The Grant Park Countdown

Enjoy. The above is footage of the countdown to 10:00 PM CST in Grant Park, when Barack Obama was declared President by CNN. Goose bumps. Check. Go see other victory celebrations around the world at the Countdown to Victory blog.

Let's Go Change The World!

You must bear with me today. The last five days have flown by with the speed and vividness of a fever dream, and I am still attempting to catch my breath.

Friday morning I was in a Rome airport on layover from my honeymoon. After seventeen days abroad, I longed to be back in the States amongst my people, amongst the things I knew. That evening I was at a Chicago Italian restaurant with my wife and parents. My father brought my attention to the television, where I saw the man above. I recognized the man instantly. He is to my life as permanent a fixture of what home is as Lower Wacker Drive or a boiled Vienna dog on a sesame seed bun. The next morning I found out that man had died.

The man is Studs Terkel and he loved America-all of America- in ways few ever have. He had a show on WFMT in the evenings and through him I learned about Walt Whitman, jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Great Depression, and why they call it the blues. Through his books I took a crash course in political science, reading the words of people from every area of our country, from every class, creed, and color.

More important, though, is what Studs stood for- an active American past where the greatest excitement came from civic action. His was an experience of speaking at Bughouse Square, shouting at union meetings, and toasting strangers in smoky clubs. His community was wider than a land between the great oceans. His community was all of us.

Studs lived through two world wars. He hustled through the Great Depression. He was spit on during civil rights marches. Through all of this, all of this, he never doubted once that we should end this American experiment. He knew you had to have skin in the game to make it all work. You can't let the next guy pick up the tab. You heard it in his voice every broadcast. "We shall overcome these differences," he would say.

Studs would be over the moon today.



Last night, Barack Obama became the 44th President of these United States, and the first black one. I watched the election returns at a near-by bar. The surrounding streets sung with electricity. At the bar, there were a group of West Indians watching the returns. There were a couple of guys from Bosnia. There were tables full of white kids. Every state that went blue was met with a thunder of applause. When the result came final, we hugged. We kissed. We cried. It was a shared national experience I had never known- the anti 9/11. You didn't want to go home.

And the world woke up changed.



What got us to last night was what Studs was all about. Corporations and agents of prejudice did not elect Obama, we did. The American people did. We as a country stood up and said, "Enough!" We did it through unions. We did it over the internet. We did it over coffee at diners and in breakrooms. After eight years of misrule and how many more years of shared apathy, we rediscovered our own power. We renewed the civic bonds that make this country a living thing.

Let us stay vigilant. A night that saw one maligned minority victorious, also saw the majority take away minority rights in California. America will always be an experiment. The minute any of us take any of this for granted is the minute our experiment fails. In Egypt, I walked amongst a people who lived under the boot heel of oppression. Thousands of armed guards walk their streets night and day. Their middle class live in a degree of filth you wouldn't see in our ghettoes. Their votes are suppressed, their voices imprisoned. America is a truly wonderful idea. We make it a reality when we stay involved. You can't own what you don't use. For eight long years, we have been used. Last night we took America back. Let us never give it away again.

Celebrate this. Don't forget how we feel. Later-think, pray, meditate. We have come a long way, baby.

And read. Yes, you can read quite a bit about this historic moment today. Newsweek begins a seven -part series on the campaign. Six years ago, the New Republic wrote about the inevitable new Democratic majority.

FoxNews, a prime vehicle of our past divisive habits, announces for Obama, and Juan Williams takes his token ball and and scores.



I leave you with this.

Thank you, Studs. Thank you, America.

Sarah Silverman for Obama

I'm not a big Sarah Silverman fan. Much of what I find transgressive about her material is so bound up in the fact that she's a LoooonnngIsland (all one word when pronounced) Jewish Princess...and I don't find that all too transgressive. Yes, when it comes to female comedians I'm a misogynist. Send the complaints to the email at the top.

Sarah has made a video promoting old Jews in Florida to vote for Obama. I further can't stand celebrity endorsements for any candidate. One, who cares? Two, it further emboldens the cavemen that Democrats are all celebrities. But this one is pretty damn funny. Here's the link. Enjoy.

What Taxes We Will Pay

John McCain keeps stating in ads that under President Obama Americans will pay more taxes. We at Shambollocks actually believe that there should be a tax increase to bring down the sky-high national debt, but that is another issue. We have posted before that McCain's statements are lies. But we also know that most of our readers are, like ourselves, visual learners. The blog chartjunk gives us an exact diagram of how the tax policies of each candidate will effect us:



As you can see from the chart, Obama will actually give bigger tax breaks to most of us. McCain, as per Republican usual, plans on cutting taxes more for the rich. Like I've asked before, when was the last time a rich person did anything for you? So, why would you vote to give them a break?

Four More Years of Bush

The Washington Post today reports about how the top levels of McCain's campaign, in particular the staff around Sarah Palin, are now rife with members of the Bush administration.

From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration.

The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.

The team has been assembled and led by Steve Schmidt, a sharp-witted, low-key strategist who has emerged as the campaign's day-to-day operations chief after the ouster of a group of sometimes undisciplined McCain loyalists. Schmidt's operation is tightly run and hard-nosed -- made up of policy advisers, communications experts, advance people and lower-level aides, many of them old friends who have worked together for the last eight years, and whose presence lends a familiar vibe to the Palin operation.

Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama's to lose. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, expressed pride at what her former colleagues have been able to accomplish.

"We had a great team -- they're the best in the business, and I'm sure the campaign feels fortunate to have them," Perino said.

People, people-do not delude yourselves that John McCain will bring any change to the White House. He will continue the same policies that have led to a failed war, a failed economy, and a barnkrupt government. The day after the election, let's have all of these Bushies updating their resumes.

A Conservative for Obama

Last week we had an Obama endorsement from libertarians. This week we have one from a conservative, in particular Wick Allison, a former publisher of the National Review. Writing in this month's D Magazine, Wick writes that Obama is the only true conservative in the race:

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Wick, welcome to our side. We need more like you, though, to send a clear signal to Republicans that their brand of greed, God, and guns before good governance is over.

More Vote Suppression

The Daily Telegraph , in London, has an article today about how the Michigan Republican party will try to suppress the votes of those whose homes' have been foreclosed. Why not an American paper? Because the American newspapers suck.

Macomb County Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli was quoted as saying last week by the Michigan Messenger web paper that "We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren't voting from those addresses."

Shambollocks has already noted this Republican strategy here. If you vote Republican this year, please be aware of the kind of people for which you are voting. They hold the importance of the individual vote in contempt, and therefore our democracy.

Why Libertarians Should Vote for Obama

Shambollocks is a liberal publication. We don't shy away from the term, or the ideology. But we can break bread with libertarians, and in fact believe they make a whole lot of sense on some things. The great libertarian blog, Marginal Revolution, has an eloquent endorsement of Obama which I hope gives some perspective on how wrong the Republicans have been for so long. Take it away, Alex.

First, war. War is the antithesis of the libertarian philosophy of consent, voluntarism and trade. With every war in American history Leviathan has grown larger and our liberties have withered. War is the health of the state. And now, fulfilling the dreams of Big Brother, we are in a perpetual war.

A country cannot long combine unlimited government abroad and limited government at home. The Republican party has become the party of war and thus the party of unlimited government.

With war has come FEAR, magnified many times over by the governing party. Fear is pulling Americans into the arms of the state. If only we were better at resisting. Alas, we Americans say that we love liberty but we are fair-weather lovers. Liberty will flourish only with peace.

Have libertarians gained on other margins in the past eight years? Not at all. Under the Republicans we have been sailing due South-West on the Nolan Chart – fewer civil liberties and more government, including the largest new government program in a generation, the Medicare prescription drug plan, and the biggest nationalization since the Great Depression. Tax cuts, the summum bonum of Republican economic policy, are a sham. The only way to cut taxes is to cut spending and that has not happened.

The libertarian voice has not been listened to in Republican politics for a long time. The Republicans take the libertarian wing of the party for granted and with phony rhetoric and empty phrases have bought our support on the cheap. Thus - since voice has failed - it is time for exit. Remember that if a political party can count on you then you cannot count on it.

Exit is the right strategy because if there is any hope for reform it is by casting the Republicans out of power and into the wilderness where they may relearn virtue. Libertarians understand better than anyone that power corrupts. The Republican party illustrates. Lack of power is no guarantee of virtue but Republicans are a far better - more libertarian - party out-of-power than they are in power. When in the wilderness, Republicans turn naturally to a critique of power and they ratchet up libertarian rhetoric about free trade, free enterprise, abuse of government power and even the defense of civil liberties. We can hope that new leaders will arise in this libertarian milieu.

When liberals and libertarians agree wholeheartedly, you know there must be some crazy dynamic in play. That dynamic is the current Republican party. Let's put them away for good!

Jon Stewart Speaks the Truth

God bless, Jon Stewart. I know he suffers near constant praise, but his responsibility as the protector of reason in the politics of nonsense is unassailable. 3 Quarks Daily has the video of a segment of his from the other day very convincingly showing the cynicism behind Sarah Palin's selection. Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris (God, won't it be great when those three return to the netherworld), and a McCain talking head all get caught in the circular rhetoric of the Republican spin machine to hilarious results.

Thank you Jon, for calling Dick Morris a 'lying shitbag' on national TV.

Sarah Palin: Today's George Bush

Well, we certainly woke up to a new reality this morning. The Republicans jujitsued the anti-Bush zeitgeist, and today Sarah Palin is a rock star. Good for her! Her speech seems to have been unanimously well-received. The Republicans have their Obama. And from what I gather from her speech last night (full disclosure-I wouldn't watch the RNC convention ever, even if it guaranteed me 100,000 hits a day), McCain-Palin will make the rest of the campaign about 'likeability'.

Yes, the Republicans are about to make this an election for ' With Whom You'd Rather Have A Beer'. Again.

Tomorrow Museum has a great post on the oncoming culture war.

I don’t fear Palin is the female Quayle but potentially the female GWB: a weak leader nevertheless capable of getting elected for the likability factor, falling under the influence of the people surrounding her while moving up the ranks. Remember, Bush had “executive experience” as a governor of Texas before the presidency. And they share a speechwriter.

From the Washington Post: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis “suggest Palin would be able to handle foreign policy matters by leaning heavily on McCain’s staff.” You aren’t electing a person, you’re electing a party.

And finally...

It all comes back to Karl Rove’s remark, “Even if you never met him, you know this guy… He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

As Jon Stewart put it, “Doesn’t elite mean good?…This job you’re applying for — if you get it, and it goes well, they might carve your head in a mountain. If you don’t actually think you’re better than us than what the fuck are you doing?”

Why can't we elect the person who we believe will do the best job? I know I stated character is a big thing to me yesterday, and it is. But we're not talking about character here, we're talking about relatability. Jon Stewart is right-we're not electing a PTA president. Remember, this is how we ended up with W-even I got fooled. We can't let this happen again.

I guess I'm flummoxed. The Republicans have an Obama, and they are now going to run their Obama campaign. Issues will unfortunately be placed out the window.

Educate yourself, fellow voters. The campaign will now be about who you 'like'. Let's change that. We want real answers. You hear that, Obama and McCain camps? Let's have an issue campaign!

Please.

Wow! McCain's Chelsea Clinton Joke

The Presidential campaign now appears neck-and-neck, thereby abiding by the MSM's vested interest. I am not shocked by this, but I am shocked at the joke Sen. McCain told earlier last month at a Republican Senate fund-raiser.

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

Thank you, Salon. No major media outlet printed this 'joke'. A few outlets made mention of an offensive comment. I don't want to get into a tangential argument over the media's bizarre dislike of Hillary, but what I do want to do is highlight the kind of man Sen. McCain is.

I personally believe that character does matter in a candidate. Sen. McCain gets a free-ride on this issue because of his war experience, even though he did not suffer. But this man and his campaign have already gone on the defensive that attacks on Gov. Palin's family are (rightly) petty and mean. Well, what about lewd, non-funny ripostes about another fellow female candidate's family? And remember this incident?

Obama is no Messiah. But McCain is certainly a mean, bitter man. To paraphrase Nixon's comment about Barbara Bush, McCain 'sure do[es] know how to hate'.

Remember who you are voting for when you enter the booth.

Obama, McCain, and Taxes

A primary objective of the staff of Shambollocks is to fight the misinformation that floods us through campaign ads, talking heads, and irresponsible media outlets. I've been amongst a lot of my Republican-leaning friends of late, and what I hear from them is that Obama is going to raise their taxes. So, with the help of a great article in the Los Angeles Times, we're going to talk about some facts.

Fact: Both candidates' plans would balloon the federal deficit to (watch out!) $9.6 TRILLION dollars over the next ten years. Someone is going to have to pay that debt. Most likely, because our politicians are weenies, it will be our children. This is gross irresponsibility and fiscal negligence.

Fact: Obama will raise taxes on maybe fifteen people I personally know. All he's going to do is let the Bush tax cuts expire. Bush's tax cuts primarily helped the wealthy. The middle class will not see higher taxes, although they will find the tax cuts Bush made eliminated. Obama is simply asking that the rich (REALLY rich) pay a higher share of the tax burden. That is all.

Do you want to help out rich people? Really? When was the last time they helped you?

Fact: McCain supports millionaires. Rick Warren asked both candidates last weekend what they considered 'wealthy'.

Obama said the dividing line was an income of $250,000 a year, while McCain responded somewhat flippantly that it was $5 million.

OK, by Obama's standards I know a slight amount of wealthy people- all of whom can afford more taxes. None of them are people who have raised concerns about Obama's tax policies to me. McCain believes $5 million dollars is wealthy. In that case, I know ONE wealthy person. He can definitely afford to pay more in taxes.

Which is good for me, because I live by Bill Murray's words in Rushmore:

Keep the rich kids in your sights. And take them down.

Facebook Masturbators, Dinty Moore Dads, and Other Key Demographics

The Onion News Network has a pretty funny, Daily Show-like video up goofing on the crazy demographic slices pollsters and networks keep creating.


Latest Poll Reveals 430 New Demographics That Will Decide Election

Unfortunately, the key to Republican strategy is splitting us up into these small, meaningless groups. Divide and conquer. Let's hope it doesn't work this year.

Do You Want To Stop Fighting The Vietnam War?

I do. I was born five years after the last American soldier left. I am thirty-years old, and I wish to live in a country which can get past the scarring, divisive wars of yesterday and settle on ending the wars of today. I do not wish for the next President of the United States to be, physically, carrying around the scars from that conflict.

As Col. Trautman told John Rambo, I believe we should all tell Sen. McCain.

"It's over, Johnny."

Do you want a hawk who was, days after 9/11, ready to attack Syria, Iran, and Iraq according to the New York Times?

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Do you trust this man with the security of our country and armed forces? A man who cannot, understandably, see outside the context of his own Hanoi imprisonment?

A vote for McCain means we will be dealing with the Iraq and Afganistan wars in 2012-guaranteed. Let's bring the soldiers home.

The Truth Behind the Energy Ads

I'm really digging the Olympics this year. Maybe it's because I just fell for the hype, or that I am thoroughly engaged by a gigantic country's coming-out party (this is the most historically significant Olympics since those of 1936 in Berlin (and let's hope it's not that kind of history in fifty years)). I like to think it's because I have a DVR and can FF'd through the non-stop Coca Cola and Nike ads. Two ads I do run across frequently are those by John McCain and Barack Obama. The two ads are freakishly similar, down to the same stock footage, and state that either candidate has the best energy plan and their opponent's sucks.

Thomas Friedman wrote in Tuesday's New York Times that neither McCain or Obama was around to vote in an extension of solar and wind energy tax credits, thereby basically putting a moratorium on alternative energy for '09.

The fact that Congress has failed eight times to renew them is largely because of a hard core of Republican senators who either don’t want to give Democrats such a victory in an election year or simply don’t believe in renewable energy.

What impact does this have? In the solar industry today there is a rush to finish any project that would be up and running by Dec. 31 — when the credits expire — and most everything beyond that is now on hold. Consider the Solana concentrated solar power plant, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix in McCain’s home state. It is the biggest proposed concentrating solar energy project ever. The farsighted local utility is ready to buy its power.

EIGHT TIMES? Wow. Hey, the Democrats are actually trying at least.

People, the Republicans are devastating our energy plans. Do not believe McCain's distortions.

And Barack, you got to show up for the big votes, brother. No free passes here.

Hillary: The Post-Mortem

The Antlantic's Joshua Green has an exhaustive analysis of how Hillary Clinton and her staff blew up her chances to become the Democratic nominee for President. Most of the fault lies with Hillary herself, who allowed her own media paranoia to cripple the huge edge she had in name recognition. Basically, Clinton is a brand-a successful, well-known brand. Hillary made the brand mysterious, which took some effort considering how famous her and her husband are. Her distrust of the media allowed Obama and Edward to capitalize on the void by using the media to spread their own core messages. Finally, her decision to bail early in Iowa will be studied in political science classes forever as an example of how to make an opponent bigger than you. Obama's win in an overwhelmingly white, heartland state launched him as a legitimate contender, an image she didn't combat until much too late in the campaign.

As I've written before, Hillary deserved to lose because she ran a poor campaign.

I highly recommend this article if you are a fan of inter-office politics and arrogance. The Clinton campaign's emails are hilarious to read.

Great John McCain Profile from Arizona

The Phoenix New Times News (no, I've never heard of them either) has a wonderful profile on John McCain entitled 'Postmodern John McCain: the presidential candidate some Arizonans know- and loath' It seems Sen. McCain is not as popular in his home state as his campaign would leave us to believe. The story gives us a glimpse of the '80s John McCain, the Senator who got himself inextricably involved in the savings and loans scandal (think mortgage crisis for the '80s) by becoming close, personal friends with Charlie Keating. I don't want to rehash the whole episode, which this articles does well, but there is an anecdote that should be told.

In the late '80s, Arizona was suffering through an Illinois-like rash of political corruption. The Republican governor at the time, Evan Mecham, was impeached and the long-serving Democratic secretary of state, Rose Mofford, stepped up to serve out the rest of his term. A week into her tenure, Rose made a trip to Washington where she would make a perfuntory appearance before the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations on the topic of the Central Arizona Project (the '60s era water project which allows for humans to live in Arizona). Rose had not been briefed extensively on the project.

At the hearing, Republican Senator James McClure fired a series of complex questions at Rose which left her staff scrambling to find the answers. That same day, Pat Murphy, publisher of the Arizona Republic, arrived at the Senate with his wife to take McCain out to lunch. Murphy tells the rest of the story to the News writer via email:

"During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.

"Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.

"His reply, as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.'

Whatever my disappointment with Obama's centrist poses the last couple of months, my belief that he will steer us away from the vehemently personal Washington partisanship of the last generation has not wavered. I am sick of watching the unending conflict over the cultural gulf which exists between conservative and liberal boomers. Vietnam and the civil rights marches ended thirty-five years ago, people. Get over it! Stop licking wounds incurred when Nixon resigned and educate yourself on the fairly progressive country you happen to represent.

McCain represents our country's past. Let's make that distant past history. Finally.

Aye Yi Yi!

Barack Obama has reversed his energy policy, and now wants to open up the strategic oil reserves according to the Washington Post. At this very moment, House Republicans are trying to pass legislation that will expand Arctic drilling. Yes, Virginia, this really is an election year.

The politicians have heard it loud and clear-Americans are sick of high gas prices. Guess what, America? THEY'RE NOT GOING DOWN!

Not in the short-term. Not in the long-term. The days of the under $4.00 gallon of gas are over. No matter how much we attempt to increase our own domestic production, the people of China and India will still control the market through their vast energy needs. This is Global Economics 101.

This is not the '70s. We are not the largest consumer of oil anymore. China is.

Why can't we have leaders who talk to America straight and let them know the truth? Barack, my principled friend, I'm looking in your direction. We need to ween people off oil.

Related: The New York Times reports on how the high price of oil is affecting the global economy. Good news for Mexico. Bad news for China.

Is John McCain Stupid?

No, that's the real title of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today by Daniel Henninger.

The one thing -- arguably the only thing -- the McCain candidacy has going for it is a sense among voters that they don't know what Barack Obama stands for or believes. Why then would Mr. McCain give voters reason to wonder the same thing about himself? You're supposed to sow doubt about the other guy, not do it to yourself.

John, John, John, with friends like these...right? What seems to have the right all up in arms this week is that McCain isn't staying on message like a brainless automaton, like...hmm, what's his name? Wood? Tree? I know it's something arboreal.

The reason McCain achieved any popularity is because he doesn't stay on message. It's his shtick. What, you expect Bob Hope to go blue?

John, you should have switched parties four years ago when Kerry offered you an out. These people never liked you, and now you just seem like a Wooderson at the dork party, trying to beat the squares at Clue.

Hey, at least all the baby-boomer media still think you're pretty cool.

MSM to McCain: No Chance, Buddy

The Mainstream Media (MSM here in the blogosphere) has not yet canceled their Barack Obama Victory Tour. You can't get more MSM than Time, where Michael Grunwald writes that McCain doesn't stand a chance.

Last week, the McCain campaign's case against Barack Obama went something
like this: He's irresponsible when it comes to Iraq, naive when it comes to
Iran, and a big-government liberal when it comes to the economy. But now Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has more or less endorsed Obama's plan to
withdraw from Iraq, forcing McCain to argue that Maliki didn't really mean it,
and even the Bush administration has accepted a "time horizon" for withdrawal,
if not a precise "timetable." The Bush administration has also engaged in some
diplomatic outreach with Iran, just as Obama has recommended, a severe blow to
McCain's efforts to portray Obama's willingness to talk as appeasement. And on
the economy, a TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll found that 82% of the country
supports more federal infrastructure spending designed to create jobs. When
big-government liberalism is all the rage, McCain's courage in opposing water
projects or the farm bill becomes less of a selling point.

Wow. Part of me is still incredulous as to the glowing press Obama has received. Where was this press for Kerry or Gore? Nowhere to be found, I guess. Mostly because Kerry and Gore could wave eight balls around and get ignored by a junkie. Obama has fully recovered from his ghastly FISA vote. The New Yorker imbroglio makes him look sympathetic, and this week's world tour makes him look like the Anti-Bush.

Two things to be pleased about: One, the Rove Machine has not found a way to confound the media into spouting the Republican message. The story remains the crowds and money Barack attracts. Two, (and miraculously for Barack (the man most have a horseshoe jammed up somewhere)) the spineless Iraqi government has grown a pair over the last month and completely changed the context of the Iraq issue into one of national sovereignty. They don't want us there, and they're (finally!) ready to face the consequences. I've never said this, but-kudos to you, Maliki.

I am not optimistic that this will remain true, however. We have less than four months left, and the networks will be under great pressure to make this election as close as possible. Expect more positive McCain coverage in the next few months, as the MSM makes a mad attempt to make their made-for-TV spectacle as close as possible.