Conventional wisdom has become that Hillary won Texas and Ohio because of her 3 AM ad. The ad talked about a situation in the White House in which some kind of crisis was unfolding at 3 AM, and implied that Hillary would be a better person to answer the phone at that time of day. First of all, I don’t know how they determine that this ad, in particular, swayed a lot of voters. Second of all, if you were swayed by this ad, you are a complete moron. “I was going to vote for Barack, but then I thought about him waking up at 3 o’ clock in the morning and having to make a decision about something and I determined that Hillary would be better at doing that.” How does that make any sense? What proof have we seen that Hillary Clinton is better at solving problems in the middle of the night?

I know, the time of day wasn’t really the point. The point was that she’s met a bunch of scary Muslim leaders and therefore she’d be better at dealing with them if they decided to bomb us than Obama. I guess because they didn’t allow Obama to meet anyone from other countries when he was in the Senate, and women have traditionally received a lot of respect from Middle Eastern rulers.

My entire office building smells like shampoo right now and it’s driving me bonkers.

Today’s top story on HuffPo:

First of all, HuffPo has got a real hard-on for anti-Hilary news. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I’m an Obama supporter. I’m tired of everyone in this country hating each other, and I think it’s more likely that everyone will continue to hate each other if Hilary is elected than if Obama is elected. But I still have to call it like I see it, and the way I see it is that the media are really being dicks to Hilary for no real reason. Just look at that circled portion up there. What right does the Huffington Post have to say that “Media Reports Doom Campaign”? They try to pass it off as though they are an unbiased observer. What it should really say is, “We Doom Campaign”.

From the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — President Bush said today that despite a new intelligence report asserting that Iran stopped its development of nuclear weapons in 2003, “nothing has changed” in U.S. policy.

“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the know-how necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at a news conference Tuesday. Noting that Iran had yet to acknowledge its nuclear past, Bush said the National Intelligence Estimate released Monday only underscores the need for international diplomacy to pressure Iran to “change their ways.”

The report “makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat,” said Bush. “Somebody hid their program once, they could hide it again.”

Matt and I have had an ongoing conversation over the past 7 years in which we repeatedly declare a particular statement or action to be the straw that will finally break the camel’s back — the camel being the American public, the media, and the Bush administration. I recognize that I should no longer look with shock at anything the administration says and does. Still and all, when I heard George Bush declaring on the radio that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat because they have been proven to no longer be a threat, I did a triple-take. There are two things that I want before I die:

#1 - to find out once and for all just what in the Hell is going on with Michael Jackson, and
#2 - to see an interview with George Bush in which he is actually forced to defend himself against someone who is not afraid to be disrespectful.

oh, and:

#3 - a tiny robot pocket monkey.

Update:

From The Hill:

Congressional Democrats are capitalizing on the latest intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons development to question President Bush’s credibility amid an angry stalemate with the White House over funding government operations and the war in Iraq.

Man, political reporters are really insufferable, aren’t they? I don’t know how many Congressional Democrats really give a shit about honesty and integrity, but how cynical do you have to be to see everything in terms of who does the best job of “capitalizing” on a sad and depressing situation? I can’t even say for sure that George Bush lied about anything … I think in order to lie about something you have to understand that there is such a thing as “truth.” I just don’t see why this has anything to do with Congress or Democrats or anything besides “reality” vs. “not reality”.

From some website I’ve never heard of that was linked on the Huffington Post:

CHICAGO–As the announcement of Oprah Winfrey stumping for White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) continues to dominate political chatter, the campaign of chief rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) rolled out Tuesday the endorsement of megastar Barbra Streisand.

Streisand is being used to reclaim the political news cycle—there’s been a lot of pondering going on in print and cable over the value of celebrity endorsements in general and Winfrey in particular.

Enlisting Barbra Streisand to combat Oprah … that’s like using a cat o’ nine tails against a Howitzer. Hilary has the “totally culturally irrelevant” vote locked up, at least. If 60 year-old gay men were the only people who voted, Obama wouldn’t stand a chance.

The top article on HuffPo right now is entitled “Bush Slams ‘Hollywood Values’”. This links to an AP article entitled “Bush Attacks Hollywood Values”.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush ripped into “Hollywood values” on Monday, in a surprise attack at the entertainment industry that overwhelmingly backs his Democratic foes.

Bush’s rhetorical broadside came as he paid tribute to the new chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, noting that his parents were well regarded behind-the-scenes players in the US movie industry.

“Many people are surprised when told about the admiral’s show business roots. After all, he is humble, well-grounded and filled with common sense. Not exactly what one thinks about when they think of Hollywood values,” said Bush.

From the headlines and the first paragraph of this story, I was picturing Bush ripping up a picture of Tom Cruise and pissing on it. I’m the last person to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, but I would not describe this as a “slam.” A “good-natured jab,” perhaps. A “groan-inducing chuckle-up.” Leaving aside the obvious contradiction in Bush praising humility, grounding, and common sense, I am hard-pressed to find the story in this story.

There is, however, a story in the lack of story. This is what the media chooses to get riled up about. There are 50,000 stories of corruption lying around, waiting to be investigated, yet George Bush making an age-old derogatory remark about “Hollywood values” (read: liberal values) is the story that draws the ire of the nation’s press. Thus opening the door for a new national discussion of the effect of media on our morals which the media will both facilitate and pretend to be removed from. Meanwhile, the war machine marches on, and I still have to prove to my insurance company that I’m not predisposed to having sore throats before they’ll pay for my cough drops.

Sidney Blumenthal has a good story about the Dan Rather lawsuit today on Salon. I haven’t seen the “mainstream” coverage of this lawsuit, but I’ve heard tell that it’s being painted as sour grapes. I guess the $70 million figure is a little hard to swallow. People in America don’t like to see people with a lot of money asking for a lot more money. Which is understandable, but in this case, the money seems like it’s more of a red herring than anything. The lawsuit is about the principles of journalism. This part gets me geeked up:

In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. Moreover, Rather’s suit will seek to demonstrate that the documents used in his “60 Minutes II” piece were not inauthentic and that he and his producers acted responsibly in presenting them and the information they contained — and that that information is true. Indeed, no credible source has refuted the essential facts of the story.

Most cases of this sort are usually settled before discovery. But Rather has made plain that he is uninterested in a cash settlement. He has filed his suit precisely to be able to take depositions.

Sadly, what I want to see will probably never happen. I want Dan Rather to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that George Bush lied about his time in the national guard. Then I want George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove to be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives. I want a law passed called “The We-Told-You-So Act” which would give all of us who knew Bush was lousy from the beginning the right to call all those who voted for him up at any hour of the day and say “I told you so”. I want to require every American to take a class called Recognizing the Obvious in which they will learn to notice the sorts of contradictions in behavior and appearance that can give clues to personality, such as “born in Connecticut to wealthy family/son of former president” (is not equal to) “salt-of-the-earth Texas cowboy” or “mispronounces every other word” (does not equal) “capable of making Americans appear reasonable”. I would like to require a complete list of the administration’s mistakes hung from every government office in the country, underneath a placard reading “Never Forget.” Finally, I would like Bush to be granted work release to personally supervise the Mission to Mars program he announced in his 2004 State of the Union address, and I would like him to be the test pilot for the rocket that he will be required to engineer and build with his own two hands.

Barring that, it would at least be nice if someone would acknowledge that Dan Rather’s story was correct. The whole fake document thing always sounded incredibly fishy to me. If you’ll recall, Dan Rather used documents in his story regarding Bush’s suspension from the National Guard that were determined to be fake by right-wing bloggers because the fonts looked wonky. The assumption being that someone went to the trouble of creating a fake memo about Bush’s poor performance in the National Guard, then funneling it through the channels until it got to Dan Rather, all the while covering their trail well enough that no one knew who created the fakes or where they originally came from. I find it more likely that OJ didn’t kill his wife. I know politics is dirty, but I can’t comprehend who would be motivated to do such a thing, or why that explanation seemed more credible to most Americans than the belief that Bush is a lazy, spoiled rich kid who used his father’s influence to avoid fighting in Vietnam and then used his powers of sloth to avoid his avoidance. If we had all studied up in our Recognizing the Obvious class as required by the United States of Me, we could have saved CBS News a lot of money and trouble.

From DailyKos:

Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS “Evening News” anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather.

“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, adding that it is “pretty much accepted” that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

“I’ve never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration’s agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda.”

Further, Couric said the Bush administration botched the war effort, calling it “accepted truths” that it erred by“disbanding the Iraq military, and leaving 100,000 Sunni men feeling marginalized and angry…[and] whether there were enough boots on the ground, the feeling that we’d be welcomed as liberators and didn’t need to focus as much on security.” She added “I’d feel totally comfortable saying any of that at some point, if required, on television.”

“Katie, the country has been lied to! We’re about to go to war based on false information! What’s more, we don’t really have any plans or goals once we get there!”

“I know! It sucks!”

“You are the host of the highest-rated morning show in the country! Millions of Americans turn to you as their only source of information! You must use your power of influence to guide your fellow countrymen away from this devastating mistake!”

“Is that a requirement, or just a request?”

To be fair to Couric, I am now and always have been astonished that anyone placed confidence in George Bush or his posse, and I suspect that if you were misguided enough to believe that going to war in Iraq was a good idea than fact-based reasoning may not be your forte. Still, she could have tried. She had a pretty big soapbox. And to say that she would make her views known if “required” to is akin to a fireman refusing to save a baby from a burning building because it wasn’t specifically mentioned in his contract.

From the AP:

Democrat Barack Obama on Monday sharpened his critique of lead rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, warning against a return to “divisive, special interest politics” that had demoralized the country even before President Bush took office.

Isn’t the act of attacking your rival in and of itself divisive? Barack seems like an OK Joe, I just feel like this comment could have been taken from any candidate running for any office in any party since parties and offices and candidates were invented.

This is real.

I’m a little confused about the all-nighter the Senate pulled last night. I sure would appreciate some help from anyone out there who understands how our government works.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled a Democratic proposal ordering troop withdrawals from Iraq in a showdown that capped an all-night debate on the war.

The 52-47 vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate under Senate rules. It was a sound defeat for Democrats who say the U.S. military campaign, in its fifth year and requiring 158,000 troops, cannot tame the sectarian violence in Iraq.

What does it mean to “scuttle” a proposal? Here’s how I understand it: Democrats wanted to vote on whether or not to end the war. The Republicans did not want the Democrats to hold this vote. So they held an all-night session, which the Republicans filibustered.

A filibuster, in my understanding, is when politicians try to stop a vote from happening by talking until it … until what? Until people get bored of the topic and decide they don’t really care about it anymore?

Okay, so the Democrats decided to hold an all-night session to debate the war bill. But for some mysterious reason, that is not considered a filibuster. The filibuster happened when Republicans decided to participate in the all-night session. Is that correct? If so, then what’s the alternative? And then they tried to have a vote to stop discussing it. The vote was 52-47, with 52 people saying they should stop talking about it and vote on the bill. 60 votes are needed to pass this proposal to stop talking. They didn’t get the votes. So, are they still talking? How has anything been “scuttled?” If they are still talking, when do they stop? It seems to me that the decision that has been made is to not decide anything just yet, and that does not strike me as a loss. Yet this article refers to it as a “sound defeat.” What, exactly, has been defeated?

And regardless of context, how can a majority vote on anything ever be considered a sound defeat?