Wow, he figured that out just in time, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (31)
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Pic swiped from Neocon Express

Trade open secrets:

Well, I think the way the national media in this country right is performing, is disgraceful. And I mean, when we - "The Washington Post" had the courage to admit that it - Deborah Howell, the public editor, the ombudsman for the "Washington Post" ran a piece this past Sunday acknowledging that "The Washington Post" has put Barack Obama on the front pages of the Washington Post three times as many times as Senator McCain. "Time" magazine has run seven covers with Obama. McCain two. I mean, this is not close, folks. And it is ugly. It is nasty. And I guarantee you, we are watching a shift in the way in which the media in this country, which is already reviled by the public, I believe it's going to be even worse.

I'm an advocacy journalist. I'm an independent populist. When I speak, people know where I'm coming from. When these news organizations are doing this and trying to pretend cloaking themselves in the mantle of objectivity, you know, they're silly, (trulish), absolutely in my opinion, despicable phonies.

Another Country Heard from: Liberal historian Sean Wilentz castigates the press for protecting and cocooning Obama, letting him coast on breezy platitudes and bumper-sticker manifestos, thus leaving him free to refrain from developing any specific (announced) platform or reason for his candidacy, other than "he's cool and he's black."

Leaving him "the most unformed candidate in the history of modern presidential politics.

Obama's most ardent admirers, who include much of the political press and practically all of the liberal intelligentsia, will almost certainly report and analyze [Obama's Invesco Field speech] as a mammoth historical occasion, and quite possibly praise the speech as one of the greatest political orations ever. But will Obama, amid the pulsating theatrics, also attempt the less glamorous and more difficult task of explaining specifically where he wants to move the country, and how he proposes to move it, above and beyond reciting his policy positions? History, as well as recent public-opinion polls, suggests that he badly needs to do so. As a lifelong Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries, I would like to see him succeed in fulfilling his promise.

...

Senator Obama's efforts to reinterpret the Democratic legacy have thus far amounted chiefly to promising a dramatic break with the status quo. His rhetoric of "hope" and "change" has thrilled millions of Democrats and helped secure the party's nomination. Yet millions of other Democrats still find his appeals wispy and unconvincing...

...

Then, suddenly this summer, Russia attacked Georgia—and Obama's immediate reaction was to call for reasonableness and good intentions and urge both sides to show restraint and enter into direct talks. Unfortunately his appeal sounded almost like a caricature of liberal wishful thinking. It was left to his opponent, John McCain—whose own past judgments on foreign policy demand scrutiny—to declare right away the sort of thing that might have come naturally to previous generations of liberal Democrats (let alone to a conservative Republican): that "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory." Beyond the matter of experience, beyond how thoroughly the two candidates had thought through the situation, the difference highlighted how Obama still lacks a comprehensive vision of international politics.

...

That Obama's record and statements have created any other impression cannot be ascribed only to his campaign's political skills and the news media's favor. Liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama's image. Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers stepped forward to question Obama's rationalizations about his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, they hailed his ever-changing self-justifications and sometimes tawdry logic—equating his own white grandmother's discomfort in the presence of a menacing stranger with Wright's hateful sermons—as worthy of the monumental addresses of Lincoln. Liberal intellectuals actually could have aided their candidate, while also doing their professional duty, by pressing him on his patently evasive accounts about various matters, such as his connections with the convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, or his more-than-informal ties to the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, including their years of association overseeing an expensive, high-profile, but fruitless public-school reform effort in Chicago. Instead, the intellectuals have failed Obama as well as their readers by branding such questioning as irrelevant, malicious or heretical.

...

On these fundamental questions may hang the fate of Obama's candidacy. In the absence of a compelling record, set speeches, even with the most stirring words, will not resolve these matters. And until he resolves them, Obama will remain the most unformed candidate in the modern history of presidential politics.

Guide to reading that piece: Skim/skip when he begins recounting the legacies of past Democratic presidents from the end of page one to the end of page 2. All nonsense. Then start reading again.

Good stuff, except for the page-count-padding review of history we all basically know.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (39)
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She says he called her an "Uncle Tom," and witnesses back her up.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (17)
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Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (29)
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Alice H. is documenting the strange interdimensional visitors.

Plus lots of videos. You will not be surprised to hear there is a lot of drumming.

Ninja'd! Darn, someone else got this already... oh well, you can never have enough pictures of Giant Paper Machiere Bush Heads.

Bonus! In DC (I think), protesters announce their unity with... Moqtada al-Sadr
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (58)
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This is sheer insanity. It was crazy before the Biden pick and would be reckless nonsense after it, but Bill Kristol gives it a shot in his NY Times column (link to the Weekly Standard).

Lieberman could hold his own against Biden in a debate. He would reinforce McCainÂ’s overall message of foreign policy experience and hawkishness. HeÂ’s a strong and disciplined candidate.

But he is pro-abortion rights, and having been a Democrat all his life, he has a moderately liberal voting record on lots of issues.

Now as a matter of governance, thereÂ’s no reason to think this would much matter. McCain has made clear his will be a pro-life administration. And as a one-off, quasi-national-unity ticket, with Lieberman renouncing any further ambition to run for the presidency, a McCain-Lieberman administration wouldnÂ’t threaten the continuance of the G.O.P. as a pro-life party. In other areas, no one seriously thinks the policies of a McCain-Lieberman administration would be appreciably different from those, say, of a McCain-Pawlenty administration.

Would McCain-Lieberman have a better prospect of winning than the more conventional alternatives? If they could get over the early hurdles of a messy convention and an awful lot of conservative angst and anger, IÂ’ve come to think so.

It's clear that Biden is going to be the attack dog in this campaign. Yes, Lieberman has gone after Obama on Iraq and foreign policy but how does he go after him and Biden on domestic issues they agree on? McCain needs someone who will attack from the right, Lieberman, with his 16 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, isn't that guy.

Besides, what would their slogan be? Joe Lieberman for VP, He Was Good Enough for Al Gore!

I agree that Biden's selection makes it harder to pick Pawlenty or Palin given the fact they may get creamed by Biden in the debate (the same goes for electoral novices Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman). That said, Dan Quayle got creamed by Lloyd Bentsen in their debate (at least in the popular telling of it) and George H.W. Bush still won.

The other knock against that group is they don't have a lot of experience. Okay but I'm not sure how much mileage the Democrats can get out of knocking the experience level of the bottom of the Republican ticket given their problems with that at the top of theirs. Besides, by any measure Palin and Pwlenty have more experience than Obama does.

Mitt Romney is now a tougher sell because of the elitist, out of touch, how many homes do you own thing (it's not even an issue, just a thing). Sure it's crap but elections have been won and lost on less and if they can portray McCain as rich and out of touch, how exactly does adding a guy that makes Cindy McCain's family look poor help?

In the end, I think they are going to have to suck it up and pick Romney. Populism only goes so far in elections and I think the upside to Romney outweighs the risk.

I'll leave it for another day to get into how exactly Mitt Romney became the great conservative hope, for now I hope he gets the nod.

We'll find out Friday what McCain thinks.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:28 AM | Comments (63)
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In an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle like the Republicans did by having Zell Miller address the 2004 convention, the Democrats are trotting out their own Republican to speak to the convention tonight. They've chosen former Representative Jim Leach, a liberal Republican from the Eastern Iowa district that includes the University of Iowa and several small liberal colleges. Would it be fair to say that Leach (or as Lincoln Chafee calls him, "that goddamn disloyal RINO from Iowa") is just slightly out of mainstream Republican politics? Yeah, I think that's fair.

If you choose to watch Leach's speech tonight, just remember that Zell Miller represented all the Democrats who believe that America is a good country, our military tries to represent us honestly and honorably at all times, and that taxing the rich out of existence eventually leaves us all in the poorhouse. Jim Leach? He represents all the Republicans who think that John McCain is too conservative. I don't really think it's an even matchup.

Jim Leach is to Republicans what Aquaman is to Superheros: He's got the suit, and he's even got some so-called "superpowers" (talking to fish? I guess that would come in handy if you worked the fryer at Long John Silvers, or something like that), but all the REAL superheros laugh at him behind his back.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 09:13 AM | Comments (25)
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Winter comes early...

.DAY ONE...TODAY AND TONIGHT

WIDESPREAD FROST IS EXPECTED OVER THE INTERIOR WEST EARLY THIS
MORNING...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:27 AM | Comments (33)
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I'm fairly certain that Ace has written about this topic before. Still, the article in the N.Y. Times is worth a minute:

They fear that growing numbers of white voters and policy makers will decide that eradicating racial discrimination and ensuring equal opportunity have largely been done.

"I worry that there is a segment of the population that might be harder to reach, average citizens who will say: 'Come on. We might have a black president, so we must be over it,' " said Mr. Harrison, 59, a sociologist at Howard University and a consultant for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies here.

"That is the danger, that we declare victory," said Mr. Harrison, who fears that poor blacks will increasingly be blamed for their troubles. "Historic as this moment is, it does not signify a major victory in the ongoing, daily battle."

This is the paradox of the successful social activist. As they get closer to achieving their goal, it becomes relatively less important that they do so. Other issues become more pressing and crowd out the attention and the money that activists depend on.

Of course, there are a few assumptions at work here. First, it is an uncompromising article of faith for civil rights activists that there will always be racism and racial discrimination. It simply will not end, ever. More than that, as far as they are concerned any amount of racism and racial discrimination justifies government intervention in the form of remedial racial preferences and quotas. (Just ignore the ironic dissonance, of course.)

Try to convince them that racial discrimination against minorities isn't so pervasive as to require legislative and judicial contortions to create and maintain state-supported racial discrimination against other groups and you will hear a lot of hemming and hawing and "We're just not there yet." And my suggestion is that you wear a rain slicker if you want to argue that class discrimination is a more destructive problem than race discrimination these days.

Second, and more troubling, is the assumption made about the goal of these activists. Most say the point is to end racism and racial discrimination. But too often it appears that the actual goal is to get as many benefits as possible for minority groups. Racism is simply a handy excuse to demand more attention, more payouts, and more preferences. In fact, these aren't social activists at all. They are lobbyists masquerading as civil rights defenders. These are the folks who turned the idea of a color-blind society into a punchline.

An Obama presidency, or even just his nomination and candidacy, should be seen as a victory for racial equality. If activists are worrying over just how invisible racial discrimination has become then it is time to man up and declare victory. Yes, it will be a change to not be part of a super-special, jump-to-the-front-of-the-line group, but wasn't that the whole point? God willing, at some point the modern civil rights movement will wake up and realize not just that everyone is equal, but that everyone deserves to be treated equally.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:21 AM | Comments (51)
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Debra Bartoshevich was a Hillary delegate until she announced she couldn't support Obama and would be voting for McCain. The Democrats gave her the boot so now she's cutting spots for McCain.

Many of us on the right noted during the primary that there really wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Obama and Hillary on policy, it was simply a matter of which type of the identity politics history did you wanted to make. Esentially this ad is targeting people like Bartoshevich who want to throw a tantrum over getting beat.

While I understand why McCain needs these votes, as a conservative it's a little disconcerting how easy it is for these Hillary voters to move to McCain. They really shouldn't be as comfortable with the Republican nominee as they are.

Such is life, I guess. At least this election cycle.

UPDATE: "rockmom" makes a pretty good argument in the comments why disaffected Hillary voters seem to be immune to Obama's supposed charms and won't just shut up and get in line.

Barack Obama is every older woman's nightmare -- the slick talking, good looking, totally unqualified man who waltzes in and gets the big job instead of the woman who thought she would get it by sheer force of dogged hard work and experience. A huge number of women have had this experience or know someone who has. I personally have had it twice. Women like this see Hillary as having done everything right to earn the Democratic nomination, getting the most votes, having the best ideas and most complete plans, and just plain working harder, but somehow still getting screwed out of it by the slick young empty suit. It is viscerally impossible for such women to vote for Barack Obama, no matter how much they might agree with him on policy. They simply don't believe him on policy either - such men will say and do anything to talk their way into the job, and who knows what they will then do once they get it?

Posted by: DrewM at 07:01 AM | Comments (49)
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