The Dish

This heartwarming tale seems like a good way to end a long spasm of dog blogging. And to cheer ourselves up.

Johann Hari gives a useful history lesson.

Conor Friedersdorf is "emailing a questionnaire to various Republican Party County Chairmen" and posting the responses as they come in. You can read the questions he posed here. And the responses here. We tried to pick out an interesting response but the voices sound so much the same it's hard to find an answer worth highlighting.

A reader writes:

I think you fail to understand the true reasons for the wall-to-wall outrage in Israel (except truly lunatic fringes) regarding this report. It is not that Israelis are not accustomed to criticism. It is that in this particular case, something else is going on.

1. There is a widespread feeling of a deliberate insult, felt by someone who is lied straight into one's face. You see, unlike many overseas observers, the Israelis have the benefit of an intimate familiarity with the situation, as almost everyone's relatives or friends actually fought in Gaza; and the Israelis know very well that in this particular war (not necessarily in other cases), the IDF's policy was to comply with the rules of warfare according to the strictest possible criteria, and that this policy was rigorously enforced. One cannot of course exclude the possibility of isolated accidents, but there was an enormous measure of care and no sign of violations on any significant scale.

Moreover, the Israelis assume that even a neutral observer without this inside knowledge would easily come to the conclusion that serious war crimes in this case were highly improbable.

Even the highest estimates give the number of the Palestinians killed as 1,400 and admit that at least a few hundred of them belonged to Hamas. Now, taking into account the conditions of warfare, the amount of the fire-power involved, and the duration of this conflict, it is inconceivable that such would be the overall amount of victims, and such would be the ratio of the killed civilians vis-a-vis militants, unless the army took extreme precautions - far beyond of what is required by international law – to avoid civil casualties. This does not mean of course that this number is low, as the loss of every human life is a tragedy. It is merely an objective proof of the absence of systematic violations.

Now, since Goldstone is not stupid, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he knows too well what he is doing, and this is why Israelis feel outraged. They just feel that this man wants to harm and humiliate them and is even prepared to lie.

2. Furthermore, the Israelis don't think that the Hamas rockets by themselves constitute an existential threat, as you seem to imply. What does constitute such a threat is the Goldstone report itself. Because, by accusing Israel of committing war crimes even when it fights with so many precautions, this report basically says that Israel is not allowed to fight at all. There is nothing Israel can do to satisfy its critics. Therefore, this report aims at delegitimising the very right of Israel to defend itself, and thus to delegitimise its sovereignty. And this is indeed an existential threat.

Steve Benen backs the administration versus the drama queens like me:

I just haven't seen the evidence that the White House considers the netroots and progressive activists in general as some kind of annoying sideshow to be ignored. On the contrary, I've seen the opposite. It's why my outrage about a blind paraphrase of an anonymous "advisor" of unknown significance is tempered.

Well, here's a suggestion. Let the anonymous leaker come out of his or her closet and tell us what he or she really meant. That should clear things up. Obviously the "advisor" is off-message … so let the advisor recant.

John Cole unpacks the real message from the Human Rights Campaign. Yes, I know. But I am so tired of the pro-gay forces pulling this stuff. As I have said, if and when the Democratic Congress and president Obama actually do something to advance equality – not pity-us hate crime laws, but equality – I will be the first to stand up and applaud. I really want to. So give me something to applaud apart from another speech.

Bugolobi, Uganda, 5.26 pm

A guide to nation-wide coverage of yesterday's march, courtesy of the Newseum (hat tip: Petrelis).

Nicholas Tabarrok notices that entertainment industry Los Angelenos abuse the word:

We all know that different part of the country use different words ('soda' vs 'pop') and many industries have their own specific vocabulary.  I'm not sure which one of those two possibilities is at work here.  I'm curious if entertainment workers in New York use the work 'friend' in the same way it's done in LA or if people in LA who are not in the entertainment business (I hear there are a few of such people) use the term as I describe above?  Is it geographic or industry specific?

The Dish wasn't planning to run any more of these, but this one is simply too good. A reader writes:

Junior year of High School, we received an assignment for Spanish class in which we had to write about the Person of the Year.  Our teacher, no doubt inspired by Time Magazine, gave us free reign to write about whomever we wanted, no restrictions, no geographical boundaries. It was 1998. Everyone was talking up Bill Clinton as the logical choice for the cover story for beating impeachment, but I thought that Hillary deserved the accolade for her perseverance during such tumultuous personal and political times.

So throughout the assignment, I waxed eloquently why Hillary should be given the mantle of Person of the Year, or in Spanish, "Persona del Año." One problem: throughout the entire piece when I typed this phrase, I forgot the tilda over the n in "Año." While I received an A- for the paper, it had one interesting comment circled in red at the top. "Well done, but since you forgot the tilda in "Año," your paper was not about why Hillary Clinton was "Person of the Year" but rather why she was "Anus of the Year." Please remember, tildas matter."

A reader notes:

Actually, the teacher was wrong. Persona del Ano wouldn't mean "Anus of the Year." It would mean "Person of the Anus." "Ano del Año" would be "Anus of the Year."

Far too much time on my hands.