It's a group of Jews and friendly gentiles that is the new liberal counterweight to the Likudnik-style neocons running AIPAC, and who up to now have controlled the discourse in America about Israel. (Which is of course why AIPAC apologists at TNR and elsewhere hate it with a passion.)

The author is the grandson of one of the principal characters. He's allowed.

Schaller, of Whistling Past Dixie fame, has made the argument that instead of fixating so hard on going after Southern white males, Democrats should instead concentrate on picking up Hispanic and women voters, especially single women voters -- who don't have as high a voting rate as other groups, but are among the most liberal of voters once you get them in the voting booths.

Of course, this advice is routinely mocked by highly-paid experts whose specialty is telling Democrats to keep tacking to the right so as to win the votes of people who have been voting Republican since the 1960s, when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and the GOP ditched its past support of civil rights to court the Southern vote.

RE: the WaPo endorsement: Meh. The WP and NYT always play this little game with Democratic candidates: Bash bash bash right up to the last minute, then endorse. Hell, they both endorsed Clinton even though Howell Raines, Jeff Gerth, and Steno Sue Schmidt were eager conduits for every smear Ken Starr and his people could dream up.

As for Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia: There are bloody hands all around. Russia's been catering to Ossetia in various ways, from shoveling Russian passports into it to assisting it in its genocidal war against Ingushetia (http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ingush/human_rights.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetian-Ingush_conflict; see also the Helsinki Human Rights Watch publication Russia: The Ingush-Ossetian Conflict in the Prigorodnyi Region which is available at Google Books). They succeeded in getting North Ossetia to break away before Georgia could mobilize to counter Russia's efforts. They're also spending the equivalent of $1500 per South Ossetian per year to persuade them to join up with Russia: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/now-about-those-ossetian-passports-via-dave-essel/

RE: the WaPo endorsement: Meh. The WP and NYT always play this little game with Democratic candidates: Bash bash bash right up to the last minute, then endorse. Hell, they both endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 (and Hillary in the 2008 primary season) even though Howell Raines, Jeff Gerth, and Steno Sue Schmidt were eager conduits for every smear Ken Starr and his people could dream up. (More interestingly, they also refused to call for Bill Clinton's resignation during the heat of the bogus CoupGate that they played such a big role in stirring up: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E1DA1730F93BA2575AC0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2)

As for Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia: There are bloody hands all around. Russia's been catering to Ossetia in various ways, from shoveling Russian passports into it to assisting it in its genocidal war against Ingushetia (http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ingush/human_rights.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetian-Ingush_conflict; see also the Helsinki Human Rights Watch publication Russia: The Ingush-Ossetian Conflict in the Prigorodnyi Region which is available at Google Books). They succeeded in getting North Ossetia to break away before Georgia could mobilize to counter Russia's efforts. They're also spending the equivalent of $1500 per South Ossetian per year to persuade them to join up with Russia: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/now-about-those-ossetian-passports-via-dave-essel/

This isn't a "funeral". This is the talented-but-mercurial and easily-bored lead guitarist of a once-wildly-popular group announcing the fourth or fifth breakup of the band and saying (yet again) that the band will never reunite, in the hopes of jerking the chains of the band's aging fan base one more time. (See also: Stones, Eagles, Who, etc.)

There are those of us who got sick of the attention-trolling and fan-chain-jerking when it was first done, oh, two decades ago. By this time it's beyond old.

Pitchfork Pat's was one of the first voices to attack Powell in 1995 after Powell proclaimed himself a "Rockefeller Republican" who was out to show that the GOP had room for pro-choice, pro-sanity candidates. The religio-racist right was elated to be able to rally their base by the use the word "liberal" as a code word for "black", much as they're using false accusations of Muslimhood against Obama as a way to say "black man" without actually saying it. They were able to prove Powell wrong in 1995, keeping him off the ticket even though polls showed that the only way the GOP had a shot at the White House in 1996 was with Powell as either the Prez nominee or the running mate.

Buchanan's freaking out now because he knows what Powell's endorsement means: It's Powell's revenge on the religio-racist right for what they've done to him over the years.

I don't recall the Mark Halperins and Jon Meachams of the world warning, when the GOP took over both houses of Congress in 2002, about the dangers of Bush being able to "go crazy conservative."

This is because they are members in good standing of the GOP/Media Complex, the ultimate triumph of the conservative push, spearheaded by William Simon back in the 1970s, to take over our schools and media. Academia is still holding out, but the media fell over a quarter-century ago, as Mark Hertsgaard's 1988 tome On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency shows in withering detail. (Excerpts can be found here: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/On_Bended_Knee.html)

Obama's already asked Stiglitz if he wanted to be in Obama's administration. Stiglitz reluctantly declined:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2008/03/02/2003403735