Month: February 2008

The Russert-ization Of The 2008 Race

by dday

The Tennessee GOP does an almost verbatim imitation of the Very Serious Journalist from Buffalo (he’s a regular guy, y’all, he’s from Buffalo!).

ANTI-SEMITES FOR OBAMA

NASHVILLE, TN – The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.

“It’s time to set the record straight about Barack Obama and where he really stands on vital issues such as national security and the security of Israel,” said Robin Smith, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. “Voters need to know about two items that surfaced today which strongly suggest that an Obama presidency will view Israel as a problem rather than a partner for peace in the Middle East.

On Sunday, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan on Sunday likened Obama to a new messiah, calling him “the hope of the entire world.” That’s the same Louis Farrakhan who has a history of making openly anti-Semitic statements, calling Judaism a “gutter religion,” and suggesting that crack cocaine might have been a CIA plot to enslave blacks.

Farrakhan, addressing 20,000 people at the annual Savior’s Day celebration in Chicago, praised the Democrat presidential candidate, calling Obama “The hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better.”

He also compared Obama to the founder of Islam, remarking that both had a white mother and black father, according to the Associated Press. “A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” Farrakhan said. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”

Obama, (pictured dressed in Muslim attire in a 2006 visit to Africa) has on the campaign trail pledged to rapidly remove American soldiers from Iraq regardless of the resulting instability and the creation of opening that would be filled by Islamic extremists, like Al Qaeda, in Iraq’s government and military.

Obama has pledged to hold a Muslim Summit to determine Middle East policy with the very leaders that have as their goal to remove Israel from the map, referenced Jews to be “dogs” and “pigs,” among other vile references.

(Dressed in Muslim attire, ay? That’s a new one. At least they’re honest about what they’re trying to do.)

There are additional smears, but the key one from which it all springs is the one legitimized and mainstreamed by Tim Russert in a public forum last night. Beyond the snickers over whether “renounced” or “rejected” is the proper term of opposition, the reality is that Tim Russert last night made anti-Semitic smearing of a Presidential candidate fair game.

Read the chair of the TN GOP’s response to the outcry over their press release:

Smith said today that […] the state GOP will continue to use Obama’s middle name. That’s no different than saying “Hillary Rodham Clinton” or “Richard Milhouse Nixon,” she said.

“John McCain has to be elected. Robin Smith doesn’t,” she said. “We have a duty to inform the Republican base.”

She said Farrakhan is known for “hateful, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel statements” and when the Nation of Islam leader “essentially endorsed” Obama, “it called out for our statement.”

“A duty to inform.” “It called out for our statement.” There is no material difference between this defense and what Tim Russert would say if challenged on his choice of questioning. The circle is now complete. Not only is Russert a mouthpiece for the GOP, but GOP mouthpieces are mouthpieces for Tim Russert.

The only proper course of action is for Tim Russert to resign, without delay, for setting back journalism to somewhere in the William Randolph Hearst era.

…I’m seeing CNN right now reporting on “what Obama’s pastor said” and “Jewish-American concerns,” complete with pictures of Farrakhan and scary supporters dressed in robes. Actually, the only concerns are from the GOP, worrying about what new ways to pitch this story to the media so they’ll cover it for the next nine months. Actually, I guess they’re not too worried at all.

UPDATE: As Glenn Greenwald notes this “Obama Muslim black anti-Semite crazy Hamas” stream-of-consciousness pattern recognition smear is picking up traction, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens, the ones on the front lines of the situation (except for Hugh Hewitt, who once broadcast his radio show from New York City, so he’s basically a soldier for America), want their country to hold direct talks with the Hamas government. This is a smear made by a far-right faction that presumes they speak for all Jewry. And as a Jewish American, I find it abhorrent.

.

Modern Branding

by digby

Here’s a very interesting interview on the subject of the Obama campaign’s masterful branding. I’d noticed the consistency of the fonts and the logos, but I didn’t realize what the campaign was trying to convey with them and had no idea just how sophisticated it all was:

[W]atching Obamamania over the past few weeks, I’ve become convinced that there’s something more subtle at work, too. It’s not just the message and the man and the speeches that are swaying Democratic voters–though they are. It’s the way the campaign has folded the man and the message and the speeches into a systemic branding effort. Reinforced with a coherent, comprehensive program of fonts, logos, slogans and web design, Obama is the first presidential candidate to be marketed like a high-end consumer brand.* And for folks who don’t necessarily need Democratic social programs–upscale voters, young people–I suspect that the novel comfort of that brand affiliation contributes (however subconsciously) to his appeal.

Seeking expert opinion, I tested my hypothesis on leading graphic designer and critic Michael Bieruit, who was kind enough to dissect Obama’s unprecedented branding campaign–and show me how it’s helping his candidacy. Excerpts:

[…]

What do you see as the “philosophical implications,” to use a highfalutin phrase, of Obama’s design choices?

There are a couple of levels. There’s the close-in parlor game you can play about what all these typefaces actually mean. Gotham was a typeface designed originally for GQ magazine, so it’s a sleek, purposefully not fancy, very straightforward, plainspoken font, but done with a great deal of elegance and taste–and drawn from very American sources, by the way. Unlike other sans serif typefaces, it’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Swiss. It’s very American. The serif font that he often uses to write Obama is delicate and nuanced and almost, not feminine exactly, but it’s very literary-looking. It looks very conversational and pleasant, as opposed to strident and yelling. It’s a persuasive-looking font, I would say. But that’s putting these things on couches and pretending they have personalities

The Republicans have been better than Democrats for years at branding and marketing. I’m sure you all recognize this:

But it looks like the Dems have finally caught up. They are taking a different tack, as they should have been doing all along, and appealing to more modern images and styles.

Marketing rules our culture, politics included. I don’t know if it will work to win over enough of the public to get “market share” — advertisers and marketers never do until they put it to the test. But the Democrats are finally playing in the same arena, and combined with a charismatic candidate, this could go a long way.

.

The Real Superdelegates

by digby

Greg Sargent comments on Dowd’s latest atrocity:

I wanted to flag a line in the column that perfectly encapsulates top-shelf pundit elitism at its finest. Referring to Hillary’s new strategy of bashing the press coverage, Dowd writes:

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Right, so according to Dowd, the only reason we’re still conducting this presidential race is because she and her fellow media cohorts are benevolently holding off on crowning Obama the winner. That’s just so lovely and generous of them, isn’t it?

Yes. It’s very kind of our press to allow Clinton to stay in the race when the pledged delegate count is currently Obama 1193 and Clinton 1038. It’s clearly a rout.

The truth is that the race, at this moment, is still close, as you can see from those numbers. In fact, judging by those numbers alone, you would have to say that the Democratic Party is seriously divided. However, we also know that Obama has won all the recent contests and that momentum is on his side and that unless something unexpected happens he is very likely to win.

But we have a little mechanism here in the United States designed to clear this up once and for all, and it isn’t begging for the press for guidance about who we are allowed to vote for. It’s called an election and as Sargent points out in his post, we’re going to have a couple of them next Tuesday which may be decisive. (On the other hand, in the unlikely event that Clinton does stop this momentum, then perhaps it will take a few more to decide.) If people object to superdelegates deciding who our nominees should be I would certainly think they’d object to Maureen Dowd and the kewl kids, of all people, doing it. Do they really have our best interests at heart?

As an aside, is it just me or has Dowd’s preening self-regard recently made a shift into Norma Desmond territory?

.

How Do We Defeat Tim Russert?

by digby

The country wants change. They want Washington to stop all the partisan bickering and they want a different tone. They want their government to be serious and deal with real problems.

Can someone please explain to me how that can possibly happen until something is done about the reprehensible political press? From tax returns to Farrakhan to footage shown by “mistake” to the endless, trivial, gotcha bullshit, this debate spectacle tonight was a classic demonstration of what people really hate about politics. It isn’t actually the candidates who can at least on occasion be substantive and serious. The problem is Tim Russert and all his petty, shallow acolytes who spend all their time reading Drudge and breathlessly reporting every tabloid tidbit and sexy rumor and seeking out minor inconsistencies from years past in lieu of doing any real work.

Judging by their silly questions tonight, Russert and Williams obviously know nothing about health care policy, Iraq, Islamic terrorism, economics, global trade or any other subject that requires more than five minutes study to come up with some gotcha question or a stupid Jack Bauer fantasy. It’s embarrassing.

These people guide the way citizens perceive politics even if the citizens don’t know it. It’s hard for me to see how anything can truly change until this is dealt with.

.

Honor and Integrity

by digby

When a radio gasbag introduced him today by babbling incoherently about the “Clinton News Network” and repeating the words Barack “Hussein” Obama over and over again, St John McCain stepped up:

Any comment that was disparaging of either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama is totally inappropriate. And I have never done that in any of my campaigns and I have a long record. And I absolutely repudiate such comments. I will take responsibility. It will never happen again.

It is so wonderful to see an honorable campaign that refuses to allow anyone to be derisive toward a rival:

At the campaign event on Monday, the woman asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?”

McCain laughed along with the crowd as he said, “May I give the translation?”

“That’s an excellent question,” he added. “I respect Senator Clinton. I respect anyone who gets the nomination of the Democratic Party.”

McCain said Wednesday he’s sure the New York senator understands.

“Senator Clinton and I have a very good relationship,” he said. “She understands I’ve always treated her with respect, and I’m sure that’s been the reaction of her campaign.”

[…]

“I can’t dictate what other people say _ that’s not my business,” he said. “Nor is it an appropriate role for me to play in a gathering at a restaurant, and if anybody thinks that I should, then I think they have the wrong idea of what gatherings are all about.

The man who introduced him today also said this, which I thought was really neat. (Got a big cheer too.)

How about Condoleeza Rice and Madeline Albright, who looks like death warmed over. I think there’s a big difference between Condi and Madeline.

I’m sure McCain repudiates that one too. After all, an honorable man like him would never countenance such despicable language:

Earlier this month, at a Republican Senate fund-raiser, McCain told a downright nasty joke making fun of Janet Reno, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

The fact that McCain had made the tasteless joke was reported in major newspapers, as was the vain attempt by his press secretary to initially deny what McCain had done. But in several major newspapers, the joke itself was kept a secret. When McCain subsequently apologized to President Clinton, the Washington Post, in its personality section, noted the apology but said the joke “was too vicious to print.”

The Los Angeles Times, in its Life & Style section, provided an oblique rendering of the joke that did not fully convey its ugliness. When Maureen Dowd penned a column in the New York Times about the joke, she wrote that McCain “is so revered by the press that his disgusting jape was largely nudged under the rug.” But Dowd chose not to relay the joke, either.

The joke did appear in McCain’s hometown paper, the Arizona Republic, and the Associated Press did report the joke in full, so everyone in the press had access to McCain’s words. But by censoring themselves, the Post, the Times and others helped McCain deflect flak and preserved his status as a Republican presidential contender.

Salon feels its readers deserve the unadulterated truth. Though no tape of McCain’s quip has yet emerged, this is what he reportedly said:

“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.”

That was eight years ago but more recently, he’s shown his chivalrous nature once again.

McCain made the reference to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton after touring USC Upstate’s nursing school and seeing a training mannequin.

“I was very glad to meet the dummy, named ‘Hillary,’” McCain said to laughter. “Is that the name?”

Actually, the dummy, or human simulator, doesn’t have a name.

That’s how he shows respect to his rivals. You can’t help but be impressed.

The press certainly is:

Chris Matthews: Wasn’t it impressive that McCain did stand up today and take down this warm up character that had made these comments?

Margaret Carlson: Yeah well, that is the kind of guy McCain is. He is a straight talker. So you have to give him a lot of credit for that. These surrogates though, you have to remember there were a couple of surrogates for Senator Clinton, Robert Johnson the head of BET, her co-chair in New Hampshire who brought up things about Obama that were derogatory and then they, Johnson apologized and Shaheen resigned.

These things happen and the question is whether people decide that you had a hand in it, you tacitly approved it, you want it out there, you’re using these people to get it out there or not. And I think in the McCain case we think he didn’t want to do that.

With a history like his, you can certainly understand why he would get the benefit of the doubt from the press corps. He always has.

.

When Pressure Isn’t Pressure

by dday

Hilarious, so the Republican Whiny Caucus (i.e. the entire Republican Party) tried to force a vote on the Senate telecom amnesty bill today, but were beaten back by a 212-198 vote. I don’t know if this is out of some principled opposition to amnesty in the Democratic caucus (probably not) or a desire to use the recognized rules of order, but once again we see that the Democrats have yet to turn to their normal state of jelly.

There are ongoing negotiations on the future FISA bill:

Instead, Democrats have begun conferencing both House passed and Senate passed versions of the FISA update—although the House version does not contain retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies, a key sticking point.

Republicans have boycotted the talks, instead insisting the House vote on the Senate bill, which received 68 votes in the Senate and would likely have the blessing of the White House. House Democratic leaders have insisted they will not be bullied into accepting the Senate bill, despite the heated rhetoric coming from the White House and congressional Republicans on the issue.

The real question is why Republicans should be at any conference committee talks in the first place. They have no minds of their own, they simply follow the White House’s directives, so why should they be burdened with showing up at the conference at all? In fact, about 150 or so of them might as well go home and direct the White House political director to vote by proxy for them, since they never deviate from that strategy anyway. Seriously, let’s just get life-sized cut-outs and use marionette wires so they can depress the buttons on that little machine that tabulates their votes.

These Republicans have nothing to add to any serious debate. They take their marching orders and that’s it. The Democrats ought to learn that a committee negotiation can proceed just fine without them, and in the future decline to invite them.

Meanwhile, the Spine Caucus is growing:

U.S. Rep. John Salazar’s office said he has been under no pressure in Colorado’s 3rd District to a vote on a measure that would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Coloradans have been very supportive of Rep. Salazar for standing in favor of stronger civil liberty protections under FISA, and he believes they deserve their privacy rights to be protected by their member of Congress,” said his Washington, D.C., spokesman, Eric Wortman.

Salazar’s district includes most of the Western Slope and southern Colorado.

Salazar is a Bush Dog, one of those Democrats who voted against the party on the Protect America Act and on Iraq. And he’s not feeling pressure. I know there are some attack ads out there from a right-wing group, but they don’t appear to be having the intended effect. This is a background issue, and try as the Whiny Caucus might to scaremonger, it’s not working. Of course it remains to be seen what comes out of the conference committee and whether or not it’s something that’s passable on the basis of civil liberties. There still exists the potential for a massive sellout. But it really looks like the man behind the curtain has been exposed.

… see too this op-ed from top Democrats denouncing White House scare tactics, signed by even Jello Jay Rockefeller!

.

Free Don Siegelman

by dday

This is awesome:

He has a real allergy to the truth, doesn’t he? What an awkward reaction.

There’s a lot of power in simple confrontations like this.

UPDATE: Dana Jill Simpson basically says tell it to the judge:

Yesterday we brought you Karl Rove’s expansive denial of Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson’s testimony to Congress and comments to 60 Minutes.

Simpson responded last night on MSNBC’s Dan Abrams show: “Since Karl Rove has said that and he feels so good saying that, what I want him to do is go and swear before the United States Congress and swear what he’s saying is true.”

Simpson also responded to accusations from the Alabama Republican Party that Simpson had never worked for the party and no one had ever heard of her. She said that phone records would show conversations with party officials in Alabama and Washington, D.C. in 2002 and 2006.

.

Siegelman Story Reaches The Light Of Day

by dday

CBS’ story on the Don Siegelman case last night was fine for a 9-minute television expose, but of course it isn’t possible to take in all of the contours in that length of time. Scott Horton, who has doggedly followed this case for Harper’s, and who was interviewed for the story, explains in greater detail.

…the show was dominated by one of 52 former attorneys general from 40 of the 50 states who have called for a Congressional probe of the conduct of the Siegelman case, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. He leveled a series of blistering accusations at the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. With the Alabama G.O.P. this evening issuing a near-hysterical statement in which it characterizes the CBS broadcast—before its transmission—as an anti-Republican attack piece, it was notable that Woods, like the piece’s other star witness, is a Republican. Not just any Republican, either. Grant Woods is co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee, and a lifelong friend and advisor to the presumptive 2008 G.O.P. presidential candidate. Woods is also godfather to one of the McCain children.

Attorney General Woods has this to say about the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Siegelman: “I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of.”

In other words, not being able to beat Siegelman at the polls, Woods believes that his own party corruptly used the criminal justice process to take out an adversary. This is an extraordinary, heavy accusation. Not something that a senior Republican would raise easily about his own party. And the facts back the accusation up, beginning to end.

The nub of the case is that Siegelman allowed HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to remain on an oversight board on which he had already served, and in return Scrushy gave money to a noble effort to improve education in the state of Alabama, an effort Siegelman approved of. That’s literally the reason that Siegelman is in a jail cell right now. This is the kind of thing that, were it actually considered bribery, would put every politician in America in jail. The case hung on evidence that Siegelman walked out of a meeting with Scrushy with the check, a baseless lie spouted by a convicted criminal on Siegelman’s staff, and the Justice Department KNEW it was a lie and yet continued the case. 60 Minutes tried to talk with the accuser, a man named Nick Bailey, but the DoJ refused to authorize the interview (he’s in a federal prison).

The prosecutors nabbed him and then told him he could get a light sentence if he worked with them to nail Siegelman, their real target. This very process is a perversion of the justice system, which as former U.S. Attorney Jones very properly says, requires that prosecutors investigate crimes and not people. But it gets still worse. Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy’s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.

Horton also notes that CBS has plenty more on this case:

CBS conducted dozens of interviews and has much more that it hasn’t shown. The additional footage concerns the Canary team—husband Billy who advised the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidates against Siegelman, and wife Leura Canary, whose prosecution of Siegelman was essential to the G.O.P.’s efforts to secure the Montgomery statehouse. And they have much more on the inexplicable conduct of federal Judge Mark Fuller, appointed by George W. Bush, a former member of the Alabama G.O.P.’s Executive Committee, and a man who publicly stated that Siegelman had a grudge against him—but who refused to recuse himself from the case.

Apparently, half of the segment mysteriously dropped off the air on one station covering a healthy portion of Alabama, for what they claimed were “techincal” difficulties (no, really, the press release did read “techincal”. I’m supposed to say something like “this is Alabama, after all,” right?). This station is owned by Republican Party backers. Ho-hum.

I don’t know if the 60 Minutes piece will act as a defibrillator, to bring the Siegelman story back to life. I sincerely hope it does. Karl Rove deserves to go down for illegitimizing the cause of justice in this country. Siegelman’s lawyers have called for a special prosecutor, as have the Alabama Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Here’s the state of justice in America.

It has been 20 months since Siegelman’s trial ended and no trial transcript has been produced by Fuller’s court. This is in violation of the rules of criminal procedure which require a transcript within 30 days of sentencing. Siegelman can’t appeal his conviction with out an official trial transcript.

The Attorney General, by the way, has said he would rather let the case go through the normal appeals process rather than open an investigation.

Kafka would be proud.

.

The Curtain Is Pulled Back

by dday

Once the culture of fear yielded no results, no frightened and cowed Democrats scurrying for cover, the White House literally had no idea what to do.

A day after warning that potentially critical terrorism intelligence was being lost because Congress had not finished work on a controversial espionage law, the U.S. attorney general and the national intelligence director said Saturday that the government was receiving the information — at least temporarily.

On Friday evening, Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell had said in an unusually blunt letter to Congress that the nation “is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats” because lawmakers had not yet acted on the administration’s proposal for the wiretapping law.

But within hours of sending that letter, administration officials told lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees that they had prevailed upon all of the telecommunications companies to continue cooperating with the government’s requests for information while negotiations with Congress continue.

A statement describing the change was released Saturday.

They’re playing with a deck that’s out of aces. The only thing they have is fear. When it doesn’t work, they try to scare even more, but the obviousness of the lie forces an unprecedented backtrack.

All of this says to me that the next President needs to open up the books on the Bush Administration, and that we cannot as a nation be truly healed until that happens. The intelligence leadership has been caught in an enormous lie, making false claims about lost surveillance gathering for purely political reasons. This cannot possibly be an isolated incident. Of coure, we KNOW it’s not an isolated incident. And indeed, many of the employees in the civil service who directed these lies and misstatements, not those at the top but the functionaries, will still be working in their same posts under a potential Democratic Administration. It needs to be extremely clear from the very beginning that they must be rooted out, expunged and turned over to the legal system for a determination. It should be a key part of the Democratic nominee’s platform. Only then can we truly “turn the page,” as our front-runner is likely to say.

In the interim, it has to be clearly stated: the Bush Administration overtly and admittedly lied about lost intelligence to bully the House into expanding executive power. This is a memorable episode.

.

What William Kristol Tosses Aside

by tristero

Kristol types:

But Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

Leave aside the claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism.

Never, not for a single moment, Mr. Kristol.

Did you notice, dear reader, that Kristol’s paraphrase was a distortion of the quote? Obama didn’t say, as Kristol asserts, that, in general, speaking out on issues constitutes true patriotism. Obama’s remarks addressed a very particular context, namely the awfully disturbing morph of American solidarity post 9/11 into unthinking support of the awfully stupid idea to pre-emptively invade a foreign country.

Bet on it: William Kristol knew he distorted Obama’s quote. But, being an awfully cynical, and awfully well paid, advocate of political stupidity, he did so anyway. Why? Read on, dear friends.

A few paragraphs down, Kristol intones:

Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician.

Get it? Under the same rules of interpretive reading which Kristol uses to distort Obama’s meaning of “true patriotism” – ie, lifting from context, and rearranging syntax – Kristol just called Obama “awful.” And don’t think that wasn’t the intended meaning, dear friends. If he meant to say that Obama was a “really talented politician,” he would have said exactly that. Instead, Kristol was making a funny – har de har har – slipping a pejorative into a description of Obama by punning on the ambiguous meaning of “awfully,” either meaning “terribly” or the more obsolete, but still used, “astonishingly.”*

Oh, Kristol well knew that Obama meant “true patriotism is speaking out on issues” within a specific context. Still unconvinced? Here’s the silly zinger Kristol uses in conclusion:

[McCain’s] patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than “speaking out on issues.”

And there you have it, Kristol’s money shot, the ejaculation – actually, more like a squirt than anything so exalted – his entire column is constructed to move towards. Let’s take a moment to unpack the awful awfulness of its awful-osity.

First, Kristol transposed Obama’s context from the specific to the general. From there, Kristol asserts that Obama meant that true patriotism consists only of speaking out on issues. This latter trick requires you to completely forget the context of what Obama actually said. And that is why Kristol urges us to leave it aside, to give us time to forget. Then, at the end of his little essay, Kristol can comfortably bring up not Obama’s remark but his own distortion of it, knowing that few readers will do more than hastily check the original quote.

And he does so in the context of McCain’s military service which – being the nasty piece of work that Kristol is – is invoked by inference, no less. That’s an extra dollop of contempt heaped on Obama, that McCain’s superior record needn’t even be directly mentioned because it is so far beyond anything Obama’s speaking out on issues might accomplish for his country.

And that, ladies, gentlemen, and Republicans, is one main reason you should never, ever agree to leave aside speaking out on issues. Especially when a paid conservative operative – Holy streewalker! Did I just call Kristol a rightwing hooker? – tells you to.

*Note to students of rhetoric: If there is a term to describe this tactic of Kristol’s (preferably in Greek, which reads so groovily in a blogpost), please let me know.