Huckabee is one terrifically stupid bastard, isn’t he?

During a speech to the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky Friday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee joked to the audience that an offstage noise was Barack Obama avoiding gunfire.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” Huckabee said. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Pointless, not funny, and just another moment revealing him to be a jerk. It is shocking that he seems to believe that things like this and his very public decision to, ahem, not make Mitt Romney’s religion an issue in the election are entirely reasonable coming from a man who wanted to win the White House.

Again I say: if McCain is silly enough to choose Huckabee as his running mate, I’ll be voting for someone else.

I can forgive a lot of my Republican candidate when the alternative is either B. Obama or H. Clinton, but choosing Huckabee as VP over someone, you know, good would lose my vote.

Bobby Jindal would be a remarkably good choice, although I continue to wonder if he’s even more useful in his current position. Mitt Romney wouldn’t be my first choice and he wouldn’t shore up all of McCain’s weaknesses, but he would be tremendous by comparison.

Until it’s official, I’ll consider it a useless rumor. If true, though, I won’t be voting Republican this year even though the potential cost would be monumental (more on that later this week). What I can’t personally accept is that Huckabee could be one heart attack, disease, accident, or impeachment away from the White House.

For people still worrying through their own voting strategy, this would be a good time to raise voices in opposition to Huckabee. If the GOP leadership and McCain’s strategists are listening, let’s hope they hear the disgust.

Read the story.

None of which changes the fact that updated information about the Interim Bash is coming up tomorrow--along with a little something about our benefactor. 

...How much Reverend Wright seems to hate Obama?

Can there be any other explanation for Wright’s willingness to keep a negative story alive? He has basically written the script for Republicans and told the world that Obama was being a typical, duplicitous politician who only pretended to distance himself from the Rev. Wright’s more outrageous statements?

If Wright cared about Obama’s bid for president, he might find it expedient to keep a low profile for a bit.

Not that I’m complaining.

The original WarGames--with a predictable, not particularly bright plot offset by the incredible charisma of young Matthew Broderick --will always be a guilty pleasure of mine. If I come across it while surfing channels late at night, I’ll stop and enjoy the little blast of eighties Cold War nostalgia that I also get from the likes of Red Dawn. It isn’t a good movie in the same way as, say, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but it still makes me smile.

But a remake (with an even dumber plot plopped on an apparently no-charisma zone) probably won’t be making anyone’s nostalgia tour two decades from now. Which might be why it’s skipping the theaters and going direct to video where only the plainly foolish might be suckered into watching the thing.

Yet again I feel surrounded by seas of stupid. You can see the trailer for the abomination at the link.

On the plus side, when we went to see the slight but funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall (with all of its surprising and unfortunate male frontal nudity), I saw trailers for movies that I absolutely cannot wait to see. Steve Carell was born to play Maxwell Smart--which might seem a small thing to be born for, but if it’s as funny as the original TV show, Get Smart will be one of the funniest movies I will have seen in years. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian looks to be a worthy followup to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lastly, a new version of The Hulk, with no connection to what shall forever be known as Ang Lee’s worst film, with Edward Norton is coming up, too, and it looks much more fun than the last movie. It doesn’t hurt that Norton, apparently, contributed some of the writing. Between that and Robert Downey, Jr’s turn as Iron Man, I have to think that there is some good comic book action coming to theaters this year.

Anyway, the message is this: don’t see War Games: The Dead Code, but look forward to some fun, dumb eye candy while the Democrats continue to work hard at making presidential politics a real brutal contact sport.

And if you’re looking for more raunchy comedy from the Judd Apatow machine, Forgetting Sarah Marshall will have you laughing and, true to form, has some touchingly real moments about how men and women screw up their relationships. It’s a joyously vulgar thing and, for all the talk of bravery for movies like Crash and Brokeback Mountain, Jason Segel showed true bravery in his willingness to bare himself in so many (often disturbing) ways and top it off by singing a portion of a melodramatic rock opera about Dracula’s desire to be loved. That’s courage, my friends.

Let us all, who have attended Rocky Mountain Blogger Bashes, give thanks that I am not a particularly courageous man.

I’ve been ridiculously busy these last few weeks between a Russian language publication, a few little freelance jobs, and my normal social and professional obligations. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t missed. Which won’t stop me from jumping back into the pool because, frankly, I need to get a few thoughts off my chest.

Like, who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to question the tax free pension a Vietnam vet gets from the many injuries that he sustained in service to our country? Most especially when those injuries came when he was tortured as a POW?

Apparently the LA Times thinks its a good idea when the vet in question is running for President of the United States. They think it’s a good idea to insinuate that either he doesn’t deserve it because he’s really not all that disabled or, if he was wounded so severely, then he might not be physically capable of serving as president.

The fact that he is legally designated with a disability pension may raise further questions.

“It is a legitimate question to ask about the commander in chief: Is he fit to serve,” said Robert Schriebman, a senior Pentagon tax advisor and tax attorney who recently retired as a judge advocate for a unit of the California National Guard.

If McCain can hike across the Grand Canyon, then why should he be getting disability payments from the government that are tax-exempt, Schriebman asked.

McCain shattered his knee and broke both arms when he was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.

In his autobiographies, McCain said that his knee still bothered him in cold weather and that he was unable to raise his hands above his shoulders.

See? Big fucking pool of stupid.

Firstly, he earned every penny of that pension in service to his country and I doubt very seriously that most Americans (we try to treat our vets well) will take the LA Times’ lead on this issue. I do not personally know the full extent of McCain’s injuries, but I do know that the military doesn’t just hand out 100%, tax free disabilities to everyone who gets a splinter. The injuries that he sustained had to have been severe.

Secondly, the office of the presidency is physically demanding--but not in the way that requires a guy who can run marathons in the morning before breakfast. As an example, and regardless of what anyone who thinks of FDR, he was exceptionally effective in acting as president with serious physical handicaps. I think McCain, even at his admittedly advanced age, can handle the stress.

And you know what else I don’t care about? His temper. I like that he gets pissed. I like that he isn’t always calm and level--there are things worth getting a little riled about.

As this political season continues (and, good Lord, can they possibly draw out the campaigning any longer? Will the next presidential campaign start before this one has even ended?) I find myself growing angrier. I’m tired of all the promises, the empty rhetoric, and the fact that none of the candidates will do the one thing that I really, really want: leave me the hell alone.

You know what else is making me cranky right now? Douglas Bruce is an ass, of that there is no doubt; but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have the right to finish his statements about immigrants and a guest worker program being debated. To be sure, a guest worker program designed to bring in agricultural workers from our neighbor to the south isn’t a program designed to bring in college educated, highly skilled workers with literary ambitions. Our need for a guest worker program, whichever side of the argument you might take, is well worth debating, and, regardless of his insensitive statements, Bruce has a right to take part in that debate.

State Representative Douglas Bruce made the remark during a debate on the Statehouse floor. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill designed to ease a shortage of farm workers in Colorado.

Bruce was ordered to leave the podium immediately after the remark. But he says he knew exactly what he was saying.

And, anyway, adult literacy rates in Mexico are quite high, though, so “illiterate peasants” may have been factually wrong.

It would appear that he won’t be censured for his words--which is as it should be. I understand why so many people are upset, but he didn’t do anything illegal or unethical. He was merely being a bit of a jerk. Voters have ways of dealing with bad, non-criminal behavior in their elected representatives. That is also as it should be.

It looks like Jimmy “The Most Useful Idiot” Carter has thrown his sham of a Nobel Peace Prize and unique legacy into support for Obama’s presidential bid.

Damn. now I almost feel sorry for Obama. I wonder if this was some convoluted strategy to win the sympathy vote?

There are some takeaways from Think Progress’ discredited accusation of plagiarism against McCain, and they apply to more than just the folks at that site.

The first thing to learn is that searching Google for an answer shouldn’t qualify as due diligence when accusing someone of misdeed. In a comment on the post after it was learned that the accusation was completely wrong, 5th Estate had this to say:

The link provided in the update did not appear to show up in my specific Google search. I didn’t notice any link to McCain’s website in the returns I got from Google–they all appeared to be general blog posts and reiterations of the words relating to the latest Mar 29 2007 speech.

Now if you advance search the phrase, there are 371 links ( I just tried it). I guess I though checking 50 out of a hundred possible source constituted due diligence. Apparently not. I didn’t present my original research as irrefutable fact, but rather a high probaability that deserved further investigation.

I think that anyone who might imagine themselves to be a journalist (citizen or otherwise) might realize that doing a Google search isn’t enough when you’re accusing someone of plagiarism. After doing the initial checks, these folks should have called the McCain campaign and asked for an explanation. That might have saved a good bit of embarrassment.

The second thing to realize is that extreme partisanship and an urge to get the big story before someone else does leads to bad decisions. It was a bad decision to make these accusations before properly exploring the information and that’s a caution to all of us. This isn’t just about bloggers--the New York Times and the LA Times have had similar problems in recent months, which, to its credit, the LA Times owned up to their mistakes.

Drudge makes a living off of linking the “breaking” news before it’s been properly vetted--Edwards’ supposed affair leaps to mind--and writing often mildly misleading headlines for his links. With the exception of the traffic and the money, though, I don’t imagine most of us want to emulate him in the least. Unfortunately, when we try to get that big, shocking story first instead of getting it right, all we’re doing is a sort of long form of precisely the same thing that Drudge is doing. Or, if you prefer, we’re doing precisely what 60 Minutes did when it failed to properly vet the documents and sources of the accusations in the Bush - Texas Air National Guard story that it ran in 2004.

I know I’ve been caught at least once saying something that I later had to retract, but that was during the last presidential election cycle. When I wrote a few articles for publication this year--the ones I actually got paid for, although unfortunately for a publication that doesn’t seem to have survived--I did everything I could to get the story right even to the point of leaving out certain things when I couldn’t find documentary evidence to support what I thought I knew. It weakened my story in one instance, but I knew that I wouldn’t have to apologize for something that proved to be incorrect.

What Think Progress did was to make an easy mistake. To their credit, the people involved have apologized and taken responsibility, but mistakes like this damage credibility. I’m trying to internalize this lesson so that I don’t have to find myself in their place, apologizing for something because I was too eager to get the story up and not eager enough to find out if my words were correct.

As an aside, for the first time in a couple years, I picked up a Sunday Denver Post a few weeks ago. I was shocked at just how slim, just how truly bad, the newspaper had become. All the talk of the demise of newspapers finally hit home and I realized it was true: newspaper journalism is dying a slow death in the United States. This made me wonder a couple things

First, where will people be getting their news ten years from now? Consolidated regional newspapers instead of local papers? Fragmented TV news at the local level? Blogs and talk radio (I shudder at the thought)? News Web sites that don’t carry the same financial burdens as their print counterparts and are able to react more quickly to breaking news? Or do most Americans just want to tune out, go to work, and vote their biases without having to think too much about the process?

Second, where will all the journalists go? The job opportunities in traditional journalism must be shrinking drastically right now. I’d hate to be in that field; it has to be something like being an autoworker in Detroit right now. Ugly.

And I’m going to stick to my guns. Here’s what they say; here’s what I say.

For whatever it’s worth.

Update: There might be a reason that, as of the time of this writing, RSong pops up first when you search for “gore no more” on Google. And, because I’m obsessed with these things, can the dems bring back gore on Google, too.

(By the way, the answer to that last question is, yes, the dems could bring Gore back. But they ought not to.)

This, from Mona Charon on NRO’s The Corner, is a good thing:

I was just on the John Batchelor radio program. He says that Chuck Todd, NBC News political director, has heard from Hillary’s people that she would accept the number two spot on the ticket.

I don’t mean it’s a good thing in that it will be easier for Republicans to win the race or that I want an Obama/Clinton tag-teaming in the White House. The very thought makes me shudder.

I mean it’s good for two very specific reasons, both having to do with Democratic eyes slowly turning to Al Gore to ride in and save the day. The first voice came a few weeks ago and cried for Gore to come in and impose Gorian discipline on the two wayward Democrats who had mucked up the Democrat’s shots at re-taking the presidency. For some reason, Charles Hurt at the New York Post, only an older, white, male, politically connected DC insider can save the Democrats from the first black man and the first woman to ever climb so high in a US presidential campaign.

I wonder how women for Hillary and America’s black communities might feel about that?

IF AL GORE can pull himself away from saving the planet long enough, he might want to consider rescuing the Demo cratic Party from the clutches of utter self-destruction.

Campaigning against an unpopular war in Iraq, a sputtering economy and a disappearing dollar, Democrats cannot lose in November.
But wait! They’re Democrats!

“The only reason we ever lose is when we beat ourselves,” one nervous Democrat grumbled yesterday as the primary dogfight dragged on.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has made it clear she won’t quit and no one expects Barack Obama to exit - and so on to the Denver party convention they go, viciously attacking one another all the way.

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if Gore descended from the heavens--beatific smile on his face, arms spread wide, radiantly wise and good--to save the party from Obama and Clinton. I’m sure that Obama’s supporters would immediately turn toward the fatherly figure of Gore and his melanin deficit and think, “Yes. Yes he can.”

I’m just as certain that all the Clinton supporters who have continued to swim upstream against the steady flow of her wholly irritating voice (seriously, is there a more unpleasant speaking voice running for office anywhere?) will collapse in weariness and float gratefully into the waiting arms of Gore the Magnificent, praying thanks for his big masculine arms and soothing voice.

And now there is rising noise about Gore being the guy who can not only bring clarity by acting as the patriarch of the clan and disciplining the other candidates (in some nebulous way that I still don’t quite understand), but about Gore taking over the top slot and taking one or the other candidate along with him.

With the prospects of a divisive and potentially chaotic Convention looming, some Democrats are starting to think - and talk — about other options. Pushing Obama aside in favor of Hillary would cause serious problems among the African-American base that the Democrats rely upon. But despite Obama’s rhetorical skills, many Democrats remain concerned that his lack of credentials and experience make him vulnerable to McCain. If neither candidate can lock up the delegates to claim the nomination by the time the Democrats gather in late August, some party leaders are thinking privately that Al Gore might be the only one who could bring the party back together and carry it to victory in November.

Or maybe it will really piss off black communities to think that they somehow need to be “rescued” from their candidate--and the offer of second place will taste pretty bitter to people who are pretty sure that there guy can actually win the election. The way some women have been treated (Oprah, I’m looking at you) for daring to choose skin color or politics over gender leads me to believe that there won’t be universal celebrations at the return of the old white male candidate. And their anger would be well-placed.

While I do think that Hillary should bow out--which we can discuss later if anyone is up for it--I also think that these two have fought through the debates and all the votes. They’ve made their stands on issues clear (well, as clear as a Clinton and a NAFTA-straddling Obama can ever be) and they’ve earned their support. It would be an insult to their supporters for their party to shove another name into the mix and say, essentially, forget your candidate and support this guy. For Gore to, essentially, be rewarded for sitting on the sidelines doesn’t seem like a winning strategy to me.

But it isn’t my party and my biggest complaint is that candidate Gore seems weaker than an Obama-Hillary ticket.

Sure, with Obama-Hillary, there are people who will refuse to vote either for a black candidate or a female candidate, but those would be balanced by the votes purely for the black or female candidate. Hillary’s biggest negative is that while there is a passionate block of voters for her, there is an even stronger and equally passionate set of voters who would never vote for her regardless of circumstance. Those voters who wouldn’t vote Hillary for president might well vote this ticket assuming that the young, healthy Obama would be more than enough to ensure that Hillary won’t ascend to the presidency. Given that their politics aren’t far from each other--with Obama arguably being a little further to the left on many issues--it would really reinforce the liberal, populist messages of their individual campaigns.

In the “marketplace of ideas,” I don’t want my candidate running against the weakest of their camp. Even though McCain is hardly my first choice--nor is he the strongest conservative choice--he is demonstrably to the right of both Hillary and Obama on the issues that are the most important to me. Pitting his ideas against theirs and seeing who communicates the best and convinces the American public of the validity of their ideas is important right now.

One of the big questions is with a foundering economy, will our future be ruled by people who believe in higher taxes, less free markets, more government controls, and larger entitlement programs? Or can we take some tentative steps back toward the fiscal responsibility of free markets, reasonable tax rates, and cutting back on government expenses? McCain is hardly the ideal candidate to carry this standard, but the contrast with Obama and Hillary is stark.

Candidate Gore would be a joke--and, Democrats, don’t think we won’t be breaking out the fat-Elvis and Unabomber-bearded year in the wilderness pictures to solidify the image. Make no mistake: for better or worse, the anti-Gore campaign would be brutal, personal, and utterly effective. He would be treated as a joke and he would lose by a far wider margin this time out, essentially destroying not only his presidential hopes, but much of his political influence. The McCain campaign would likely be civilized, but the commentariat drives a good chunk of the conversation these days and the YouTube videos would be hilarious.

If the goal of the election is to entertain me, piss off all the workers who have stayed by candidates Obama and Clinton, and take much of the substance out of the debate, then by all means bring back Gore. If the idea is to debate ideas and visions of America’s future, then, please, leave Gore at home.

Hillary and Bill seem intent on doing something that no Republican has ever been able to do: kill off the odd nostalgia for the Clinton White House.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

“The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya,” the Drudge Report said. The photo created huge buzz in political circles and immediately became known as “the ‘dressed’ photo,” reflecting the Drudge terminology.

And, yes, I do believe that it was Clinton staffers who pushed the photo; and, yes, I do believe that they would have done so intent on taking advantage of fears from some Americans that Obama is more African than American or secretly Muslim. While finding ways to maintain deniability, that is exactly the kind of thing that typified Clinton political maneuvers during those presidential years.

After this kind of thing, you’d have to believe that people are starting to remember the divisiveness and nasty politics that came with the Clinton machine--and realize that the machine was a function of Bill and Hillary, not merely Bill acting alone. I had thought of pimping a bit for Hillary over the coming weeks, still believing (regardless of what my good friend, Jerry, has said) that Hillary would be an easier target for McCain. And I still believe that if a Democrat should be in the White House, a Clinton presidency would be less damaging than an Obama presidency.

But here’s the rub: he’s the better person. I can’t spend energy pushing the candidacy of a woman who I find increasingly abhorrent even though I think her policies will be closer to my own (by a fairly small margin in most cases) than her opponent.

I don’t want to see Obama in the White House, but I really don’t want another four years of the Clintons, either. This isn’t about the extra-changiness of Obama; it’s about the complete ethical bankruptcy of the Clintons. I have a feeling that more and more people will defect from the Clinton camp as they remember the reality of 1992 - 2000.

Obama is a decent man and he’s run a clean campaign. I’ll fight tooth-and-nail against his policies, but at least he would be a dignified force in the White House. I doubt that he would be a candidate for impeachment or special bimbo eruption squads of handlers designated to quell news of his indiscretions or assassinate the character of his opponents. I’m sure that he’ll play hardball--anyone who makes it to the White House has to know how to play politics a little rough--but not in the scheming, ruthless manner of the Clintons.

Read the story.

Ralph Nader is making one of the funniest--as in, almost as funny as any mention of the trilateral commission during nationally televised debates--decisions of the 2008 election cycle. He’s coming back to be a disruptive influence on the political process one more time.

I’m betting that most his natural constituency won’t be hopping on this particular bandwagon again. In a different era they might be singing “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will “shift the power from the few to the many.”

Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in debt.

He has no chance of winning, little chance of moving any of the entrenched positions of the current candidates, and probably won’t gather up much of the vote. Ron Paul’s place in the process--Quixotic, to say the least--made far more sense and pulled in far more support than I imagine Nader will find.

But at least we’ll all get a good laugh out of it, right?

Read the rest.

In a Politico piece this morning, Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen) take a little swipe at the “commentators on the right” in reference to the McCain/New York Times story. Their contention seems to be that McCain killed the potential damage from the NYT piece by “sophisticated 24-hour counterattack” against the story and was aided by right leaning journalists, bloggers, radio personalities (who all, I suppose, make up the commentariat of the right) and their aversion to all things Gray Lady.

While I do tend to view much of what comes out of the NYT with a little more cynicism than many newspapers, it’s just as true that I went to read the story worried heavily about the damage that it would cause. I went assuming that it would be a well-researched, well-written, and campaign-derailing article; else why was it published in the Times?

See, my actually assumption was that there would be some substance to the story and some accusations made. There weren’t. It was very simply one of the worst pieces of investigative journalism that I’ve read from the Times--although it would have been a high water mark for something like Denver’s Westword. Apparently, that isn’t how Martin and Allen see things.

Few commentators on the right—including some who regularly denounce ethical lapses or weaknesses of the flesh among Democrats—paused to assess seriously whether the Times’s suggestions of conflict of interest were well-founded.

Instead, many swallowed past misgivings about McCain to rally to his defense, on the apparent theory that anyone under assault by the most powerful institution in the mainstream media could not be all bad.

If that article had contained anything reliable, anything substantial, I think that the conservative call would not have been to circle the wagons; the call would have been to get McCain to bow out and figure out how to get Romney back in the game. Conservatives aren’t as suicidal as recent buzz words might indicate, and what saved McCain from an already skeptical base wasn’t a rallying instinct, but a story that never should have run. Outside of the insinuation that McCain was cheating on his wife, there wasn’t much new in the story--with the oldest allegations dating back to the Keating 5 scandal. Honestly, people have already made up their minds on these things and it was the sex angle that was being used to lead and sell the story.

Martin and Allen, though, seemed to have seen more substance in the story than most people, suggesting that if the Times had been more aggressive in its defense, people might have been persuaded that there was more to the story than McCain’s denials of wrongdoing.

Not long after the network and cable morning news shows led with the story, top McCain supporters appeared on the same programs to chastise the Times and denigrate the story. Conservative publications including The American Spectator and Human Events weighed in to defend McCain. By late morning, Shirley’s firm had lined up a half-dozen conservative leaders to attack the Times, and booked guests on dozens of radio and cable television shows. In addition, Black, Bennett and Davis all made the rounds.

Also on in the morning and for the rest of the day was Todd Harris, a top aide in Fred Thompson’s campaign who had previously worked for McCain in 2000.

The Times did not immediately defend itself, letting the story speak for itself until Executive Editor Bill Keller issued a statement Thursday morning saying the account was “nailed down to our satisfaction.”

With silence from the paper, the McCain campaign was free to frame the debate.

What debate? The Times ran a story that was undeniably inflammatory in purpose, but never got around to making any real allegations. It never said that McCain did anything inappropriate. It said that McCain might have appeared to do something inappropriate, but we’re really not sure and there’s no real evidence (at least none on offer in the article) to support full blown allegations.

There was no debate to frame: without an accusation to defend, without named sources to rely on, without a smoking gun (or a stained blue dress), there was only McCain saying, “I didn’t do anything” and journalists saying “what was this story about?”

Honestly, if you look at some of the staff of NRO, I would imagine that there were a few writers who would have been damned near giddy to jump on a McCain-killing story.

But even if you’re skeptical of the right wing reaction, other outlets said essentially the same thing. John Friedman at Marketwatch, who I wouldn’t categorize as one of the “commentators on the right” had this to say in his article:

The Times violated a basic tenet of journalism: Either you have the story, or you don’t. If you have the goods, put the story on page one and shout about it from rooftops. If you don’t, delete the flimsy, unsupported stuff. Like my professors at the Medill School of Journalism used to preach: When in doubt, leave it out.

No newspaper should feel a need to swing at every pitch, especially one with the reputation of The New York Times.

Absolutely right, and I think quite a few publications of less stature than the Times would have passed on that article. The Boston Globe, for example, chose not to run its parent paper’s story in favor of running the WaPo’s stripped down version which “focused almost exclusively on the pervasive presence of lobbyists in McCain’s campaign.”

The Huffington Post, no friend of the right, had a story by Jay Rosen that posed its own questions and concerns:

Lots of people will be asking: did the Times have the goods, enough facts to even run this story? (National Review’s Rich Lowry says no, and many others will be saying the same thing today.) I notice that the Washington Post essentially ran the same story today, minus the innuendo about an affair. It leads with the strongest fact to emerge from the Times account: that former McCain aide John Weaver had met with the women in question to ask her to stay away, a meeting--and an agenda--that Weaver confirmed to the Times and the Post. If there’s any “hard” news in these accounts to support the appearance of ethical taint, that is it. But the Post left out the, “Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened...” part, which makes the Times story far more explosive, and more of an event within the 08 campaign. Which makes me wonder why the Times didn’t run a G-rated version scrupulously free of tabloid stuff.

For a good overview of the questions raised--by the left and by the right--over the Times article, check out Howard Kurtz’s WaPo piece.

The New York Times shouldn’t have run unsubstantiated gossip--and that is, in the final analysis, what they did with reference to the insinuation that McCain had a sexual relationship with Iseman. It isn’t blind partisanship to suggest that this was a piece unworthy of the Times or any other reputable news outlet, and the Politico’s suggestion to the contrary is offensive. My opinion on the piece wasn’t framed by the McCain machine--or by anything other than seeing the link on Drudge--it was framed by reading the actual article and finding myself baffled by its lack of substance. I doubt that I’m alone in that.

Before we begin this day’s scheduled blogging, let me say thanks to Shawn and RandomCheryl44888862 for linking posts over here. Shawn gets double thanks for linking the story both on his own site and over at the American Spectator’s blog. Then he gets triple thanks for coming up with the headline that I should have come up with…

Lastly, is it just me or is the story about McCain and the lobbyist seriously lacking in meat. Hell, I don’t even think that the NYT article rises to the level of accusation--I’d say it’s more firmly grounded in meaningful insinuation. This was supposed to be the story that knocked him from the hobby horse? I don’t see it.

Unless there are more details (and speculation, insinuation, or actual accusation) in the hopper, I’d say that this story is more about why the hell did they publish it (okay, we already know that answer) than about McCain’s phantom misdeeds. He may well have done something wrong--he’s human after all, and a politician as well--but you wouldn’t be able to tell it from that flaccid little article.

I left a comment in response to comment #24 over here because of a post that I read here (thanks for the link, Rob!), but I didn’t want to deprive people of the opportunity to disagree with me here.

So, here goes:

“(Unfortunately I really don’t see McCain picking Paul…although honestly it’s absolutely the very best thing he could do.)”

Why? Because Paul will bring that extra 4% of the vote that he’s been missing? Or, maybe, because it would establish his bona fides with the anti-war folks? Or, perhaps, you were thinking that it would bring in extra white supremacists? Nah, can’t be that, he’ll already get the “I ain’t votin’ for a black man” block by default.

No, no, I know, it’s because the gold standard hordes were just dying to find a reason to believe that McCain was the guy to make their wishes come true.

Yeah. That would really blow it open.

Whatever anyone thinks of Ron Paul, not only would it not be the very best decision that McCain could make for VP, it would be a ludicrous proposition. They don’t have much in common and Paul won’t make McCain into a viable candidate for the libertarians, anti-war activists, or any of the others that have rallied to Paul.

Which is okay: frankly, he doesn’t need those folks to win the election. He needs to woo the conservative base without losing the independents--that will be tough since movement conservatives are in a mood to fight and he’s not a particularly conservative candidate. Moving too far right, though, will lose his natural constituency: moderate Republicans and independents who admire his “maverick” brand.

If Obama is the nominee on the other side--and he is--then McCain has an uphill battle to winning the presidency. If Hillary had been the candidate, I think he would have chewed her and Bill up, spit them out, and taken the White House by a huge margin. But Obama isn’t an unlikable, arrogant shrew, he’s just a stealth lefty waiting to unleash a speedy financial doom on the country’s economy.

We can talk bad about Bush all we want, but an Obama presidency will be a much more painful thing for conservatives and libertarians--not always for the same reasons, but the results will be like slow torture. Expansive new social programs that will dwarf the Bush errors (the pill bill will look tiny compared to whatever flavor universal health care Obama and a friendly congress tosses on our backs), for example.

The next four years could be brutally painful.

Of course, for libertarians and Democrats, the pain might be just as pronounced with a McCain White House.

Which goes to show that when you’re a libertarian, you just can’t freakin’ win. Poor bastards.

Play ball.

There are things to dislike about McCain--and, again, when I have enough clear time to address it properly, I’ll spend it explaining my view on voting in the upcoming election--but we need to remember that there are things to appreciate about the man, too. Like this, for instance.

Wisconsin has received a half billion dollars—more than twice as much as any other state—from a federal subsidy meant to help out dairy farmers struggling with low milk prices.

Should farmers keep that safety net? Both Democratic presidential candidates think so.

In a tough 2004 re-election fight, Republican President Bush said he, too, would support renewing the program in spite of its cost to taxpayers. But this year ‘s GOP frontrunner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, says he can ‘t do that.

“At a time when Americans must work four months a year just to pay their taxes, John McCain cannot support farm policies that are too costly for the taxpayer, particularly when they also play a negative role in encouraging farmers to rely on government subsidies, “ McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said of the dairy subsidy.

In an election year, it takes guts to tell a group of voters that you won’t support their particular sacred cow (sorry, had to).

I’m sure that a President McCain would introduce new spending--I’ve never seen a president that didn’t--but I think he would be the first in a long time to do his best to downsize some of the market-distorting subsidies and programs that have grown out of government’s good intentions. He certainly wouldn’t be as reliable Ron Paul in trying to squash the old order, but he would be a damned site better than anyone else still in the running.

And, as for the article’s assertion that it is “a federal subsidy meant to help out dairy farmers struggling with low milk prices,” well, that’s only half the truth. The full truth is that agricultural subsidies largely seem to exist to keep prices low so that consumers feel good about their grocery-buying experience and American farmers remain competitive with their counterparts around the world. Without subsidies and protectionist trade policies, we consumers might have a better idea of the real value of foods in the world.

Of course, since the subsidies come out of taxes, most consumers are paying higher costs than we notice--the more taxes you pay, the more likely it is that you are subsidizing cheap milk for other families. As an act of charity, that seems like a nice thing, but as an act of distorting our view of the value of a thing, I would suggest that the actual cost of a gallon of milk in the United States is almost impossible to calculate.

I’m going to speak a little heresy here: I’m fine, for now, with tax rates. I want to see all the tax cuts from this Bush era made permanent, but I’m not personally looking for any more cuts. What I want to see from the next President of the United States is someone who will tackle spending issues. Entitlement reform and an overhaul of the ridiculous bureaucratic that drain money from our coffers is what we need right now. More tax cuts won’t gift us with long-term economic well-being right now: but solving the problems of Social Security, Medicare, and government bloat would take us in the right direction.

Again, McCain is the only candidate remaining (Ron Paul notwithstanding--and, honestly, Paul doesn’t figure much in any rational debate about who will be the next president) who is likely to work toward that goal. Many people find his answer about why he opposed the Bush tax cuts (that those cuts weren’t supported by spending cuts) to be a sign of how he strayed from the conservative base; I personally find the argument persuasive. Government spending must be cut for the economic health of the nation.

Read the rest.

Newt Gingrich, in a call for change in the Republican party, had this to say about the upcoming election:

“I actually believe that any reasonable conservative will, in the end, find that they have an absolute requirement to support the Republican nominee for president this fall…

“As a citizen, I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20 percent of the time, than a President Clinton or a President Obama that we fight with 90 percent of the time.”

So that isn’t really an endorsement of McCain, I’ll admit, than it is an endorsement of making a rational compromise for the sake of the nation.

More on this later. It will probably come up around the same time as I finish off the Three Sunday Reviews posts…

Newt had more to say, of course, and Newsmax can be relied on to give us little tiny chunks of it while trying to get us to buy something for pervasive joint pain. Read the rest.

Romney’s words made me feel a little misty. I admire that he would be willing to sacrifice his own ambitions to bring an opportunity for unity in the Republican party.

Even though we face an uphill fight, I know that many in this room are fully behind my campaign.” You are with me all the way to the convention. Fight on, just like Ronald Reagan did in 1976. But there is an important difference from 1976: today… we are a nation at war.
And Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child’s play. About this, I have no doubt.
I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles; I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!

That bolded bit is something that I doubt you’d see from many career politicians these days, and it speaks well of Romney. It doesn’t hurt that he’s young and I’m sure he’ll be making this run again in the future, perhaps with very different results.

I’m sure it was a difficult decision. Unlike some (perhaps many) people who will drop by RSong today, I also happen to think it was the right choice. Bravo!

Read the rest of his speech.

Mike Huckabee is complaining about voter “supression” after taking umbrage at the Romney campaign’s assertion that a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain in the upcoming primaries. That assertion may or may not be true--I’m not sure where Huckabee fans will break when their guy is forced out of the picture--but I think that Huckabee is a bit confused on the whole point of the campaign.

See, the campaign exists to convince people to vote for your side instead of the other guy’s side. Voter suppression, on the other hand, is when you try to convince people to stay home--something I try to do when faced with people who really don’t seem to care about the political process, the issues at hand, and what the candidates actually stand for.

So, for example, if I point out that there is no way in the world that, say, a vote for Obama in the general election is a vote for higher taxes than McCain or Romney will offer us, I’m not trying to suppress the pro-tax contingent, I’m simply letting you know what the consequences of your vote will end up being. Now, since over one half of my recent (and modest raise) was eaten up by taxes, let’s just say that the tax issue is a big one for me.

In case you skipped over that last bit, let me say it again: over 53% of my raise was taken away from me in taxes. Damnit. Update: See comments for just how incorrect this number is. If you’re curious.

What were we talking about? Oh, yes.

Offering up arguments to convince a person to vote A instead of B is voter re-direction, not suppression. Suppression would be me saying that Obama will win so handily that you don’t even need to show up to cast a vote. Don’t waste your time.

See the difference, Mike?

Good. Because Romney seems to have a firm grip on the subject and he’s beating you over the head with it:

Huckabee’s accusation followed Romney’s remarks to FOX News last week, in which the former Massachusetts governor said: “A vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain, and if they want John McCain as their nominee … that’s exactly what the vote would do.”

Huckabee then cast Romney’s comment as an attempt to keep voters from going to the polls.

“If you try to discourage people from voting for somebody, what else would you call it? Isn’t voter suppression when you try to keep people from voting a certain way, by anybody’s definition? … Isn’t that voter suppression, suppressing the vote, pushing it down, keeping people from feeling comfortable and going and making a vote? I think that’s exactly what it is,” Huckabee told reporters during a stop in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Monday.
But Romney, speaking in Atlanta, dismissed the charge, saying Huckabee has misused the term.

“First a couple of rules in politics. One, no whining. And Number 2, you get them to vote for you. And so I want them not to vote for Mike Huckabee and not to vote for John McCain and to vote for me. … That’s not voter suppression. That’s known as politics,” Romney said. “I want people to vote, but I want them to vote for me.”

I’ve started wondering, somewhere deep in the back of my head, if it isn’t Ron Paul that’s plotting a third party run if he doesn’t get the nomination: unless he imagines that he’ll be offered a plum cabinet position or the VP slot for giving out his endorsement, what is Huckabee still running for? The only thing that shoots down my own little, irrational conspiracy theory is the fact that there would be nowhere for Huckabee to run.

The mind wanders.

Read the story.

Maybe. Maybe not.

At a time when consumer confidence in the US economy is flagging, the deficit is growing, run-away entitlement spending threatens to seriously damage our economy, and it’s really freakin’ cold and snowy outside in Denver, CO, is telling a Denver crowd that we need to stunt the economy to combat global warming a winning strategy?

I would say no. Bill Clinton would say yes. Unless he secretly hates his wife, in which case his evil plan to derail her presidential bid is coming along nicely, thanks.

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ‘cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?

A charitable view might imagine that he misspoke, but I’m not so sure. Increased economic activity means more energy consumption. Even with breakthroughs in efficiency, energy consumption tends to go up as economies grow and energy consumption tends to go up as populations become more affluent. It’s hard to work job growth, fiscal responsibility, and the American love of comfy living into a strategy of intentionally hobbling the nation’s economy, I would guess. But, then, I’m not an economist, so my ideas might just be old fashioned.

I watched a portion of his speech last night, and I admit that it was fun to watch him smack down a Truther who had disrupted the event--even while advocating a position that I find foolish (immediately ending the war without, apparently, consulting the military, without considering consequences, without even a nod to the idea of victory), he was strong in his defense of common sense and verbally slapped the Truther around a bit when he wouldn’t shut up. The crowd was appreciative and so was I.

None of which changes the fact that Bill must hate his wife to be talking about intentional economic slow-downs during her campaign. And, damnit, I want some global warming to come along and melt the snow and give me warmth. Global warming is a promise that I want our elected officials to keep.

Slackers.

PS - I’m not the only one who thinks Bill might be batting for the other team. Wait, that didn’t sound right, did it?

PPS - Apparently I’m being unfair. He actually made a good point with the not-so-out-of-context bit that you can read at the link. Bill doesn’t hate Hillary.