The Dish

The best coverage is by Rocco – by a mile. Just scroll. I was relieved at this:

"I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, [which] is another thing."

Ryan Anderson reviews Tracey Rowland’s new book, Ratzinger’s Faith, which attempts to map the Pope’s theology.

(Hat tip: Frank Wilson).

Richard Haass describes the end American unipolarity:

Nonpolarity complicates diplomacy. A nonpolar world not only involves more actors but also lacks the more predictable fixed structures and relationships that tend to define worlds of unipolarity, bipolarity, or multipolarity. Alliances, in particular, will lose much of their importance, if only because alliances require predictable threats, outlooks, and obligations, all of which are likely to be in short supply in a nonpolar world. Relationships will instead become more selective and situational. It will become harder to classify other countries as either allies or adversaries; they will cooperate on some issues and resist on others. There will be a premium on consultation and coalition building and on a diplomacy that encourages cooperation when possible and shields such cooperation from the fallout of inevitable disagreements. The United States will no longer have the luxury of a "You’re either with us or against us" foreign policy.

Mill Valley, California, 9 am.

An amusingly bitchy and sometimes extremely close-to-the bone guide from the Village Voice to the right-wing blogosphere. Heh. Indeed. (Why, though, is Obama-leaning Megan in the mix?) This take on Ace Of Spades sums up the mood in many quarters:

MODUS OPERANDI: Not much changes with Ace. Believes the Wright scandal "belies Obama’s appeal to those of us who wish black folks well but honestly would prefer to be left the fuck alone to live our lives in peace"; disdains Clinton ("Seven Year Bitch"); agnostic on McCain ("he would rather lose a war than a political argument"). Has threatened to sit out the election unless McCain goes anti-immigration.

WHAT TO EXPECT: In the eleventh hour, will remember that McCain is running against a woman or a black guy. Then, porn and car-crash videos all around!

A reader writes:

You’re completely wrong about Bittergate, and whether or not it will be electorally disastrous.

"The second we will find out soon enough when Pennsylvania votes."

It won’t kill him in PA, but it will hurt him a lot over the long run. The problem is that this is going to be used to define Obama.  He’s an elitist who has contempt for rural America, aka the real America.  If you have a minivan, and take your kids to softball games, he thinks he’s better than you.  That he knows better what’s good for you than you do.

This first episode doesn’t tip the scales.  But he’ll say something else, and they’ll try to plug it into that narrative.  They’ll just make stuff up — it will circulate in emails, and no one of stature will endorse the lies.  But they’ll be out there.  And they’ll be talked about on talk radio.

People will phone in and say, do you believe that Obama did x, y, or z?  And the host will say, I’ve heard those stories, and they need to be looked into, and you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned out to be true.  But right now, we just don’t know.  So the host seems reasonable and cautious, while the show spews out the lie.

Back when I was a Hillary supporter, a big part of the logic behind my position was that the Clintons understood the big lie.  They knew how to run against it.  It turns out that they understand it as well as anyone, as we’re finding out now.

This is the beginning of the big lie for Obama.  And he has to have a viable strategy to beat it.  I see him doing exactly what Kerry did — he’s above it, and he’s refuting it by saying, this is nonsense, that’s not who I am.  It ain’t gonna work.

Guys like you have to take the danger of the big lie seriously.  The fact that it is the big lie has to be pushed out into the debate, and talked about, and it has to become part of the conventional wisdom. We have to talk about it as the big lie, and openly discuss the best way to respond.

Because really, the best response to the big lie is to talk about it. Not to get bogged down in whether or not Obama is an elitist — that’s playing on the liar’s home court.  But rather to talk about the strategy of the big lie, and to show how it’s being used, and to try to get people — or at least pundits — to become more skeptical of this stuff.

I don’t need to tell you how big the stakes here are.

Something is always out to kill you.

Jacob Sullum ponders which candidates will actually relinquish executive power. Guess which candidate is the least likely.

Well, it didn’t help Kerry enough. But if you wanted someone with appeal to the Clinton male demographic, could you do much better? Money quote:

Like most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "… nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

I love that formulation. Very Lasch.

The audacity of cynicism: