At the same time, Frank Rich points out that the media is not covering the violence:
When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.
The media has an interesting way of helping its buddy John McCain with a "surge is working" narrative: don't report much about anything contrary to that narrative.
Right now on Dan Abrams, they are talking about how John McCain has repeatedly said "I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company."
A quick google search and I found the transcript in which McCain said it to Hannity.
Wow, this makes the wingnuts look like total morons.
TEN years ago John McCain had to apologize for regaling a Republican audience with a crude sexual joke about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno. Last year he had to explain why he didn’t so much as flinch when a supporter asked him on camera, “How do we beat the bitch?” But these days Mr. McCain just loves the women.
The Obama folks are being too nice to McCain...calling him "confused" suggests his views are remediable, that with the proper information, John McCain's state of confusion can be fixed. I doubt it. I think McCain is in a far more incorrigible state.
That's not to say McCain is not prone to confusion generally, like when he mixed up Sunni and Shia and which country is training Al Qaeda.
But confusion is kind of forgivable. We all get confused sometimes. Hell, I get confused. I thought John McCain was against the Bush tax cuts, but then he's for them. Very confusing to me, I must admit.
But this notion that we can keep keep troops in Iraq without casualties like in Germany and South Korea goes way beyond confusion and an out-of-touch state. It speaks to being stubborn, dishonest, and delusional.
The Politico has an article up in which John McCain's campaign is complaining about their press coverage!
Openly frustrated by what they see as an ongoing double standard in the press’s treatment of his campaign, John McCain and his aides have been aggressively denouncing unfavorable stories as “smear jobs” and “scurrilous attacks,” while the candidate himself has launched a series of stinging attacks on Barack Obama.
Well, they are right about one thing: there is a double standard of media coverage...but it benefits John McCain.
I was heartened to learn this week that the DNC is planning on adopting Obama's policy of refusing money from federal lobbyists.
But today's New York Times is depressing. Both the DNC and RNC are planning on raising millions in soft money to pay for their conventions.
Donors who give $1 million or more at the “Presidential Sponsor” level are given convention credentials to all hospitality suites and are assured of invitations to private events hosted by Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado; the state’s governor, Bill Ritter Jr.; members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation; and other leading Democratic politicians.
I'm sorry, but this has no role in Barack Obama's Democratic Party.
So John McCain has challenged Barack Obama to a series of ten town hall meetings.
They sounds really good in theory. No media moderators to ask questions on process or distratctions. The format will be relatively unstructured. There will be a lot of them.
I think I know why John McCain seems just a little too eager to have these forums...
So John McCain opposes Jim Webb's GI Bill on the grounds that it will encourage folks to leave the military, a debatable proposition at best. But yesterday's New York Times profile of John McCain shows us that he himself once took advantage of an opportunity to leave the military.
At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral.
But Mr. McCain, the son and grandson of revered Navy admirals, was having second thoughts about following his family’s vocation. He had spent the previous four years as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate...
...Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral’s star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could “do more good there,” Mr. Lehman recalled.
Why can't less connected service members have opportunities to follow their dreams too, Sen. McCain?
It looks like Scott McClellan is not the only person debunking the myth of the "liberal media."
On Michael Calderone's Politico blog, CNN's Jessica Yellin is cited as having this conversation with Anderson Cooper last night on AC 360:
"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings," Yellin said.
"And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time...."
First it's Bush's Press Secretary, now it's a traditional media reporter. They can't blame this on "liberal bloggers" any more.
The Politico has got a sneak peak at Scott McClellan's new book. And boy, is it a doozie.
—McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.
—He says the White House press corps went too easy on the administration.
—He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”
—The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them – and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him the full facts.
—McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff – “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
The signature defect of modern political journalism is that it has shredded the ideal of proportionality.
...
Her comment was news by any standard. But it was only big news when wrested from context and set aflame by a news media more concerned with being interesting and provocative than with being relevant or serious. Thus, the story made the front page of The New York Times, was the lead story of The Washington Post and got prominent treatment on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC.
A fair point generally. But I have a big problem the timing of this quasi mea culpa and its central example of Hillary/RFK.
This "big news" has been a 48 hour story during 2 slow news cycles in which many, if not most, pundits have given Hillary the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but this is nothing. Look at Wright and Bittergate if you want examples of an out-of-proportion media feeding frenzy in which words are wrested from context.
I suppose we should not expect much from a Faux News person.
But this week after Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a Brain Tumor, Mort Kondracke seems to think the timing is perfect to write an article in Roll Call essentially telling the GOP to get their act in gear to prevent Ted Kennedy's dreams from being realized in this election.
The title of the piece, published just a few days after Kennedy's diagnosis, is "Can GOP Reform to Avoid 'Kennedy Scenario' for 2008?"
I kid you not.
Maybe I am just a bit sensitive right now over the RFK/Assassination comments with regard to Obama, but I must say that I find it incredibly tasteless to write an article using someone just diagnosed with brain cancer as a bogeyman.
First Mike Huckabee, then Hillary Clinton. While I believe these are offhand comments, I must admit there is a part of me that wonders if there is an element of dog whistling occurring here. I hope not. I pray not.
It doesn't help that there was a report that the Secret Service stopped screening at a rally in Dallas in February or that the Secret Service has been plagued with allegations of racism, especially with regard to their protection of Jesse Jackson.
I really don't want to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but I'd be lying if I said that I don't worry about Barack Obama's physical safety.
A few weeks ago I wrote a diary in which I argued that the best way Obama could unify the party would be to promise now to mentor Chelsea Clinton's political career when he is President. He could give her an appropriate job in the White House, and support her one day if she runs for office. Perhaps someday she would advance to the Presidency and perhaps Hillary Clinton would live to see her daughter be Preident.
Well, Bill Clinton is now saying something very similar. Via Drudge and ABC:
"If you asked me (if Chelsea would run for office) before Iowa, I would have said, 'No way. She is too allergic to anything we do.' But she is really good at it," former President Bill Clinton tells PEOPLE magazine in their latest issue, hitting newsstands Friday.
Aha! She is interested. (At least her dad says so). I said it before and I will say it again...Chelsea is the key to unity.
I have a lot of respect for what Tom Daschle has done behind-the-scenes for Barack Obama. This Washington Post story suggests that he is urging Obama to pick a Clinton supporter like Strickland, Clark, or Bayh be his running mate for the sake of party unity.
In addition to the fledgling attempts to merge the fundraising operations of Obama and Clinton, there is growing talk that the best -- and perhaps only -- way to truly mend the rift is for Obama to pick a top Clinton surrogate as his vice presidential nominee.
"There's gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland, [Indiana Sen. Evan] Bayh, and [retired general] Wes Clark almost constantly, and it's no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."
If the Washingtonpost is correct and this is Tom Daschle's argument, I think he may be wrong on this one.
In 1938, Nevelle Chamberlin appeased Hilter by giving him half of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement. Hitler took advantage and invaded the rest of europe.
In 2003, McBush appeased Iran by replacing an Iraqi regime hostile to Iran with one sympathetic to Iran. Iran took advantage and armed insurgents to kill the very Americans who knocked off their biggest competitor.
McBush helped Ahmadinejad as much as Chamberlin helped Hitler
Keith and others are showing a lot of justifiable outrage at Bush's reasons for (*UPDATE per Keith - pretending to )give up golf.
But there is another piece of the story. Is Bush lying by neglecting to tell us that this this clip from Fahrenheit 9/11 is the real reason he (pretended) to give up golf?
