The Dish

A reader writes:

My reaction to that Palin quote, in terms of its use to illuminate her fundamental mindset, is simply "eh."  Those words, in that context, sound to me like a throwaway line, the sort of pat response that, down here in the South especially, can be tossed out at any unforeseen life-altering event.  A promotion.  A firing.  Twins.  A car wreck. To suggest that this choice of words was specific to her believing her ascension to power and prominence was foretold by God is, at least in this case, just reading too deeply. There's lots of strong evidence of crazy out there.  Don't dilute it with the weak.

Another writes:

I have to admit that – even as a near agnostic – her comment "It's God's plan" might also have possibly have been a rare (and probably fake) moment of humility.

Religious types (as I'm sure you've encountered as a church going man) generally do believe that everything that happens is according to God's will.  It doesn't always only include what might be viewed as good fortune. She probably would say her child being born with Special Needs is also God's plan, and there are some that wouldn't see that as a blessing.  SO – as much as I share your view her that she is a whack job, for me, the "God's plan" comment doesn't necessarily reveal that she is.   

Another:

You've neglected another possible explanation, beyond the delusional or Messiah complex. Simply put, nothing short of divine intervention could pull off the miracle of her being named the Veep candidate. Someone without much experience in elected office and none in foreign policy. Someone who doesn't read much of anything newsy and might even be called studiously incurious. A person without even a high-school level grasp of history. Someone from a state that isn't exactly a prize when it comes to delivering electoral votes. Hmmmmm… I beginning to think it HAD to be God's plan.

Michael Petrelis was at the court on day one of the Prop 8 trial. His impression:

Two words come to mind as opposing attorney Charles Cooper presents his opening arguments: hesitant speaker. Coming after the wonderful preparation, smoothness and expert delivery of Olson, Cooper was a letdown. Damn hard to sense much of his self-confidence. He also gets too jittery at the lectern. His central point is that marriage must and does equal procreation. Huh? That's going to be his argument? We should easily win, if it is.

In Somalia? Yes; Somalia. There's a pirate party going on:

Down south, the Islamists who had sworn to eradicate the piracy scourge have joined up with the pirates’ southern branch. There’s more: 13 pirate syndicates have gone public, becoming shareholding companies. The town of Barawa, pillaged and raped by Mohammed Farah Aideed’s Somali National Movement in 1991, is now the wedding capital of the Benadir, and according to a recent visitor’s account, an outpost of Blackberries, Porsches, and Bling.

Hat tip: Nick Wadhams, who reproduces the NSFW image below which accompanied the article.

In its ten years of daily existence, the Dish has had to run some humiliating corrections. Like any good/bad Catholic, I treat this as some kind of penance for the joys of the whole adventure. But none has come close to what’s coming. Integral to the Dish’s well-being are the two beagles who appear in the cartoon at the top right of this blogazine. One of them is an impostor.

Eddy was adopted from the animal shelter three years ago, and was described to us as a beagle-basset mix. Her face is very beagle although her long and stubby body reveals the basset beneath. Or so we thought. And then at one of recent vet check-ups, Aaron was asked if he wanted a DNA test for her. Why the heck not? Well the results confirm that she is not Sarah Palin’s baby in any form a beagle. She is a mix of bloodhound, basset hound and … a chinook!

It took a while for us to absorb this news. And I wasn’t sure how to break it to our fellow beagle fans. Dusty remains a pure-bred beagle with an attitude to match. But Eddy is not. I have been unwittingly misleading you all these years. Apologies.

(Do I get absolution now?)

Insta responds to Friedersdorf. Conor replies:

When I critique people or sites, it isn’t because I’ve got a personal grudge against them, or because I want them to fail, or because I want to divide and conquer them, whatever that means — it is because I think they are wrong on some matter of substance. It is weird that this most straightforward motivation doesn’t seem to occur to Mr. Treacher as a possibility. As long as journalists on the right conceive of themselves inside some kind of war metaphor, where criticism is considered to be the disloyal act of a would be conquistador, they’ll exist inside a movement bubble where they never get tough criticism save from ideological opponents who really are thinking strategically, and would rather see them fail than improve.

A pro-Mousavi physics professor is assassinated after his motorcycle is rigged with explosives. Michael Rubin says the killing "highlights just how vulnerable the regime is becoming":

There could be any number of motives, but it's reasonable to suspect that Professor [Massoud] Ali-Mohammadi was killed for his involvement in the nuclear issue. Some opposition groups may claim that they have penetrated the nuclear program. This is an exaggeration. Far more likely, Iranian officials — even in sensitive organizations — are becoming so corrupt that information can be bought. The hit will also send a chill down the spine of other scientists who must now consider whether they want to work for the losing side.

Naturally, the regime is blaming the US and Israel. And that is instructive. The one card the junta has to play is the Great Satan card. And Obama is refusing to give it to them. This is essential for the revolution to succeed. And it confirms every hope I had that Obama could be a pivot in our relations with the Muslim world. Of course, the neocons could still ruin things, but Obama's steadiness in foreign policy will, in my judgment, reap its greatest rewards in due course.

In Iraq and Iran right now, there is a real potential for a breakthrough in history. If Iraq can avoid sectarian warfare in the next two years (something I remain deeply dubious about), and if Iran's regime can be forced to change its vile domestic and international behavior, we will have two Muslim semi-democracies, one largely Arab and Kurdish, one largely Persian. 

You want a game-changer in the war on Jihadist terrorism? That's a game-changer.

A few years ago, there were alarming reports of crystal meth use soaring among gay men. Readers know I'm a libertarian on the responsible use of soft drugs. But I have no tolerance for crystal meth. It's poison. I decided a while back to have a zero tolerance policy for it among my friends and acquaintances. I saw what it was doing to human beings. Not only did it destroy their minds and empty their souls, it also was HIV's best friend. On meth, the last thing anyone thinks about is protection from HIV.

And so we gays had a challenge. Could we fight this the way we fought HIV and AIDS? Some pioneers, like my friend Peter Staley, an alum of ACT-UP, deployed all the skills they had learned fighting HIV to fight meth in NYC. 

We forced the city council to appropriate funds for anti-meth campaigns designed by our own community groups.  We held packed community forums to discuss what the drug was doing to us.  And most importantly, we started talking to each other honestly about the downsides of Tina.  We helped those among us whose lives were being destroyed — getting them into treatment, begging them to stop, and caring for each other much as we did during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis.

The results of this campaign of self-help are now coming through:

In 2008, only 6% of gay men in New York City reported using meth during the previous 12 months.  That's a 57% drop from the percentage reported in 2004.

There was a similar drop in San Francisco, which ran many of the same meth prevention campaigns designed for New York City.  They reported a meth use rate of 13% in 2008, dropping from 22% in 2004.  Los Angeles still has work to do, with a much smaller drop – 13% of gay men reported using meth in 2008, vs. 16% in 2004.

This kind of success story doesn't get much media play – certainly not as much as hysterical stories about "Super-AIDS" (remember that in the NYT?) or diagnoses of dysfunction and gloom among gay men. But it's real. And it makes me proud of my community, and its capacity to drag itself out of trouble with tenacity and compassion.

Conservatives of all people should see this as a classic example of a minority group not whining but acting to help its own, to confront uneasy truths, to air its dirty linen in public on order to save lives. But they won't.

Because we're gay; and our well-being is of no interest to so many in the GOP. When was the last time you heard any conservative thinker or writer express any concern about the well-being of gay men, unless it is to tell them to stop being gay? It's as if there is one group of human beings and citizens the right simply won't treat as worth caring about.

"Terrorism by definition is only successful if it produces "terror" — the kind of hysterical over-reaction we are once again seeing — yet this fact does not seem to have resulted in very many critics toning down their hysteria or shrillness. (The Republican Party has the collective cool on these matters of Prissy helping to birth Melanie's baby in Gone With the Wind.)" – David Rothkopf.

Am I guilty as well – after my hyper-ventilating about the errors made in the system and demanding firings?

I hope not, although I can see how some could say that. I don't think subjecting the government to brutal criticism if it has allowed a terror attack to slip through when they had the info to prevent it, is helping the terrorists attain their goal. Maybe my tone was off. The smugness of Napolitano really rubbed me the wrong way.

The balance is between rigorous vigilance toward the government's indispensable role in preventing terror attacks from happening and/or succeeding – and not losing our shit every time some repressed trust-fund Islamist singes his bollocks. We have to both accept that some terror attacks will occur in a free society and that the government should nonetheless do all it legally can to prevent it. That's a tough brand of stoicism.

"What would America do w/out Fox News? I'm so thankful for the opportunity to work w/team committed to fair&balanced reporting. Please join us!" – Sarah Palin.

IranNewsNow finds a video of the dramatic scene from last week:

The site captions:

The video shows what looks like two people shooting at the vehicle, and appears to corroborate the claims made by Karoubi and his son. They had reported that the vehicle was fired upon, damaging it, but not injuring anyone inside. The vehicle is said to have been an armored one. At about 18 seconds you will notice two individuals standing to the right of the vehicle firing shots at it!