Obama's fear of Muslims

Nate Silver had fellow Baseball Prospectus author Rany Jazayerli do a kind of guest post on the subject of Mazen Asbahi's resignation from the Obama campaign. I first read about the issue when Steve Clemons screamed bloody murder about it.

Anyway it turns out Rany, unlike Steve Clemons, is Muslim, and he isn't at all pleased either:

If Obama won't stand up to the flimsiest of accusations linking someone in his campaign, however remotely and ridiculously, to terrorists, then I’m not sure what he'll stand up against. I realize this kind of feckless approach worked so well for Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, Barack, but could you act like a man for once and grow a pair? Maybe Hillary will lend you hers.

Read the whole thing.

John Edwards admits affair with Hunter

What. An. Asshole.

"Edwards made a point of telling [ABC's Bob] Woodruff that his wife's cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter."

Oh good. As long as your wife's cancer is in remission then by all means, tally ho!

As I've said before, I supported Edwards in the primaries, so there's some money I wish I could have back. What was he thinking pursuing the nomination?

I don't have much to add to this. I'm sure you can get more analysis and crowing vindication on the subject Chez Kaus.

Ana Marie Cox can't stop, won't stop

Ana Marie Cox is smooshed against the filter at the bottom of the tank for John McCain. There's just no other way one could write something this absurd about his campaign's blog comment payola scheme.

"Yeah, rewarding supporters with points for being helpful to the campaign is really desperate. And giving people pre-written talking points to disseminate? Surely a sign of ideological bankruptcy."

Those two puckishly deployed hyperlinks go to:

1) A point system for Obama campaign volunteers for making calls and hosting meetings, as an overt Obama campaign volunteer and

2) the official Obama campaign "Fight the Smears" site that provides talking points to, well, do as its name suggests.

"From what I gather, the major objection to McCain's points-for-blogging scheme is that people actually receive something of some monetary value in exchange for their hard work, whereas Obama's volunteers simply bask in the glow of their smug self-satisfaction..."

Well... YES! And it's a solid objection. Does one have to be predisposed to dislike McCain to see the tawdriness of paying people to say nice things about him on websites as if there weren't a "Country First" beach towel in it for them?

I'm not exactly outraged about this or worried that it's going to move the needle in November, but how can you read about these shenanigans and think: Oh, look at those smug Obama supporters. Not getting keychains and shit for their boosterism and thinking they're so pure!

Her bottom line: "The question is whether the McCainiacs would be doing it anyway."

Oh, man. As a Swampland commenter points out, if they were going to write the stuff anyway, why would the McCain campaign give them prizes for doing it?

She's a true believer. I think if McCain wins he could do a lot worse for a press secretary. She would never flip like Scotty 2 Hotty.

OhioPandemicFlu.gov

Let it never be said that the state of Ohio is taking the threat of pandemic flu lightly. They're running a TV ad during Reds games that pretty much says we're all gonna die and you should learn more about it at this website. Well I was intrigued.

About This Site:

Experts believe a worldwide outbreak, or pandemic, of influenza will happen someday.

When?

The exact timing is not known, but it is certain our everyday lives will drastically change during a pandemic.

What may these changes include?

These changes may include temporary closing of schools or cancellation of events, disruption of normal services such as utilities and some shortages.

What can I do?

There are things you can do now to prepare.

I'm listening.

This Web site is designed to help prepare and protect the health of Ohioans.

Just Ohioans?

Update:
Here's the ad itself, via Norb, of the GQ banner:

Mets win, Santana doesn't

Johan Santana can't be happy at having started 24 games, thrown 161 innings of sub 3.00 ERA ball, and only having 9 wins to show for it. As was said, with some disapproval I think, on SportsCenter: "Cy Young voters require wins. You can't do it with ERA."

Well he got out of a jam but Scott Schoenweis became the latest Met to ensure he wouldn't get the W for an excellent 7 innings. And I'm not saying he should win the Cy Young, necessarily, and he isn't striking fools out like he did in Minnesota, but he's still been pretty unhittable.

Fortunately David Wright closed the deal in the 9th so there was a 2-out vulture win for Aaron Heilman. And the Phillies got shut down by Chris Volstad, wasting a nice start from Cole Hamels.

Los Mets are now two games out in the division and the wild card.

Favorite fictional presidents: Windows to the soul

WSJ: McCain also reveals his favorite fictional president as Dennis Haysbert, who played President David Palmer—the first black president—on "24."

"You know, I hope that I and all Americans can be color-blind about any president," McCain said. Coincidentally, Obama selected an older white male as his favorite fictional president: Jeff Bridges in "The Contender."

A few points:

1) This is an excellent choice on Obama's part. The Contender is an underappreciated classic. I like to think that he's got an equivalent of Sam Elliott's character on his campaign, screaming about the necessity of digging up incriminating photos of John McCain with midgets or something...

2) Is it really "coincidental" that Obama's selection for favorite fictional president was an "older white male"? I mean Palmer was not the only conceivable black choice. There was Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact, Tommy "Tiny" Lister in The Fifth Element (or was that some galactic organization?)... but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head. It's not like a random grab in the pool of possible choices is likely to be non-white.

3) It was just brilliant for McCain to have gone with Palmer (both pro-diversity and a nod to his pro-torture base).

4) Jeff Bridges' President Evans was not "older" by presidential standards. He just looked like Jeff Bridges, who was 51 when the movie came out. That's much closer to Obama's age than McCain's.

Michelle Bernard: Better labeling, please

Of the non-celebrity talking heads who regularly appear on MSNBC, few get as much airtime as Michelle Bernard of the "Independent Women's Forum."

Bernard is very good at cable news, but (or so) I would say comes out with more than her share of really stupid stuff. And not necessarily random stupidity, either. At times she sounds more than a little Republican-leaning, which would fit the pattern of gross over-representation of black Republicans (in general but especially relative to black Democrats) on cable news.

Anyway it, which is to say she has been kinda bothering me but making up for it at other times for quite a while now. Tonight on the subject of imposing a windfall profits tax on ExxonMobil, which I am also against, she dropped such horrible supply-side crankery that I figured this woman must be a regular at Grover Norquist's Wednesday meetings.

So I fire up the Google, and what do you know:

Before joining IWF, Bernard had a short stint with the 2000 Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee, Inc. Prior to that time, she was a partner at the District of Columbia's Patton Boggs LLP.

Which brings me to the real problem here: It's bad enough to let anybody spout off on TV identified only by the Independent Women's Forum. Nobody knows what that is. I get uneasy when people from the National Review or the Nation do their thing, and those organizations' leanings are widely (if not universally) known. All we can infer about her is that she's an independent woman. And we all know independents are the truth tellers.

But she really doesn't sound all that independent, and the reason for that is she worked for Bush-Cheney '00 and at one of the most high profile and most Republican law firms in D.C.

There's hatred...

And then there's the sentiment Spencer Ackerman feels toward Jeffrey Goldberg. How very uncivil!

They even mention Norman Hsu

The national attention to McCain's fundraising practices may be happening at an even faster pace than I had hoped. First McClatchy, now the Washington Post has a front page story "Bundler Collects From Unlikely Sources."

Aaron Heilman likes to give up home runs

Heilman just served another one up to Jody Gerut. Three run shot, bringing the Padres to within one.

Keith Hernandez is firm but fair: "When he gets hit, it's not a double in the gap. It's not a single. It is a BOMB."

Update
Scott Schoenweis gets the one out save. Thank goodness. Also, Fernando Tatis!

Bill Clinton is very angry

I'm afraid Bill Clinton has gone round the bend. The intensity level of his interview with ABC News is off the meter. When he talks about Jim Clyburn it looks like his eyes are on fire. He even threw in a Freudian slip for good measure: "He was never my... never a Hillary supporter."

It pisses me off that he managed to keep his statesmanlike reserve during pretty much the entire Bush administration, and is now flipping out just because Team Clinton couldn't nail down a third presidential term and he lost a little face in the process. Cry me a fucking river.

Or better yet, whine loudly about it and threaten to withhold your enthusiastic support for your party's duly nominated candidate! That'll show them how devoid of hubris Bill Clinton is, and it'll help convince black people that you've been their staunch political ally at the same time!

This is a long video, but you can skip to pretty much any point at which Bill is speaking and feel really sorry for the woman interviewing him.

"It's like they take pride in being ignorant."

Oh, yes. More like this, Barack.

In unrelated news, Rachel Maddow just did an excellent job putting the "McCain has 9 houses and $520 shoes" meme on cable TV, and almost making Jay Carney's head explode in the process.

Keith runs Dana Milbank off Countdown

Good for him. I never liked that guy.

h/t Atrios

The generosity of Hess employees

As worrisome as some of the polling trends have been recently, I think there's a decent chance that, between the McCain camp's violations of campaign finance law that have already occurred, and the high likelihood of even more damaging violations coming to light, one of them might actually attract the notice of the national media and reach the level of scandal.

Today TPM has been doing work on the strange inflow of donations from Hess executives and employees after McCain's (not to be confused with Obama's) reversal on offshore drilling. Of particular interest to them are two donations of $28,500 each from a Hess-employed couple who apparently live in a rented apartment in Flushing, an area known more for its sports arenas than its concentration of high net worth individuals.

Sure, it seems so clumsy that you'd think there was no way the McCain campaign would try it. But politicians are never as circumspect as you'd think about this stuff. Remember Hillary bundler Norman Hsu and the three dozen Hill-raisers supposedly living in the same NorCal shanty?

It's not much to get excited about at this point, but I think of the campaign finance thing as a little call option or lottery ticket that may end up getting redeemed for the total implosion of John McCain's support.

Good point

The Hill's "Pundit Blog" is maybe the worst stretch of real estate in the entire blogosphere. Their three most prolific contributors are A.B. Stoddard, Armstrong Williams, and Lanny Davis, who seem to have an internal competition over who can churn out the worst copy. But today their in-house sensible liberal Bill Press makes the worthwhile observation that very few prominent Democrats saw fit to defend their presidential candidate from a string of incredibly slimy and dishonest attack ads, which is something they should probably start doing.

Brett Favre's plane just landed in Green Bay!

ESPN just broke into the baseball game to announce that Brett Favre has landed in Green Bay. He's on the ground. There was no fiery, newsworthy crash. Also, earlier on Baseball Tonight the ticker on the bottom of the screen had three categories: AL, NL, and FAVRE.

Let's hope the STL bullpen can keep the Phillies one run down. It would be nice not to have the Mets fall three back if Jason Isringhausen and co can avoid it, which they might.

Screw Michigan AND Florida

I'd really like to see the DNC ignore this plea from Obama and tell Michigan and Florida they'll get their half votes or no votes at all.

I liked Howard Dean as a candidate, but he needs to start asserting his authoritay or this jockeying for primary position is going to get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we'll be lucky to live through it.

There was really no good reason to give the delegates from those states even half votes, except that it was necessary to accelerate the official end of the primaries. Now that the party has its nominee, it's going to give total absolution? But why? It's very hard to believe the almost purely symbolic issue of delegate seating is going to weigh heavily in either state in the general.

Of course Obama's going to ask for you to seat them. But how about showing some institutional integrity? It's just a thought, but I can't see how it helps the Democratic brand to have the national party get disrespected like a substitute teacher.

Deciding what to do with the state primary calendar, including maybe just getting rid of it and having a national primary, cries out for some kind of national decision making entity. A committee perhaps. Like a Democratic National Committee. And the rules could be such that if you had a state primary when you weren't supposed to, you were SOL no matter what the eventual nominee had to say about it.

Plus, it might be a benefit for Obama politically to not get his way here. I'm all for Team Obama merging with/acquiring the Democratic Party for the purposes of the campaign, but it might be helpful to throw a contrary data point in the Stalinist-rise-to-power narrative.

If it would really hurt his November turnout in either state, I would feel differently, but I think Florida's and Michigan's Democrats will have more than enough time after the convention to get over it. And they'll have learned what it means to disrespect Howard Dean.

Bob Herbert gives it to 'em straight

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

Oh, indeed.

My but he is limber

Good. This whole argument about offshore drilling is ridiculous, so don't even let McCain use it as an issue.

Obama's basically saying to the American electorate: "Look, I've seen the polling. I realize you've been sold on this stupid idea. So fine, if it makes you happy, I promise I'll give it a serious look."

This is small potatoes. The oil companies already have plenty of relatively promising prospects that could be developed profitably at these oil prices. What's preventing them from drilling everywhere one might reasonably expect to find oil isn't regulation as much as the scarcity of rigs. More are being built, but for the forseeable future they are extremely costly. The basic ones run about $80,000/day and the more sophisticated (deep water) ones run about $400,000/day.

Here's a chart of rig dayrates going back to '05 (by which time they had already gone up a lot). You can still see the dramatic increase in the last 3 years:


That's utilization on the right axis of the graph, and you can see the red line steady around 100%. If the areas off Florida were especially promising, you could make the argument that the highest use of the rigs was being prevented by federal regulation. But the most active markets right now aren't near the US Gulf. The're in places like the Indian Ocean, offshore Brazil, the North Sea, West Africa... and of course the Middle East. That's where the really big projects are. It's not like producers are going to suddenly swarm en masse to the U.S. when the restrictions are lifted, just because it will make Bob in Toledo feel more "energy secure."

So go forth and pander, BO. Do what you gotta do. It's a completely phony issue.


Chart via Energy Current

Go ahead, George!

Just take the wily old bastard. I mean at this point are you really going to worry about appearances?