Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us of the anger of Jerry Falwell and "legitimate" right-wing attacks on activists like Dr. King:

These men didn't kill Martin Luther King, but they contributed to an atmosphere of nationalism, white supremacy and cheap unreflective patriotism that ultimately got a lot of people killed. Confronted with Aparthied South Africa, men like Helms and Falwell used the same "communist" defense. While Mandela wasted away in prison, they dismissed the whole thing as a communist plot.

Let me be clear—This is the ghost that McCain Campaign is summoning. This is the Ring Of Power that they want to wield. The Muslim charge, the "Hussein" thing is nothing more than today's red-baiting, and it is what it was then—a cover for racists. You may say I'm overreacting, and I really hope you're right. 999,000 out 1 million times we'll go on like normal and proceed to Election Day. But if some shit pops off, the thug and thug-mongers will not be able to throw up their hands and say "How could I have known?" Ignorance will not save them. Their stupidity is a scourge on us all.

Joe Klein is scared of what McCain's enabling:

Watch the tape of the guy screaming, "He's a terrorist!" McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes... and I thought for a moment he'd admonish the man. But he didn't. And now he's selling the Ayres non-story full-time. Yes, yes, it's all he has. True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn't done the right thing all year. His campaign is appalling, as the New York Times editorial board said today—and more, it is a national disgrace.

We forget how much Democratic governments engender violent hatred. The '60s weren't just shitty music and hideous clothes, they were a violent near-revolution. The 1930s were an era of extreme vitriol from the nation's right-wing. The polite front was Congressional rebellion and checks on Roosevelt's power—the less polite part was Father Coughlin preaching fascism and Lindbergh and Ford practicing it. The '90s had Waco and the weird Militia culture and Timothy McVeigh.

Honestly a Barack Obama presidency was always going to stir up the extreme members of society, but to play into it? To feed off of it? It's fucking irresponsible. Rallying the base always means satisfying the furthest out-there elements, but they've taken on the tone of George Wallace's racist campaign. Mocking John Kerry as a Frenchified sissy is a bit different than encouraging people to assume the guy who'll probably be our next president is a secret Muslim terrorist black power '60s radical extremist baby-murderer.

It's all basically a nasty, nasty preview of what we could be in for in an Obama administration. With particularly rabid conservatives already declaring the election pre-stolen by ACORN and (horror of horrors) the poor, black, and homeless (how ACORN is rigging public opinion polls has not yet been adequately explained), the illegitimacy of Obama's presidency will always be a convenient excuse for seething hatred.

And with the economy heading south? With a rise in unemployment probably on the way? With a full-blown recession around the corner? We anticipate a resurgence of Lou Dobbs nativism. The Times is already warning that crime could come roaring back to our rapidly gentrified city:

Whatever fate awaits New Yorkers, many say they are bracing for a crime increase, particularly in petty crimes, if the economy gets worse. But opinions are mixed about whether any signs of disorder have already begun.

Mya Bee, 34, a filmmaker from a Brooklyn neighborhood once ravaged by crime, said that while it was still too early to gauge the full impact of the economic downturn, she had begun to notice some troubling trends. People seem less confident, she said. Some were selling personal belongings. One friend told her he had pulled his money out of the bank.

“When you can’t use your credit cards, it will get worse,” said Ms. Bee, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant. “I know when people are really, really feeling it, it’s going to get bad. When that happens, all hell will break loose. People will resort to their old methods of making money, whether it’s robbing or stealing or hustling.”

If the cities fall apart? Obama can't control the Blacks. If the Rust Belt keeps failing? Obama doesn't care about the Whites.

Then, in 2010, if things really suck, we'll get a rerun of the 1994 Republican revolution, with a new, crazier, more nativist breed of lunatics hell-bent on making Obama into the nation's biggest villain. Anti-immigration violence doesn't sound too outside the realm of possibility.

This is all, obviously, worst-case scenario fear-mongering, but things look fucking grim right now. A pissed-off newly poor populace is never a great sign for anyone in a position of power. A minority in a position of power faces god knows what challenges.

Thanks, then, to American Hero John McCain for stirring shit up as much as possible weeks before the election.

Roosevelt's emergency measure, which gradually restored confidence in the financial system, came after his rousing inaugural address in which he reassured Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." (A clip is below.) By contrast, this international financial rescue plan has been leaked by the most corrupt and irresponsible leader in the Western world and is presumably to be discussed tomorrow by international finance ministers at a White House meeting hosted by a leader despised by foreign leaders even more than he is by the American public. But that isn't a constructive thought.

1932

Sez Who? Writing in The Nation (natch), "Superintendent" Charmers Johnson sez this year just might be a "'realigning election,' of which there have been only two during the past century—the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and of Richard Nixon in 1968."
Why now? "First, the weakness (and age) of the Republican candidate may perhaps indicate that the Party itself is truly at the end of a forty-year cycle of power. Second, of course, is the meltdown, even possibly implosion, of the US economy on the Republican watch (specifically, on that of George W. Bush, the least popular president in memory, as measured by recent opinion polls)..... Third, there has been a noticeable trend in shifting party affiliations in which the Democrats are gaining membership as the Republicans are losing it, especially in key battleground states like Pennsylvania...." (And fifth: the youngs!)
Is Is True? Not really! Because back then, the Dems rode the depression through countless elections and Roosevelt remained popular! If things suck more in 2012 than they do now, Obama will be blamed.

1992

Sez Who? Robert Reich, former secretary of labor, writing in the New York Times, says "January 2009 is starting to look a lot like January 1993."
Why Now? "Then, the federal deficit was running at roughly $300 billion a year, or about 5 percent of gross domestic product, way too high for comfort. By contrast, the deficit for the 2009 fiscal year is now projected to be $410 billion, or about 3.3 percent of gross domestic product." Uh, ok.
Is It True? Not really! Back then we'd had two terms of a mostly popular Republican followed by one disastrous term of an unpopular Republican who was considered out of touch. This is the "John McCain wins this year" option.

1976

Sez Who? Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, blogging for the Wall Street Journal, says, "one could see this year’s scenario as closer to 1976, when a previously unknown Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, promising a breath of fresh air in the White House, seized on the public clamor for change and won the presidency."
Why Now? "The public mood in 1976, less than two years after Republican Richard Nixon resigned the presidency due to Watergate, and with the economy hurting due to what was then skyrocketing gasoline prices, was almost as sour as today." And! "Mr. Carter, a former one-term governor of Georgia offered a candidacy that conceded a lack of Washington experience, much like Sen. Obama. And, as Sen. Obama so far this year, Mr. Carter prospered because the national mood valued change over all else."
Is It True? You know, it might be!

1988

Sez Who? Peter Brown, again!
Why Now? Two-term Republican ends on a not-too-popular note, Dems nominate a proud liberal, economy not looking hot.
Is It True? Probably not, because Obama's looking way better than Dukakis.

But!

Worst Case Scenario

It is 1988 redux. Only Obama is Bush senior. Remember, he's an elitist who's out of touch too! He inherits a miserable economy and can't right the ship fast enough. A brief war—or killing Bin Laden—might make him briefly, hugely popular. But a couple years from now, if things haven't improved, he gets the blame, as we said. He's basically positoined perfectly for a folsky populist Souterner to swoop in and steal the nation's heart. In other words, welcome President Huckabee!

Best Case Scenario

It's 1952 redux! We're mired in a pointless foreign war! Another incredibly unpopular two-term president is leaving! The country needs stability and economic renewal! In this example, Obama is Ike Eisenhower, America's favorite president! He serves two wonderful mostly peaceful terms, builds up the middle class, and everyone is happy except the beatniks.

So. Should we have a poll? If so we'd like to add that maybe it's 1884, on account of how nasty everyone is.

The Observer reports on the contenders:

Michael Takiff, on oral historian. He's writing a Bill Clinton biography (though maybe it's been shelved). He's a Nation-contributing lefty, who once also tried to write a book about George McGovern. You might be able to guess how his book would read.

Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. Balz, the consummate Washington Post political correspondent, has been following both campaigns around and probably has the sources to get some good material for a quickie book. It's up to Haynes Johnson, the former civil rights reporter who now writes big grand sweeping statement books about how it's "the age of" something or other, to give it a cohesive narrative. That narrative will probably be pretty middle-of-the-road. And Johnson is probably too old to get THE INTERNET. But maybe it'll be good?

Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Halperin writes The Page for Time. Before that, he wrote The Note for ABC. He became the King of the Washington Press Corps in the '90s when he underminded Clinton and the liberals all the time and sucked Drudge's cock incessantly. He's so far outside reality now that his last book was on how the next president would have to heed the words of Karl Rove and worship at the altar of Drudge. His blog is unreadable and he was dead wrong on the Biden pick, even though he erased the entry and tried to pretend he had it too. Heilmann, though, is the very very good New York Magazine political writer. John, find a different co-author and we're right there with you!

Everyone is covering their asses now that the Senate Armed Services is looking into just who decided to give the CIA authorization to torture the fuck out of people, but Condi released some documents blaming John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld for everything. Except of course that she was in the same goddamn room and her proud stand against the program was to ask Ashcroft to personally review the legal documents that Bush lawyers used to justify violating the Geneva Conventions.

REMEMBER HOW OUR PRESIDENT VIOLATES THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS?? LIKE, REGULARLY, BECAUSE THAT IS HIS POLICY?? WTF!

Anyway. This is fun. Our CIA actually began kinda torturing people weeks before our executive branch drafted a legal memo authorizing them to kinda torture people! The FBI objected to the torturing and "ultimately withdrew from Mr. Zubaydah’s interrogation." It's funny when the FBI is the voice of reason! Funny in a "why did we all agree that the last 8 years didn't happen" way.

Basically we'd like a 9/11 commission thing, here, to figure out what happened when a bunch of career conservative fuckers and their cherry-picked law school moron lackeys ran the country for eight years and basically blew it up, from the inside. Can John McCain race back to Washington and work on that?

This would be historic. And not in the good way. As the industry has declined during this decade, almost every newspaper has suffered economically. Layoffs have become ubiquitous. Foreign bureaus have been shuttered across the board as a matter of policy.

Large metro papers, which dominate major cities but lack a national readership, have suffered the worst. Many (if not most) of them have pulled their correspondents from Washington and brought them home, to save money and cover local news, which is believed to be the wisest area of investment. The glory days are over. Salaries are down. Older, more expensive reporters and editors are urged to take buyouts. It's harder for aspiring journalists to get first jobs, or even internships.

Papers have changed physically. Their pages have shrunk. Their page count has come down. Sections which once stood alone have been combined, all to save printing and newsprint costs.

Two-paper towns are becoming a rarity. Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, and, of course, New York all support at least two sizable papers. But some of them shouldn't. Particularly in smaller or declining markets, it's a war of attrition to see which paper can hang on the longest. The idea that two editorial viewpoints are a necessity in most cities has been rendered anachronistic by the internet.

Recent buyers of newspapers or newspaper companies have been disappointed. Brian Tierney, an ad wizard, has been unable to restore the Philadelphia papers to their former glory. Sam Zell is being sued by his own employees for the Tribune company's declining prospects. McClatchy wishes it had never bought Knight Ridder.

What we haven't seen in all this, though, is a major American city with no newspaper. Everyone believes that a paper is an essential part of a city's fabric, like city hall and the jail and the local sports team. If Newark—a town with more problems than most—is left without a paper, who will tell the world what's going on there? Who will tell Newark what its own government is up to? Even bloggers should be humble enough to pray that the Star-Ledger isn't the first in a long line of papers that disappear and leave people with no forum for the local bickering, minutiae, and moments of glory that are the real American civics lesson.

Print may be dead. But it shouldn't die before something better is in place.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story — that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

But now, John McCain lies. And it's not like 2000, when John McCain lied about loving the confederate flag and then apologized for lying, because back then he'd wink to Richard Cohen every time he did it, so Rich knew it was just a thing he had to do, this lying.

Anyway, Rich, your column went over great with Joe Klein, who is pretty much just like you except he writes for Time.

So that's two useless moderate bearded columnists off the straight talk express! Who's next?

Wait, David Brooks? No, wait, he just doesn't like Sarah Palin anymore. Because she's not a comfortable entrenched establishment conservative like David Brooks, but rather a scary culture war populist idiot, like Bush.

And, of course, Andrew Sullivan—once a gay Catholic right-winger (well, honestly, still those things in his head) who wanted to kill all the Muslims and accused liberal journalists of being in league with the terrorists right after 9/11—never wastes an opportunity to point out that John McCain has lost his respect (we're sure that keeps the senator up at night).

Of course we're being unfair in only listing people we never liked. (JK Andrew, you've grown on us.) Ana Marie Cox likes McCain—for that openness and access that Rich Cohen pretends not to care about!—but she has been critical of his campaign, lately (though she scored a late-August interview with the candidate—just before the Palin selection!) And Jon Stewart had McCain on his Daily Show more often than any other guest. But during the RNC the show produced what is maybe the most damning and mean indictment of the man's entire biography we've ever seen.

To sum up: in 2000 John McCain learned that making friends with the media does not win elections, and this year he may yet learn that pissing them off has no consequences.

[Via Radosh]

It is, honestly, a bizarre and inexplicable story. "We grow good people in our small towns," Palin said, quoting someone identified only as a writer, "with honesty and sincerity and dignity." That "writer," Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank notes, is a man named Westbrook Pegler. You have probably never heard of him, but he was a very popular and very right-wing columnist from the first half of the 20th century. How right-wing? He openly wished for the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt, for one.

And for two, he was quite the anti-Semite! He hated Jews so much, the far-right anti-Semitic John Birch Society banned him from their journal. And all Pegler did was claim that American Jews were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism"! And also claim lots of other crazy stuff!

So. Quoting an old anti-Semite is obviously proof of nothing—people still say nice things about Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and Richard Nixon—but the larger question here is who put those words in her nice speech, where did they find them, and what the hell were they thinking. Like... did they think no one would notice? Who even reads Pegler anymore?

Answer: Pat Buchanan! Buchanan, that lovable old coot, used that same line in a 1990 book. Buchanan, of course, did not mind being associated with a crazy old anti-Semite, and the passage was quoted in a section quite complimentary to the reactionary columnist.

It really does boggle the mind, doesn't it, that they could not find another passage by another writer talking about how nice small towns are, right? Of course the line is question is also about Harry Truman, who was, of course, a Vice President who eventually became president when the guy before him died in office of old age, so really there are a lot of questions we have for the people who composed that terrible speech.

Palin's Source [Ben Smith/Politico]

Though this Michael Kearney was actually Obama's great great great great uncle, it's apparent that his political instincts were passed on to his distant nephew. A wig-maker, or something, Kearney was a member of the Guild of Barber Surgeons, which basically is the same thing as being in the Illinois State Senate. "In 1720, within three years of joining, he was elected house warden. In 1724, he was openly critical of the master and warden of his guild, and led a petition against them." Then they all elected him guild master, in what is an obvious parallel to the political career so far of Senator Obama.

But most interesting is this crazy rhyming pamphlet about how Michael Kearney is evil and aided by The Devil, or something. We really don't get most of it. But Kearney surely issued his own "fight the smears" pamphlet in response while 1700s Irish Lee Atwater accused Irish John McCain of having a Danish baby. Nothing ever changes! Except blogs which cheapened and coarsened our politics.

Here's the family tree that proves Barack "O'Bama" Obama's filthy drunken Irishness.

A McCain fundraiser named Harold Simmons funded the ad through one of those shadowy nonprofits the kids are so into these days called the "American Issues Project." Simmons was, you may be shocked to learn, also a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth funder. This particular ad is so distorted that CNN and even Fox News have refused to run it! Which leaves, of course, the local channels owned by Sinclair Communications.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group owns the largest number of local TV stations in the country, mostly throughout the South and Midwest. They last made headlines in 2004, when the company refused to allow its stations to air the Nightline segment that named American casualties in Iraq (they hate the troops!), and then six months later when they made all their stations broadcast a crazy Swift Boat documentary about how John Kerry committed treason in Vietnam. Oh, and then they were the ones behind the Armstrong Williams debacle, in which Williams was revealed to be a White House-paid propagandist while hosting a syndicated show as an ostensibly independent commentator. The show was produced out of Sinclair's "New Central" office, which produced much of the insane "news" content Sinclair feeds to its many stations. (Sinclair received a $36,000 FCC fine for their trouble.)

But besides a GQ story on Sinclair back in '05, no one really pays any attention to the work of Sinclair. They reach nearly as many homes as an actual television network and purposefully exert more control over the message they broadcast than any 24-hour news network, but because they own podunk affiliates in flyover country, no one notices. Per Wikipedia:

Sinclair still produces a one-minute national news briefing for its stations, entitled Washington Newsroom. Starting in 2007, Sinclair launched a new newscast on some of its' stations, completely separate from local news operations, called American Crossroads. Like News Central and "The Point", the program, hosted by Jeff Barnd (a news anchor at WBFF) covers national news stories and offers a conservative editorial segment.

Oh, and the co-owner who controls the in-house produced conservative "news" that each of their stations are forced to play is also a war profiteer and a convicted whoremonger.

SO! Harold Simmons does not actually need the reasoned and wise gatekeepers of the real national media, or even the nutty-but-mainstream gatekeepers of the conservative national media. Because he can reach nearly a quarter of America at home, on their local channels, across Ohio, Florida, Missouri, and other small-market towns in swing states. For cheap!

Of course, unlike Kerry, Obama's fighting back hard against this smear. His campaign sent strongly worded letters to all the stations that played the ad, featuring veiled threats against their broadcast licenses in the event of an Obama presidency ("Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity.")

And, of course, in going after these ads, he's getting them more play from those respected gatekeepers, who will now play them all the time to tsk-tsk about how terrible it all is.

In McCain's defense, we'd have six more houses too if our first one was this garish. (And OMG that sweater!)

Andrew Sullivan argues that all the shit that happened to McCain—"sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating"—now falls under the category of perfectly legal enhanced interrogation, as practiced by the United States across the world. With McCain's approval! Hooray!

(Of course U.S. law requires that detainees are treated to one night of a guard quietly scratching a crescent into the sand every year on a holy day of their choosing.)

Oh, and no one yet knows when McCain first remembered the guard that drew the cross in the ground with a stick or why he did not mention this fact until 1999, but the story is not from Solzhenitsyn at all but rather from Watergate crook turned evangelical wingnut Chuck Colson, who claimed he heard it from Jesse Helms, who said he heard it from Billy Graham in 1977.

John McCain seems to have a habit of making up his own biography to fit whatever his circumstances require and then seeming like he believes his own nonsense. Maybe it relates to those years of torture, during which he'd only give up useless information to his captors, like the starting defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers (sorry, wait... that was the Packers.).

The official line is age, experience, and foreign policy expertise—Biden matches up well against McCain by outdoing him on most of his strengths besides the "tortured for five years by homos" thing. But with Biden comes the history of saying insane and inappropriate things and, you know, the plagiarism. (We said he matched up well with McCain!) And hey, let's look at some of our favorite moments of Biden saying something insane—taken entirely from his recent run for the presidency!

July, 2006:
Biden: goes to a 7/-11.
And says: "You CANNOT go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without an Indian accent."
Which he meant as: some sort of comment on how Indian-Americans are a fast-growing and terribly productive group whose support he's always welcomed!

August 27, 2006:
Biden: goes on "Fox News Sunday."
And says: "You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state."
Which he meant as: reassurance that he was not an out-of-touch liberal coastal elitist!

December, 2006:
Biden: goes before the South Carolina Rotary Club.
And says: Delaware, he noted, was a “slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.”
Which he meant as: a joke.

January, 2007:
Biden: is interviewed by the New York Observer.
And says: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man."
Which he meant as: a compliment to Barack Obama, whom he actually seems to like, and also an astute observation on the way Americans and the media represent Black-ness couched in cringe-inducing language.

October, 2007:
Biden: is interviewed by the Washington Post editorial board.
And says (when asked why Iowa schools perform better than DC schools): "There's less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with...."
Which he meant as: look, who knows now? Maybe he meant, as his campaign said, that "the disadvantages were based on economic status, not race." But that is not what he meant because it is not what he said. The most charitable possible explanation for this is that by "it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with" he does mean that minorities are born with far fewer advantages in life than whites out in Iowa. But at this point the man's tone-deaf inability to discus race in any sane way—despite no evidence that he, you know, dislikes black people or anything—is actually stunning, like watching an acrobat repeatedly fall to his death over and over and over again.

BUT. The Biden penchant for saying dumb shit is tied to his charm for saying whatever the hell is on his mind. His extemporaneous monologuing produces both gaffes and gems. Like at the Democratic debate where he just up and called a gun nut a dangerous crazy person:

See? Also when, more recently, he asked if the Vice President had been kissed, in Iraq. Why? Who knows. Maybe because he knows he's in the running for the job.

Politically, Biden is probably a terrible choice. Another two Senators for the Dems. And he's from Delaware. And he makes Obama look even less experienced. And honestly he has nothing compelling to say on domestic issues, at all, which is still what the voters care about. And he doesn't help to win any swing states, at all.

But, you know, the guy is also a hilarious blowhard. So we win.

Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

Yes, ok. What?? How did POW McCain know they were gay if they weren't gay "toward him"? Were the homosexuals the ones who enjoyed the beatings or were the sadists a separate category? We have lots of unanswered questions here. Like—how come he mentions how gay the North Vietnamese were but leaves out that inspiring tale of the cross on the floor he mentioned last weekend?

John McCain, Prisoner of War [USNews via Queerty]

Would She Have Won Iowa? Look, Howard, we still think no. "By 55% to 33%, Iowans — who will take part in a Jan. 3 caucus that will be the first test for Democratic presidential candidates — said they favored 'new direction and new ideas' over 'strength and experience,'" Time said in November. The disillusioned Edwards voters may have been voting for the guy who talked like a radical populist outsider, not necessarily the White Guy. Edwards also apologized often and loudly for Iraq, while Hillary kept stumbling over it. STILL. Let's assume that enough Edwards voters would've switched to Hillary to give her that first important win. From then on out, things are very different!

New Hampshire It would've been a breeze. Hillary would've won easily, once again making her look like an unstoppable steamroller of inevitability. BUT! Her real-world New Hampshire win breathed new life into her "struggling" campaign. She had to cry and say she found her voice and suddenly everyone was nice to her. Would two wins in a row have made the press more interested in Obama?

South Carolina Here's the big question. Hillary was way ahead in the black vote until Iowa, when, some say, black voters suddenly realized the black candidate might have a chance and switched to Obama. But in this alternate universe, have they still stuck with Hillary? Maybe Bill's not so angry and crazy and therefore not saying questionable things about Obama's race, but maybe the press coverage is becoming as quietly racist as it was sexist in our universe. This is totally up in the air.

Super Duper Tuesday Hillary wins New York and California, just like now. The delegate count is perhaps as nutty as it was in real life, but Obama's camp would probably sound "desperate" if they brought that up. Now we're in a position not unlike the real one—the nation's racial fault lines exposed as commentators call on Obama to drop out, even though a win is still a statistical possibility. Obama maybe handles the situation with more grace and returns to the Senate to work on his 2016 campaign.

The Future Would Hillary be stronger against McCain? Her negatives are way higher than his, but she appeals to more of his base than Obama does. Obama has a better shot in some states than Hillary would, but he also may lose blue-collar white Democratic strongholds that Hillary proved adept at winning. But this is becoming a really lame and hedged "alternative history" so let's say Hillary would SWEEP MCCAIN in this future, while as we all know in the real world this election is still Obama's to lose. Then the reanimated Hitler would win the Olympics! The Confederate States of America would be so disappointed. Then Vice President Favre would get sacked by Speaker of the House Evil Spock and the world would learn to laugh again.

In conclusion, Howard Wolfson is a tool.

[Maps of War via KnifeTricks]

Barcelona 1992: "Cobi." WTF.

Atlanta 1996: "Izzy." No.

Sydney 2000: "Syd, Ollie, and Millie." Why?

Athens 2004: "Athena and Phevos." God.

[WSJ. Learn more about mascots here!]

Dear Allen:

After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little-known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old-world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand—I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, "I must have felt the vibes."

Michael Weiner

That's from 1970. Radar also mentions a rumored-about photo of Ginsberg and Savage swimming naked together in the balmy waters off of Fiji. Oh hoooooo. Were he alive today, I wonder what Ginsberg would say about this batshit zealot who was once his friend, long ago. Probably something about the best minds of his generation being destroyed by madness. I'm with you in Rockland, Allen.

Wolfson's taste is perfect focus group-tested schmindie, and his writing is infected with the stain of a lifetime of shitty mp3-blogging and capsule reviews. The Grey Album is "the funkiest album the Beatles never made." There's much more where that came from on his now-defunct blog (HowieWolf!).

His 2005 list is embarrassing—were we all so corny then? and so white?—but for our money little he's done since can top Wolfson's review of Green Day's moden classic American Idiot.

What happens when the glue sniffing class clowns starting raising their hands and getting the answers right? And then decide to write, direct and act in the class play? Like a cross between The Who and Bad Religion, American Idiot is a surprisingly successful rock opera on the state of the nation from the band voted least likely to succeed. A soundtrack travelogue to a landscape littered with strip malls and fast food (www.benjaminedwards.net), Green Day's "kids of war and peace" worship "the Jesus of Suburbia" to the sound of poppy punk guitar, a pogoing rhythm section and tight harmonies. When Billie Joe Armstrong urges us to give him "another amen" he may be asking ironically, but it doesn’t stop us from shouting out just the same. Wonder why John Kerry won the youth vote? Give a listen.

Now we're totally turned around on Wolfson's upcoming Fox gig. Because maybe instead of talking politics he'll just show up for a little Gene Shalit-style "this week in mp3s" review segment? The new Girl Talk is revolutionary! Neko Case is winning the popular vote! Why won't Danger Mouse agree to seat the Michigan delegates?

Howard's List [NYO]
AppleBites
Howard Wolfson, Indie Darling [Wonkette]

In 2004, he was behind the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," a group that claimed that not only was John Kerry not a war hero, but in fact he had never even been to Vietnam, or even on a boat, as boats made him seasick, because he is French. He actually spent the majority of the 60s and 70s making love to Jane Fonda on a burning American flag.

Now John Kerry did not really respond to these claims very effectively or quickly, but part of that was surely because he did not expect these sort of goofy attack ads to suddenly become serious topics of impassioned debate on the television, giving them exposure far beyond what Mr. Pickens actually paid for.

And the Times reported recently that Pickens is welshing on a million dollar bet he offered to anyone who could disprove the claims of the Swift Boat people. The Times also said: "Extensive media accounts undermined the Swift Boat charges in 2004, pointing out that some of the Swift Boat critics had written statements during Vietnam lauding Mr. Kerry for extraordinary bravery in the incidents they later said he made up." MediaMatters is upset (su-prise, su-prise, su-prise! Charles Durning as T. Boone Pickens might say here) because the extensive undermining thing did not really happen until well after most media outlets simply repeated all the claims without context, 500,000 times. Though to be fair, the Times largely ignored the Swift Boat people, because they, like Kerry, thought they were so ridiculous, so it was more of a sin of omission.

But one man who did publicly criticize and refute the claims of this terrible group of liars is American Hero John McCain! He fought in Vietnam too, you may remember, so he is pretty confident that it actually happened and John Kerry was there.

Now, though, McCain is happily accepting money from the people who funded these terrible lies he denounced in 2004. Because he's a MAVERICK. McCain also brought out Swift Boat member Bud Day for a conference call on Monday. Day was there to respond to the terrible lies Wesley Clark made about McCain's war service, because irony is dead.

But here is some good news: T. Boone Pickens, as a proper old-fashioned evil Texas oil billionaire, still quietly hates John McCain and will not be donating any money to anyone this year.

It's sort of a fact of war reporting that, you know, people are going to fuck around. They're far away from home, they're only in contact with other journalists, contractors, and soldiers. Passions run high! Etc! But the other fact of the matter is that if there is going to be a scandal of this nature, chances are decent that it will involve a man and a lady. Like in this Logan situation, where we're not hearing much about CNN correspondent Michael Ware, one of the alleged "beaus." Well, we're hearing plenty about him, but he's not in the headlines. So there's your sexist double standard, obv—we castigate the pretty lady for having sex and boys will be boys.

But there's an exception! (Once again, sort of.) Balk, refuting the idea that we wouldn't "read these stories about a male correspondent," reminds us of Dexter Filkins and John Burns. Filkins and Burns are star New York Times reporters who were involved in an imbroglio when another Times correspondent emailed their wives exposing their overseas extramarital affairs. That reporter, Susan Sachs, was fired. So the affairs of Burns and Filkins were exposed, yes, but most of the coverage was about that firing, and Howard Kurtz didn't even mention the names of Filkins and Burns, even though, as in Logan's case, those names were already "out there."

So yes everyone is being totally unfair to Lara Logan but whatever, it won't really cost her much more than a headache, we're pretty sure.

The rumor is floated by Post gossip Liz Smith:

Anna's speech to her staff receives a mixed reaction:

Wintour takes her complaints public:

[Front Row]

A rough translation from an Italian news story from last September:

The father Pasquale is already under trial, accused of having illegally appropriated almost a half a billion lire when he was the judicial administrator of a private company in a tourist development. The trial finished in April 2005 with the Pasquale being sentenced to three years in prison and blocked forever from serving in public office.

The father and son team of Catholic property sharks caught the attention of the media, and the younger Follieri's world began to unravel. Today's charges may be the first step towards following his father into prison.

The main beneficiary of this whole mess: former Gawker writer Josh Stein, who has a big story coming up in Page Six Magazine about Follieri. He's been working on it for a while, and he couldn't have timed it better.

Absolutely not. I had no personal feelings towards him as I have no personal feelings towards Bob Woodward. I have a whole section in my book describing Bob Woodward as the dumb blonde of American journalism. You could say there was something personal but I've barely met him, and I met Tim Russert once.

Yeah all well and good but what do personal meetings have to do with anything? No one in Woodward's family ever wrote a thirteen-page hit piece about Arianna! We have only met Keith Gessen once and Jakob Lodwick never but we'd have to say that yes, our criticisms are personal.

She goes on to recommend Keith Olbermann for the Meet the Press job, which is kinda funny, because he's a big blowhard who doesn't stand a chance at getting the gig. But he is actually a pretty good interviewer.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins wrote a memoir in which he discussed his role in Michael Huffington's disastrous run for the US Senate. Attached is the relevant excerpt, reporting the rumor that Arianna Huffington hired a private eye to tail Maureen Orth, the Vanity Fair author who happened to be married to Tim Russert.

Now Orth did write a piece on Michael. And it was terribly embarrassing for both Huffingtons. Since that story, Arianna had a political realignment, divorced her now-gay husband, and became a left-winger. Rollins remains a slimy Republican hack. It's his word against hers, and she's stringently denied the charge. But Orth believes it! So Tim probably did too. And so, obviously, Arianna did not have much to say about the death of beloved newsman Tim Russert.

October 2006: The Inevitable Hillary Avalanche Begins Rolling Down the Mountain of Victory Former Virginia Governor and, for a brief time, the Democratic Party's Great White Hope Mark Warner dropped out of the race before it even began. At the time, rumors of a sex scandal briefly percolated, though he might've just had his hopes dashed by that notoriously terrible Times Magazine cover.

Guess what that meant! Hillary Clinton was now pretty much the "inevitable" nominee. But! "With Sen. Clinton likely to have the endorsement of most of the party liberal bigwigs, labor unions and activists, the expectation has been that one other Democrat will emerge as the anti-Hillary candidate in the presidential primaries." Another but! "Of course, politics abhors a vacuum, and someone will become the anti-Hillary candidate in the primaries. But given a lack of other Southern Democrats of Warner's stature, it is unlikely that candidate will have his potential to change the electoral map."

Also in that October (a year-and-a-half ago! Christ!), Senator Barack Obama said he'd consider a run for the presidency. Conventional wisdom was still divided on whether he was dumb enough to go through with it, but he was now the official anti-Hillary.

And in that same October the first Clinton-related OUTRAGE happened, with Elizabeth Edwards saying she'd had a happier life than Hillary Clinton, code for "better husband" and also "I am not a cuthroat ambitious bitch." At least that's how the Clintons spun it.

December 2006: Which Well-Spoken Fellows Will Decide to Lose To Hillary This Year? Obama's not-quite-campaign was the focus of much speculation. In a Tribune interview, Obama amusingly said that any match-up between him and McCain would be spun as "War hero against snot-nosed rookie." Little did he know it would be spun as "crazy old coot versus secret Muslim!"

It basically went on like that for another couple months—Clinton was still the inevitable candidate, John Edwards was someone you might have to watch out for in Iowa, and Obama was the anti-Hillary (unspoken: he'd end up like Howard Dean).

2007: Still Ridin' the Hillary Express, Next Stop The White House, Again Hillary was still inevitable, according to analyses linked by such guardians of blog conventional wisdom as Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesias. She had passionate reservoirs of support. The only people who didn't like her were the internet people who wanted Edwards or Richardson or maybe Obama (once again, shades of 2004 and Howard Dean).

Summer '07: Follow the Money! It Leads, For Some Reason, to Someone Other Than That Inevitable Gal! Then, in July of 2007, something odd happened! "Obama's money puts Clinton's 'inevitable' nomination in doubt" was how CNN put it. Obama's fundraising beat Clinton's throughout the "invisible primary" (the money race the year before any voting). BUT! "Howard Dean won the invisible primary in 2003, but was effectively finished a few weeks later after he came in third in Iowa." Silly internet candidates! Hill's inevitability was now "in doubt", but only pretend doubt.

But Obama kept raising more money, and gaining in the polls in Iowa, and then Hil "stumbled" in the October '07 debate.

Iowa: Hillary Loses Her First Thing Ever Then Obama won in Iowa and suddenly idiots were saying he was inevitable, especially since Clinton came in a miserable third place and surely Obama would go on to sweep New Hampshire.

Why Don't You Cry About It?