I had the misfortune to watch a bit of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC this morning. Mike Barnicle was carrying on about how Obama's poll numbers have gone down due to his not offering the voters "specificity."

HOW ABOUT MCCAIN OFFERING UP SOME GODDAM SPECIFICITY???!!!

Obama told Bill Clinton, "Mr. President you can say whatever you like" during your convention speech.

I'd like to see anybody stop him. Unguided missile.

Expect significant snark, major self-congratulation and much grimacing through happy (but very, very spontaneous) tears.

You might .

The rest was this.

That Bill Kristol quote is classic. These people really are unstable; they will switch positions without warning, without reason!

I am Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message.

Great.

Let's hope Camp McPOW promptly assures the press that this is a translation error and further more Hillary Clinton can't speak for John McPOW, herself or anyone else so shut up and smile pretty, you c^nt trollop.

Actually, I'm sure a few ratfuckers will claim she didn't mean it (and cite body language, tone of voice, formation of clouds) or Obama forced her to say it.

Powerline, Corsi, the New York Post and TalkLeft. Impressive reading list you've got there, Doctor. Have you got the Stormfront Gazette ("Mullahs in Our Midst: Special Sleeper Muslim Issue!") and Weekly World News ("Obama Impregnates Alien! 'He Called Me Sweetie, then Split,' Martian Minx Recalls") on your nightstand?

Do you ever read anything that wouldn't embarrass you if a grownup caught you with it?

To continue the Chris Matthews comment from another thread, he was just out interviewing the demonstraters and counter-demonstraters. He gave a couple of professed Republicans very brief chances -- challenging one, with a military haircut 'So you're for the war, then?'

Then he went on to the PUMAs, got them talking, showed how rude they were, challenged them when they claimed to have a '17-page report from a Congressional investigator' backing up the Muslim claim, to tell them who wrote it, who he worked for. (They eventually changed to a 'former Congressional investigator') and after going to the pro-Obama people -- who got a LOT more time, ended, in obvious reference to the PUMAs, "I guess you" (the audience) "can tell insanity when you see and hear it."

If the MSM is in the tank for McCain, some of the bigger fishes are swimming out.

Michael Moore asks what so heroic about dropping bombs on citizens?

John McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which lasted for almost 44 months, U.S. forces flew 307,000 attack sorties, dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single month -- for 44 months.

McCain is a mass murderer. Period.

The fact that he did his killing behind the US flag does not alter the fact. The fact that he sleeps well at night because he never saw the bloody torsos his bombs ripped apart is a perverse consequence of modern warfare. The fact that he whines and crows about the treatment he got at the hands of his captors is a sad and sordid thing.

If I was Vietnamese, and had managed to nab one of those raining bombs on my homeland, my friends, and my family... I can't imagine I'd have treated them so well. That the Vietnamese that captured McCain did not beat him to death on the spot shows extraordinary restraint. But I suppose when a superpower does everything it can to crush you underfoot, even poisoning your forests from the sky, it necessarily brings to the fore such restraint: Apparently, McCain was worth more to them alive than dead. And so McCain lives, and plays the POW card as if his suffering was the greatest the world has seen...

Shameless.

All in all if you think about it, McCain is a very lucky mass murderer. Not everyone who has committed genocide and killed children gets to run for president as a war hero.

But then again, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. McCain is living proof of that.

Apparently at least one other reader besides myself can't get the comment screens here to "remember personal info." I have set my Firefox browser to "accept" cookies from "washingtonmonthly.com" but I'm still having to type in my info every time.

Is it me? Or does the site need a small fix?

Well, I do like the way Karl has helped keep people together on one issue - low Bush ratings.

When I see people use the name McPOW I cant help but think POW means Person Of Wealth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Make sure your Firefox browser is also set to remember what you type in forms and search bar in the Tools>Privacy section of Options.

HOW ABOUT MCCAIN OFFERING UP SOME GODDAM SPECIFICITY???!!!

He'll have his staff get back to you.

snarkola

"Now I understand that the McCain campaign is running ads trying to divide us and let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads: I am Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message."

More of this, please. This is the role HRC must play.

OkieFromMuskogee: same issue, Firefox, MacOS

Just wanted y'all to know that I did come here from Carpetbagger, but I am NOT satisfied. And yes, I really am using all my powers to undo this misadventure before it's too late.

Would it really be so hard to get rid of Drum's dull blue and bring us back the much slicker Carpetbagger Report layout? Please??? This place is ugly.

Ditto Okie and ? @18:29. MacOSX, Firefox. The *browser* remembers me and shows a prompt but the Political Animal is in need of a re-education camp.

Are you guys watching MSNBC? That Nicole Wallace! What a piece of work. Just because the crowd behind her was yelling at some of her more atrocious remarks, she told Gregory that she hoped she'd get an agent to escort her out, implying the crowd was dangerous. LOL!

The Republicans have been trying to make hay over Obama as a "celebrity." It got me wondering - Which party is the one that actually ELECTS celebrities?

President Ronald Reagan (R) - "B" movie actor.
Congressman Sonny Bono (R-CA) - Hippie singer.
Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) - He's not a president, but he might play one on TV.
Congressman Fred Grandy (R-IA) - Gopher on The Love Boat.
President Dwight Eisenhower (R) - All right, all right. Ike saved Western civilization, and that's how he became a five-star celebrity. But he had never even voted before he ran for President.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, (aka Conan the Terminator), Governor of California (R) - Well, at least he married a Kennedy.
Congressman Jim Ryun (R-KS) - Olympic athlete from Kansas University.
Congressman Jack Kemp (R-NY) (Buffalo) - Buffalo Bills quarterback and candidate for vice president in the Dole Administration.
Former (thank God) congressman Steve Largent (R-OK) (Tulsa), U of Tulsa and professional football star. (Largent almost became Governor of Oklahoma, but for a big fuss over cockfighting that drew hoards of Democratic voters to the polls from cockfighting country, and an independent candidate that drew away some of Largent's Republican votes.) I suppose that Governor Largent wasn't part of God's Plan after all, like Largent thought.
Congressman J. C. Watts (R-OK)- former Uiversity of Oklahoma quarterback. (What is it with Oklahoma and football players?)
Congressman Tom Osborne (R-NE), former U of Nebraska football coach. (Oklahoma Republicans couldn't manage to get Bud Wilkinson, former OU football coach, elected to the U. S. Senate in the LBJ landslide of 1964. But they nominated him!)
Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), Hall of Fame baseball pitcher and one of the US Senate's zaniest members.

Democratic celebrities elected to national office? I can think of only two: basketball star Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) (who was also a Rhodes Scholar), and Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), former astronaut.

So when you hear the Republicans carping about the Democrats' "celebrity" candidate this year, remember that they're eating their hearts out because they don't have a celebrity candidate of their own. The best that they could do was poor old dull John McCain.

By the way, had you heard that McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam? It's not generally known because he doesn't like to talk about it.

(I am indebted to Karen Webb's excellent letter to the editor in the 8/25 Oklahoma Observer.)

The AP's Ron Fournier has caught MoveOn.org's attention.

Just because he is a hack with a minimal amount of separation from the McCain campaign!

Oh, those nasty liberals...

Speaking of Morning Joe..how about Carly Fiorina stating that "Rezko helped Obama buy a
house he couldn't afford from prison.." Not one person called her on that whopper..

..and I didn't realize that Sean Wilentz was a PUMA....

orange

CSPAN's got the full coverage. Although Chris Matthews is on a roll. That Alexi Giannoulis: he's going places.

Hey young Steve Benen? Think we can get a nightly Open Thread for convention week?

okie - didn't we do this rpi problem pretty thoroughly in another thread? It just doesn't work, is all. Some of the PA regulars confirmed that.

There are other problems as well, but as newcomers I guess we gotta be respectful before we redecorate the damn place. We shouldn't be measuring the drapes just yet.

CB - (or should I call you WM? or PA? hmmm...)

That Media Matters chart on Swiftboating 2.0 is AMAZING. Should be required reading.

PS Glad to be here with some familiar names and, of course, great great posts.

Homer

as newcomers I guess we gotta be respectful before we redecorate the damn place

Why? Us PA regulars are being very whiny over at Drum's new place.

PA regulars have also been whining for quite a while about the RPI weirdness. It works on one of my systems, and not on another. Never been able to figure out what's different about them.

HOW ABOUT MCCAIN OFFERING UP SOME GODDAM SPECIFICITY???!!!

John McCain went without specificity for 5 years as a POW, while he was being tortured -- or almost.

Got to love Olbermann speaking off screen about Joe Scarboro's crap about McCain closing the gap. Olbermann was heard saying "get him a shovel" LOL! Joe did not know what hit him and then asked who said it, Olbermann manned up and then commented on Obama's poll numbers being better than last month. Joe S tried to throw some numbers out, but he was basically doing the O'Reilly bit of throwing out numbers without any backup. It was a riot! Only 30 minutes into MSNBC coverage and a fight in the ranks!

How about if McCain picked Katie Levinson for VP?
http://novemberblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-mccain-must-pick-katie-levinson.html

Breaking News.....

McCain taps Mickey Rooney as running mate.

First, I love the DNC for being chickenshit enough to exile the “ official protest site� to 12 blocks away from the Pepsi Center. (I flew back to Dallas on the end of my vacation, from Denver yesterday and checked things out before I left.

There were closer sites with adequate space and adequate security concerns addressable. This wasn’t a security issue, it was an issue of Dems not wanting to face 18 months of failures and cop-outs.

Vote Green. (Which I told people to do as I walked from the Pepsi Center to the protest site at Cuernavaca Park.)

Breaking News.....

Senator John McCain taps actor Mickey Rooney as running mate. Rooney continues to decline.

And McCain gets a pass on everything, without any clear policies except to be McBush. I too was crushed with Morning Joe. I had to turn it off. The only salvation has been Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann on teevee as I text this...and Rachel Maddow on air america, and previously, Amy Goodman on democracy now radio.
It is a sad trajectory that voters could well elect a miserable, mediocre, seriously out of touch man without any vision whatsoever, with no ideas of the problems of this nation, this McCain,
still trying to win that war, any war, four more wars... It is so scary that voters will elect
the less capable white man just not to elect the black man. It is mind-numbingly stupid.

Got to love Olbermann

Olbermann is popular enough now that he can begin to go after that piece of shit Scarboro -- and Matthews and Gregory while he's at it.

O please Nancy Pelosi, stop with the botox. Your face is tilting.

Chris Matthews is coming alive in protest of the war and the bullshit.
Keith is a good influence on him... And I like how Chris has David Shuster fill in--he's nicely outspoken.
Nancy Pelosi exudes confidence. Like she says, women have the most to lose with McCain.
Someone has to say it.

Second I love the utter corporatization of both the convention itself and the city of Denver (with Dem mayor) in its official welcome for the convention.

Breaking News.....

Senator John McCain taps actor Mickey Rooney as running mate. Rooney continues to decline.

Don't fall for this, My Friends. This commenter is trying to mislead you.

While nobody knows who J-Mac will pick, hopefully it will be Willard Romney, who is affectionately known as Mittens by those of us who know him best.

But irregardless, it won't be Rooney and will be someone AWESOME.

Thank You.

McCain Blog Outreach Coordinator

*

"But irregardless, it won't be Rooney and will be someone AWESOME."

Judy Garland?

mhr

Thanks for your point of view. But could you post something awesome about John McCain, instead?

Thank You.

McCain Blog Outreach Coordinator

good point, mhr.

better the millionaire Republicans who make their money in unsavory ways - no-bid contracts, tobacco, banking for Hitler, big pharma lobbying - who have the decency to not even try and help anyone less fortunate. because one can't have enough role models for utter selfishness.

(oh, yeah. i forgot. you're likely one of those people who think Atlas Shrugged is the epitome of both literature and philosophy and think selfishness is a positive trait.)

very funny alibubba.

But just so you know you are not fooling anyone.

There is no way McCain will pick Garland. Gingrich, maybe. But not Garland.

Thank You.

McCain Blog Outreach Coordinator

"But just so you know you are not fooling anyone.

There is no way McCain will pick Garland. Gingrich, maybe. But not Garland."

Why not? She's famous. Cute. Older. Dead.

Gingrich? Not dead. No contest.

If we get the media that we deserve, then what did we do to earn Jon Stewart, and how can we trade, say, CNN for 30 more of him? I swear, the man is the keenest political observer on any television network, and quite possibly the best interviewer. Granted, he has to inject jokes from time to time, and in a 5 minute interview that often lets people off the hook, but he's still better than anyone working in "serious" journalism.

"Mr. President you can say whatever you like" during your convention speech.

No time limit? Careful.
Billy has a history with speeches at Democratic conventions...

Keep one of those Lil'-Bo-Peep-style vaudeville hooks handy, 'kay?

I really think that
McCain and his people would start a war to win an election. Why should the Georgian President decide now that it was a good time to attack and kill Russian soldiers? Georgia has paid McCain's people millions.