According to Stacy, McCain and Palin will be campaigning separately, so they can cover more ground.

But Obama could copy that—go to some states himself, and delegate the others to that charismatic guy he picked as a running mate . . . whatshisface, who's actually been in the Senate longer than McCain has been alive. Very dynamic speaker; not afraid to play the "I'm smarter than you, so there" card. Likes the sound of his own voice.

That guy. Joe something.

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Paul Kane at WaPo:

House and Senate Democrats have been assembling different proposals for the past few weeks after absorbing months of Republican criticism as gas prices soared. Under pressure from moderate Democrats fearful of November election losses, Pelosi took the first formal step Wednesday by unveiling a proposal that would open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling at least 100 miles offshore. If governors and state legislatures agree, drilling off each state's coast would be allowed 50 miles from shore.

Pelosi had previously suggested opening only portions of the southeastern Atlantic coast and some of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling, but ultimately offered to allow drilling off both coastlines. The eastern gulf off Florida's west coast would remain off-limits.

Under the Pelosi bill, scheduled for a vote Tuesday, the federal government would not share royalties with the states, devoting the money instead toward federal funding for renewable energy resources. Taxes on oil companies would be increased, with that revenue also going to alternative energy sources.

A separate proposal, developed by about 20 Senate Democrats and Republicans, also would move the drilling boundary to 100 miles offshore, with states given the option to set it at 50 miles. But under that plan, new Atlantic drilling would be limited to Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The Senate plan would allow no drilling in the Pacific.

In a key difference with Pelosi's bill, the Senate legislation would allow new drilling off Florida's west coast.

Some industry experts question the effect of the proposals, citing federal studies that show that more than 80 percent of known oil reserves are inside the 50-mile limit and therefore unavailable. Very little is known about oil reserves beyond 100 miles. Waters off almost the entire Pacific coast -- where all three governors oppose drilling at the 50-mile barrier -- is considered too deep for drilling 100 miles offshore.

"You would just open a door to an empty room at the end of a very long hallway," said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the oil industry. Kennedy also said that, without some sort of revenue sharing for state governments, there would be little incentive for states to approve additional drilling.

With revenue sharing, Virginia and Georgia would quickly approve offshore drilling at the 50-mile mark, Kennedy and some environmental experts predicted. The biggest target for new drilling at the 100-mile mark would be in the Georges Bank, off the coasts of Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, where cod fishing was once the dominant industry. Oil and natural gas already are extracted not far away, in Canadian waters.

The most sought-after area, however, is the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida's western coast. Drilling rigs already operate in the gulf off Houston, New Orleans and Mississippi, giving oil producers a near-certain guarantee of finding oil near Florida. It also would be less costly for producers to move their production and delivery systems to the other side of the gulf than to place new rigs in previously unexplored regions of the Atlantic or Pacific.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) has vowed to filibuster any legislation that would open the waters off Florida's western beach resorts, to protect his state's tourism industry and the military testing areas for Navy and Air Force bases in the region. "If they want to get something done, they have to deal with me," Nelson said in an interview Friday.

Republicans have been skeptical about Pelosi's proposal, because environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have endorsed it as "a chance for clean energy gains that would represent a giant step in solving our energy crisis."

Many lawmakers privately predict the energy legislation will stall in parliamentary gridlock, but Congress has its own statutory deadline to deal with by Sept. 30. At that point, the annual congressional moratorium on offshore drilling expires. President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling early this summer.

That means Pelosi has barely two weeks to forge a compromise or face the end of the moratorium. That would allow drilling within three miles off all coasts. Faced with such a predicament, Democrats are increasingly likely to add their new drilling legislation to a catchall spending bill that will fund most of the government into next year.

Such a decision would dare Bush to veto the legislation and shut down the federal government over the GOP's preferred drilling plan. But if Republicans accepted the compromise, it would lead to increased offshore oil drilling under the watch of a Democratic Congress, a concept that was unfathomable just six weeks ago.

Well, we're getting closer. I still think 50 miles is too far; IIRC half that distance will keep facilities from being visible from the beach in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

There must be some revenue-sharing with the States, or they'll have no reason to sign on.

And whatever we come up with cannot forbid drilling off of Florida's West Coast; only set strict Environmental Impact rules (which we'll probably need to follow in California: tourism is a big deal in a lot of our beach towns).

Fortunately, we know from Katrina that these facilities can take a huge amount of pounding without spilling any oil; they are better-designed these days than they ever have been.

Give up nothing, Folks: don't take ANWR off the table. Instead of a strict 50-miles rule, let states collaborate on their own strategies for mitigating environmental impact, and let them keep some of the proceeds. And make sure that the R&D being subsidized is for a healthy proportion of alcohol-based fuels such as methanol and ethanol. Finally, make sure there are incentives to build new nuclear plants: if electricity is one of our solutions, let's make more of it available, and not just with wind farms.

The main thing, O my congresscritters, is not to lock yourselves into a bad deal; after all, we may be able to get a better deal next year. Don't take any promising areas off the table in a way that subsequent congresses cannot revoke. Just get us started.

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I took you on my honeymoon; you were just what I needed.

That sounded wrong. I mean to say, I read most of Infinite Jest on a cruise in Alaska while I was recovering from an overwrought wedding. The book was very nice, though there was an awful lot of it.

Did you ever do anything about that attention-span problem? I really dug the footnotes; really.

* * *

Overheard:

A: I was in a bad way again on Friday night.

B: Are you okay?

A: I'm fine. I didn't think about The Bad Thing; I just threw up.

B: Throwing up is better than The Bad Thing.

* * *

Why didn't he just puke his guts out? This way is so . . . permanent. Nearly irreversible.

* * *

I keep finding out that circumstances push other people further than I will allow myself to be pushed. One time I was having one of those "make sure I don't do anything stupid" nights and the very same evening a friend of a friend swallowed a bottle of pills and had to get her stomach pumped.

* * *

I did discover that if you have a strong stomach, and you only barf every several years when afflicted by a bad case of influenza, there are abdominal muscles that simply don't get worked very often. No pain, no gain.

But I have concluded that it's not hormones; I think it's . . . sunspots.

It's all about . . . well, you know.

* * *

David Gates, in Newsweek:

In Wallace's last book, a story collection called Oblivion—oh, now we get it—the self-tormenting protagonist of "Good Old Neon," an ad man who has felt like a "fraud" his whole life (and who used to know one "David Wallace" when he was a kid) swallows antihistamines and drives his car into a bridge abutment. And in Wallace's commencement address to the class of 2005 at Kenyon College, he dragged in—if not exactly out of left field, certainly out of left center—"the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master . . . It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."

It will take a while for all these apparent "clues" in Wallace's work to stop pulsing like neon signs when we stumble on them. But that work will outlast the garish particulars of his death. In years to come, no one will be able to dismiss it as the symptomatic productions of a depressive head case: the dread to which he gave artistic shape is too real, too universal. True, Wallace was a head case, but in the sense that we're all head cases: encased in our skulls, and sealed off from our fellow humans, we have worlds upon worlds of teeming, unruly sensations, emotions, attitudes, opinions and-that chillingly neutral word-information. "What goes on inside," Wallace wrote in "Good Old Neon," is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at a given instant."

Yeah. But that's no excuse; it's still an astonishingly selfish thing to do.

* * *

Marion Ettinger, the Los Angeles Times.

The Salon interview.

And the infamous/illustrious Ruth Reichl published him once, in Gourmet. Which is kind of cool.

The New York Press.

* * *

One thing, though: I think God secretly forgives; it's the people left behind who may or may not be able to accomplish that.

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on what he calls the "Palin vs. Obama" contest:

Sarah Palin may indeed be president someday.

. . . [T]here is the question of how to boost the turnout in key states.

Palin has become an instant heroine with the Wal-Mart crowd in Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania and other critical states. And Wal-Marters are a lot more likely to volunteer or show up at the polls than the younger people Obama has attracted.

Right now, the best shot Obama has of winning is to get out and register 12 million or so unregistered blacks, especially in the South. But he has got to do it without anyone noticing.

Palin will have no problem signing up new voters in her group. She can go to the Mountain Dew 250 in Talladega, Ala., and pitch for votes, and no one will bat an eye.

But Obama can't go to a meeting called by Al Sharpton to get out the black vote, because if he does there will be a backlash.

He's got to do it under the radar.

I don't think anyone would mind if (1) Sharpton hadn't pulled so many dishonest maneuvers over the years, or (2) if the media weren't so far in the tank for the Big O. [Oh, hush with your dirty jokes.] That's where the "backlash" comes from; it ain't a black thing.

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Gerard has the whole story of how The Atlantic got screwed by freelance photographer Jill Greenberg during and after her McCain cover shoot.

I'm sticking it out for right now with The Atlantic; I do not believe the editors and art directors who work for a publication should "vet" their independent contractors on the basis of their politics (though they do, all the time, in the other direction—I'll let that pass—one must go along to get along, and if you cannot laugh at the "we hate Bush" jokes, I guess you must get out of the kitchen—and I'm out, all right).

If the folks at The Atlantic ever use Jill Greenberg again, however, I'm cancelling my subscription, and taking their site out of my bookmark collection.

If they keep Andrew Sullivan on among their bloggers, and/or do not take on any center-right bloggers whatsoever to balance out all of their center-left-to-left-left bloggers in the next six months, I'm cancelling. (And no disrespect is intended to their stable of weblogs; other than crazy-Ivan Sullivan, I like their crew a lot: McArdle, Coates, and Fallows, especially; but taken as a whole, the ship is . . . listing).

And if I continue to go to their website only to see that two of the five revolving "top stories" are critical about Sarah Palin—and none are critical of Democrats, and the cartoon is also anti-Palin—I'm cancelling.

I can take reading contrary points of view; in fact, I want it. I want intellectual honesty. I want challenge.

What I do not want, however, it to subsidize—with money, circ numbers for the paper version, or uniques for the online edition—a publication that wants to shade information all in one direction. (Unless that is its clear editorial mission, as with National Review, Weekly Standard—or, for that matter, The New Republic—or even, let's face it— Time or Newsweek.)

McCain's people should have been suspicious when Greenberg picked the "bad" angle on McCain that exaggerated his enlarged gland to make him look ugly.

Between egregious behavior from an Atlantic freelancer to extreme bias in interviewing and downright malevolence in editing at ABC, it hasn't been a great week for the mainstream media.

Hey, Guys? The audience is listening.

And if you've just cancelled your subscription to Us because of their slimy visual hit-job on Sarah Palin last week, the folks at People want your money: Check out the McCains on the current cover, and People's visible archives, which show clearly profiles of both the Clintons and the Reagans as cover stories—the subtext being, we aren't in this to take sides; we serve the readers rather than ourselves.

I bought a copy to have and to hold, just on general principle. I'm not a big celebrity-culture girl, but one wants to reward those who are making an honest attempt to keep their politics out of the workplace.

UPDATE: Ace is outraged!

Geez: Do you have any idea how complex an operation a high-end magazine is, Buddy? Have you any notion how many different editors, circulation bigwigs, publishers, and the like get "veto power" over a magazine cover?

Sez Acey:

Vanderleun has a different take on this than I do. He seems to know more "facts," but so what? I'm more confident in my assertions. That's all that really matters.

He puts the blame on Greenberg. I say nuts to that. There was no "betrayal" of The Atlantic here. She did what her masters wanted. She only betrayed them by letting the cat out of the bag.

Sure, Excitable Ace. The photo editor probably said, "take the out-takes home with you. Play around with P-Shop. And don't forget to blog about it."

FWIW, last month's issue featured portraits of both McCain and Obama, and McCain's was for more flattering.

We don't fight flagrant, dishonest bias with flagrant, dishonest bias of our own . . . do we? But don't mind Ace; he's experiencing "Andrew Derangement System."

On the other hand, sometimes The Lord of Reasonably Priced Spirits turns his evil powers to the cause of good: here's a collaboration between him and one of his "Morons," Lee.

Little did Jill Greenberg realize what she was unleashing upon the world—nor how much the world would love it.

UPDATE 2: Michelle suggests that they should have Googled Greenberg before using her, though that might prove impractical over the long-run: as it is, it takes a lot of time to look through all those porfolios. I could see that someone might know that this woman was a staunch Democrat, but also be happy with her shots of centrist Republicans such as Schwarzenegger, and conclude that she could handle an assignment that involved another centrist Republican.

It's my hope that no respectable magazine hires her after the way she betrayed The Atlantic. Even those who share her politics, or mainstream mags (but I repeat myself).

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Most of my gunwriter friends have been talking about this for a long time: how do we save the shooting sports? Most of the time, the answer I hear is, "introduce women to hunting and shooting." (This is one of the reasons I've written several variations on "how to pick your first gun" for women, and "how to turn your wife on to shooting" for men.)

During the Clinton Administration the outdoor industry was feeling embattled; later, the gun-grabbing mania subsided for a variety of reasons, though getting urban people of either gender into shooting has been an ongoing challenge.

But it turns out that all the outdoor industry needed for its XX-outreach was the right face:

Via Insty.

For a list of "woman-friendly" hunting and firearms courses near you, call your local chapter of the NRA—and/or check in with your state's department of fish and game for other instruction resources. (Yes: even Rhode Island has a department of fish and game; take it from the chick who used to put together Hunting's annual guide to hunting seasons for all the states—and all the Canadian provinces. Every state or province, every species. Primitive arms seasons. Bowhunting days. All fees and permits required. In eight-point type. Helvetica.

You might also consider subscribing to Women & Guns.

The site for my former employer, Petersen's Hunting, is here, but please note that it's sound-enabled.)

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I've been considering ending it with The Atlantic. Certainly, the magazine's website is cluttered with various tidbits of anti-McCain/anti-Palin propaganda (such as this uncharacteristically idiotic James Fallows post about Palin and "The Bush Doctrine").* The editors' choice of a photographer for this month's issue is a disgrace. And the continuing presence of Andrew Sullivan on their roster of bloggers is an ongoing black eye, and an insult to their readers' intelligence.

I have started to fantasize about leaving them for another print magazine, like National Geographic or Popular Mechanics. (And, yes: I must have one print magazine; web access from my bedroom can be iffy, and I don't like reading myself to sleep with a laptop, in any event.)

But then, The Atlantic is still running Christopher Hitchens, who continues to call 'em as he sees 'em.

And then there is this priceless Benjamin Schwarz piece about Christian Lander, the man behind the legendary blog Stuff White People Like.

Schwarz:

For those whose “politics” are almost entirely gestural, not only do the personal and the political insidiously entwine, so do the aesthetic and the political. The logic, born in college dining halls and now embraced by people well into adulthood, that holds that donning a colored plastic bracelet or a kaffiyeh is an act of personal and political self-definition can and does attach the same significance to snowboarding and to selecting one’s iPod playlist. When everything is “political,” of course, nothing is.

Perhaps I should give SWPL a look; I guess I've always been put off by the name, seeing the name "white" as a racial designation rather than a cultural one. But Benjamin Schwarz makes it clear that Landers is just going that final ironic mile:

LanderÂ’s most entertaining and spot-on entries dissect White PeopleÂ’s elaborate sumptuary codes, their dogged pursuit of their own care and feeding, and their efforts to define themselves and their values through their all-but-uniform taste and accessories (Sedaris/Eggers/The Daily Show/the right indie music/Obama bumper stickers/uh, The New Yorker).

So why call this group “White People”? Lander is almost certainly being mischievous. After all, dismissing something or someone as “so white” has long been a favorite put-down among those who like to view themselves as right-thinking, hierarchy-defying nonconformists—that is, White People.

My issue with these "nonconformists," of course, is that they tend to buy their politics "off the rack." Which is a fine place to get one's clothing, but not the best venue for approaching the moral or administrative issues of the day.

Currently, The Atlantic and I are in counseling, and attempting to use "active listening" techniques to improve our communication styles.

So there is hope.

* Charles Krauthammer coined the phrase "the Bush doctrine," and points out that there are four separate incarnations of it: something that Palin may or may not know, but Charlie Gibson and James Fallows apparently do not. I tend to wonder whether Fallows' iffy internet connection led to him only seeing or reading the heavily edited version of the Palin interview, in which ABC went out of its way to make her look bad. It is also worth noting that Krauthammer has, in the past, been sharply critical of Governor Palin.

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Barack and Bill had a two-hour lunch meeting this past Thursday, presumably while Obama was in New York City for the 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero with McCain; WJC expert John Harris speculates about what kind of words the Big Guy might have had for the newbie that day, including these:

Stop smoking whatever it is you are smoking.

In his cool treatment of both Clintons over the summer, and in the way he allowed expectations among Democrats and the news media to build, Obama has acted as if he were on a glide path to a relatively easy victory.

Clinton knows this attitude is delusional. Someone who grew up in Arkansas as the state — and much of the South — was growing more conservative can never forget how hard it is for Democrats to win in what for the past two generations has been a center-right country. Democrats have only won more than 50 percent in a presidential election there twice since 1944. Republicans have done it seven times.

One important thing to remember: Obama has never faced a serious race against a Republican. His important victories in Illinois and this year have all been against other Democrats in nomination battles.

Some Clinton allies say this may tend to warp his perspective about how politics works and what kind of issues and stories matter in a presidential context. Bottom line: it does not matter who is getting better coverage in The New York Times.

Read the whole thing.

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You bet your life it is."*

The left — both at home and abroad — while always prattling on about championing the little guy, seldom include the unwritten caveat to such support, specifically, provided the little guy shuts up, learns his place, and doesn’t try to crash any of our parties.

* With apologies to Tori Amos.

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From Iowahawk:

hammer hammer hammer

Heh! Poor Sarah, my unsuspecting brood sow! By the time you realize my expertly-painted dinosaur detour was a ingenious ruse, I will have you trapped out here on the Bridge to Nowhere. Then for the plunge into the ravenous pit of pumas! Hah hah hah hah!

HONNNNK HONNNNNK

What the...? Yipes!

FWWEEEEEEEEEEE....

praypraypray

...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

** plouffe **

pant.. pant... pant...

grrrfghh....

ohno...

RRROWWLROWLLL

Not the ratings! Stay away from the ratings!!

shhhrrredd shriiipppth

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:27 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm nauseous, hormonal and just feel crappy.

No, it isn't the flu; no fever. Just some kind of peri-menopausal thingie. I'm fine, but I'm taking another day off.

On the other hand, Gerard is on fire. So go read him his entire main page; lots of bloggy goodness there.

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. . . shop at Out of the Closet?

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. . . by not allowing myself to develop iPhone lust. That, plus poverty, have prevented me from getting an iPhone.

Of course, late last-possible minute adopters like me benefit directly from the struggles of the early adopters.

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Via Mikal, who says it's uncanny in its accuracy:

Pay an escort of your affectional preference subset to not
bathe for five days, cover themselves in glitter, dust, and
sunscreen, wear a skanky neon wig, dance close naked,
then say they have a lover back home at the end of the night.

Tear down your house. Put it in a truck.
Drive 10 hours in any direction. Put the house back together.

Invite everyone you meet to come over and party.
When they leave, follow them back to their homes,
drink all their booze, and break things.

Stack all your fans in one corner of the living room.
Put on your most fabulous outfit.
Turn the fans on full blast.
Dump a vacuum cleaner bag in front of them.

Buy a new set of expensive camping gear.
Break it.

Lean back in a chair until that point where youÂ’re just
about to fall over, but you catch yourself at the last
moment. Hold that position for 9 hours.

Only use the toilet in a house that is at least 3 blocks away.
Drain all the water from the toilet.
Only flush it every 3 days.
Hide all the toilet paper.

Set your house thermostat so it's 50 degrees for the first
hour of sleep and 100 degrees the rest of the night.

Cut, burn, electrocute, bruise, and sunburn various
parts of your body. Forget how you did it.
Don't go to a doctor.

"Downsize" last year's camp by adding two geodesic domes,
a new sound system, art car, and 20 newbies.

Don't sleep for 5 days.
Take a wide variety of hallucinogenic/emotion altering drugs.
Pick a fight with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

Spend a whole year rummaging through thrift stores
for the perfect, most outrageous costume.
Forget to pack it.

Shop at Wal-mart, Cost-Co, and Home Depot until your car
is completely packed with stuff.
Tell everyone that you're going to a "Leave-No-Trace" event.
Empty your car into a dumpster.

Read "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delany.
Read "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy.
Cut off the bindings, throw all the pages up in the air,
and shuffle them back together.
Reread "The City After Dhalgren" by Samuel Murphy.
Burn it. Read the ashes.
Listen to music you hate for 168 hours straight, or until
you think you are going to scream. Scream.
Realize youÂ’ll love the music for the rest of your life.

Spend 5 months planning a "theme camp" like itÂ’s the invasion of Normandy.
Spend Monday-Wednesday building the camp.
Spend Thurs-Sunday nowhere near camp because you're sick of it.

Walk around your neighborhood and knock on doors until
someone offers you cocktails and dinner.

Bust your ass for a "community."
See all the attention get focused on the drama queen crybaby.

Get so drunk you can't recognize your own house.
Walk slowly around the block for 5 hours.

Tell your boss you aren't coming to work this week but
he should "gift" you a paycheck anyway.
When he refuses accuse him of not loving the "community".

Search alleys untill you find a couch so unbelievably tacky and
nasty filthy that a state college frat house wouldn't want it.
Take a nap on the couch and sleep like you are king of the world.

Ask your most annoying neighbor to interrupt your fun several
times a day with third hand gossip about every horrible thing that's
happened in the last 24 hours. Have them wear khaki.

Go to a museum.
Find one of Salvador DaliÂ’s more disturbing but beautiful paintings. Climb inside it.

Before eating any food, drop it in a sandbox and lick a battery.

Mail $200 to the Reno casino of your choice.

Spend thousands of dollars and several months of your life
building a deeply personal art work.
Hide it in a funhouse on the edge of the city.
Hire people to come by and alternate saying "I love it" and "this sucks balls".
Blow it up.

Set up a DJ system downwind of a three alarm fire.
Play a short loop of drum'n'bass until the embers are cold.

Make a list of all the things you'll do different next year.
Never look at it.

Have a 3 a.m.soul baring conversation with a drag nun
in platforms, a crocodile, and Bugs Bunny.
Be unable to tell if you're hallucinating. Lust after Bugs Bunny.

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Thank you.

Also, please send me money, so I can keep buying pineapple-mango juice.

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That's not Bidinotto's question; it's mine. He's being much more civilized than I am; I'm still outraged, and I didn't know that behavior of the MSM could still make me this angry.

Here's what Robert actually wrote:

A clear pattern has emerged: ABC's heavy-handed editing is lifting Palin's replies to questions out of context in order to undercut their coherence and substance.

Why do I say that? Because I have now seen the same questions posed by Charlie Gibson in these various broadcasts, and repeatedly, I've seen those questions paired with different fragmentary answers by Palin. Rather than allow her to be heard in her entirety on any given question, ABC yanks a one- or two-sentence snippet as a sound bite, sometimes blatantly cutting off Palin's reply in mid-thought or even mid-sentence, as if that reply represents the essence or entirety of her position. Only by watching all these various ABC interview broadcasts -- which are being scattered over a number of its daily programs in order to boost their ratings -- can you get a fuller, in-context understanding of her responses, which are often far more nuanced than ABC's editing makes them appear.

The only time that interviewer Charlie Gibson and Palin (are shown to) engage in an exchange of any length, it's when Gibson presses Palin on the meaning of "the Bush Doctrine." It is a clear "gotcha" question, intended to make her look like a confused rookie on foreign policy. But, as an ABC analyst just pointed out on "Good Morning America," you could probably have asked that same question to 500 random people at the State or Defense Departments and gotten vacant stares or stammering replies. Palin's full response -- when shown last night on "ABC News" -- turned out to be a solid defense of the doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes in the case of imminent threats. On "Good Morning America" today, however, that answer is deleted, and in its place ABC's editors substitute a vague sentence, obviously one of those that preceded her more definitive statement. The vague sentence gives the impression of evasion and lack of knowledge; "GMA" viewers would never know that Palin had said anything more.

[UPDATE: And she was right to ask Gibson to clarify his question, because there are a number of evolving positions subsumed under what pundits call "the Bush Doctrine." Why didn't Gibson simply ask, "What do you think of the Bush foreign policy?" Because he wanted to set a trap regarding "the Bush Doctrine," knowing that if she showed any puzzlement, she'd look amateurish. It was a "gotcha" question, and everyone knows it.]

Folks, this is dirty pool. And I have a suggestion as to what to do about it.

First, I think you should write ABC News demanding a release and posting of the full transcript of the interview, rather than these out-of-context clips.

Secondly, I believe that the McCain campaign should post, on YouTube or on their website, whatever video or transcript they may have of the ABC interview. The comparison between the full interview and ABC's hatchet-job version will once again demonstrate the blatant bias of the MSM "news" outlets in their treatment of Palin.

The more the mainstream media tips its hand in its (mis)treatment of Palin, the more disgusted the average voter becomes, and the less likely he or she is to believe anything else they say. And the more likely the citizenry becomes to seek out alternative sources of information.

But after mis-quoting Palin to her face, it's a bit rich that ABC is also editing her own answers to make her sound as stupid as possible.

So why was she so reluctant to expose herself to a flagrantly hostile media? Very mysterious.

AllahP on the way Gibson distorted Palin's prayer about the Iraq war.

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I wouldn't run an attack ad against someone based on a physical handicap—particularly one that he got while being tortured in service to his country because he declined an early release from a prison in Hanoi—where he ultimately spent over five years.

This is chutzpah.

The ageism is also, as usual, quite unattractive. And yet I doubt we'll be hearing anything about that from the gun-grabbers at the AARP.

Via Malkin.

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. . . for obvious reasons:

Easter 1916

I

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

II

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

III

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

IV

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:57 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 It was my statement about 9/11; best I could do, what with yesterday being a big deadline.

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 12, 2008 11:52 AM (TpmQk)

2 I must admit I did not make that connection. I was looking at other clues, ones related to your current state of mind/mood. My apologies. Some people need diagrams and schematics.

Posted by: Darrell at September 12, 2008 02:43 PM (v6un6)

3

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 12, 2008 02:52 PM (TpmQk)

4 isn't the poem in praise, albeit mournful praise, of the IRA and its courageous dead?

Posted by: rin at September 13, 2008 11:31 AM (f8xXa)

5 It's strong emotion recollected in tranquility. "Time that, with this strange excuse, Pardoned Kipling, and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well." Not that Paul Claudel needed pardoning, in retrospect. Which is surely why Auden later excised those two stanzas from his poem. And yet, the point remains. I quoted the Yeats poem because my feelings about anything remotely smacking of nationalism are so mixed; hence, "terrible." And yet my feelings about what the American experiment--and its sister experiments, other democracies--can accomplish, at its best, are so fierce, and so positive. Thus, "beauty."

Posted by: Attila Girl at September 13, 2008 05:07 PM (TpmQk)

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(Gin-blogging; could you tell?)

I really used to think that Allah P harbored tremendous amounts of sexism—perhaps even misogyny.

Now I believe he's terribly enlightened—though perhaps a bit depressed. I think that suggests that either (1) he's been getting laid more in the past few years, and/or (2) I was even more puritanical and judgmental a few years back than I am now. [[[shudder]]]

Now, of course, I'm convinced that not only is Ragnar the most sexist creature in the Rightosphere, but he's also an asshole the likes of which I haven't seen since . . . well, since the last time I watched broadcast news.

And he's green. Seventeen or eighteen years old, tops.

* * *

Oh, yes. Assholes who happen to be male:

When I was nine years old, my brother was 11. No offense, kitten-boy, but you were horrible. (I was thinking of buying a house down the block from yours sometime in the next few years; that way, my mother and I could just check in on you and your wife from time to time and make sure you two are alright—and that the boys don't need more iTunes gift certificates, so they can buy stuff from "Scars on Broadway.")

Then I was ten, and he was 12. This did not help matters whatsoever. He decided to teach me chess, which he accomplished by showing me how the pieces moved, and imparting nearly no strategy to me. In an odd turn of events, he found it easy to beat me rather rapidly when it came to chess.

So, see? It was a win-win situation: he got to win, and I got to lose, which was almost certainly good for my soul.

Surely that gives me the moral high ground in the years to come, and if it does not--well, I'll take it by force.

Perhaps my nephews need a place where they can go to shoot pool, and have a few beers. Like the garage/bonus room in the old days in Santa Monica.

I would hate to be a bad influence, of course. But my mother and I think we should live somewhere nearby, so that we and the dog could . . . enhance your lives! And I, for one, promise not so supply your sons with weed. Unless they ask me really, really nicely. For a nominal fee, I will not tell then (too many) stories from your days as a party boy.

* * * * *

[Actually, I'm completely making this up; the mom will be moving up to east LA: Pasadena, La Canada, or something like that.]

* * *

Fortunately, I shot the television a few nights ago with my .40-caliber Glock. My husband seems testy about it, even though I invited him to "watch the idiot box go boom!"

He's been muttering under his breath. I've only been able to pick out "football," "high-definition?" "sports bars" and "fuckin' bitch."

He does seem quite angry at the forces of radical feminism that have tried to shut down debate from equity feminists over the last few decades. So angry, in fact, that he barely speaks to me any more.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 02:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Here it is, Sweetie.

We haven't come far enough, and my name ain't Sweetie.

Via Goldstein, via a comment from Darleen, via another rockin' Goldstein post:

[Sayeth Billy Jack] I mean, at least in my day when we had to pretend to take them seriously they had the good sense to go without bras and embrace that whole ‘free love’ business. Nowadays, though, it’s like, ‘Christ, don’t you bitches have an oven to clean or something…?'

I think we're right on the cusp of the Robo-Cop Revolution, wherein we're just told, "Bitches—leave." Except that it'll be Gloria Steinem saying it.

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