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Maybe it's just how the NewsHour is selling the news, but here's what we see:

First we get John McCain, opponent of the King holiday, proponent of the Confederate flag over South Carolina, pretending to be a McCain admirer.

Then we get Hillary Clinton, talking about steps backwards and how it is just as hard for her as it was for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And we want to just vomit. What dreck. (What's worse is that we know that somehow, in some way, Clinton really has a progressive racial conciousness, but she simply has a serious problem with expressing any sort of authenticity.)

And then we get a snippet of Barack Obama, who's talking not about how Dr. King was such a remarkable America (which he was), but about Dr. King's message -- and how we are or are not living up to it.

Two panderers eager to kiss a dead man's ass, and one leader who takes up the dead man's message and challenges us.

So which candidate is the most presidential here?

[No transcript or audio here, save for the discussion after.]

First he says that his religion doesn't matter. And then he argues for the establishment of religion by the state.

Oh, I'm sure he would deny that. Of course. He couldn't possibly admit what he's really saying. But when he's claiming that the amazing religious freedom that we enjoy in this country is not enough for him, that he wants more, what is he really saying? Government sponsorship of religion?

Which religion?

Who decides?

I ask you: Would you buy a used car from this guy?

Via Alas, a blog, we learn of the gender ratios of paid and volunteer staffs for the various presidential campaigns:

At The Huffington Post, Zephyr Teachout and Kelly Nuxoll provide a breakdown of presidential campaign staffs by gender. (They also provide links to an explanation of their methodology and a spreadsheet of their data)....

Just two of 15 senior Edwards staffers are women, with women filling 37 percent of the top-paid roles. Three of Obama’s 12 senior staffers are women, and women fill 45 percent of the highest-paying jobs. In fact, of all the leading candidates (the list also includes Huckabee, Richardson, Romney, and Thompson) the only candidate who did not favor male staffers was Clinton. On her campaign, eight of 14 senior staffers, 12 of the top-20 staffers, and 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers are women. Women are also much more likely to play important strategic roles in the Clinton campaign; in the other campaigns, women are more likely to work in finance and internal operations.

This may seem like petty stuff, but I think it foreshadows the gender breakdown of executive staff under a Clinton administration. As I’ve written before, gender matters. Women understand, and care about, women’s interests, which is one reason many women are supporting Clinton despite reservations about her politics.

Play of the Day: Romney's No Democrat

Well, duh! The guy is trying to be the scariest man since Himmler.

Edwards labels Clinton an Insider

Oooooh! I never saw that coming! Gotta admit, though: the MSM love a good fight (and will do what they can to spur it on).

Giuliani talks about his prostate cancer

And the issue is not whether he's healthy enough to take on this demanding office. No. It's the hook for his own health insurance plan. Thanks, AP. That's a great headline. Very informative.

Clinton, Giuliani top scary costume poll

Once again, Hillary Rodham Clinton leads in a poll. This time, she's the top choice when people are asked which major 2008 presidential candidate would make the scariest Halloween costume.

What does this mean? Is AP trying out for the writing staff of Saturday Night Live?

This one I just love:

Clinton dominates campaign news

This one we have to hand to Reuters. Nothing like the news media reporting their own behavior as news. I guess that's one way to try to boost circulation.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has dominated news coverage of the 2008 White House race, partly due to negative segments about her on conservative talk radio, according to a new study released on Monday.

At some point, someone new is going to be hired in journalism schools that is going to shake the orthodoxy up a bit. "Today a somebody said something about someone, according to something we heard somewhere, at some point." Now that's a way to hook a reader!

Giuliani blasts Clinton

Do you detect a theme here? I have yet to come across any other presidential candidate in my feed reader today. --Whoops! I'm back to yesterday!

Oh, wait. I did miss this:

Obama singer wins cheers despite protest

A Grammy-winning singer whose role in a Barack Obama campaign event riled gay activists served as master of ceremonies of a gospel concert promoting the Democratic presidential hopeful Sunday night.

I guess that is news. I'm not sure it's good news, though.

Oh, wait. I see the pattern now. Late night Sunday night is the time to post articles about Richardson, Dodd, McCain, Huckabee, Thompson, Putin -- oops.

Interesting how there are so many invisible candidates.

Ah, but at least the mainstream media are onto their own game.

When it comes to presidential politics, the news media loves front-runners. And seems to hate them, too.

Don't you feel reassured? Doesn't that just make you want to read more mainstream media manufacture?

Oh, and by the way, Ron Paul supporters, nada regarding your man in the past several days, though the "liberal" New York Times found you.

Smugness in mainstream obscurity, apparently. Morons indeed. Ha!

What's absent through all the coverage? Substance. What do the candidates actually say about healthcare? The deficit? National security? Social Security? Global warming? Energy policy? Education?

Not a whole lot. That crap is boring! Or so say the "news" editors of these mainstream outlets.

And of course we'll get a story about how we don't know much about the positions of any of the candidates.

That is what we call "news."

Good night, and good luck!

What a strange political season! I see Joe Biden on This Week this morning and say, "Yes, I think he should get the nomination." In spite of things like his support of the Credit Card Company Welfare Bill (aka bankruptcy "reform"), I could find it in myself to support him, and I think he'd be good against whichever of the Republican lightweights get the nomination.

But on Friday night, I saw John Edwards on Bill Maher, and I found myself thinking I could support him. And yet I count myself as an Edward skeptic. His email list -- which I ended up on after I wrote in support of his bloggers after a religious intolerance group attacked them -- doesn't help: for all their asks for cash, the Edwards emails don't say much about his positions behind mere sloganeering. He's supposed to be the best candidate on substantive issues, so why don't they share that in these spammy newsletters? And he's not helped by his hair. If Edwards and Romney end up the nominees, we will never have seen more meticulous hair in a presidential election. I know that's shallow of me, but how you present yourself is a big part of politics. Edwards is always so together that you wonder just how passionate he is. When he speaks, he's passionate, but then he smiles and I almost feel like I was watching a little performance. That's what I was left with on Maher.

Aside: I wish someone would give us an objective comparison of everybody's plans for healthcare reform. It's a mess, and yet all I know about the candidates is they have plans and they've been talking about them for some time. So why don't we get any coverage of what these plans are? Edwards appeals because he sees the insurance companies as part of the problem. But he doesn't appeal to me if he plans to just dump it on the backs of employers. You can't expect small businesses to just take on the weight of financing healthcare. Our economy is driven by small businesses, and many, if not most, of the larger enterprises today started as small businesses. We can't make it impossible for people to start new businesses.

Anyway....

Last week I saw Hillary Clinton on some show or another -- was it This Week? -- and she impressed me more than she has in the past. She's more relaxed now, and it really seems like she's enjoying herself. She may be a natural. But I am extremely suspicious of her political machine and her DLC ties. Still, I'd vote for her.

And then there's Barack Obama. He apparently is drawing the biggest crowds and is raising a lot of money from a lot of people -- the latter part always a good sign -- but I'm not seeing him much on TV. That could be good, because his position is as the new guy, and if you look at him every day for months on end, he won't seem so new. I appreciate his willingness to question political orthodoxy. I like is stated opposition to how politics is practiced in Washington. Even though in the past he has struck me as wishy washy, today he seems much more clear and focused now. I'd vote for him.

Oh, and let's not forget Bill Richardson. I'd vote for him, too (though I don't think he is realistically in the running any more).

What a strange world. With most politicians most times, the more they talk the more I dislike them. That is still true for the Republican candidates, who every time they speak always remind me that they are indeed worse than I thought. But for the Democrats, there's a very strong slate of candidates.

And that's why I feel it's just too late now for Al Gore to get into it. He would throw confusion into the process, and I'm not sure that would be a good thing just now. Leave the confusion to the Republicans.

So said David Addington, Cheney's legal counsel and chief of staff.

Redstate notes that "Cheney Warned Of Iraq 'Quagmire'":

I don't know what to say. Maybe something like I hate it when he's right? I don't think Iraq is a quagmire. Progress is being made. So much so that even the New York Times had to acknowledged it and there is talk of some Democrats being worried about facing a voter backlash for pandering to the left wing defeatists.

I was speaking with a Marine Master Sargent last week. He was getting ready for his second deployment to Iraq. Asked what he thought of our efforts he said He has 25 years in the Corps, looking to make it 30, he expects he will have three more Iraq tours. He thought for a moment and said 'we just need more time. You have to give us more time.'

The problem with Cheney's use of the q-word is that ever since we gave up in Vietnam, quagmire equates to failure in our political lexicon. We have not failed in Iraq, not yet, regardless of what the Democrats and the main stream media say. Another problem is that we can't look at the post-9/11 world through pre-9/11 lenses. September 11th changed everything.

So it turns out Bush was treated for lyme disease:

WASHINGTON - President Bush was treated for Lyme disease last August, the White House announced Wednesday after failing to disclose the problem for nearly a year.

The treatment was revealed only when the White House made public all the results of Bush's annual physical exam on Wednesday. It showed up in the "past medical history" section and in the summary along with other skin conditions....

...Symptoms can include lethargy, joint pain, fever, limping and loss of appetite. A bacterial disease, it can be eradicated with antibiotic treatment in the early stages, but can become more complicated to treat if not caught early.

That doesn't quite catch it. Some Googling will reveal that lyme disease has neurological effects, too. Is that why it was kept secret?

ACP Online says:

Symptoms—Second Stage

The second stage of Lyme disease is known as early disseminated Lyme disease, which means that the infection of bacteria is beginning to spread and is affecting certain body functions. This stage occurs weeks to months after the bite of an infected tick. Problems can include:

* Numbness and pain in arms or legs
* Paralysis of facial muscles (usually on one side of the face)
* Meningitis—fever, stiff neck, and severe headaches
* Abnormal heart beat (rare)

Symptoms—Third Stage

The third stage of Lyme disease is called late (or chronic) Lyme disease. This stage can occur weeks, months, or even years after infection in patients who either never received antibiotic treatment for early Lyme disease or whose treatment did not kill all of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Patients with late Lyme disease may get:

Regarding a conference call bloggers had with Al Gore yesterday (podcast), this from Taylor Marsh on The Huffington Post:

Needless to say it was a remarkable conversation, talking about Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, which I received from the publishers and have briefly walked through. I'll be talking about it on my radio show today. It was interesting that we even got to talk to him before Larry King did last night.

The whole conversation, a full hour, is taped for you to listen to. The whole hour podcast, plus a couple of podcasts breakdowns, can be found in full here.

It was quite an opportunity, with all of the questions thought provoking, which you'll hear in the audio. Not a single blogger asked Gore the Sawyer question: Are you running in '08, blah-blah-blah. Repeat question and recycle it again. Oh, and no questions about how much weight he has lost either. We know our jobs even if the corporate hack pack does not.

(Links and more in full article.)

It's funny how the media race to the lowest common denominator in how they cover politics, and then wonder why everyone's looking for something more relevant to their lives.

Thank goodness we don't have Diane Sawyer or Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw or Katie Couric deciding what's important for us to read and hear and see on the internet.

Via Shakesville, we learn that Hearst Newspapers did a little reading between the Pentagon lines:

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.

I'm speechless.

"It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

I really really hope this analysis is wrong. What is definitely not reassuring is that we now have a military surge industry that is making very very big bucks on the war, and stand to lose out on mega cash flows when we withdraw. Dina Rasor writes in The Huffington Post: