Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 99 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
McCain tells USA Today:
“I believe that people are interested very much in substance,” McCain said, contrasting himself with Barack Obama’s charismatic style. “If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president.”
The great orator was the losing Democratic nominee in 1896, 1900 and 1908.
This must be part of McCain’s outreach to younger voters, as he mentions candidates from his teenage years.
by John Cole| 6 Comments
This post is in: Sports
This stinks:
The Pittsburgh Steelers have confirmed that former player and one of the original members of the Steel Curtain, Dwight White, has died. He was 58.
White, a former defensive end, was hospitalized in intensive care last month due to complications from back surgery.
Officials say White originally went home after the surgery, but he had to be taken back to the hospital.
“Dwight White was one of the greatest players to ever wear a Steelers uniform,” says Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, in a statement. “He was a key member of the Steel Curtain defense and a member of the greatest defensive line in NFL history. He played with a relentlessness that led us to four Super Bowl titles in the 1970s.
Thanks.
This post is in: Open Threads
This post is in: Sports, Assholes, General Stupidity
There are few things that piss off Canadians (right Krista?)
1. American Beer
2. Messing with hockey or anything associated with it
The CBC had a license agreement to use the familiar Hockey Night in Canada theme song. It ran out recently:
The “Hockey Night in Canada” theme song, a mainstay of Canadian households for 40 years and often thought of as the unofficial second national anthem, may have launched its final hockey game, according to the company that controls use of the song.
The tune, which has opened the Canadian Broadcasting Corp’s Saturday night National Hockey League broadcasts since the late 1960s, will not be renewed as the broadcaster has chosen to move in a new direction, said John Ciccone, president of Copyright Music & Visuals.
This is not funny and I hope it is a joke. The Hockey Night in Canada theme song is as ubiquitous as Don Cherry and hockey itself! Canadians will hate this.
by John Cole| 36 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
John McCain hates war:
Thanks for the bold stance on war, McMaverick! TPM has more, although it is fair to point out that McCain LOVES the war in Iraq, and has some ideas about Iran, too:
In the abstract, McCain hates war. But when you give it a name and actually get it going, not so much.
by John Cole| 56 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
For all Hillary’s talk about invisible voters, it really seems like there is one person who is actually invisible this election cycle- John McCain. I have had the news on since 7 am, and I honestly do not think I have heard his name so much as mentioned. it is as if the race in the fall is a fight between Obama and Clinton. Still.
And when he is mentioned in the press, it is not flattering. Either it is his flip-flopping on wiretapping, concerns about his inability to be competitive with Obama in fund-raising, or stories like this about his disastrous speech:
As Democrats buzzed this week about their new de facto nominee, his historic candidacy and the unlikely political demise of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican circles were humming with another topic.
The topic: Is there a way John McCain can win the presidency without giving another speech?
That’s overstated, of course, but the concern about McCain’s wooden and stumbling address before a few hundred supporters here Tuesday night – the same evening as Barack Obama’s soaring acceptance address before thousands of screaming fans – has sent something of a shudder through the party and left GOP operatives shaking their heads in dismay.
***“They were appalled at the environment the candidate was standing in and his performance,” said this strategist. “It’s a serious problem — the contrast is so clear that it’s demoralizing. And it deflated our balloon last night. When the guys on Fox are trash-talking, you know it’s bad.”
I was one of many who felt that the longer the Democratic primary continued, the more hurtful it would be to the Democrats. We shall see how much permanent damage was done and whether or not Hillary can help Obama woo her supporters, but one thing is true- they are still sucking all of the oxygen left in the room, and there is not much left for McCain.
And just because I find it amazing that someone is a worse public speaker than George Bush, this deserves another showing:
Too funny.
by John Cole| 89 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
Also via Lawyers, Guns, and Money, this comment about the alleged “Whitey” tape:
At this point, there no longer needs to be an actual tape. Mission accomplished I’d say.
The other day I speculated:
It is as if folks are simply spending weeks prepping the ground preparing people to expect a bombshell, they can release some weak nonsense, and then pretend it is a big deal. While the “bombshell” will fizzle, the psyops will have been successful enough to make people think it is a big deal even when it isn’t. Right now, their goal is mainstreaming this and trying to get the chattering classes in the press and on the cable networks to talk about it. If they can get Chris Matthews to speculate about the “bombshell,” they will have succeeded.
It isn’t quite mainstreamed yet, but reporters are now asking Sen. Obama about it:
Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday batted down rumors circulating on the Internet and mentioned on some cable news shows of the existence of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people, and criticized a reporter for asking him about the rumor, which has not a shred of evidence to support it.
“We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”
Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question.
Via Reason, this Robert George post:
This is the ’08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years, The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) It always portrays the wife — not the candidate — committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act.
I was first exposed to this during the 1988 campaign when the line was, “There’s a picture out there of Kitty Dukakis burning the American flag…just wait til that comes out…” (that one got out of hand when a GOP senator actually believed it and called a press conference to say he would soon produce the evidence — which never materialized). Four years later, “There’s a picture out there of Hillary Clinton burning the American flag…just wait ’til that comes out…” In 1996, the Hillary thing repeated itself. In ’04, there was a similar one about Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Differences this year: Because of the racial angle and Jeremiah Wright, Michelle Obama — and Louis Farrakhan, for good measure — are blaming “whitey.” Because of YouTube, it’s a clip, not a photo. Oh, and it’s also real early: This urban legend isn’t supposed to start making the rounds until September or so. Perhaps it’s because this one has “crossed over” — Larry Johnson is a lefty blogger partial to Hillary, so he’s caught up in the feverish wish that this might be true. Sorry, Larry, don’t hold your breath.
I am not going to say there is no tape, because I have learned to never say never. However, that is just what Larry Johnson and others are playing on when they spread these rumors- you simply can not prove something does not exist. Between the shifting rationales, the fact that the right wing is sifting through everything at Trinity United, and the fact that still, in the age of viral YouTube videos, nothing has shown up, it looks like George may be on to something. Right now this looks like little more than a sophisticated version of the “Obama is a Muslim” e-mail smear that was so effective.