The Dish

"The only two candidates that speak clearly, you see, are the ones they call the kooks. On the Democratic side they ask Mike Gravel a question and he goes, "Do you think Ameri– English should be the official language?" He said, "Yes." And the rest of them say, "No, not the official language, the national language." I said, "Well, what the devil is the national lang"– I mean, why don’t you just say "no"? And on the Republican side you have Ron Paul, who was the only candidate who is antiwar and pro-civil liberties. That is he opposes what this administration is doing in terms of civil liberties. And they call him a kook. That’s the closest thing you can get [to Barry Goldwater]. So you can imagine Senator Goldwater, if he were– he’d probably throw up his hands at the whole process and not run," – Victor Gold, former speech-writer to Goldwater.

The numbers are not a total surprise, but they’re astonishing nonetheless. Ambers:

There is no other way to put it: not only did Sen. Barack Obama set a record for single quarter donations by a Democratic candidate, but his fundraising total — $31M from 154,000 new donors — imposes an obligation on all of us who cover the race: we need to figure out why the "national" frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, isn’t generating as much excitement as her chief competitor.

A whole tranche of the political press has been verging on pronouncing the active phase of Obama’s campaign dead — and re-asserting Sen. Clinton’s "inevitable" claim on the nomination. But the evidence belies those assertions.

A quarter of a million Democratic donors are hungry for something different, and they’ve invested direclty in Barack Obama. Yes — Obama’s supporters tend to be a bit more upscale that Clinton’s base — but the breadth of his support can’t really be explained away by an appeal to political demography.

The Democrats want to win, and most know that with Clinton, they start with massive negatives in a general campaign. Marc fisks campaign manager David Plouffe’s memo here.  My take-home stat:

258,000 Americans have never contributed to a campaign this early.

He remains behind in the polling. But it’s very early, and his name recognition is still not in Clinton’s ballpark. Plouffe argues:

Some of our opponents have tried to deflect attention from the obvious power and momentum of the movement we’re building by pointing to national polls, that are all but meaningless. Indeed, at this juncture four years ago, Joe Lieberman had a solid lead in national polls. In the fall of 2003, the leaders were Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. You’ll recall, none of these men were the nominee.

I think the Obama-Clinton contest is probably the real contest for the presidency. It will go down to the wire, but Obama’s achievement as a freshman senator so far suggests to me that there is a real phenomenon here. And it could change America.

(Photo: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty.)

Romney tries to overcome the Mormon issue in Iowa. Not easy with Rove’s base.

Here’s a story to counter some of the gloom around: a former asylum seeker from Nigeria becomes Ireland’s first black mayor.

The Swedish Chef’s Danny Boy was a big hit with the emailers. So here’s another all-time fave: mahnamana. I have fond memories of being in a physics class aged 13 or so in my all-boys English high school. Every time the teacher said the word "manometer," we burst into the chorus. It nearly drove him nuts after a while. But I digress:

An unusual alliance – especially when it’s in defense of online free speech. Just in case you think the cause of liberty is doomed worldwide, here are some real heroes:

Arab and Chinese youth activists will be joining forces in a new Internet campaign calling for the release of imprisoned Chinese bloggers and demanding greater freedom of expression in China.

The campaign “New Youth 4” received its name after the case of the four young Chinese activists Jin Haike, Xu Wei, Yang Zili and Zhang Honghai, who in 2003 were charged with “subverting state power and the overthrowing of the socialist system” and sentenced to prison for setting up the Internet discussion group the “New Youth Society;” a forum allegedly advocating social and democratic reform…

Esra’a Ahmed, director of the Free Kareem Coalition told The Daily Star Egypt that the right to free speech is an “incredibly important cause to fight for,” leading her team to help set up the New Youth 4 only days after receiving the request.

Furthermore, Ahmed emphasized the importance of networking between activist communities in different parts of the world.

"Networking is extremely powerful. Today these Chinese activists need our help, tomorrow we might need theirs. We help each other and that will strengthen our campaigns and hopefully help us achieve our goals," she said.

The site is here.

Some fascinating research I’m just catching up on: a new technique to reprogram skin cells as the equivalent of embryonic stem cells. Money quote from Nature:

"Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I’ve never worked with either," says Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who has pioneered the new technique.

Last year, Yamanaka introduced a system that uses mouse fibroblasts, a common cell type that can easily be harvested from skin, instead of eggs. Four genes, which code for four specific proteins known as transcription factors, are transferred into the cells using retroviruses. The proteins trigger the expression of other genes that lead the cells to become pluripotent, meaning that they could potentially become any of the body’s cells. Yamanaka calls them induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). "It’s easy. There’s no trick, no magic," says Yamanaka.

This could be a very big deal, not just ethically, but scientifically.
 

It’s been the quiet story of the last ten years – a large increase in the number of self-identifying gay households:

The increase was most pronounced in the Midwest, with Wisconsin showing an 81% jump in the number of same-sex couples and Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Indiana also among the ten fastest-growing states in this respect. What this means, perhaps, is that gay America is becoming more like Middle America. "Much of the stereotype around gays is a stereotype of urban white gay men," says Mr Gates. "The gay community is becoming less like that, and more like the population in general." Gay couples are still more likely than straight ones to live in cities, but the gap is smaller than popularly believed, and closing. In 1990, 92% of gay couples but only 77% of American households were in what the Census Bureau calls "urban clusters". By 2000, the gay figure had fallen to 84% while the proportion for households in general had risen to 80%, a striking convergence.

Gay America moves closer and closer to Middle America all the time.