The Dish

An interesting big-picture Forbes piece. Money quote:

As the company’s business faltered, McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was in a position to help Paxson win–or lose–billions.

During the six-year-long fight that followed, McCain never wavered from his opposition to the legislation Paxson pushed, which would have diverted those billions into his company’s coffers and away from the U.S. Treasury. Whether McCain did any other, smaller favors for Paxson is a question that will draw new attention as the campaign heats up. But, at least on the issue of most consequence, the two strong-willed men were implacable foes.

The right goes in for the kill. Mr Passive-Aggressive does his bit.

I was wrong:

I live in South Dakota, and I’m one of your biggest fans. I’ve been here since the beginning. I was a financial supporter of the original blog, and I bought some of the books for the old book club. I own all of your books. I subscribe to the Atlantic. I read your posts religiously, and I send you email responses, some of which you have replied to. You’ve even used my responses as the basis of a post or two.

I’m sorry. Samples of 2,000 don’t capture the full picture. And I’m really grateful for the support.

A little historical context for the silly Clinton attack on Obama.

My association of being transgendered with being straight was a little garbled. It can get confusing but this is what the APA says:

What is the relationship between transgender and sexual orientation?

The great majority of cross-dressers are biological males, most of whom are sexually attracted to women. People generally experience gender identity and sexual orientation as two different things. Sexual orientation refers to one’s sexual attraction to men, women, both,or neither, whereas gender identity refers to one’s sense of oneself as male, female, or transgender. Usually people who are attracted to women prior to transition continue to be attracted to women after transition, and people who are attracted to men prior to transition continue to be attracted to men after transition. That means, for example, that a biologic male who is attracted to females will be attracted to females after transitioning, and she may regard herself as a lesbian.

No questions in two years?

An Hispanic supporter in Texas says:

"Obama’s problem is that he happens to be black."

On live TV, Clinton didn’t disown the remark. More explicitly, she refused to "reject or denounce" it:

“People have every reason to express their opinions. I just don’t agree with that. I think that we should be looking at the individuals who are running.”

Chris Wilson toys with the idea of web democracy:

While both [Digg and Wikipedia] effectively function as oligarchies, they are still democratic in one important sense. Digg and Wikipedia’s elite users aren’t chosen by a corporate board of directors or by divine right. They’re the people who participate the most. Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web 2.0, direct democracy isn’t feasible at the scale on which these sites operate. Still, it’s curious to note that these sites seem to have the hierarchical structure of the old-guard institutions they’ve sought to supplant.

Yes. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Pure democracy is a horrible thing.

The Times makes a good point:

What is not warranted is a rush to judgment that these drugs are no good: policymakers and doctors should have sharply in mind that the people most likely to say that pills are pointless are the people who most need them.

Background here.