David Ignatius’s column in the Post frames Obama’s supposed unflappability as “cool,” unflinching. He seems a little flappable to me sometimes, but it’s a good political figure-ground experiment: you can read the coolness as statemanlike surety or uptight aloofness. (Guess which one the media will be going with this summer.) Ignatius captures some of [...]
As the primary winds down, Erica Barnett at I’m Sick Of Your Insane Demands (which, let’s face it, you should be reading for the title alone, never mind all the amazing content), maps out some of the really nasty background chatter to this primary season. This is, in part, why I thought it was fair [...]
The irrepressible Dave Neiwart at Orcinus has a lengthy post about the now well-established patterns of racially charged (and otherwise duplicitous) political advertising. Well worth a couple of minutes to get a feel for just how institutionalized this is:
It’s important to understand the role that people like [Floyd] Brown [creator of the "Willie Horton" ads] [...]
Why this election matters, Item #11,273:
The incidents are not limited to burglaries. In Mississippi, former Judge John Whitfield was the victim of arson at his office. In Alabama, the whistleblower in the Don Siegelman case, Dana Jill Simpson, had her home burned down, and shortly thereafter her car was allegedly forced off the road.
While there [...]
Two excellent, disparate points in comments highlighted at TPM. First one, then the other.
First one…
…as someone who was marching in New Hampshire in 1991 for Bill Clinton, who ran the campus Democrats for his ‘92 campaign, who interned in his White House, who argued against impeachment at every turn, who even defended the pardons, who [...]
Tristero at Hullaballoo quoting Matt Taibi on the church run by McCain’s Christian fig leaf, John Hagee:
By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy [...]
… and the pitch. Via Digby:
… The story was a giggling GOP oppo plant, but that didn’t stop the kewl kidz from running with it. I don’t need to remind you about John Kerry and his “butler” and the “green tea” and the “wit-whiz” psuedoscandals of 2004. If Clinton were still the front runner, she’d [...]
Yeah, yeah, I know. I just got this superdelegate counter link at CNN (which I admit is totally fun) from a good friend who sort of reiterated the now-familiar theme (paraphrasing): “She can’t win! She’s destroying the party! She’s got to quit!” As my friend said, “Do the math yourself.” My email response….
Okay. Just for [...]
Reed Hundt at TPM takes an avuncular tone arguing for reason and strategy in the liberal blogosphere. I’ll tilt at that windmill with him:
… What bloggers need to do is focus now on the madness and not on the Clinton vs Obama counterpoint, which all of us can agree is getting old. What all Democrats [...]
Probably won’t be posting much as I try to dig out from missing a couple of weeks (quarters are really, really, really short). But here’s Greenwald tirelessly arguing against the crazy double-standard in our mainstream political media. Seriously, this guy is going to end up screaming out the window… and he’ll be right.
…The reason the [...]
