There is no "I" in "team"--but there are several in this shameless Gordon Smith ad

". . . What matters is helping people, not who gets the credit?" Seriously? You're actually going to say that, Senator, in an ad that's desperately trying to give you credit?

I haven't actually been in touch with Kerry or Obama, but I think I can speak for them on this one:

Senator Smith, go campaign with your fellow Republicans, please.

(H/t to Atrios.)

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Dear Washington Post: If I promise to produce content as silly and untethered to reality as Paul Kane does, can I write for your paper too?

Anonymous: Good Morning Paul. How do you see Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore) re-election? A poll said he was trailing his opponent by 2 percent.

Paul Kane: Ah, the best sleeper Senate race in the country right now. I think this will be the race that is the equivalent to Tester-Burns from '06. These are two good candidates -- Smith spent the 1st five years of this decade voting a bit more conservative than his state's political ideology, but the past 3 years he has aggressively moved back to the middle and he's now firmly planted in the ideological sweet spot of his state, and he's adamantly opposed to the Iraq war. Jeff Merkley is the state House speaker, with lots of connections to the Democratic Party there, lots of institutional knowledge. Smith has all the money he'll ever need. I think this is going down to the wire. If the race is all about Smith and his votes in '01-'05 in favor of most Bush administration policies, then Merkley can win. If it's about how Smith has become an independent voice for Oregon, then he wins.

(Emphasis added. Silliness in the original.)

Memo to Kane: Do your homework. Oregon Democrats (with the occasional irritating exception of Ron Wyden) have never trusted Smith. Oregon Republicans suspect and fear he's a RINO. He doesn't want to be seen in public with his party's President or his party's presumptive presidential nominee (although he's the chair of the latter's Oregon election campaign and he'll certainly let either of those worthies fundraise for him).

And the Oregon independents . . . well, here's what the Independent Party of Oregon has to say about him:

"We are supporting Jeff Merkley because he is the true 'independent' in this race," said Linda Williams, state chair of the Independent Party. "Gordon Smith is very dependent – dependent on the utilities, drug companies, and other corporations for the millions of dollars he is spending on ads denying his record as a Bush Administration rubber stamp. He has voted repeatedly against campaign finance reform, including the McCain-Feingold reforms in 1997 and 2002, and has denounced voter-enacted campaign finance reforms in Oregon. He has been the Republican point-man against campaign finance reform on the TV talk shows."

Smith is an "independent" only in the sense that, with each passing day, no one's really on his side anymore. He's gradually becoming a man with a war chest, and that's about it.

Oh, yeah, and postscript to Kane: That bit about Smith being "adamantly opposed to the Iraq war?" During one long, dark night of the soul a week after the Republican were routed in the 2006 midterm elections, alone in the Senate chamber near midnight, Smith did say this:

"I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore."

But in the cold light of the following day, his staffers were already walking that one back as best they could: Did the Senator really say criminal? Well, yes, but not in the legal sense, only in the sense that it was ridiculous and absurd. Which, as an explanation, makes about as much sense as if Smith had called the war ridiculous and absurd--but only in the sense that it was criminal. Two different things, guys.

And in any case Oregon's Junior senator has managed to rise above semantics and continue his record of unflinching support for Bush and his Iraq war.

Looks like he found some more rope after all.

Is Gordon Smith really independent? Well, yes, but only in the sense that he's completely in lock-step with Republicans George Bush and John McCain.

Otherwise, no.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to work for the EPA

Submitted for your consideration:

Item one:

The Environmental Protection Agency has told its staff not to answer questions from the agency's internal watchdog, news reporters or the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, according an internal memo that an environmental group released Monday.

The June 16 memo to the staff of the EPA's enforcement division told them that if they're contacted by the EPA inspector general's office, an independent internal watchdog that monitors the agency, or by the Government Accountability Office, the investigators who work for Congress, they're to forward the call or e-mail to a designated person.

"Please do not respond to questions or make any statements," it adds. The memo sets down the same procedure, with different contact people, for queries from reporters. […]

The memo appeared as the Senate Environment and Judiciary committees are trying to get EPA to release information about its global warming policies, and after EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson declined to testify this week before the two committees.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said last week that he was instructing the EPA inspector general's office to investigate whether there was any wrongdoing in failing to cooperate with Congress.

Item two:

I'm not mad, I'm proud of you. You took your first pinch like a man and you learn two great things in your life. Look at me, never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.

Jimmy Conway, "Goodfellas"

The irony is, of course, that the EPA was created by Richard Nixon, but back then it was legit.

DOJ hiring practices: The riddle solved

I'm probably not the first person you'd expect to suggest this, but perhaps we haven't been entirely fair to Monica Goodling, Regent University graduate and former White House liaison to the Justice Department.

Yes, her critics insist that Goodling was heavily--and inappropriately, probably illegally--involved in screening DOJ applicants. And it's true that she provided a list of interview questions for future hirings that included such items as:

[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

But you can't really judge a question like that out of its context. As it turns out, Goodling wasn't trying to conduct an ideological purge of the Justice Department, doing damage to law enforcement in America that would take years to repair. She was simply researching recipes:

It would certainly solve the embarrassing "When to have Bush speak at the convention?" problem for the GOP.

And if that works, expect a joint C-SPAN/Food Network project: "Who Wants to Have the Vice President for Dinner?"

(Grateful hat tip to the eagle-eyed Doctor Beyond.)

Negative political advertising: Retail and wholesale

It now appears that, however untutored Team McCain might be on economics, geography, and the internet, they're at the cutting edge of the theory and practice of negative advertising:

In the old (retail) model, you pushed a negative ad out to voters in critical states, and then the political media covered that.

In the new (wholesale) model, you distribute a negative ad narrowly to the political media, bypassing altogether the voters, who then become familiar with the ad only after the pundits have fit it into their preferred narrative.

Case in point:

It looks as if the new McCain ad falsely attacking Obama over his canceled troop visit may not really have a lot of money behind it, suggesting that its real purpose isn't getting it before voters directly.

Rather, the real target audience may be the media -- meaning that the McCain camp's goal is largely to get the ad debated in the press and to drive the conversation that way.

Evan Tracey, who tracks media buys at the Campaign Media Intelligence Group, took a look at the McCain buys and discovered that an earlier McCain foreign policy attack ad, as well as the troop visit attack spot launched this weekend, are running in almost no battleground-state markets, with the new spot only running in Denver and Washington, D.C.

So it's more efficient and cheaper just to direct the ads at the chattering class, who apparently will make no more effort to bring critical or fact-checking skills to bear on it than their average audience member.

Honestly--could we really have a much more dysfunctional relationship between the elite political media and national politics?

I doubt it.

Vets Veto Veep Visit

It's the kind of lede that makes The Daily News stand apart:

Vice President Cheney was told to get lost by Disabled American Veterans, which had invited him to its convention next month.

And I'm afraid that the telling of the story isn't remotely sympathetic to Cheney:

Vice President Cheney's invitation to address wounded combat veterans next month has been yanked because the group felt his security demands were Draconian and unreasonable.

The veep had planned to speak to the Disabled American Veterans at 8:30 a.m. at its August convention in Las Vegas.

His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney's arrival and couldn't leave until he'd finished talking, officials confirmed.

"Word got back to us ... that this would be a prerequisite," said the veterans executive director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn't have any rest rooms. "We told them it just wasn't acceptable."

When Cheney spoke to the group in 2004, his handlers imposed the same stringent security lockdown, upsetting members, officials said.

Many of the vets are elderly and left pieces of themselves on foreign battlefields since World War II, and others were crippled by recent service in Iraq and Afghanistan. For health reasons, many can't be stuck in a room for hours.

"It was a huge imposition on our delegates," added David Autry, another Disabled American Veterans official.

Autry said vets would've had to get up "at Oh-dark-30 and try to get breakfast and showered and get their prosthetics on."

Once inside, they "could not leave the meeting room, and the bathrooms are outside," he said.

So the disabled vets objected to being treated like furniture on the set while chickenhawk Cheney explains the meaning of their sacrifice. Gee. Who'd have seen that coming?

The unforgiving minute

Spencer Ackerman makes the point that when David Broder and his ilk return again and again to the subject of Obama's "articulateness," it's code-word racism: It's talking about Obama, says Ackerman, "in a way he would never talk about a white candidate."

Well, yes, but I think there's something more revealing going on here: For Republicans, "articulateness" has become a tainted word (or else why would they use it to put the needle to Obama?).

Whatever problem Republicans had with Bill Clinton as president, it certainly wasn't that he was inarticulate. More often it was the opposite: If anything, they still rage at his Jesuitical "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" line; they roll their eyes at his reputation for droning on about policy details; they think of him as being too clever by half.

On the other hand, for the last 30 years, Republicans have been drawn to presidents who become laughable for their unreliability when it comes to putting a coherent sentence together--think not only of Bush II, but also Bush I, Reagan, and Ford. The last articulate president the Republicans put up was Richard Nixon.

That didn't work out well, I'll grant you, but at least he wasn't inarticulate.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Whine and Cheese" Edition

First the whine; the cheese will come later.

Not surprisingly, the number of political toons this week covering Obama's tour of the Middle East and Europe overwhelmed the number of toons devoted to McCain's feeble campaign events here at home. But don't expect the McCain campaign to add that to its list of things wrong with the world this week. Sadly, yet predictably, even the toon coverage is mainly interested in charting the ups and down of the candidates' relationship to the press--as opposed to what they're actually saying they'd do as president.

But what the hell. Let's get started--by dipping into Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Lane, John Trever, Jerry Holbert, Patrick Corrigan, Mike Lester, David Fitzsimmons, and Mark Streeter.

And, in a unanimous decision of the judges, the p3 Award for Conspicuous Cynicism While Saying Something Essentially True goes to Daryl Cagle.

Good news: Batocchio published the 31st edition of his Right Wing Cartoon Watch this week. It's not just for the toons--it's the more-patient-than-they-deserve debunking of them that Batocchio provides. Must-read.

Ann Telnaes considers the pain of actually getting what you asked for. (How can we not make Hulk angry when Hulk angry all the time anyway?) Oh, Ann, when will your toony goodness be available to us as embeddable links? (7/28 - link reparied. Thanks, Anonymous.)

Opus shudders at the reality of American justice.

Hey, Boit! C'mere! As the domestic economy geared back up following WWII, "the house of the future" was a recurring meme in pop culture. Here's a minor classic of the genre, "House Hunting Mice," a 1947 Looney Tunes featuring Bertie and Hubie. This is the "cheese" part of today's menu, promised above. Enjoy.

Odds are, you recognized Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices, as Hubie--but how about Bertie, the other voice? (Answer: It's Stan Freberg. Readers under 50 might need to go here.) Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," the musical theme of the cleaning robots, was a Warner Bros. staple, and musical director Carl Stalling reached for it every time he needed to convey the idea of modern technology on the verge of running amok. Ditto with the repair-robot's theme, a well-known bit of Stalling's own "Anxiety Montage," usually called up for images of whirling, fast-moving machines, but not necessarily dangerous ones.*


p3 Bonus Toon artist Jesse Springer is off the radar screens this week (vacation? parachuting behind enemy lines? broken point on the #2?). So let's pull up one from the archives--sorry to say, it works just as well now as it did 18 months ago when it was first published (click image to enlarge):




(*Hat-tip to Jerry and Todd. They know why.)

The unforgiving minute

What Steve Benen said:

In a sense, "gaffe" is overly forgiving. It implies that McCain means to say the right thing, but tends to misspeak. I don’t see it that way at all. "Gaffe" suggests McCain knows what he’s talking about, but is burdened by the occasional embarrassing verbal faux pas.

But that’s not the real story here. The important point is that McCain, most, seems hopelessly clueless and confused. That’s far more significant than the occasional "gaffe."

Minute's up.

Happy birthday to p3 "It Girl" Illeana Douglas

The descendant of Hollywood royalty sells it:

Jon Stewart: We need "more vigilante bicyclists!"

Stewart was on form during last night's Daily Show. And the muses of satire obliged, serving him up a story that has it all: black Corvette convertibles, fish heads, the Prince of Darkness, elderly pedestrians in marked crosswalks--and, of course, vigilante bicyclists roaming the streets of our nation's capital.

A p3 tip of the Bell Ghisallo helmet to DC cyclist David Bono for facing down evil incarnate. (Follow the link; you'll love the part where Novak claims he was listening to NPR when the incident occurred. That should have tipped the police off right there that he was desperately covering his ass.)

Here in the Portland area, of course, we are already quite familiar with the concept of bicyclists stopping traffic in the name of fair play, however well-thought through the attempt, as well as cycling-related incidents involving a victim sprawled across the hood and windshield of a car speeding away from the scene. But it's good to see the practice of cyclists meting out justice spreading to Washington DC, where there's so much work to be done and so little time. (Even as you read this, somewhere in DC Dick Cheney could be getting behind the wheel.)

This is the first time, and perhaps the last, that I've posted a story that had both "cycling" and "right-wing media" as topic tags. Funny old world.

Kids. What can you do with them?

(Link repaired.)

I've written before about the GOP's pod farms for growing young conservatives to create, and eventually take the place of, the likes of Rove, Atwater, Abramhoff, Reed, and Norquist when the time comes.

They were one motivated little bunch of true believers when they were the angry post-Watergate outsiders, and even more so when they could ride the Reagan-to-Gingrich wave. And of course the Bush administration has been a full-employment program for them all, right down to the most mediocre graduate of Regent University.

But now it's not as much fun to be a Republican, especially when the party is being led by an angry old guy, and the young Republicans are feeling a little . . . disappointed. Misunderstood.

Abandoned. Neglected.

Consider the case of one young Web 2.0 conservative:

[McCain's] campaign has never sent All a text message, he complains.

You have to read the whole thing. Really. Poor babies.

The GOP pardon pool

Emptywheel announces the George Bush Last-Minute Pardon Betting Pool. Who's your money on?

It's almost unfair of me to give away the ending, but, as with "Murder on the Orient Express," the answer is--everyone.

(Oops. Retroactive spoiler alert. Sorry.)

The only question is, what about the last two men out the door? One of the unspoken truths of the 2008 campaign is that, if Obama wins, the odds of Cheney and Bush ever being called to account for their high crimes are very slim; if McCain wins the odds are zero.

My original theory, assuming that Obama wins the election, was that Bush would pardon Cheney late in the morning of January 20th, then resign, and Cheney, as the new president, would pardon Bush. (It would have been Cheney's staffers' plan; 'way too complicated for Junior.)

My new theory is that Bush will pardon Cheney sometime during the final days and then simply pardon himself, as the ultimate logical extension of the Unitary Executive Theory. After all, you can't get much more unitary than a self-pardon.

Honor among Republicans

Here's a story that'll warm your heart:

Republican Senate leaders — terrified by the prospect of losing five or more seats in November — have freed their members to vote however they need to vote to get reelected, even if that means bucking the president or the party’s leadership.

On at least four votes over the past month — Medicare, housing, the GI Bill and the Farm Bill — Republican leaders haven’t even bothered whipping members to toe the party line or back President Bush’s veto threats. Instead, a GOP leadership aide says leaders have told vulnerable senators that it’s all right to “get well” with voters by siding with Democrats on anything but energy and national security.

It’s unusual for rank-and-file members to get a green light to blow off their party leaders. But these are unusual times for Republicans. They are genuinely worried they could get their clocks cleaned in November. The prevailing attitude: It is better to lose some big votes now than big races in November.

Call it the "Gordon Smith Re-election Escape Pod," since Oregon's Junior senator is miraculously on the non-Bush side of all four votes.

(Hm. Perhaps the way to bring Gordon Smith around would be a constitutional amendment shortening his term of office to six months--if he were constantly having to seek re-election, he would be forced to stay in his faux-moderate posture year-round. He wouldn't mean it, of course, but at least we'd get the votes we need out of him.

Or we could simply replace him with Merkley, which does seem a lot simpler.)

But some of these GOP Senators have been in such tight lock-step with Bush for the last eight years that their tongues might burst into flames before they could utter an "Aye" against the White House.

If nothing else, it should be interesting to watch Senate Republicans claw their way over one another to the lifeboats in the next couple of months. When even Saxby Chambliss is donning a life vest and scrambling over the railing, you know things are looking bad aboard the S.S. Bush.

July 20, 1969: "Oh boy . . . !"

Here's a clip I've been seeking for years.

Sunday afternoon toons: Special "Themeless" edition

I had to tear myself off the bicycle and come indoors for this, so let's make it good--starting with Daryl Cagle's round-up of the week's political cartoons.

p3 Picks of the Week: Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, John Darkow, Thomas Boldt, John Cole, J. D. Crowe, Mike Luckovich, and Matt Davies.

This just in: Jesse Helms (R - Dixie) is still dead.

Today marks 100 days since George Bush publicly admitted that he approved torture of GITMO prisoners as official US policy. Here's a cartoon, but don't look for a punch line.

Predictably, a lot of cartoons took a swipe at last week's infamous New Yorker cover, and average level of wit they show is probably higher--certainly no lower--than the controversial cover itself, but I don't think the whole thing deserves much more attention. You can look at some of them here if you want, but I'm not going to feature any.

Ann Telnaes reveals what it's all about. I won't miss Dick Cheney when he's finally gone, but I will miss her depictions of him. They make me laugh.

Can Opus handle the truth?

'Allo, my leetle muffin baskets of loave--eet is I! Pepe Le Pew is probably the most under-appreciated of the characters Chuck Jones created for Warner Bros. Think of it as, essentially, the "Road Runner" series slowed 'way, 'way down, with Maurice Chevalier as the coyote. Mel Blanc's gloriously fractured French alone is worth the price of admission. Zoot alors! Monumental! Une skunque de pew!

p3 Bonus Toon: Is a traditional family summer still possible with sky-high gas prices? Jesse Springer says yes! (Click to enlarge.)

Gordon Smith in three-quarter time

Gordon Smith, like most Republicans, says he's in favor of cutting taxes--but that really isn't so. They're only in favor of reducing those taxes that their big contributors and ideological bunkmates pay. (Case in point.)

As for cutting the taxes you and I pay--well, that's a different matter altogether. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, Smith assumes that taxes are the price you and I pay for their civilized society. After all, someone has to keep the money coming for things like this.

Just not any of Smith's friends.

The Democratic Party of Oregon has put together a new video responding to Gordon Smith's latest attempts to play the "tax cut" card:

Nice touch that they picture him in a tuxedo, too. Oregon's economy isn't taking the beating that some other states seem to be facing, but I don't think the power of the "out-of-touch rich guy" meme should be underestimated in this campaign.

Obama, the Middle East, and enlightenment

Regarding Obama's tour of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other points of interest in the region, Gail Collins oh-so-cleverly asks:

Why is Obama going at all? Given the constraints under which he has to operate, the chance that he’ll see something enlightening seem to be lower than the chance of being shown something misleading. (See above: McCain/marketplace.) Really, anybody he needs to talk to would be happy to pick up a phone.

Well, there are several ways to look at it, starting with the most literal:

At least as far as Iraq is concerned, seven years after the US invasion, the land-line infrastructure is still in shambles and Kuwaiti-provided cellular service hangs on the ability of hired security to protect the cellular towers scattered throughout the country. So although Collins was simply trying to be cute with her rhetorical question, "picking up a phone" isn't much of an option.

And, of course, in the next few days Obama will visit more foreign countries than Bush had been to in his entire life up to the day he took the oath of office. So even if he never makes it out of his bullet-proof HumVee, it shows an interest in (or at least an awareness of the existence of) the outside world that Junior never really managed to show.

Or, think of it this way: Perhaps Obama just thought the folks in the Middle East might enjoy the novelty of seeing someone who could be the next American president behaving like anything other than an uninformed, arrogant warmonger.

In any case, as long as she's going to keep writing willfully dumb columns like this, it hardly becomes Collins sniff that anything anyone else does has a poor chance of leading to enlightenment.

Send Karl Rove to prison

Robert Greenwald and the never-say-die folks at Brave New Films have put together this primer on the issues:

In a statement announcing the release of the video and the accompanying petition project, Greenwald writes:

All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We've never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it's a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.

I'm sympathetic--believe me, I'm sympathetic--but any sentence about making a member of the Bush Mafia face justice that begins with the words "All we have to do is . . . " has a pretty starry-eyed view of the last two years of the HJC in action (and we won't bother mentioning the six years before that).

Also, let's be clear about one other thing: If the thought of letting Rove see a little time behind bars--even if it's only an hour or two, while he waits for Ted Olson to personally post his bail--pleases you because it sends a message to the entire Bush administration, I'm glad for you. Personally, I don't think the administration gives a crap about any message it gets sent (ask the EPA).

I think the reason for sending Karl Rove to prison for breaking the law is to send Karl Rove to prison for breaking the law.

The unforgiving minute

The good news: Labor is no longer the most expensive line item on the airlines' budget sheet.

The bad news: Fuel is now the most expensive line item on the airlines' budget sheet, and they're approaching the problem in the same way they approach every other problem--by bullying personnel and cutting corners on safety.

Tell me again why we keep underwriting this industry after every mistake they make?

Minute's up.

Drinking Liberally, 7pm tonight at Madison's Grill

The Portland DL chapter has its regular meeting at Madison's Grill, at SE 11th and Madison (map), tonight at 7pm.

(DL meets the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month.)

Join us tonight--with 89 days until the general election and 165 days until Bush leaves office--for drinks and political conversation.

(And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.)

Hey, maybe Bush can use one of those "Free Speech Zones" two miles away from the convention site?

It's an awkward situation for the Republicans: They're going to have to use every trick in the book, as it is, to keep morale up for the GOP national convention, at which the angry and disoriented media favorite John McCain will don the mantle of nomination because there was no one else.

Unfortunately for the convention planners, they've got this little extra problem: What to do with Mr. Twenty-Eight Percent? How do they keep Bush--who still sees no reason why he shouldn't still be worshiped and adored--from becoming the ultimate buzzkill at a convention that's already shaping up to be like a gathering of 5,000 Christian Scientists with appendicitis?

Well, for starters, they can make sure that Bush and McCain are never photographed together at the convention, are in fact never even seen breathing the same air:

First is the question of how to give President Bush a forum as the party's two-time nominee but at the same time keep McCain at a distance from the unpopular incumbent. The answer, according to McCain aides, will be to have Bush give a speech on the first night of the convention—a Monday—and let him have the moment to himself. McCain isn't scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the convention site, until Tuesday at the earliest, after Bush leaves, which means that, at this point, the two men won't be seen with each other that week.

Okay: Avoiding Bush like the plague--check. That may help convention planners gain a little more control over the way the convention is spun in the press.

But they might still receive some extra media attention, although it's hardly the kind they're hoping for:

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September's Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party's official declaration of principles.

Ah yes. Republicans spent the spring fantasizing about a replay of the Democratic convention of 1968. But this September they may well end up re-running the Republican convention of 1992, when the price of heading off the insurgency of Pat Buchanan's "culture war" campaign was to give him time on the podium during the convention--and we all remember how that turned out. (Molly Ivins later remarked, "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German.")

Can you imagine the two nights between Bush's speech to the convention and McCain's acceptance speech being filled with fire-breathers from the GOP's base of global warming-deniers, immigrant-bashers, and champions of equal rights for blastocysts, to buy their support for the following eight weeks?

It could be a ratings dream come true for the networks, even if it's a GOP nightmare.

Larry King: Threat to planetary security?

Larry King is releasing his most recent "written-with" autobiography in time for Father's Day 2009. It's an odd marketing strategy--despite his many marriages, it's probably anybody's guess whether people associate King more with Father's Day or with Arbor Day.

All of this serves no particular purpose other than as an excuse to finally publish a Separated At Birth I've been sitting on for a while: Septaugenarian celebrity interviewer King and thirty-first century human-loathing "Futurama" news anchor Morbo:




Quake in fear, puny humans! Our invasion of Earth is set to begin on the date of your next ritual celebration of male progenitors!

(Note: Wikipedia mentions an unsourced claim that Morbo's appearance is based on the aliens in the 1957 movie Invasion of the Saucer Men. It seems more likely that "Futurama" creator Matt Groening started this rumor to head off the possibility of litigation by King.)

(Images via XMRadio.com and Puny Humans!.)

That New Yorker cover

I was going to take more time and write something lengthier, since the brouhaha the forthcoming New Yorker cover has stirred up comes from that part of the vineyard--conservatism and satire--I've worked before around here. Fortunately for me, Atrios made the point pretty well without any help from me, so I can put my time to better use. Here's his gist, although you should probably read his whole post:

It obviously was an attempt at satire, but it fails. It represents the basic stuff that you get from the Right about Obama, but it neither mocks nor exaggerates them. It's a sad state of affairs that conservatives are hard to satirize or parody because they're so insane, but that's where we are. The only context is that it's on the cover of the New Yorker and Everybody Knows That They're Good Liberals So It's Satire. But, look, whatever the merits of the New Yorker it's more "elite chattering classes of New York" than "good liberal." Not quite the same thing, even if there's some overlap.

The upper-west-side elites at the New Yorker undoubtedly assumed that cover would be taken as satire. Although if it wasn't, they probably didn't care that much. The result was a lazy, tin-eared piece of work indistinguishable from what the fear-of-an-Obama-planet folks on the right would eagerly say without a hint of irony. (Scroll down here to the quote from "Doughy Pantload" aka right-wing legacy Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online.)

Can't un-ring the bell on this one; it's out there and that's that. And frankly, even in the hands of the fear-Obama folks, it's not as bad as much of what we have heard and will continue to hear from them during the campaign, to say nothing of what will be casually piled on by the "mainstream media." So barring something amazing and unforeseen, this is the last time p3 will need to cover that cover.

Chasing the elusive demographic

Stop me if I've told you this story: Back in grad school I did a few gigs with a Mass Comm professor who had a sideline doing "interest, convenience, and necessity" surveys for radio stations. (Ah, those were the days.)

One of the gimmicks he used to market his company was that he developed his sample by pairing all the 3-digit phone prefixes in the market with final four digits drawn from a random number table. Compared to other survey companies, who pulled their sample numbers straight out of the phone directory, our phone operators blew through more not-in-service numbers, but the client wouldn't care about that; they just cared that we reached more new numbers and unlisted numbers than our competitors. New numbers and unlisted numbers, so the argument went, skewed toward the holy grail: young, mobile, professional listeners.

This morning, DailyKOS regular Meteor Blades jumps into an interesting discussion that's been brewing in the background for a few years now:

whether pollsters are undercounting Barack Obama's support by millions of voters because they are failing to survey cellphone-only users, a growing portion of the population, especially the population of young adults most likely to have only cellphones and which showed a strong preference in the primaries and caucuses for the Illinois Senator.

Reviewing a Salon.com article on the topic this morning, he concludes:

If Maslin and Brown are right, pollsters who continue to take the easy path this election year could wake up red-faced on the morning of November 5.

Some day, if I live long enough, I'll probably read an article speculating that polling results may be undersampling one candidate's supporters (Meghan McCain's?) because they aren't reaching the younger voters who get their messages via subcutaneous transponders instead of the old-style 3-D holovids everyone else has.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Gravity-Defying" Edition

(Reminder: I die shortly after the intermission at today's matinee performance of Les Misérables. With a draw like that, it's not surprising that the show is sold out. Hope you got tickets.)

So while we're waiting, let's start with Daryl Cagle's round-up of juicy political toon goodness.

p3 Picks of the Week: Nate Beeler, John Darkow, Eric Allie, Steve Sack, Thomas Boldt, and John Cole.

This report just in: Jesse Helms (R - Middle Ages) Is Still Dead. Hat tip to Mike Luckovich, Steve Benson, John Sherffius, and Jeff Darcy.

Ann Telnaes reminds us: When the monarch taps your phone, it isn't illegal. (And isn't it nice that this time, he remembered to say "Democratic," not "Democrat?")

Opus may have discovered the unified theory of gravitation and politics.

(By the way, the idea of a cartoon penguin mooning Dick Cheney as the ultimate act of energy independence in last week's Opus, which we brought you same as always here at p3--in fact, here it is again--was too hot for the Washington Post to handle. The Post's editors complained that the strip was "ethnically offensive, overly partisan, and mean-spirited." Which seems a little odd, because they run stuff like this all the time. Guess it's one of those "eye of the beholder" things.)

Inspired by the Thomas Boldt (aka TAB) toon above, and keeping with our "defying gravity" theme, here's a classic by Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, and Carl Stalling: the first-ever Warner Bros. cartoon featuring the Road Runner (Accelleratii Incredibus) and Wile E. Coyote (Carnivorous Vulgaris).

p3 Bonus Toon: And to return to our theme one last time, Jesse Springer notes the gravity-defying act Oregon's rural communities are facing. (Click to enlarge.)

Psst! Everybody hide your phone inside your civics book--Mr. McCain's coming!

John McCain, who wants to lead America's last superpower in the 21st Century, thinks he may be ready to go on the Internet by himself--before long. Right now he has his press secretary helping him get online and find the Drudge Report:

He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online […]

"They go on for me," he said. "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need."

I think this must be what it would have felt like to read in 1945 that Harry Truman was getting his advisors to place telephone calls for him, but hoped to be able to master the new technology himself soon.

So there are early adopters, secondary and tertiary adopters, laggards . . . and then there's McCain, shrewdly waiting to see if this whole Internets thing is just a passing fad like coonskin caps or rock and roll.

(In fairness to the oldest presidential candidate in history, McCain--like any political figure who makes it to his level--has lived in a bubble of controlled access for so long it's probably a miracle if he knows they aren't making vinyl LPs any longer.)

Interestingly, the rest of the McCain household seems to have caught on:

Asked which blogs he read, he said: “Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously. Everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics.”

At that point, Mrs. McCain, who had been intensely engaged with her BlackBerry, looked up and chastised her husband. “Meghan’s blog!” she said, reminding him of their daughter’s blog on his campaign Web site. “Meghan’s blog,” he said sheepishly.

Ah yes. Meghan's blog. Have I mentioned Meghan's blog?

Doctor TV tipped me off to this a couple of weeks ago, and we spent some quality email time rolling our virtual eyes over this story:

John McCain's 22-year-old daughter, Meghan, and a few friends have launched a group blog in support of John's candidacy, "McCain Blogette: Musings and Pop Culture on the Political Trail."

I love it. It reminds me of the good work Jenna and Barbara Bush did on the campaign trail for their father to help reach out to Gen Next voters and young professionals.

The good news, which we learn from the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, is that the blog is owned by Meghan McCain and is not affiliated with the official campaign. Why do we care who it's owned by? Because what that does is give Meghan and her friends a bit of breathing room and won't have to run anything by the McCain press shop.

So, not surprisingly, Meghan and Mom are a little farther along the technology curve than Dad seems to be. Perhaps they can also help him get his Internet bearings (although, hint to Meghan: it's probably a good idea not to show Dad how to check the browser history).

I too-vividly remember the campaign blog written by Romney boys (think: the Venture Brothers times 2.5), so I'm going to keep my distance from this project.

And as for the notion that Meghan's blog would be independent of, and not coordinated with, her dad's $400 million campaign for the presidency, that's just too silly to rebut.

(By the way: Does anyone actually remember "the good work Jenna and Barbara Bush did on the campaign trail for their father?" Anyone? I did some digging, and all I could find is that they took their public partying to South America where it was easier to keep them off the front page in the US.)

Reading: Bill Moyers on media consolidation

There has been a glimmer of hope on the communication technology front this week: The FCC handed observers on all sides a surprise by smacking Comcast for blocking peer-to-peer traffic, a clear victory for net neutrality.

Of course, this was also the week that the Senate approved, and Bush gleefully confirmed he will sign, the FISA reauthorization bill that will grant the telecoms retroactive immunity for crimes at the behest of the Bush administration that neither the telecoms nor Bush will admit have occurred. (The motion passed with the support of Sen. Obama, who looks like he's going to be a better campaigner than a leader.)

And behind all this is the much larger problem: the increasing consolidation of the corporate media. That's the topic of an address by Bill Moyers to the National Conference for Media Reform Conference in June.

He's not optimistic:

We must be vigilant. The fate of the cyber-commons - the future of the mobile Web and the benefits of the Internet as open architecture - is up for grabs. And the only antidote to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people at the net roots.

When Verizon tried to censor NARAL's (National Abortion Rights Action League) use of text messaging last year, it was quick action by Save the Internet that led the company to reverse its position. Those efforts also led to an FCC proceeding on this issue.

Wherever the Internet flows - on PCs, cell phones, mobile devices and, very soon, new digital television sets - we must ensure that it remains an open and nondiscriminatory medium of expression.

By 2011, the market analysts tell us, the Internet will surpass newspapers in advertising revenues. With MySpace and Dow Jones controlled by News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft determined to acquire Yahoo!, and with advertisers already telling some bloggers, "Your content is unacceptable," we could potentially lose what's now considered an unstoppable long tail of content offering abundant, new, credible and sustainable sources of news and information.

So, what will happen to news in the future, as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely and as content programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package?

Last year, the investment firm of Piper Jaffray predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it "communitainment." (Oh, George Orwell, where are you now that we need you?)

Across the media landscape, the health of our democracy is imperiled. Buffeted by gale force winds of technological, political and demographic forces, without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it.

Moyer's essay is going onto the Readings list on the sidebar.

From the vaults: Bush meets an actual journalist in 2004, comes up short

Huffington Post and Crooks and Liars have rediscovered the 2004 story of Irish journalist Carole Coleman learning, the hard way, that Bush the Sun King must not be treated like other political figures. Not surprisingly, the interview was never broadcast on American television.

p3 had the story almost three years ago, although I've had to update some of the links.

One of the things about the interview that struck me at the time was not simply the bullying arrogance that Bush displayed, but that the interview made clear just how little actual brainpower was lighting up his remarks. Bush complained that Coleman interrupted his answers, but his answers so resembled memorized sentences strung together like beads on a wire that it really is difficult to tell when an answer is finished. They didn't go anywhere, so there was no way to tell when Bush thought he'd gotten somewhere.

Should the interview (and Coleman's book, in which the story is retold) be required on every journalism school syllabus, as C&L suggests? It couldn't hurt, although at best that might only help solve the problem ten or fifteen years down the road. It won't address the more urgent problem that the Washington press corps we have right now has for years been unwilling or afraid to do their job and ask the hard questions, Coleman-style.

Fourth Amendment: 1791 - 2008

The Fourth Amendment, once-proud embodiment of a seven-century tradition of legal rights for the accused, was found dead yesterday on the floor of the US Senate after a long illness. It was 216.

The Fourth Amendment was one of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, originally introduced by James Madison. Of that original ten, most are on life support or in hospice care; only the Second and Tenth have shown any signs of life in the last eight years.

Attempts by Democratic Senators to resuscitate the Amendment at the scene were complicated by the actions of Senator Barack Obama, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who stood on the victim's windpipe while friends struggled to perform CPR. The victim was pronounced dead at 2:47pm, Eastern time.

In lieu of flowers, friends of the deceased are asked to make a donation to the Fourth Amendment's favorite cause.

Gaming the ballot initiative process: It's all about the timing

The good news, I suppose you'd have to say, is that with the tightening of Oregon laws governing the collection of signatures for ballot initiatives, the company that makes its money harvesting signatures for conservative measures has stopped cheating like a bandit.

The bad news is that the new law only applies to signature sheets dated after January 1, 2008, so that signature sheets dated before that--rife with indications of tricks like "writing circles" (where a small group of people complete a large number of signature sheets) and the use of carbon paper to copy single signatures onto sheets for several initiatives--are still legally included among those submitted to the Secretary of State to get these measures on the ballot.

"We have not seen any examples of the law being broken at the time these signatures were gathered," said Don Hamilton, a Bradbury spokesman. "If these practices were used today, they would be illegal and (the sponsors) would be subject to criminal sanctions. If you follow the law, there's nothing for us to do."

Nine of the 10 initiatives that appear to have qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot were sponsored by three veteran conservative activists: Bill Sizemore, Russ Walker and Kevin Mannix. Aware of the new law's more stringent requirements and its effective date, they rushed to gather voter signatures on petitions before Jan. 1.

About two weeks ago, representatives of Our Oregon, a labor-backed activist group, and several labor unions, met with Bradbury to show him the results of their research into the conservative signature-gathering operation. Hamilton said Bradbury agreed that the evidence showed the use of practices, such as the changing of dates on signature sheets, that are now outlawed, but that they all occurred before Jan. 1.

(Emphasis added.)

The problem is that the new law kicked in only midway through a signature-gathering process that has become a year-round business for conservative signature company Democracy Direct, headed by the unfortunately-named Tim Trickey.

There is none of that practice in anything gathered after the first of the year," he said.

Trickey said if dates were changed on signature sheets that was the fault of the initiative circulator and was not noticed by his company. He also denied using writing circles or other methods to forge voter signatures on initiative petitions.

OPB reports that Secretary of State Bradbury has a press conference on the subject scheduled for later today, and in any case the signature-counting process will continue until August 2, but all indications are that he's going to say there's nothing to be done, absent evidence of fraud apart from the matter of the January 1 law.

Ironically, the slate of ballot initiatives seeking signatures for November referral to the voters are almost all creations of the state's conservative Republican operation, currently out of power because its ideas are so unpopular with Oregon voters. Still, history has taught Oregon Republicans that it's far easier to game the initiative process than the legislative process.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

What's your motivation? Dude, you're dead. That's your motivation.

I remember, when I first started working with André's company, I couldn't get over the way the actors would hug when they greeted people. "Now I'm really in the theater," I thought.

Wallace Shawn, My Dinner with André

In my own case I discovered I was really in the theater when my colleagues invited me to drop dead.

After decades away from the stage (reviewers said my high school turn in "You Can't Take It With You" was "tenacious" and "unhampered"), this Sunday the 13th I am once again treading the boards. Kind of.

If we understand "treading the boards" to mean that I'll be "sprawling lifelessly on the boards."

Still, "roar of the greasepaint" and all that.

The Broadway Rose Theatre Company has kicked off its seventeenth season with Les Misérables, (which, by the way, The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, and Willamette Week all loved, and for which tickets -- including this Sunday's never-to-be-forgotten performance--are still available)

My part -- if I may be modest about this -- is quite simply the linchpin of the whole story. I play one of the dead bodies in Act II, sprawled at the base of the barricade -- a huge set-piece on the turntable that spans the stage -- during the 1832 student uprising in Paris.

Playing dead for the afternoon is one of the perks of serving on the BRTC board of directors. (There's no truth to the rumor that, if my performance goes well, they'll look into casting some of us permanently. That's just jealousy speaking.)

I have two moments on stage: The turntable shows first the heroic students and their allies as they sing inspiring, yet depressing, songs of social injustice and unrequited love. Then it turns to reveal me lying there, dead as a flounder and definitely on the wrong side of the barricade. Then back to the students, for another hearty song of struggle and self-sacrifice -- then back to me and my mates, roadkill on the highway of French history. One more turn, moving me out of the audience's view, but not their hearts, and I'm done.

My role is obviously essential; its purpose is to help the audience feel the reality of death in the story without causing them the discomfort of, you know, actually seeing it happen to any of the characters they might care about.

In this respect my role stands (so to speak) in the grand performance tradition extending back to the crewmen in the red shirts who never make it back to the ship from a "Star Trek" landing team. I shall attempt to do it justice.

One of the chief reasons I came out of retirement for this part is that the show is directed by Rob Hunt, who starred as Javert on Broadway and in the national tour. He's a man of enormous talent, who's lived and breathed "Les Mis" for years. I let the reader imagine the moment when I humbly asked the veteran for advice--how to make my performance count for everything it can in this powerful story, spanning several decades with over 30 singing parts? Imagine him taking me aside for a moment, grabbing me with both hands and squaring my shoulders, gazing levelly into my eyes: "It's a long second act. Don't forget to go to the bathroom at intermission," he said.

And then the moment was over. I may never have another one like it.

(Images via Wikipedia and Think Geek.)

Pre-9/11 thinking

Discovered last night while looking for something else:

Usurpers always choose troubled times to enact, in the atmosphere of general panic, laws which the public would never adopt when passions were cool. One of the surest ways of distinguishing the work of a law giver from that of a tyrant is to note the moment he chooses to give a people its constitution.

Jean Jacqu Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Holiday Hangover" Edition

(Updated below.)

You've seen the fireworks, you've been to the cookout, you've gone for the family drive. So all we have to do to wrap up this holiday weekend is do the toon review, starting with Daryl Cagle's round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Lane, Pat Bagley, Mike Thompson, Jeff Stahler, Jeff Koterba, and Henry Payne.

The p3 Citation for Literary Merit goes to Steve Breen.

A p3 Hometown Fist Bump to Portland's own Jack Ohman, seen here taking things to their inevitable extreme.

Update: Politicker.com observes the passing of Jesse Helms (R - Jim Crow) by recalling the long-time battle between Helms and the late Doug Marlette, political cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer, who never missed the chance to point out what a disgrace Helms was to citizens of the Tarheel State born after the fifteenth century.

Ann Telnaes captures the essence of the Fifth of July hangover.

Opus continues to explore the oil grief cycle. (Hint: It's not just solar-powered; it's also moon-powered.)

The Comics Curmudgeon spots notices a disturbing trend this weekend.

The first Ren & Stimpy cartoon I ever saw--stumbled across it by accident, really--was "Space Madness." I was hooked.

Creator John Kricfalusi, who voiced Ren Höek in the original six episodes, said he created the voice as a cross between Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre (especially from "Maltese Falcon").


p3 Bonus Toon: Oregon's newest Obamamaniac gets a welcome from Jesse Springer (click to enlarge):

Keith Jarrett, solo performance, 1984

The unforgiving minute

Thought for the day:

Having Dana Rohrbacher tell you that you're bad for the Republican Party's image is like being called ugly by a frog.

Minute's up.

Jesse Helms dies; America plans fireworks celebration on the National Mall tonight

A shocked America will mark the passing today of racist, bigot, anti-communist dinosaur and iconic Southern Republican Jesse Helms, in the most fitting way it could think of:



(Photo via Wikimedia Commons.)

Treasonable document

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the
thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

The unforgiving minute

Karl Rove frets in today's WSJ: "Can Barack Buy the Presidency?"

You can appreciate his alarm over such a precedent: In Rove's America, the presidency is not to be purchased like a candy bar at a 7-Eleven.

It's to be stolen, like a candy bar at a 7-Eleven.

Minute's up.

Drinking Liberally, 7pm tonight at Madison's Grill

Join the Portland DL chapter for our regular meeting at Madison's Grill, at SE 11th and Madison (map), tonight at 7pm.

(DL meets the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of every month.)

Join us tonight--with 152 days until the general election and 227 days until Bush leaves office--for drinks and political conversation.

(And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.)

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

NPR's Liasson: Actually, it's Smith who proves that Obama's got bipartisan cred

Any hopes I had of sleeping in this morning were finished shortly after five, thanks to my clock radio, which is set to NPR. This story had me off the bed, across the room, and pounding on the "off" button with a shoe in about five seconds flat.

MSNBC's sexually-confused man-child Chris Matthews famously said of John McCain's relationship to the media, "We're his base."

Yet even Matthews, and his donut-lovin' colleagues on the Straight Talk Express who have reduced themselves to little more than groupies--really, all they need to do is start selling candles in the parking lot at his tour events--might blanch at the seven-and-a-half minute tongue-bath that FOX News regular and (inexplicably) NPR reporter Mara Liasson gave McCain this morning:

The topic: "Measuring McCain And Obama's Bipartisan Efforts."

The bottom line:

Whenever there's a bipartisan scrum of moderate Democratic and Republican senators working toward a compromise on judicial filibusters, or with other groups dealing with torture, tobacco regulation or global warming, McCain can usually be found right in the middle. The same is not true for Obama.

McCain's accomplishments?

McCain has made a career of taking heat from his own party for working with liberal Democrats, such as Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform or Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on immigration. These bipartisan efforts are both the source of his maverick reputation and the cause of his ongoing problems with his own party's conservative base.

Missing in action from this list of McCain's achievements?


Liasson's report doesn't mention any of the following:

• McCain's campaign is apparently in violation of public campaign financing law, and has been busily exploiting loopholes in his own campaign finance reform bill.


• McCain announced he wouldn't even vote for the immigration bill he once cosponsored with Kennedy.


• And McCain has expediently reversed himself on a long list of other issues that Liasson's report didn't mention.
  

But what about Obama?

Comparing Obama and McCain on bipartisanship is a little like comparing apples and oranges. Obama has only been in the Senate for three years, and he voted with his party 97 percent of the time.

McCain — who has been in the Senate since 1987 — voted with his party just 83 percent of the time.

If the criteria are who has stuck his neck out on difficult issues and paid the price for doing it, McCain has done it over Obama.

So what is the question?

So the question is, would it be easier for a President Obama to act on his post-partisan instincts, or for a President McCain to re-enact his Senate record of working across the aisle?

Speaking of bipartisanship:

This was the second-longest piece on Morning Edition this morning (it ran about 15 seconds shorter than "Rival Actors Sparked Fatal 'Shakespeare Riots'"). And yet there apparently wasn't time for a single Democrat, liberal, progressive, independent, or nonpartisan to be interviewed for the story.

Nope. Not one. On the subject of who has the more bipartisan record, McCain or Obama, the quoted sources, in order, were:

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R - SC)


• Sen. Tom Coburn (R - OK)


• Sen. Gordon Smith (R - OR)


• Mike Murphy, identified as "former McCain strategist"


• Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, identified as having "written extensively on partisan gridlock in Washington"

Ornstein, according to an unusually tortured explanation in Wikipedia, "is considered within [conservative-leaning] AEI to be a bipartisan centrist"--whatever that means. Evidently that wobbly credential, plus the fact that Al Franken used to like sparring with Ornstein on his Air America show, means he was injected into the story to provide token "balance."

And surprise, surprise! The consensus--the unanimous decision, actually--among these "experts" was that McCain has the bipartisan credentials, not Obama. McCain has a track record (never mind that he's reversed course on most of it); at best, Obama has only his professed good intentions. In fact, in a clever two-rail shot, several of the Republican sources, echoed by Liasson herself, helpfully pointed out that it's not entirely Obama's fault that he hasn't developed a long record of bipartisan achievement--since he has so little experience.

And yes, you read that right: Gordon Smith, Oregon's own Junior senator, got a great big PR freebie: the story included almost the full length of Smith's widely-derided "Truth" ad from last month, in which Smith, chair of the McCain campaign in Oregon, made a desperately dive for Obama's coattails to save his own political skin. Liasson's story brazenly portrayed Smith's ad as one of the few bits of evidence that Obama has a record of bipartisan achievement, rather than vice-versa.

No mention was made of the fact that Obama immediately denounced the substance of Smith's embarrassing ad. Such a detail would confuse the point of the narrative, which is that Smith's ad--created to gin up evidence of a bipartisan track record for Smith--is actually one of the (supposedly scant) indicators of Obama's bipartisan intentions. (Not his bipartisan record, keep in mind, since an assumption of the story is that Obama has no such record; at most, he only has intentions.)

(Memo to the Washington press corps: When an individual candidate like Smith or McCain desperately takes sides against his own record to dodge political fire, this does not count as an example of "bipartisanship." Please make a note.)

You couldn't have gotten a more thorough trashing of Obama, or a more shameless promotion of McCain, if the assignment had been handed to a FOX News operative.

Oh yeah. That's right. Never mind.

NPR should promote Liasson to Special Correspondent at once and consign her to covering supermarket openings for eternity, or else send her back to FOX full-time in exchange for two food critics to be named later. Whatever value she might once have had as a journalist (rather than a partisan shill) is long gone.

And, as a sad little side-light: The next time the right-wing noise machine finds it necessary (or simply fun) to pound on NPR for its so-called liberal tilt, shameless mash notes to the right like this won't buy them an drop of mercy. Which makes you wonder why NPR bothers to try.