The answer couldn’t be simpler, and, no, it isn’t the fault of the greasy whores in the stenographic media.

Sure, there’s lots of blame to go around, but the most salient reason – by far and away – is the gutlessness of Obama and the DLC rats polluting the Democratic Party, whose purpose is insuring that no progressive policies are ever permitted to threaten control of the party by the insurance industry, Wall Street, Big Oil and the rest. Blacktop’s got it right: Stop the ass-kissing, never again give in to the urge to babble on about what an inspiring, brave, heroic, all-around fantastic human being McCain is, and repeat ten times a day that McCain is a brain-addled pandering hypocrite who calls his wife a cunt in public, and will say and do anything to satisfy his drooling lust to become president of the United States.

Along the same lines, it means (as discussed in the post immediately following this one), cutting the bullshit about how “[t]he era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a perilous moment.” It’s not the greed and irresponsibility in Washington, it’s the incompetence, corruption and fanaticism of the Republican Party. We’re not “in this mess because of a bankrupt philosophy,” but because of the corrupt and fanatical ideology of the Republican Party. It’s not that “the doors of Washington have been thrown open to an army of lobbyists and special interests,” but that they’ve been thrown open by the Republican Party. Get it? There is simply no excuse whatever why McCain gets away with claiming that he and the Pig represent “change” of any kind, and he couldn’t do so if Obama didn’t talk about change as some vague, amorphous quality, but defined it each and every time as change from “the incompetence, corruption and fanaticism of the Republican Party.” We simply can’t lay the blame for the fact that McCain continues to get away with this shit at the feet of the Republican-owned media until our own candidate grows the balls to press the narrative he expects them to report.

Thank God! At long last, someone has shown the courage to stand up and provide a corrective to the simplistic, bigoted Hollywood portrayal of the Nazis as “villains.” As finally happened with the racist depiction of Native Americans as ignorant savages and Arabs as bloodthirsty terrorists, Spike Lee – at last! – has painted a picture of the Nazis that restores the nuance and moral complexity the Hollywood establishment has so long denied this misunderstood people.

1. Wysiwyg is absolutely right about Obama's repeated - and infuriating - “Senator McCain is right . . . .” Please get it through your goddamn head, Obama: don’t ever say it again.

2. Here’s how to handle “The Surge” bullshit once and for all.

“In 2003, Bush started a ten-alarm fire in Iraq and decided to fight it with a bucket of water instead of a fire hose. Now the Republicans want credit for finally correcting their criminal incompetence after four years. It was the wrong war, they managed it just like they managed Katrina and the U.S. economy, and it’s about time Senator McCain stopped bragging about it.”

"By the way, is anyone ever going to ask Senator McCain exactly what he means by winning in Iraq, or are we just supposed to trust that he'll let us know when he's ready?"

3. If McCain brings up funding the troops again, Obama has to get pissed off and tell him,

“That’s the kind of sleazy tactics that Americans are sick of, and Senator McCain should stop dragging this campaign into the gutter. John voted for a funding bill without a timetable for withdrawal, and I voted for one with a timetable. That’s the simple truth of the matter, and accusing a United States senator of voting to deprive American troops of funding during a war is the most despicable political opportunism I can imagine. It is a bald-faced lie and Senator McCain should be ashamed of himself.”

So 60% isn’t a substantial enough proportion of this Democratic caucus for this piece of shit Wall Street payoff that gives Bush virtually everything he was looking for? The Democratic leaders are supposed to “keep their coalition together?” How about because even the craven, gutless, ass-kissing scumbags of the Democratic Party aren’t so monumentally stupid and self-destructive as to allow the Republicans to dump this piece of toxic waste in their laps, like Hindenburg and the General Staff turning the keys to Germany over to the Socialists after eviscerating the country for four years.

Sure, there's little chance anyone will actually learn anything about the economic crisis or who's responsible for getting us to this position from watching the two men compete to see who can be the bigger blowhard.

What palpable bullshit, exactly the type of corporate-media sneering condescension Glenn Greenwald so effectively skewers on a consistent basis. Quite simply, the notion of asserting some equivalence between O'Reilly and Frank on the basis of this performance is just assinine, reflecting nothing more than the typical, "both-sides-are-equally-responsible" approach to journalism that is as lazy as it is egregiously stupid.

There is a saying that was tailor-made for dealing with a punk and a bully like O'Reilly: "Lie down in shit, and they call you a pig." Well, the world has rarely seen a more rancid pile than O'Reilly, and the only way to deal with his thuggishness - as with any snarling dog - is to rap him on the snout with a rolled up newspaper. That is precisely what Barney Frank did, and he did it, moreover, without losing his dignity or composure.