"Nothing bores me more than to be in New York and have a dinner in a big fancy restaurant, where you have to sit for three fucking hours."

"You know and people will have drinks before, wine after, then three courses, then they want coffee and someone is going to ask for a fucking French press and all the rest of this crap. To me my idea of what’s good is to drive here and go to Waffle House, get a couple of eggs and waffle. When I see the first Waffle House, I know I’m in the South. That’s good."

Stephen King, talking to Neil Gaiman. Lots of nice stuff here. (Via Metafilter.)

Why is it that Obama can't just enjoy his slow jam with Jimmy Fallon?

We were talking about Obama's effort at comedy on the Jimmy Fallon show. I had said, in the post, "Doesn't he have a job?" In the comments, Rabel said:

From the AP, April 25, 2012....

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO says that two service members have been killed in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, while two others have died of non-battle injuries.

The coalition said in statements that one service member was killed by an improvised explosive device Wednesday and another by a similar weapon on Tuesday....

So far this month, 31 coalition members have died in Afghanistan, bringing the year's toll to 122."

Barack Obama was their Commander-in-Chief.

Fuck him.

 And then Rabel came right back and said:

That's his job right there.

Fuck him and fuck his Goddamn comedy act.

Now, that's a very harsh way to talk about Obama, but it's the way people talked about George Bush all the time. Remember how Bush was savaged for displaying a capacity for enjoying himself when Americans were fighting and dying?



That much criticized performance occurred in 2002. A year later, after he received news of war deaths while golfing, Bush gave up golf:

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf... I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong message."

Does a slow jam with Jimmy Fallon send the wrong message? Or do we not think about the mom whose son may have recently died anymore? (Obama has no Cindy Sheehan dogging hounding him bothering him... at least not that we see in the news.)

Why is Obama immune from the criticism that normally befalls a President? Back in 2008, running for President, Obama pushed back the press one time with "Why is it that I can't just enjoy my waffle?"

It's like that was a really hard question — why is it that he can't just enjoy his waffle... and his multiple vacations and his golf and his rock concerts in the White House and his slow jam with Jimmy Fallon?

The answer is: Because you have a job. You applied for it. We hired you. Make us believe you're doing it.

You know, a couple days ago, Rush Limbaugh said something that sounded outlandish to me at the time:

There's a lot of mythology out there still today about Obama and his strengths and how there hasn't been any fallout from the dismal record that he has amassed.  None of this is true.  They're in trouble.  They're in deep trouble.  You basically have David Plouffe, who's the president, you got Axelrod who's the chief of staff and Obama's out playing golf.  Obama... Not quite.  Obama's out doing the fundraising, but David Plouffe is the acting president, Axelrod's chief adviser, and Obama's out playing golf.  Obama basically has a nine a.m. to four p.m. day.  It's these other guys that are formulating policy, doing all this other stuff.  He knows what's going on, don't misunderstand, and he's guiding and influencing it.

I'm not saying Obama's disengaged, doesn't know what's going on and he's a puppet.  Don't misunderstand.  Not saying that at all.  But he's not known as a hard worker. He's not known as somebody who gets in there early and stays late....

While David Plouffe is the president, Axelrod's the chief of staff, Obama's out raising money. After his campaign stop in North Carolina today, he's going on his comedy tour.  He'll be appearing on the Jimmy Fallon show and then with Jimmy Kimmel before being roasted at the White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend....

Plouffe is the acting President?! That sounded outlandish. But look around. Obama performs 5 minutes of a musically sexualized speech about students and... it's wearing down my sense of the outlandish.

The shopping trip.

1. We went to a building supply showroom to look at some doors. All my doubts about fiberglass doors that are made to look like wood were shattered, but I was freaked out in the kitchen section by the fake waffles display:



2. We prowled the outdoor racks at Home Depot to get about 300 plants — a few extra odds and ends after the thousands of bulbs and seedlings Meade has mail-ordered. After 25 years of accepting whatever the heavens bestowed upon my patch of real estate, I'm amazed at the number of plants one buys to do the landscaping professionally.



3. Leaving the parking lot, we kept our distance from these people who were displaying the hilarious, age-old confidence in the ability of the human hand to secure a large item of furniture on the roof of the car. (And note the classic "baby on board" sign.)



It's like they're trying to act out old comedy routines:

1. Baby on Board:



2. The power of the hand:

"It's nothing like the way we know it in our community. If you're going to appropriate a dish we treasure, at least get it right."

An Atlantic City chef attacks the International House of Pancakes for serving chicken and waffles.

[Carl Redding] says he learned to make chicken and waffles where most food historians agree it was created 60-plus years ago, at the now-departed Wells Restaurant on Seventh Ave. between 132nd and 133rd Sts.

"When I worked for the Rev. Sharpton, he used to meet Betty Shabazz [Malcolm X's widow] there," says Redding. "They'd meet and I'd sit by myself just luxuriating in the chicken and waffles. It's something everyone uptown knows and likes."

Are there serious issues of authenticity to talk about or is this just a chef who's figured out how to promote his restaurant? The IHOP representative says that "because IHOP has more than 1,500 locations, it can introduce more people to chicken and waffles, 'and maybe some of them will make their way to Redding's... Next time I'm in Atlantic City, I'd like to go there myself.'"

Do fast food restaurants get people interested in a particular dish in a way that leads them to look for better versions of the same food? Or do people develop a taste for the fast-food version and reject the original form of the food? For example, maybe people like a McDonald's hamburger and don't even want a full-scale, old-fashioned hamburger anymore. To them the McDonald's hamburger is the real thing, and they're put off by this bizarre monstrosity served at... wherever hamburgers used to come from. Krazy Jim's!

So maybe Redding must take action:

He'll set up at noon in front of the IHOP on Black Horse Pike in Mays Landing, N.J., to cook and hand out free portions of chicken and waffles, Redding's-style.

Redding stresses, by the way, that IHOP doesn't normally ruffle his feathers. "I eat there," he says. "I love their T-bone steak with pancake breakfast."

Aw, come on. Handing out free food in front of somebody else's restaurant? Is that fair? There's this quasi-civil-rights flavor to this protest that's a bit absurd. Is he saying that white people have their meat-and-breakfast-starch dish and black people have theirs? IHOP can do steak and pancakes but not chicken and waffles?! 

Enough of these squabbles. Let's eat french toast and ham.

"Can't I just eat my waffle?" said Meade, channeling Obama.

Actually, he was eating a pancake. (Meade makes pancakes nearly every morning. When he gave me mine this morning, he said "Here's your circle of grain for the morning," because the evening circle of grain, Meade-made, is pizza.)

I'd just said: "There's a big civil disobedience event at the Capitol in 15 minutes."

Did Meade continue to eat his pancake or did Meade stop mid-'cake to answer the new media call?

Limbaugh cites a BarackObama.com sponsored link on Google as evidence of collusion between the White House and the SEC.

On Wednesday's show, Rush Limbaugh was talking to a former Google employee — "John Doe" — about the way sponsored links on Google work. Rush was unusually thick trying to understand, and I found that pretty annoying considering that he'd been riffing this week about how a sponsored link to BarackObama.com — Obama's campaign site — comes up on a Google search for: goldman sachs sec. (It still does. Try it. You get "Help Change Wall Street/www.BarackObama.com/It's Time for Financial Reform that Protects Main Street. Act Now!")

Rush has been saying things like:

So this is pure Alinsky on steroids. This guy is incompetent to run the private sector but, boy, does he know how to agitate and community organize. They had no advance knowledge this was happening, but they happened to get hold of Google and they said, "Look, we want to buy the search terms 'Goldman Sachs SEC,' we want you to direct the first hit to our website where we are going to raise campaign funds and awareness of the effort to demonize Wall Street." Meanwhile, the White House continues to deny that there's any link between the timing of the SEC suit and its push for regulatory reform.

Okay. Interesting conspiracy theory — collusion between the White House and the SEC. That's something to consider. It was pretty convenient that the SEC moved against Goldman Sachs just as Obama was presenting his finance reform bill. But what kind of evidence is the Google ad?

Back to the colloquy with John Doe:

CALLER: The way it works is that, for instance, with the Goldman Sachs SEC key word, a company or a political campaign can put in a bid on that key word or that phrase so that when someone does a Google search for that phrase an online auction is conducted instantaneously, and the highest bidding organization has its advertisement displayed there. So if you were the Obama campaign, you would bid enough so that the very top result would be the one that you want people to see, namely the anti-Goldman Sachs advertising campaign.... [I]t can cost anywhere from five to ten cents a click or it can cost upwards of two to five or ten dollars a click depending on how popular and how much in demand those key words are. And so, for instance, every time you click on that ad, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents....

I'm editing out the parts where Rush struggles to understand this description. You can read the whole dialogue at the first link in this post. It's possible that Rush pretends to have trouble understanding to help radio listeners keep up with something that might be a little challenging.

Now, the funny thing is that John Doe didn't call in to help us weigh the evidence of collusion. (What would motivate the Obama campaign to bid for the "goldman sachs sec" search term? How likely is that bid to a result of advance knowledge that the SEC was going to charge Goldman Sachs with fraud?) Instead, John Doe has an idea that will waste the Obama campaign's money:

CALLER: [W]hat your audience might be interested to know, sir, is that each time somebody clicks on that link, the campaign is charged anywhere from 25 to 50 cents or greater. And so I don't want to tell anybody what to do, but again, your audience of millions of people might be interested to know that each time they click on that link, the campaign is charged a small fractional amount, but with millions of listeners, sir, that can end up having --

RUSH: Snerdley, do you know what he's talking about? I have no idea what he's talking about here?

Ha. Is Rush pretending not to understand?

CALLER: Sir --

RUSH: John Doe from somewhere in the country, uhhh, sometimes I'm pretty thick.... So if the 20 million people in this audience all entered "Goldman Sachs SEC" and then clicked on the first result that came up at the top of the list, the person responsible behind that link -- in this case the campaign -- would be charged 25 to 50 cents.

CALLER: That's correct, sir.

RUSH: That can add up to a lot of money if I'm hearing you right.

CALLER: It can, sir, and in many cases the organization will establish a daily budget of maybe $50 or $100 or $10,000 or $100,000 dollars. But in any case, each time there is a click, there is a charge against that organization, and when they reach their maximum budget for the day, their ad disappears.

RUSH: Oh, is that right?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Oh! Oh! So the White House -- I'm sorry -- the campaign here has agreed to a maximum daily financial exposure, and whenever that limit is reached per day, that link then disappears from any further searches?

Oh, too bad! Because 20 million clicks at 50¢ each... talk about pure Alinsky on steroids! But it's still pretty good Alinsky stuff to get people who don't like Obama to go max out the clicks, use up the campaign's allotted money for that sponsored link, and make it go away so it can't reach anyone the campaign was hoping to reach.

After the break, Rush goes into a related riff that is horribly ignorant about Google. Rush either doesn't know or pretends he doesn't know the difference between a sponsored link and a "Google bomb":

RUSH: You remember late in the second term of George W. Bush, if you entered the search term "miserable failure" in the Google search field you would come up with stories on George W. Bush. And Google said, "There's nothing we can do about that, that's just the way it happens." But then when it began to hurt Obama -- 'cause after Obama was elected you put in "miserable failure" or whatever the algorithm was, it defaulted to whoever the president was. That was a way of hiding it being a direct default to George W. Bush. There was a time you could enter "miserable failure" in a Google search field and you would end up with Obama. They found a way to fix it then.

But it's incredibly easy to find out that Google fixed the Google bomb problem by January 29, 2007 — before Obama had even announced his candidacy for President. I Googled "Google bomb" and got the Wikipedia article on the subject. It has a section on the "miserable failure" incident, and that got me to the NYT article, dated January 29, 2007, which makes it obvious that Google responded to the problem Bush had:

It has been a bad month for anti-Bush snarkiness.... 

[A] favored online tactic to mock the president — altering the Google search engine so the words “miserable failure” lead to President Bush’s home page at the White House — has been neutralized.

Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our analysis of the link structure of the Web” such mischief would instead “typically return commentary, discussions, and articles” about the tactic itself.

Indeed, a search on Saturday of “miserable failure” on Google leads to a now-outdated BBC News article from 2003 about the “miserable failure” search, rather than the previous first result, President Bush’s portal at whitehouse.gov/president.

Such gamesmanship has been termed “Google bombing,” and is not unique to President Bush, or even politics. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, was linked to the search “waffles,” while other Google bombs have been elaborate jokes or personal vendettas.

So, note: Google didn't respond to the problem when it affected Kerry. So Rush's they're-all-against-us pose is ridiculous. Yet it's unlikely his millions of listeners will notice. It happened to jump out at me. I think Rush Limbaugh reads my blog, by the way — I have my evidence — so Rush, I'm talking to you.

Back to Rush's Wednesday show:

"Miserable failure" at Google was linked to the White House page, the official WhiteHouse.gov page. And so when Bush was president, "miserable failure," took you there. But when Obama assumed office it still took you there, and then Google found a way to change it. They said they didn't know how it was happening. So when Obama was elected, it went to him, and Google said, "Oh, no, no, we can't have that," so they changed it. So now "miserable failure" does not take you to the White House website ever since Obama has been immaculated.

That's just plain not true. And even if it were true, it wouldn't have anything to do with the suspicions about the sponsored link and the question whether there was collusion between the White House and the SEC.

"My waffle-y wedded wife..."

A reader writes: "I love your blog and immediately thought of you when I watched this at the Anchoress' blog." The video:



The Anchoress post is here.

By the way, I did laugh — more than once — during our recent and oh-so-private wedding, but I won't tell you the things that made me laugh (other than sheer happiness).

Why did Obama's people buzz lower Manhattan with a jumbo jet and an F-16 fighter?

"The planes appeared on the horizon around 10 a.m. and sent a chill through the city. Flying in as low as 1,000 feet to 1,500 feet above New York City, they circled the Statue of Liberty before flying over Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey. Before they vanished, hundreds of frightened people had jammed emergency phone lines, and thousands of terrified people evacuated from buildings in the city and across the river in New Jersey. 'I was crying and praying to God to forgive me my sins because I thought I was going to get killed,' said Kathleen Filandro, who fled from 1New York Plaza when she spotted the planes."

Quiz:

Why'd did they do it?
	To get pics for propaganda, like they said.
	To distract you from the flu.
	To distract you from the economy.
	Because the torture memos weren't exciting you enough.
	So Obama could just eat his waffle, in a golf cart, and wear shorts.
pollcode.com free polls

"While pouring syrup on your Eggo waffles, you note that you missed a few voxels."

Jokes for brain scanners.

Madison, Christmas Eve, snow...

As you can see, State Street is nearly entirely bereft of Christmas decorations...



... though an occasional lamppost has a big snowflake on it, as I noted here (prompting HeatherRadish to quip, "The symbol Madison chose to display for the holidays is a flake? Sweet Barack Obama's waffle, that's funny"). The snow itself is a nice, natural winter decoration, but I think there should be evergreens and strings of electric lights twirled around each lamppost.

Bikes are deeply embedded in snow...



... as is this sign memorializing a Vietnam War protest that once took place on this very spot...



... and this yard sign memorializing last month's election...

In Iraq, throwing a shoe at somebody is the ultimate insult.

So the question must be asked: What object, thrown, is the ultimate insult in other countries?

In France, of course, it’s a waffle....

Who’s to say why, exactly? Some say the waffle’s association with Belgium is enough to disgust any Frenchman. Others suggest it is its annoyingly spongy consistency....

[In] Chad... hitting someone with a pair of pants is the highest form of insult....

In the former Soviet Union it is not uncommon, especially among the savage Russian mafia, to throw a 68-ton American-made Abrams M1A1 tank....

In Peru, meanwhile, people throw their voices as a form of insult...

[In] Bhutan... people throw brightly colored tissue paper...

Surely, you can think of some better examples. So many countries. And don't forget the 50 states.

Moderating Michelle — Michelle Obama to go on "The View" today. UPDATE: I live-blog the show.

There's a big effort these days to rebuild Michelle Obama's image. And today, Michelle Obama will be "one of the ladies" on "The View" — chatting with the rest of them, not as an interviewee.

"We're going to be interviewing Matthew Broderick, she will participate in that," [Barbara] Walters said. "Another segment will be what makes a good breakfast. It will be a normal show; instead of five, there will be six."

Chatter. You can learn a lot about a person by their chatter. Oh, how I would love to hear the behind-the-scenes chatter between Michelle and her handlers about going on the show. Did Michelle bitch about the need to soften herself for dimwitted American women in flyover states? Or did she think it would be fun to have a free-for-all with those smart, funny women? Did her people tell her that the important thing is just to smile and look comfortable and not say anything too smart or too stupid? Or did they tell her to be herself and enjoy this chance to let everyone see the Michelle Obama we all know?

Walters said the show was put together as normal, and guests booked in advance.

And, if today resembles the typical day on the popular daytime show, there will be plenty of give and take between the hosts on serious and not-so-serious topics.

What? Matthew Broderick was not a special selection for Michelle? I'm sorry, I find that impossible to believe. He's too perfect for the occasion, isn't he? Married, delightful, mild, warm... squishy yet masculine... white. Watch her not call him "whitey" — though the man is stark white.

And making a good breakfast? Come on! That's too perfect of a set-up for them to talk about — we all want to know! – what's Barack Obama like at breakfast?

You can really learn a lot about a man by seeing what he's like at breakfast. He's helping the girls find their mittens and testing them last-minute on their spelling words, I bet. Or is he grouchy? Is he all Why can't I just eat my waffle?



ADDED: The women walk out in pairs, with Michelle and Barbara Walters in the lead. Michelle is much taller than the others, and she looks fabulous in a fitted, black-and-white, floral print sundress. Her hair is neatly tousled, and she has pearl earrings and really pretty soft makeup. They sit at the table, Whoopi Goldberg enthuses an introduction, and Michelle says: "I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please."

All the ladies bump fists with her. Whoopi's all "I'm sorry. What'd that mean? Should I be worried about doing that with you?" in a Valley Girl voice. Barbara leans forward and yells: "It's a terrorist attack!" Michelle responds: "It's now my signature bump, but lemme tell ya. I'm not that hip. I got this from the young staff." Joy Behar says: "I thought it was for germ freaks." I'm thinking: good idea! And then: potential new smear: Michelle Obama, a germophobe!

Whoopi says they've got "a million questions" for her. Oh! So then, she's not just another co-host. She is being interviewed. Barbara waves the New York Times article that is the first link in this post. Is Michelle here on "The View" to soften her image after all these attacks? Michelle finesses this into the new introduction that the NYT said she is seeking. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, etc.

Barbara interrupts to ask what it causing the attacks? Michelle refers to the pervasiveness of the media and the competition of politics. And people are "tired" of all this hostility. Elisabeth Hasselbeck takes this as a cue to chatter about how the media think that she (Elisabeth) is going to be fighting with Michelle (and is enemies with the other View ladies). By this point, Michelle is visibly sweating. (If she weren't wearing a bare sundress, you wouldn't see it.) But she gamely talks about how she puts her heart out there, taking a risk by showing passion. And she's not worried. Over time, people will get to know who she really is.

Michelle is asked if she thinks there was any sexism against Hillary Clinton, and she says, "Yes, there's always a level of... people aren't used to strong women... We don't even know how to talk about 'em. So, yeah, there was obviously that. There was also, um, you know, there were elements of racism and that will go on." But she resisted veering into the subject of racism and, wisely, kept to the subject of sexism but ended on a positive note. Hillary had cracked the glass ceiling, and had made it so "my girls, they won't have to feel it [sexism] as badly."

Barbara asks if, then, Hillary should be the VP nominee. Michelle insists that she willl have "nothing to do" with the decision. Elisabeth breaks right in an offers an opportunity for Michelle to talk about getting away from politics and paying attention to the kids. A commercial break swiftly descends.

Sherri Shepherd wants to interrogate Michelle about her toned arms. Michelle is always going sleeveless, setting a trend that is rough on women who are flabby. But the subject is immediately shifted to how long it takes for a woman to do her hair and makeup in the morning. Whoopi starts riffing about how up until now all the black women we've seen on the news are toothless or have gold-rimmed teeth. (How many people did she just insult?!) What she's trying to say is that Michelle with be a good role model. Joy Behar has the classic "who farted?" expression on her face.

Barbara raises the hot topic of pantyhose. They say not wearing pantyhose makes you look young, so she (Barbara) went without pantyhose to some event and someone yelled "No pantyhose!" Funny, especially since Barbara Walters is nearly 80. But the point here is: Michelle Obama is not wearing pantyhose. Michelle says: "I stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago because it was painful."

Much talk of raising the kids. Barack and Michelle think about their daughters "every single day." She quotes 10-year-old Malia saying — when asked how she deals with going in front of a big crowd — "I'm just a kid... They just think I'm cute, so I just wave and I smile and then I'm outta there."

There's talk about Barack Obama's Father's Day speech. Michelle says she's most touched when Barack says that "the greatest gift he can give to his kids is to not be who his father was."

Barbara asks if Michelle wanted Barack to run for President, and she says she didn't even want him to go into politics, because it's "a mean business":

I knew the man that I loved. He was sweet and pathetic. I thought...

Pandemonium! I think each of the 5 view ladies exclaims "Pathetic!" Michelle's all: "Right, I know, he's pathetic." She does a dismissive hand wave. I take a few TiVo passes at the chaos, there's a reference to a comma, and I figure out she was saying:

He was sweet, empathetic.

Whoopi spells out the whole word to the camera and makes big hand gestures to get the point across: Empathetic.

After the break, they bring out Matthew Broderick. I think he's wearing a bad wig. He's got a bulky black suit on and a red tie. He fist bumps everyone, and they sit down on little puffy gold chairs. He crosses his legs just like Joy Behar. He's not wearing pantyhose, but white and black striped socks. He has largish feet.

It's established that Broderick's 4-year-old son supports Barack Obama. Why? "He likes the man to beat the lady." Michelle makes a cute grimace then distances herself from that remark. Kids are drawn to Barack Obama, she says. Some think his first name is Baracko.

Michelle must sit through the promotion of 2 Matthew Broderick movies, which is slightly painful, especially since they show a clip that has him talking to a young woman who's prating about how easy it is to be a stripper. Michelle basically keeps her mouth shut here.

Fortunately, they go to commercials, and when they are back, Michelle, Joy, and Sherri are standing with some woman under a big orange sign that says "Best of BREAKFAST." The woman — Elizabeth Somer — has written some New York Magazine cover story about breakfast and she starts ranting about how people who eat breakfast are better than other people. She's a raving breakfastist. Guess what you can eat for breakfast? A bowl of cereal with milk in it. And have you heard? You can put fruit on your cereal and also drink a glass of fruit juice. Michelle asks a question about pomegranate juice. She looks uncomfortable, and she doesn't get a straight answer, just a warning about apple, grape, and pear juice. Michelle munches a nugget of Autumn Wheat cereal and pronounces it good.

Joy asks Michelle what she has for breakfast, and she says:

"Toast, fruit, and I do my protein as: bacon. We're bacon people."

Joy does a mini-cheer: "Bacon! Bacon!" The audience shows enthusiasm. Somers in all seriousness says if you're going to have bacon, you should have Bob Evans Canadian Bacon. Michelle and just about everyone laughs at her for that absurd suggestion. Somers also recommends turkey bacon and "smart bacon" — and much grumbling is heard. "Smart bacon" is soy. Michelle is all "soy, sounds good" as she elbows Joy Behar. Those 2 seem to be bonding over bacon. Whoopi sneaks over to join the group: "I'm just going to say leave the bacon alone. We'll eat anything, but don't touch the bacon." Ha ha. The health nannying is shot to hell. "Does Obama eat bacon?" Joy asks. Michelle: "He will eat the bacon." Ha ha.

Final shot at the table. Everyone's looking happy. I find myself smiling. Okay. Worked for me. Broderick and Somers were stodgy and dull, but Michelle was just lovely and excellent. Her one little flub/nonflub ("pathetic") was hilarious.

Time for me to go get some bacon.

ADDED: Plenty of video here.

"Her message is unapologetically emasculating."

Hillary's message is:

If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?

Crackers. Crackers, indeed. Are we allowed to say "crackers"? Well, we can say waffles, so why not, in the grand scheme of bad carbohydrates, say crackers?

Anyway, that's Maureen Dowd, wielding extreme Dowdiness this morning:

In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.

“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”

His subtext was obvious: Why can’t I just be president? Why do I have to keep eating these gooey waffles and answering these gotcha questions and debating this gonzo woman?

Gooey... gotcha... gonzo...

What's the next word in that series?

Gonad!

She's so emasculating.

Historic ort: Obama's famous waffle goes for $10,000 on eBay.

As well it should. When else has food played such an important role in a political story?

Can you think of any other historic orts and estimate their value at eBay auction? There's that cheesesteak with Swiss cheese that John Kerry ordered, without which cheese he might have won the election.

UPDATE: Bad first link corrected after 8 months. I hope you appreciate it!

And Hillary gets her 10 point margin.

Did we not all agree that the game would be transformed if she hit that mark?

WaPo puts it this way:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Pennsylvania presidential primary decisively on Tuesday night, running up a 10-percentage-point victory that bolstered her case for staying in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Sen. Barack Obama played down a defeat that did not substantially reduce his delegate lead....

The NYT front page displays the percentages as 54.7% and 45.3%, using decimals to deprive the feisty candidate of the 2-digit lead that means so much. The lead article, by Adam Nagourney, frames it this way:

For better or worse — and many Democrats fear it is for worse — the race goes on.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defeated Senator Barack Obama in Pennsylvania on Tuesday by enough of a margin to continue a battle that Democrats increasingly believe is undermining their effort to unify the party and prepare for the general election against Senator John McCain.

Despite a huge investment of time and money by Mr. Obama and pressure on Mrs. Clinton by the party establishment to consider folding her campaign, she won her third big state in a row. Mrs. Clinton showed again that she is a tenacious campaigner with an ability to connect with the blue-collar voters Mr. Obama has found elusive and who could be critical to a Democratic victory in November.

Mrs. Clinton’s margin was probably not sufficient to fundamentally alter the dynamics of the race, which continued to favor an eventual victory for Mr. Obama. But it made clear that the contest will go on at least a few weeks, if not more. And it served to underline the concerns about Mr. Obama’s strengths as a general election candidate. Exit polls again highlighted the racial, economic, sex and values divisions within the party.

The news is not that she won big, but that it's bad that she won.

ADDED: Here's the Wall Street Journal editorial:

Just when Democrats think they might have a Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton spoils the party. With her solid victory in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the former first lady kept her campaign alive and underscored doubts about Barack Obama's November appeal.

First in bellwether Ohio, and now in another crucial swing state, the New York Senator has shown her tenacity. She and her husband are nothing if not relentless, and Mr. Obama can be forgiven if he wakes up at night thinking he's in one of those "Terminator" movies where the machine in the form of a human being just keeps coming. Nothing – not Bill Clinton's gaffes, not the Bosnian sniper-fire fantasy, not even being outspent 3-to-1 – has been able to stop her.

A summary of the demographics:

According to the exit polls, Mrs. Clinton walloped him among voters without a college degree, and by nearly 2-to-1 among high school grads. She won easily among middle-income voters, as well as across the central, northeast and southeast areas of the Keystone State that are home to culturally conservative union households. These voters may not have bought her shot-and-a-beer routine, but they clearly preferred her to Mr. Obama's "bitter" condescension. Perhaps ominously for Mr. Obama's November prospects, Mrs. Clinton crushed him among Catholics, who are the ultimate swing voters across the U.S.

Bottom line: "Mr. Obama still needs to show he can appeal to the non-liberal, non-wealthy American middle class."

The bitter NYT editorial is called "The Low Road to Victory." It's the way she won. She went negative.

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it....

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

Inconclusive? But it was a smashing victory! I guess it's "inconclusive" because the party's candidate is yet to be determined. And I fail to see the terrible negativity that ad, which was just a vivid reminder of the weightiness of the President's job and a tweak at Obama for his complaints about questions that are less fun than eating a waffle. A really negative ad would push some ugly factoid in our face — such as Obama's connection to Jeremiah Wright or William Ayers.

The new Hillary ad.

I like it. I like Hillary best when she shows her hawkishness, but I've heard some Obamists are upset about this. About this, about the waffle, about the meanie debate questions....

Obama refuses to debate Clinton in North Carolina.

Marc Ambinder says it's because his advisors "did not want to give Hillary Clinton any excuse to stay in the race beyond Tuesday, assuming she doesn't fare that well." I don't like it. He just did badly in a debate, so it looks like he's afraid to debate. He should be bold and show us how good he is, show us what a strong candidate he'll be in the fall. Otherwise, Clinton, who just bested him in debate, has reason to claim she's the stronger candidate.

The Clinton campaign should milk this like mad. Here's their first parry:

It is unfortunate that Senator Obama has chosen to brush off the people of North Carolina by flatly refusing to debate....

Hillary Clinton is committed to debating the issues facing the Tar Heel State. We hope Sen. Obama will make the same commitment

Flatly refusing.

They must be furiously brainstorming: What's the most apt way to plant in people's minds that he's chicken, that he's weakening, tiring, and he doesn't want to give people a chance to see it?

Howard Kurtz says:

In political terms, Obama had little incentive for another face-off. He's comfortably ahead in the Tarheel State, and after drawing most of the tough questions in last week's ABC debate in Pennsylvania, he undoubtedly wasn't looking forward to a sequel.

(Is it Tar Heel or Tarheel? It's Tar Heel.)

I disagree with Kurtz. 1. Even if Obama is ahead, he should try to defeat Clinton as impressively as possible. 2. His poor performance is the reason to come back with a solid performance. 3. It's not just about North Carolina; it's about proving to all of us and to the superdelegates that he's the better candidate. 4. He's handed her a fat, juicy issue, and she'll take advantage of it (which in itself will be a demonstration of her fighting strength as a candidate).

And speaking of weakness and evasiveness, the Obama quote of the day is "Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

Here's where I pick out all my favorite quotes from the things I've collected on this blog over the past year.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Joe Biden on Barack Obama.

"And to say that we are going to feed more American young men and women into that grinder, put them in the middle of a tribal, sectarian civil war, is not going to fix the problem...." Chuck Hagel, sure the surge would fail.

"I am self-involved, mercurial and comfortable eating dinners of frozen waffles in my underpants."

"Is Coulter truly oblivious to her gender weirdness? It's no coincidence that words like 'tranny' and transvestite' clog the anti-Coulter blogs." Camille Paglia, getting ugly.

"I'm pretty much going to stay out of it until the course — the case has finally run its final — the course it's going to take." President Bush, declining to say if he'll pardon Scooter Libby.

"Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle." Christopher Hitchens on the Virginia Tech Massacre.

''He still didn't put the butter up... I was like, 'You're just asking for it, you know I'm giving a speech. Why don't you just put the butter up?''' Michelle Obama.

"An aging roué, who is almost too facile, and a grimly ambitious feminist lawyer, with a tough but conventional mind." Noemie Emery -- in The Weekly Standard -- on Bill and Hillary Clinton.

"We believe bottled water has become less about the physical act of hydration and more about being a companion to people."

"We like the United States of America, but we do not like your Waschbaeren!"

"I suggest to you with respect, Your Honor, that you're a few French Fries short of a Happy Meal..."

"If you don't like your life, change it." Something simple but profound that Laurence Olivier once said, noted on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

"Maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn." Something hilarious John McCain said about Mitt Romney.

"I will follow him to the gates of hell." "You sure wouldn't want to be where Saddam Hussein is, where we helped put him." Hell talk from John McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

"Teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed." Justice Clarence Thomas.

"I believe that Ann intentionally keeps her camera focused on the books behind her... so that she is filmed in a flattering soft focus." Some ADS sufferer on Bloggingheads.

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them ’permanently’ meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee." Winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

"I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially..." Young Hillary Clinton.

"Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation..." Robin Givhan.

"He quickly matched my urgency in the clothes-removal efforts and we were naked and happy in no time." Al Gore's daughter writes a novel.

"We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America."

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." Mother Theresa.

"I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate...."

"He knows enough to know he's not descended from apes!"

"So here’s the rule. You never repeat right wing talking points to attack your own, ever. You never enter that echo chamber as a participant. Ever. You never give them a hammer to beat the left with. Just. Don’t. Do. It." Jane Hamsher tells Elizabeth Edwards what to do.

"What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply." A quote from it's-easy-to-guess-who that I wrote 10 questions about.

"He's typing and drinking and threatening to 'shave Paul Krugman with a broken bottle.'" Maureen Dowd, describing Stephen Colbert as he's writing a guest column for her.

"Si te gusta el sexo oral, vote por Caragol por consejal." My favorite foreign language quote of the year.

"And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence. These are almost, these are the best I've had anywhere in the United States. But, uh when I gain a little weight they cut me under there. So, leave me , you never do have much of margin there. See if you can't leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need to." LBJ, ordering pants.

"The rage he harbors raises questions about whether he can sit as an impartial judge in many of the cases the Supreme Court hears." New York Times editorial about Clarence Thomas.

"It strikes me as a self-hurt book." Jon Stewart on Chris Matthews' self-help book.

"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a 'before' in a Charles Atlas 'before and after' ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?" Bob Dylan.

"I knew this was no fetish-laden intrigue with a woman of another race, but a gift from God." Clarence Thomas, on meeting his second wife.

"I'd done what I thought was right, and I took heart from George Benson: I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows/If I fail, if I succeed/At least I live as I believe/No matter what they take from me/They can't take away my dignity." Clarence Thomas, steeling himself by listening, over and over, to "The Greatest Love of All."

"What I wanted was for everyone — the government, the racists, the activists, the students, even Daddy — to leave me alone so that I could finally start thinking for myself." Clarence Thomas describing how he felt after reading Ayn Rand.

"He insisted that we bathe in what he called a 'teaspoon' of water, using laundry detergent instead of soap. 'Waste not, want not,' he repeatedly warned us. We weren't allowed to use towels to dry ourselves, either, since Daddy thought washcloths were good enough to get us dry (as well as being easier to launder than towels). Whenever he thought we hadn't gotten ourselves clean enough, he finished the job himself, a terrifying experience that we did everything we could to avoid." Clarence Thomas, on the baths of childhood.

"Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it." Barack Obama.

"And I would never spend my money on a Chinese girl skeleton. That would be crossing the line. It's a Chinese boy, for the record." Marilyn Manson.

"Maybe yellow blotches, wrinkles, and phantom fetuses really get a pubescent neotenic mole salamander in the mood for love." Go Fug Yourself.

"At the moment, Giuliani and fellow moderate Mitt Romney are attacking each other for being insufficiently Tancredo-esque." David Brooks.

"I did shift from being against the death penalty to thinking that if it has a significant deterrent effect it’s probably justified." Cass Sunstein.

"Blogs are walking up to legal scholarship and slapping it in the face. Blogs say to legal scholarship: 'How dare you! Evolve or Die!'" From the Bloggership Symposium.

"If you don't pass universal health care by July of 2009... I'm going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you." John Edwards, megalomaniacally.

"It's basically akin to someone sitting on their couch and chewing up food and spitting it all over the floor and the walls and the furniture month after month until it piles up and congeals and grows into mold, turning the room into a repulsive, health-threatening mess." Bad Simile of the Year, from Glenn Greenwald.

"Oh gee, I can't figure out what I think. Don't pick on me by asking that question! That's a gotcha question!" Rudy Giuliani spoofs Hillary Clinton.

"Everything I'm saying here is my wife's position, not just mine." Bill Clinton, remembering to talk not only about himself.

"I'm not doin' hand shows today." Fred Thompson.

"Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well."

"WHAT DI DHE DO AFORE HOW LONG AND WITH WHO ?? PLS TELL BOB HELLO BOB."

"I am self-involved, mercurial and comfortable eating dinners of frozen waffles in my underpants."

I understand. And why do you like to live alone? Or -- in case you don't live alone -- what exactly would you like about it if you did?

How Kerry lost me.

I started this blog in mid-January, and I've devoted a lot of words since then to analyzing the presidential campaign. I've said many times that I'm not going to pick my candidate until October. Yet I find myself expressing an increasing amount of hostility to Kerry, so I thought I'd go back and trace the arc of my antagonism through my various posts.

Here's my first statement about Kerry and the Iraq war, made on April 9th. (It was Good Friday--scroll up [actually, click here] to see the man preaching from a cross.)

I think it makes a lot of sense, after the primary season, to ignore the Presidential campaign as much as possible. There's no reason for a moderate like me, who might end up voting for either candidate, to follow the campaigns right now. For one thing, it's not fair to Kerry, because I find him a boring speaker and I'm really going to get tired of him if I pay any attention to him. For another thing, I can't think about him seriously until I know what he plans to do in Iraq, and he hasn't said what he will do. (Will, meaning, in the future. How the past might have been different is not going to determine my vote. And don't try my patience by telling me that I can infer what he will do in the future from what he asserts he would have done in the past.) He has no motivation to take a position on Iraq until closer to the election: why should he pin himself down when events are in flux?

Six days later, I got irked at him for the first time, for saying "You're not listening" to a man who wanted to know what his position on Iraq was. Back then, Kerry was saying things like "We shouldn't only be tough, we have to be smart. And there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing." My question was: "If you still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be snapped at for 'not listening'?" I've linked back to this old post of mine a number of times, because I never forgot that he got testy and accused a man of not listening, when in fact Kerry had never expressed himself clearly about what he would do in Iraq. I had been willing to wait a long time for a clear answer, yet here he was criticizing us for not having heard his answer yet. All I had heard was "smarter way," which just seemed like a placekeeper for a plan to be submitted later.

On April 19th, Kerry appeared on "Meet the Press," and Tim Russert asked Kerry exactly the question I wanted an answer to: What would you do differently from Bush in Iraq?

Kerry's "response" is to launch into an anecdote with no apparent connection to the question (about a Vietnam vet--of all things) and gradually work his way toward something that will seem to be an answer. The strategy is to put the "answer" as far from the question as possible, in the hope that you'll forget the question and accept the proffered "answer" as an answer (or just hope that he'll stop talking already). Does Kerry ever answer the question about the future of Iraq? He always substitutes assertions about mistakes in the past. The most I'm hearing about the future is that Kerry will pursue all the same goals, but in a "smarter way." I'll just do it better. Trust me! Why? Because Bush hasn't been good enough.

On April 28th, I complained about a Kerry appearance on "Hardball." I'm irritated by meandering non-answers and robotic repetition of lines from his stump speech. I offered Kerry a deal:

It's on and on about the medals and ribbons. This is incredibly irritating. I agree with Kerry that it's pointless to quibble about whatever it was he threw away when he was an young man with an issue to fight for. But let's make a deal then: stop using Vietnam as an argument for why you should be President. The whole issue is a waste of time. I'm willing to accept that both Bush and Kerry are good people with good character. Now, get on with it! Give me some substance!

After the first commercial break, Kerry is smiling--with teeth showing oddly. Someone told him to smile, so he's taking stage directions. Oh, I'm so hopelessly tired of Kerry.

And that was back in April! Little did I know then that he would keep robotically delivering clips from the stump speech and would make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign! Looking back, I can see that the "Meet the Press" and "Hardball" interviews were crucial in turning me against him. Notably, Kerry thereafter steered clear of serious interviews.

May 1st was an important day, when Kerry responded to the news of Abu Ghraib. I complimented him and expressed a hope:

Kerry may choose to do something more with this issue later, but [his comments today show] complete forbearance from opportunism. I want Kerry to demonstrate that he would never allow his political ambition to override the interest in the successful completion of our efforts in Iraq, and I have worried that he would pursue the strategy of uniting Bush and the war in the public's mind, creating a single entity (BushWar), and then use every opportunity to find fault with something done in the war to attack BushWar. What a disaster that would be.

Perhaps Kerry's statement only represents the astute political understanding that he needs to avoid appearing not to support our soldiers--especially important for him because of his Vietnam era statements--but I hope there is something more to this restraint, that there is a real commitment to the success of the mission. He is in a tough position here. Should he criticize Bush for not acting swiftly and harshly against the accused soldiers? For now he's chosen to refer to gathering the facts and providing "appropriate" process to the accused soldiers and preserving the rule of law. That may be too tame, part of his characteristic dullness, but it may be the surface of what is a competent commitment to the success of the war effort.

Nine days later, I wrote about Abu Ghraib again:

If Bush doesn't find a way to do something comprehensive, he deserves to be replaced. Whatever deficiencies Kerry may have--and I have not been a Kerry supporter--I would like to see him moved into the Presidency to make clear statement of the thing that Bush himself keeps going around saying: this is not what Americans are.

This was the point of my strongest support for Kerry.

On May 29th, I was pretty sympathetic to Kerry and defended him against attacks that he took too many positions:

One can easily portray Kerry as a man who takes so many different positions in such a confounding mix that no one--no one with any real potential to actually vote for him--ever gets too upset. Yet, obviously, Kerry has a careful balancing act to perform, and he seems sensible about trying to hold on to the middle. For the antiwar side, he seems to be offering only a feeling that he's going to wind things down more quickly and effectively than Bush, but Bush is trying to reach the same goals Kerry is stating. (This is why I'm not deciding between the two candidates until October: I'll see what Bush has actually done between now and then.) Kerry is urging ... that we get away from "partisan politics" and "just think common sense about our country, about what it should be doing." I don't argue with that. It's hard for him to get specific about what he would do, since he wouldn't be starting to do anything until over eight months from now. How can he use common sense to figure out what should be done that far in the future when things are changing every day so far out of his control? That's the downside of not being an ideologue.

Ironically, on this day I was dealing with nasty commenters on my blog (right before I turned off the comments function), who couldn't stop telling me what a louse I was for not condemning the war.

In June, two things happened that I wrote a little about: Reagan died and received a lavish funeral, and "Fahrenheit 911" came out and was loved and hated. I watched a bit of the funeral and avoided the movie. Various people used the occasions to stoke extreme partisan feeling. I felt my usual aversion to all of that. On July 1st, I complained about "ugly political imagery."

On July 31, I was very impressed by a Christopher Hitchens article that attacked Kerry for criticizing the war in Iraq for using money that we could be spending on our own people at home. Like Hitchens, I found that argument repugnant. Kerry further alienated me by repeating that argument many times.

Right after the convention, in early August, I questioned the assumption that Kerry is especially smart and call him "a cipher who went to Vietnam":

[M]y questions about Kerry's intelligence do not arise solely from my inference that he had a poor academic record and low standardized test scores. My questions are also based on his exasperatingly convoluted and unclear manner of speaking. This has been excused as a propensity for "nuance" and "complexity," but could also be caused by a lack of mental capacity. It could also be willful evasion. I'd really like to know. ... I've been listening to him talk for a long, long time, and I'm not impressed at all. And I'm sure not impressed by the mere fact of someone managing to hold a Senate seat for a long time!

I realize people who truly despise Bush don't care about any of this. The fact is Kerry's the candidate, so there's nothing more to say. Unite behind him, whoever he is. It's too late now. And please don't say anything bad about him. Shhhh! But that doesn't work for people, like myself, who don't despise Bush. I am actually trying to assess Kerry! Where is the material? It certainly wasn't presented in the convention last week, and Kerry's speeches and interviews are not exactly brimming with information. I've been looking for an answer to what he plans to do in Iraq for a long time ... and I still can't figure him out. It seems to me we're being asked to make a cipher President. A cipher who went to Vietnam. And isn't Bush. Is that enough? If you hate Bush, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" It isn't enough for me.

Next came the Republican Convention, which I watched much more closely than the Democratic Convention. I had TiVo'd the C-Span coverage of all nights of both conventions, but the Democratic Convention bored me and the Republican Convention gripped me. The speakers that made a real impression on me were: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Ron Silver. These men all spoke well and with conviction. I listened to every word they said. I will admit to feeling deeply struck by Silver's line: "The President is doing exactly the right thing." Silver was open about being a liberal on the social issues--as I am--but passionate and clear that national security trumps other matters. I agree! I even enjoyed Zell Miller's old-style preacher speech.

How did Kerry try to claw his way back into the running after the convention? He was getting a lot of conflicting advice and being told to fight harder and attack. This post, written on September 5th, was pretty sympathetic to Kerry:

Of course, Kerry does seem to be on the path to defeat right now, so his supporters can't help panicking and find it hard not to yammer a lot of (conflicting) advice at him. But I think his best chance lies in continuing to be the lumbering, dull but solid and grown-up guy that he is, so that when election day finally comes and the excitement-seeking is over, people will look at him and say--perhaps: Yes, he's a frightful bore, but put him in the office and he'll probably earnestly work hard and make a decent share of good-enough judgments, which is all we really ever hope for anyway.

I could still have accepted Kerry at this point. But Kerry decided to go for the hard Howard Dean-style criticism of "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." In these last few weeks, he has battered us with negativity about the war, but still without offering any realistic positive solutions that are different from Bush's, and raising worries that he will simply give up on Iraq. And then he disrespected Prime Minister Allawi when the man was in the country and speaking to Congress. Yesterday, I wrote of Kerry's treatment of Allawi as his final, fatal mistake. I meant only to say that he had sealed his fate with voters for that, but, realistically, thinking about it today, I have to say he sealed his fate with me personally. Rereading this post, I see that the hope about Kerry I expressed on May 1st is completely lost.

UPDATE, MONDAY EVENING: After devoting much of Sunday to tracing the arc of my antagonism, it was nice to get so many visitors today. Thanks to Instapundit for starting the traffic, to Allahpundit for the cool quip ("[A]fter several months of looking at the menu, Ann Althouse decides she's not in the mood for Waffles."), and to lots of other people who linked and emailed.