Nige insults America’s pastime:
Baseball survives on this side of the Atlantic as a playground game for both sexes, rounders. In America it was pumped full of testosterone and self-importance and became the modern baseball game – basically rounders, but with the ball thrown so violently as to be all but unhittable, and with lots of burly men dashing around showing off. I can’t help but feel that we Brits got the better of the deal. Baseball, when all’s said and done, is not cricket.
Competitive eater ‘Crazy Legs’ Conti stretches out his jaws before the Annual Cannoli Eating Contest during the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy September 12, 2008 in New York. The competition, sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, was won in an upset by newcomer Brad Sciullo, who ate over 20 cannolis at 500 calories apiece. By Chris Hondros/Getty.
One that is even more expensive. More here:
…[Palin] still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on "the other Bridge to Nowhere," the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage, [former Gov. Tony Knowles] added.
One reader thinks so:
I just wanted to say thank you so much for being the only blogger (aside from Al Giordano) who gets it. While the rest of the blogosphere (especially the liberal bloggers) lose their heads you are an island of common sense. Patience and Steel. Yes, yes. yes.
It also occurs to me that in a way McCain and Rove have actually simply taken over the liberal blogosphere in some way. They are being played.
Just a few examples—yesterday Obama gave a fantastic interview at the Service Forum. Did the liberal blogs even cover this? No.
He gave a great speech on the trail. Are his town halls even posted or excerpted? No.
The liberal bloggers have become McCain central. They make people click on his ads, make the world spin around him instead of focusing on our candidate and what he is trying to do. There is ZERO coverage of what Obama is actually doing every day talking tough on the issues. There is ZERO coverage of Biden (who is on the trail but the blogs don’t seem to care or cover him unless he is doing what they think he should be doing. Sadly AFP did cover him this week and people seemed to be too busy saying he was not doing anything to include the link with his forceful comments against McCain. The one time the blogs linked to Biden—when the MSM tried to make a big deal out his answer to a question that made Hillary look bad and he defended her. That was it).
McCain and crew realized early this cycle that they did not have a visible internet presence. So what did they do? They took over the liberal presence, they are manipulating the leading liberal blogs , just as they manipulate the MSM. All to their own advantage. And the blogs have all fallen for this hook, line and sinker. Does no one realize this?
They are all being played.
And Obama, god bless him, he gets it. As does his team. while everyone whines he keeps at it every day with much much class and like a laser focused on the issues. The problem is not Obama, is that no one wants to follow his lead. Instead they are following McCain-Rove and they don’t even know it.
E.J. Dionne offers some advice:
McCain has shown he wants the presidency so badly that he’s willing to say anything, true or false, to win power. Obama can win by fighting for what he believes. What he can’t do is wait for the media to call McCain out–although they should–or expect voters to know he’ll fight for them when they are not yet sure that he’s willing to stand up for himself.
Yes, but always, always on the issues. No personal attacks. Leave those and the outright lies to the liar, McCain.
This is all Rove has left:
Speaking of getting into Obama’s head, always remember this. This is what all this is about period. It’s all they got:
"The most readily identified, most easily stereotyped, and most quickly dismissed figure is an angry black man."
That’s what that tool Rove and his acolytes are trying to do. It’s the only card they have left. Obama must not let them get their way. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t just win. We have a chance now to defeat the forces of evil that Obama has smoked out of their cubicles.
It’s sad to be lectured constantly by the Republicans on morality. My marriage, for example, is a sin, according to Republicans. And if you squint hard enough somewhere in the Bible, you can find a couple of verses that will say so. But you don’t have to squint hard at all to see the Ten Commandments. And one of them is pretty clear:
Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
What we are seeing from the pious denizens of the Christianist right – once again – is not just their susceptibility to breaking this commandment, but their zeal and enthusiasm in doing so. They are obsessed with the sex lives of others but see nothing wrong with breaking one of the most fundamental moral instructions in the Bible thenmselves. A reader writes:
Thou Shalt Not Lie.
Anyone? Dobson? Romney? Hewitt? Anyone? Larry Craig?
I’m seriously losing count of the transparent frauds on the "Right." This whole Palin bump/fiasco is like one last glow of the Rove movement before it goes boom in the night.
The other thing that comes to mind is lemmings. You’re right. People need to chill, take a step back, forget about the polls for a second, and understand that there is a historic implosion taking place right now. History will look back kindly on the canaries in the conservative coal mine. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be many.
Well, David Frum is quietly chirping. And Paul Mirengoff did too.
From Ambinder’s and Green’s article on the campaign:
The truth is that, as the country begins a slow migration leftward, McCain now hews more closely to a rightward partisan line than at any point since his career began.
In campaign style: McCain and his staff have developed the reflexive contempt for the national political press corps that’s in the DNA of regular Republicans. In tone and policy: In 2002, McCain opposed a permanent repeal of the estate tax. Now he supports an almost complete repeal and calls it “one of the most unfair tax laws on the books.” His speeches are studded with conventional Republican policy talking points. There are remnants of apostasy, but not on the economy or Iraq, the two most important issues facing the country. Good luck finding an important McCain economic policy that could not have been devised and proposed by the Bush administration. McCain’s support for the surge, which was mavericky at the time, has transmogrified into support for an even longer war.
Whatever happens, the McCain campaign could never pull this off. Patience, steel… triumph.
A reader writes:
"John McCain isn’t running against Barack Obama. He’s running against reality."
The Dish 