I knew that Warren guy was a pederast the moment I saw him. Predictably, he serves up the post-debate (or whatever that was) spin that was obviously concocted pre-debate:

For some reason, no candidate has ever asked me for campaign advice. Perhaps they don't know that I offer it for free.

It seems to me that mewling over silence cones only serves to reinforce certain negative stereotypes, and I'm not talking about the stigma of breaking gentlemenly agreements over debate rules.

I'm not sure why Barack Obama's braintrust continues to quibble about the Queensbury when there's a big, fat, slow pitch hanging over the plate.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

These rats will not self copulate, people. Granted, this theme could probably be approached with a lighter touch that affords more plausible deniability. But I'll leave those details to the specialists. I'm just a big picture kinda guy.

Tom Toles, eat yer heart out.

Extremely keen.

Much potential for memory hole mischief, though.

This week-old story flew under the radar, but apparently we now have proof that the recent oil price spike was caused in large part by mysterious parties attempting to corner the market:

A quiet data revision that has boosted by nearly 25 percent the number of oil futures contracts U.S. regulators think are held by speculators is raising eyebrows in the energy trading community...

..."There may have been multiple 'positions' which were reclassified ... but they all appear to have been held by just one trader, and this was a very special trader, with an enormous concentration of positions in crude oil amounting to perhaps 460 million barrels, and not much interest in anything else," noted John Kemp of RBS Sempra Commodities.

Next time you fill up your tank, remember to thank "former" McCain economic honcho Phil Gramm for deregulating the commodities market. Just don't whine about it.

Heh heh. Heh heh heh. Ha ha ha ha. HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

T. Boone Pickens was waiting for John McCain in a small conference room at the Aspen Meadows Resort...

“You’re looking trim," Pickens told McCain as they engaged in some small talk. Pickens mentioned yesterday’s Census article in a newspaper about how non-Hispanic whites would no longer be the majority in 2042.

“You and I won't have to worry about that,” Pickens said jokingly, referring to the age of the two men.

Said jokingly. This, folks, is what they refer in journalism school as style, "helping capture the excitement and tension you are trying to convey."

A reporter tried to ask McCain about a new anti-Obama book, to which McCain responded cryptically "gotta keep your sense of humor."

McCain staffer Brooke Buchanan then stretched her arms in front of her boss, saying “we’re not doing that,” and escorted reporters to the door.

Hey, have you seen that Obama body surfing video? Teh funny. I tell you.

Upsidaisy: Funnnnny. Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, has been personally arrested at the Capitol for carrying an illegal weapon

Standing at a police checkpoint between Tbilisi and the city of Gori, Vakhtang Golinjashvili said that his village had been attacked by Russian troops. The checkpoint was surrounded by a throng of Georgian refugees, most of them walking toward Tbilisi with sacks of their belongings. “The only way out is the help of America,” Golinjashvili said.

Standing next to him, Iveri Nezvrishvili agreed.

"The Russians want to destroy us," he said. "The only things we can rely on are God and the Americans."

Sigh. How could one even begin to explain...

A dispatch from a correspondent, one T.F. Gumby, riding the campaign short bus (i.e., sitting around his thumb up his ass with WiFi on Waikiki):

McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes

HONOLULU - For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Foreign policy credentials, eh? What follows must be Pulitzer worthy, uncovering the magical transformation of a dottering old dolt who doesn't know Shiite from Shinola.

Sorry for beating a dead horse, but for those who've read Rick Perlstein's masterful Nixonland this may sound familiar:

It was all part of a continuing effort by the McCain campaign to seize on the events overseas to appear presidential and in command on the world stage while at the same time not appearing to be political. At several points today, he emphasized that he had visited Georgia many times and was familiar with the players.

He also said he was sending Mr. Lieberman, of Connecticut, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, to Georgia, as both stood beside him at a flag-bedecked news conference here.

I might say that violates the Logan Act (not that there's any danger of disrupting George and Condi's non-existent efforts to stop the bloodshed). But unlike the Republicans who accused George McGovern of violating said act, I won't lie and say that it applies to members of Congress.

Anyway, I don't have Perlstein's version handy, but here's Christopher Hitchens' version of how Nixon derailed the Paris peace talks and used the blood to further his political ambitions.

Lieberman does have a slight resemblance to Madame Chennault, no?

The Konservative Koffee Klatch of Obamaphobics have finally achieved nexus with the...wait for it!... 9/11 Truthers.

This surely means the end times are upon us, my friends.

Interests: Pinot Noir, leggy Baltic blondes, helping kick off pointless regional bloodbaths in exchange for large sacks of cash.

Favorite quote:

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”

- H. Kissinger

Added: This is a great backgrounder on the morass of Caucasian conflicts that Scheunemann and his ilk have worked to drag into US politics.

These yahoos operate a lot like the brass on The Wire. They know nothing and could care less about the facts on the ground, and work tirelessly to spin human tragedy into their stupid little power plays and money schemes. It's really disgusting to watch, yet darkly compelling.

I'm sure Grumpy McSame justifies this to himself with something along the lines of, "Hey, I know whose side I'm on - and it sure ain't the Russkies - so what does it matter my top adviser on the subject pimps himself out for a little coin?" And that's part of why Mr. Foreign Policy Experience hasn't a clue when it comes to the Crisis in the Caucasus.

I do feel for the Georgians, who got bupkis for the considerable scratch they spent on high-dollar GOP call boys. Just like the Coushatta, whose former phony proponent is also ingratiating himself with the pretender to the throne.

Added: One of the most striking features of the crisis in Georgia has been the role played by John McCain...[who] became the leading international spokesman on behalf of Georgia.

Uh huh. I suppose Georgians could try filling reconnaissance balloons with Mr. Honorable's hot air, but otherwise what has it got them? Isn't McCain still a sitting senator? What legislation has he introduced to help out our bereaved brethren?

Ouch: “Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

• "Mr Saakashvilli may also have banked on support from his closest ally, US president George W Bush, whose administration is said to have given tacit support for a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in the believe that the territory could be recaptured within 48 hours."

Click here for audio commentary. Via

Beyond parody.

(Fiore cartoon)

The fuzz abides.

"I can has peace," he sez.

"Me no Bush three," says he, "He be!"

Y'all heard it wrong. dammit, Coke is the Choice of a New Generation!

Someone's internal polling must be screaming bloody murder.

(UPDATE: Jeebus, it just struck me what all this wackiness is about. McCain making his bid for Obama's VP slot. That sly dog. Brilliant.)

Blatantly. Very, very weird. Almost as weird as Harold Ford praising McCain's cheesy speech backdrop as "the color of the future."

Is this mocking contempt? A serious attempt to remake the dottering old fool image? A desperate cry for attention? All of the above?

Compare and contrast this and this.

"Hey, what's phase two?"

I'm well beyond being surprised or outraged by my president calling me a limp-wristed Nazi fetishist. But even after all these years I can't get over the militant brainlessess that passes for mainstream postmodern conservative thought. It's beyond stupidity; it's a Nietzschean abyss that's as fascinating as it is horrifying.

In the grand tradition of Saint Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost causes (or perhaps Gen. George Armstrong Custer, stupid white man), I'm going to attempt to demonstrate that Rev. Wright - and more importantly the religious tradition from which he springs - has been grievously wronged.

Rather than wishing this would all go away we should be righteously angry at the system - The Man - that generated this fiasco. Or at least understand it. Because it's probably going to happen again and again in the age of character assassination via YouTube, regardless of whether Wright is put "behind us."

And I promise - this won't be a political brief for Barack Obama.

A fanatic preacher...who had been taught to read and write, and permitted to go about preaching in the country, was at the bottom of this infernal brigandage. He was artful, impudent and vindicative, without any cause or provocation that could be assigned.

Check local listings.

Fortunately, the reverend will likely not meet the same fate as Nat X when the NCGOP attempts to divine his motives. We've come a long way, baby.

If the dummocrats didn't want us driving 87, 96.5, or 102 mph, they shudda made that clear in the law

Update: How far out of bounds is an argument to be called a fascist by the freakin' John Birch Society?

"Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales."

Stellar reasoning, Dianne. And sterling leadership.

Feinstein '08. She may be a hopeless, cowardly twit.
But at least she's not Imelda Marcos.

D'oh!

...Precisely:

There has been no shortage of litmus tests in the past: abortion, gay marriage, the flag amendment—whatever hot-button issue the G.O.P. cooks up for its next election campaign. But the torture litmus test is new, and it seems to be key for lawyers. It really is an exercise in Kool Aid drinking. If you’re prepared to hedge on whether waterboarding is torture, then you might be counted upon to do anything.

Bush Derangement Syndrome turns humble schoolmarm into coldblooded apologist for unspeakable acts:

Wesley Clark fans may be interested in this interview (warning: you'll have to fast-forward through a bunch of fundraising pleas before the interview starts) in which he says the Dems have set themselves up for a fall by focusing on troop levels and such instead of wider Middle East strategy.

This series of interviews with IR scholars who predicted most everything that's happened in Iraq is also worthwhile. Particularly interesting is the one with MIT's Steve Van Evera, who notes that the press not only failed to examine the war's faulty premises but also the cultlike figures behind it. And the public still doesn't know who's advising Dick on Iran.

I've become so inured to Republican presidential candidates talking like drunken hare krishna bag ladies that this one slipped past me when it was reported. But when I watched the video, it made my eyes cross.

Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.

Putting aside the inflammatory topic and obnoxious rhetoric, what's amazing it that anyone could get away with that logic in a non-institutionalized setting.

Sausage making:

In advance of Council Bluffs some of the hacks on the bus commiserated about their reporting strategies. A loud British reporter two seats in front expressed hope that he’d get something really real. “I hope we get some real, you know, interaction with a voter,” he gushed. Others were talking with editors via cell phone about their pre-fab article theses – Thompson as the only guy who can beat Hillary, Thompson as Reagan, Thompson the too-late candidate.

Then I watched as we actually poured out into the crowd at Bayliss Park in downtown Council Bluffs, and these same guys went from Iowan to Iowan in search of the needed quotes, literally shaking audience members like fruit trees until they coughed up the right answers. The only Thompson-can-beat-Hillary guy – actually a female wire reporter – was moving quickly, trying in the 30-odd minutes we had on the ground to get at least one or two folks to say that they were supporting Thompson for the right reasons.

“Do you think Thompson is the only guy who can beat Hillary?”

“Uh, I don’t know…”

At that the reporter frowned and quickly moved on to the next local:

“Why do you support Thompson?”

“I just think he can beat Hillary.”

Sausage:

Early State Voters Respond to Fred's Message
FRED CAN BEAT HILLARY
"Added another backer, John Craggs, 60, of Altoona: 'I just think he can beat Hillary.'" (Liz Sidoti, AP, 9/7/07)

Responding to Bob Herbert's column calling out the GOP on racism, Sen. Macaca's former mouthpiece defends St. Ronnie's infamous 'States' Rights' speech in Philadelphia, MS by noting that the Neshoba County Fairgrounds isn't actually in Philadelphia.

Item: "The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp."

Item: "Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about 'politically charged' opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, 'they had them printed out on the table in front of me.'"