The Dish

Jim Henson meets M.O.P. meets the brilliant editing skillz of najellih:

(Hat tip: BF)

Mark Blumenthal sees a comfortable Hoffman win:

One overlooked data point – Scozzafava's favorable rating among the 18% undecided is 28% fav-22% unfavorable, 50% no opinion.  Hard to see a decisive swing from undecided to Owens based on her endorsement.

Weigel is in NY-23:

I spent some time with volunteers for both campaigns yesterday and observed that — to put it simply — Owens is counting on a fairly standard Democratic ground game of unions and party operatives, while Hoffman, having been denied Republican organizing tools until now, is counting on conservative activists. The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, for example, has eight organizers working full-time in the district. Today, they’re canvassing with members of Generation Joshua, a religious youth group, and handing out literature that lists Hoffman’s endorsements from former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former Sen. Fred Thompson, and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. They’ve prepared 90,000 sample ballots for Hoffman to be handed out by 200-odd volunteers at key precincts.

Jacob Weisberg heralds the death of prohibitions:

Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.

Gene Weingarten recalls:

Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast madly off in all directions, fighting for command. Nor were they the exuberant archaeological expeditions of his middle years, when every other tree or hydrant or blade of grass held tantalizing secrets about his neighbors. In his old age, Harry had transformed his walk into a simple process of elimination—a dutiful, utilitarian, head-down trudge. When finished, he would shuffle home to his ratty old bed, which graced our living room because Harry could no longer ascend the stairs. 

On these walks, Harry seemed oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the arduous responsibility of placing foot before foot before foot before foot. But this time, on the edge of a small urban park, he stopped to watch something. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too. Harry sat. For 10 minutes, he watched the fling and catch, fling and catch, his face contented, his eyes alight, his tail a-twitch. Our walk home was almost … jaunty.

The rest here. My own tale of Dusty on her rock at the beach is here.

Michael Wolff tries to understand this bizarre but riveting soap-opera:

It is another element of the Palin risk-taking temperament and anarchicness—she might rightly be described as the nation’s first major anarcho-conservative politician—that she built this domestic-political fantasy around somebody her family undoubtedly had reason to believe was uncontrollable.

Or perhaps they didn’t. Maybe they saw him just for what he obviously was, some stupid, minor, local doofus, and missed the more salient point that he was a stupid, minor, local doofus who got the joke about himself.

Of course, it may not even be Levi who got the joke. He’s surrounded now by retinues of handlers and publicity strategists who are marketing the irony that is Levi—although, to be fair, such retinues are usually not known for their sense of humor, and this Levi rollout is riotous.

A pressing American political question is about how far Sarah Palin might ultimately go. As relevant is how big Levi Johnston might get.

I don’t think at this point it’s quite possible to say who, in terms of American archetypes and media success, will come out ahead.

My money is on Levi, if he truly has the goods on Palin. If not, my money is on Levi.

Brookline, Massachusetts, 2.07 pm

Josh Marshall hits the nail on the head:

Every non-hard-right congressional Republican will have this episode in mind going forward the next year — it will shape votes, positions on key issues. And what happened in this race will be the backdrop for every primary contest between a mainline and hard-right Republican this cycle — think particularly of the Crist/Rubio contest in Florida, which hard-right Republicans are already pointing to as the logical place to repeat the Scozzafava/Hoffman pattern.

This is the electoral equivalent of those brief moments earlier this year when prominent Republicans issued tepid criticisms of Rush Limbaugh only to be forced into craven apologies hours or days later. The hard-right of the GOP just got a much stronger lock on the institutional Republican party than it had before. And, let's face it: the lock was pretty strong to start with.

Gideon Levy pulls no punches:

Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world. The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year – Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no.

One question that should always be asked of an ally: what is that ally doing for the US? Since the end of the Cold War, that question has been increasingly hard to answer with respect to Israel.

Strategically, Israel is obviously a huge burden for the US, making relations with Muslim or Arab nations much harder, and undermining any attempt to portray American intervention in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, as beneficent rather than predatory. It's a big drain on the Treasury, as Israel consumes a vast amount of military and non-military aid.

It's a big blow to any attempt by the US to restrain nuclear weaponry, since Israel has 150 nuclear weapons and threatens regional and global war if its monopoly is in any way challenged. And it means that American money is directly connected to the mass killings of civilians in Gaza last January. Despite all this, an American president's primary concern is maintaining the support of Israel! And secretary of state Clinton can actually applaud Netanyahu for telling her own president to go pull a Cheney.

Moreover, any attempt to chart a foreign policy for the region that is not subject to Jerusalem's veto is subjected to the kind of hysterical smear-mongering that the neocons have applied to AIPAC J-Street and even the NIAC head, Trita Parsi. Greenwald applauds:

I have almost nothing but good things to say about J Street — they are fighting a difficult and largely noble battle — but the fact that not even this group, devoted to orthodoxy-busting, is willing to get anywhere near what Gideon Levy advocates illustrates how constricted American debates over Israel continue to be compared to Israel's.

A reader writes:

Here is my own anecdotal contribution, as someone who grew up in NY 23, was once a part of the Republican establishment there.  I have both moved out of the area and am no longer a Republican, but I still have many contacts with party voters there.  What I’m hearing from friends & former neighbors the last 24 hours doesn’t sound good for Hoffman.

The North Country is a seriously economically depressed area, and some kind of healthcare reform would disproportionately benefit the local residents up there.  Like most places, it is fairly popular among the regular voters.  Over the weekend, registered voters of both parties have been INUNDATED with phone calls, mostly from Hoffman’s side, railing against the evils of the Pelosi machine and Nationalized Healthcare.  We’re talking 20+ calls/day.  I think there are more people calling registered voters in NY 23 than there ARE voters in NY 23 – it really is a very sparsely populated region. 

Combine the out-of-touch culture war rhetoric that GOP voters there are getting bombarded with, and the snide “parochial” comments from national figures about their local issues, plus Scozzafava’s endorsement of her Democratic opponent, and anything could happen. Scozzafava is now actively campaigning with Owens in the 23rd.  They had an appearance together yesterday in Canton, NY. It’s truly bizarre for me to imagine all this national bile and culture war crap being heaped on such a tiny little parochial district – you can usually number the people who turn out to vote there for these kind elections in the very low 4 figures.

I don’t know, but the Dish tries to offer as many viewpoints as possible.