Month: October 2008

Congratulations!

by tristero

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize for economics and the heartiest congratulations are in order! Like so many laypeople, I know Krugman’s economics work only from his lucid columns in the Times and the discussions they’ve generated. They have always been a deep pleasure to read, even when the economic news has been, as it has recently, terrifying.

Krugman, of course, was one of the earliest, and most informed, critics of Bush and the madness of the eight years. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt that their sanity was often buttresed by the reality check Krugman’s political columns provided.

Congratulations, Dr. Krugman, and thank you for all the intelligence and commonsense you provide to all of us in the reality-based community!

UPDATE: Added link to Krugman’s recent Times column.

No Biology, Lots Of Religion

by tristero

The title of the Times article is Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage and yet, for the life of me, I can’t find any biology whatsoever in the article. Unless, I suppose, this very odd assertion counts as biology for the NY Times:

“It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family,” Mrs. Galloway, 60, told a legislative panel in Connecticut last year as it was considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

The assumption here seems to be that the man and woman who create the specific children are, by necessity, the only ones who can create the family. That eliminates not only same sex marriages but adoptions and various kinds of high tech conceptions involving donor sperm or eggs as well.*

And that makes their assertion, dear friends, primo grade christianist claptrap. And indeed:

While they are Christians, the Galloways say they refuse to use religion to defend their view of marriage because it just muddies things.** And they insist they are accepting of everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

By protecting heterosexual marriage, what “we’re trying to do is protect the foundation of society,” Mrs. Galloway, a volunteer worker from Trumbull, Conn., said in a telephone interview on Saturday.

“Everyone who disagrees is automatically labeled a right-wing bigot,” she said.

Her husband added, “How can you be a bigot when you’re looking out for society as a whole?”

I’m sure the commenters here would be happy to answer that one…

*In this context, it’s noteworthy that the Galloways seem to practice what they preach. They are childless and, while it is not known from the article if they tried advanced fertility techniques, apparently they have not adpoted.

**One could make a case that this is literally true. Their argument uses the trappings of a religion to advance a secular cultural/political agenda. This is christianism, not Christianity.

One could also make a case that what they are saying is pure assertion without any backup, scientific or religious.

Regardless, what they seem to be specifically saying, and what they practice – that the same man and woman used to create a child must be the same man and woman who create the family with the child – certainly is not an assertion based in biology.

The Terror Party

by digby

Michael Froomkin reports from Florida that this is what is arriving in mailboxes in Annette Tadeo’s District:

Froomkin says:

This is accompanied by a smiling photo of Governor Charlie Crist, along with a message warning that terrorists want to kill us, and that we should vote for Republicans to “help keep America safe.” (You can download a .pdf of the entire mailer, if you want.) Got that? The State GOP, which paid for this thing, and the formerly post-partisan Governor, are saying that Democrats want to surrender to terrorists. Talk about low-class smear jobs… […]

It used to be that we only saw stuff like this in the last week before election day. But the GOP wants absentee ballots, and early voting starts soon, so here we go.

Perhaps you would like to fight this back by buying an ad in Annette’s district.

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Become A Political Consultant For 10 Bucks

by digby

Have you ever watched people identified on TV as a “political consultant” and thought to yourself, “geez, I could do better than that.” Well, now you can prove it.

Blue America has teamed up with “SaysMe.TV” to allow average folks like you and me to place ads for our favorite congressional candidates on our favorite TV shows.

Here’s Howie:

Today Blue America, with our partners at SaysMe.TV, is launching a new application that can make everyone a political media consultant– or, better yet, a replacement for a political media consultant. Click here to see the program. Start by picking a media market: Cincinnati- Vic Wulsin
Miami- Annette Taddeo
Washington, DC- Judy Feder
Detroit- Gary Peters
New York- Dennis Shulman
Seattle- Darcy Burner
Philadelphia- Sam Bennett
Charlotte- Larry Kissell (should be up Monday)
Los Angeles- Debbie Cook or Russ Warner (should be up Tuesday) Then pick which ad you want to run. Right now we have one ad available per candidate but we’re hoping to add some more in the next week. Type your name in at the top, because at the end of the ad it will credit you with paying for it. Then pick the network and the daypart (time). An individual ad can cost as little as $10, but the minimum purchase per candidate is $100. Review the ad purchase, then check off all the boxes that attest that you’re a U.S. citizen and that you’re not a member of the Bush cabinet, etc. And then pay for it with your credit card. SaysMe.TV will notify you before your ads run. This is the beginning of a new world in media buying. I have a feeling it’s going to get better and better over the next year or so. Meanwhile, as usual, we’re the pioneers. Play around with it.

This is a really fun concept. The ads are great and the idea that we can all contribute directly to put these ads on the air is a fantastic new empowerment tool.

And it’s going to drive the insiders nuts …

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The Village Throws Down

by digby

In today’s Washington Post, David Broder lays out the problems that a president Obama would face from the moment he takes office — massive global economic turmoil and foreign mistrust of American leadership. And then he lays down the law about what he’s allowed to do about it.

Here it is, right up front, no frills, no sprinkles:

If, as seems likely, the economic crisis swells the ranks of Democrats in the House and Senate, the new president will face an early test: Repair the battered financial system or move ahead on the Democrats’ domestic agenda.

The numbers in the first budget Obama would have to prepare will look scary indeed. The deficit could approach an unimaginable trillion dollars. His economic advisers would undoubtedly counsel him that he must, at all costs, signal to the world that he will impose the kind of discipline needed to prevent runaway inflation and a run on the dollar.

But the larger the Democratic majorities, the greater the pressure will be to deliver promptly on the promises Obama has made in the campaign.

When pressed in the two debates, he has reiterated the goals of a massive new alternative energy program, expansion of health-care benefits and investment in education at all levels from pre-kindergarten through college.
This Story

With revenue depleted and the costs of Medicaid, welfare and unemployment benefits boosted by the threatened recession, it will take legerdemain to keep those promises.

And that hardly allows for the costs of an expanding war in Afghanistan and a continuing commitment to Iraq — and God knows what other international crises may develop.

A few forward-looking Democrats have begun to focus on what could be the first test for a President Obama with a Congress controlled by his own party: whether to insist on a pay-as-you-go rule for the budget.

That rule, which provided the discipline behind the Clinton administration’s balanced budgets, was abandoned by the Republicans — with disastrous fiscal results. Pay-go was revived last year when the Democrats took over Congress. But the requirement that any new or increased spending be offset by comparable cuts or new revenue has been a source of frustration for many in the party. And it will pinch much harder if applied next year.

I realize that building safe roads and bridges is nothing but socialistic, nanny state coddling and that creating alternate forms of energy is a pie-in-the-sky hippie fantasy. And while it does not surprise me that David Broder would put “fiscal responsibility” ahead of the betterment of his fellow Americans in normal times (I’m sure he thinks “tough love” is good for the shiftless losers who can’t get health care and that the businesses who are drowning in insurance costs should just throw their employees to the curb) I guess I assumed that international economic meltdown, an energy crisis and catastrophic global warming would be enough for him to grant that the government might not want to obsess about balanced budgets right this minute. I had certainly thought someone of Broder’s age and experience would at least remember the lessons of Herbert Hoover.

If the village could cheer on George W. Bush and his ignorant thugs as they turned the country into a pariah nation and destroyed the global financial system, I think they must let a new administration have a little room to clean up the fetid mess they left in their wake without standing on the sidelines like a bunch of schoolmarms scolding anyone who brings up the name of that horrible cad John Maynard Keynes.

The Village elder of Village elders has thrown down the gauntlet and says a president Obama must choose between the American people and fixing the financial system. He’s wrong, both on the politics and the economics. By helping the American people, he will be rescuing the economy so that the rapacious greedheads can live to pillage another day.

After 30 years of Republican dominance these elites simply can’t wrap their minds around the fact that the old paradigm is dead — deregulation, cutting taxes for rich people and running a taxpayer funded war manufacturing system is a failed governing philosophy. Broder says it right out:

If Obama wins, he may have the shortest honeymoon in history.

In other words, the new president is on notice — he had better follow the paygo blue dogs and the right wing purists over the cliff of “fiscal responsibility” or he will lose any support from the political establishment. I guess we have to actually live through another great depression before they will let go of their cherished shibboleth that it’s the liberal spendthrifts who always ruin everything for the Real Americans.

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Iraq

by tristero

The horrors continue:

Hundreds of Christians are fleeing Mosul in the wake of a string of killings that appear to be singling out Christians in the northern Iraqi city, where many had taken refuge from persecution in other parts of the country.

At least 11 and perhaps as many as 14 Christians have been killed in Mosul since the end of August, according to government officials and humanitarian groups. The victims have included a doctor, an engineer, two builders, two businessmen and a 15-year-old boy, who was shot dead in front of his house. In the last week alone, seven Christians were killed.

On Friday, a pharmacist was shot to death by a man who pretended to be an undercover police officer and asked for the man’s identification card, said Khisroo Koran, deputy governor of Nineveh Province, which is in northern Iraq. Mosul is the province’s capital.

Louis Sako, the archbishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Kirkuk, said Friday that the killings were an example of “a campaign of cleansing, killing and threatening” that Christians faced in Iraq….

In Sadr City on Friday, thousands of followers of the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr shouted anti-American slogans as they marched along a funeral convoy carrying the body of Saleh al-Ugaili, a member of Parliament representing the Sadrist party who was killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb.

In a statement, Mr. Sadr blamed the United States for Mr. Ugaili’s death. The United States Embassy and the American military condemned the killing as “an attack on against Iraq’s democratic institutions.”

Also on Friday, a car bomb exploded in the Abu Dshir neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people.

There’s something dreadful about that last sentence, appended at the end of the article, just a footnote to the epic carnage unleashed by George W. Bush – aided and abetted by the American media, most of the foreign policy establishment who either signed on or kept their traps shut, and some 2/3rds of the American public. Those are 12 lives no less important than our own, nothing but an oh-by-the-way, soon to be forgotten by everyone except the survivors, who will never forget.

And who will blame all of us for opening the gates of Hell.

Fair And Balanced

by digby

Sarah W. Palin got booed. As planned.

Here’s Perlstein to explain:

Sarah Palin will drop the ceremonial first puck at the Philadelphia Fliers’ season opener, and we liberals have been laughing at what a terrible idea this is: Philadelphia sports fans are notoriously crude and boorish. They may well start throwing things at Sister Sarah, shout obscenities, start chanting about how Alaska’s First Milf ought to show us her…well, you get the idea. Ha! How stupid can the McCain campaign be?

Well, as my longtime readers know, whenever I see a liberal laughing at a conservative, I reach for my buzzkill gun.

I know I promised not to flack my book anymore today. But I’ve got NIXONLAND on the brain. Maybe the McCainiacs—with a Rovian assist?—know what they’re doing. Maybe they chose Philadelphia because they WANT lunks throwing things at her and all the rest, to stage a morality play about how big-city lib’ruls are uncivil punks who disprect the virtuous true womanhood of the heartland (this year’s GOP’s version of “feminism”). Maybe this is Haldeman letting a few dozen hippies into the Nixon rally so he could–well, turn to page 531 in your red and black hymnal. Here’s old RN on the campaign trail in 1970 in Green Bay, Wisconsin….

read on …

He concludes with this:

As I noted earlier today, right-wing crowds are getting pretty surly heading into the home stretch of this election, perhaps even unto the point of imminent violence. Wouldn’t it be convenient if the sage solon McCain, if and when his supporters somewhere get too frisky, he could intone thoughtfully from a platform how much all Americans should regret and rebuke the violence on both sides this year?

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Choke: Shades of Ashby

By Dennis Hartley

At the risk of sounding like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore, I’m going to go ahead now and sound like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore. There was a time, not too far removed, when the descriptive phrase “character study” was not necessarily the American film industry’s code for “box office poison.” Okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush. I’m talking about the 1970’s, when maverick directors like Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and Bob Rafelson made quirky, compelling “character studies” that audiences actually went out of their way to see. The protagonists were usually iconoclastic fringe dwellers or workaday antiheroes who, like the filmmakers themselves, questioned authority, flouted convention and were generally able to convey thoughts and feelings without CG enhancement. The films may not have always sported linear narrative or wrapped up with a “Hollywood ending”, but they nearly always left us a bit more enlightened about the human condition.

I’m not saying that the character study ever really went away; it just became increasingly more marginalized as the era of the Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut encroached. Indie films of more recent vintage like Buffalo 66, Jesus’ Son and SherryBaby are direct stylistic descendants of episodic 70s fare like Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Altman’s California Split, and Ashby’s The Last Detail, and prove that the genre is alive and well. The main difference between then and now, of course, is that when you venture out to the multiplex to seek such a film these days, you almost feel like donning dark glasses and a raincoat. When I went to a weekend matinee to catch Clark Gregg’s Choke, I counted exactly 4 other patrons in the postage stamp auditorium. It just made me feel so…dirty.

Choke is one of the most original comedy-dramas I have seen this year, undoubtedly due in no small part to the fact that Gregg’s screenplay is based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whose previous book-to-screen adaptation was 1999’s Fight Club. Choke, similar to Fight Club, serves up a mélange of human foibles (addiction, perversion, madness and deception, to rattle off a few) and tops it all off with a dark comic sensibility. To put it another way, it’s a sort of a screwball romantic comedy for nihilists.

In his work life, Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is employed as a “historical re-enactor” in a theme park that replicates American colonial life. Victor’s personal life, as we soon come to learn, is more akin to some kind of a psycho-sexual Disneyland. In his off-hours, Victor regularly attends support group meetings for sex addicts, along with his pal/co-worker, the Portnoy-like Denny (Brad William Henke). Victor doesn’t appear to be making much headway toward recovery, as he customarily spends most of the session time furtively (and joylessly) humping fellow group member Nico (Paz de la Huerta) on the restroom tiles. The rest of his spare time is spent working a very specialized hustle. In order to help foot the private hospital bill for his ailing mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), he goes to restaurants and feigns choking fits. He carefully pre-selects his “saviors” based on the likelihood of them having wallets that are as big as their bleeding hearts.

Ida is suffering from dementia, and subsequently fails to recognize her son most of the time. During her rare moments of lucidity, Victor attempts in vain to learn more about his unknown father, a subject Ida has always been reticent to discuss in any detail. Through episodic flashbacks of Victor’s childhood, we glean that the somewhat free-spirited Ida has raised her son in, shall we say “a creative fashion” (in the interest of avoiding spoilers). One thing that does become clear is that, insomuch as Victor’s abilities to run a skillful con game go, it looks like the apple has not fallen very far from the family tree.

The plot thickens when Ida’s doctor, a pretty, enigmatic young woman named Paige (Kelly MacDonald) counters Victor’s inevitable horndogging attempts with an invitation to assist her with some medical “research”. Paige’s proposed method for propagating the stem cells for her experiment requires Victor’s um, interactive participation, and is medically unorthodox, to say the least. So is it love, or purely science? I can say no more.

Rockwell gives a nicely nuanced turn in the lead performance, and is well-supported by Henke and MacDonald. Anjelica Huston is excellent, as always. In a tangential sense, she is reprising the character she played in The Grifters. In fact, the dynamic of the mother-son relationship played out between Huston and Rockwell in Choke shares many similarities to the one she had with John Cusack’s character in the aforementioned film, particularly concerning some unresolved “abandonment issues” on the part of the son.

This marks the directorial debut for Gregg, who is probably most recognizable for his work as a TV actor (The New Adventures of Old Christina). Gregg casts himself as a self-important “lord high” role-player in the faux-colonial village where Victor and Denny work; it’s a small but very interesting part. Also look for the great Joel Grey (who we don’t see enough of these days) as a battle-scarred member of the sex addiction group.

This is not a popcorn movie. Challenging and thought-provoking, it does demand your full attention; and even though it offers a fair share of entertaining chuckles, it is not really designed to be taken lightly. There’s a hell of a lot of ideas packed into 90 minutes here, ranging from Oedipal conflict to Christ metaphor. There’s even a sense of twisted cinematic homage to Tom Jones when we are treated to the occasional fast-cut montage of bodice-ripping flashbacks depicting Victor, replete in leggings, waistcoat and tri-corner hat, having it off “on the job” with a few of his more comely fellow re-enactors.

Prepare yourself for a lot of sexual frankness, not visually graphic, necessarily, but still the uncompromising, in-your-face kind that makes a lot of people squirm in their seats. Warning: one scene that some may find very disturbing takes place between Victor and a woman he has met through the personal ads. She “enjoys” acting out rape fantasies. In the context of the narrative, it is not as sick as you may assume; it is actually an important and pivotal moment in the protagonist’s journey. This trip can be psychically brutal at times, but if you’re open-minded and willing to take the whole ride, it may blindside you with genuine warmth, humanity, and yes, even some redemption.

Mommy issues: The World According to Garp, Harold and Maude, The Loved One, Marty (1955), Mask, Psycho, Ed and His Dead Mother, Suddenly Last Summer, The Glass Menagerie, The Subject Was Roses, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), East of Eden, New York Stories, Crumb, Mother (1996), Next Stop Greenwich Village, Laurel Canyon, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 8 Mile, Elvis (1979), Nixon, Alexander, Oedipus Rex (1957), The Lion in Winter, Titus, Hamlet (1996), Life of Brian, Blue Velvet, Throw Momma from the Train, Strangers on a Train, White Heat, The Krays, Bloody Mama, No Way to Treat a Lady, Breakfast on Pluto, Forrest Gump, Ordinary People, Spanking the Monkey, Luna (1979), What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Where’s Poppa?

Previous posts with related themes: The Hoax/Color Me Kubrick

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Spite Politics

by digby

Kit Seelye has a rather silly article about Karl Rove in today’s NYT, wherein he’s describes as something of a celebrity Wizard of Oz who’s making good money now as a commentator and still driving people crazy. but the tone is typical Sellye, trivial and fluffy and doesn’t really get to the heart of what is wrong with the cult of Rove. Fortunately, Matt Taibbi, tackling the same subject matter, has no problem defining exactly what “Rovian” actually means:

Rove is not a genius, or even very clever: He’s totally and completely immoral. It doesn’t take genius to claim, as Rove ludicrously did last fall, that it was the Democrats in Congress and not George W. Bush who pushed the Iraq War resolution in 2002. It doesn’t take brains to compare a triple-amputee war veteran to Osama bin Laden; you just have to be a mean, rotten cocksucker. The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can’t bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove’s vision of rules, laws and “the truth” as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back. Rove’s comeback is evidence that the attack on our civic institutions in the Bush years wasn’t an isolated incident, something we can pin on a specific group of now-deposed politicians. It’s a trend, a thing that grows in direct proportion to our greed and ignorance. We may be a country at war, facing one of the greatest financial meltdowns of all time. But in the end, the thing that could be our undoing is the kind of generalized boredom with legality and honor that empowers Rovian behavior. If we let it.

It’s true that the problem with this isn’t really Rove or even his clients. The problem is that there is such a large market for what they are selling.

Hopefully it’s not a majority this time. (It barely was even in 2004, and certainly wasn’t in 2000.) But as we’ve seen during this last week of thuggish cretinism at GOP rallies, the Rovian politics of spite is alive and well among a substantial number of Americans.

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Pallin’ Around With Extremists, McCain-Style

by tristero

From Media Matters

Now: G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the break-ins at the Watergate and at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychologist’s office. He has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in “if necessary.” He plotted to kill journalist Jack Anderson. He plotted with a “gangland figure” to murder Howard Hunt in order to thwart an investigation. He plotted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. He used Nazi terminology to outline a plan to kidnap “leftist guerillas” at the 1972 GOP convention. And Liddy’s bad acts were not confined
to the early 1970s. In the 1990s, he instructed his radio audience on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (“Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.” In case anyone missed the subtlety of his point, Liddy also insisted: “Kill the sons of bitches.”) During Bill Clinton’s presidency, Liddy boasted that he named his shooting targets after the Clintons.
What does Liddy have to do with the presidential election? As Media Matters has noted:

Liddy has donated
$5,000 to McCain’s campaigns since 1998, including $1,000 in February 2008. In addition, McCain has appeared on Liddy’s radio show during the
presidential campaign, including as recently as May. An online video labeled, “John McCain On The G. Gordon Liddy Show 11/8/07,” includes a discussion between Liddy and McCain, whom Liddy described as an “old friend.” During the segment, McCain praised Liddy’s “adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great,” said he was “proud” of Liddy, and said that “it’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program.”

McCain even backed Liddy’s son’s congressional bid in 2000 — a campaign that relied heavily on the elder Liddy’s history.To sum up: John McCain is “proud” of his “old friend” Gordon Liddy –an old friend who plotted to kill one of the most respected journalists in American history, and who urged listeners to kill federal agents and advised them on how to do so. McCain campaigned for Liddy’s son, and Liddy has even hosted a fundraiser for McCain at his home.So McCain’s relationship with Liddy is pretty much a direct parallel to Obama’s relationship with Ayers. Except that McCain and Liddy have apparently spent time together more recently than Obama and Ayers. And Liddy’s extremist activities continued well into the 1990s, at least. And Liddy says he and McCain are “old friends,” while The New York Times says Obama and Ayers aren’t close. And Obama has never said Ayers adheres to “the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.” Other than all that, it’s a direct parallel.Yet even as they obsess over Barack Obama and Bill Ayers — just as the McCain campaign tells them to –the news media have all but ignored John McCain’s close ties to Gordon Liddy. A Nexis search** finds fewer than 100 news reports that have mentioned McCain and Liddy this year.As Chicago Tribunecolumnist Steve Chapman –who has criticized Obama’s relationship with Ayers — has noted:

Liddy, now a conservative radio
host, has never expressed regret for this attempt to subvert the Constitution. Nor has he developed any respect for the law. … Yet none of this bothers McCain. Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain
at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, “I’m proud of you.” Exactly which part of Liddy’s record is McCain proud of? While Obama has gotten lots of scrutiny for his connection to Ayers, McCain has never had to explain his association with Liddy. If he can’t defend it, he should admit as much. And if he thinks he can defend it, let him.

To repeat:

• 2008 news reports that mention
  Obama and Ayers: more than 4,500.

• 2008 news reports that mention
  McCain and Liddy: fewer than 100.

Incredibly, The Atlantic‘s Ambinder today suggests that the media have not covered Ayers: “To truly drive Ayers into the public conversation, to trick what they consider an irredeemably biased press corps into biting, McCain has three vehicles gassed up and ready to go. …So far, McCain has done none of those things.” There are 1,800 Nexis hits for Barack Obama and Bill Ayers in the past week,
and yet Marc Ambinder thinks the media have not bitten on the Ayers “story” — and that McCain, who is running ads about Ayers, isn’t “really serious” about pushing it, anyway. Even Steve Schmidt would likely be too embarrassed to try to claim that the media have not covered Bill Ayers. Incidentally, Ambinder doesn’t seem to have ever mentioned McCain’s relationship to Liddy.Not only have the media avoided stand-alone reports on McCain and Liddy, they consistently fail to bring up the connection when reporting on McCain’s attacks on Obama’s ties to Ayers, or in interviews with McCain staff who bring up Ayers. The McCain/Liddy relationship is such an obvious parallel — except arguably much worse — that it’s hard to imagine how any evenhanded journalist could possibly justify ignoring it. Yet it happens again and again. And, needless to say, McCain aides do not get badgered about Liddy the way Time‘s Mark Halperin badgered Obama aide Robert Gibbs about Ayers.Just this morning, NBC’s Chuck Todd said he is “sure” Ayers will come up during the final presidential debate next week, adding that moderator Bob Schieffer “may feel no choice but to bring it up” in light of the “TV ads” the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee are running. Setting aside the absurdity of the suggestion that a debate moderator is compelled to bring up a topic simply because John McCain is running ads about it, if Schieffer does ask about Ayers, basic fairness demands that he ask McCain about Liddy as well.

I’d just like to add this. As someone who followed Watergate so avidly, the notion that a madman like Liddy has regular access to the airwaves is simply appalling. The famous incident which sticks in my mind is the time Liddy was walking one night with a companion when he calmly pulled a gun and shot out a street lamp.

These are the kinds of people who have been driving American political discourse for at least a generation. They are the strange, diseased lunatics who helped Sarah Palin rise to power. They are dangerous and they must be marginalized. McCain’s proactive, wholehearted, and recent embrace of such fanatics, and their embrace of him, demonstrates once again that he does not have the seriousness of character, let alone judgment, to be president of the United States.

Or, for that matter, a senator.