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You’d think that conservative pundits would know better than to assume that their microphones are turned off between broadcast segments, especially on MSNBC.

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman. (cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And –

PN: It’s over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this –

MM: They’re all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives –

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Peggy Noonan wrote a CYA column for the Wall Street Journal today.  Read it if you want to, but I think it’s just more bullshit.

That’s The New Yorker’s satirical way of showing that when you portray all the crazy Obama smears in one illustration, you get a very ridiculous picture.

The magazine is making fun of the nuts that believe all the crazy stuff about Obama being a Muslim; that he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator on a Koran; that his wife is a terrorist that hates Whitey; that they are disciples of Osama Bin Laden; and that they hate the flag and all it stands for.

But it’s Obama’s supporters who are all whacked out about the caricature.  I’ll bet the Right wingnuts love the cover and don’t even recognize it as a joke about themselves.

In this interview with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, he is asked if the magazine has plans for an equally unflattering portrayal of McCain.  What the people upset about this cartoon don’t get is that an about face by The New Yorker would be a parody of Left’s distortions of McCain.  The Left has its crazies too, but would the sum of their distortions even come close to the Obama caricature? I would hope not.

The joke is on those who perpetuate the smears, not the candidates themselves.

Read This Modern World today…

Wednesday night’s debate between Clinton and Obama was one big media blunder.  Moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos chose to focus on missteps made by both candidates in the previous three weeks instead of on the issues affecting average voters.

I am pretty sure that most people don’t really care to hear Obama explain for the hundredth time why he doesn’t routinely wear a flag lapel pin, yet there he was explaining it again.  The question was presented via video from a Pennsylvania voter.  As I watched, I was thinking that anyone who thinks someone can’t be a true patriot because he doesn’t wear a flag pin should not be allowed to vote.  I wanted to take away her voter registration card and burn it.

Sniper fire in Bosnia?  Strange story, but old news.  There she was explaining he memory problem again.

Can we discuss something that matters now?

Nope.  The question that followed the lapel pin question was another question about who you know and whether or not you should know them or associate with them.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to — (applause) — (inaudible).

I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”

An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

I watched Stephanopoulos ask that question and immediately thought he was a mindless jerk.  In what should be a serious debate, there he was pandering to the worst instincts of the American electorate:  we must find a way to tear somebody down now matter how lame the connection.  Anyone who knows about politics, and I’m sure Stephanopoulos knows a lot, realizes that politicians attract people with power and money, and some of those people might have questionable backgrounds and motives.  It doesn’t mean that because a politician meets them and speaks with them the politician is sympathetic to their cause or sanctions everything they’ve done in the past.  Anyway, here’s Obama’s answer:

SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.

The fact is, is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I certainly don’t agree with those either.

So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

Excellent response.  Now, can we move on to a topic that matters?  The economy?  Iraq?  Healthcare?  Taxes? Inequality?  Anything of substance?

Nope… Clinton cant’ leave well enough alone.  She’s “a fighter” so she has to join sides with media idiots (mediots?) and the Republicans.  Here’s her jab at Obama:

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.

And if I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn’t done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is — you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. And I have no doubt — I know Senator Obama’s a good man and I respect him greatly but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.

And if I may say so Hillary, YOU just raised it.  Perhaps you really are just a sparring partner who is there only to help toughen up Obama for the race against the meanest, nastiest, deceitful political party on earth.  For that we thank you, but now we’ve really had enough already.

Of course Obama had to show her that he can throw a counter punch when necessary:

SENATOR OBAMA: I’m going to have to respond to this just really quickly, but by Senator Clinton’s own vetting standards, I don’t think she would make it, since President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than me –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Applauds.)

MR. GIBSON: Please.

SENATOR OBAMA: — than me serving on a board with somebody for actions that he did 40 years ago.

Ouch!

Nice round senators.  I hope that when you go back and review the tapes, you recognize what you were doing was knocking each other down.  That’s great if you want McCain to be our next president.  Personally, I don’t.

I know you guys are fighting each other for a shot at the oval office, but if you continue punching each other out like this for the next four months, you’re both going to look battered and beaten and neither one of you will be able to defeat McCain.

You should use these debates to explain the differences in your proposed policies, but you should also be working together in a united front against Republicans and explain how their policies are destroying our nation.  Ultimately, they are the ones you must defeat.

So how about a truce?  Can’t you both get your teams together and agree to stop the personal attacks against each other?  Can you see that your proxies get the message too so that we don’t have another repulsive episode like the one a couple weeks ago when someone in Clinton’s camp said Obama wasn’t electable because he was a LIBERAL.

Enough!  You are both on the same side.  The goal is to defeat McCain and put Democrat in the oval office.  Please don’t lose sight of that.  If you do, neither one of you will win and all of America will lose.  (Well… except for the extremely wealthy 5% of Americans that is.)

Roger Cohen wrote a column published in Thursday’s New York Times where he looks back to his time as a child spent in South Africa during the apartheid years and reasses his feelings in light of Obama’s speech.  I really do like this bit from the column:

Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?

Yes. It. Can.

The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.

One need only turn on one of the many 24-hour news channesl, Fox in particular, to see how Bush’s black-and-white world view has permeated the mainstream media.  It’s gotten to the point where if you want to watch anything close to an intellectual discussion on T.V., you’ve got to watch “comedy” shows like The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher.

So has discussion of Obama’s speech lifted the intellectual level of cable news to a higher plane?  Apparently not.

Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congressional committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

…

Rep. Waxman recalled that President Bush had promised a full internal probe. Knodell repeated that no probe took place, as far as he knew, and was not happening today.
Knodell said he had “no” conversations whatsoever with the president, vice president, Karl Rove or anyone about the leak.

…

Rep. Waxman at one point said that he regretted not being able to put up a video of the president promising a full probe but added, “I guess we will leave that to The Daily Show.”  (story)

That’s a sad commentary on the state of the mainstream media.  Waxman knows full well that the mainstream news channels are unlikely to show the clip of Bush promising to do something he never intended to do.  The news channels will probably think showing Bush telling a lie wouldn’t be “balanced,” and I’m not just talking about Fox News. 

Waxman knows he’ll have to count on the fake news show to tell the story as it should be told.

According to Ann Coutler today on CNN’s The Situation Room, we are winning in Iraq:

“We have to establish a democracy in this God forsaken are of the world.  It doesn’t have to be a perfect democracy. We need a place for our troops, we need a base.  And we are transforming the world.  I think the recent war in Israel[?] would have developed into an entire conflagration if but for all those countries over there are George Bush’s bitch now. They know that he may attack.”

Let’s break it down point by point.

1. We should work on our own ‘democracy’ before we start trying to establish a democracy anywhere else.
2. I doubt the residents of the Middle East consider their region to be ‘God forsaken’.
3. If we are going to establish a democracy in a country that we invade, it should be a nearly ‘perfect’ democracy.
4. We don’t need a place for our troops or a base.  We shouldn’t be there to begin with.
5. We shouldn’t be transforming the world.
6. I bet the leaders in the Middle East would not be too happy to hear that they are all “George Bush’s bitch now”.
7. Most of the Middle East does know that he may attack.  History is the best predictor of future behavior.

Wow.

The Dixie Chicks’ ad for their movie, Shut Up and Sing.

[youtube]FgESdfe7v90[/youtube]

At Variety, via C&L

The big story of the day is about a minister’s wife killing her husband. It’s what was on the television this morning, on the radio during the drive to work, and the featured headline on all the news sites.

Here’s the A.P. story from Yahoo!:

The wife of a minister found dead in the church parsonage has confessed to shooting him and fleeing to Alabama, where she was found the following night with their three young daughters, authorities said Friday.

Mary Winkler told investigators she shot her husband on Wednesday, Selmer Police investigator Roger Rickman said.

…

“I can’t believe this would happen,” said Pam Killingsworth, a church member and assistant principal at Selmer Elementary.

“The kids are just precious, and she was precious,” Killingsworth said. “He was the one of the best ministers we’ve ever had – just super charisma.”

What is up with the media? Why are they so obsessed with this terribly sad story about murder? Don’t they know that President Bush and his followers don’t want us to hear about this kind of stuff? There must be some good things that happened today that the media can feature, even in Selmer.

Why can’t the media tell us about Ms. Livingwell who got up today, made coffee for her husband, fed her children, drove them to school, stopped at the coffee shop for a latte and a muffin, tipped her barista, and then went home to clean house and walk the family dog? Instead of interviewing Ms. Killingsworth about a grisly murder, the reporters should interview Ms. Livingwell to find out what her preferences are for window cleaner and doggie doo doo bags. They could ask her how often her husband calls home from his office. We all want to know these things.

We don’t want to know about what drives a seemingly nice substitute teacher in Tennessee to shoot her husband–a man of God. We don’t want to know what will become of her precious children do we? We’d be sick in the head to dwell on such things.

It’s just not nice.

P.S. This story is prime material for Nick Cave’s next album of murder ballads, should he ever decide to revisit that genre. And if he does, I’ll buy it.

Paul Krugman weighs in on the U.S. media:

The National Security Council document released this week under the grandiose title “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” is neither an analytical report nor a policy statement. It’s simply the same old talking points – “victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest”; “failure is not an option” – repackaged in the style of a slide presentation for a business meeting.

It’s an embarrassing piece of work. Yet it’s also an important test for the news media. The Bush administration has lost none of its confidence that it can get away with fuzzy math and fuzzy facts – that it won’t be called to account for obvious efforts to mislead the public. It’s up to journalists to prove that confidence wrong.

Krugman then provides examples of how the report uses rigged statistics to convince us that oil production in Iraq has improved since 2003, when in fact it has not. He also shows how the report uses misleading statements to show that many parts of the country are under Iraqi government control, when they are not.

Krugman then questions whether the U.S. media has the balls to challenge the report and inform the American people of the facts.

The point isn’t just that the administration is trying, yet again, to deceive the public. It’s the fact that this attempt at deception shows such contempt – contempt for the public, and especially contempt for the news media. And why not? The truth is that the level of misrepresentation in this new document is no worse than that in a typical speech by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Yet for much of the past five years, many major news organizations failed to provide the public with effective fact-checking.

So Mr. Bush’s new public relations offensive on Iraq is a test. Are the news media still too cowed, too addicted to articles that contain little more than dueling quotes to tell the public when the administration is saying things that aren’t true? Or has the worm finally turned?

Stay tuned…