The Dish

A great interview with Hitch by Johann Hari. Norman Geras comments.

DISSING BLOGS: Why does the NYT ignore blog scoops of major stories while always crediting other mainstream newspapers? Steve Clemons wants to know.

A VERTICAL LINE: Kerry’s headed up in the poll of polls. And the Iowa markets seem to have had a change of heart as well. I’ve no doubt that the dynamic of this race just changed dramatically – and that it will change again.

NOW, SPAIN: It’s no longer big news that another country is adopting equal rights for gay couples. Almost every civilized country has done so or is about to do so, apart from the U.S. But Spain’s adoption of marriage itself strikes me as a big deal. Spain is an historically Catholic country, however secular it has become. For gay equality to have arrived in the land of Franco is a sign of how profound the social revolution has become. And how irreversible.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Another week of travel and talk. Tonight, I’m giving a talk on the current election at Lawrenceville School, New Jersey, at 7.30 pm in the Kirby Arts Center. Tuesday, I’ll be making the case for equal marriage rights at Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, in the Olin auditorium, at 7.30 pm. Wednesday, I’ll be giving a talk on the spiritual dimensions of friendship at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan. The talk will be at 7 pm in the McNally auditorium. Thursday lunchtime, at 1.15 pm, I’ll be speaking abou the election at the Looms Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. Friday, I’ll be checking into a spa. Just kidding about that last bit.

Here’s what Tom Brokaw had to say about the web fact-checking Dan Rather’s bottom: “What I think is highly inappropriate is what going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad … that is quite outrageous.” You know what I hear in that moronic statement? Cold, white-knuckled fear.

Here’s the Newsweek poll. The debate result? Over to Hugh Hewi –, sorry, Newsweek:

Among the three-quarters (74 percent) of registered voters who say they watched at least some of Thursday’s debate, 61 percent see Kerry as the clear winner, 19 percent pick Bush as the victor and 16 percent call it a draw. After weeks of being portrayed as a verbose “flip-flopper” by Republicans, Kerry did better than a majority (56 percent) had expected. Only about 11 percent would say the same for the president’s performance while more than one-third (38 percent) said the incumbent actually did worse that they had expected. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans felt their man out-debated the challenger but a full third (33 percent) say they felt Kerry won.

And this has changed judgments of the candidates at a deeper level. If I were Karl Rove, I’d be panicking a little:

In fact, Kerry’s numbers have improved across the board, while Bush’s vulnerabilities have become more pronounced. The senator is seen as more intelligent and well-informed (80 percent, up six points over last month, compared to Bush’s steady 59 percent); as having strong leadership skills (56 percent, also up 6 points, but still less than Bush’s 62 percent) and as someone who can be trusted to make the right calls in an international crisis (51 percent, up five points and tied with Bush). Meanwhile, Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to below the halfway mark (46 percent) for the first time since the GOP convention in late August.

My own view is that Bush’s critical problem is the last year in Iraq – and his arrogant, Pollyannish response to it. What happened Thursday was that for the first time, the public saw the president confronted with these issues directly and saw that he had no real answer. Worse, they saw him visibly angry at being called to account at all. Out of it and pissy. Not a great combination.

And it helps with the gay vote as well.

The new slogan for Fox News’ Carl Cameron. Well, at least they apologized. But doesn’t this incident prove that Cameron is, er, biased?

If you get a chance to see the new documentary, “Tying the Knot,” you won’t be disappointed. It shows how the denial of marriage rights to gay couples, especially in the heartland, is so inhumane. And it presents the marriage rights debate in a clear and movng fashion. I saw it earlier this year (full disclosure: I’m in it) and left it choked up about the cruelty that still gets inflicted on people merely because they’re gay and trying to form a stable relationship. It’s gotten solid reviews. Go see it.

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: “No matter how you feel about Bush, watching him speak is difficult. It’s like watching a drunk man cross an icy street,” – Tucker Carlson, last night on Real Time with Bill Maher.

“Who cares? No one reads Andrew Sullivan’s blog.” – Sean Hannity, last night on Fox News, responding to Willie Brown’s citation of this blog’s criticism of Bush’s debate performance. Sorry, Sean, but last month, we were a tiny bit shy of two million separate visits, a record. The day Hannity lashed out, we got 120,000 separate visits – a record in the more than four years this blog has been in existence.

David Brooks, as usual, has a fair column today. If you read between the lines, you’ll discover what is, in fact, the private consensus of many conservatives who are publicly supporting Bush: that the president’s heart is in the right place but he has a tenuous grasp of the instruments of government and how to wield them. But what strikes me in Brooks’ defense of Bush is how it’s traditionally a liberal defense of a liberal president. It’s liberalism that has historically enunciated grand, abstract themes and conservatism that has always emphasized the difficulty of translating abstraction into reality, of finding the proper means to achieve certain ends, of the limits of our intellect when faced with the world of practical life. In that philosophical sense, it is Kerry who is the practical conservative in this race; and Bush who is the airy-fairy idealist. If Bush didn’t have the abstract theological support of evangelical Christians, he wouldn’t have a, well, prayer.

“In Iraq, no doubt about it, it’s tough. It’s hard work. It’s incredibly hard. It’s – and it’s hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it’s necessary work. We’re making progress. It is hard work. You know my hardest, the hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harm’s way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for the loves ones who lost a son or a daughter or husband and wife.” – president George W. Bush. Reassured that he’s on top of things in Iraq? Me neither.

Here’s what president Bush said last night about training new Iraqi troops:

“The best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job. We’ve got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year.”

Most people would agree that this is a critical factor in winning the war in Iraq, perhaps the critical factor. Spencer Ackerman points out the following:

According to internal Pentagon documents recently obtained by Reuters, only 22,700 Iraqi forces have received enough training to be considered even “minimally effective.” Barely 8,000 of the 90,000-strong police force have completed a full eight weeks of training–after a year and a half of occupation. While Lieutenant General David Petraeus wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Sunday that the Iraqi civil-intervention force is “now conducting operations,” the leaked Pentagon documents show that training hasn’t even begun for its 4,800 members. And perhaps most significantly, while Bush promised 200,000 Iraqis would be trained by the end of the next year, the documents state that it will take until July 2006 to train 135,000 Iraqi police officers.

Again, the problem isn’t the will or the resolve. It’s that our commander-in-chief doesn’t seem to have a clue about what’s actually happening on the ground. And that he’s not telling the truth – knowingly or unknowingly – to the American people.