apparently believes that he, like W, should be listening in to your phone calls.

Wow. Talk about a disconnect.

Democrats should hit him over the head with this.

It will become obvious over the next few months that McCain really is “McSame” McBush.

what the hell is he doing on my TeeVee on CNN telling me that Hillary should concede right now? Toobin knows legal issues like no one else but he has literally no idea about political campaigns. Holy cow.

And anytime I’m hearing discussions about her “tone” in a speech, I get annoyed. Anytime I hear “tone” mentioned at all in any way, I get annoyed. “Tone” discussions are almost always bullshit in my view.

How many times have you sent someone an e-mail that was carefully crafted and they complain about the “tone?” We’ve all had that kind of experience. That sort of argument is almost inherently emotional, not logical or analytical.  Read more 

Wow. Graves goes even lower. If you listen closely, the ad does refer to her as “Gay Barnes.” I bet they thought that was funny — and you know the folks in Graves’s office say that to each other several times per day.

Wow.

Of course, the mastermind behind all this is “media consultant” Jeff Roe, who is about as reprehensible a campaigner as I’m aware of at any level of politics — and I’m including Karl Rove. He’s one of the major reasons that Missouri politics is rapidly becoming a cesspool.  Read more 

is my congressional representative. It’s so embarrassing, really. He’s apparently completely out of ideas as to how to run a campaign. I like Kay Barnes’s response ad to this tactless attack.

(For more on the national coverage of Graves’ pathetic ad, go here.)

If you want to learn more about Graves, you should go read this article. It’s pretty informative and tells you about all you need to know about Sam Graves’ thuggish campaign tactics.

I’m so proud he’s my congressional rep.

from Rachael Ray’s hateful Islamic terrorist, um, scarf.

I’m not kidding. You’ve got to read this to believe it. Click on the link.

Just how ridiculous is Michelle Malkin, anyway?

I guess the only thing more ridiculous is the fact that the Dunkin’ Donuts company gave in to Malkin and took the ad down.

You know, brave defenders of the first amendment over at Dunkin’ Donuts, this sort of reaction just empowers vapid pious pompadours like Michelle Malkin to do more things like this both to get attention and to provoke a reaction.

Wow. I really don’t know what else to say.

Atrios brings up the ubiquitous problem of the historical memory of undergraduates:

I spoke in an undergraduate class today. As a friend of mine has said a few times about her students, pretty soon you’re going to have to explain to them what the Lewinsky scandal was. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the students, just that the degree to which 19 year olds have shared cultural and historic experience with me is shrinking fast. Bush v. Gore happened when they were 11. What’s recent history to me is a vague recollection for them.

As I discovered this over the last few years, I dropped 1990s references in my classes. If I make them, I have to give a rather detailed background discussion because they don’t really remember Bill Clinton as president.

In fact, a year or so ago I was responding to a question in class that indirectly brought this subject up (I think it was a question about Johnson’s impeachment) and I said — with my usual measure of heavy sarcasm — something like this:

Oh yeah. That’s right. You’re the kids so many “concerned Americans” were worried about back then. The cry at the time from enemies of Bill Clinton was “What will we tell the children? What will this do to the children?”  Read more 

All of these folks have tried to argue that this “Tonya Harding option” stuff was from some supposedly objective anonymous DNC official.

Nope — this is something straight from Obama’s people as I expected.

Obama: Not Going to Pull a Tonya Harding

December 28, 2007 7:49 AM

ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Vinton, Iowa Thursday that he’s not going to pull a Tonya Harding on his rival candidates.  Read more 

Wow. The Obama people have this whining thing down to a high art:

“Her securing the nomination is certainly possible - but it will require exercising the ’Tonya Harding option.’” the official said. “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

The Tonya Harding Option — the first time I’ve heard it put that way.

It implies that Clinton is so set on ensuring that Obama doesn’t get the nomination, not only is she willing to take extra-ruthless steps, but in the end neither she nor Obama win the gold.  Read more 

with this post right here.

It’s really getting pretty damned sad now.

And I’m someone who would be happy with either candidate as nominee — but this is just a sad thing to see Josh self-immolate himself like this.

And wouldn’t it be nice if Josh would hire himself an editor? The various errors in his posts are a bit annoying from a “professional” blogger. You’d think if you just wrote 5-6 paragraphs per day you could, um, you know, proofread them?

This McPeak goofball apparently doesn’t even remember his own childhood very well:

McPeak, a co-chairman of Obama’s campaign, then said to his Oregon audience: “As one who for 37 years proudly wore the uniform of our country, I’m saddened to see a president employ these tactics. He of all people should know better because he was the target of exactly the same kind of tactics.”

Wow, what’s wrong with this guy? What the heck has he been smoking? That’s positively absurd!  Read more 

Wow. Goeglein was fired from his job at the White House too. Oh, excuse me, he “resigned” but we all know what really happened, don’t we?

I think it’s been a rather bad day for him. As you’d expect, I wholeheartedly agree that plagiarism should have serious consequences. I just didn’t realize that the Bush White House would actually levy them against someone serving in Bush’s office.

Heck, Goeglein’s already suffered as much in consequences at the White House as Scooter did — for committing treason in the Plame case I might add.

If you’ve been following the saga of Special Assistant to the President Timothy Goeglein today (also here and here), you probably know by now that the editorial team at his hometown newspaper has fired him as a columnist for plagiarism.

Wow. I have undergraduates try that all the time — and I catch them when they do it.

In fact, I now require all undergraduates to submit their papers in electronic format through a plagiarism-detection website.  Read more 

Wow. This is just uneffing believable.

I don’t really even know what to say. As one of the commenters so aptly put it:

It’s good to know that not all Republicans are crooks. Some are just assholes.

Indeed.

You really should go read this post by Scott Horton over at Harper’s.

I’ll wait.

You know I find it fascinating to read all of these libertarian Republican types (Andrew Sullivan) who are suddenly astonished by the rise of the evangelical whackos and their power. “Where’d these folks come from?” they seem to be asking.

You know who empowered these people? You and your kind, Andy, that’s who. It’s like these folks haven’t been paying attention the last twenty years. You guys enabled these people, in the 1980s and 1990s you avidly courted them. Did you not pay attention to the political history of the last twenty years?  Read more 

I hear this guy’s lectures are pretty good.  Read more 

Wow. Jeffrey Toobin is coming to my school to speak this week.  Read more 

As I said earlier, I actually enjoyed Sullivan’s talk. I’m a sucker for the “big idea” sort of presentation, which is exactly what Sullivan was doing.  Read more 

Well Andrew Sullivan will be speaking at my school in less than an hour. I met him this afternoon and he did a nice job talking with our students.  Read more 

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Matt Yglesias’s place about historical analogies, imperialism, a  Read more 

BAGHDAD - Nine American soldiers died in Iraq on Monday — all but one killed in vehicle accidents in and around Baghdad, the military said.
(via AP)

I guess nine of our soldiers can’t be killed by IED roadside bombs on the “Glorious Surge is Working” day.  Read more 

Yesterday Wonkette reported that departing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was looking to get even with some students at American University who had the tenacity to show him their asses.  Read more 

My my. Now the Gray Lady is openly stealing from blogs.  Read more 

Wow. It appears that this aptly-named “fish story” went straight from the tabloid right-wing press in Australia to right-wing blogs to ABC News in about 12 hours.  Read more 

Wow, remember Jake Tapper, formerly of Salon?

You remember, the guy who helped to break big stories during the Clinton impeachment stupidity?  Read more 

Holy cow! Our soldiers have fired so many rounds that we’ve run out of bullets:

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

Now that’s a heckuva ratio, huh? 250K bullets per insurgent killed.  Read more