This past summer, Rick Perlstein, the author of the new biography called Nixonland, looked back on the period leading up to Richard Nixon's 1968 election and told Reason magazine that in his opinion, "Bonnie and Clyde was the most important text of the New Left", adding:

"It made an argument about vitality and virtue vs. staidness and morality that was completely new, that resonated with young people in a way that made no sense to old people. Just the idea that the outlaws were the good guys and the bourgeois householders were the bad guys--you cannot underestimate how strange and fresh that was."

It certainly was strange, compared with the nation's politics at the start of the 1960s.

In the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti videoblog, we take a look back at the film, its radical chic times, and its champion--Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, who would reject traditional culture for "trash cinema." And we'll also look at Bobby Kennedy's Fascist Moment--and even a Bonnie & Clyde-related excerpt the fourth edition of Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan's A Quick And Dirty Guide To War. Which sounds like one meaty, beaty, big and bouncy little video to me.

Tommy guns and fedoras are optional, of course.

(Previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, going back to the start of the year, can be found here.)

Update: Welcome readers of InstaPundit, the Brothers Judd, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism blog at NRO, and--appropriately enough--the New Nixon Blog. Please look around, there's lots here we think you'll enjoy.

I remember reading a book on Stanley Kubrick that said that the great director wanted a large circular table in the middle of Dr. Strangelove's war room set, so that it would symbolically appear to audiences that the generals and the president were playing a very high stakes game of poker.

Here's a bluff of another sort:

You know where that very important $700-billion figure came from?

Here's a quote from that Forbes story:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

They made it up to be sufficiently ginormous to frighten everyone into rapid action.

And it worked.

Not yet.

Andrew Breitbart has a modest proposal for Hollywood:

Just last week, the Nobel Prize-winning and Academy Award-adjacent ("An Inconvenient Truth") Mr. Gore told students, "The world has lost ground to the climate crisis," and made a dramatic call to action:

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."

But even if those coal plants are in foreign lands like Ohio and Pennsylvania, it doesn't mean we Southern Californians must stand still and let the planet implode in front of us. That's why I'm taking Al Gore's lead and starting Code Green, a Hollywood organization whose purpose is to use civil disobedience to thwart the unnecessary use of energy in the entertainment industry.

Inspired by Jodie Evans, who started the antiwar group Code Pink, the menopausal performance artists known for interrupting public debate, Code Green will demand oversight over her group because, after all, her tidy little rage club is based in L.A.

No more trips from L.A. to Minneapolis on Northwest Airlines to protest the Republican National Convention. (I saw you wearing that tiara - in first class!) Mother Earth coughed up some smog while you chanted at the GOP, "Not one dollar, not one more, Don't you dare buy Bush's war."

You are now not free to move around the country.

From now on, Jodie and Arianna, too, will be bashing their Bushes from home, telecommuting their unrequited anger by way of solar panels and the Internet.

The days of hoarding electricity and gas are over, including by the truest believers. Carbon credits are now as worthless as Lehman stock.

There are new rules that we will all have to adhere to, whether we like it or not.

Here is the Code Green four-point "Gang Green" mandate:

1.) Directive: Stop film and television production.

This will be the first sentence of the rewrite of the Kyoto Protocol.

Each show or movie leaves a massive carbon footprint that cannot be erased even by the best CGI masters. There will be no more "Grey's Anatomy" spinoffs, nor will there be any more labored attempts to squeeze out lame sentimentality from child actors pretending to be smarter than us. They will now have to work at Pinkberry, where those little saps belong.

Tough to argue with that--since I proposed a very similar tonic for Tinseltown over a year ago.

(However, since Andrew beneficently links to your humble narrator on his mighty and sprawling Breitbart.com Website, I'm more than willing to chalk this up to a case of synchronicity and GMTA, to borrow a little of the secret lingo from the Code Green code book.)

Allah Pundit has the gory details here:

House Republicans weren't willing to swallow a bitter pill today so they'll swallow a more bitter pill later this week. And guess what? They'll still get killed at the polls in November. Bill Kristol thinks McCain's only chance now is to stop campaigning (again) and come back to D.C. to try to drive through a compromise. If he succeeds, it'll prove his leadership and calm the markets. I don't see how he's supposed to pull that off, though, when the entire Democratic leadership will be primed to whine about how he's only making things worse by being there, is ruining delicate negotiations, etc. If Kristol's serious about solving the crisis and willing to sacrifice electoral gain to do so, there's an easy compromise solution: Have McCain and Obama do some sort of joint appearance, maybe a presser, urging support for a bailout. That'll swing public opinion sufficiently to remove the political incentives to voting no and give Pelosi the 10 votes she needs to pass it now. There's no gain for McCain at the polls in doing so, admittedly, but he's the guy who preaches "country first." Here's his chance.

Howard Fineman of the Obama-cheerleading Newsweek writes, "The Obama Administration began at midnight Sunday"--and at the moment, it's tough to argue with him; though hopefully Obama won't prolong the current financial malaise as long as FDR and Carter did theirs.

"They told me if I voted for John Kerry we'd end up with socialism. They were right!"

So Bill Clinton let Osama bin Laden go, but captured Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now there's an awesome rep for the history books.

For those insomniacs checking in with us in the wee wee hours, be warned--here's a little something from Gateway Pundit guaranteed not to generate sweet dreams:

The financial crisis is real. Most people don't realize it yet, but banks, investment managers and corporate treasurers around the world all know what is going on. It started with the Freddie - Fannie collapse. They wrote loans to individuals who they shouldn't have. Government policies encouraged loans to minorities and the underwriting function of banks was no longer approving loans upon an individual's creditworthiness but their race was now a factor in the loan decision. In 1997 President Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, claimed Fannie Mae had exhibited "racial discrimination" and proposed that 50 percent of the GSEs' (Fannie and Freddie) loan portfolio be made up of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers by 2001. When individuals are given loans based on race and not their ability to pay, it is inevitable that bad loans would be written and foreclosures would come. That's what happened and in a big way.

This caused ripple effects throughout the financial services industry. Firms who consolidated loan packages or guaranteed their creditworthiness were caught in the middle. Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers and others went under. The largest insurance company in the US by some measurements was one of the casualties (AIG). With insurance companies around the globe, AIG is hoping to have some business left when all is over. The government stepped in to rescue this giant by providing capital for the firm while it liquidates portions of its business to pay off the investment derivatives which caused it trouble and then pay off the government loan. The investments became bad when the mortgages went south.

The ripple affect continues. Putnam funds, the largest money market fund in the US and rated AAA, had to close its doors since money managers began to realize that Putnam's assets were not guaranteed by the Federal Government (unlike cash in banks and savings and loans) and began to ask for their money. Putnam had to sell securities in order to meet the demand. Although they have begun to pay their account holders, their reputation and money market accounts in general have been severely damaged.

And it only gets worse from there.

The Washington Post says, "Congressional Leaders Announce Breakthrough in Bailout Bill Negotiations":

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration last night struck a historic accord to insert the government deeply into the nation's financial markets, agreeing to spend up to $700 billion to relieve Wall Street of troubled assets backed by faltering home mortgages.

Shouldn't that be "more deeply into the nation's financial markets"? Especially since inserting the government deeply into the nation's financial markets caused all the trouble in the first place.

Rich Lowry:

Pelosi unloads on House Republicans. Why is it always OK for Democrats to call Republicans "unpatriotic"?

Ramesh Ponnuru:

Because it has no sting.

But I thought dissent itself was patriotic.

Update: "We're staring down the barrel of the worst disaster since Katrina or maybe even 9/11 and these people are playing douchebag psych-out games with each other."

Individuality is fine--as long as we all do it together.

Right Wing News posits that it as unfortunate as Obama forgetting the name of the soldier on his bracelet was, it was the tone of his response that created the takeaway moment of last night's debate:

And from yesterday's debate: "I've got a bracelet too." A lot of conservatives want to give Obama heat for the fact that he couldn't remember the name on his bracelet, but I actually find that forgivable. Obama was in the hot seat and, at moments like that (at least if you're me), names are the first thing to go. The sin wasn't the memory failure, the sin was that he made the statement in the first place.

Let's start with some context: In connection with his belief that there is no peace and honor without victory, John McCain told the moving story of the moment Matthew Stanley's mother gave McCain Matthew's bracelet and asked him to wear it and, more importantly, to honor and give meaning to Matthew's death by making the Iraq War an American defeat, not an American victory.

Obama, had he wanted to, could have scored some substantive points by immediately saying that we don't honor one man's death by creating more dead, or some such argument. That seemed to be where he was heading, but I tuned out because I was so overwhelmed by his actual response: "I've got a bracelet too."

What is this? Kindergarten? Could anything show more clearly what a selfish, self-centered, shallow man Obama is. McCain is talking about real people, and he's talking about how the beliefs he shares with those real people drive him to his understanding that, both for the good of the nation and for the honor of her troops, America must leave Iraq as a strong, viable nation. It breaks faith with both America and her troops to slink away as Obama so wants to do. This is a deep substantive argument. The bracelet wasn't the central point. It was simply a human-interest lead-in to that point.

And what does Obama say? "I've got a bracelet too." What that means, translated, is "I can't think of an original argument, I don't have a deep emotional story, I don't have sound policy justifications for abandoning Iraq now that we're trembling on the verge of actual and complete success but, 'Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah -- I've got a bracelet too.'" The attitude and ignorance behind the statement was appalling.

If this was just one example, it would be bad enough, but we've seen this before. When Hillary, the darling of huge chunks of American women, self-deprecatingly (and rather charmingly) acknowledges that she grates on some people, Obama snaps back with the condescending "You're likable enough." If I'd been Hillary, I would have marched across the stage and bitten him. So, I suspect, would all of her female followers.

And then when Palin comes on the scene, this man of Indonesia, Hawaii and Chicago suddenly discovers his inner Southerner and, when speaking of Republican policies, comes out with an old Southern expression: "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig." At that moment, the remaining chunk of American women who aren't Obama acolytes lunged for their TV screens, teeth bared.

The MSM, no doubt recognizing how damaging this statement, is going to downplay "I've got a bracelet too" in the hope that it doesn't enter the pantheon of memorable moments in debate history. It's therefore our responsibility to make sure that this telling moment into Obama's character does not vanish into the abyss.

Elsewhere, Roger L. Simon explores Obama's Kissinger Blunder.

And Newsbusters opens up the Memory Hole: "Media Fail to Correct Obama's Claim of No Al-Qaeda in Iraq Before Invasion."

Update: Related thoughts here.

More: Biden's gaffe slowly begins to permeate the cocoon: the L.A. Times' campaign blogger writes, "Barack Obama: We'll never forget what's-his-name."

Kyle Smith reviews the new leftwing agitpropumentary on Lee Atwater:

Atwater's painful demise seems to delight the largely left-leaning pundits assessing Atwater's legacy, which inspired Karl Rove among others. Howard Fineman of Newsweek, for instance, says, "Life gets even with you in the end," an ugly comment that sounds a lot like the liberal equivalent of calling AIDS God's punishment for gays.

Mewanwhile, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria begins his latest article with the following opening sentence: "Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony?"

At the start of 2005, shortly before Newsweek started tossing Korans into toilets and American flags into garbage cans, Fineman wrote:

A political party is dying before our eyes -- and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.

Might want to look a bit closer in the mirror, fellas.

Greg Pollowitz writes, "In the debate, Senator Obama laid out his four conditions for passing the bailout bill", "Yet 48 hours earlier, he had five conditions:"

Fifth, we both agree that this financial rescue package should move on its own without any earmarks or other measures. We have different views about the need for other action, but this must be a clean bill.

As Greg writes, "Yeah. . .can't have a clean bill now, can we? Not when there are billions for ACORN at stake."

Or as Glenn Reynolds puts it, "You know, it would be easier for me to believe this was a crisis, if the people in charge were acting like it was a crisis, instead of just an opportunity for graft. Then again, to some of these people, everything is just an opportunity for graft."

Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has the change spam we need today:

Dear Sirs,

Please do not be alarmed at the way I am contacting you, and I trust God you will see your way to assisting me.

I am Mr. Henry Paulson, and I currently serve as Secretary of Treasury in a North American country, the US of A. I am due to be receiving the sum of USD700 billion (seven hundred billions), only the money seems to be held up. I got your name from the girl who runs the computer. This is where I need your help.

As soon as you can, God willing, I will need you to give me the number of your American account where I can wire this sum. For your trouble, as part of the settlement, I will give you the sum of exactly nothing.

Please be well, and I trust in God you will assist me honestly and without delay.

Yours, truly,

Mr. Henry Paulson
USA Secretary of Treasure

Via Steve Green, who also spots a New York Times parody (yes, there is a difference, believe it or not) that hits the mark quite well.

Jennifer Rubin thinks she may have spotted it last night.

"And now we can write: Round 1 in the contest to see who's most in the tank for Obama goes to CNN."

Bad news, but not entirely unexpected, as the legendary actor had been ailing for some time.

First CityWide Change Bank believes in change:

Bob Owens writes, "If he can't handle a simple debate without falling apart, how is he going to handle a Presidency?"

And elsewhere, Michelle Malkin spots the telling gesture of the debate.

Update: Jennifer Rubin asks, "Who Won the Debate? More importantly, who does everyone think won?":

How did they hold up on temperament? Obama seemed peeved, and a number of observers - including Juan Williams and Alex Castellanos -- agreed. McCain was occasionally funny and poked at Obama but showed none of the nastiness or ill-temper which his foes identify.

But the "gotcha" may have been from Obama -- who eight times conceded that McCain was "right" on a point. McCain rushed out a video capturing a number of these.

So how did Obama and McCain fair in the opinion wars? The telling difference: Obama's spinners tended to call it a draw while McCain's group was ecstatic. William Krstol on FOX said "no knockout but on the offense throughout." Nina Easton, also on FOX, criticized Obama -- "something bland and policy-speak" about him she thought. Juan Williams conceded that Obama didn't really successfully tie George W. Bush to Obama.

We'll have more as the night goes on. But for once this week the McCain camp is feeling a spring in their step.

Orrin Judd concludes:

Any analysis has to begin from the fact that the media and the Left have built Senator Obama up so much that a guy who's a mediocre debater at best was widely expected by the electorate to dominate. Thus, he's a loser if their performance was roughly equal and a big loser if you think he had a rough night.

Finally, Steve Green has a mild point of contention with Andrew Sullivan.

While change is an ever-accelerating dynamic, some things always remain the same. Whether it's 1960, 1988, 2000, 2004, or this year, the Republican presidential candidate in an election year can invariably count on plenty of CBS from the Tiffany Network.

As the headline on Jim DeMint's blog says, "What Caused The Economic Crisis? Watch This!"

Viral marketing at its finest!

(Especially since I heard about the site via an email from its author, who says that his next project might be "Measles for McCain"--though that could be a bit of a strain...)

"Is Bill Clinton deliberately undermining Obama?"

Update: Almost a decade and a half ago, Clinton said, "I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans." Now more than ever, judging by the title of this post by Pejman Yousefzadeh.

"Only in Berkeley: Tree Sitters Accused of Racism."

Elsewhere in the news from the town that reason forgot, "Code Pink declares victory and folds tent", according to the This Ain't Hell blog.

I think Code Pink's "victory" over the Marines (one which sees Code Pink backing down and the Marines staying put) is an example of that "Peace With Papier-Mache" that Nixon was always talking about...

This rapidly developing story just in to the Tiffany Network:

CBS 'Early Show' Newsflash: Okay to Be Gay in Hollywood

Now if we can only get more groups out of the closet there...

"Dear Editor," Sarah Palin wrote in 2002. "San Francisco judges forbidding our Pledge of Allegiance? They will take the phrase 'under God' away from me when my cold, dead lips can no longer utter those words."

David Levinson Wilk of Politico claims that "Crossword puzzles heavily favor Democrats"--and he should know:

I am partly to blame.

On Jan. 8, 2005, I purposefully and unapologetically became the first person to ever construct a crossword puzzle for The New York Times that featured this five-letter answer:

OBAMA.

Earlier this week, Steve Schmidt, John McCain's senior campaign adviser, lambasted the Times for being "totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate." The GOP, it seems, is finally catching on to a once-hidden truth:

Crossword puzzles heavily favor Democrats.

According to the puzzle database maintained by Cruciverb.com, ever since that game-changing day in 2005, OBAMA has appeared regularly as an answer in New York Times crossword puzzles. With its wonderfully convenient alternating series of commonly used vowels and consonants, OBAMA has been the answer to the clues "Senator who wrote 'Dreams From My Father,'" "Future senator who delivered the 2004 Democratic convention keynote address" and "Presidential candidate born in Hawaii."

But what about MCCAIN? Shockingly, not once has MCCAIN been an answer in a crossword in the New York Times, The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. No MCCAIN, no JOHNMCCAIN, no SENATORMCCAIN, not even his most recent sobriquet, the presidential-sounding JOHNSMCCAINIII.

Gee, now there's a shock.

For most on the left, it's always 1968, the summer of Mobius Loops, and the year of the hippie poseur. Not to mention their only marginally more grown-up appearing peers, such as RFK, who said, "The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow." But Edward Blum writes that to voting rights activists, "It Will Always Be 1965."

Kevin D. Williamson writes, "We've heard much from the media about CDOs, CDSs, and other previously obscure abbreviations. But we should be hearing more about this acronym: ACORN":

Imagine if the housing bubble hadn't burst, but there hadn't been all those dodgy subprime loans made and then securitized. We'd be reading stories about how America is having a wonderful housing boom but the poor and minorities are being left out. There's lots of greed and stupidity in this story, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that a big part of what is wrong comes from bad public policy designed to encourage homeownership, particularly among the poor. Unintended consequences are not to be denied.

But we're not going to hear much about ACORN's role in all this, or, by extension, Senator Obama's.

Or as Robert Stowe England wrote in 1993:

QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous.

Paging Cassandra. Miss Cassandra to the red courtesy phone, please.

Update: Robert Bidinotto has a recent post chockablock with links, quotes, and updates titled, "Why the Bubble Burst."

Hey, 57 states, 40 days 'til new president's sworn in, FDR on TV in '29--forget it, they're rolling. (Even if the teleprompter isn't.)

Kathryn Jean Lopez posts an update from Sen. Jim DeMint's office:

We've just been alerted that despite House Democrats relenting on extending bans on offshore drilling and oil shale in the continuing resolution (CR) appropriations bill, Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid has decided to sneak an extension of the oil shale ban through as Congress fights over the financial bailout. Oil shale in America's West is estimated to hold be between 800 billion and 2 trillion barrels of oil -- that is more than three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia alone.

Here is the text of Reid's proposed new ban on oil shale, that he is trying to add as an amendment to the CR or move seperately as a "stimulus" package, or we should say an anti-stimulus package if this is included.

Sec 1602 continues ban on oil shale. The language follows:

SEC. 1602. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, including section 152 of division A of H.R. 2638 (110th Congress), the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009, the terms and conditions contained in section 433 of division F of Public Law 110-161 shall remain in effect for the 19 fiscal year ending September 30, 2009.

It would be an insult to all Americans if Senate Democrats worked to bailout Wall Street while damaging our future prosperity by banning development of vast energy reserves in oil shale.

Which may help to explain this headline:

Liberal Democrats vow moratorium on offshore drilling to return in '09

Meanwhile, as Glenn Reynolds notes:

AND YOU THOUGHT JOE BIDEN WAS UNFRIENDLY TO COAL: "Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon."

Will he be advising Obama on energy policy?

Certainly in spirit.

The Northeast Corridor is one giant blue state, so presumably they'll be OK with paying high energy prices come the winter.

Two new multimedia software updates will be making their way into the toolkits of many in the Army of Davids this fall. This week, Adobe announced their latest CS4 lineup of products, updating Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other Adobe products. Meanwhile, Cakewalk has announced Sonar 8, their more-or-less annual update to their flagship Sonar digital audio workstation platform for Windows.

Along with Adobe's Ultra chromakey program and accompanying virtual sets, recent iterations of all of the above products are what powers my Silicon Graffiti video blog. And speaking of video blogging, I have an article in the September issue of Nuts & Volts magazine on that topic. (No, that's not me on the cover; and unfortunately, the article is only available on dead tree at the moment.)

This video, originally produced in January when I was still getting it all together, gives you a sense of what a product like Ultra 2 can do--this was only the second video I had shot with it; and was still learning my around the program, and yet, I think it does a reasonable job of walking the viewer through what's possible via DIY video.

What's next? RAM power! Lots and lots of memory will soon start appearing in your computers; as the 64-bit computing revolution is still in its infancy.

Hey, forget FDR's 1929 fireside video chats in stereophonic Bidenvision! Independent third party presidential candidate Dave Burge--the Maverick's Maverick--explains the basics of the credit bailout to you in this exclusive man-in-the-TGIFriday debate.

It's sort of like the famous Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate of 1959, but combined with a heaping helping of all-you-can-eat nachos and gallons of half-priced happy-hour Margaritas in genuine polystyrene cocktail glasses.

Newsbusters' Brent Baker writes, "Couric Scolds McCain for Palin's 'Great Depression' Scare -- Which Couric Proposed to Palin."

And meanwhile, Joe Biden's Pangea of gaffes this week continues to pay dividends--as blogger "Right Wing Professor" noted, Katie never batted an eye during Joe Biden's wacky Depression-era-flashback on Monday.

Mark Levin writes, "I hope McCain and his advisors have thought this through beyond today and tomorrow, gimmick or no gimmick":

Ok, let's say the debate is suspended by both camps. Then what? Bush is pushing hard for some kind of massive bailout deal, and will do so in his speech tonight. The conservatives in Congress are resisting all of this - and good for them. McCain says we have to get something done and work together, which means some kind of massive deal that is unlikely to satisfy conservatives. I hope McCain and his advisors have thought this through beyond today and tomorrow, gimmick or no gimmick.

Jonah Goldberg adds, "Mark makes a good point. If McCain does go to Congress and helps rally reluctant Republicans (and they really are reluctant). It will in effect become the McCain bailout, at least as far as conservatives are concerned."

Meanwhile, Dan Riehl has some advice--and who amongst us doesn't, these days?--for McCain:

Let the Left laugh, with Obama saying he wants to continue campaigning and debating, I'd do two things were I McCain.

1) Say you can understand Obama's point of view as he has never been engaged in anything this serious on Capitol Hill, or anywhere else.

and 2) Volunteer to let his VP nominee sit in for him against Obama on Friday.

Yes, I realize the media is still all about Palin - who cares. I'd make the offer.

Maybe Palin would be better off debating this bitter resident of Pennsylvania.

Update: Welcome Riehl World View readers; check out this interesting chess game being played out in the Senate, with Harry Reid being forgainst John McCain returning to the Senate within the space of 24 hours, as Ed Morrissey of Hot Air notes:

[Reid] wanted McCain on the hook so that Reid could blame McCain for the political fallout. When McCain called Reid's bluff -- and that's what appears to have happened here -- Reid did what Reid always does: retreat.

I think Reid fears more than just the idea that McCain will "risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation's economy." What Reid fears is that McCain will return to lead the Republican effort to reach a compromise, and the Senate and House GOP will let him do it. If McCain takes ownership of the bailout effort and manages to get his suggestions on limiting executive compensation and so on as part of the finished product, he will be able to trot McCain-Dodd on the campaign trail as yet another reform he's accomplished by working across the aisle. And in a time of crisis, no less.

And what will Obama be able to say? He gave a couple of speeches and raised cash for himself while McCain went to work for the nation.

If that's what McCain and the Republicans have in mind, this could be the coup of the entire campaign. While Obama went out and sucked up to fundraisers, McCain built the bipartisan compromise that saved the American financial system. If he succeeds, McCain will have trumped Obama on what should have been the Democrats' best issue.

This post started with a quote from Mark Levin hoping that "McCain and his advisors have thought this through beyond today and tomorrow, gimmick or no gimmick." It seems--at least to some extent--that they most certainly have.

Richard Miniter calls McCain's campaign suspension "a shrewd move for the McCain campaign", if not necessarily an example of "country first."--Read the whole thing.

Details at Hot Air; politically, it seems like an interesting move, somewhat reminiscent of this earlier time out. But how will voters--not to mention the junior senator from Illinois--respond?

Update: Well, that was fast:

However a senior Obama campaign official said Obama "intends to debate. The debate is on."

An Obama campaign official said the Democratic presidential candidate called McCain this morning to suggest a joint statement of principles.

McCain called back this afternoon and suggested returning to Washington.

Obama is willing to return to Washington "if it would be helpful." But Obama intends to debate on Friday, an official said.

And thus McCain's next YouTube ad writes itself.

Sky News: "Singer Bette Midler Quits Touring To Help Save The Planet."

Glad to see that at least one celebrity has taken my advice after Al Gore's Live Earth concert last year:

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.

As Daltry told the The Sun, "I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel". Each concert will require massive transportation efforts involving jet planes and tractor-trailers, hundreds of thousands of watts of electricity to power the lighting and sound gear, and the deforestation required to print at least couple of hundred thousand souvenir programs (and many more no doubt, for sale afterwards). And heck, just think of all of the methane emissions coming from the stadiums' rest rooms, where, no matter how much the audience promises, the Sheryl Crow Rule is incredibly difficult to enforce.

But in the minds of its participants, a cause like Live Earth is worth it. But a generic, everyday, run of the mill concert shouldn't be. So go out with a bang, rock stars--and then, don't be hypocritical puritans; take the sort of pledge that even the Goracle won't.

More news regarding energy and an even bigger celebrity, here.

Last week, Ace had some thoughts on polls:

We haven't lost -- but we are behind.

Four or five twists to go, and we need two or three of those twists to go our way.

BTW, I am not getting into the constant these-polls-are-wrong/oversampled/etc. game. I played that all through 2006 and wound up looking like a chump.

My general take is to buy polls -- especially as regards direction, if not exact numbers -- unless there's some clear problem with them.

The constant complaining that any poll I don't like must be flawed is a mug's game.

I think Ace is right about the polls--but I think we can make an exception for this one.

When an already closed loop is hermetically sealed:

Today is a red-letter day for the New York Times. For the first time, the paper has reported in its news section that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once uttered the phrase "God damn America." Wright's comments were widely reported and widely discussed beginning with an ABC News report six months ago. Barack Obama even had to give a much-publicized speech because of those words, and others. But the newspaper of record has never seen fit to publish Wright's quote in its news pages. Until today.

If my search of the Nexis database is correct, Wright's quote first appeared in the Times in a column by Bill Kristol on March 17. It was mentioned again in a column by Maureen Dowd on March 23. It appeared in an editorial on April 26. It appeared in a column by the public editor on May 4, and also in an article in the Week in Review section on that same day.

But never in the front section of the paper. Until now. As with the April 26 editorial, today's mention of "God damn America" is in the context of reporting on attack ads targeting Obama. But still, it's there, on page one, for the first time.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama's Wikipedia page being vandalized highlights the excesses of the sclerotic Gray Lady's polar opposite--How's that "anybody can edit it" thing working out for Wikipedia?

The hacking of Obama's Wiki page puts him in interesting company, alongside Sarah Palin, Mike Love, Mike Bloomberg, and former RFK associate, John Seigenthaler, Sr--and no doubt, many more who have entries within The Faith-Based Encyclopedia.

Related: At City Journal, Adam Thierer explores both closed and open information models and writes, "The Internet Isn't Dying--On the contrary, the Web is just catching its second wind."

Jonah Goldberg spots the media playing the race card on Obama:

I have no doubt that the Bradley effect is real. But the Bradley effect does not reflect racism; it captures voters' fear of appearing racist. There's no reason to assume those who lie to pollsters are racists. But for Obama supporters and the media, poll results are some kind of sacred, binding covenant. If voters don't keep their promise, the media have no problem seeing racism at work.

The media's obsession with race in this election is probably fueling the Bradley effect. Repeating over and over that voting against Obama is racist only makes non-racist people embarrassed to admit that they plan to vote for McCain.

Another rich irony is that the only racists who matter in this election are the ones in the Democratic Party. News flash: Republicans aren't voting for the Democratic nominee because they're Republicans. A new AP-Yahoo News poll claims that racial prejudice is a significant factor among the independents and Democrats Obama needs to win, specifically among Hillary Clinton's primary voters. According to the pollsters' statistical modeling, support for Obama may be as much as 6 percentage points lower than it would be if there were no white racism.

I'm skeptical about those findings, as well as the overemphasis on race generally. But to the extent that race is a factor, here's the richest irony of all: Obama's problem is with precisely those voters the Democratic Party claims to fight for, working- and middle-class white folks. Of course, Democrats can't openly complain that their own vital constituency is racist.

I don't know--Nora Ephron's complaint on that topic was pretty darn out in the open during the primaries.

Update: As is this article from Monday's edition of the typically uber-liberal (if I recall the tone of the paper correctly from when I was living in the Delaware Valley until a decade ago) Philadelphia Daily News.

As Kathryn Jean Lopez writes, this election wouldn't be the same without Joe Biden. In addition to the aforementioned Barack-Olian Cluster-Gaffe--which actually snowballed to true classic proportions after Joe's appearance on CBS last night, this was Joe's other moment of greatness from his interview with Katie Couric, transcribed by the Politico's Ben Smith:

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

Actually, you'd probably be wondering what happened to Felix, but still: If Sarah Palin had said this, CBSNBCABCCNNMSNBC would be running it on a never-ending loop today.

Update: "At any rate, it looks like Biden learned his history from Faber College." Hey--knowledge is good.

More: "What's funnier is that Katie Couric didn't catch it."

I think this might be the first presidential campaign gaffe equivalent of a music mash-up, as multiple unforced errors by both a presidential and vice-presidential nominee get chopped down into a fine, fine puree by the patented Obama campaign's Super Gaffe-O-Matic '76 blending machine. First up, via InstaPundit, here's Joe Biden on the 6:30 PM CBS News, complete with video:

Barack Obama's running mate says a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was "terrible" and would not have been done had he known about it.

Obama, McCain's Democratic rival, launched the ad earlier this month, part of an aggressive push to slow McCain's rise in the polls after he chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. It included unflattering footage of Sen. McCain at a hearing in the early '80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik's Cube.

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class," the ad says.

Asked about the negative tone of the campaign, and this ad in particular, during an interview broadcast Monday by the "CBS Evening News," Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said he disapproved of it.

"I thought that was terrible, by the way," Biden said.

Asked why it was done, he said: "I didn't know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we'd have never done it."

And here's Biden a few hours later:

I was asked about an ad I'd never seen, reacting merely to press reports. As I said right then, I knew there was nothing intentionally personal in the criticism of Senator McCain's views which look backwards not forwards and are out of touch with the new economic challenges we face today. Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize, especially when they continue to distort Barack's votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators.

The Obama camp has been thugishly issuing threats on a surprisingly routine basis to metaphorically break the knees of his critics on the right, so presumably, his veep feels equally threatened to stay in line, lest he face a painful Luigi Vercotti-style end to his nomination. (Which "notorious conservative blogger" Glenn Reynolds has been not predicting right from the start!)

Or perhaps the Obama campaign's PR department just threw caution to the wind and got a quick press release out there, safe in the assumption that Biden likely can't remember what the heck comes out of his perpetual motion machine of a mouth from one moment to the next.

Related: Al Qaeda's dreaded Weather Weapon!

While this weekend's edition of the annual Blog World Expo was all about the ongoing revolution in electronic media, Mr. Gutenberg's pioneering analog blog format isn't going away anytime soon, of course--which is a good thing in my book. (Hey look--a pun!) While Barnes & Noble had a large display in the convention hall selling several existing books on blogging and new media, there were two new books of note discussed at Blog World:

Austin Bay gave me the galleys of his upcoming Fourth Edition to A Quick And Dirty Guide To War--right after Steve Green was done holding up the book, Brian Lamb Booknotes-style, during his interview with Austin for PJM Political on XM and PJTV on, err, PJTV. This is a sprawling (the galleys are over 600 pages) overview of the current wars of the world, and what could come in the future, written by two authors who also review what they accurately predicted--which was quite a bit--over 20 years ago. (Here's the Amazon link to an earlier edition of the book; the new edition is scheduled to hit the streets later this year.)

At the start of the month, I had interviewed Scott Ott for PJM Political. Scott is the proprietor of, and chief satirist in residence at Scrappleface, on the floor of the Republican convention (while Joe Lieberman was performing his sound check on stage in the background). He's contributed a chapter on politics and journalism (Scott, not Joe) for the upcoming book titled, The New Media Frontier, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton, whom I interviewed on Sunday at Blog World. Their book, featuring an introduction from Hugh Hewitt, debuts at the end of the month. My very early first take? If you can picture a book aimed at Christian Americans that combines Hugh Hewitt's Blog book with some of the broad 3000 mile "medium is the message" overview that Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler have provided, you get a sense of The New Media Frontier. I'd even suggest it to the non-religious, who can skip the more proselytizing chapters, for a pretty nifty look at the ability to use the Internet to build broad social networks and virtual communities.

Finally, speaking of books, Stephen Michael Kellat of a Website geared towards libraries and librarians stopped by the booth and interviewed Steve and I about Pajamas Media and PJTV as part of their weekly podcast. I haven't a clue why a library-oriented podcast wanted to talk to us, but hey, we were there and happy to talk to anyone who stopped by, including those who stuck a mic and digital recorder in front of us.

Tune in here to listen; Steve and I appear about 15 minutes into the show, which requires no iPod--or library card!--to hear.

(And click here to see a slide show featuring about a babillion photos of the exhibitors (including Pajamas) and the weekend's events.)

Brent Bozell writes:

It's a shame the roles in this interview couldn't be switched. Palin could have turned around and asked Gibson about his qualifications to lecture our commanders, whether he thinks any war, anywhere, is ever worthwhile. In 2003, he told Larry King "We used to have a little framed sign hanging in our bedroom, my wife and I, that said, 'War is not good for children and other living things,' and I believe that."

Wow--who knew that underneath his size 12 Florsheim double-soled wingtips, Charlie Gibson was such an unrepentant hippie?

Kathy Shaidle quotes from this passage by Ronald Radosh on the Rosenberg's guilt. Kathy also highlights a couple of key sentences by Radosh:

Finally, one more point needs to be made. The Rosenberg's defenders continually fall back on the claim that after all, they were only helping an "American ally." The implication, of course, is that the Soviets needed what we chose not to give them; they were only helping a mutual victory against fascism when the reactionary American government held back weaponry that was rightfully due the Soviets. After all, the Rosenbergs saw the Soviet Union as the vanguard of anti-fascism, and they helped Stalin as the good anti-fascists they were.

There is one problem with that defense. Julius Rosenberg became a Soviet spy and set up his network before June of 1941; in other words, during the years of the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact, when Stalin aligned his country with Hitler's Germany. He saw himself as a Soviet partisan fighting behind enemy lines on behalf of Soviet Communism. He was, as David Greenglass put it to me, a "soldier for Stalin." Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their recruits, including Morton Sobell, wanted to do anything necessary for the Soviet cause, before, during and after the war against Hitler. When it came down to it, they were first and foremost Soviet patriots who hid their treachery on phony remonstrations of their love for America.

The Rosenbergs weren't the only Soviet patriots (a.k.a. useful idiots, as Stalin himself put it) making "phony remonstrations" of their own in 1941.

Stephen Spruiell reminds us that "While all eyes are diverted to the mess on Wall Street, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are attempting to extend the ban on offshore drilling, which is set to expire October 1."

Roger L. Simon pens an "Open Letter to My Fellow Jews: The Democratic Party is not your religion (or anybody's)."

"We may never know how the Unicorn Rider alienated Jake Tapper so badly, but it sure has amusing results."

Doug Ross has your one-stop Palin Derangement Syndrome Database to keep up with who's said which smear.

Meanwhile, The Jawa Report has a lengthy and detailed post on "Hope, Change, & Lies: Orchestrated 'Grassroots' Smear Campaigns & the People that Run Them." Scott Johnson of Power Line describes The Jawa Report's report thusly:

Rusty Shackleford has posted the results of his and his Jawa team's investigation to determine the source of smears directed toward Sarah Palin. The smears include false allegations that she belonged to a secessionist political party and that she has radical anti-American views. Shackleford's research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated the rumors, that the rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure and that the firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, Shakleford's evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign.

More from Ace of Spades.

What if it works? Well, Jim Geraghty has one forecast of what the next two years could look like.

Otherwise, the management of Ed Driscoll.com, Newsbusters, Pajamas Media, and its affiliates will not be held responsible for the survival of your computer's monitor when you read the following sentence by Frank Rich:

In our news culture, [Joy] Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.

Not that last year's Murrow is currently living up to that rep himself, of course.

On Saturday, Jennifer Rubin wrote:

The McCain camp calls out -- by name -- another reporter (this one from TIME) and goes to far as to quote her snide response when provided with information which contradicts her storyline. Ouch. And the Post's media critic isn't any better-neatly ignoring that the basis of the McCain ad in question was the Post.

And then, yowser, the McCain camp dares the Post to call itself "not credible." I don't know about the campaign against Barack Obama but I could watch this duel for awhile.

Well, here comes Round Two, featuring Smokin' Steve Schmidt, teeing off on the New York Times:

He's right of course (though as Allahpundit notes, "By what Orwellian definition of the term is the guy who co-wrote the McCain-Feingold bill a 'First Amendment absolutist'?"), but for anybody who paid attention to either of these stories from 2004, it's not exactly news, is it?

As yet, as another chapter in the ultimate love affair gone sour unfurls, it will be interesting to watch how the press reports the attacks on its credibility (or lack thereof) from a politician it once feted.

Related: "Hi. I'm NBC and I approved this ad."

Tim Blair writes that it's a "Battle of the Openings", as "The best opening paragraph is challenged by the best opening sentence."

One of the running jokes in the 1990s satire Wag The Dog is that "there is no B-3 bomber."

Start worrying, Albania: there is one on the way, apparently.

(Though that could change come January, of course.)

With a bailout plan costing--cue the Dr. Evil voice--700 bee-llion dollars in the works (designed to prevent a meltdown that would in the neighborhood "north of $30 trillion"), The Gormogons write, "So maybe Bush is a fascist after all--Just not in the way the frothing lefties allege."

Meanwhile, (also found via Jonah's Liberal Fascism blog), Roderick Long reminds us:

There never was anything remotely like a period of laissez-faire in American history (at least not if "laissez-faire" means "let the market operate freely" as opposed to "let the rich and powerful help themselves to other people's property"). The regulatory state was deeply involved from the start, particularly in the banking and currency industries and in the assignment of property titles to land.

I think it's also worth comparing the bailout to the period in the first half of the 1970s when the Democrat-controlled Congress attempted to make the trains run on time--or at least keep them running at all--by creating Amtrak in 1971 and Conrail in 1976:

Amtrak was designed to take over passenger railroading, which was essentially rendered superfluous by commercial jet aviation almost everywhere in the US except the sprawling Northeast Corridor, where passenger trains are still viable. Conrail was designed to merge the failed Penn Central and a half dozen other smaller but also bankrupt railroads.

Amtrak is still in existence and still relying upon taxpayer dollars to survive. It may very likely never be financially independent. Conrail was designed from the start to be a profitable company, and eventually did turn a profit by the mid-1980s, when it also went went public, and was eventually merged into two different railroads in 1999. Fortunately, the federal government hasn't gone into the railroad bailout business since the 1970s, and in fact passed sweeping railroad deregulation bills in the late 1970s that helped make Conrail financially viable in the first place.

So hopefully, like the railroad bailouts of the 1970s, this is a once in a lifetime event involving the investment community.

Until the next sector of the Mentos economy fails, of course.

Update: Nick Schulz has "The Acronym We Need."

Progress of a sort, from Charlie Rangel: with his latest in a lifetime of ad hominems, at least he's no longer calling a Republican a Nazi.

At Pajamas Media, Katherine Berry notes that "The media gives celebs a pass on ugly rants -- as long as they bash the right people":

The true irony behind the left's united decision to overlook [Sandra] Bernhard's racist ravings is that, by doing so, they've given up their strongest rallying point: something Slate's John Dickerson called "the politics of umbrage" back when Hillary was still in the race.

A reporter will never go wrong at a Clinton or Obama press conference by asking: "Senator, what about the latest outrage?" The question is always apt, because taking umbrage and responding to it has become the chief daily business of the Democratic campaign.

Now, however, Hollywood -- the darling of the left -- is the source of the umbrage, and the resulting silence among the liberals is deafening. The effect is much like Dorothy and crew's stunned silence in The Wizard of Oz when the curtain pulled back to reveal the "wizard" as a gnarly little old man.

Only this time what the curtain has revealed is a far more gruesome sight: the true face of Hollywood, no longer wearing Al Jolson's blackface paint, but just as racist as ever.

Read the whole thing.

Are you inexperienced?

I've been showing my students a video on the history of presidential debates that Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw did in 2004 before the Bush-Kerry debates. It's a fun retrospective of the memorable moments from all the presidential and vice-presidential debates up to then. I was just listening to Matthews and Quayle rehash the Dan Quayle-Lloyd Bentsen debate. Brokaw pointed out that Brit Hume twice asked Quayle a question about what he'd do if he succeeded to the office. Then Brokaw said that he felt that Quayle hadn't really answered the question the first two times and so he asked it again. And it was that third time that led Quayle to point out that he had had the same number of years in Congress that John F. Kennedy had had by 1960. And then Lloyd Bentsen unleashed his devastating riposte that he "knew John Kennedy and you're no John Kennedy."

Of course, Bentsen didn't really know JFK, but he knew that the pre-Blogosphere mass media would happily cover for him. More from Betsy Newmark:

I was just wondering what the chances are that any reporter this year would, in the presidential debates, would ask Barack Obama three times a question about whether he was prepared after three and a half years in the Senate to be president. After all Quayle had had four years in the House and eight years in the Senate in 1988 and people considered him unprepared to be vice president. Yet, Obama with his unremarkable record in the Senate, half of which he's spent on the road campaigning, is not getting that question over and over. And Charlie Gibson isn't asking Obama if he didn't have a moment of pause wondering if he was really ready to be president before he decided to run.

Funny how standards change back and forth, isn't it?

Indeed.^TM

David Burge recently quipped, "When America's Communities Need Organizing, America's Community Organizers Will Be There to Organize Them." The global village? Eh. As Jennifer Rubin writes, "Solidarity on Standing Up To Iran? Not in the Obama Camp:"

Apparently, the Obama camp and its allies on the left have higher priorities than a showing of bipartisan solidarity on an issue they claim to care about. Whatever drama surrounds the Clintons had ripped through the Jewish community, dashed a showing of bipartisan support, and given Ahmadinejad a moral victory.

But Barack Obama may have been the biggest loser on a number of fronts.

Obama is after all struggling to overcome skepticism in the Jewish community. His past affiliation with Palestinian groups, his flip-flop on an "Undivided Jerusalem," his coterie of advisors who have made troubling comments regarding Israel or America Jews have given pause to some Jews, the vast majority of whom have voted Democratic in presidential elections. The fact that partisan politics by Obama's allies -- and perhaps his own campaign -- submarined an event in defense of both U.S. and Israeli interests will not go unnoticed. Many will ask: "Is bumping Palin off the stage more important than standing up to Ahmadinejad?" It seems so.

On a broader level, Obama's claim to fame is his ability -- how can we forget -- to organize his community. His dismal failure here, indeed his role in wrecking a community protest, doesn't speak well of his ability to bring people together for a common purpose.

Roger L. Simon adds, "There is a Yiddish word for this -- schande."

Stuart Taylor writes, "I no longer trust the major newspapers or television networks to provide consistently accurate and fair reporting and analysis of all the charges and countercharges." Me too--but I arrived at that point four years ago.

Exhibit A: Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. Ed Morrissey writes:

I'm going to start this post by noting that I avidly read Kurtz' media blog, and consider it one of the best continuing analyses of both traditional and new media. I believe that Howard usually tries to approach this task without bias, and mostly succeeds, although he has certainly laid more that a few eggs (and who among us has not?). So when I tell you that Howard is talking out of his hat, I say it with respect and affection.

Why do I say that? His own newspaper has twice reported the relationship between Raines and Obama, and on one of those occasions, Raines was their source:

Read the rest, and then read Cuffy Meigs, who has a video of the "Most Racist Ad EVER ... No, THIS Is ... Wait, THIS One ..."

Finally, Glenn Reynolds asks:

Meanwhile, if Obama is President, will Time regard every criticism of his administration as racist?

No--as long as it's a writer at Time that's making it.

Viva Las Vegas, baby!

Nina and I are in town for Blog World, which kicks off on Friday. If the concentrated geekery of the event wasn't enough, we'll have this to contend with as well:

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Sure, an' you'll be tellin' yar fav'rite piratical japes, now? Such as:

Which Texas politician is the pirate's favorite: Dick ARRRRRRRmey. Which Pixarrrrr movie is the pirate's choice? RRRRRratatouille. (Wrong! It's CARRRRRRrrrrs.) Some people find this day tiresome. I find it delightful.

To honor the occasion, it's too bad they're not holding the convention here, instead.

Joel Stein in the L.A. Times in January of 2006:

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. . . . But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

Today in the Boston Globe, Steve Almond writes, "I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally":

PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the military. To put this in bumper stickerese: Support the Troops.

Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally. When somebody tells me they serve in the military, my first impulse isn't to say, "Thank you for your service!" like those insufferable chickenhawks on talk radio.

My first impulse is to say, "I'm sorry to hear that." Because I am. I'm sorry to know that the person I'm talking to might someday be maimed or killed on the job, or might someday kill someone else. Or refuel a plane that drops bombs on buildings.

I can't see how anyone who calls himself or herself Christian - or human, for that matter - wouldn't be sorry.

The fact that we have an army, that we need an army, is inherently tragic. It's an admission that our species is still ruled by fear and aggression.

As Jeanne Kirkpatrick once said:

Reflecting at a 2002 conference on her early career as a socialist, she said it had been "relatively short." As she read the works of various socialists, she said, "I came to the conclusion that almost all of them, including my grandfather, were engaged in an effort to change human nature. The more I thought about it, the more I thought this was not likely to be a successful effort."

"Human nature has no history", but then neither does much of the left. I'd call it a draw, but that might be using language that's too militaristic for some.

Related: The above "Human nature has no history" quote comes from Professor Glenn Loury, whom you can see discussing Obama and feminism in this new Bloggingheads TV interview.

From the Obama's campaign's latest email to his supporters:

More than 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Home foreclosures are skyrocketing, and home values are plunging. Gas prices are at an all-time high, and we're still spending more than $10 billion every month on a war in Iraq that should never have been waged.

Obama, back in June:

CNBC's John Harwood: So could the (high) oil prices help us?

Barack Obama: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly, particularly U.S. automakers...

Or as the president of Fredonia once said, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

(Video of Obama being foregainst high gas prices, here.)

Perception:

Percentage of Americans, according to Gallup, who believe we're in a recession: 38 percent.

Percentage of Americans, according to Gallup, who believe we're in an economic depression: 23 percent.

Reality:

"The second-quarter growth rate for the U.S. economy was revised upward, to 3.3 percent."

Were the preceding two quarters pretty lousy? Yeah, .9 percent in 2008's first quarter and -.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. But the preceding two quarters, the economy grew 4.8 percent each.

Of course, in politics, as with the legacy media (but I repeat myself), perception invariably trumps reality.

Meanwhile, James Pethokoukis lists four ways to make bad news worse. So invariably, watch for these to begin to be implemented. Obama/Smoot '08!

As Rich Lowry writes, "The enduring scandal of the McCain campaign is that it wants to win"; such determination has already ended one love affair:

A crucial turning point in the presidential race came when the McCain campaign ended its candidate's habitual informal interactions with the press. The area of the McCain campaign plane where a couch had been installed so the Arizonian could hold court with journalists was cut off with a dark curtain, marking the end of an era.

Since 2000, John McCain had thrived on his irrepressible chattiness with the press, talking about anything reporters wanted for as long as they would listen. The press loved the access and avoided "gotcha" coverage, letting McCain explain any seeming gaffes. The arrangement worked beautifully for both sides -- until McCain became the Republican presidential nominee.

Suddenly, he wasn't afforded the same old courtesy from reporters, and he had to go about the grim business of driving a daily message. With the end of the running bull sessions, a trial separation began with the press that became a divorce that became a feud.

The enduring scandal of the McCain campaign is that it wants to win. The press had hoped for a harmless, nostalgic loser like Bob Dole in 1996. In a column excoriating Republicans for historically launching successful attacks against Democratic presidential candidates in August, Time columnist Joe Klein excepted Bob Dole -- not mentioning that Dole had been eviscerated by Clinton negative ads before August ever arrived.

The press turned on McCain with a vengeance as soon as he mocked Barack Obama as a celebrity. Its mood grew still more foul when the McCain campaign took offense at Obama's "lipstick on a pig" jab. "The media are getting mad," according to Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz. "Stop the madness," urged Time's Mark Halperin, exhorting his fellow journalists to fight back against the McCain campaign's manufactured outrage.

The lipstick controversy indeed represented a silly bit of grievance-mongering. But had the Obama camp's tendentious interpretation of Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" put-down as a racial slight generated similar push-back from the media? Had Obama's ridiculous depiction of Geraldine Ferraro as a quasi-racist? Had Obama's repeated contention -- with no evidence -- that Republicans were attacking him for looking different?

The media have made it gospel that McCain is attacking Obama dishonestly. Of course, campaign advertisements are the last place to look for a dispassionate rendition of the facts. McCain's ads are no different. But they are no worse than Obama's spots.

There's no doubt that McCain came to play, but up against the Chicago Way, is he really prepared to fight to win?

Update: Somewhat like the many cynical, intelligent journalists who get that classic deer in the headlights look when asked to explain the worldview of their fellow staff, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times just can't seem to figure out why on earth John McCain is less chummy with the press these days.

Jay Nordlinger explores "the sheer hatred that Palin has aroused":

"I am almost 60 and come from Massachusetts. In all my years, I have never seen anything like this, and don't want to see it ever again. I have a friend who is both feminist and left-leaning. I asked her why they hate Palin so much. She said, 'Because she's had it all: family, career. And she did it without a man like Bill Clinton helping her. She did it on her own.'"

I have said it before: Hillary Clinton's husband was president of the United States. Sarah Palin's works the night shift in an oil field. Who is the feminist hero? Bien sûr.

I myself have a tale to relate. An episode left me kind of shaken, honestly. Last week, I was talking to a friend of mine -- a very warm and humane woman. We've been friends for years. I had been away, and we hadn't talked politics -- but then, we never do. We never had. She's a liberal, of course -- virtually everyone here in NYC is. And I never, ever bring up politics (with pretty much anyone -- not worth the trouble) (and, of course, I do it professionally).

But she said to me, out of the blue, "What do you think of Sarah Palin?" And while I was drawing breath to answer, she said, "I hate her."

That kind of took my breath away -- because this friend of mine is no hater. But she said it with firm, horrible conviction. She said it with true emotion in her eyes. Frankly, I was too taken aback to reply, other than to say, "Well, my feeling is the exact opposite."

I can see how you might disagree with Governor Palin -- she's a conservative, after all. I can see how you might find her unprepared even for the vice-presidency. But hate? Hate a woman who rose from a modest background to be governor of her state? Who is obviously a warm, civic-minded, talented mother of five?

Hate?

It must be abortion, religion, and culture. If she were pro-choice, went to a mainline church (only on Christmas and Easter), and didn't hunt, she'd be okay. At least less attacked. But then, she wouldn't be herself, would she?

The advertising tagline for George Clooney's 2005 Good Night And Good Luck, one of those exceedingly rare Hollywood movies about McCarthyism, was "We will not walk in fear of one another"--but there are always exceptions.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin notes, "The Associated Press refuses to assist federal investigators trying to find the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin's private e-mail account"; which of course recalls this seminal moment in transnational journalistic ethics--or the lack thereof.

After the 2004 presidential election, the left started billing themselves as "The Reality-Based Community"--as opposed to those faith-based Christianist God worshipers on the other side of the aisle.

And yet, the left isn't above asking a higher power if He'd be willing to invoke a little smiting of his own from time to time...

(Earlier vlogulations found here.)

If you missed it on XM, the latest PJM Political is now online. Stay tuned 'til the end, when host Steve Green and I chart a course towards the Delta Quadrant in the final minutes of the show!

Yesterday, Roger L. Simon asked, "Is Obama the most conservative presidential candidate of our time?" Certainly the most reactionary, and his veep nominee wants to set the Wayback Machine to about 1934. But then, the day after "Markets Crash, Media Hysterical, Democrats Thrilled", Joe's far from the only person on the left who's longing for the days of FDR and breadlines. Or maybe Schumervilles.

Glenn Reynolds links to this Wired item on a World of Warcraft terror plot.

Has anybody accounted for Leeroy Jenkins' whereabouts during this period?

"Who knew that back in the late 1990s, the folks at Free Republic were helping collect material for Obama supporters a decade later..."

As I mentioned on PJTV earlier today, as much I love having 500 channels to choose from via my satellite dish and, according to Technorati, 113 million blogs out there, the amount of information and opinion and the unending pace at which it's cranked out, makes it very easy to lose perspective. In a sense, a cable channel like CNBC, as great as it can be, puts an emphasis on the rapid speed of the financial markets, when for most individual investors, they're far better off (NOTE: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. CONSULT YOUR OWN FINANCIAL ADVISOR. INSERT OBLIGATORY SEC WARNINGS HERE. POST NO BILLS. DO NOT EAT PASTE, DO NOT RUN WITH SCISSORS.) essentially buying a few decent mutual funds and hanging onto them for a decade or so, rather than buying, selling, and trading like mad.

The above headline comes from a 1979 Business Week cover story which electroplated then current trends and assumed that they would run indefinitely into the future. At the time of its writing, the Dow closed at about 975, in the midst of the last days of the Jimmy Carter administration's stagflation, culminating in double digit unemployment, interest rates, and inflation, as the above ad from that era highlights.

When I was preparing for PJTV today, I came across this PBS article, which quoted from its coverage of "Black Monday", the stock market correction of October 1987. At the time, the Dow was at 2,200, and the dropped 500 points. Note the end-of-the-world tone from 20 years ago, as PBS attempted to attack the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, and perhaps in its collective subconscious, longed for the days of Jimmy Carter--if their writers even remembered the gloom of that period at all. (Of course, a decade later, President Clinton was following the basic concepts of Reaganomics--and essentially bragging about it ("We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?", presumably much to PBS's chagrin.)

How long will today's economic woes last? Well, check out this CNN article quoting from Alan Greenspan, who goes from stating that Wall Street is in the midst of "a once-in-a-century type of financial crisis"--but then adds:

"Indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes," Greenspan said. He predicted that would not happen until early 2009, and said the odds of U.S. recession have gone up in recent months.

So despite the doom and destruction tone of the MSM (but then, when is it otherwise, when the GOP is in the White House, particularly during an election year?), I wouldn't start heading for the ledge just yet.

Update: Well, here's one way to liven up an otherwise gloomy day of financial reporting!

Elsewhere: "See me after class."

Found via Hugh Hewitt, John H. Taylor Spots Salon's Gary Kamiya allowing his Palin Derangement Syndome to lead him into an astonishing bit of hyperbole [After the Jill Greenberg meltdown, why is that astonishing?--Ed Good point]:

If Palin catapults McCain to victory, it will be revealed to be the most powerful and enduring force in American politics. And that fact will raise serious questions about the viability of American democracy itself...

As opposed to a tyro Senator who has yet to complete his first term in office and unlike Palin has zero executive experience? (Oh wait, other than running his campaign. Harold Stassen and Lyndon Larouche, eat your hearts out!)

Riehl World View quotes the AP:

John McCain leads Barack Obama by 23 points among rural voters and by 13 points with voters age 65 and over, according to an AP-GfK Poll of likely voters.

And as Dan Riehl notes, "And that's mostly before the 'he doesn't use a computer' ad has really started to play."

Given that senior citizens historically tend to vote in wider numbers than the MTV "Rock The Vote" crowd, this seems like a pretty enormous audience for Obama to alienate.

As Noel Sheppard writes, "Lib Photographer Admits Making McCain Look Sinister for Mag Cover", quoting from the photographer in question, Jill Greenberg:

I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.

No--as long as it's understood that the magazine is taking sides in this election. But then, who isn't these days?

Update: Bumped to top, to include this post from Gateway Pundit, who has a link to Greenberg's homepage, which currently has a rotating series of vile Photoshopped and crudely captioned images of McCain. Now that's dispassionate freelance photojournalism in action!

But more than that, it's also worth flashing back to this April post from Jim Geraghty regarding the far left's meltdown over Hillary Clinton, and this article from last year by Noemie Emery on what was said by the left about President Reagan near the end of his second term. Both of which help to place the burgeoning McCain Derangement Syndrome displayed by self-professed "hard-core Dems" such as Greenberg into sharp perspective, and illustrate that there was nothing out of the ordinary about George W. Bush's presidency to set the left off over the last eight years. He was simply yet another in an endless series of political enemies of the far left who needed to be destroyed. That's valuable governing knowledge for the next Republican (heck, maybe even moderate Democrat) in the White House, whether he's sworn into office this January, or four or eight years hence.

More: Gerard Vanderluen has additional Photoshopped images of McCain that Greenberg has run on her site, along with a press release from Atlantic editor James Bennet:

"We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday.

When we contract with photographers for portraits, we don't vet them for their politics--instead, we assess their professional track records. Based on the portraits she had done of politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger and her work for publications like Time, Wired, and Portfolio, we expected Jill Greenberg, like the other photographers we work with, to behave professionally.

Jill Greenberg has obviously not done that. She has, in fact, disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images she has created for her Web site of John McCain."

As Gerard writes, "It has been my experience that if you have to get PR to push out statements on a Sunday, you know you are in trouble. Developing..."

"Dear SiteMeter: Please make SiteMeter Classic an option."

Update: Whew! Thanks, Sitemeter!

The Anchoress compares and contrasts the questions that Charlie Gibson asked Sarah Palin last week, versus the softballs he pitched to Barack Obama in June. And Newsbusters goes four years back into the memory hole, and reviews Gibson's equally softball Q&A with John Edwards.

Boston Globe: Don't trust the Boston Globe! (At least when it comes to reporting on John McCain.)

Brian Maloney, the "Radio Equalizer", catches former Air America hostess Randi Rhodes calling Sarah Palin a child molester:

She's the woman who shows up at the kid's birthday party and starts opining about everything from politics to lawn care. This is the woman that knows it all. Will shout you down, will get revenge on you. That's who she is.

She's friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, 'can we sleep over at the Palin's? No! NO!'

(Click over to Brian's site for audio of Rhodes.)

At least she's back to demonizing Republicans. Back in early April, when we last mentioned Rhodes, she was caught on videotape calling Democrats Geraldine Ferraro "David Duke in drag", and Hillary Clinton, "A big f***ing whore, too." As Jim Geraghty wrote at the time:

In and of itself, it's shocking, but it's otherworldly when we think about what Hillary Clinton has meant to liberals for most of the past sixteen years.

Maybe Bill Richardson owes James Carville money, because that would help explain the bitter jihad the former Clinton strategist seems to be on, so relentlessly decrying the New Mexico Governor as "Judas" that Richardson stopped doing media appearances. It didn't take much for Obama-backing General McPeak to declare Bill Clinton the equivalent of Joe McCarthy. And if you've read any Hillary vs. Obama thread on a liberal blog lately, you know that there have been friendlier back-and-forth exchanges in snakepits.

There's something vaguely reassuring about all this, from the view of sitting on the right. It reveals to conservatives that the nastiness exhibited in our earlier disagreements with these folks was never personal; these people are clearly nasty to anyone who disagrees with them. Geraldine Ferraro's long service to the Democratic party means nothing to many Obama backers; she's a racist, "David Duke in drag," as Rhodes put it. I'm sure Senator Patrick Leahy thought his decades of work on the left side of the aisle had bought him some street cred from feminists, but no, he was called sexist when he called on Hillary to leave the race.

Hillary gets called a "monster" by Obama's surrogates; Hillary's surrogates wonder out loud if Obama ever sold drugs. Today Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell speculates that Americans know only half the story of Barack Obama. Day in, day out, in this race it continues.

And while the far left's media mavens continue to wallow in madness, their more moderate establishment liberal counterparts are victims of narcissism, as Roger L. Simon writes.

The legacy of the post-breakup Beatles comes full circle--the terrorists whom Yoko Ono publicly admires have told Paul McCartney, as Allahpundit puts it, "Play Israel and we'll kill you."

(Fellow 1960s Britpop vet Cat Stevens could not be reached for comment.)

Jake Tapper (the anti-Charlie Gibson at ABC) explores "The Isotoner campaign":

Like any number of Democratic candidates before him -- Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is once again declaring that he is going to take off the gloves and fight back against attacks from the Republican Party.

This is what you're going to hear from his campaign today, anyway, which is unveiling two new TV ads, including this attack ad against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

But just so you know -- this is, by my count, the 4th time Obama's campaign has officially or unofficially made such a declaration that Obama will "take off the gloves" and fight back.

That's a lot of pairs of gloves.

The Isotoner campaign, one might say.

Curiously though, once Obama took off the Isotoners, what voters actually received were a glimpse of John McCain's hands, as Ed Morrissey writes:

Earlier today, Barack Obama's campaign released an ad attacking John McCain for not knowing how to send an e-mail. Their crack research team apparently never heard of Google or Lexis-Nexis, but Jonah Goldberg does. He discovers why McCain doesn't use a keyboard -- his torturers made sure he couldn't. The Boston Globe reported it eight years ago:

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

After Vietnam, McCain had Ann Lawrence, a physical therapist, help him regain flexibility in his leg, which had been frozen in an extended position by a shattered knee. It was the only way he could hope to resume his career as a Navy flier, but Lawrence said the treatment, taken twice a week for six months, was excruciatingly painful.

"He endured it, he wouldn't settle for less," said Lawrence, who rejoiced with McCain when he passed the Navy physical. "I have never seen such toughness and resolve."

Making fun of a war hero's severe injuries -- smooth move, Team O. Talk about computer illiteracy! Doesn't anyone on the Obama campaign know what they're doing? Didn't it ever occur to them that a man who can't raise his arms above his head might have a physical barrier to using a computer?

If this is what happens when they takes the gloves off, maybe they should just keep them on in the future.

While McCain is obviously computer literate on some level, telling the New York Times last year that he reads "Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes", Glenn Reynolds suggests that his campaign might want to better familiarize themselves with another technology--the video camera:

If I were a candidate, I think I'd bring my own camera to interviews, shoot the whole thing and post the unedited raw video on the Web.

The technology for this is easy - I've got a little Sony HD video camera that records on a chip and fits in a coat pocket or purse - and putting video on the Web is a snap, too.

Of course, the knowledge that this will happen is likely to be enough to keep people honest - but if anything is edited unfairly, the full video will tell the tale. No need to wait for Groundskeeper Willie to appear.

TV journalists won't be happy with this, of course, but it's hard to see a principled basis for objecting.

In the past, the tools for broadcast newsgathering were expensive and specialized, and much of the media's power came from the fact that no one else had them. Those times are long gone, and candidates, and journalists, are going to have to adapt.

Of course, there are risks for candidates, too. A gaffe-prone candidate, or one who's just bad at speaking extemporaneously, might want to present only edited videos to the public - especially if he or she can count on the news media to be generally sympathetic.

But that just makes the whole exercise more valuable to the public, as whether a candidate is willing to make the raw video available would provide a useful data point on whether the candidate is confident - and whether the press corps is in the tank.

I predict, however, that we'll see this strategy adopted soon, quite possibly in this election cycle. The news-media monopoly continues to decay, and technology continues to march on.

Back in 2005, I quoted a passage from Bernard Goldberg's second book on media bias, Arrogance, from the chapter titled "File It Under 'H'"--for hypocrisy:

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With one and a half seasons behind it, and its themes better understood than some of the crabbier initial reviews anticipated, Kyle Smith weighs in on AMC's Mad Men:

When Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), a ferrety young colleague of Don's, finds out Don's secret and informs the head of the firm, he is angrily brushed off. It's Pete who comes off looking bad, just as it seems unwise for Don's wife Betty (the fetching January Jones) to talk to a shrink. Mad Men's rule is omerta in a station wagon, La Cosa Waspa.

Perhaps Don's finest hour came in Season One when his friend and boss Roger, felled by a heart attack during an office tryst, was being carried to an ambulance. Half-conscious, Roger moaned his new inamorata's name. Don grabbed him by the hair, slapped him in the chops and said, "Mona. Your wife's name is Mona." Can men ever have been this manly?

When Don meets beatniks, he spends the evening getting high with his suit jacket on. Yet it's not the fraudulent philanderer but the beardy coffeehouse revolutionaries who are ridiculous. Ironic or no, the show makes the case for repression that has seldom been heard in popular culture since Gary Cooper hung up his spurs: straighten your tie, stash your problems in the bottom drawer, pour another gimlet and carry on.

Along with Robert Morse's classic "A man is whatever room he is in" motif, the scene with the beatniks that Kyle mentions above ends on one of my favorite Mad Men moments.

Draper starts to leave in a huff. (If he waited a minute and a huff he'd be Groucho Marx of course.) But the cops are investigating a domestic disturbance in the apartment next door, and the beatniks (and Draper, if I recall correctly) have consumed a fair amount of cannabis and other substances that only way-out bebop cats like Gil Evans and Dave Brubeck would ever touch. So one of the proto-hippies tells Don that he can't leave--the cops are still outside.

"You can't", Draper tersely replies, putting on his suit jacket, buttoning the collar of his Paul Stuart shirt, straightening his narrow New Frontier tie, and donning his Lock & Co. Trilby.

For those of us who put our emphasis on the bourgeois half of David Brooks' Bobos In Paradise equation, it was a tremendous little moment.

Having watched several clips of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin, I have to say I agree with Jay Nordlinger's take on Gibson's body language:

In his loud sighings and overall body language, he reminded me quite a lot of Al Gore, in the first 2000 debate.

Remember that debate? Governor Bush did poorly, but Gore's behavior was so boorish, people tended to focus on that (and a Saturday Night Live parody absolutely slew Gore).

Palin did much better than that (and Bush rose to the occasion -- more than rose -- in the second and third debates). (Same thing happened in '04, oddly enough.) And she'll get nothing but better, I predict.

P.S. Gibson's behavior was so "out there" -- drawing attention to itself -- I think Palin should have remarked on it, in the course of her answers. What do I mean by "out there"? Well, I mean intrusive, in a way. Blatant.

Often, a good interviewer is seamless in his performance -- he almost absents himself from the proceedings, so that the questions and answers take over. But it was like Gibson was the co-star -- if not the lead star -- of the whole show.

He was as much adversary -- debate opponent -- as questioner. And that's not my idea of how these shebangs should go. (Whether the interviewee is an R or a D.)

As Jay wrote in an earlier post:

Remember this about Gibson, too: A lot of pressure was on him. Why? Because he had the first interview, with this much-hated figure. He was standing in for the whole MSM -- and they were depending on him. He just had to be somewhat hostile, he had to trip her up, if only a little. Otherwise, his colleagues would have said he had blown his opportunity -- their opportunity -- and gone all soft.

In the eyes of the arrogant MSM, he was "vetting" for all.

So -- walk a yard or two in his moccasins . . .

Moccasins? At the risk of venturing into the Manolo's territory, those looked like extra clunky double-soled Florsheim battleship-grade wingtips Gibson was tapping whenever he was bored with Palin, the perfect metaphor for a dinosaur media in general.

Beyond Gibson's effete condescension, the 65,327 jump cuts in the video were obvious and glaring. And in these days of unlimited bandwidth, there's no excuse for that. I can certainly understand cutting a lengthy interview down to fit in with the rest of the material on the half hour nightly news. (Itself a relic from the Jurassic era of Eisenhower and Arthur Godfrey.) But then put the whole thing online with a few or no edits.

And in addition to ABC's edits, Gibson relied on a truncated AP quote to attack the Alaskan governor on her prayers for America's troops. And then to compound the problem, ABC puts the word 'God' in unnecessary scare quotes on the video page highlighting the exchange. Stay classy, ABC!

Update: Neo-Neocon also has some thoughts on, as she calls Gibson, "the Not-So-Grand Inquisitor":

I was constantly distracted by two things: the shockingly choppy editing, and Gibson's profoundly inquisitorial demeanor.

It wasn't just his game face, and the peering over the eyeglasses (he gave new meaning to the expression "looked down his nose at her"). It was his remarkable condescension: "I got lost in a blizzard of words..." That crack sounded more like one side of a couple's quarrel overheard in a restaurant than the statement of a neutral interviewer.

It didn't help that it was preceded by yet another clunky jump cut, leaving the viewer not knowing where "the blizzard of words" was naturally concluded by Palin or--more likely it seems--truncated by an editor at ABC.

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Make way for An Army of Davids An Army of Sarahs!

(And yes, we do need more Pun Control!)

As Ed Morrissey writes:

Yet another stupid Palin smear arises today, on the front page of the Washington Post, no less. Anne Kornblut writes that Sarah Palin linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein in telling troops departing to Iraq that they would be fighting the same people who attacked America. Perhaps the Washington Post hasn't yet realized it, but Saddam and his regime have long since been dispatched to history:

Hey, it was in all the papers--even the Post!

Jonah Goldberg writes, "Whether or not Sarah Palin helps John McCain win the election, her greatest work may already be behind her. She's exposed the feminist con job":

On Tuesday, Salon ran one article calling Palin a dominatrix ("a whip-wielding mistress") and another labeling her a sexually repressed fundamentalist no different from the Muslim fanatics and terrorists of Hamas. Make up your minds, folks. Is she a seductress or a sex-a-phobe?

But this any-weapon-near-to-hand approach is an obvious sign of how scared the Palin-o-phobes are.

Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

It's funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

Since we know from basic science that Palin is a woman -- she's had five kids, for starters -- it's clear that these ideological thugs aren't talking about actual, you know, facts. They're doing what people of totalitarian mind-sets always do: bully heretics, demonize enemies, whip the troops into line.

Hey, somebody should write a book about that!

Of course, Palin has unhinged (hey, somebody should write a book called that!) the rest of the left as well. Roger Ebert's meltdown earlier this week is a classic of the genre:

Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don't want to know.

Remember all that stuff from the left in the late 1990s about tolerance and diversity and multiculturalism and "think different?" Pretty amazing how it all goes out the window when "The Shadow" appears.

(Ebert has apparently since broken out the Liquid Paper to whitewash his gaffe, but thanks to the Blogosphere, that genie's out of the bubble.)

Update: Orrin Judd writes, "Because they are materialists, the Left thinks elitism is an excess of material things, so they don't even realize that it is how divorced from American culture they are that has always hindered them."

Meanwhile, Tiger Hawk writes, "If John McCain is as lucky as he is smart, the lefty pundits and bloggers -- for example -- and their allies in the press will keeping hammering Saracuda all the way to Halloween."

Well, that's what David St. Hubbins tells me, but it won't just be Spinal Tap's drummers who explode come November if the Community Organizer loses. Mark Steyn writes:

The Washington Post's media man, Howard Kurtz, is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it for more than another couple decades or until the management buy-out offer improves:

The media are getting mad.

Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated...

Yes, indeed. Howie feels the press is being "manipulated" by the McCain campaign.

Maybe it is. A conventional launch strategy for a little-known vice-presidential nominee might have involved "manipulating" the media into running umpteen front-pagers on Sarah Palin's amazing primary challenge of a sitting governor and getting the sob-sisters to slough off a ton of heartwarming stories about her son shipping out to Iraq.

But, if you were really savvy, you'd "manipulate" the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix, comparing her to Islamic fundamentalists, Pontius Pilate and porn stars, and dismissing her as a dysfunctional brood mare who can't possibly be the biological mother of the kid she was too dumb to abort. Who knows? It's a long shot, but if you could pull it off, a really cunning media manipulator might succeed in manipulating Howie's buddies into spending the month after Labor Day outbidding each other in some insane Who Wants To Be An Effete Condescending Media Snob? death-match. You'd not only make the press look like bozos, but that in turn might tarnish just a little the fellow these geniuses have chosen to anoint.

John Hinderaker has more on Kurtz' descent into madness, while Roger Kimball calls the last two weeks an "act of auto-immolation" by the media. Alas, while setting their own pants on fire, Howie & co also managed to spill the lighter fluid all over Barack's coronation robes. The other day Boston's "alternative" paper ran a piece lamenting that MSNBC being so obviously in the tank for Obama is, in fact, damaging the Obama campaign. As Orrin Judd says:

Even if it isn't particularly true, the notion that Keith Olbermann defeated Barack Obama needs to become conventional wisdom, just to drive the Left bonkers.

Indeed. When Howie claims he's getting really really mad, I wonder if he realizes he sounds like Elmer Fudd warning Bugs Bunny "You're making me vewy vewy angwy" right after he's shot his own butt off.

Having written one post earlier today on Charles Krauthammer's "Pressure Cooker Theory" on the madness of the leftwing in general after 9/11, and another which linked to Glenn Reynolds' "Spinal Tap Media" meme (all amps cranked to 11 all the time), when Kurtz writes, "The media are getting mad", all I can say is that I'd hate to see them when their anger actually reaches fruition.

Considering how the media exploited Katrina "to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq" to "damage Bush politically for a long, long time" as Mickey Kaus wrote in September 2005, there's a fascinating sense of schadenfreude in this story. In late summer of 2005 Kanye West was first dubbed by Time magazine as "the smartest man in pop music" and two weeks later then blurted into an open microphone during a fundraiser telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina on NBC that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Today, West was arrested at LAX:

Hip-hop star Kanye West has been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of felony vandalism after a heated confrontation with photographers at the city's international airport.

West was taken into custody at LAX airport on Thursday after a photographer's camera was reportedly smashed to the ground during the struggle.

According to celebrity website TMZ.com, a still photographer was attempting to take pictures of the rapper at the American Airlines terminal when he was confronted by the star.

According to a TMZ videographer, "West rushed the (photographer) and grabbed his camera. A struggle ensued and the still guy was screaming, 'Police, help!'"

The website reports West took the camera and threw it to the ground, breaking it into pieces.

The videographer reportedly approached West with his camera rolling when the rapper's bodyguard walked up to him, demanding he hand over the camera.

West's assistant allegedly intervened, grabbing the equipment and smashing it to the ground.

West was reportedly stopped by police before reaching security checkpoints in an attempt to board his plane after the confrontation.

He was allegedly restrained by authorities during the initial police investigation, when he discovered the incident had been recorded, shouting, "Give me the f**king videotape."

West and his assistant are being held on $20,000 bail.

Video here.

Incidentally, "Give me the f**king videotape" seems to be quite a timely catchphrase at the moment.

After my appearance on PJTV this afternoon, I heard Glenn Reynolds discussing this New York Times story with PJTV host Allen Barton and Maximum Pajamahadeen Roger L. Simon:

Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence.

Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American government claimed was the secret to the atomic bomb.

Glenn added, "Before my time, but I believe that all right-thinking people believed the Rosenbergs innocent back then. I wonder what other beliefs, widely shared among right-thinking people today, will turn out to be similarly wrong in 50 years?"

Back in late 2005, when there a news item that Upton Sinclair hid knowledge of Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt in order to do his antediluvian Free Mumia impersonation (as I wrote back then), Jonah Goldberg noted:

So which leftwing martyr/icon is left? Sacco & Vanzetti were guilty. The Rosenbergs: guilty. Hiss: guilty. Margaret Mead: liar. Rigoberta Menchu: liar. Duranty: liar. Kinsey: liar. Upton Sinclair: liar. I.F. Stone isn't looking too hot (lied about America often, loved totalitarians, might have taken KGB money).

Martin Luther King Jr. -- small flaws aside -- is still looking good. But Bobby Kennedy is only a useful leftwing hero if you don't look too closely. Ditto JFK. Jesse Jackson's going to look awful to historians.

Who's left?

Hey, there's always John Kerry and Bill Ayers.

Kathy Shaidle calls this post "Unlike any other 9/11 tribute you've ever seen" and a must see. I wish I had seen it before today's PJTV segment.

I just recorded a brief segment for PJTV's September 11th show. I had tons of notes prepared, since I didn't know how long I'd be on, so I'm reprinting some of them here in the form of a blog post on 9/11's impact on the culture war:

9/11 changed the culture quite remarkably, but it did so in ways that may not have been expected. Back in 2004, the great Charles Krauthammer wrote a piece in which he referred to "the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release":

The loathing goes far beyond the politicians. Liberals as a body have gone quite around the twist. I count one all-star rock tour, three movies, four current theatrical productions and five best sellers (a full one-third of the New York Times list) variously devoted to ridiculing, denigrating, attacking and devaluing this president, this presidency and all who might, God knows why, support it.

How to explain? With apologies to Dr. Freud, I propose the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release.

The hostility, resentment, envy and disdain, all superheated in Florida, were not permitted their natural discharge. Came 9/11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks (many of the flags, according to Howard Dean, Confederate), the president was untouchable.

The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. It was the most serious case of repression since Freud's Anna O. went limp. The forced deference nearly killed them. And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.

Stripped of his halo, the president's ratings went down. The spell was broken. He was finally once again human and vulnerable. With immense relief, the critics let loose.

The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is re-elected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy.

The pressure was released during the 2004 election cycle, but when John Kerry lost, it mutated further into a virulent strain that was only fully released after Katrina. As Mickey Kaus very presciently noted, Hurricane Katrina gave the media a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq:

I'm not saying Bush and the Feds don't clearly deserve major grief for not getting today's National Guard aid convoy into downtown New Orleans a couple of days earlier. Some people are probably dead as a result. But the commentators on Washington Week in Review seemed a little too happy when proclaiming this a "debacle" that will damage Bush politically for a long, long time. And I don't think they were happy just because Bush has suffered a blow. I think it's because the hurricane and its New Orleans aftermath at least seemed to solve a big problem for anti-Bush commentators and politicians. Previously, they couldn't grouse about the Iraq War without seeming defeatist (and anti-liberationist and maybe even selfishly isolationist). Even the Clintons never figured a way out of that trap. But nature has succeded where they failed; it has opened up a way out, at least temporarily. Now Bush opponents can argue, in some cases quite accurately, that without the Iraq deployment aid would have gotten to New Orleans faster. And 'if we can [tk] in Iraq, why can't we [tk] in our own South?' They aren't being selfish. They are just asserting priorities! In short, Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. No wonder Gwen Ifill smiles the "inner smile."

In a very real sense, 9/11 also created the Blogosphere and the idea of partisan journalism--and I don't mean that in any sort of pejorative sense--which began with Matt Drudge and Fox News in the mid 1990s, and Rush Limbaugh's national radio show nearly a decade earlier, and began to become an increasingly accepted element outside of the conservative media.

In 2004, the New York Times admitted what was obvious to all concerned--that it was a liberal publication; and a year prior, Eason Jordan, then of CNN, admitted that his network had shilled for Saddam Hussein. The pressure cooker that Krauthammer refers to led directly to some incredibly sloppy thinking, such as Dan Rather's MemoGate at CBS, and the rise of MSNBC, an openly hyper-partisan division of an otherwise staid establishment liberal news operation like NBC. This morning, MSNBC nobly ran the videotapes of The Today Showfrom 9/11, when all was chaos and uncertainty except for the two towers and the Pentagon being hit. But yesterday, as Kathryn Jean Lopez noted, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC said:

The television networks were told that the Convention would pause, early in the evening, when children could still be watching, for a 9/11 Tribute, and they were encouraged to broadcast it.

What we got was not a tribute to the dead of 9/11, nor even a tribute to the responders, or the singularity of purpose we all felt. The Republicans gave us sociological pornography, a virtual snuff film.

In addition to hyper-partisanship, 9/11, also fueled (if you'll pardon the carboncentric pun) the rise of environmentalism in the media. Julia Gorin, whom I've interviewed for PJM Political on XM, had a piece in the Christian Science Monitor in 2006 in which she talked about environmentalism as a sort of Freudian displacement for the War On Terror:

Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. "I really consider this a national security issue," says celebrity activist and "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David. "Truth" star Al Gore calls global warming a "planetary emergency." Bill Clinton's first worry is climate change: "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it."

Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can't deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it's Kyoto that'll save you.

That's why in 2004 we got "The Day After Tomorrow" - so we could worry about junk science that may or may not kill us in 1,000 years instead of the people who really are trying to kill us the day after tomorrow.

While the hawks among us worry about preventing the Armageddon that's coming, our modern-day hippies just want to make sure the planet is pristine when it does. In fact, the more menacing terrorism becomes, the more some people seem to worry about the weather. Scared and unsure how to fight terrorists, they confront "climate change," which only requires spending trillions of other people's dollars on something that may not need fixing or may not be fixable. No wonder some of these people chain themselves to trees - they think money grows on them.
Why are these people so worried about the environment, anyway? It's not like they're living on this planet. Speaking of which, scientists have recently discovered global warming on Mars. See that? Martians need to stop driving those darn SUVs!

Notice that the undercurrent in all the doomsday rhetoric is America as chief culprit in the axis of enviro-evil (just as it is in all the world's turmoil). Having found a warm and fuzzy cause to snuggle up against in this big, bad, scary world, the enviros pick a fight with the one guy they're not scared of: America.

Such displacement also helps to explain the conspiracy theories and "trutherism." For a very long time, ABC had no problem running someone like Rosie O'Donnell as part of their daytime programming, who in the course of five years went from publicly claiming support for President Bush in the early stages of 9/11 to literally telling ABC viewers not to trust what they had just heard on Good Morning America and other news shows.

The events of the morning of September 11, 2001 have changed the culture in ways that few could anticipate that morning, and will continue to do so, no matter who wins in November.

Betsy Newmark suggests perusing this list of foiled terror plots against Americans since 9/11:

Some I'd heard of, but there are quite a few that I was unaware of. And these are just the ones where there was an arrest. We have no idea of how many were foiled without an arrest and a public announcement.

I believe that many Americans have grown to discount the whole idea that there are people out there who want to kill Americans, preferably here in the United States, and would like to orchestrate as massive a killing as possible. We have grown complacent in the seven years since 9/11 and now take the lack of attack as the norm.

While some of these plots might seem like a bunch of losers cooking up some crackpot idea that never would have been successful, remember that, if the 9/11 plotters had been arrested before they took over those airplanes, their plot would have seemed like just some bizarre idea that a bunch of incompetent kooks was dreaming up. Foiled plots might not seem that scary when they're exposed, but just imagine how those plots would have seemed totally different if they hadn't been foiled.

As successful as President Bush's administration has been at foiling terrorist plots, I think part of the complacency amongst Americans can be blamed on a relatively poor White House communications effort. Other than the periods when Ari Fleischer and the late Tony Snow were press secretaries, the White House has been surprisingly mediocre at PR and controlling an overwhelming hostile legacy media, which barring another successful terrorist attack between now and January, may in retrospect be seen as its greatest failing.

...By doing nothing, Cassy Fiano notes, adding that once again, the Dogpile search engine has a simple, tasteful cartoon on its homepage which does remember 9/11, and even adding the symbol that's dread by all transnationalists on Gaia's green earth, the American flag.

But hey, let's be fair. Not every day is the emotional equivalent of Walter Gropius's birthday.

In the latest edition of PJM Political, Steve Green and I discuss tomorrow's seventh anniversary of 9/11.

Today though, Charles Johnson has a far more cheerful anniversary to commemorate (though it will also be underplayed by the MSM): the fourth anniversary of everybody's favorite blinking GIF.

For our video look back at 2004, check out this edition of Silicon Graffiti:

As Cuffy Meigs notes, even though the original ad can still be seen on McCain's Website, CBS Forces YouTube To Yank McCain's "Lipstick":

Instead they piss off CBS, get everyone talking about media bias, network anchor egos, and YouTube censorship, which fuels the rabid curiosity of those who missed it the first time and forces McCain to produce a new Couric-free version of the ad which then extends the life of this poisonous story for another 2-3 news cycles.

Rove you magnificent bastard.

Or maybe SYMB--Schmidt You Magnificent Bastard. In any case, between the Obama-As-Celebrity riffs, the Palin for PUMAs pick, and now this little gem handed to them by their transnational friends at CBS and Google (who owns YouTube), McCain's campaign has done a great job of political jujitsu. Somebody there is quite adept at using the left's mindset against them remarkably well.

Shannen Coffin writes:

It would appear that Carol Fowler was jealous of the attention her husband Don received for his God-is-smiling-on-Democrats-because-of-Hurricane-Gustav comments and wanted to say something equally stupid that would make her famous. She succeeded. Congratulations, Carol. I'm sure your apology will follow shortly hereafter.

And here it comes, right on cue--complete with the to-be-expected "I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive" weasel language.

Hey, it's a botched joke!

Decades ago, Orson Welles once called Citizen Kane and its use of "Rosebud" as a framing mechanism an example of "Dollar Book Freud". Bracing for the onslaught of Hurricane Sarah, Deepak Chopra channels some Dollar Book Jung, and nests a seriously clunky PC parenthetical along the way.

But what would Freud and Jung have made of this incredible admission from Smokey Joe Biden?

Back on the mighty XM satellite after a two week hiatus, this week's PJM Political is a chronological look back at the past two weeks, beginning with the debut of Sarahmania, through the GOP convention, and a look at the weeks to come. With a star-studded cast of pundits, bloggers--and even actors!

And speaking of Sarahmania, Fred Thompson called in today to discuss how she's driven the media absolutely bonkers.

You make the call! Nathan Goulding posts photos from both parties' conventions. Near the top of the album is a photo with this caption:

MSNBC's booth right next to Al Jazeera's. Think RNC planners did this intentionally?

That whole media row on the west side of the Xcel Energy City was a wretched hive of old media infamy. While ideologically the networks housed in those booths moved from establishment liberal to very far left, in terms of skybox placement, the lineup ran from right to left as follows:

• CNN, Saddam Hussein's favorite shills.
• CBS, home of Ra^therGate.
• Channel 9 Action News--OK, we'll let them slide.
• And then Al Jazeera and MSNBC.

As I joked to Roger Simon on the day before the convention began and we first saw the lineup in the convention hall (and somewhat presciently in retrospect), if Keith Olbermann gets the boot mid-convention, he can simply walk next door and feel right at home. Hey, good enough for David Frost, good enough for Keith!

While the new McCain ad highlighting yesterday's gaffe from Obama is pretty good, and I commend the speed with which it was crafted and uploaded to YouTube, the late-August video from Team McCain (embedded above) is just devastating. It's crafted with lurid psychedelic colors, filled with ancient 1960s peace symbols, and linking Obama with Boy George, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, the late drag queen Divine, 1970s Greenwich Village cult singer Klaus Nomi, and other international musicians and celebrities. Really potent raw red meat for conservatives. Though I imagine the left might not be too sanguine with some of th....

...Oh wait, it's not from McCain? It's a pro-Obama message? Who can tell these days?!

Jim Geraghty writes that this ABC headline "Really Belonged in The Onion":

The smears of Sarah Palin continue, as ABC News writes, "Obama Takes on Obama-like Phenomenon."

Compare her to a pig. Call her election "a step back for women." But calling her "an Obama-like phenomenon" is way out of line.

Unlike the transnational Obama, as long as Hurricane Sarah doesn't play well in anti-free speech Canada, Old Europe and amongst other overseas socialists, she's safe.

While PDS may be running rampant in the US, it takes Saudi Arabia to really push it to its ironic zenith:

Here's an irony to start your Iftar meal tonight: Saudi Arabia, where a woman must have permission from a male relative or her husband before traveling, will nevertheless run a Gloria Steinem column in its main English-language daily about the sufferings of American women (and their impending doom if Sarah Palin makes it to the White House).

But then, feminism has stopped at the American border since 9/11/01--and sometimes not even there.

"Journalists are not going to change their coverage because of what John McCain says. They are going to change their coverage because of what Jon Stewart says."

Obama really grinds the gears of the Super Gaffe-O-Matic '76 with this one:

"You know, you can put lipstick on a pig," Obama said, "but it's still a pig."

But hey, he still hasn't called her sweetie!

Meanwhile, Camile Paglia writes:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant?

Gosh--I don't know. Let's ask Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork if they know how far this trend goes back...

Tim Blair's aphorism defines, as he puts it, "The ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."

Hey, remember a month ago when leftwing Hollywood puritans blew a gasket over a movie using the word "retard?"

Nahh, neither can I.

Update: And neither could Christian Toto, who also heard the Tinseltown crickets chirping in response response to the latest outbreak of the R-word.

Roger L. Simon, who knows a thing or two about movies (and critics) is not happy with Ed Koch today:

As many recall, former NY Democratic mayor Ed Koch backed Bush in '04. Now he's endorsing Obama because Palin's "book banning" scares him. Never mind it's been thoroughly debunked. (Hello, Ed, the Harry Potter series was published after Palin supposedly banned it.) And never mind that McCain is far more of a centrist than Bush. We're all entitled to our opinions and I'm entitled to mine: Ed Koch is the world's worst film critic. Yes, the ex-mayor sends out endless movie reviews - which read like a refugee from the AARP lost in your high school paper - in an email barrage to anyone interested or, in my case, disinterested. I am going to exercise my right to never read another one and unsubscribe. [Didn't you block them as spam over a year ago?-ed. Shh....]

Could the Simon/Koch feud take off in much the same way as the Prager/Lileks rumble?

(Nahh, probably not--but both would make for great video fodder for PJTV.)

The International Herald Tribune reports that "For now, the rule is simple: Hug your running mate, kiss your wife":

When Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, came out on stage to congratulate his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, after her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week, he gave her a hug, not a handshake. Palin got another hug at a rally here outside Kansas City on Monday.

The same McCain-Palin embrace -- businesslike, to the point -- was on display at a rally over the weekend in Colorado Springs, but this time McCain's wife, Cindy, was on stage. Moving quickly after his clasp of his running mate, John McCain took a short side-step and planted a peck on his wife's cheek.

It has been nearly a quarter century since Walter Mondale almost never touched Geraldine Ferraro in public when they shared the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984, and it is safe to say that times have changed. Back then, Mondale had a strict "hands off" policy and did not even put his palm on Ferraro's back when the two stood side-by-side and waved with uplifted arms.

Anything more, and "people were afraid that it would look like, 'Oh, my God, they're dating,' " Ferraro recalled in a brief telephone interview on Monday, of what now seems like a political Victorian age.

A healthy distance between running mates is usually a good thing. Glad to see that McCain and Palin have learned from the costly mistakes made in 2004.

Almost three years ago, Hugh Hewitt took a look inside "The Media's Ancien Regime" of Columbia Journalism School, in an article whose subtitle noted that the school was doing its damnedest to maintain the old world order.

Flash forward to the present, and very little has changed in the interim: Kaithy Shaidle links to a post from a young student studying journalism at NYU, who concludes--rightly, of course--that "Old Thinking Permeates Major Journalism School":

Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper [edition of the New York Times.] I don't understand why they don't let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it's the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it's a big waste of trees.

But a consistently bland source of the most conventional wisdom imaginable!

The Mere Rhetoric blog explores "The 5 Stages Of Liberal Mourning Over Palin." Meanwhile, Radio Free Canada asks, "Are we Witnessing Obama's Campaign Implosion?"

I think it's far too soon to say that for sure, but candidates with bad internal polls do tend to get weird in their latter stages of their campaigns, as Kerry's midnight rally from September of 2004 highlights.

Neo-Neocon writes that a big reason why the left hates Sarah Palin is that "she's a woman from the wrong side of the tracks. Or at least, that's the way she's been perceived":

Cries that the Democrats have engaged in sexism towards Palin are not misplaced. Palin is also hated for her social conservatism--even by feminists, who acknowledge she's a woman, but a woman from the wrong side of the issues.

But perhaps even more important to many liberals is that she's a woman from the wrong side of the tracks. Or at least, that's the way she's been perceived.

Forget that she's a college graduate, with a father who was a teacher. She went to the wrong college--or colleges. She's a redneck, even if she's from the far North where the sun hardly shines for half the year. She's a redneck at heart, don't you see, with the "mess" of a pregnant daughter and five children herself. How very gross.

She hunts. She fishes. Hubby's a Marlboro man, minus the cigarettes. She's a working woman but not an oppressed "worker." She probably even shops at Walmart and listens to country music.

I'm old enough to remember when a working class hero was something to be.

Over at City Journal, Edward L. Glaeser has a tail of two cities--one whose fiscal policies invite middle class growth, another whose punitive liberalism discourages it. And of course, both cities are microcosms of the states that contain them; as Nicole Gelinas wrote in April when she profiled New York Governor David Paterson's early days in office, replacing the disgraced Eliot Spitzer:

To lay out his goals, Paterson gave a speech last week similar to the one that Codey delivered nearly three years ago. "We need to take a realistic view of New York State's budget," he said, which is "too big and too bloated." He gently warned the legislature against its usual budget-balancing tricks: overestimating revenues, issuing long-term debt or hiking taxes to cover one-year shortfalls, and trying to use "gimmicks to solve real problems." He added that the legislature's modest cuts to Spitzer's budget proposal would be eaten up by April as tax revenues continue to fall. "We have got to address these issues," he said, "and not by taxing anybody."

Paterson could have recited facts and figures from census reports on how New York ranked dead last, in both raw numbers and percentages, in net domestic population losses between 2000 and 2004, with nearly 183,000 residents leaving the state annually. While immigration from other countries more than made up for these losses, New York still lost some ground in its percentage of the nation's population. And immigration could slow precipitously with the economy's woes, as a protracted credit slowdown will lessen the state's need for Parisian investment bankers as well as Salvadoran construction workers. The governor could also have cited numbers from the Tax Foundation showing that New York's state and local tax burden is a full one-fourth higher than the national average, and significantly higher than the burden in some of the states competing most fiercely with it for jobs and residents: Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, and most of the states in the new South.

Instead, Paterson cited a number of personal friends, all former New Yorkers, who have contacted him from out of state since his ascent to the governorship. "A friend from primary school, Randy San Antonio, told me he moved to Dallas 20 years ago," Paterson began. "Another friend, Randy Watts, had moved to Reno. A friend from Syracuse, Marvin Lee Simons, said he's working in Lower Manhattan. I said we should get together . . . and he said, 'Well, I don't live in New York. I live in western Pennsylvania.' Jeff and Stacey Stackhouse wanted to start a business on Long Island. They moved two years ago--they're trying to start their business in Charlotte, North Carolina. They couldn't pay the taxes here."

Socialism: if you build it, they will leave.

Orrin Judd has your one-stop shopping for legacy media quotes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sarah, including this classic:

Like a lot of delegates at the Xcel -- and the woman whom they nominated as John McCain's running mate -- Ms. O'Hara was fired up by all the sudden energy, but a bit suspicious of those who were there to cover it.

"Conservatives have a bad history with The New York Times," she said, looking at my press ID, still smiling and still very friendly. "How can I be sure that you won't take my words and twist them to suit some agenda that you already have?"

Her friends from Montana leaned in and enjoyed the spectacle as I stammered my way through a response. I'm working on an answer because I don't think it is the last time that question is going to come up.

--David Carr writing for (where else?) the New York Times.

That of course is Tammy Bruce's trademark slogan, but it also applies perfectly well to another woman in politics. So it's not entirely surprising to find Tammy making "a feminist's argument for McCain's VP":

On the day McCain announced her selection as his running mate, Palin thanked Clinton and Ferraro for blazing her trail. A day later, Ferraro noted her shock at Palin's comment. You see, none of her peers, no one, had ever publicly thanked her in the 24 years since her historic run for the White House. Ferraro has since refused to divulge for whom she's voting. Many more now are realizing that it does indeed take a woman - who happens to be a Republican named Sarah Palin.

Read the whole thing, which ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, a paper and a town not exactly known for celebrating a wide diversity of opinions. As Tammy noted when she emailed the link, "If the comments section for their online version is any indication my argument has upset a few on the left." But then, it doesn't take much to do that these days. (These days being the last forty years or so...)

It's the Jungian thing, sir! Tim Blair has your electoral synchronicity of the day.

Albert Brooks: "Is this the new way for women to break the glass ceiling? To have their daughters throw their babies at it?"

"Big Bounce for McCain Among Likely Voters", according to Stop The ACLU.

Which helps to explain Obama's "I was for joining the military before I wasn't" whopper today. Or as Ace writes:

It is only due to bad timing he didn't get his chance to kill livestock, cut off ears, ravage villages, blow up bodies, and behave in a fashion reminiscent of Jenjhis Khan.

Wow. Those internals must be really, really awesome for Obama.

Watch for similar panicky gaffes and general thrashing about from Obama and Biden and their media supporters, if these numbers sustain.

The New York Times reports that the wannabe Woodward and Bernstein of cable TV have had their broadcasting license curtailed:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel's coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change -- which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle -- is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left.

Perceived? Here's the New York Times on MSNBC a year ago:

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.

Ed Morrissey adds, "NBC finally had enough during the conventions, according to the Times. The chant of 'NBC, NBC' during the Republican convention didn't help."

Update: More from Ace and the Texas Rainmaker.

Glenn Reynolds links to this parody of Oliver Stone, but this is still my favorite video goof on Stone, created at the apex of his Hollywood career: "Break On Through with JFK!"

While I've long thought that Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic was one of the most prescient essays on the moral collapse of the post-JFK left, in book form, it comes packaged with another Wolfe essay from 1970 that's somewhat overshadowed by the star power of Leonard Bernstein & Co. But Gerard Vanderleun spots a remarkably timely passage within "Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers", excerpted from a much longer block of the essay quoted by Steve Sailer.

(This video brings even more of that era back home.)

Third party candidate Dave Burge is rapidly closing that 50-point gap between himself and the two front-runners in the 2008 presidential election. And he's not at all happy with the election's newest sensation and her hateful rhetoric and subliminal class warfare:

When America's Communities Need Organizing, America's Community Organizers Will Be There to Organize Them

Iowahawk: now more than ever, it's the audacity of tautology!

In 1946, Whittaker Chamber managed to sum up the entire history of the 20th century in 16 perfectly chosen words:

The dominant problem of the 20th Century is the reconciliation of economic security with political liberty.

Absolutely spot on.

As Jonathan Last writes, "The Atlantic Becomes a Laughingstock":

Believe me, I'm more relieved about that than you are. A friend sends along an email with this link and the subject header "Why David Bradley Doesn't Care." I'll spare you the click: It's Sullivan informing readers that his site has gotten 2 million views over the last two days.

So perhaps I should make a little more explicit why I've been so worked up about this whole thing.

I have no particular aversion to the smearing of political figures; or rather, no aversion greater than that of the average reasonable person. I find it ugly and distasteful, but I realize that it's part of the rough and tumble of politics. It has always happened. It will continue to happen. That's why you'll note that I haven't written a single word about what sites such as Daily Kos, Democrats.com, or Democratic Underground have said about her.

And I hold no particular brief for Sarah Palin, per se. As I've written elsewhere, there are reasonable criticisms of her both as a governor and as a vice presidential candidate. I don't think anything I've written about her would count as boosterism. (Although I do make the case that she was the best strategic pick available to McCain, as an analytical matter.)

What's caught my attention here, then is The Atlantic. I am, and always have been, an enormous booster for the Old Media, and smarty-pants general-interest magazines in particular. What's so notable in this whole affair isn't the tarring of Palin but the fact that The Atlantic Monthly is the vehicle for the irresponsible spreading of smears about Palin and speculation so inane that it can't be counted, by any reasonable measure, as analysis. (Here, I'm thinking of Sullivan's claim that he thought it possible both Palin and McCain would relinquish their nominations.)

If Andrew Sullivan were to have written everything he wrote this week at his own website, I wouldn't have said a word about it. The real scandal here isn't Sullivan: It's what The Atlantic has become by publishing him.

As for Sullivan's page views, I sincerely hope that David Bradley isn't making his editorial decisions based solely on eyeballs and dollars. Were that so, you could simply give The Atlantic's pages over to Perez Hilton or Slashdot or Matt Drudge or any other number of content formats. But the point of The Atlantic, like other great journals, is to be something different--to be a stage in the world of ideas, even if it's not the most profitable thing.

I find the prospect of The Atlantic devolving into some version of Free Republic or Daily Kos to be immensely worrisome. Hopefully David Bradley will do something to put his house in order. Soon.

For some background on how such a fine publication arrived at this particular moment, allow me to reprint a post from last year titled, "The Atlantic Hits An Iceberg":

Back in 2004, I linked to Jonah Goldberg in a post titled "The Atlantic Creeps Leftward":

The Atlantic is still a great magazine, but it seems to be inching urther and further into official Liberal Magazine Land. One can be a liberal magazine and still be a great magazine, The New Republic has proved that more than a few times. But what made the Kelly and post Kelly era Atlantic particularly special was its effort not to be predictably on one side of the political ledger.

As I added back then:

Goldberg writes the Atlantic's current pieces, "contribute to the continued Slateification of the magazine, by which I mean that 'post-partisan smart' is defined as a certain kind of enlightened liberalism which enlightened liberals see as simply correct, not liberal".

Hugh Hewitt writes that the era that the late Michael Kelly launched has officially concluded:

On my radio show moments ago I asked Mark Steyn about the current issue of The Atlantic which does not have one of Steyn's wonderful obituaries. (A collection of these magnificent send-offs, Passing Parade, is here.) Mark revealed that he and The Atlantic have parted ways after a disagreement.

So, no need for me to purchase The Atlantic anymore. Steyn's byline was for me the reason to always buy the magazine, especially when moving about the country through airports. Other interesting stuff was always there, but the purchase was automatic because Steyn's obit was a must read. Now he's not going to be in there, and I'm not going to be buying it.

The byline has become the brand as I have often argued over the past few years. Editors and publishers who haven't figured this out yet are really living in the past, and The Atlantic has definitely enrolled itself in the club of the clueless in this regard.

As Hugh notes above, Mark Steyn's Passing Parade is very much well worth your time. If America Alone is a darkly humorous preview of where the world might be headed, Passing Parade is a much lighter, wonderfully witty look back its most interesting movers and shakers, and I certainly hope that Steyn's monthly obit series continues with some publication, whether it's online or on dead tree.

* * *

Back to 2008: While Sullivan's perma-Drudge-link apparently ensures high Internet traffic, the Atlantic's brandname certainly appears to be suffering through their association with him. In swapping out Mark Steyn, who wrote some of his most enjoyable and non-partisan material for the magazine, this is one trade that eventually may be looked back upon as being akin to the Red Sox offloading Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

Watch this short video; your next episode will then write itself in about five minutes.

(Need I even mention how the above clip fits perfectly into these categories?)

Update: "I so wanted the clip to end with Sarahcuda firing on a moose that wandered into their drum circle."

Hey, she only shoots things that needed killin'...

The editor of the Weekly Standard writes that he and his staff "believe in giving credit where credit is due. The presidential race looks a whole lot better today than it did two weeks ago. For this, thanks are owed to two men--Barack Obama and John McCain--and to that herd of independent minds, the liberal media":

A special thank you to our friends in the liberal media establishment. Who knew they would come through so spectacularly? The ludicrous media feeding frenzy about the Palin family hyped interest in her speech, enabling her to win a huge audience for her smashing success Wednesday night at the convention. Indeed, it even renewed interest in McCain, who seems to have gotten still more viewers for his less smashing--but well-received--presentation the following evening.

The astounding (even to me, after all these years!) smugness and mean-spiritedness of so many in the media engendered not just interest in but sympathy for Palin. It allowed Palin to speak not just to conservatives but to the many Americans who are repulsed by the media's prurient interest in and adolescent snickering about her family. It allowed the McCain-Palin ticket to become the populist standard-bearer against an Obama-Media ticket that has disdain for Middle America.

By the end of the week, after Palin's tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren't being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin--who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times--lamented in a piece for Slate: "So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin's wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison." I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

Indeed.^TM Charles Johnson links to an article on Sarah Palin that highlights the crystalline objectivity and nonpartisan fairness of the Associated Press through this quote:

WASILLA, Alaska - The mother kneels in the snow, cheerfully posing beside her bundled up daughter, behind the bloody, dead caribou the mom just shot.

Charles adds:

The mainstream media. What's left to say? This may be the election in which they have finally finished the job of utterly discrediting themselves as left-wing hacks, for all to see.

I wrote much the same at the conclusion of the 2004 race, and four years on, I can't say I'm surprised to see this same paradigm get even worse, which isn't exactly working out well as a sustainable business model.

Last October, there was an interesting, if sadly brief, discussion in the Blogosphere which attempted to define the culture war, the Red/Blue, Right/Left, conservative/Bobos Divide as a "Cold Civil War." Over at PJ HQ, Phyllis Chesler ponders if the coming election will cause its temperature to increase in a rather dramatic fashion.

Late last month, the Whiskey's Place blog wrote:

Much has been made by any number of commenters, from Steve Sailer, to John Derbyshire, to Spengler, to Mark Steyn, to in particular, Ed Driscoll, about the pathetic state of popular culture. Blogger Ed Driscoll in particular is fond of reminding us that in popular culture it's always 1968.

Well, to be fair, old media certainly does a pretty good job itself in that department. This NPR article on the Academy Awards of forty years ago has the usual boomer spin on the era, highlighted in this excerpt from Mark Harris, the author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of a New Hollywood, talking about The Graduate:

The scenario: Upper-middle-class L.A.; disaffected college grad (played by Dustin Hoffman) is seduced by older woman (Anne Bancroft), falls in love with her daughter (Katharine Ross).

That's not so unusual, Harris says: The idea plays like a mid-'60s sex comedy. But what even the actors didn't realize until shooting began was that the perspective would come from Dustin Hoffman's character.

"Suddenly," says Harris, "the camera head shifted, and this was looking at the Generation Gap from the other side -- from the young side."

Young people -- an audience Hollywood undervalued at the time -- flooded theaters around the country.

"And that's who movies got made for after that," says Harris.

I'll second the emotion that The Graduate is a great picture. But if it indeed opened up the youth market, a lot of grownups decided concurrently right around that same time to check out of the theaters, as Michael Medved (whom I met at The Best Party Ever, just to shamelessly namedrop) wrote when Jack Valenti retired from his role as the long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America:

Despite his unquestioned eloquence, elegance and charm, Mr. Valenti presided over history's most disastrous decline in the audience for feature films. In 1965, the year before he left the Johnson administration to assume his plush position as chief mouthpiece for the entertainment industry, 44 million Americans went out to the movies every week. A mere four years later, that number had collapsed to 17.5 million.

In other words, some potent, puzzling force drove more than half of the nation's film fans to break the habit of movie going. That same mystical power served to suppress attendance for the next 20 years, with figures on ticket sales remaining flat until they began to rise moderately in the 1990s, reflecting the construction of thousands of new movie screens at multiplex theaters. Most recent figures (from 2003) show weekly attendance today at just over 30 million. As a percentage of the nation's population, however, the numbers on movie attendance remain only slightly improved from the devastating trough of 1970 (10.3% vs. 8.6%) and still vastly lower than the robust box-office years of 1965 (44%) or 1960 (45%).

It's amazing how many movie professionals remain altogether unaware of this long-term decline in film going--or, when informed about the depressing but undeniable figures, wrongly attribute them to the advent of television. TV sets began appearing in living rooms in the late 1940s, of course, and by the time the audience for feature films started its sharpest slump in 1966, the tube had already arrived in nearly all American homes.

Hollywood originally panicked that television would destroy its business by offering for free the sort of entertainment that cost money at the local Bijou, but during the fateful 10 years of the primary TV invasion (1950-60) the audience actually declined 34%, compared with a 60% decline in those nightmarish four years of the late '60s. In later decades, the arrival of the VCR, cable TV and DVD actually corresponded to modest increases in the motion-picture audience, so no theory centered on technological alternatives can solve the mystery of the missing moviegoers.

So what happened 38 years ago to drive millions of Americans away from movie theaters? In 1966, Mr. Valenti's Motion Picture Association of America quietly dropped its enforcement of the restrictive old Production Code that Hollywood studios had imposed on themselves since 1930. Then, on Nov. 1, 1968, Mr. Valenti introduced the "voluntary rating system" that continues in force to this day. As he proudly declared in his farewell address to the industry on March 23 of this year: "The rating system freed the screen, allowing movie-makers to tell their stories as they choose to tell them." That new freedom allowed the profligate use of obscene language strictly banned under the Production Code, the inclusion of graphic sex scenes along with near total nudity and, more vivid, sadistic violence than previously permitted in Hollywood movies.

The resulting changes in the industry showed up with startling clarity at the Academy Awards. In 1965, with the Production Code still in force, "The Sound of Music" won Best Picture of the Year; in 1969, under the new rating system, an X-rated offering about a homeless male hustler, "Midnight Cowboy," earned the Oscar as the year's finest film. Most critics, then as now, welcomed the aesthetic shift and hailed the fresh latitude in cinematic expression, but the audience voted with its feet.

And wouldn't return until Hollywood returned to making apolitical family-safe blockbusters a decade later; as I wrote a couple of years ago:

I have to laugh at the tunnel-vision of the filmmakers of the 1970s (and to a certain extent, Biskind himself, as he chronicles their rise and cocaine-laden fall). Sandwiched between blockbuster crowd-favorites of the 1960s such as Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music and The Dirty Dozen and then the Star Wars, Star Trek and Indiana Jones movies (not to mention the bulk of Steven Spielberg's first twenty years of filmmaking), they don't understand what an aberration their late '60s to early '70s films were. Much as I love some of the darker movies of the 1970s (such as M*A*S*H, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, and The Conversation), while all of these films were critics' darlings, its always been popcorn fare that's kept Hollywood afloat.

How a slate of leftwing political movies such as Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, The Interpreter, and Munich could be greenlighted for release last year is beyond me, unless Hollywood in mid-2004 assumed that a Kerry win was inevitable, or after he lost, decided to put the celluloid shiv into Red State audiences. Why anyone thought these films would make money is utterly astonishing. But, to build on Michael Barone's recent op-ed, the Hollywood left is currently as stuck in the 1970s as liberal politicians are.

Not to mention their favorite radio network.

(Back in CA after an incredible week--see above shameless namedropping--regular blogging to resume tomorrow.)

Mark Steyn writes:

Golly. These days, NOW seems to have as narrow and proscriptive a view of what women are permitted to be as any old 1950s sitcom dad.

Why not? They rolled over for Bill Clinton's antics, which were right out of a plot from Mad Men, minus the veneer of gentlemanly courtliness still expected from executives back then.

Amy Holmes writes:

So, let's get this straight. They didn't choose her and her 18 million voters to put on the ticket. They gave the VP spot to Joe Biden. But now that Sarah Palin has arrived on the political scene, they're promoting Hillary as the female answer to the Republican VP nominee. Awkward, to say the least.

And as one female democratic strategist tells me, don't think that Hillary hasn't noticed.

During last Friday's round table discussion with Austin Bay, Glenn Reynolds noted that while Bill Clinton has reluctantly agreed to flak for Barack, all it would take would be a slight turn of the phrase from Bill for his selling efforts to backfire. While Hillary can't sell the postmodern treacle as well as Bill can, she wouldn't be above a little sabotage herself.

Scott Johnson writes:

Governor Palin's political and media enemies have not yet drawn blood. Thinking to condemn her, for example, the director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance told the Associated Press: "Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill." Reasonable people might construe that as high praise. Indeed, it sounds like a winning slogan, if not a platform.

If this quote had run a week earlier, the vendors at the Republican convention would have sold 27,325 T-shirts with that slogan printed on it.

Related: Kevin Williamson explores the the flip-side of the T-shirt wars with an exploration of liberal fashionism.

The New York Times, May 3rd, 2007: "Oprah Endorses Obama".

ABC News, today: "Is Oprah Biased? Host Won't Interview Palin".

Related: "While it is true that only Oprah suffers from a bad business decision it is
enlightening that the very crowd pushing for reinstatement of the "fairness
doctrine" fail to see the irony."

Or at least more like Wednesday's speech by Sarah Palin. Mickey Kaus critiques her boss's speech and concludes:

The speech reeked of extra cooks making too many unintegrated additions. What does it say about McCain's management ability if he let the process for this crucial effort get out of control? It's not like he didn't have months to prepare. Or were the months the problem? Palin's Wednesday night text, presumably written in a few days, was much better. Maybe the McCain campaign didn't have time to kill it with improvements.

As Mickey writes, "That makes two successful conventions ending with weak final acts."

Nuance: Andrea Mitchell has no idea what the ideology of anyone working in NBC might be, but can spot a Republican "Katharine Harris type" from miles away. She's afraid that the botched New Yorker Obama parody was actually "too sophisticated to actually be perceived the way it is intended" by the booboisies out there in Middle America. And then there was this attempt at cultural anthropology gone awry:

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell issued an on-air apology Monday following a remark last week in which she referred to an area of southwestern Virginia as "redneck, sort of bordering-on-Appalachia country."

Which is why she's probably filing a request for hazardous duty pay from NBC after this particular field assignment.

Thank God that ABC lets its hosts of The View blog. Back in 2006, there was the sophisticated and nuanced prose stylings of Rosie O'Donnell, and successor Whoopi Goldberg is proudly upholding the same commitment to high-quality journalism that has made Big Media what it is today. In both cases, the 21st century medium of the Blogosphere allows them to share with us insights into their personalities--and dare I say it--views, that simply cannot be boxed into the tubercular blue small screen of television alone.

Such as the fact that Whoopi Goldberg doesn't know the difference between "succeed" and "secede", and sees in Sarah Palin, a conservative tax-cutting pro-life candidate with libertarian leanings, the return of a hard left racially driven socialist agenda governmental leviathan bent on euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.

Or as Tim Graham puts it, "Whoopi Goldberg: Palin Sounds Pro-Nazi, Wants to 'Succeed' From U.S."

(And speaking of secession--I guess this means that the left has finally come to their senses on the Akaka bill, whose author has said could eventually lead to "outright independence" for Hawaii, and is supported by Barack Obama.)

Joe Klein attempts to explain "How McCain Makes Obama Conservative", when the word he's actually searching for to describe the community organizer is "reactionary."

Related: Roger Kimball flashes back to Bill Buckley's famous opprobrium "that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University", and adds that WFB would be pleased by Sarah Palin's effect on the legacy media. "I like to think that Boston phone book-or maybe it's the Juneau phone book-is finally getting some of its own back", Roger writes, but read the whole thing.

Well, out of control of old media, that is. In the Washington Times, Matthew Sheffield explains, "Candidates use Web for cheap, edgy ads". Your friend and humble narrator is mentioned here, right after Matthew discusses McCain's "The One" ad, which pokes fun at a certain obscure young Chicago community organizer's rapid rise to the dizzying heights Hollywood stardom:

Besides demonstrating how the Web can be cost-effective, "The One" phenomenon is illustrative of another way the Internet has become useful for the presidential campaigns: helping them spot organic political themes that they can help develop into larger ones. The inspiration behind the ad is straight out of the conservative blogosphere where it has proven enormously popular with center-right readers long dissatisfied with the elite press' love affair with Mr. Obama.

That inspiration isn't restricted to just online ads, either. Just this week, the McCain camp released an ad that looked astonishingly similar to a parody ad created by blogger Ed Driscoll, which combined Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's famous "3 AM" ad with a second segment telling viewers that Mr. McCain also could be relied upon to respond to a crisis situation.

It's highly likely this will continue to happen, Mr. Driscoll told me in an e-mail.

"While a campaign still has to spend large sums of money buying advertising time on TV, as the older generation still glued almost exclusively to the television tube begins to fade away, watch for the Web to continue to grow in power as the political advertising venue," he said.

He's exactly right. It's simply a matter of time.

Matthew was of course instrumental in organizing the sprawling Newsbusters blog. He emailed me yesterday afternoon alerting me that the above article would be online today, and asked me if I was in St. Paul. I wrote back that indeed I was--and was immediately following him on C-Span in this online video shot on Wednesday.

Jonah Goldberg breaks down journalists' multifaceted anger over Sarah Palin. One reason is that the choice caught Old Media--which paradoxically abhors innovation, even though it's in the news business--by surprise:

Cockroaches scatter when shocked by a flipped light switch. Grizzly bears attack when startled. And when caught napping by big news, the press corps floods the zone. Editors scream at underlings who missed the story. Networks fret they'll be scooped. And all of a sudden, the norms and standards become a blur in the race to be first. In the case of Palin, the press vaulted over every principle and standard they'd established about what is and isn't fair game, like O.J. Simpson leaping over luggage in the old Hertz commercials. It required the Jaws of Life to pry news of John Edwards' affair out the mainstream press. But when it came to the personal drama of Palin's 17-year old daughter, the press clawed for morsels like they were golden tickets from Wonka Bars.

They wouldn't have done the same thing if Palin were an unknown Democrat, because the press' reflex is to assume the worst of Republicans.

The Eagleton Option exposed the press' gut instincts, and the viscera are not pretty. Eagleton dropped out because it was leaked that he'd received shock therapy for ill-defined mental problems. Many of those who expected Palin to withdraw see her values and her choices as proof of a mental problem. "She's more a conservative man than she is a woman on women's issues," quoth a spokeswoman from the predictably shrill National Organization for Women, which always defines womanhood by a woman's commitment to left-wing feminist dogma. If you're pro-life, or even just a Republican, you're not a real woman, you're suffering from some sort of pernicious gender confusion.

How long before the Palin-haters insist she needs shock therapy, too? For her own good, of course.

One queen of video therapy sounds like she's needing plenty of her own these days.

...Minneapolis audiences are the best audiences in the world!

Special thanks to Roger L. Simon for allowing me the last word on this week's PJTV coverage from the convention. As maiden voyages go, this one was surprisingly smooth sailing--though not without a surprise or two of a different sort.

I can second what Danny Glover writes here:

Word on the cable networks this morning is that Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a superstar because she delivered her rousing speech at the convention here last night despite a broken teleprompter.

MSNBC reported that tidbit. So did Fox News, with an aide to GOP presidential candidate John McCain talking about the teleprompter woes. Now the blogs are running with the story.

Don't believe the myth. I watched the speech from the area to the left and behind the stage in the Xcel Center and had a perfect view of the teleprompter. It worked fine. I have the footage to prove it.

Because of the positioning of the PJTV booth, I had a clear view of the teleprompter as well, and it never conked out. On the other hand, I also noticed that Palin's hilarious "What's the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom" line--and she may have been the only person on the planet to successfully sell such a joke--was an improv; it wasn't on the teleprompter.

(H/T: IP)

Update: Ed Morrissey (who's my kind of community organizer!) deflates the Palin speechwriter meme--with a little help from Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

"I love Ronald Reagan, but after Sarah Palin's speech I miss him a little less. He's watching. He's okay with that."

--John Nolte

Kwame "Name That Party" Kilpatrick resigns.

In other Motor City Memory Hole news, Dan Riehl notes, "Don't Look Now: ABC Pushing Plants":

Gawd this was easy, let's see what else turns up over time. Via ABC:

The Detroit Free Press invited a panel of Michigan voters to weigh in on Gov. Sarah Palin's speech last night. Their reactions run the gamut, but the independents didn't seem to care for her very much.

Ilene Beninson, 52, Berkley independent: "Her speech contained few statements about policy or the party platform. ... I am not convinced that Palin's experience as a mayor or governor in Alaska meet the qualifications to be vice president much less one stroke or heart attack away from being commander in chief."

Oh, you mean the Code Pink independent from Michigan doing a lame hunger strike for Cindy Sheehan. Yeah, how "indpendent can you get??? ha ha ha

We have Google--we can fact check your plants!

Somehow the caffeine, adrenaline, brain and mouth were all wired correctly together last night to give a full-tilt promotional boogie for PJTV in the booth when a C-Span cameraman appeared to discuss bloggers at the convention. I'm on right after Matthew Sheffield:

Matthew Sheffield writes, "About a year into MSNBC's strategy of refashioning itself into the network for Bush haters, some consequences are starting to emerge for the cable channel and its corporate parent NBC":

Internally, the lurch to the left has resulted in numerous outbreaks of hostility as the remains of the old guard fight to protect themselves and the token conservatives find themselves increasingly marginalized.

Some external consequences are emerging a well now. While apolitical liberals still haven't kicked their CNN habit (and likely won't), MSNBC's corporate leftism has antagonized conservatives. It showed last night here in St. Paul as conventioneers held up signs denouncing the network and began a derisive chant of "NBC! NBC!" when Alaska governor Sarah Palin took a pronounced swipe at the media in her vice presidential nominating speech.

"I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone," Palin said in one of her biggest applause lines of the night.

Immediately thereafter, the audience started booing loudly and clapping. Within a second or so, various crowd members starting chanting out "NBC! NBC! NBC!" This quickly spread throughout the packed arena. Many conventioneers followed it up by pointing toward the MSNBC temporary studio inside the Xcel Energy Center, conveniently positioned next to the Arab television network Aljazeera by someone at the RNC.

After waiting for the boos to die down, Palin paused and delivered a retort:

"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

Amusingly enough, MSNBC's biggest left-wingers Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews actually had discussed these lines in Palin's speech just hours before.

"Who those reporters and commentators might be she does not say, at least not in the excerpt. It will be interesting to see if they're named in that speech," Olbermann remarked to Matthews in highly defensive conversation between the two, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and Norah O'Donnell.

"There's no one I can think of, off the top of my head, who did what she is apparently complaining of tonight, but she will be doing the complaining herself."

Evidently the audience was a little smarter on that account.

Just click over and NBC the accompanying video.

Elsewhere in the old media war against conservatives, John McCain canceled an interview with Larry King after a drive-by attack dog interrogation from CNN's Campbell Brown of his strategist Tucker Bounds with the goal of dismissing Palin's gubernatorial experience.

Sound advice under any and all circumstances; we should print up a copy in huge type and tape it to the PJTV green room.

It beats having to issue these sorts of addendums.

Peggy Noonan gets caught writing positively about Sarah Palin and inadvertently trashing her on MSNBC (don't they have enough anchors there that do that for a living?), when we she was caught on an open microphone during a break.

Rick Moran is far from the first person to ask the above question, but he frames his query in terms of a media that the GOP should embrace as tightly as possible:

What's the problem with the Republican party and bloggers?

We've been pretty happy with our Mission Control-like PJTV booth, but Rick notes that in contrast Bloggers' Row in 2004, "The dungeon that the GOP has put bloggers in this time around would be familiar to Torqumada and his buddies who made the Spanish Inquisition such a great party."

Click here for a snapshot from history of perpetual change.

Apparently it now includes releasing a candidate's social security number and the addresses of her homes.

Which candidate? Here's a hint: the above link came via an email from the Anchoress, where's it's Wall-to-Wall "Palinsanity!"

Meanwhile, found via a Glenn Reynolds post, Mitchell Blatt writes:

Hillary Clinton's campaign complained about sexism in the media during his primary battle vs. Barack Obama, and we are seeing now just how right she was about sexism in the media.

Good to see that someone remembers liberals' cri de coeur from only a few months ago.

Pajamas TV's second night--both at the convention, and it's existence as a streaming Internet TV site--is on the air right now. Click here to tune in!

John Hinderaker of Power Line spots, as he puts it, "this pathetic effort" by Barack Obama to defend his lack of executive experience:

Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.

Still though, bonus points for not calling her "sweetie."

As John writes:

Apparently Obama hadn't heard about Palin being Governor of the State of Alaska, which has a budget in excess of $11 billion annually and more than 24,000 employees. Also, on Obama's theory, the act of running for President gives you the experience you need to qualify to be President. That's convenient for a guy who has accomplished so little in his career in public life.

Before his death at age 93 in 2001, Harold Stassen must have racked up more executive experience than anyone!

Update: Ben Smith of the Politico writes:

The McCain campaign, happy to talk about Obama's experience, calls his using his campaign as an example "desperate circular logic" and pointing to Palin's tenure as governor.

As Orrin Judd writes, "Yes Barry, they're laughing at you."

"Not that anybody wanted there to be a hurricane, of course. Good heavens, no. But if there had to be one, the timing was fabulous."

--Clive Crook, the Financial Times.

You can watch the interview that Glenn Reynolds, Roger Simon and I did with Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal yesterday from the convention hall right here. Among the topics discussed were several questions I asked Jerry regarding John McCain and his YouTube operation.

"Did God intend Gustav to help one party or the other? We do not know. He did not respond to our requests for comment."

During the day, as we watched the final preparations being applied to the PJTV booth before it could go live yesterday evening, Jennifer Rubin, the three Power Liners and I kicked around how the ever-expanding Palin family story was playing on Monday. As I quipped, somebody should write a Mark Steyn-style demographic angle to the story.

And with 113 million Weblogs floating around out there, not surprisingly, at least one blogger did just that. Glenn Reynolds calls this the "Best Spin Yet."

Hey, it's the demography, stupid!

Capt. Ed writes:

CNN reports that the thankfully moderate impact of Hurricane Gustav will mean that the Republican convention will get back to business. At this point, they have no article with specifics, but apparently their sources indicate that the Gustav-imposed restrictions on campaigning in St. Paul will be lifted. The schedule will return to normal, and the speakers originally slated to speak tonight will do so.

As for Monday's events, you can watch a full recap on PJTV for free, several segments of which feature yours truly.

Maximum Pajamhadeen Roger L. Simon did a Herculean effort supervising the Army of Davids it takes behind the scenes to make PJTV's ability to debut live on location (which I'm not sure if a traditional TV network ever tried). He then switched seamlessly into host mode--and even blogged about it in the midst of the action:

How was it? Well, to be honest, in sixties parlance, it was a trip. There I was (only 75% befuddled) sitting in the high director's chair passing the baton to Cindy McCain and Laura Bush on stage, trying to sound suitably solemn about the hurricane and glad I was on with Glenn Reynolds, Ed Driscoll, John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson and James Lileks - all gentlemen who know how to move their mouths... because let me tell you you run out of ideas fast. This is especially true because, as the world knows, this is a convention in temporary postponement. Luckily for us we are only streaming about three hours today. Coming up... some intereviews I did with American Carol director David Zucker and Jon Voight (who plays George Washington in the film). These guys are members of the Friends of Abe (FoA), a Hollywood organization started by Gary Sinise for the folks in the entertainment industry who think the battle against Islamic facism might actually be worth fighting. This org was supposed to be hush-hush but the cat has now gotten far out of the bag. (Yes, I'm member - though we don't have cards.), so Zucker and I talk about it. Anyway.... tune in on our convention coverage and let us know what you think. But be gentle, dear reader.

Roger's being remarkably modest. It was difficult to get a sense of how the complete package looked to viewers from the snippets I saw on various monitors in the booth. But Nina and I watched a good hour of the coverage late last night back in the hotel room, and the finished product, which includes not just the remote from Minneapolis, but also the virtual studio back in L.A., a video feed from the convention floor, and several pre-recorded segments, looks incredibly smooth for an opening night's effort.

I have no idea what today will be like, but it certainly seemed pretty calm and orderly around the convention center's perimeter yesterday. If today isn't complete anarchy as well, the attendees can thank some careful due diligence on the part of the Minneapolis-area authorities over the weekend, fellow attendee Ed Morrissey writes:

Five leaders of the so-called RNC Welcoming Committee are under arrest, and a sixth is being sought. The "activists" strongly deny that they planned to use these items in their protests. Heck, everyone keeps buckets of urine around the house!

The best part of this story: police used a system of informants to keep apprised of what these nutcases plotted. Every one involved in these groups have to be asking themselves who the moles are, and what else might the police know. I suspect that a great deal of disillusionment set in among the fringies, and no small amount of paranoia, too.

The all-seeing eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Karl Rove are everywhere.

The Brothers Judd pick up quite an interesting story about Joe Biden:

t was an unbearable turn of events, from one of the most daring political breakthroughs in Delaware political history to unspeakable grief, and there is no reason to make the accident appear worse than it was.

While campaigning in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination, however, Biden did.

"Let me tell you a little story," he was quoted as saying last Friday in the New York Times.

"I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on December 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly - and I never pursued it - drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries."

Except there was no drinking. There was not even speeding. The truck's brakes checked out, as well. It was not the driver's fault.

It's also somewhat reminiscent of another Democratic veep nominee's story.

An addendum to the last post: Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler issued an apology for his Wolcott/Moore-style joke rooting for Hurricane Gustav.

As Glenn Reynolds writes:

What's interesting is that the apology came before the story was picked up by the traditional media. It was just blogs and Drudge, but it forced a public apology.

200,000 or so unwanted YouTube views within the span of a couple of days will do that to you.