God bless.

Are they in cahoots on Rummy? Josh has a sliver of evidence.

When I get concerned at widespread public acquiescence in the military’s use of abuse and torture in the war on terror, I have to remind myself how many Americans really feel about the war we’re in. This poll should relieve us of any lingering illusions:

The survey found 44% favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way. The survey showed that 27% of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29% thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising. Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.

Michelle Malkin isn’t alone. And these beliefs were held most strongly by those with strong Christian belief. What version of the Gospels are they reading?

THE PRINCE AND ISLAM: Prince Charles has been doing his small bit to encourage inter-faith dialogue and discourse. He is unfairly maligned in my opinion. His recent effort has been to encourage Muslims not to execute apostates. Now this was a small aspect of political I slam I was actually unaware of. If you’re a Muslim convert to Christianity in many Islamic states, you can be executed? In rpivate discussions with British Muslim groups, Charles was told essentially to stay mum:

It is understood that the Muslim group, which included the Islamic scholar Zaki Badawi, cautioned the prince and other non-Muslims against speaking publicly on the issue. It argued that Islamic moderates could have more influence on the traditional position if the debate remained largely internal. A member of the Christian group said yesterday that he was “very, very unhappy” about the outcome.

Isn’t freedom of religion something we should insist upon in Iraq?

MISC: It turns out that the correct spelling is “verklemmt” …

if you spell it the German way, which I think most people would. The Yenta character on Saturday Night Live used the word as if it were Yiddish, but it’s not–it’s high German for “overwrought”–it just sounds Yiddish and funny to the English ear.

And, in our continuing series of corrections to obscure ’80s album titles, the group was Missing Persons, the album title was “Spring Session M”, and the song was “Walking in L.A.” Yes, we care about accuracy here.

ALL-TIME MALKIN AWARD NOSTALGIC ENTRY: How could we forget the classic Pat Robertson fund-raising pitch:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Now, that’s how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen.

“There is no theocracy in the United States, and we remain one of the freest and most open countries in the globe; but what happens when the party that once promised to guard this freedom transforms into its detractor? In the late 1990s Bill Clinton shifted domestic politics to the right BECAUSE he was a Democrat (and could). What happens when the party of the right leans away from the defense of liberty and toward the despicable martial art of book burning?” – John Coleman, a self-declared member of the religious right, worried about what is happening to conservatism.

What Thatcher could teach Bush on governing from the right. Jon Rauch explains why the Democrats shouldn’t despair. All they need is a Blair.

“The Millau. Its pillars poke the clouds and its design inspires the spirit and it will surely be a major tourist attraction for decades to come — a fact that, of course, means little to most Americans, because most red-blooded patriots never venture past the Wal-Mart on the outskirts of their home state. But still.” – Mark Morford, SFGate.com. You know, no one is as anti-American as some Americans.

CORRECTIONS: The album “Nobody Walks in L.A.” was made by Missing Persons, not Mission Persons. And there have been 130 soldiers charged with abuse and torture, not convicted. Apologies.

STEROID SING-ALONG: Hey, it’s Friday afternoon.

HEADS UP: I’m on the Chris Matthews’ show this weekend. Chris gets all verklemt over Christmas. Is that how you spell verklemt? It’s his birthday today.

Wow. Thanks for all the emails on “what a waste.” In general, I’m in favor of not taking offense unless you really have to. Life’s too short. And y’all tend to agree. Here’s a representative email, from the belly of the beast, Manhattan:

As a reasonably attractive straight male living in New York, I’ve been surrounded by gay men all my life. Many’s the time I’ve been told it’s a shame I’m not gay, often in highly ribald terms. Once, as a teenager, when I offered one of my mother’s friends a bite of my roast beef sandwich, he replied with heavy sarcasm, “I’ll take a bite of your ‘sandwich’ any time.” A gay colleague of hers asked if I was interested in men; she said, “He’s yours if you can get him.” In 1979, I worked at the Strand Bookstore, whose staff would be decimated by AIDS in the 80s; gay colleagues followed me around and spied on me through the bookshelves. Far from being offended by this kind of attention, I’ve always accepted it as a genuine compliment, though it sometimes verged on sexual harrassment. But it’s the kind of thing that women put up with all the time, and though it can always be a problem if it goes too far, men, like women, generally like to be flirted with and made to feel attractive. In the age of ‘Will and Grace,’ in my opinion, any straight man who is offended by a little gay flirtation has a problem he’s not dealing with.

That’s grown-up, although, frankly, I wince when gay men sexualize straight men inappropriately. A little mutual respect is more seemly. But context is everything.

SPEAKING OF CONTEXT: Art Buchwald’s words of wisdom obviously have a couple of exceptions:

Your quote of the day from the always amusing Art Buchwald “if a man doesn’t drive, they think there must be something wrong with him” has one major exception (at least): the city of New York. As a New Yorker who only got his license this year at the age of 30 (!) I can attest to this: “As many as 3 million New York City voters do not have a driver’s license. Indeed, 1990 census data showed that less than 50 percent of New York City’s voting age residents had a driver’s license compared with 91 percent of the state’s residents overall.” I suspect, but cannot say for certain, that other large cities share comparable stats. In major cities, people walk or take mass transit. Which leads to the Mission Persons’ lyrics “Nobody walks in L.A.”, but again with their new system I suspect that this is not quite as true anymore.

I’ve lived in Oxford, Boston, Provincetown and D.C. in my adult life. In all those places, cars can be more hindrance than help for a man with no kids. Just try parking.

A cheering tale of real compassion from Jacksonville, Florida.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Americans will accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic or a dope fiend, but if a man doesn’t drive, they think there must be something wrong with him” – Art Buchwald.

STEALING HELSINKI: Tom Palmer has the goods on a “human rights” group in Britain that actually backs dictators.

AFRICA AND ISLAM: Dan Drezner makes a case for why Mali matters in the war on terror.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Your argument states that the sentences for the two Marines convicted of using shock treatment allowed them to remain in uniform. While technically correct, this is disingenuous. Both Marines will serve their terms in a military prison at hard labor. Both Marines have been reduced in rank to E-1, the lowest rank in the military. They receive no pay while in prison. There is no parole from military prison. Upon their release they will be awarded Bad Conduct Discharges making them convicted felons, unable to vote, ineligible for any future government employment, and virtually unhirable in the private sector as many corporations refuse to employ former military personnel with BCDs.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.