(I'm copying my own comment here from another Salon blog -- hope that's playing by the rules!)

On NPR this evening, Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard (house organ of Moonies and the Washington Republicans) insisted that it was not a gaffe or even a misstatement, because, he claimed, there was solid proof going back many years to back up the connection between Al Qaida and Iran's ayatollahs. You can hear the piece at

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88689984

There's no transcript yet, but I've taken the liberty to transcribe it myself -- enjoy:

Continetti: "McCain's statement that Iran is aiding Sunni terrorists has been treated as a gaffe in the media, but I think it isn't a gaffe. I think if you look at the 9-11 Commission, I think if you look at the Washington Post's own reporting on some things that Major General William B. Cauldwell has said, there IS a pattern of Iranian assistance to Al Qaida -- not just since the Iraq War began but even in the 1990s. We can't forget that Imad Muniyah, the terrorist who was recently killed in Syria, was allied with the Iranians, and of course also helped Al Qaida when it was becoming an organization."

Robert Siegel: "He was Lebanese."

Continetti: "He was Lebanese."

Siegel: "So you think he believed it, you think he meant it when he said it."

Continetti: "McCain believed it, and I think the facts, under strict scrutiny, bear him out."

Siegel: "Matt Continetti, E.J. Dionne, thanks so much."

End of story. No follow-up. Amazing.

It's (or should I say, Its) such an interesting article, I hate to nitpick, but -- and I quote -- "last year he was interviewed by it's producer.... Meyers, who calls the films allegations nonsense...."

If you don't (or do I mean "dont"?) see a problem here, then, well, never mind.

I was quoting from the text as it originally appeared. The eagle-eyed editors silently corrected the text (it's > its, films > film's) after my snide little snipe. Say la vee.

I had a laugh -- well, maybe just a smirk -- when I read that Matthews had said this: "There's a larger globe out there of people, 350 million Americans." As any moderately numerically literate citizen knows, the population of the US is just a hair over 300 million. Where'd he get the extra 50 million? But then I listened to the audio and, wouldn't you know it, he actually does say 300 million. Whoever did the transcript heard it wrong (and is probably ill-informed about the US...).

But then, Matthews really DOES say this: "We're stuck in Iraq; 4,000 people are dead now because of decisions made by politicians like the Clintons." What?! I'm no fan of either Clinton and never have been, but that's the sleaziest attack-by-association I've ever heard. What is the logic here? Bush is a politician; the Clintons are politicians; therefore we're stuck in Iraq because of decisions by politicians "like the Clintons"? I'd like to see Matthews say to Bush's face that "we're stuck in Iraq because of your bad decision." That would take a miniscule amount of guts. But attacking Clinton over something Bush did (which Matthews will never directly criticize Bush over) is simply rancid.

... as written by Charles Addams. I'm sure little Pugsley and Wednesday are sleeping tight!

... http://www.aerorider.com/en/aerorider.html ...

Mmmm...

Who needs oil when we have feet? I'd love to see something like this in production in the US.

Obvious point number one: If Sean Wilentz's "sensible" winner-take-all system had been in place for the Democratic primaries, both campaigns (correction: all ten Democratic campaigns for the nomination) would have been run differently. You cannot take the results of the campaigns we had and apply them to rules we did not have. Obama's campaign outmaneuvered and outperformed Clinton's campaign in the primaries we had, and there is every reason to believe he would have done the same in the alternate universe of Wilentz's "sensible" system. (In which case, he would be complaining that Clinton would be ahead if we had had some other "sensible" system.)

Obvious point number two: As a Michigan voter, I am sick and tired of hearing people blame the Obama campaign for "disenfranchising" Michigan voters. It was our idiotic state Democratic "leadership" who disenfranchised us by deliberately contravening clear national party rules. It is only now, months later, that they are belatedly beginning to realize that they aren't going to get away with it after all, and they are frantically blaming everybody else for the fiasco when they should be looking in the mirror. (That, and resigning, if they had any sense of honor.) What we had in Michigan was not a primary, it was a farce and a fraud.