The Dish

In this 1999 article from the Atlantic’s archives, Perry Knize debunks the stereotypes:

On average, ranchers make only a two percent return on their operations, and many don’t do that well. They would be better off liquidating their assets and putting them in a passbook savings account. Instead they turn down big offers from real-estate developers, put up with "ecoterrorists," and hang on by taking temporary jobs in town when the cattle market bottoms out. Ranching, it would seem, is a profession for romantic idealists, not profiteers. Those who hew to it do so for only one reason—they love the land and their way of life.

Andrew Sprung notices a sharp increase in prose over poetry in Obama’s Virginia speech.

(Photo: Obama last night by Alex Wong/Getty.)

From a new Iraq blog written by a recently deployed solider, a post about the mail soldiers get:

… my favorite portion of the miscellaneous stack of our mail room are the letters written to soldiers by American schoolchildren …

Here’s a list of my early favorites, all advice suggested by real American children in real American letters with real American crayons. This is what the Red, White, and Blue is all about, you dig? If we fight this Long War to protect the nurturing of such beautiful understatement, I’m all for it. It’s as good a reason as any, and not contrived like the normal political justifications.

— I hope you don’t die, soldier. That would be bad.

— I feel sorry for you.

— I think war is worse than math.

— My daddy doesn’t want me to be in the soldiers, cause he says that the Irack will last forever. Maybe if he changes his mind I’ll see you in the Irack.

— My cousin was in war but he got hurt. Now he has a big beard and drinks beer all day long. My mom says he should get a job.

— Can you send me back a bad guy’s head? That would be cool.[…]

— I hate cursive. Do you have to write in cursive for war?

— Is it like the movies? Do our letters make you feel better?

If the Potomac primaries go his way, and if they do by anything like the margins of last night, the dynamic of the race changes. It becomes a matter of whether a hard-won close victory by Obama can be derailed by the Clintons’ super-delegates. It shouldn’t and I’m pretty sure it won’t. But you’ll have to hold both Clintons down and pry the nomination from their vise-like grip before that happens:

The results in Washington and Nebraska vindicated Obama’s strategy of preparing expensive efforts to organize votes after the Feb. 5 contests that many expected — wrongly — effectively to decide the race. Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, played down its own efforts in the states, though she did air television ads in both Washington and Nebraska.

Obama also won in Louisiana, buoyed by taking nearly 90 percent of the support of  black voters, according to exit polls. And he won overwhelmingly in the U.S. Virgin Islands, winning all three of the territory’s pledged delegates.

In squeezing every delegate out of the small and mid-sized states between now and March 4, and every dollar out of his supporters, Obama is hoping to build a head of steam this month that will make him unstoppable and will lure free-floating superdelegates to his camp.

He hasn’t just out-dreamed her. He has out-campaigned her.

Loved this succinct rebuke to Christianism:

I think the ultimate tribute to God, in any form, is to maximize individual freedom –- and not to obstruct that freedom for others. The thing that puzzles me about moralistic government is that if you force everyone in the country to act a certain way morally, there ceases to be free will. Then nobody is truly benevolent at all, just pawns of the state. If I’m forced to act in a Christian manner by threat of law, am I really a Christian? Seems like this is quite detrimental to the Church. And to be honest, I’m less afraid of social conservatives in this regard as I am of fiscal liberals. If the government hijacks my income to redistribute it into some form of pork designed to help the less fortunate, especially when it doesn’t go toward its intended purpose anyway, not only are they stealing from me, but they’re preventing me from being charitable. It’s destructive for all parties.

Look at the margins:

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama led Clinton, 58 percent to 36 percent, in Louisiana. Obama romped to victory earlier in the evening in Nebraska, 68 percent to 32 percent, and then overwhelmed Clinton in Washington, 68 percent to 31 percent, with 96 percent of the caucus vote counted.

What excuse does Clinton have for being beaten so overwhelmingly?

Claiborne Lee Bell’s 1976 Atlantic article argued that voters should elect not just the president, but also his or her spouse:

If for centuries royalty has been willing to sacrifice personal preferences and to marry for reasons of state, our Presidents can do no less. To let them have consorts chosen for their own pleasure is just the kind of frivolous romanticism that undermines our public ethics. The reform that is needed is obvious: The President’s spouse, as well as the President, must be elected by the people.

But not consecutively.

So John McCain wins the nomination – and to reward him, voters back Huckabee in Kansas, and CPAC endorses Romney in a straw poll. For good measure, Huckabee currently has a clear lead in Lousiana – with half the votes in. It cannot bode well for a nominee to have his own party reject him after he has won the race. I assumed the GOP would rally behind McCain in the end. I may have misjudged them.

This will be hard for the Clinton campaign to spin:

His winning margins were substantial, ranging from roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington state and Nebraska to nearly 90 percent in the Virgin Islands. With returns counted from more than one-third of the Louisiana precincts, he was gaining 53 percent of the vote, to 39 percent for the former first lady.

Actually they do have spin:

The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads. The Obama campaign has spent $300,000 more in Louisiana on television ads, $190,000 more in Nebraska and $175,000 more in Nebraska.

So why didn’t Clinton compete? As Ambers puts it:

Ordinarily, this would be a firing offense — how dare they let a state go uncontested?

Two words come to mind when assessing Clinton’s apparent strategy to wait the primaries out till bigger, more fertile states: Rudy. Giuliani.

Two pictures from precinct 702 in Port Townsend, Washington: Clinton’s supporters; Obama’s supporters. This wasn’t just a victory. It was a wipe-out. More feedback here.