McCain: still crazy after all these years

Well, if I said once, I’ve said it a thousand times: once an asshole, always an asshole.

No wonder John McCain "suspended" his presidential campaign Wednesday to focus in a bipartisan manner on a grave national crisis -- he's been pulling the same stunt for nearly a decade now, boosting his poll ratings by pretending not to care about them.

You probably remember his suspension of the Republican National Convention's first day of business in order to raise funds and awareness for the victims of Hurricane Gustav (a move that, besides allowing umpteen convention speakers to praise McCain's selfless patriotism, neatly airbrushed the unpopular sitting president and vice president from the proceedings).

But McCain first used the tactic to spectacular effect way back in March 1999, when -- even though his White House run had been chugging along for five months -- he postponed the "official announcement" of his candidacy so that the nation could focus as one on the week-old war in Kosovo. "It's not appropriate at this time," the somber senator said then, "to launch a political campaign."

How did that play out? As McCain's sympathetic first biographer, Robert Timberg, wrote, "His decision amounted to a masterful political stroke."

This, of course, confirms a couple of things for us. First, it goes to show that this idea that there once lived a good and principled McCain that was replaced somewhere during the last eight years with this cynical, pandering model is nothing but another McMyth. The Arizona Republican was an angry, unstable, self-absorbed, preening asshole the day he landed in Washington, and he is just the same today. Second, the “suspension,” if not abundantly clear already, was never intended to be anything more than a campaign stunt.

But there is something different about this post—the above quote is from a column by Matt Welch, editor of Reason. It is not often that you are going to find me singing the praises of a prominent libertarian. Well, get your cameras ready; I am about to do it some more.

But if McCain's latest "country-first" outburst is a mostly empty symbol in terms of actual campaigning, it's a meaningful one in other ways. By taking what was originally Obama's behind-the-scenes initiative of cobbling together a joint candidate statement on the bailout package and opportunistically turning that into yet another chance to portray his patriotism as shinier than his opponent's, McCain is ripping what little facade remains over his campaign. This is not an election about ideas or policy; it's an election about a Great Man, facing down an interloper.

The upside to running a Great Man campaign against Obama is obvious: The Illinois senator is untested and comparatively unvetted at a time of war. . . .

And, in general, the more of the next few weeks that can be used up stressing vague issues of patriotism and "cleaning up Wall Street," the better McCain's chances of continuing to avoid any talk of the elements of his record that key parts of his GOP coalition despise. . . .

But as many Great Men come to learn, there is a colossal downside built into running a campaign on outsized personal virtue. The line between stoic, honorable service and showy moral vanity is oftentimes difficult to maintain.

And when a candidate confuses his own political ambitions with the fortunes of his country, that's when Great Men turn into self- parodies.

"I have craved distinction in my life," McCain wrote in his 2002 political memoir, "Worth the Fighting For." "I have wanted renown and influence for their own sake. That is, of course, the great temptation of public life. ... I have never been able to conquer it permanently, but I have tried."

Don't say he didn't warn us.

Welch has spent years chronicling the dick circus that McCain calls his career, and I think that perspective has paid off here. I am, myself, a little embarrassed at how much space I have expended on McSame’s shenanigans, rather than the real issues of the day. But McCain and Palin are like that proverbial car wreck—and you can’t help but rubberneck. The difference here is that rather than driving by that wreck, in the case of these characters, the wreck is heading straight at us—so, even if it’s hypnotizing to watch, it’s still probably a good idea to sound the horn.


Interested in more honking? Click on over to capitoilette. . . .

NYT crops photo to make me look stupid

OK, so it turns out that this picture of Obama addressing 200,000 in Berlin is not flipped as I originally suspected. As noted by commenter brendan1963, a different shot of the same event shows other written signs that read correctly even though the “ANGOLA” sign remains in reverse.

However, the New York Times and/or the photographer still made a conscious choice to frame and crop the picture as they did, with Obama on the left, looking left, with his arm raised to the crowd. . . and they still ran the photo under the headline “Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowd in Europe,” and all of the words in the article remain the same, so I think the image and the article still deserve analysis, though perhaps with an ever-so- slightly less-raised eyebrow. So, flip over to capitoilette and have a read.

tweety has a man-crush

But, in this case, I'm OK with that (though we might have to change the name of the show to Softball).

guest blogger: Buckles the cat

Can you tell that I'm having a busy week?

distribution requirements

No time for a big write-up today, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t news. . . plus, I get to fulfill header-mandated distribution requirements!

Politics:

It’s only one poll, but hey!

Who needs Oprah when you’ve got Ralph. . . sort of.

It’s always nice to say thank you. (Watch the video—I think it’s nice that the Senator says “thank you”; how you want to say “thank you, too,” is up to you.)

Speaking of saying thanks, guess which presidential contenders will be saying thank you to the telecommunications industry this season (gosh, I guess by missing the debate on Monday, they kind of already did, no?).

Shocked! Shocked to discover that the White House was directly involved in discussions about whether to destroy those CIA torture tapes.

And about those tapes—it’s not just that they showed torture, they showed that the torture didn’t work.

NYT makes fun of Greenspan’s favorite book. . . or maybe they’re just makin’ fun of Greenspan. (h/t Gem Spa)


Popular Culture:

Wow! If only our sex scandals could be this cool.


And, finally, Mixed Drinks!

For the love of grog—someone please have a holiday party, invite me, and make this!

obviously, I don’t read the Post enough

I’m talking about the Washington Post, and after reading the sample below, I gotta ask: Why would I?

While responding to a comment (by Alex) on yesterday’s cross-post to The Seminal—a comment asserting that Edwards would be dogged in the general election by the two-minute video of him fixing his hair—I said the following:

The hair thing? Gosh, have we not had our fill of that, yet? I bet that you are right, and some 527 or nutosphere parrot will try to get that going again, but I actually think that the hair got so much play early—complete with late night talk show jokes—that we might have hit saturation on that one. I expect that we can counter that with “what’s worse, pretty hair or an ugly war?” or some such. I also think that if it’s down to Edwards and a Republican, those that would be swayed by the hair probably weren’t going to vote for JE anyway.

Unless there’s a metrosexual equivalent to the Bradley effect.

Silly me.

I like scaring republicans

This is not the first time I’ve heard something like this:


Beyond the politics of demographics—to give it a nice name—I think that the Edwards message on domestic issues is one that is going to be harder to run against for most of the Republican hopefuls. I also think that it is more inspirational to a large group of voters that have felt left out of many recent electoral battles—inspirational as in it will inspire them to go the polls.

By the way, there’s another candidate that scares Republicans—but not in a good way.

Krugman does my job so that I don’t have to

Something really has to be done about the state of campaign reporting at the New York Times. On the whole, they have spent far too much column space on handicapping “the horserace” or doing these “Long Run” pieces which are, in most cases, the intellectual equivalent of those “Up Close and Personal” soft-focus biographies they used to run during the Olympics. But when the Times does try to report on an issue, they just seem to make things even worse.

When I read this lazy-ass bit of “journalism” short piece about the Clinton and Obama health insurance proposals by Katherine Seelye in yesterday’s paper, I quickly dismissed it because it lacked even a cursory reference to the context—the current healthcare crisis, with 47 million uninsured, and so many millions more under-insured—and because it made no mention at all of Sen. John Edwards, whose plan is more detailed and more aggressive than either of the other “frontrunner’s” proposals. The story also completely neglects to note that this only seems to be an issue in the Democratic primaries, since none of the Republicans has a plan that even attempts to guarantee coverage to the uninsured.

But, in my haste to be done with this vapid article, I missed perhaps the biggest hint that Seelye is barely even up to a level we might call “phoning it in.” Fortunately, Paul Krugman’s blog has the money quote:

I have a lot of problems with this Kit Seelye piece. It’s kind of weird that the usual “both sides may have a point” reporting gave way to a clear declaration that one side is right — precisely on an issue where many, many health experts believe that Obama is wrong, and that mandates are both feasible and essential. Much better coverage of the issue, I’m sorry to say, in the Murdoch news.

But this takes the cake:

Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan group.

Is it really possible for a veteran reporter to believe that AEI is nonpartisan? Not even a qualifier, like “right-leaning” or “free-market-oriented”?

Krugman also goes on to point out the Seelye’s numbers don’t compute.

It is important to note that Krugman is no blanket Clinton booster, either. In fact, though he thinks all three of the candidate’s plans are a step in the right direction, he agrees that the Edwards plan is superior—and has previously discussed why with some of the details and the context that Seelye left out.

I can imagine that Seelye might argue that she was on deadline and had a word limit, but none of that explains the bad attribution on AEI. And, if this is all the space that the paper of record has for coverage of the issues, then the editors have some explaining to do, too

Mitt talks “funny”

In the contest between Republican frontrunners Rudy “I (heart) Judi” Giuliani and Mitt “Double Git” Romney to prove who is more innately xenophobic and racist, last night’s round goes to Mitt.

I know Giuliani thought he was going to win the day when he jabbed at Romney for allowing “Illegal immigrants” to mow his lawn, but Romney scored with a counterpunch that could have only originated deep down in his solar plexus:

Giuliani: There was even a sanctuary mansion. At his own home, illegal immigrants were being employed, not being turned into anybody or by anyone. And then when he deputized the police, he did it two weeks before he was going to leave office, and they never even seemed to catch the illegal immigrants that were working at his mansion. So I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city.

Romney: Mayor, you know better than that.

(Laughter)

Giuliani: No ...

Romney: OK, then listen. All right? Then listen. First of all ...

Giuliani: You did have illegal immigrants working at your mansion, didn't you?

Romney: No, I did not, so let's just talk about that. Are you suggesting, Mr. Mayor -- because I think it is really kind of offensive actually to suggest, to say look, you know what, if you are a homeowner and you hire a company to come provide a service at your home -- paint the home, put on the roof. If you hear someone that is working out there, not that you have employed, but that the company has.

If you hear someone with a funny accent, you, as a homeowner, are supposed to go out there and say, "I want to see your papers."

Is that what you're suggesting?

Funny accent? I gotta think that the Detroit-born son of a Mexican-born father probably sounded a little funny to his former constituents in South Boston, but if that’s how Mitt feels in his gut, give him big bigot points for letting it gurgle out.

It was a special moment.

While the Democratic debates have been a relative waste of time with the likes of Timmeh! and Wolfie spending half the time trying to provoke fights between Senators Clinton and Obama, I honestly think all of America should be exposed to some of these Republican tussles. Everyone should hear what passes for statesmanship, morality, and leadership in the bowls of the GOP. With the far more eclectic and ecumenical American electorate, it can only do Republicans harm—so it can only do America good.

(cross-posted on The Seminal)

Katie writes a hit piece

I’m short on time, so I’m going to cut back on what could be a point by point refutation of many of the assertions published in today’s New York Times in a story by Kate Zernike about the relationship between John Kerry and John Edwards during the 2004 campaign—let me just say that the article is rife with unnamed sources, ignores the role of Bob Shrum in counseling Kerry not to disavow his vote to authorize the Iraqi incursion, and is filled with reductive statements that clearly represent opinion rather than a logical conclusion based on the evidence laid out in prior paragraphs.

In place of that tome, I’d like to make a couple of quick observations:

Almost every single line in Zernike’s story relates to 2004. It is highly critical of Edwards vis-à-vis his time on the campaign trail with John Kerry, but the article barely begins to explain what the three-and-a-half-year-old anecdotes have to do with today, here, now, in 2007. There are maybe three or four paragraphs, and one of them is mostly a quote that, if anything, reveals how little any of this story’s preoccupations matter today:

“There’s no question John Edwards is different now than he was in 2004,” said Peter Scher, whom Mr. Kerry recruited to run Mr. Edwards’s vice-presidential campaign. “There’s a great deal more confidence in his own instincts and his own judgment. You see much less reliance on consultants and pollsters and media advisers, and more of a willingness to say what he believes and let the chips fall where they may.”

Write this story for the Week in Review section in December of 2004, fine—interesting even—but what makes this even remotely worthy of front page coverage now? I can’t answer that question—if Kate could, she should have put it in print (though probably on the opinion pages).

However, even more importantly, as little as there is in this piece to tie it to the current campaign, what there is dwarfs the amount of reporting Zernike does on today’s issues. There is zero—not one line is devoted to what the 2008 election is, you know, about. Not a word about Edwards’s positions or proposals, not a word about his stump speech, not a word about his campaign today. There is nothing describing what Edwards proposes to do about healthcare, about poverty, about domestic security, about ending torture and rendition, about restoring the Constitution, about fixing the VA—nothing! Even when it comes to Iraq, the only discussion is about whether Kerry or Edwards renounced their 2002 votes first; Zernike has seemingly no interest in informing her readers about where Edwards stands today, or what he says he will do in 2009.

In fact, it appears that Kate Zernike and her Times editors have no interest in informing us readers about Edwards at all. I know I live in Clinton country here in New York, so maybe I shouldn’t expect better from the New York Times, but the Times is called “the paper of record,” and for the record, the only stories I’ve seen about Edwards this month have been about his campaign (how it’s in trouble), his fundraising (how it’s in trouble), and now, about how troubled his relationship was with Sen. Kerry back in 2004.

Isn’t it about time the Times got with the times? Isn’t about time they used today’s front page to inform us readers about today’s concerns? Isn’t it about time we got some campaign coverage that didn’t reduce everything to a cat fight, a horse race, a game show, a beauty pageant, or a coronation?

Maybe Zernike sees issues as nothing more than political footballs, and perhaps she is betting on Clinton to win this one by a couple of touchdowns, so the other campaigns are just the halftime show. But because the Times still claims to be a newspaper, isn’t it about time they really covered this year’s Edwards campaign, instead of just covering the spread?

(cross-posted on capitoilette, The Seminal, and Daily Kos)

first things first

While it can be argued that all the news that’s fit to print doesn’t always get printed in the New York Times, I would like to take a brief moment to (again) critique a couple of instances when the question was not whether or not it was printed, but where.

First up, a story that appeared on the front page. . . of the Business section:

The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.

While this is certainly big business news, since Qwest chief Joseph Nacchio is fighting to stay out of jail after being convicted on insider trading charges in April, it is so much bigger than a back section implies. First, there is the open question of whether Nacchio was singled out for prosecution after failing to cooperate with Bush Administration requests to wiretap without warrant conversations involving American citizens inside the US—and that is huge—but bigger, now, to my mind, is the revelation that Bush’s NSA sought unprecedented (and illegal) spy powers well in advance of the events that Bush and company now argue necessitated these unconstitutional intrusions.

This story was actually first reported in the Rocky Mountain News last Thursday, but it took three more days to migrate to the paper of record. If corroborated, Nacchio’s allegation proves once and for all that the war on terror™ is nothing but a smokescreen for far more sinister designs. If this story received the proper front-page treatment, perhaps it might convince more congressional Democrats that Bush/Cheney’s insistence upon weaker FISA requirements is not about keeping America safe, but is about stifling dissent and fighting political opponents. (Remember that there is already anecdotal evidence that journalists have been spied upon under some NSA program or programs.)

One congressional Democrat that does read the business section, and, so, does suspect nefarious doings, is Michigan Rep. John Conyers. In a letter to DNI McConnell and a DoJ official, Conyers has asked for a full briefing on pre-9/11 spy activities, and all relevant documents.

Let’s see where (or if) that story lands in today’s papers.

. . .

Another interesting story from Sunday’s paper could be found in “Week in Review.”

Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted against it. Senator Barack Obama said he would have voted against it if he had voted. Former Senator John Edwards implied he would have voted against it if he could vote.

And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? She voted in favor of the measure in question, which asked the Bush administration to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move — more hawkish than even most of the Bush administration has been willing to venture so far — would intensify America’s continuing confrontation with Iran, many foreign policy experts say.

While the “Week in Review” section is one of the better parts of Sunday’s New York Times, it is usually considered the province of analysis, commentary, and opinion, and not so much the place where the Gray Lady reports her best news. . . which makes Helene Cooper’s story (quoted above) sorely misplaced.

For this article is actually what I would call news reporting. It gives the reader some facts, like who voted how, and what the resolution means in the estimation of several experts. It relays the widely held perception that Sen. Clinton is not so much conveying her positions to primary voters as positioning herself for the general election, but also gives room for Clinton’s campaign to respond.

It is far more informative, and, as I see it, more interesting and important, than the latest fundraising numbers. . . which regularly appear on the front page—the very front page—of the Times, usually above the fold.

It is fine to want to understand how a candidate runs, but not at the expense of knowing where she stands. It is hard not to wonder about editorial priorities—or the priorities of the editors, for that matter—when the front-page news winds up in places like the business section, while money news winds up on the front page.

Update: Could the Nacchio/wiretap story have legs? Appearing this afternoon on the “Reporter’s Notebook” segment of the PRI program To the Point, Caroline Frederickson, Director of the ACLU's legislative office in Washington, details the story of Joseph Nacchio and Bush Administration warrantless surveillance for a national radio audience. Frederickson outlines the issues raised by the Nacchio revelations and amplifies what’s at stake as clearly, succinctly, and forthrightly as I have heard to date. Explaining the speciousness of administration arguments for expanded spy capabilities with minimal oversight now that it is apparent that the NSA started domestic spying early in 2001, Frederickson asks, “How then will that keep us safer if 9/11 followed the expanded capability?”

It’s a great question, and one I’d like to see asked by many more news outlets—and many more congressional Democrats.



(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

sorry, senator, we don’t want tunas with good taste

I don’t care about your political skills; I care about the country.

I don’t want a candidate that leads in the polls; I want a candidate that leads.

Those are just two of may lines I couldn’t work into today’s post on capitoilette.

road kill

Much has already been made of this new, very real, not-a-joke-I-swear-it, “wide stance” logo for next year’s Republican National Convention (for instance, do those at the RNC know that an elephant only stands on his two hind legs for one reason?), but I just can’t get over that this pachyderm in profile looks flat and dead. I know that cartoon shorthand more often uses Xs to connote a character’s demise, but, to my eye, that star really does have the same effect. Combine that with the skid marks on its back, and what else am I supposed to take away from this image?

You can’t make metaphors like this up.

a different kind of page scandal

While four reporters combined forces on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times for not one, but two long stories about the race for the White House, 2008, one will have to turn all the way to page 11—of the opinion section—to find some actual reporting.

Perhaps I should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but I can’t help but observe that while Messrs. Nagourney, Zeleny, Cooper, and Luo spend prize, above-the-fold real estate covering the horserace, the editorial board has actually taken the time, and the entire space allotted for all editorials, to detail the differences between all the major presidential candidates of both parties on the subject of national health coverage.

It strikes me as just a bit confused and confusing, not that the editorial board should express interest in the positions of would-be chief executives, but that a reporter with the experience or esteem of any of the men mentioned above can’t muster the same degree of fascination—or that the editors of the news portion of the newspaper don’t see fit, after all the navel gazing of the Judy Miller/Jason Blair years, to mandate that when covering a political race, they report on what ideas make candidates run, rather than handicap how they are running.

Democrats again willing to compromise on Iraq

That, of course, would have been a more accurate headline for today’s lead story in the New York Times:

Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”

Or, another possibility would be: Democrats willing to compromise values over Iraq.

Or, maybe: Democrats willing to provide political cover for sinking Republicans.

Some poker face, gentlemen.

Seriously, somebody needs to slap Sens. Carl Levin and Harry Reid silly. Even if compromise was a laudable goal here—and it certainly is not—who announces in advance of a negotiation that they are prepared to give away the store?

Here’s an example: How much you want for that turkey? I’m going to offer you a dollar, but I’m really willing to go as high as you want.

Does that sound like a good strategy to you?

Let’s get this straight, guys: There is no “mixed picture” on “progress” in Iraq. The GAO report and the latest NIE both confirm that the Bush escalation has failed. There is no way to “win” this war. The Iraq debacle is hugely unpopular with American voters. Coalition troops are dying daily for no other reason than to save face for the Bush Administration and its Republican enablers. Democrats took both houses of Congress in 2006 because voters expected them to end the occupation. Americans are not looking for some face-saving measure, and no one is interested in compromise except the president who is content to run out the clock on Iraq, and Republican members of Congress who are looking for anything that sounds vaguely pro-drawdown to hang their hat on come November 2008.

This Democratic strategy doesn’t “peel off” Republicans—it props them up.

And meanwhile, people die.

How’s that gonna look come ’08?

The Democrats control Congress—they control the budgets for this war. Keep sending bills to the president that include specific deadlines for withdrawal over the next year. De-fund anything that doesn’t meet those goals. Let the president veto it. Let the extremely unpopular Bush go on TV and explain that he needs to extend this extremely unpopular war for another 2, 4, 6, 8 months. Let him. Every time the president opens his mouth, another Republican loses his seat in Congress.

Pretty much that’s how it works. The polls say so. Bush is at a place now where he actually goes down in popularity every time he makes a media push.

So let him blab about how Democrats want to bring the troops home but he wants them to stay. Let Bush talk Iraq, Iraq, Iraq all the way through to next fall.

I dare you.

You can thank me in November.

shocked, shocked. . .

On a day when Halliburton announced a 19% uptick in second quarter profits, is it of any particular amount of surprise to learn that the massive tax-payer-funded cash giveaway also known as the war in Iraq has resulted in massive graft and corruption?

A former officer in the U.S. Army Reserves pleaded guilty Monday to bribery, conspiracy and money laundering charges in connection with a government contracting scheme in Balad, Iraq.

John Allen Rivard, 48, entered the plea before U.S. Magistrate Andrew W. Austin. Rivard pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired with a government contractor and accepted bribes to steer federally funded contracts to the contractor's company from April 2004 through August 2005. At the time, Rivard was deployed for logistical support near Balad.

In exchange for 5 percent of the contracts' values, Rivard awarded multimillion dollar contracts for such items as tractor trailers.

The total value of the contracts awarded was approximately $21 million (€15.19 million), according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Rivard said he received more than $220,000 (€159,178) in bribe payments. Rivard also confessed to conspiring with others in the United States to launder the proceeds of the bribery scheme, sending money to others to purchase, among other things, rent on a West Hollywood, California apartment and a down payment on a new BMW convertible.

From a tent in Balad (home to the massive Camp Anaconda) with a Humvee parked outside to an apartment in West Hollywood and a Beemer—why, it’s the American dream!

(Of course, here in Bush’s opportunity society, some less, shall we say, “enterprising” Iraq veterans have had to resort to a lawsuit in an attempt to pry a few dollars worth of disability pay from the underfunded kakistocracy commonly referred to as the VA.)

I would like to think that some smart presidential aspirant could cut through the “everybody does it” clutter to expose the Bush/Cheney Administration for the giant kleptocracy it really is.

Everybody doesn’t do this. This is something completely different. This is what happens when a unitary, greedy executive operates without oversight for over half a decade. This is what happens when you appoint loyal ideologues and cronies to positions of authority. This is what happens when White House war-making authority is allowed to flourish unchecked by the Congress. This is what happens when you go into war without a clue of how to get out. This is what happens when foreign policy exists only to service domestic electoral concerns. This is what happens when Pentagon auditors are overruled and punished for flagging cost overruns.

Alas, things being what they are, this is what happens when you vote Republican.


(PS Yes, I know I just used this headline in April—this is also what happens when you elect Republicans.)


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

with friends like these

At the very same time Senator Asshole was on the floor of the Senate shilling for the current president’s war, McCain’s top two campaign aids were announcing that they were no longer going to work to make Johnny Mac the next president.

“Ironic,” says Joe Sudbay over at AMERICAblog:

In 2000, the Bush team destroyed McCain's presidential aspirations by running a fiercely negative campaign against him. In 2008, the Bush team destroyed McCain's presidential aspirations because the Senator remained fiercely loyal to the failed policies of the failed presidency of George Bush.

Most likely, both Bush (who did his own fantasyland fear mongering on Tuesday) and McCain will spin all of this as the story of two men of conviction standing side by side, come what may. But the reality is more tawdry.

McCain has been contorting himself and twisting his “straight talk” for the better part of this decade in a failed attempt to find his party’s ideological sweet spot, while the president McCain has chosen to mimic stands more or less frozen, increasingly desperate for allies, and even more desperate for approval from his daddy’s generation.

McCain clings to his lead-lined life preserver while Bush grasps at any straw man that will have him—even one going down in flames. It’s getting so it is hard to tell who is the greater liability for whom. Is it worse for McCain to be seen as so tied to Mr. 29%, or is it worse for Bush to have Senator McFlop as his biggest cheerleader?

the new number one reason to stop Hillary Clinton from getting the Democratic nomination

If you don’t, you’ll have to listen to this. . .
over and over. . .
all the way through next November.


Unlike StarKist, we want a president with good taste. . . sheesh!

More later. . . .

waterboarding is for pussies

I suppose that the mayor who was sued for violating the constitution 17 times during his tenure, praised the police after the killing of Amadou Diallo, and provided the namesake war cry for the cops that sodomized Abner Louima with a wooden stick and then shoved the same stick in Louima’s mouth wouldn’t have a problem with waterboarding. . . but what are the other guys’ excuses?

all this oversight makes me wet

Drew Weston has a nice piece up on TAP about building a stronger Democratic brand for the 2008 elections. While I find much of the advice sound, I think Weston’s parting shot misses the mark:

The only other prerequisite to building a coherent brand is to know what you stand for. That may be the hardest one of all.

Or maybe I should have said “doesn’t hold water.” Swim with me over to capitoilette and I will explain.