Internal Monologue

From this Crooks and Liars post , which has documentation.

Via Bowers , we have this graph from Pollster.com : It shows Obama at 49.6% and McCain at 38.1%, whereas their chart without third parties has Obama at 46.4% and McCain at 42.3%. Given that the presence of third-party candidates seems to be benefiting Obama, Bowers thinks Obama should debate Nader and Barr to raise their profiles: The answer, I think, is just to debate them. Next month, Obama should propose including Barr, Nader and McKinney in one of the presidential debates. This seems like a no-brainer that would benefit Obama no matter what McCain said in response: Obama could frame the proposal as looking for discussion and solutions from all parties. Given that both he and McCain are trying to look bi- / post- / non-partisan, making this proposal is any easy way to back up that narrative. If McCain accepts, then he is once again following Obama's lead. If he declines, then he looks chicken, not to mention unwilling to debate people with a wide range of viewpoints. The thir

Obama is out-fundraising McCain...in Idaho : Through June 30, Idahoans gave $375,586 to Barack Obama, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee. Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain received $228,938. via mcjoan on DailyKos .

There is a connection between the perpetrator of the church shootings in Tennessee and the church he chose: his ex-wife had been a member of that church : [murderer] Adkisson's ex-wife, Liza Alexander of Powell, was a former long-time member of the church, congregant Barbara Kemper said today. Sad sad sad.

This Kevin Drum post reminded me of something that I've often thought: [...]spending a lot of time on the internet, as I have since 2002, has rubbed my nose in something that hadn't really bothered me before then: namely just how overwritten so many books and magazine articles are. Seymour Hersh? He's great. You could also cut every one of his pieces by at least 50% and lose exactly nothing. And I'm not picking on Hersh. At a guess, I'd say that two-thirds of the magazine pieces I read could be sliced by nearly a third or more without losing much. That's true of a lot of books too. The thought I've often had is, "This book has a really good idea in it. But the author really only needed 20 pages to do the idea justice. The rest is just padding because the market for 200 page books is more favorable than the market for 20 page essays." People have expectations about how long things should be, and people are loathe to violate them. I'd have seco

My thoughts go out to the people of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. There was a horrible shooting there and 2 people have died. The shooter was tackled and captured. No motive established yet. I heard about this on the BBC news as well as on the Kos diary I link to. There's a news article here . Update: It turns out the shooter was politically motivated, and also frustrated about unemployment. Here's knoxnews.com : The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning. Jim D. Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his “hatred of the liberal movement,” Owen said. “Liberals in general, as well as gays.” [...] Owen said Adkisson specifically targeted the church for its beliefs, rather than a particular member of the cong

Atrios : Maliki likes Obama's timeline. McCain likes Maliki's timeline. McCain thinks Obama's timeline will cause the destruction of America as we know it.