Great piece from Ben Smith on Richard Ben Cramer, who apparently isn't fully aware of the fact that his "What it Takes" is "now widely considered the greatest modern presidential campaign book." (I read it -- yes, the whole thing -- in grad school, and still consider it an exceptional piece of work.)

I read the whole thing for fun years ago. Quite interesting. As I recall, it was fatally flawed by not having an index. How can a book about Washington not be equipped to do a Washington Read?

Steve King's Fifth Iowa District, according to the New York Times, has a White demographic of 91.4%, as opposed to 65.9% nationally. The Black component is .8%, Hispanics, whom he's been remarkably silent about lately, a little over 5%. That's how he can say what does, how he can get away with it, and why he thinks it's a good idea. That, and the ability to instantly believe anything that comes out of his mouth, like some other notable rightwingers of past and present centuries.

King's district is also losing population mega-rapidly, except for the cities of Sioux City and Council Bluffs, the most liberal part of the district. Iowa is going to lose a seat in the next redistricting and, unlike most states, Iowa's redistricting is done by a bipartisan commission, a model the rest of the country would do well to follow. King's followers hope he'll challenge Tom Harkin for the Senate. What he knows and they don't is that outside of his area, whose base is fleeing him, he's toast.

R.I.P., Geraldine Hoff Doyle, best known as the inspiration for "Rosie the Riveter."

My grandmother worked in the Bremerton shipyard during World War II. We called her "Elsie the Welder." Doesn't have quite the same ring to it. She was pretty, though.

While his attempts at humor usually leave me stony-faced, Keith Olbermann is 100% fucking awesome.

Lanny Davis can represent whomever he wants. The problem isn't Lanny Davis representing Laurent Gbagbo. The problem is people taking Lanny Davis seriously.

BTW, while I'm not entirely clear on the relationship between Lanny Davis and Laurent Gbagbo (that is, whether Davis was simply a lobbyist or Gbagbo's lawyer), IF Davis was Gbagbo's lawyer and IF he is the source of the leak of the resignation letter, then it sure looks like Davis is a sleazeball who is unethically disclosing confidential and arguably damaging communications with a client.

The question is not whether college is "worth it" to the individual, the question is whether the high cost of college is of benefit to the society as a whole, I would argue it does not. Having an educated population regardless of rate of return is of an advantage to any civilization because of emergent properties and cross-fertilization of ideas. IF you turn colleges into trade schools where one MUST earn a high living in order to pay for college, you exclude artists, writers, many scientists, entrepreneurs from attending because these are traditionally low paid jobs and success, also, tends to come late in the fields. SO will JP Morgan wait 20 years before Frank Lloyd Wright or Einstein can pay back their student loans? I doubt it, their credit will be ruined.

OR to pay back those loans Einstein would still be working in the patent office and never have gotten that PHD and Wright would still have been an engineer.

A waste not only for them, but a loss for society and the world s a whole.

So lets not kill our future by raising the cost of education to unaffordable levels today. To paraphrase Ayn Rand, You would chain Wrights mind to a rock by the links of debt and expect him to produce genus level architecture?

KurtRex1453 - much better said than what I was to post.

Increasingly, higher education is becoming a very expensive lottery ticket. Most likely, you won't get a profitable return on your investment. OTOH, "you have to be in it to win it" and without going to college you are almost certainly going to get economically screwed in the future.

There's an old saying, "It's not what you know, but who you know."

College is not about what you learned, but who you met. Washington and Wall Street are disproportionally populated with Ivy League grads.

The knowledge you can find at the library, on the internet. The contacts are formed at Hasty Pudding, Skull and Bones, Princeton's eating clubs.

My read of that Lanny Davis article is that he resigned from his paid lobbyist position, but he will continue to advocate for the despot in an unpaid capacity. I fail to see how that makes Davis any less odious.

Steve King is so obviously mentally ill that it is very hard to take anything he says seriously.

I used to live in western Iowa. Yes, it was quite conservative, but I didn't think it was any more bigoted than other parts of the country where I've lived.

Steve King is starting to make me think I was wrong.

As to war veterans finding it difficult to find good jobs, the other day I had two 2 man teams in my house to track down a problem I was having with my satellite service. Each team consided of a regular employee and one trainee. One of the trainees stood out. A little older than the rest he was really the guy in charge. He ran the crew (and he was the trainee) like a military squad. The other guys were younger and obviously well trained. They were all very good at their jobs and found my problem very quickly. I had the distinct impression the slightly older guy was far better trained than the average satellite repairman. He clearly had far better leadership skills than the rest of the young men. They didn't even realize who was really running the show. I would have loved to have any of them on my team, but the slightly older guy I would have trusted with my back. Clearly the older guy had seen service some place hostile. He would have fit in with the greatest generation. All four exuded military but the slightly older guy struck me as being a platoon leader or better. My understanding is satellite repair guys make between 12 and 15 an hour. The trainees make less. They were all worth more, but the slightly older guy was worth a lot more. The point of this is we are not creating jobs up to the skills of our best and brightest young men.

* MSNBC's Keith Olbermann wants to make it clear that, in his words, "Fox News is 100% bullshit." That seems like a reasonable assessment.

So long as Fox keeps Shep Smith, they will never achieve 100% bullshit status.

I bought What It Takes when it came out in paperback- must have been close to 15 years ago- and it is great.
In a class with Caro's LBJ books, which I consider to be some of the best political writing ever.

Too bad I am completely uninterested in baseball, as I love reading what Cramer writes.

As a sometime gardner, I have a fondness for bullshit that I could never develop for the murdoch foxaganda menace.

Oops, *gardener