Must Reads

Chauncey DeVega: The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)

Andrew Rosenthal: Chris Christie, Revisionist Historian

NY Times: Rabbi’s Followers Cast Doubts on Congressman’s Fund-Raising

James B. Stewart: Paying Far More Than 13.9%: A Taxpayer’s Lament

John Pitney Jr.: Why Gingrich would lose in a debate with Obama

Christopher Brauchli: The Condom's Cousins

Matt Taibbi: Is Obama's 'Economic Populism' for Real?

Jim Wright: The Special Kind of Crazy

A must read, seriously.

POSTED BY JHW2212

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you must read this article in the Guardian. Jonathan Freedland has nailed so many points like no one I've read.

Here's a tease:

The Republican shift is now towards an anti-government fervour that recalls the militia movement of the 1990s, convinced that every Washington move – even a plan to expand healthcare – is motivated by wickedness and constitutes a step towards tyranny. In that context, any action to thwart the government beast is justified. Such ideas were always around on the lunatic fringe, but they have entered and now dominate the Republican mainstream. Today's Republicans are less like a traditional political party and 'more like an apocalyptic cult'. There is a bitter irony here, that the party that insists it is conservative and patriotic now threatens the centuries-old political system that lies at the core of the US's national identity.

Driftglass' Rebuttal To Bob Herbert

Yesterday, I added Bob Herbert's editorial, "Stop Being Stupid" to my short list of "Must Reads." It looks like Driftglass has taken offense to Herbert's use of "We" in describing the stupidity of the American people.

I could not help but note that the technical term for people who tried to suggest any of this at any point over the last couple of decades was "Dirty America-hating Liberal".
...Truth is, Bob, there is no “we” anymore; there are those of us who look at your laundry list as a reasonable assay of our challenges and changes ...and there are the Pig People, their panderers, exploiters and ringleaders.

He makes some very good points, which is why I'm mentioning it here, but like I wrote in my comment on DG's blog, "when I read the article, I didn't include myself in the "we." I assumed Herbert was just being polite and not trying to be accusatory to get the "we" has was talking about to the end of his column. It's like the simpler days when we were in school and you aced a pop quiz but the rest of the class failed. The teacher berated the class as a whole but you knew he/she wasn't talking about you specifically."

Must Reads

Bob Herbert: Stop Being Stupid

Joby Warrick: CIA buys Afghan chief's loyalty with Viagra

Must Reads

Judith Warner: Tears To Remember

Newsweek: Hackers and Spending Sprees

John Cole: Henke On The Rot

Gotta Laff: Knock Knock...

Must Reads

Gene Sperling: Fact Checking the Fact Checkers: The Washington Post Gets its Pinocchios Dead Wrong on Biden, Palin and Health Care

The Rude Pundit: Joe Biden Beats Up A Woman With Glasses

New York Times Op-Ed: Dick Cheney, Role Model

Carl Bernstein: What The Palin-Biden Debate Really Told Us

Matt Taibbi: Mad Dog Palin

Must Reads

Dr. Biobrain: All RedState, All The Time

The Rude Pundit: John McCain: The Town Hall Stalker

David Corn: Is McCain More the Populist than Obama?

Must Reads

The Rude Pundit: Grappling With McCain

Newsweek: Team McCain and the Trooper - Nominee's ally moves to curb probe of Palin

Political Punch: Palin Accuses 'Obama/Biden Democrats' of Attacking Her Family, But Campaign Can't Name One

John Ridley: Your Pocket Guide To Speaking Palin-guage Vol.1 and Vol. 2

Must Reads

Seth Colter Walls: Clinton's Wealthy Die-Hards Are Contradicting Her Campaign's Message

Nora Ephron: Hillary the Admonisher

The Rude Pundit: Hillary Clinton Is Not A Liar

Must Reads

Frank Rich: The Candidate We Still Don’t Know

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

...Most Americans still don’t know, as [Josh] Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

Robert Scheer: McCain's Warped Worldview

The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government’s imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There you have it encapsulated, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational mélange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters.

Must Reads

Michael Moore: How The Democrats Can Blow It ...In Six Easy Steps

Paul Rieckhoff: Brain Dead Bureaucrat Watch: VA Blocks Voter Registration at Vets' Hospitals

Bob Cesca: The Exotic Candidate Is The One With Eight Houses

David Brody: Obama Gets Heated on Born Alive Infant Protection Act

Must Reads

Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News: Obama trip likely to rob McCain of, well, limelight


Nicole Belle, Crooks & Liars: FNS: Lie-berman Shills For McCain


Bob Cesca, HuffPo: Senator McCain Isn't Funny, So Stop Encouraging Him


d r i f t g l a s s: On Shouting "Fuck"