Greetings From Minneapolis! I have arrived; the convention may now proceed. Unless of course it doesn't.

But if it does (and hopefully that means that Hurricane Gustav's force will have greatly diminished before hitting land), this clip should aired on the Xcel Jumbotron in prime time and referenced by several candidates in their speeches:

Ed Morrissey asks:

This also prompts a question of ethics, which all of us should consider carefully. Should private conversations between politicians get videotaped surreptitiously like this? If so, then perhaps Fowler and many, many others should take better care about having a laugh at the misery of others, even among friends.

Plenty of traditional liberal journalists have turned off the record remarks of politicians and celebrities into major stories. (Which is ultimately part of what earned them their "drive-by media" sobriquet from Rush.) As Roger Ailes noted several years ago:

Jimmy Carter's famous confession that he sometimes had lust in his heart for women other than his wife was uttered to a Playboy magazine journalist as he was leaving Carter's home at the conclusion of the formal interview.

And there are numerous additional examples of such moments, a few of which are described in the above link.

But as is its wont, the Internet amps these sorts of moments not up to 11, but 1100. George Allen's Senatorial re-election in 2006 was sunk by his "Macaca" gaffe, which was part of a coordinated effort by the left to videotape Republican candidates during every possible appearance (and then some), waiting for any sort of gaffe that could be turned into a YouTube clip and exploited by a friendly news organization such as the Washington Post, which ran over 100 stories on Allen's gaffe in the space of about less than three months, in which he apparently mispronounced his campaign staff's nickname of the young mohawk-haired James Webb campaign operative assigned to tape him.

Whatever the explanation, Allen's gaffe, given massive exposure from the Washington Post and other quarters in the MSM ended his senatorial career, which ultimately lost GOP control of the Senate, and sank Allen's presidential ambitions. In its wake, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos gleefully wrote:

Every appearance by a top Republican official or candidate should be recorded. Every one of them.

All it takes is one "Macaca" incident to transform a race or create one where one didn't exist. As the Montana incident blogged earlier today showed, a video can knock out prospective candidates before they even enter.

And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It's about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events.

A couple of years ago, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

Liberals are geniuses at unleashing social panics because A) it never occurs to them that their motives are anything but pure and B) because they are almost exclusively focused on short term tactics. And yet they are invariably shocked when these moral frenzies come back to bite them.

The "tape 'em all, let YouTube sort it out" philosophy began on the left, but its eventual boomerang was merely a matter of when, not if.

Austin Bay interviews Steve Green, Glenn Reynolds, Jennifer Rubin, and--live from Denver International Airport--James Lileks. In a half-hour interview recorded by yours truly earlier today, they look back at the then just recently announced Sarah Palin pick by John McCain, Barack Obama's speech last night, and the gestalt of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Tune in here to listen!

Tim Cavanaugh of Reason magazine writes:

If even Bill Clinton, the gold standard of "third way" politicians, is trading in classic Democratic Party populism, it really is over for the what used to be called New Democrats.

Which is bad news for everyone, as the Democrats shifting further left in the post-Clinton years shifts the American political center of gravity with them. Read the whole thing.

I'd quote from this story by Dave Barry on the big, big story of the Democratic Convention--the fight against bird porn, and a cameo from Daryl Hannah, but I'd wind up excerpting the whole thing in an effort to lay out the conceptional groundwork of this fast breaking story. Which, like Watergate 35 years ago, required the efforts of another journalist to bring the story to its complete fruition. In this case, Blogosphere favorite James Lileks, who makes a key guest appearance in Barry's article, and also has video of the anti-Bird Porn puritans in action, here.

Of the ongoing catfight between the hosts of MSNBC (with the shrapnel frequently hitting even the guests), Rebecca Dana of the Wall Street Journal writes, "Since the start of the Democratic National Convention, ratings have exploded for the cable news channel MSNBC. So have tensions among the network's top anchors":

In an uncomfortable moment Tuesday night, an exhausted-looking "Hardball" host Chris Matthews shouted at a producer ("I'll wrap in a second!") before a stilted exchange with "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, in which the two argued about who was talking out of turn. Mr. Olbermann made a flapping-lips hand gesture, and Mr. Matthews took umbrage. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sat quietly on-screen, waiting to be interviewed.

That incident followed a seven-minute back-and-forth Tuesday afternoon between "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough and network correspondent David Shuster. Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican representative from Florida, accused Mr. Shuster, a registered independent, of taking a "cheap shot" by mentioning his party affiliation. Mr. Scarborough sarcastically added: "I feel so comforted by the fact that you're an independent. I bet everyone at MSNBC has 'independent' on their voting cards."

Since the early days of CNN's "Crossfire," cable news has relied on strong personalities to keep drama high and viewers tuned in throughout the day, when news isn't always exciting enough to keep the audience's attention. Passionate debate can make for great television -- and terrific ratings.

But some found this level of personal bickering hard to watch.

"My reaction to that is: 'Grow up!' They have to just grow up," said Connie Chung, a former MSNBC host and former co-anchor of "CBS Evening News."

Tough to argue with--particularly when it's coming from the woman who gave us this moment of adult, sophisticated cabaret entertainment.

(Which also aired on--but of course!--MSNBC.)

Who knew that John McCain would have YouTube down, indeed?

The McCain Camp has issued a memo listing "Suggested Toga Styles" for those visitors tonight on a pilgrimage to the "Barackopolis."

But really, they're just helpfully trying to prevent the sort of wardrobe malfunction that seems to befall performing celebrities in football stadiums all too often these days.

There is no escape even from the aura of the penumbra of the echo of the Decade From Hell:

"Mackenzie Phillips has been busted at LAX for allegedly possessing heroin and cocaine."

Disco Stu's mood ring sure turned black over that news.

And it's comin' right at you, complete with a phalanx of papier-mache puppets, courtesy of Zombie's all-seeing camera in Denver. This caption in particular is terrific:

And then there was the woman who showed her support for "Separation of Church and State" by wearing a kaffiyeh.

Howard Dean's got to crank up his anti-hypocrisy machine a couple of more notches, I suspect.

Back in the very, very early days of this site's existence, I wrote:

When Malcolm Muggeridge was the editor of the British satirical magazine Punch in the early 1960s, Khrushchev had announced he was going to tour England alongside its prime minister. Muggeridge wrote up a list of the silliest tour stops he could think of, and then put the article to bed, ready for publication. When the actual tour list was drawn up, he had to massively rewrite the article. At least half the tour stops in his satirical piece were actually on Khrushchev and the British PM's agenda!

Which is why Muggeridge's Law is: there is no way that a writer of fiction can compete with real life for its pure absurdity.

And even your humble narrator isn't immune. Yesterday, when I was interviewing Roger L. Simon about PJTV, he started talking about bias, and remarked that everyone's biased, which is true enough; it's human nature. "You have a bias, I have a bias, everyone has a bias" I think Roger said. I immediately quipped, "Keith Olbermann doesn't have a bias--he's straight down the middle!", trying to think the most obviously in-the-tank anchor on TV, who in the past, hasn't been afraid to at least tacitly admit it.

Naturally, I had just unwittingly crashed straight into the brick wall of satire known as Muggeridge's Law:

Regardless, [MSNBC President Phil Griffin] said he has faith in his convention anchors -- including Olbermann, a scourge of the right -- for both the final days in Denver and next week in St. Paul, Minn.

"Look, when Keith anchors, he plays it straight down the line," Griffin said. "This is our team. They've served us well. We love 'em, and we're going to be at the Republican convention, and it's going to be great. And I don't have any hesitation."

Straight down the line, straight down the middle. Objectivity all the way, dude!

(Is it just me, or is Griffin starting to sound like Howell Raines railing against the furies immediately after the Jayson Blair scandal exploded in his face? But hey, if this was the gang you had to play Kindergarten Cop with every day, you'd be feeling pretty tense, too.)

Bi-partisan support: John Hinderaker of Power Line and Ann Althouse are both calling this new ad by the McCain campaign "devastating", and it's tough to argue with them:

Glenn Reynolds notes that, "Weirdly, McCain seems to have taken a lead in the rapid-delivery YouTube department. I wouldn't have predicted that." Especially since Obama's arrival as a national player was trumpeted by this YouTube mash-up, produced by one of his supporters. But it looks like McCain's braintrust have found a video producer or two of their won with some pretty nifty YouTube chops in recent days. And the Operation: Chaos-extended Democratic primary season has given them plenty of raw material to build with.

Kathy Shaidle writes, "I'm not a big Sean Hannity fan but... ":

He is spanking stupid old Mike Dukakis right now.

Dukakis came on acting like a tough guy -- I must say, it's the first time I've ever seen somebody try to swagger while sitting in a chair -- and ended up fumbling and mumbling when Hannity asked him to name some of Barack Obama's specific accomplishments.

Dukakis got so agitated his ear piece fell out, and he was reduced to parroting (just as vague) answers that Alan Colmes was shamelessly feeding him.

It's obvious that Dukakis spent all day, maybe all week, practising a tough guy act for this appearance: "Ha, not only would I kick my wife's rapist's ass, I'd do it IN A TANK!"

After less than five minutes, Hannity had him squirming, smirking and choking.

Brutal.

Heh.

Watch the Massachusetts Miracle man right here:

This BBC article, which starts breathlessly, "Hollywood is on the verge of breaking into an entirely new virtual world", really isn't all that surprising; Arthur C. Clarke was writing about "synthetic thespians" over 20 years ago.

Though why not start with musicians first? The MTV/YouTube small-screen format has to be a lot more visually forgiving than a 40-feet movie screen, and an all digital, all synthetic singer seems like a logical progression from today's formula pop stars, as I wrote four years ago for Tech Central Station.

Fox's Shepard Smith seems to have discovered the crisp new Nacho Cheese-colored spray-on tan, which Doritos appears to be test-marketing at the Democratic convention. As James Lileks writes, "the last time I saw someone with that much makeup on he had green eyes and went by the name 'Data.'"

George Will forecasts what to expect--and what not to expect from the Sermon on the Mile High Mount tomorrow:

When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. One more inspirational oration, one general enough to please Berliners or even his fellow "citizens of the world," will confirm Pascal's point that "continuous eloquence wearies." That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous, it is necessarily formulaic and abstract, vague enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none.

If Socrates had engaged in an interminable presidential campaign in a media-drenched age, perhaps he, too, would have come to seem banal. But the fact that Obama lost nine of the final 14 primaries might have something to do with the fact that when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises liberalism's most shopworn nostrums.

Russia, a third-world nation with first-world missiles, is rampant; Iran is developing a missile inventory capable of delivering nuclear weapons the development of which will not be halted by Obama's promised "aggressive personal diplomacy." Yet Obama has vowed to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems." Steamboats, railroads, airplanes and vaccines were "unproven" until farsighted people made investments. Furthermore, as Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Democrats will eventually embrace missile defense in Europe because they "will have nowhere else to go short of pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities."

Read the whole thing, which is leaving Kyle Smith in awe.

When we last left Team Obama, they were attempting to get the above video banned from TV. (More on that here.) Now they're attempting to smear NRO journalist Stanley Kurtz for attempting to report the story, thereby bringing maximum attention to it, as Ben Smith of the Politico writes:

Barack Obama's campaign hasn't advertised this a great deal this week, but the campaign's "Action Wire" has been waging large-scale campaigns against critics. That includes tens of thousands of e-mails to television stations running Harold Simmons' Bill Ayers ad, and to their advertisers -- including a list of major automobile and telecommunications companies.

And tonight, the campaign launched a more specific campaign: an effort to disrupt the appearance by a writer for National Review, Stanley Kurtz, on a Chicago radio program. Kurtz has been writing about Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, and has suggested that papers housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago would reveal new details of that relationship.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Andy McCarthy of NRO describes the results thusly:

The pro-Obama callers on the Milt Rosenberg show are a riot.

In the last few minutes, two called to scald Milt for having Stanley on without having an Obama rep on to give the counterpoint. Milt explains, repeatedly, that he contacted the Obama campaign (he gave the name of the campaign official his producer spoke with) and the campaign -- the HQ of which is about a quarter mile from the studio where the show airs -- declined to come on. They were offered the opportunity to have someone there with Stanley for the entire two hours, and they said no.

Another pro-Obama woman called and, after accusing Stanley of slander but of course not citing anything he said that was slanderous, stated, "We want it to stop." Milt asked what she wanted stopped, and she replied, "It's just not what we believe as Americans." Milt tried again, asking what she didn't believe. She responded that it was someone saying bad things about Barack Obama and, again, we just want it to stop.

Very compelling.

Earth to Obama supporters: no one is claiming guilt by association -- though willful association with an admitted terrorist would be worthy of noting in a presidential candidate. Obama and Bill Ayers had a working relationship. Yet, Obama claimed Ayers was just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and has otherwise minimized the relationship. Aside from the fact that Obama is not telling the truth, which itself is important, the details of the relationship are important. If the press was doing its job, we'd have those details already. Finally, the media's job is being done ... by Stanley. He should be saluted, not smeared. If the Obama campaign has a substantive response, let's hear it. If all they can do is smear a good faith critic, they are strictly bush league ... and it comes as no surprise that their guy thought Bill Ayers was someone worth cultivating.

We're still in the early rounds, but this is playing out remarkably like John Kerry and the Swift Vets all over again. As I wrote right around this time four years ago:

Kerry's massively invented narrative ("swashbuckling Swift Boat lieutenant"--as Steyn describes him--turned brave defender of soldiers' rights) was built to survive the glancing scrutiny (if you can call it that) of a 1972-era media that consisted of three TV networks with half hour evening news shows, and a few liberal big city newspapers, all of which were staffed with journalists more or less largely sympathetic to Kerry's leftist anti-American beliefs.

But between the Swift Boat Vets and the Blogosphere, there are far too many people examining Kerry's story, and his "reporting for duty" edifice has crumbled.

Is that fair? We'll, we're deciding if we want the man to have the key to the most powerful arsenal ever assembled. If he can't survive the scrutiny of the Blogosphere, who James Lileks recently described as an "obsessive sort with lots of time on their hands", is he someone who should be trusted with this power?

The 1972-style media seems to think so.

And a year later, John O'Neill of the Swift Vets gave an interview in which he said:

TAE: Were you surprised when Senator Kerry focused so much on his Vietnam record at the Democratic Convention in late July? How do you account for this when he clearly knew you were out there?

O'NEILL: I think he thought that he had good control over the mainline media, that they were sympathetic, that they would kill the story. And I think he was very confident that was the case with the New York Times and the three major networks and CNN, and that he could intimidate the portions of the media not already friendly to him. And so he thought the story would never come out. That had been his experience over and over again in Massachusetts.

TAE: Everything changed in early August, after your first ad.

O'NEILL: All of a sudden, Kerry and the media were faced with an ad that was actually showing. There was a time when they controlled the entire world of communications. That day is over.

Change the name from Kerry to Obama and the state from Chicago to Illinois, and O'Neill's quote is remarkably timely.

Back in 2004, Kerry's brain trust could at least some ignorance in the difference between old media and new--when RatherGate broke for instance, Mary Mapes of the very Kerry-friendly and very old media CBS later claimed, "Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Web sites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line."

Four years later, what's the Obama camp's excuse? And as John Hinderaker notes:

Obama's suggestion that it is illegal for a 501(c)(4) entity to fund issue ads that are negative toward him appears ludicrous. Here's the real question, though: if Obama is elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now demanding? I suppose we can't know for sure, but why wouldn't he? If he demands criminal prosecution of free speech that opposes his political interests when he's a candidate, why wouldn't he order it as President?

Revel in the joy and optimism--the hope and change, you might say--that comes from the audacity of litigation.

Update: Don't miss Mickey Kaus's thoughts on this story as well.

In 2004, Lewis Lapham got caught phoning it in, writing up the GOP convention for Harpers magazine before the convention actually took place. But Jonathan Last goes Lapham one better--why not intentionally write the most hyperbolic prose possible about the Democratic convention--and then see who's deep enough in the tank to actually top it?!

...And you're Ed: Interview Michelle Malkin about her run-in with a crazed 9/11 "truther" for this week's edition of PJM Political--and then talk to Roger L. Simon about PJTV--Pajamas' new online TV service. Both on this week's edition of PJM Political.

(Note: No Bird Porn or High Fructose Corn Syrup was harmed in the making of this podcast.)

With a "high-ranking" though otherwise anonymous MSNBC journalist telling the Politico Website that "The situation at our channel is about to blow up", MSNBC President Phil Griffin responds:

"MSNBC does not have an ideology," Griffin said. "We hire smart people who are passionate about their love of politics and love of news."

But Griffen was happy to talk about his network's ideology last fall to the New York Times:

Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

"It happened naturally," Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel's passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m.

Of course, the savvier TV networks aren't as schizophrenic when it comes to admitting their biases.

Update: "If they're this unhinged this week, what will they be like next week in Minneapolis?"

Gerard Vanderleun has a photo of a mock Air Force One that, sadly, won't be in use after Obama's Sermon on the Mile High Mount tomorrow:

We've already had the leaked photos of the Greek Temple / faux White House backdrop, but it seems to me that this little touch -- if they are actually stupid enough to use it -- will be enough to cause high-velocity bipartisan projectile vomiting from coast-to-coast. It also might be [ice-on-cake / straw-on-cameltoe / bridge-too-far] element of the Obama Potemkin Presidency that insures he never gets on board Air Force One -- without an invitation from a merciful McCain.

Nonsense--Obama can hop on this Air Force One any time he wants...

Jay Ambrose asks, "What if Obama was president instead of Bush":

More and more it looks as if we've won the war in Iraq, thereby giving the United States a crucial victory in the struggle against Islamic radicalism, and it is clear we wouldn't have if the most important war protester in Denver this week had had his way.

That protester is not one of the street shouters waving a banner and thinking he has thereby made a profound, world-changing statement, but Barack Obama, who rode his opposition to the war to primary and caucus wins and finally to his moment of selection as the Democrats' presidential nominee.

His position on the unpopular war was not the only thing leading to his triumphal hour at the Democratic National Convention, but the position undoubtedly was the sine qua non of his candidacy, and he did not stop with saying the war was wrong.

Early on, he proposed a U.S. troop withdrawal divorced from conditions on the ground, and he opposed the troop surge, saying at one point it wouldn't work and insisting it would put more American lives in danger.

In fact, the surge in combination with new battleground tactics and other factors vastly reduced U.S. and Iraqi casualties and has helped get us to a remarkable point. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been all but destroyed.

Aided by a population sickened of endless killings of Iraqis doing nothing but going about their daily lives, the Iraqi armed forces have grown in strength and have established order in increasingly large swathes of the country.

A confident Iraqi government has been negotiating with the United States about when we will go home. And we've already reduced the number of combat troops to pre-surge levels with more troop reductions planned for the fall.

Put Obama's timetable in place and take away the surge he did not want, and we could now be facing a deteriorating situation with deep, dark tragedies lying in wait: A quick return to a dictatorial, vicious, anti-American regime, genocide, an al Qaeda resurgence and the increased likelihood of terrorist strikes within the United States.

Found via Glenn Reynolds. A corollary to Ambrose's story, which would make an equally good column, is how the key moments of the last four years, from the GWOT, to Katrina, to the economy would have been reported by the legacy media if all of the events were the same, but Obama or someone else from his party had presided over them. Something tells me the collective tone of Katie & co. would have been just a hair less apocalyptic.

(See also: media coverage of American events under Clinton, Bill.)

"Practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started"--Peter Robinson, quoting FDR crony Rex Tugwell, in the latest edition of his Uncommon Knowledge video series. This week with Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man.

Greg Pollowitz writes, "One thing that's becoming clear is that MSNBC's bias toward Obama is reaching a stage where it is clouding the judgment of the pundits."

Meanwhile, Stephen Spruiell asks:

Is it just a coincidence that as MSNBC is becoming increasingly more like the official network of the Democratic Party, it is increasingly engaging in that party's penchant for embarrassingly public in-fighting and back-biting?

Probably not--which is why Allah has your "daily 'Olbermann antagonizes another colleague' clip."

Two and a half years ago, I asked, "Will Video Kill The Blogosphere Star?" Now we know: the two parties are about to have a pretty bigtime merger, in beautiful downtown El Segundo.

All hail Caesar Obama!

Update: There's always been definite gnostic feel to Obama; to combine memes from Glenn Reynolds and Nigel Tufnel (and really, who doesn't?) I blame...Da Druids. Meanwhile, Orrin Judd asks a reasonable follow-up question.

(Via Michelle Malkin, who has much more on the Temple on the Platte.)

Say, that new John McCain ad in the above video with a 3:00 AM cameo from Hillary looks awfully familiar--almost as though it was created months ago...

Update: Welcome Instapundit, National Review Online and Riehl World News readers--please look around; there's lots here you may enjoy, both on the blog, and our video page.

Don't tell MADD (I don't need the spam), but I made the Drunk Report with this post. I have no idea what the Drunk Report is except that it's like the Drudge Report, but with an additional 80 proof, an extra half-once of vermouth, and only a mild hangover the next morning.

I'll get back to you on that last item.

Wow, I was only kidding when I wrote that last headline, but Ed Morrissey writes, "Recreate 68? They're on their way."

He has a link to the live video feed of the Denver Post of the crowds in the street for those who want to see if the proverbial revolution really will be televised. On the other hand, as Ed notes, "So far, the protesters have managed to recreate '68 in at least one way ... reminding the nation to vote Republican."

Well that would ensure the most authentic recreation...

Update: The esteemed Zombie is in the midst of the scrum, fighting off the odd blast of pepper spray.

And look! It's a giant paper-mache puppet! Oh, sorry, that's Ward Churchill with his stylin' shades and Che beret--since paper-mache is literally French for "chewed-up paper", it's easy to get the two confused.

Jennifer Rubin writes, "The conservative blogosphere is agog: what was Barack Obama thinking?"

He took a story largely confined to the internet, (only briefly raised in the primary) about Obama's connection to former terrorist Bill Ayers, put it in his own ad, and then filed a claim trying to force the third-party 527 ad that first brought up the Obama-Ayers connection off the air. In the next 24 hours thousands if not millions of voters who never heard of or didn't understand the extent of the Obama-Ayers relationship are going to get a full education.

That Justice Department complaint is a stunt reeking of abject panic. Really, isn't this just unlimited free publicity for the McCain accusations? In the Right blogosphere there is a mix of amazement and delight. And in case you thought the McCain camp wasn't thrilled by this turn of events, read what Steve Schmidt has to say about it.

It is very hard to figure out the reasoning behind the Obama effort. Perhaps there is a deadly poll or maybe they think they can so skew the coverage as to insulate himself. But for now, it is just plain baffling.

Short of digging up Leonard Bernstein, at this point, there's really only one option left for Obama: start flaying about, yelling, "Make! Them! Stop!"--which is what another presidential candidate was doing right around this time four years ago. As James Lileks wrote back then:

John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance. . . . Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.

And as Tom Maguire writes, "Coming soon--'That's not the Bill Ayers I knew.'"

Obama better make sure he's driving one up-armored bus before he throws Ayers under it.

Barron's: "It's Almost as if Obama Wants to Repeat the Mistakes of Herbert Hoover."

They're not the first to notice--Orrin Judd sounded three (Bronx) cheers for Obama/Smoot '08! last month, and Amity Shlaes made the connection in March.

Speaking of Shlaes, the author of the brilliant The Forgotten Man is featured on this week's edition of Peter Robinson's "Uncommon Knowledge" video series at NRO--don't miss it.

Iowahawk files a satiric dispatch from Denver:

With new polls showing Barack Obama's once-commanding lead over John McCain all but evaporated, the Obama campaign announced today it has begun deploying its vast volunteer army of downtown hipster douchebags to help reconnect the presumptive Democratic candidate with middle-American voters.

"Unlike Iraq, this is one surge that is actually going to work," said Obama campaign manager David Axlerod.

Sources within the campaign say the new strategy was prompted by recent national poll trends indicating McCain pulling even with, and in some instances even overtaking, Obama. More troubling for the campaign were internal tracking polls that show the candidate losing significant ground in key Midwestern, Southern and Western battleground states. As the numbers dropped, some within the campaign were left in stunned disbelief.

"It really didn't make sense," said Carly Voorhees, an East Village experimental performance poet, Cooper Union graduate student and member of Obama's 600-expert foreign policy team. "We knew in theory there were a handful of stump-toothed biblebillies and neocon dead-enders out there, but by all rights we should have had at least a 60%-75% lead. Even after Barack threw that awesome victory rave in Germany, the numbers kept deteriorating."

"At first we were stumped," she added. "Then it dawned on us -- McSame's subliminal attack ads were stoking the deep-rooted, latent racism of white middle America. We needed to warn these uneducated simpletons that McSame was exploiting their superstitions and genetic bigotry. The big question was -- how?"

Read on gentle reader, read on...

Sonny Bunch asks, "Am I the only one who read this story about the kid arrested for 'protesting capitalism' in Denver and thought of this South Park clip?"

No--great bloggers searching for quick and easy gen-X pop culture references metaphor alike!

Don't even think about eating a peach inside the Democratic convention:

Today the security check-in tent has expanded to Ringling dimensions. Same rules: remove everything metallic and electrical. You cannot even think of the concept of steel or even the lesser, more malleable metals, or you will set off the detectors; they're calibrated to beep if you've listened to Iron Maiden in the last 24 hours. All electronic devices must be turned on - but of course by the time you get to your place before the Inquisitors, everything has shut itself off. You hold up the line as you struggle with your STUPID CAMERA, which has a balky button; it will turn on only when pressed for a second, but if you press it too long it turns itself off immediately. Behind you, professional camerapersons fume: rube. I made it through without alarms - or so I thought."Got another Apple," said the screener. I actually wondered if they were talking about the make of computer, and were all Mac fans themselves, but no. The secondary screener team plowed through my bags and came up with . . . an apple. "Can't bring these in," said Officer Apple-taker. I asked why, instantly regretting it: Don't cause a scene, idiot, just move along and accept the loss of an apple as one of those things that happens, unless you really want to wear the plastic bracelets and she said "it could be thrown."Yes, it could be thrown; it could also be eaten. That was the plan, long ago."I had to take a peach and a pear too," she added. Somehow that made it better. A simple, soft, gentle peach was now considered a weapon? Arrr. No roughage, no peace! No roughage, no peace!

On the other hand, it's not like next week's GOP convention will be any less strict in what its organizers permit being taken in or out of the convention hall in Minneapolis. Of course, at least there, poo and other contraband won't be carried by the hosting party's allies.

Nancy Pelosi's natural gas is flowing freely:

For those who thought this was just another election, Nancy Pelosi says to wake up: the planet is at stake in the choice between Barack Obama and John McCain.

"We've got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it today," the California Democrat and speaker of the House told reporters Saturday afternoon in assessing the election and the nominating convention taking place here over the week.

She said Mr. Obama's new running mate, Sen Joseph R. Biden Jr., was a good choice because he melds Washington know-how with an outsider's view. She pointed to his daily commute by train from his home in Delaware to Washington as evidence he is still a man of the people. [Fair enough: the people are paying for it--Ed]

"Joe Biden is the all-American boy," she said in a luncheon for reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

"The All-American boy?" That's a pretty slanderous attack on Joe coming from the current leader of the party of transnationalism.

Betsy Newmark writes:

Remember when the Democrats used to be critical of anything that Republicans did that gave off the appearance of impropriety. We heard this phrase over and over during the Reagan and first Bush's administrations as a justification for all sorts of hearings into possible malfeasance. It didn't matter if someone had actually done something wrong, just if it seemed fishy to the American people.

Now the Obama campaign has decided that the connection between Joe Biden and his son's job working for the a credit card company and his vote for the bankruptcy bill, a bill that Obama opposed, is not a concern.

As Betsy notes, "that whiff of impropriety that Democrats were always so troubled about now doesn't seem to smell so bad when something seems fishy about Democratic connections"--such as these.

Pajamas has a terrific round-up of photos of the protesters in Denver, including this amusing shot. It's a banner featuring a hagiographic image of Saddam Hussein and written underneath, the caption "'Good Vs. Evil': Gross Simplification".

Well, except when you're a Newsweek columnist on PBS discussing Bob Dole and Spiro Agnew, of course. Why equivocate?!

As Richard Miniter recently wrote, "In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles", and that hectoring puritanism has seeped into its celebrity culture in a massive scale.

Fortunately, whenever such Hollywood hypocrisy occurs, the opportunity for satire is rife, and Cracked.com riotously pushes back with "The 7 Most Retarded Ways Celebrities Have Tried to Go Green." I can't argue at all with their number one choice; I would have found a way to work this item into the list somewhere as well though.

(Found via Dirty Harry, and definitely one for Orrin Judd's "All Comedy Is Conservative" files.)

Well, I thought he was Don Draper (minus the hitch in Korea); Karl Rove thought he was "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

And now Clark S. Judge, managing director of the White House Writers Group and was former Reagan speechwriter dubs him "Barack Gatsby":

Fitzgerald writes of how James Gatz swims out to a Great Lakes yacht, casts off his past and turns himself into Jay Gatsby, a very different man from a very different place. Barack Obama is such a figure. He didn't swim out to a boat. He went to Chicago and there, it seems, he reinvented himself. Much has been written of how he has cast off parts of his past - the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the one-time Capitol and Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers. In and of itself, walking away from problematic associates is not unusual for politicians. But his handling of Wright and Ayers is part of a larger pattern. Across the entire presentation of his personal history, he has nipped here and tucked there until the man in the camera looks entirely different from the man inside.

If, despite his populist rhetoric, people have - as polls tell us they do - a discordant sense of the elite in Barack Obama, it is because, while he may not own a bunch of houses, that's how he grew up and that's what he is.

But even if we're not sure of Obama's identity, as Ed Morrissey writes, "Identity politics -- it's what's for dinner in Denver", complete with Barack Obama's political mentor being accused "by several witnesses of calling a black Hillary Clinton delegate an 'Uncle Tom'", according to Ed.

If you enjoyed my "Atlas Mugged" article on mass print media and its successor, then you'll definitely want to read this recent piece by Mark Harris on the Wired Website:

For 20 years, Ted Harbert worked at ABC. He started there right out of college in 1977, when the network, along with CBS and NBC, was the only game in town and was the hit factory responsible for Happy Days; Charlie's Angels; Rich Man, Poor Man and Roots. By 1996, when Harbert was running ABC, those glory days were ending. All three networks were still colossal, but Fox had established its beachhead, and cable's market penetration was almost complete. The '80s had seen the rise of MTV. And CNN was by then a big deal, not just an incinerator for Ted Turner's extra cash. ESPN was competing aggressively. Individually, none of these channels got much of a rating most of the time, but the damage was starting to add up.

"People would say, 'Oh, they're nibbling away, they're nibbling away,'" Harbert recalls. "And we would always say, 'Well, they can nibble, but they're never gonna really take us.' And then they took us."

Detroit and the newspaper industry each thought the same thing--despite numerous predictions from futurists of diversification just around the corner in each industry. Why should Jurassic television be any different? And the Wired article doesn't even get into the next wave of video technology, which is slowly beginning to level the playing surface in much the same way as the Blogosphere did to print.

And speaking of Jurassic and futurists, if you missed a recent edition of my Sillicon Graffiti video blog I did on the topic, I explore what Michael Crichton and Alvin Toffler had to say about the media and demassification:

Especially when you're Joe Biden, and you get to ride it every night on the taxpayers' dime. (And at a normal ticket price of at least $125 per trip on the Acela Express from DC to Wilmington, that's a lot of dimes). Not to mention having your son the lobbyist on its board.

Dan Riehl's post on Biden's love of the rails includes this Wikiquote:

Government aid to Amtrak was controversial from