The Dish

I was a little surprised to hear the president dress down a reporter for apparently not addressing him as Mr President. Drudge ran with it; so did many other sources. It’s to Josh Marshall’s credit that he points out that this incident may actually have been due to the fact that the reporter asking the question had a cell-phone up to his ear. In that context, “Who are you talking to?” is not so crazy a question. In fact, if this was the case, it seems to me that it was the reporrter who was being ill-mannered, not the president.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “We have both made the choice of Europe and the European Union as a principal vehicle for our economic and political aspirations. For both of us this does not, nor should not, in any way weaken our strong ties of friendship with the United States. These are complementary relationships.” – Queen Elizabeth II, in Paris, spreading a little cordiale on the entente.

This, one recalls, is the battle John Ashcroft was really hoping to wage. Terrorists are one thing, but porn-consumers – now there’s a real threat. With the Justice Department having nothing better to do, like catch Jihadists, it’s very important that they keep a fierce and unrelenting eye on adults enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes. Hey, they can’t even arrest homos any more. You’ve got to give the feds something important to do. Now, excuse me while I surf the, er, web.

DODD-GATE: It’s now reached Fox News. Fred Barnes, who always liked Trent Lott, thinks it proves the Republicans were too hard on nostalgics for segregation. C’mon, Fred. You’re so much classier than that.

KEEPING TABS: Two sites worth checking out: No-Pasaran keeps its bloggy eye on the European amd especially the French media. Fact-Check is also an excellent non-partisan resource for dissecting and deconstructing the lies, er, I mean, messages of the Bush and Kerry campaigns. So far, I’ve found most of the official ads appallingly crude and misleading. The Bush ad citing Kerry as wanting to raise taxes 350 times was almost self-parody. But it worked. Sigh.

THE BEEB AGAIN: More sarcastic grilling of soldiers with their lives on the line.

Here’s a quote from a Sadr relative that speaks volumes: “We may be unable to drive the Americans out of Iraq. But we can drive George W. Bush out of the White House.” The violence in Iraq is designed to exert pressure indirectly by leveraging opposition to the war in the U.S. and Britain. The sadr-masochists know they cannot overwhelm the coalition militarily, so they need to destroy its morale at home, as well as create constant instability in Iraq. One obvious point: this uprising isn’t over and it’s having its effect.

That’s the Pew poll’s latest finding on Bush’s approval rating. And that’s with the public behind him on Iraq.

David Beckham reels under a tabloid assault in London. An icon is toppled, or at least wobbled a little. And how have the mighty fallen:

The just-gay-enough metrosexual hipster, the uxorious one, the guy who tattooed his baby son’s name on to his back in Gothic script… suddenly he looked like every nylon-shirted commercial traveller sleeping with a drunk stranger in a motorway services hotel on a three-day break from his wife.

Ouch.

That’s one theory of the terrorist plot foiled last week in Britain.

A home-run early in the season.

He didn’t see the threat of al Qaeda either. It says something about how distorted our debate has become that this is even news.

The battle for Sadr City appears to be over. If this report is to be believed, it was relatively easy. No one should mistake Sadr’s mobs of looters with a real army. But they sure have a lot of weapons. Blogger Zeyad also reports a new calm:

Sorry for the depressing note. It seems like everything is back under control, at least from what I can see in my neighbourhood. There is an eerie silence outside, only dogs barking. Until about an hour ago, it sounded like a battlefield, and we had flashbacks of last April. I don’t know what happened, but there were large plumes of smoke from the direction of Adhamiya and Kadhimiya. I wanted to take some pictures but my father and uncle both said they would shoot me on the spot if I tried, they were afraid the Apaches would mistake us for troublemakers and fire at us. I’m dreading tomorrow.

Of course, Sadr doesn’t represent all Shiites. Far from it. But the more mainstream Shiites are still obviously leery of siding openly with the CPA against him. We should expect – and actually demand – a very effective display of military power and authority from the coalition in response to this provocation. Arresting Sadr is a start – and certainly worth doing now rather than in four months’ time. The optimist in me hopes that this confrontation – threatening for months – can be resolved effectively before June 30. The pessimist in me worries about the propaganda value in this kind of unrest in deterring investment, polarizing ethnicities and sects, and making democracy even harder. If you want to see how the anti-war crowd will spin this, check out the headline in the Guardian today: “On the Brink of Anarchy.” They wish. I find no fault in the president’s strong response. But he must understand that the battle he is now fighting in Iraq is not a diversion from this election. It is what this election is and should be all about. No, this is not a quagmire. It’s the brightest opportunity for real change in the world since the end of the Cold War. We have to seize it.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great Senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. ROBERT C. BYRD, in my view, would have been right at any time. He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this Nation. He would have been right at the great moments of international threat we faced in the 20th century. I cannot think of a single moment in this Nation’s 220-plus year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country. Certainly today that is not any less true.” Senator Chris Dodd, hailing former Klan member and active anti-gay bigot, Robert Byrd, on the floor of the Senate. Byrd would have been perfect during the Civil War? Wrong side, Senator Dodd. Wrong side. How much do you bet that Dodd’s remarks will get one smidgen of the media attention Trent Lott’s hailing of Strom Thurmond did?

In all the poems of praise for the late and brilliant actor, writer and raconteur, his record of supporting any anti-Western dictator and his vast blind spot with regard to the Soviet Union have been ignored. No longer.

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR: “The fit of ejaculatio praecox to which the commentariat abandoned itself when payroll job growth hit 308,000 last week was perhaps understandable, in view of the terrible frustrations it had suffered for so many, many months before.” – James K. Galbraith, Salon.

THE FUTURE: An openly gay soldier marries his male fiance in Canada. I think I just ruined John Derbyshire’s day.

KERRY WIMPS OUT: On education reform. Why doesn’t the president go on the offensive on “No Child Left Behind”? It makes a lot of sense to me. And Kerry’s cravenness toward the teachers’ unions is too soft a target for the Bush team to ignore. Or is it? (Hat tip: Tagorda.)

BLOGGING FOR PEACE: It’s working in Northern Ireland.