The Dish

Dont’ tell Blank Slaters, but there’s a correlation.

He’s uninvited from their debate – because of his opposition to foreign aid for Israel. But he’s against almost all foreign aid, guys! Including for the Saudis. Still: it’s interesting that almost all the GOP candidates found time to debate with this tiny minority. But not blacks or Hispanics or gays. Hmmm.

I slammed the leather/dildo version of Leonardo here. Dan Savage throws me a punch. Rod Dreher has a cow.

The final tally:

Most conservatives think not, Ross included. For these reasons:

The anti-Hillary share of the primary vote is shaping up to be right around forty percent, which in a divided field simply isn’t anywhere near enough to derail a candidate with Hillary’s institutional advantages and deep reserves of support.

Deep? How about "shallow"? Those most interested in the Dem race, as shown in donations and volunteers, are evenly split, with Obama retaining an edge. My suspicion is that a lot of Hillary support in the polls is mainly core Democrats, many of whom are picking her as a place-holder. Many have not examined Obama closely; and haven’t focused yet. Tom Bevan reminds us of the fact that in 2004, the entire race shifted in the last two weeks before Iowa. It easily can again. Matt is biding his time. Noam reaches into his lower colon for this analysis:

If you pressed me, I’d say she has something like a 55-60 percent chance of winning, to Obama’s 20-25 percent and Edwards’s 15-20. A 40-45 percent chance of someone other than Hillary is, by definition, hardly a lock.

And what about the Biden "surge"? About as effective in the long run as Petraeus’, I’d suggest. My own rash prediction (which I reserve the right to withdraw at any moment) is that 2008 will be for the Republicans what 2004 was for the Democrats. At the last minute, as the primary voting approaches, Republicans may rush back to McCain, after realizing their front-runner, Rudy, is just plain nuts.

One of the arguments for pork-barrel politics is that local pols know what their districts need. And infrastructure does matter, as we’ve found out after the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge. Do the big porkers succeed in fixing their own districts better than other congressmen or senators? This graphic can help you cross-tab the amount of a pork in a district with the number of functionally obsolete bridges. There seems to be a negative correlation:

The five states with the highest pork to functionally obsolete bridges ratio are:

    * Hawaii: $2,283,244.19 per bridge
    * Nevada: $2,767,920.10 per bridge
    * West Virginia: $3,219,261.98 per bridge
    * North Dakota: $4,575,615.67 per bridge
    * Alaska: $9,184,510.00 per bridge.

Isn’t Ted Stevens the best?

Environmentalism is increasingly a moral issue, one of basic civilizational responsibility:

We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea.

I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

Three times as many black men will spend tonight in a prison cell as in a college dorm room. That number is almost as bad for Hispanics. A quarter of a century ago, the ratio was even.

Party time in NYC today:

Lindsay Schaeffer, 25, may even skip the rally for the nighttime bash.

"Look, you never meet good guys in a bar," she reasons. "Something like this naturally weeds out the losers for you. You aren’t going to get some pickup artist at a political after-party."

One ardent Obama supporter (who declined to give his name because he works in politics) says he’ll attend both the rally and the after-party, and he doesn’t expect to be going home alone.

He’s confident for a reason.

"Let’s face it: Leftie girls are easy," he says.

"Next week the Democrats are going to vote whether to give Republicans all their lunch money or just some of it," – Bill Maher.