Month: August 2008

Check out this fabulous time-waster quiz from Empire.

Dissent from the left on Evan Bayh as veep:

It would be hard to fuck up Barack Obama’s brand any worse than picking John McCain’s honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. We really shouldn’t have to say anything more than that.

Getting serious about understanding how marijuana works – and doesn’t.

Dickerson summarizes recent campaign ads:

The latest from Chicago:

The audits commissioned by [Cardinal] George contain shocking information about how the archdiocese handled monitors. Monitors were not told why they had to keep an eye on a priest in his or her charge. Some monitors had very little contact with their subjects. McCormack’s monitor was told by the vicar for priests that he didn’t have to notify the archdiocese of his vacation plans unless he would be gone for more than a week. And now we learn that the archdiocese assigned an accused priest’s close friend as a monitor. In 2006?

It’s depressing stuff if you believe the hierarchy should have learned its lesson by now.

Kmiec sees progress in the new Democratic Party abortion plank (which he helped draft).

Some gorgeous color photos of American cities in the 1950s are now online. The full collection is here.

Fallows watched all of this season’s primary debates and Obama’s senate debate with Alan Keyes. His advice for the general election debates:

[McCain] will play the expectations game as hard as he can, knowing that’s how the press will keep score. Objectively, George W.Bush did poorly against both Gore and Kerry. But in each case, he did “better than expected,” and so, if anything, was helped by the debates. In every talk with reporters, the Republican campaign team will marvel at Obama’s gifts in rhetoric. Of course he’ll do well in debates; that goes along with being “all talk.”

Once he gets on the stage, McCain will try to remind Obama of Hillary Clinton—that is, of someone he must take seriously, someone who is willing to challenge him and even insult him to his face. Obama “is vain about his idealism and ‘nobility,’” a staff member for one of Obama’s Democratic opponents (not Clinton) told me on the phone. “He is thin-skinned about having his motives and competence questioned, so that’s what you do.” Grizzled pols like Hillary Clinton or her husband would laugh off such an attempt; Obama may still be innocent enough to be shaken by it. McCain made many dismissive references to Obama after Obama became the presumptive nominee. The easy next step is to do so while looking at him.

For Obama the key is: look at John McCain, and see Alan Keyes.

I wouldn’t be so sure about the Powell endorsement rumors. I’m with Ambers on this. It’s too ballsy a move for Powell. I’m also inherently suspicious of Kristol’s motives. If Powell were considering such an endorsement, Kristol would do all he can to derail it. Prematurely leaking it, creating a fire-storm and forcing Powell to deny is one way to pre-empt such a move.  It’s vital for the neocons to prevent Obama gaining traction with serious foreign policy machers.

But it makes sense in one obvious way: Powell understands how deep a hole the US is in internationally, and how only Obama truly has a chance to get the country back on its feet. It’s the impulse of a patriot. And maybe the smears have made him mad.

Josh Green worries.