God Help Us All...

...when even a milquetoast apple-polisher like Charlie Gibson can expose Sarah Palin for the shallow, intellectually vapid, Right-Wing tool she really is.

About that Magical "Executive" Experience...

...if your claim to fame is being mayor a city with 7,000 people, would it be too much to ask that you not have screwed it up? And the tough-talking Governor can't bear to face the Evil Liberal Media unless they show her proper "deference"? Also, apparently it's okay to dare to question the Sacred Surge What Has Absolutely Succeeded...if you are John McCain.

Good One, Bill

Excellent speech by Bill, seemingly made point-for-point to refute hyper-technical criticism by the GOP and their lapdogs in the MSM.

PUMA Overload

It's becoming increasingly clear that the "Angry Hillary Supporter" meme is being overhyped and driven primarily by the MSM and the McCain Campaign, as clearly demonstrated by Our Man in Denver, Hilzoy.

UPDATE: Damn good speech, damn good. Of course, the punditocracy is already on about how she didn't go far enough, with one idiot I watched on PBS even saying she should have explicitly taken back everything negative she ever said about Obama. Please. You couldn't ask for a more unequivocal endorsement. If it's not good enough for the MSM, screw 'em. Nothing that might be positive for Democrats will ever be good enough for the corporate MSM. And if it wasn't good enough for the PUMAs, then they were never really Hillary supporters and they aren't really Democrats and to hell with them, too.

Obama Thoughts

Should Obama be less technocrat and more populist? Obviously, I agree (and there is some evidence he is starting to do so); it may be the only way for him to broaden his appeal to working-class whites. Meanwhile, the Georgia Crisis may not be the incredible boost to McCain the MSM seems to think. And, of course, Dubya the Lame Duck continues to screw the environment. And adopt Barack Obama's plan for Iraq. Some legacy.

Not A Bad Idea, Actually

Arianna Huffington suggests Obama turn up the heat on McCain...on national security. She makes a convincing case. National security is the only area where McCain currently and consistently outpolls Obama, yet his pronouncements on the subject have been nothing but one long string of gaffes and misstatements (including most recently plagiarizing from Wikipedia and accusing Putin of wanting to restore the Czarist empire). The only reason McCain has gotten a pass is the MSM's man-crush on him. Obama should call McCain on it. It's a Rovian strategy, hitting your opponent where he's strongest. Maybe it can work for good instead of evil this time.

UPDATE: MSM continues to carry McCain's water on the Russo-Georgian conflict, even as it becomes more and more apparent that he has no idea what he's talking about.

John McCain vs. Indian Country

John McCain blows off meeting with Indians to hit the real cultural highlight of South Dakota--Sturgis. Pretty sad, really, given that McCain has had a decent record on Indian issues in the Senate, but evidently hundreds of yuppies pretending to be Hell's Angels is more important. That and the topless women.

UPDATE: Does McCain's willingness to enter his wife in a topless (and frequently bottomless) drunken "Beauty pageant" at a biker bar indicate A) he has no idea what goes on at these things and is therefore a latte-sipping elitist; or B) he does know and is just a sexist jerk? For extra bonus points, what do you think the MSM would be doing if Obama had made the same comments in the same venue?

Anthrax Leprosy Mu

Glenn Greenwald has up a superbly-researched post about the Bush Administration's suspicious and misleading actions surrounding the still-mysterious anthrax attacks and the MSM's complicity in pushing government propaganda. When did the Bush Administration know about the risk of loose weaponized anthrax? Did they deliberately leak false details in order to implicate Iraq?

MSM Coddles McCain!

Film at eleven! Also, gravity still makes things fall when you drop them!

Happy Mother's Day!

The US Military has been carrying on an illegal, covert, and widespread system of deliberate propaganda in support of the war (and of course torture) for years now. Oh, and the MSM refuses to so much as breathe a word about it now that the story has broken.
Yawn...oh what? Sorry, were you talking? I was busy reading about Obama's bowling score and his really scary black preacher who hates America.

UPDATE: Reid promises hearings, bless his little heart.

If You Love Jon McCain So Much...

...then why don't you marry him? The MSM continues their bizarre, unrequited and at times vaguely homoerotic love affair with John McCain.

"Liberal" Media Rush to Defend McCain...

...from vicious little girl. And also to point out that McCain's crazy preachers are "patriotic," unlike Obama's crazy preacher. Thanks for clearing that up, guys! I feel better.
Also, McCain is endorsed by someone else who doesn't really understand the economy all that much.

Can Someone Please Explain to Me...

...why the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed "King of America" (crowned in a bizarre ceremony thanks to John McCain's "chief political advisor" lobbyist Charlie Black),the biggest backer the Republican Party has ever had, and crazier'n a pear orchard boar, gets a pass from the Mainstream Media that makes their treatment of L. Ron Hubbard look like coverage of Mother Theresa's funeral?

The Shape of Things to Come

What's the Fall campaign gonna look like? Something like this:

1. The MSM flog Obama over moronic comments made by his former pastor, while glossing over rabidly anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic rants by McCain's religious braintrust;
2. McCain, apparently disatisfied with the old "Who would Osama vote for?" slander, has upgraded to actively claiming that Al Qaeda will kill people in order to elect Democrats;
3. Ezra Klein, sadly, hits the nail right on the proverbial head as to why Obama's ex-pastor "matters," but Joe Lieberman's rabbi and Pat Robertson don't.

In Case You Needed More Proof...

...that this is going to be a tight election: public support for continuing the Iraq War is pretty much evenly divided, though a narrow majority believes "the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals" (whatever those goals are). Obviously, though, these are extremely volatile numbers (and may have something to do with the fact that only 28% of Americans know how many total casualties we've suffered in this conflict, down from 54% who knew the right number last August). One bad round of car-bombings or (God forbid) more out-and-out fighting, and support will plummet again. If nothing else, this should be an alert to Obama and Clinton: you have to run on more than Iraq.

UPDATE: Apparently, when it comes to MSM coverage of the war, out of sight means out of mind.

Good Night and Thank You

For God's sake, get out!
Yes, he was smarmy self-righteous and arrogant, but as attorney general he took on Wall Street when no one else would, and as governor he faded the heat and approved the St. Regis Mohawk Casino, against some of his early anti-Indian rhetoric. Nevertheless, there's already going to be enough fall-out from this idiotic self-immolation, if for no other reason than it allows the GOP to deflect attention from their own morally bankrupt, whoremongering hypocrites. Is it a double standard, especially considering how fast the Vitter scandal dropped off the MSM radar? Sure, but shouldn't Democrats be better than Republicans? Shouldn't we at least demand that our leaders not flagrantly break the law? Hit the road, governor. You have no one to blame but yourself. Don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out.

The Wannabe Tribe

By now, you've probably read about Margaret (Jones) Seltzer, author of a fictional account of growing up on the mean streets of LA...except that she passed it off as real. But being a gang-banger in LA apparently wasn't enough; she also claimed to be "part Native American" unaccountably raised by a black family. Talk about minority envy! Did she also claim to be quadriplegic or a lesbian? David Treuer (Ojibwe) has a good piece at Slate on the long artistic history of fake Indians and some speculations on why so many non-Indians try to pass. Putting aside the obvious New Age charlatans who are in it for the money, I would add that I think many white people feel a desperate yearning for a sense of spirituality. Buying into the stereotype that all Indians are inherently spiritual/mystical/magical (what I call the Indian Elf syndrome), it follows that many of them then "discover" heretofore unknown "hidden ancestors." This, frankly, is just as harmful as Seltzer's blatant fakery as it reduces the profound cultural experience of being an Indian in America to the equivalent of deciding one day to switch churches. Also, as noted by one of the commenters at the Slate piece, many white people love to believe, or at least tell others, how oppressed or victimized they are, the Religious Right and Angry White Men being prime examples. Who could be more oppressed than Indians? Bottom line, there are enough problems with Indian Identity (something I am keenly personally aware of as a fully assimilated thin-blood) as is without further denigration by speculators, errant spiritual pilgrims and other wannabes.
Hat tip to Three Wise Men!

Dubya's Shadow

From the Great and Powerful Kos, a rumination on the legacies of this Administration that will last long beyond January 20, 2009. I agree with much of it, sadly, particularly the part about allowing Dubya's tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1% to expire being portrayed as "the largest tax hike in the history of the Universe." Also, in addition to a pledge to reverse all of Bush's executive orders, I would also like to hear which candidates, if any, will promise to eliminate forever the use of "signing statements."

Also: In light of the foregoing, is John McCain really in as good a shape for November as the sinister liberal MSM would have us believe?

We're DOOOOOOOOMED!!!!

The economy is crashing, with the skids on the toboggan to hell greased by the mortgage meltdown and the Bush Administration unsurprisingly clueless. But, on the plus side, St. John McCain is an absolutely unbeatable juggernaut of electoral rage who will crush his enemies, seen them driven before him and hear the lamentations of the women. Don't you feel better now?

UPDATE: Still DOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!

George Will Gets the Vapors

In his latest pronouncement from in high, the Official Spokesnerd of the Republican Establishment denies that any such "establishment" exists, since, after all, wasn't that filthy barbarian Barry Goldwater nominated? In Will's mind, "establishment" apparently is synonymous with "Rockefeller." Likewise, Will sniffs that John Edwards and Mike Huckabee are (*gasp!*) "populists," which evidently means anyone who expressing anything less than unvarnished contempt for the poor. Why. it's so bad, Will looks favorably upon Obama, who is thereby transformed into a grown-up. And nothing, but nothing, gets the goat of Economic Royalist Republicans more than anything that even remotely smells of "populism."