Breaking News???

This is why I have such a difficult time looking my journalism students in the eye when they ask about what their career is likely to be like ...

p.s. I've had the occasional oral encounter, and while many of them have been very nice, I don't think I'd call any of them "fateful" ...

breaking news, hillary was home

Just caught a special report on abcnews.com. Seems Hillary was home when Bill Clinton stained the blue dresss.


And I really get a kick out of the byline: By BRIAN ROSS and the ABC NEWS INVESTIGATIVE UNIT (see it at http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4482242&page=1)


Said investigation involved:


1. sifting through documents released by the National Archives to anyone who cared;

2. zeroing in on the most salacious parts.

Yea, it's nearly as much work as unveiling the Pentagon Papers. But no doubt technology helped; the docs probably came on e-mail or as a .pdf file, so you just search for 'oral.'

No doubt it makes the likes of Woodward and Bernstein proud.

this is what McCain gets for listening to Bush

What's that country lyric about not knowing the difference 'tween Iraq and Iran'?

John McCain, GOP candidate for president, traveled to the Middle East yesterday and showed once again he has no more clue than the current administration.

McCain said several times during his visit that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. Oops. Iran is a Shiite theocracy that the U.S.. claims has been training Shiite extremists in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a Sunni insurgent group that blows up lots of people, but particularly Shiites. The two groups don't like each other.

You'd think McCain, who has based his presidential run on being the best man to handle the war in Iraq, would know that.

Yet asked about it, McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

Senator ol' Joe Liebermann, who was with him, then whispered in McCain's ear. "I’m sorry,” Mr. McCain said, “the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”

Guess we can only hope that Joe is in bed with McCain when that 2 a.m. call comes and he has to decide whether to bomb Iran or Iraq to get Shiite terrorists or Sunni terrorists.

Of course, confusion has been the Bush policy thus far in Iraq, and McCain's position is to continue Bush's policy. And of course, "Al Queda in Iraq" is no more the Al Queda group that attacked us than Indiana boys who listen to rap and wear red bandannas are really insane crips.

But Bush and Cheney have consistently told us this war is us and Iraq vs. Iran and Osama. I think down deep they know better. But they have McCain convinced.

Is confusion a policy we want to continue for the 100 years McCain says we'll stay in Iraq?

I see the China Olympics are underway...

and really, should the world be surprised that China's demonstration sports include Tibetan-protester bashing and the security-police biathlon (they run to where protesters are gathered, then shoot guns)?

The tank-catching event will be held in Tiananmen Square this summer.

The Dalai Lama has said he'll have to step down if protesters get violence, but really, he had to say it. Truth is, no one would have listened to Ghandi until it was clear his nonviolence was the only alternative to a lot of very real anti-British violence.

Besides, he was picked to be Lama when he was 2 because he was someone's reincarnation. How exactly do you resign from that?

Also this summer in China, the smog-choked runner's marathon; the pollution-choked waterway individual medley; and a special gymnastics event in which the little girls on the US team will challenge Chinese children in making toys for Mattel.

There's some buzz about a boycott, which would be pointless. The world decided the Olympics should be held in a Communist dictatorship which values basic freedoms almost as much as the air we're now worried the athletes have to breath. Is any of this really a surprise?

Just because you have 'free trade' with it doesn't mean a country is free.

Sometimes the Bear eats you

Here's what no one's said about the Bear Stearns sweet deal:

Last Friday, thousands or millions of everyday investors, people counting on 401(k)s and IRAs for their future, owned shares of Bear still worth more than $30.

If JP Morgan had decided Monday to try a buyout, it would have had to go to the market, and those folks might have gotten, oh, $27, $25, $21 -- something.

Instead, the Fed and JPM cut a deal over a weekend and decide the shares will be worth just $2. That adds up to a couple hundred million for those shareholders. Bear Stearns' building alone is worth much more than that.

Is this the way the market is supposed to work? Because if it is, we shouldn't put a dime into stocks, because the Fed can decide to write your stocks off tomorrow and hand the company you own to someone else for pennies on the dollar.

Simply amazing. The government didn't act this fast to bailout Katrina victims.

The Middle Class Need Not Apply

From the AP:

After days of denials that it had liquidity problems, Bear was forced into a JPMorgan-led, government-backed bailout on Friday. The arrangement, the first of its kind since the 1930s, resulted in Bear getting a 28-day loan from JPMorgan with the government's guarantee that JPMorgan would not suffer any losses on the deal.

And the government wants me to worry about gay marriage?

Me Too!

I can't help it. I wanna bag on Elliot, too. It's just too easy.

Actually, we're OK with married men hiring hookers. That Repub in Louisana did that and he's still on the public's payroll.

We're not OK with:

- Laziness. Jesus, take a lesson from organized crime; USE CASH! Is it that hard to do?

- Unsafe sex. THAT was the thing that was so emotionally disturbing.

The real hero here?

Kristin.

An 18-year-old hooker was ready to tell the Governor of New York, "Look, you either wear a condom, or take your hardon and walk."

Prosecute her? Hell no! Kristin for President, I say. She'll have the same background, ethics and do the same thing as McCain, but at least she'll be nicer to look at.

A lazy man's guide to political scandal

Ah, Eliot. I'll let Wall Street and Capitol Hill celebrate your downfall and do the moralizing -- as if high-priced pros don't find lots of work from those two centers of power.

No, what I may mind most is your laziness.

You wanted to be governor of New York. You might have been president. You couldn't just go out and find a lady to supplement your marital bliss?

You're a celebrity, cavorting in New York and Washington, with plenty of cash to lay down for meals, plush hotel rooms and assorted other forms of fun, You could get millions of people to vote for yo. But you couldn't close the deal in a Westside singles bar? Nothing steamy in the Georgetown night? You couldn't just get a girlfriend?

We could debate whether that's morally superior, of course. But American political life is full of politicians who've done quite well despite having girlfriends as well as wives. Yes, you might eventually have to choose between them -- Clinton chose Hill, Newt dumped two wives for girlfriends, McCain dumped one -- for the sake of a campaign.

But that's like shampoo. Rinse, cycle, and then repeat. It doesn't end your career. And then you can get another. We've outgrown Gary Hart. Heck, Rudy Giuliani left his wife in the New York mayoral mansion to publicly date his mistress, and he was a serious candidate for president. As a Republican.

But hookers? Nah. Sure, Charley Sheen can still get a TV show. Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Hagget can still pack churches. But you're not an actor or an evangelical preacher; you're a moralistic politician.

So I suppose it's OK to celebrate your downfall.

The Race Card and Political Suicide

I'd expected someone to eventually try to smear Obama with the "affirmative action" charge; i.e., as the latest Clinton gunslinger says, he got where he got because of his race. (The laughter you hear is that of every African-American person in the U.S.; blacks in the U.S. get to where they are in spite of their race, not because of it. If Obama were white, he'd be the nominee now.)

What I didn't expect is for Hillary to be the one to sling this particular bit of mud. And I'm curious as to how Hillary expects to win the general election while alienating one of the largest voting blocks that has stuck by the Democratic party in times good and bad. Maybe she figures that demonizing minorities of all stripes - illegal immigrants, gay people, even strong women - has worked for Republicans, so it might work for her. It's as though she's forgotten that there's already a Republican in the race.

Never underestimate the power of a Democrat to self-destruct. Or spend tens of thousands on hookers. Or gay masseusses. Or hit on underage males. No, wait, those are Republicans ...

Democrats masters at losing battles

Leave it to my Democrats to find new and novel ways to lose a presidential election.

Here's the worst: The convention this time around was delayed until August, as a showcase for the fall campaign. But we have a deadlock, so we have months left for Hillary and Obama to tear each other to shreds while McCain stands above politics as usual.

You have McCain standing up with Bush and with a preacher who hates Catholics and Jews as much as Satan, and the Dems say nothing.

Or worse than nothing. Hillary is saying she and McCain are better on foreign policy, and Obama will no doubt respond by saying we need a maverick like him or McCain.

This should be a slam duck, with Bush's ratings in the toilet and McCain promising to continue Bush's war and his economic policies, same ol' same ol. It will take some effort to screw this up.

But it looks like we Democrats will manage.

Is Obama tough enough?

So Hillary wins the key races, but the folks over at Air America were talking this morning about how she should step aside anyway. They're shocked (shocked!) at her recent tactics; she's not playing nice.

They're missing the point of primary season.

Much as I support Obama, if he can't stand up to Hillary, how will he stand up when the voices of Rove, Coulter, Limbaugh and the rest rally behind McCain and get nasty, as they inevitably will?

And McCain may not have stood with them in the past, but this is a once-proud man who now hires a talking head to introduce him with insinuations about Obama's race and religion, then distances himself from his own introduction. The straight talk express is now the hate talk express.

Once of the best things about Hillary is her toughness. Republicans have gone after her and Bill with throngs of political hacks, legions of supposed journalists and armies of special prosecutors, and been beaten every time.

Obama's talk about a new era of cooperative politics is certainly inspirational. But can it hold up against the old politics of rip their throats out and grind them into the dirt?

Demoats lost with Gore and Kerry, who declined to fight back and lost races they should have won. We actually once nominated Walter Mondale, who slogan was "Jimmy Carter's vice president.' And then there was Michael Dukakis, who vowed to try to be nice if someone raped his wife.

Obama is being tested, and frankly, if he can't stand up to Hillary, he would lose to McCain. This is why we have primaries.

McCain's own Farrakhan

Well, it's just a few days since Louis Farrakhan endorsed Obama, Obama denounced, Clinton said he needed to renounce, and he did so there. Or something like that.

But certain GOP nominee John McCain has thus far accepted the endorsement of his own religious hate-mongering fan, a guy named John Hagee.

If you haven't heard of him, he's the evangelical spokesman for God's wrath not just against pro-choicers and gays, but Catholics. He's said, among other crazy nonsense, that Catholic school birthed Hitler's hatred toward Jews.

Folks looking for McCain to denounce Hagee include those not-so-flaming-liberals at Catholics United. But so far, McCain says he's happy to have Hagee on board, and frankly he's in a tough spot.

Catholics are critical to any victory, according to Karl Rove, among others. But so are evangelicals, and denouncing this rootin'-for-armageddon pastor would step on their toes.

Imagine the uproar if Obama had accepted Farrakhan's endorsement, and rightly so. He's said lots of crazy, hateful things, and believes those who don't side with him are bound for hell. It would cost him the Democratic nomination.

But McCain can't denounce Hagee, who's also said lots of crazy, hateful things, and believes those who don't side with him are bound for hell. GOP true believers are indeed a different bunch.