Rip tides of narrative and reality

The national press is rightly impressed with Obama's fundraising, but focusing on that rare apparent advantage obscures the reality that bleeds through lower in the story:

Republican officials point out that, when the RNC totals are combined with the $21 million in cash that McCain held at the end of July, they actually have slightly more money available for the White House contest than do Democrats. (Combined figures show Republicans with $96 million and Democrats with $94.3)

So, parity. Forget the Republican underdog story. It's bullshit.

Combine this parity with unmeasured but almost certain Republican advantages in 527s, and the ocean of slime coming from the right will get deeper and deeper before the tide ebbs off the beach and leaves us.

We'll see if there's a strong enough rip current to drown Obama. I hope he's strong enough to swim around it.

Third person omniscient bullshit

Glenn Beck is so full of bullshit that it's hard to know where to start cleaning it up.

Here, he starts and finishes with this utter nonsense:

"This is for America. This is for NATO. This is for Bush." These were the phrases that the president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvilli, told me were on Russian bombs...

I suppose Saakashvilli has super hearing to match the super vision that gives him the ability to read chalk off of falling bombs. Beck must think so. He takes everything Saakashvilli says as if he's George Washington and James Madison and who else could he roll into his ball of over-the-top hyperbole?

Later, Beck gives the UN the back of his hand for merely condemning the Russian invasion - as if the U.S. has done anything stronger. Oh, I forgot, we cancelled a joint military exercise with Russia. That'll teach 'em!

Beck would be an embarrassment to McCNN if they were capable of it. When will they have a liberal host who gets months and months of promotion? Never, that would make too much sense.

But someone ought to be reminding viewers and readers that Russia is engaged in the same sort of violation of international law in Georgia as we are Iraq.

Unbelievable gall

It's scary how bereft of any unselfish principles the Republicans are.

Barack Obama is too Presidential overseas, and there's a week-long shitstorm on cable about it.

John McCain meddles in the Russia-Georgia crisis, and the Washington Post finally catches up to Digby with a story on A16.

But he's not presumptuous. That's a bad thing, and no Republican can be bad by definition! IOKIYAR!

I would really prefer to have a President who holds himself to the same standard he holds others to. Without that, there's no morality, there's no ethics, and there's no law. Remind you of anyone?

Why Jerome Corsi has work

Why is Jerome Corsi on your television and in the New York Times? He has been caught writing things under a pseudonym that would normally exclude him from ever showing up on TV again. He's a "reporter" for WorldNetDaily, a wingnut font of heavily aerated liquid bullshit (I wouldn't link to them for hard, cold cash). I don't mean the lies and innuendo against Democrats (John Kerry's a communist, fer chrissakes) - they're always fair game in a way that Republicans are not. I don't mean Muslims, either. He has said hateful things about Catholics.

Yet he's still on Larry King Live.

Corsi is a lunatic, but he knows how to work the media system:

• As they do with all their vicious pets, Republicans will help him out even if he claims not to be one of them. After all, Mary Matalin, mainstream Cheneyite operator who can always be counted on to defend wingnut lies, published this book. If the GOPers have to, they'll drop him like a hot potato - but they'll keep paying him.
  
• There will be no consequences for him personally. Libel is virtually impossible for a public figure to prove since New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan even if his actual malice toward Obama is stated explicitly in his book.
  
• Wingnut interest groups (Richard Mellon Scaife, anyone?) will buy his scurrilous books in bulk and thrust it high on the NYT bestseller list. Who cares if anyone reads it?
• Bulk purchases provide a nice payday so that Corsi can continue the manufacture of sleaze.
  
• More important, they guarantee his presence on the TV screen. The media can't turn down a bestselling author, no matter how odious or dishonest.
  

Why would Simon & Schuster permit their brand to be sullied by association with these lies and all the other lies Matalin has thrust into print? Don't be a dummy! Money, nothing else. They'd ship boxes full of styrofoam peanuts if they could invoice a dozen copies per box of this rotten tripe.

So, why is there nothing like this on the left?

• The right pays better.
• Training by the American Petroleum Institute and the Tobacco Institute hews to the right.
• Democrats still think that politics is about ideas. How stupid is that! (Of course, I keep pretending that, too.)
• The left cares about fairness. Sometimes our caring is vestigial and compromised and incomplete, but that's what motivates us. The right cares about retaining the power to prevent their being called to account for their unfairness.

Asleep at the switch again

Republicans talk tough, but:

The United States has repositioned some of its intelligence assets to provide the Bush administration with direct information about the conflict in Georgia and Russian military movements, a U.S. defense official said Thursday.

...

In the initial days of the Russian-Georgian conflict, the United States did not have its own assessment of the fighting, said the official, who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Having it both ways

Sums up blood 'n' guts McCain in one sentence:

Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that the crisis in Georgia should not be used to score political points, but his campaign has stepped up its attacks on Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy credentials.

Anyone want to guess which half McCNN calls out as a story highlight? Yep, it's obvious:

• McCain says crisis should not be used to score political points

While he's scoring every point he can. No shame from him, just advocacy for the use of force whenever there's a question. That's why I put him in the bully faction of the Republican Party.

A pundit gets the values of journalism

Pundits usually make their livings with heavy breathing on the latest hot story of the day, but Roland Martin gets news values right:

We should forget the nonsense about the competitive pressure to break the story.

The rules are simple: Either you have the facts or you don't. If you do, you run with the story. If you don't, you leave it alone.

Sadly, few news people exhibit this any more.

McCain's strengths

According to Bill Schneider at McCNN, bullshit, blather, and impotent bluster are John McCain's strengths. Yeah, he would be a great choice. We can always use another war to set America right.

Update: Not satisfied with Schneider's slighty mealy-mouthed statement of the McCain strong like bull talking point, McCNN gives Bushist Linda Sanchez a second crack at it here. She says McCain "conveyed strength and determination," which is conservative code for macho bluster. These people are idiots, and they expect us to be, too.

Astronomy break

I've been so busy griping about nonsense this summer, among other things, that unless I happen to catch one tomorrow, I've missed the Perseid meteor shower. With the gibbous moon waxing, it wasn't a good August to see much anyway, and the near saturation of the atmosphere with water vapor renders everything into a soft focus more suitable for an aging actress than for brilliant brief flashes of fire.

I wonder how the Quadrantids will be in January. I once fell asleep in my parka and sleeping bag in the back yard waiting for more Quadrantids. Maybe I'll need to do that again. (No, I'm not worried about the neighborhood coyotes.)

It always does me good to remember that gravity will continue to turn the world no matter how foolish or insightful the voters turn out to be in November (and September, here in Massachusetts).

Click image for public domain claim at Wikimedia Commons.

Why not say it

Only a Democrat gives a shit about repairing New Orleans for the poor people who used to live there, yet there's no mention in the editorial of the yawning partisan divide. Instead, the liberal media as represented by the New York Times is too ... establishment to say something so direct and obvious and hurtful to one side of the great bipartisan elite who really run this country and most of the buffets that journalists might graze on.

(Wow. That sounds really bitter.)

Race in the hole

Josh Marshall hits bulls-eye in the bullshit:

How do you think McCain's memos read?

Only the deeply naive or the deliberately oblivious -- which regrettably includes the greater number of the people covering the campaign -- don't know the answer to that question.

If Mark Penn wrote xenophobic crap, you know the little Rovians are filling up briefing books with it. Or else you're a dunce.

Tsk-tsk, but too bad

Justice Department officials committed no crime by letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday, speaking to the American Bar Association.

No accountability, no consequences, no punishment - the Republican way (when Republicans are in the dock). It was wrong, uh, improper, but too bad. Oops.

That's all we'll ever get from so-called law and order Republicans.

If President Obama fires all the Bushist hires, and he should, do you think "oops" will be enough?

Update: Please let us waste even more of your time.

I think the Bushists are determined to kill Civil Service, too. Honestly, is there any law left that they're not openly contemptuous of?

Why isn't this much much worse than "no controlling legal authority"?

Even when they try the truth

Every now and then, someone in the media tries to set the record semi-straight: Obama's not elitist for vacationing in Hawaii, the state of his birth. Problem is, they always start by reviewing the ridiculous Republican spin. In this case, their production people get the bullshit Republican message into the headline.

Just once, I'd like to see "GOP pushes obvious hogwash."

Update: I figured it out: The Republicans think that the fact that Duhbya vacationed in the shittiest vacation spot in America sets a new, iron-clad rule that every American Presidential contender must vacation in a shitty place and clear brush while doing it. Never mind that Obama doesn't have the money that the Bushes have to buy a vanity ranch.

Who's credible

The left blogosphere, especially Atrios, had it in for Mark Penn all along. Hillary Clinton's choice of him to lead her campaign confirmed their worst fears about her captivity to the Washington insider narrative and culture. Besides, they said, he was a vicious slimy swine and far too friendly to the Bushists and their friends. He has no convictions he wouldn't barter or sell, they said.

This story proves they were right. To the traditional media, these were strengths. Who got it right, again...

Quotes he needed

Ed Henry outsources his so-called news analysis (again with the mythical McCain VP hunt) this way:

While I was in Lima, Ohio, last week, I asked Republican voters waiting in line for a McCain town hall meeting what they thought.

These Ohio Republicans oblige with a series of guesses that have already been well-washed through the pundits. No one Henry quotes has anything interesting to say, but they provide quotes to fit into his narrative.

Romney is the plurality guess, but Henry fails to note his lack of wingnut credibility. Sure, he had the politically convenient epiphany on abortion and the one on embryonic stem cell research and the one on this total freaking political identity. If Tom Ridge's abortion rights position deserves mention, surely Romney's opposition in 2002 to every anti-abortion stand except for age of consent merits a line.

Doesn't it come down to what's more important to McCain to win the election? Here are some choices:

• Money - Romney, but I think Republican fund-raising will not be a problem. They're just going to steer their money through other entities than McCain's campaign, mostly 527s which can take rivers of unrestricted money, but also the RNC. No coordination, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
  
• Securing the wingnut base - If McCain still needs this, he's toast. Conservatives have rallied grumpily behind him. He just has to avoid alienating them, as he might with bachelor Charlie Crist.
• Defending a red state in play, say Virginia - Problem: No good option. Also, it suggests planning to avoid an Obama landslide, not planning to win.
  
• Putting a blue state in play, say Pennsylvania or Minnesota.

Did I just commit real analysis? Sorry, I should just wait until the announcement.

Nothing for you

That's gonna leave a mark.

Tying flies

No reason the Democrats can't play the Vice Presidential game of bullshit. And make the McCain campaign look tired and passé. Again.

I was in the mass invitation, but I didn't sign up. Frankly, I'm not in such a big hurry to hear that I can't wait ten extra minutes for the media, which I'm sure will have good wood for the story.

Lay around the shanty, mama, put a veep buzz on

The political news media is so lazy that they'll do a global find and replace on their last McCain veep non-story at every stop with a favorite son. Now it's Tom Ridge, and frankly I'm rooting for the bloodless Gov. Color-code. If there's better proof that McCain is seeking four more years, I don't know what it would be.

More veep press release disparagement from me here.

"Is Obama too cerebral?"

Heaven forbid that we might actually have a smart guy as President!

Ante up, boy

This is our card game.

Click image for full Matt Bors cartoon.