I've been almost totally overwhelmed with last minute Summer Semester planning - Media and Politics in the United States (PO324) starts tonight at 6pm - so blogging has really suffered these past few days.
So... some thing I missed but wish I hadn't:
+ Great catch by Joe Klein and Greg Sargent: McCain isn't nearly as clueless on foreign policy issues as he sometimes seems. He knows the truth, but he also assumes that most Americans don't, and as a result he's perfectly willing to demagogue the issue if the thinks it will help him win this fall. The problem here is that were McCain to speak about this correctly, not only would his attack on Obama fall apart, his proposed policies toward Iran would make no sense either!
+ Don't look now, but bin Laden just admitted that he doesn't much like Iran and its terrorist surrogate. Shocking, isn't it? Not all terrorist want the same thing, and some might even be working towards opposite ends!
+ Obama got 70,000+ in Portland over the weekend. Among many other things, this reinforces the point that Obama has no problem attracting white voters to his campaign. His problem isn't race, and never has been. Its sometimes gender, and oftentimes Appalachia
+ Charlie Black, McCain's most senior advisors, may not be "ashamed of anything (his) firm did," but he should be:
McCain is hoping that the resignations of "national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide" will take care of this problem, but it won't. McCain's friends in the media may not push him on this, but Obama certainly will. In fact, he already is. And as he does, things will only get worse for McCain.
+ Want another sign of just how despondent Congressional Republicans are feeling about this fall? Check out their just released agenda for 2009. Its a watered down version of all of the things they have been fighting against for the past 20 years! Yet another sign that the realignment is coming...
+ Obama is right. Iran is not the USSR. Iran poses a potential threat to the US, but we must be sure to keep proper perspective about this. And if we do that, we will see that McCain's position makes no sense. On the one hand, McCain runs around telling everyone that Iran is such a threat that we might need to go to war with them. On the other, he tells everyone that we can't sit down and talk to them, because to do so would give them a PR victory by boosting their prestige. Call me crazy, but I think claiming they are a such a threat that we must go to war boosts their prestige more than talking to them about the possibility of not going to war.
+ Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a fascinating take on what the rhetoric of the Clinton campaign tells us about the historic inability of the feminist movement to attract African American women.
+ Not to right wing nutters: McCain is not Jesus.
+ Did one of Hillary's fundraisers try to bribe 2 Supers into supporting her candidacy? Yup, looks like he did.
+ Sulu - George Takei - is getting married to his boyfriend of 21 years!
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