"Obama is slowly but surely emerging as a clear winner, beating against all odds the formerly unstoppable 'juggernaut' that is Hillary Clinton... he MUST be the weakest candidate."

Yeah. Brilliant logic there, Rush. But hey, the right wing didn't make its bones making any sense. In fact, they seized upon a brilliant strategy of saying blindingly idiotic things over and over again, insolently and loudly, until their audience believes it.

Then AGAIN, their audience wants to believe. Think about it: ~50% of this country supported Bush TWICE, right? About 2/5 of these people are strongly disenchanted with Bush right now, right? They're not against the Republican party, mind you, they feel that Bush himself fucked it up. (These are, at heart, monarchists who delight in cults of personality. Thus, everything the Republicans do right is to Bush's credit, and everything they do wrong is Bush's fault.) Which means, they WANT someone better. They WANT to hear that the Democrats have a weak candidate and that the GOP has a plan to win. So, anything that speaks to this sentiment will be accepted.

Rush knows what he's doing. He's making no sense only to us liberals, who are (admit it) entrenched in our beliefs just as much as the conservatives are entrenched in theirs. We have two strong candidates to choose from, they have one senile old fool to pin their hopes on. They need hope, and in this case, the hope comes from denial. Rush is happily supplying them with rationale for that denial: everything is going according to plan, we have 'em where we want 'em.

Despite a little twitch of doubt, I think that all his efforts are in vain and the GOP is up for a serious smack-down in a few short months. In that light, Limbaugh's flailings are kind of fun to watch.

(Except that if/when the Democrats win both the Congress and the White House, Limbaugh is still going to make his money, thriving as the spokesman for the underdog far right. Gah.)

Oh yeah, she's right to make him squirm. He fricken' deserves it. Next up, Rob Riggle talks to him about not bothering to show up to vote for the new GI Bill. And so forth.

You know, I've been getting more and more pissed off by Mr. Koppelman's mindless repetition of various crap from various news networks, but this is hilarious. Literally minutes ago I read Steve Benen's blog where he actually took the trouble to look around the other news outlets and see if there's any other reporting on these "talks" and found... not a thing! Furthermore, he went on to analyze these claims and found numerous logical holes. He then expressed a professional opinion (backed up by logic and evidence) that this piece of "news" Mr. Koppelman is so mindlessly regurgitating to us is completely bogus.

Maybe it's not. Benen is only one blogger. Who knows? I certainly am not THAT invested in the whole thing to go looking on my own, but I expect a professional who gets paid to do his job (likely more than I get paid to do mine) to, you know, do his job. Not to nag, but maybe investigate this a little? Tell us how likely it is, in your professional opinion? Cite some evidence in favor or to the contrary? You think, maybe? No?

Copy / pasting CNN bullshit does not a good journalist make, Mr. Koppelman.

"Rather than listening to MoveOn.org to set his strategy, Barack Obama should withhold judgment until he meets with our commanders in Iraq."

Ummm. Yo. Am I the only one who noticed how obscenely absurd this statement is? Seriously, how uninformed does one have to be to actually go for that drivel?

Yeah, Barack Obama, pawn of MoveOn.org. My teeth hurt just from typing that.

Make that "Stone Age Technology". In the late 19th century they had the telegraph. In the early 19th century and all the way back into the Bronze Age they had, um, written correspondence. All of these allowed heads of state to be in communication with the troops in the field in any particular conflict zone and thus be appraised of the situation at hand.

I suppose when you say "neocon", the "neo" part stands for "Neolithic." Neolithic Conservatives. I like it.

...makes me hungry. And I just had lunch.

Hell, I'd suffer to dine with Johnny Mac himself only to get my fork into a plump, sizzling sausage... oh bloody hell, I'm drooling now!

Evil, evil Salon bloggers.

Do we think that the Republican effort to goad Obama into taking a foreign trip will be written about in textbooks as a GOOD idea?

Um... by the time they're writing textbooks that cover 2008, most of the country's population will have forgotten who John McCain was and what he was doing at the time. Political junkies may remember towering giants like McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and uh, Dole but most of us regular Joes? Let's just say that if there IS a textbook (for whom? Campaign Management majors?) that covers in excruciating blow-by-blow details the events of the summer of 2008, 99.99999% of the world's population isn't going to know it exists, let alone give a damn.

Political commentators may get off on the exciting minutiae of the campaign, but what a candidate does in their presidential campaign pales in comparison with their record in office. Nobody is going to remember any of this. Maybe a blurb on Wikipedia. Maybe.