Shouldn't Talk About The Weather...

...shouldn't talk about the government" the REM song goes. We're seeing the return of the "Obama and the Weathermen Underground" meme this week over at Just One Minute as the answer to the question "What else has the media been sitting on about the Democrats?"

So Obama has a relationship with Ayers that can be documented from 1995 and almost surely came into being in 1987. Jerome Corsi mentions the Annenberg Challenge in his book - any guesses as to whether Media Matters, the Times, or the WaPo will fact-check that? Obama either lied (by ommisison) or had an absurdly hazy memory at the debate and in the web-site follow-up - any chance the media will wonder what he is hiding and why?

The truth will out - Steve Diamond of Global Labor owns this story and I am riding in his wake - but the Times will be the last to find this news that's fit to print.

Well, I'll be honest there's a lot of stuff there about Obama and his relationship with Ayers...but I mean if we're going to talk about Presidential candidates with long-term relationships with unsavory characters with disturbing viewpoints on America, and how the media glosses over that candidate's problems and gives them preferential treatment, we're going to be here all day.

One Last Parting Shot...

...on the whole Georgia kerfluffle.

There's a reason I've got McClatchy News over in the links there, they're the best news outfit I've read in a long time. The analysis of the situation by Jonathan Landay is the most complete I've seen, and the questions it raises are shockers (emphasis de Zandar):

Pentagon officials said that despite having 130 trainers assigned to Georgia, they had no advance notice of Georgia’s sudden move last Thursday to send thousands of Georgian troops into South Ossetia to capture that province's capital, Tskhinvali.

Not only did the U.S. troops working alongside their Georgian counterparts not see any signs of an impending invasion, Georgian officials did not notify the U.S. military before the incursion, a senior U.S. defense official told McClatchy.

But the Bush administration had fretted for months over what officials saw as intensifying Russian moves that it feared were aimed at provoking Georgia into a conflict over South Ossetia or Abkhazia, another secessionist province.

Russia has been angry over Georgia's close links with Washington, and has been determined to stop the admission to NATO of its former vassal, which is located on strategic energy and transportation routes to Central Asia.

The Russian actions against Georgia "seemed designed to provoke a Georgian over-reaction," said a senior U.S. official. "We have always counseled restraint to the Georgians."

Some experts, however, wondered whether the administration might have inadvertently sent Saakashvili mixed messages that would have led him to believe he could count on U.S. support if he got into trouble.

Bush lavished praise on the U.S.-educated Georgian leader as a "beacon of democracy." He gave military training and equipment to Georgia, which supplied the third-largest contingent to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and had promised NATO membership, they said. He visited the country in 2005 and addressed a huge crowd from the same podium as Saakashvili.

"The Russians have clearly overreacted but President Saakashvili . . . for some reason seems to think he has a hall pass from this administration," said former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

U.S. officials had been warning of Russian actions designed to provoke Georgia for months.

Nice. Russia got Georgia to lose its cool, they didn't tell the US (or they are totally covering their asses on this) and the rest is history. Can it get worse?

At the same time, U.S. officials said that they believed they had an understanding with Russia that any response to Georgian military action would be limited to South Ossetia.

"We knew they were going to go crack heads. We told them again and again not to do this," the State Department official said. "We thought we had an understanding with the Russians that any response would be South Ossetia-focused. Clearly it's not."

One problem in under-estimating the Russian response, another U.S. official said, was "a dearth of intelligence assets in the region."

U.S. "national technical means," the official name for spy satellites and other technology, are "pretty well consumed by Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan," the official said, and there was only limited monitoring of Russian military movements toward the Georgian border.

...epic fail.

The Hell Is This All About?

Breaking news that the Chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party was shot in his office this afternoon.

The shooter, described as a white male, came into the headquarters before noon and asked for Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney before firing three shots, CNN affiliate KATV reported.

Little Rock police would not confirm or deny whether Gwatney was shot.

CNN affiliate KTHV reported that a witness working in a nearby shop said Gwatney's assistant ran into the shop and asked her to call 911 because the chairman had been shot.

Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said that the victim was in critical condition at a hospital.

My first question is "Why?" I of course hope Mr. Gwaltney makes a full and speedy recovery.

My second question is "If a man goes into a state party HQ and asks to see the state chair and then shoots him, is it a politically motivated terrorist attack on US soil?"

So If It's Not Bayh...

...then who? Jeralyn at Talk Left has a pretty intriguing theory:

The Vice Presidential candidate speaks at the Democratic Convention on Wednesday night. The theme that night is "Securing America's Future."

So the VP candidate is someone who fits with that theme. Also, according to another report I read elsewhere, military veterans are part of the night's theme.

Could Gen. Wesley Clark be back in the ballgame? His organization is Securing America's Future, the same name as the night's theme. More on that here.

She argues that Wes Clark would actually be a pretty good choice.

Here's Gen. Clark In 2002:

I'm concerned about the lock-up policy, the 3-strikes policy, putting people in jails and the way we've treated people in prison. We've got to look seriously at the American penal system and what it does when it returns people.to the streets." Source: WBUR Public Radio interview Jun 19, 2003

On the Patriot Act in 2004:

I will suspend the portions of the Patriot Act that have to do with search and seizure law, and we'll go back to old way with probable cause and judges and warrants, and then we'll take the whole act back to the Congress for legislative review. We will have all the authority we need to protect the country from terrorists, but you can't win the war on terror by giving up the very freedoms we're fighting to protect. Wes

He's uneasy about the death penalty and at one point supported a moratorium on it.

He's even open to medical marijuana (same link):

When asked about marijuana laws, he said he opposes the use of the illegal drug. However, he added that he has talked with people who use it to ease their chronic pain. “They said smoking marijuana helps,” he said. “We need to look at that and make some allowances one way or another.”

He would have fired Rumsfeld in 2003.

Okay, my mind's made up. I want General Wesley Clark for Vice President. He's got the experience and a better position on issues I care about than every other name mentioned.

I have to say that her argument for Clark is compelling on the surface. It would be very hard for the GOP to say that Clark doesn't have military/national security experience and he's dead correct about the Patriot Act needing to be reigned back in. I've been hoping for Russ Feingold myself, but Wesley Clark would certainly be better than Evan Bayh based on that evidence.

But Clark has his share of problems too, mainly both the GOP and the netroots have already torn him up based on his failed 2004 run, and he clearly has had bad moments.

It's not time for panic about the Clark campaign, or rage about the top-down groundswell behind him, only questions: What was the retired general spending his time on in the last three months, while the world knew he was only his wife's blessing away from declaring his candidacy? Wasn't there a minute to catch up on the Brady Bill, to figure out whether he'd have voted for the Iraq war declaration in Congress last October and exactly why, to research whether or not he voted in 1972 -- "I hope I voted then," he said, "and I would have voted for [Richard] Nixon." And why are party big shots so enamored of this politically untested general who admittedly performed well in CNN studios but doesn't seem ready for the rough and tumble of campaign trail journalism?

It wasn't the political positions Clark stated that were disturbing as much as the apparent lack of thought behind them. His confessing that despite his doubts about the Iraq war he "probably" would have supported the resolution in Congress isn't indefensible -- John Kerry made the same decision for much the same reason (although he's finding the nuances of his choice tough to defend politically). What's disturbing is Clark's appearing to have hardly thought about it much until now, and the vacillating way he defended his position once he took it.

A moment after saying he'd probably have voted for the resolution, he added, "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position -- on balance, I probably would have voted for it." But later, talking about Howard Dean's opposition to the resolution, Clark said, "I think he's right. That in retrospect we should never have gone in there. I didn't want to go in there either."

Granted, Clark has had 4 years to work on his campaign chops since then. But there's a hell of a lot of out of context ammo the GOP can use against him from '04, and there is the rather nasty problem that he endorsed Hillary, not Obama.

Still, the PUMAs will see any choice that's not Hillary as a problem, but as with Bayh and Feingold, a male Veep *will* be seen as a betrayal and rejection of women voters by Obama by the PUMA crowd, and they will exact punishment, the question being only how much. There's a whole lot of evidence that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius would be the compromise candidate for the PUMAs that Obama is looking for.

Sebelius is among the vice presidential prospects mentioned most often by Obama's key supporters, including many who say that if Obama bypasses Hillary Clinton then he would do well to choose another woman. At 60, Sebelius is a popular two-term governor of a Republican-dominated state, and her reputation as a low-key problem-solver marks a contrast with Clinton.

Her problem is lack of national exposure and foreign policy experience -- opposite problems of Wes Clark -- and there is of course the problem that she will be seen as a direct insult to Hillary...but to be fair, anyone who isn't Hillary will be seen as such.

With Clinton now formally gone from the race, her most fervent female supporters have taken up the cause of putting her on the ticket as the vice president. To snub Clinton in favor of another woman -- Sebelius -- would be a slight that many women might not be able to reconcile themselves to.

Depending on where you stand, Sebelius's gender is either one of her strongest assets or a major argument against her. Seen one way, picking her would reinforce the historic nature of Obama's candidacy and help strengthen his hand among female voters alienated from him after the race against Clinton. Seen another, Sebelius's gender makes her all but unselectable -- a symbolic provocation to the legions of Clinton backers.

General Clark has a lot of things going for him (more than Bayh of course) but there are more than a few strikes against him too. He's preferable to Bayh of course but again, he may not be the best choice. Gov. Sebelius is another strong choice and can bring a lot to the table too, but not the same things Clark can.

As much as I think Russ Feingold would kick ass, he's not in the hunt, and I honestly think Obama's Veep will be either Clark or Sebelius. Either one is far, far better than Bayh. But in the back of my mind the cynic in me can't rule Evan Bayh out...or Hillary Rodham Clinton for that matter. Clinton would be a disasterous selection...but the temptation must surely be there for somebody in the Obama camp to say "You're screwed no matter who you pick, might as well go for her."

It's true what they say: A Veep pick can't help you, but it surely can hurt you. Obama has the most important and most difficult Veep selection in a long, long time.

UPDATE: BooMan points out Clark's not happening and that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is and that Kathleen Sebelius has indeed earned a speaking slot at the DNC Convention:

Thus, I refer you to fivethirtyeight's analysis and note, in addition, that as far as I know no slot has yet been reserved for Evan Bayh.

UPDATE 2: With the announcement of Virginia's former Governor and Senate candidate Mark Warner as the DNC's keynote speaker, the general consensus is current Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is NOT going to be Obama's pick.

McSame Gets To See The Friedman Unit

Steve Benen notes Tommy Boy thinks McSame is a doodoohead.

It’s probably safe to say John McCain is losing the NYT’s Thomas Friedman.

Oh reeeeeeeeeeally?

Despite McCain’s negligence, he’s running TV ads during the Olympics, showing a wind farm full of spinning turbines, the exact same energy McCain would not vote to support.

Without directly using McCain’s name, this led Friedman to suggest a certain candidate “cynical,” and thinks “Americans are so stupid — so bloody stupid — that if you just show them wind turbines in your Olympics ad they’ll actually think you showed up and voted for such renewable power — when you didn’t.”

Friedman isn’t always my cup of tea when it comes to foreign policy, but I can’t help but notice that when it comes to energy policy, the NYT columnist seems very unimpressed with the presumptive Republican nominee.

And there's actually several indications that Friedman has a long time problem with McSame's "Energy Policy".

Today, Friedman hammered McCain on his negligence on alternative energy. In July, Friedman mocked him and his party for his coastal drilling canard.

You'd think Friedman would like that.

And in April, Friedman excoriated McCain (and, in this case, Hillary Clinton) for the ridiculous notion of a “gas-tax holiday” over the summer months.

Note how McSame's dropped that from his platform, too. Sit and spin Johnny Boy, sit and spin.

The Bayh Line, Part 2

While I've talked about Evan Bayh before, the BooMan has more analysis on why he's the still the wrong choice:

I'm hearing word that Evan Bayh has at least a 50-50 chance of getting the vice-presidential nod and that the final decision will be made soon. Unfortunately, I don't have any other names to tell you so that you know what the alternatives are. The New York Times did a great job yesterday morning in explaining why the selection of Bayh would be problematic. It would be hard to fuck up Barack Obama's brand any worse than picking John McCain's honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. We really shouldn't have to say anything more than that.

Obama's Veep selection is either going to be a confirmation of his anti-war message and the anti-war beliefs of the people who got him to the big dance...or a complete repudiation of both. It's personal this year. As BooMan explains (emphasis mine:)

If Evan Bayh is acceptable then maybe John McCain's judgment isn't so bad after all. I might add that Al From of the DLC wants Evan Bayh and so does Cokie 'Myrtle Beach' Roberts. Those are two big alarm-bells. And I'd really prefer it not to be the case that Team Obama is more interested in appeasing Al From and Cokie Roberts than they are concerned with enraging their base of support online. There are many of us that were in the long fight to win the nomination with Obama who made that commitment out of a desperate desire to see the DLC sidelined and a new generation of post-Bush thinking Democrats put in charge of the party. We're the same people that fought off Tim Roehmer and Harold Ford for DNC chairmen and gave you Howard Dean and the immensely successful 50-state strategy. We did not put in all that work in order to see the former DLC chairman put next in line for the presidency.

Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but he's dead right about Howard Dean and the 50-state strategy. Obama must remember (and apparently we have to remind him) that he won the primaries because he reflected the majority views of anti-war Democrats. The terribad argument will be made for Bayh that 18 million Democrats didn't find any problem with Hillary Clinton's voting record on the Iraq War, but then "why not pick Hillary Clinton for Veep?" immediately and logically follows.

It's not just that Bayh is a bad choice, it's that the any logical process that would lead to Bayh as Obama's running mate has to cross that big thick red "Screw The Progressives" line, by reason that Bayh voted for Iraq on a number of occasions. The fact that Obama is even seriously considering Bayh is reason enough for the netroots to be pissed. Somebody in Obama's camp has convinced him that Screw The Progressives is acceptable, and the fact Obama hasn't shot this down immediately as a non-starter means he's thinking about it.

Bayh means Obama played the netroots and he's done with them, plain and simple. And he's not afraid of them should he go down that path, because he's convinced (or someone has convinced him) that they will not support McSame in the White House under any circumstances...even if those circumstances include Bayh.

And even if you accept the notion that Obama has tossed the netroots aside, the problem is even the most overly pragmatic reasons to have Bayh on the ticket do not work: he's not going to get Obama Indiana, he's not going to appeal to the PUMAs, he's not going to generate national buzz, the GOP isn't going to magically admit that an Obama-Bayh ticket is strong on national security and the guy's just kinda average in every other way.

So why is he even being considered at all? He's lose/lose all the way around.

Zandar's Thought Of the Day

As Michael Phelps and the US women's gymnastics team compete, I'm reminded of what a high school teacher one told me:

An Olympic gold medal is proof that in any language that the best compliment in the world is the word "champion." An Olympic silver medal is proof that in any language that the dirtiest insult in the world is the word "potential."

StupidiNews!

• Men's clothing sales are up. Chips are down, guys dress like the Mad Men.
  
• Chalk up two more gold medals for Michael Phelps. Just another day at the office.
• Barry O unveils his "Republicans For Obama" effort with some big names.
• Starz takes Vongo out back with a shotgun and a plan.
• The Ukrainians are having serious second thoughts about joining NATO now.

Eagle in Winter, Bear in Summer

The Neocons are scared out of their mind. They have to be. The last five days showed the world just how empty and meaningless US power is outside of the delusions of the Kagans and Kristols of the world. The Russians stomped a potential NATO member flat, ignored the UN, ignored the US, and finally cut a deal...a deal brokered by the French.

The US had absolutely nothing to say about the outcome of the conflict. Bush was at the Olympics. Condi was on vacation. Nameless One emerged from the Nameless Lair to give McCain his talking points. McCain peed in his pants, saying the Russians were the scariest thing ever.

After nearly 7 years of hearing how The Great Brown Beturbaned Horde was going to force Sharia Law on the Dhimmiverse with their Terrah Beams, when the Russians actually march in with a TANK COLUMN on an idle Thursday, the Neocons are beside themselves, reacting with kneejerk shock and empty rhetoric.

US power was utterly useless here. American values, American pride, America's troops, America's freedom-spreading Tom Clancy powered Hyperstate meant precisely jack-shit to the Russians, who called our bluff, bitchslapped Georgia like an abused spouse, and now are busy telling all the world "The clumsy bitch fell down the stairs again" and are daring us to say otherwise.

And there's nothing we can say. We've got our own abusive relationship with Iraq and Afghanistan, having killed hundreds of thousands and occupied both countries for years all over lie after lie after lie. The Russians occupy Georgia for five days, and all we can do honestly is say "Well, um...yeah." Anything else elicits the response you saw the world give us: We didn't factor into any goddamn thing. That's got to be outright depressing to the Neocons.

Convinced that we were forging our own reality, the Russians reminded the world that we're a bunch of loudmouthed jagoffs who are hopelessly stuck in the Middle East fighting a war we can't win, that has cost us trillions of dollars, our world standing, our sanity and our economy. The captain of the football team just got pantsed in front of the entire high school, and he's wearing Aquaman underoos.

And after telling us we must be scared of a country with a military about 1% of ours, a country with a real military waltzed in, beat up our proxy, and left. We're a joke now. Somebody finally called our bluff.

Who will call it next? Somebody will certainly do so now. Maybe China. Maybe Iran. Maybe Russia again. It's far past time for us to get out of Iraq and change our entire foreign policy agenda. If McSame is President, we will be at war because somebody will yank our chain and he will respond like the bully he is. If Obama is President...maybe we can get our standing back.

Maybe. Given where our economy is heading, it's a moot point. Our time is over. The next few years will be full of harsh realities for America and its people. It's going to be bad, folks, very very bad. Our economy is on the brink right now, and only funny Fed money is keeping us in Big Macs and mani/pedis. It's going to fall apart in 2009, and we're going to land on our faces hard.

If McSame is in charge, those harsh realities will lead to a global war. More than ever I am convinced of that. He will lose his temper and decide we HAVE to have oil and power in the Middle East for America's very survival. We will be in a bloody shooting war that will engulf the globe and will last for a generation...or it may be brutally short and nuclear.

If Obama is in charge, we will still have a tough road ahead. I foresee unemployment in the double digits, and Americans really, really hurting across the country. The world will be facing a recession, and America I honestly believe will be in a borderline depression. but a way out of it that doesn't involve the draft.

The lesson of August 8 is that America is at a crossroads. We can go with another path, or we can go straight down the road to Hell that we have been on. The world has served us notice.

It's up to us to choose a path in November. Cheesy, but that's what's at stake. When this country hits the skids over the next four years, who do you honestly want in charge, the guy who thinks the path that got us into this mess is the way out, or the guy with the new ideas?

WOLVERINES!!!

BillO says it's Double U Double U Eye Eye Eye out there. We have to stop the Russians before they invade and take our loofahs.

But the message is sent: I, Vladimir Putin, and Russia can do whatever we want to do, and you can’t stop us because we have the oil. Now, its the same thing with Iran. Who props up Iran? Russia. Why? Because Russia wants the United States weakened. And Russia knows that Iran wants to dominate the oil in the Gulf. So Russia sells Iran weapons, blocks any sanctions against them, and he’s playing the double game. Putin is a real villain. Now, this is World War III on the horizon, ladies and gentlemen.

Red Dawn baby! WOLVEREEEEEEEEEENS!!!

Break Out The Booze And Condoms!

No, seriously. Apparently the War in Iraq is over and we won and everything. So when can we bring the troops home?

With victory in sight, why would we quit? The steady -- but not total -- withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is freeing up forces to fight in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not the central front in the war on terror. Al Qaeda is hiding in Pakistan, a nation we are not going to invade.

You can almost hear the word "yet" in there.

And people wonder why the neocons are nothing more than a sick joke these days.

Global No-Confidence Vote: The Perfect Storm

Oil has plunged, the dollar is at a six-month high, and things are now looking up for the US, right? Well, remember, the dollar's strength is coming at the weaknesses of other currencies, and the recession that infected the US has spread to other countries now. The Asian and European economies are slowing down from their breakneck pace. In the short term the dollar looks good, and oil hedge money is flowing from commodities to the dollar. In the long term, we're going to be back on the downward slide.

There is now an increasing probability that the global economy - not just the US - will experience a serious and protracted recession. Macro developments in the last few weeks suggest that now all of the G7 economies (the group of the major advanced economies including US, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada) are already in a recession or close to tipping into one. Other advanced economies or emerging markets (the rest of the Eurozone including Spain. Ireland the the other Euro members; New Zealand, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and some other South-East Europe economies) are also on the tip of a recessionary hard landing.

And once this group of twenty plus economies enters into a recession there will be a sharp growth slowdown in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and other emerging market economies. The IMF defines a global recession as a global growth rate below 2.5% as emerging market economies usually grow much faster (6%) than advanced economies where growth averages about 2%. For example, a country like China - that even with a growth rate of 10% plus has officially thousands of riots and protests a year - needs to move 15 million poor rural farmers to the modern urban industrial sector with higher wages every year just to maintain the legitimacy of its regime; so for China a growth rate of 6% would be equivalent to a recessionary hard landing. It now looks like that, by the end of this year or early 2009, the global economy will enter a recession.

Just in time to greet our new president. It's not that the dollar is strong, it's the weakness in the dollar is now spreading to other currencies like the British Pound.

The pound slid to its lowest level in almost 21 months against the dollar after an industry report showed U.K. house prices fell in July, adding to evidence the economy is slowing.

The currency snapped a three-day gain versus the euro after the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said the number of real-estate agents and surveyors reporting lower prices exceeded those reporting gains by 83.9 percentage points last month as the credit squeeze brought the market to a ``virtual standstill.''

``The pound is still being swept along by a broader dollar move,'' said Michael Metcalfe, head of macro strategy at State Street Global Markets in London. ``There is also an assumption the Bank of England will have to capitulate and focus on growth rather than inflation.'' Investors should sell the pound versus the dollar, Metcalfe said.

The pound fell as much as 0.7 percent to $1.8969, the weakest level since November 2006, and was at $1.8990 by 5:41 p.m. in London, from $1.9108 yesterday. The British currency has lost 4.8 percent against the dollar in the past month. It slipped to 78.43 pence per euro, from 78.03 pence.

All 11 regions in the U.K. tracked by RICS showed negative price balances on the month, the group said today.

Property values declined by the most in at least a quarter of a century in July, HBOS Plc reported on Aug. 7. Banks have curbed lending as they nurse losses and writedowns from the collapse of the U.S. subprime-mortgage market that have totaled about $493 billion worldwide.

As the problems in the US spread: housing prices falling and energy prices and food prices rising, credit markets griding to a halt, and consumer spending down, the rest of the world will suffer the same problems as the US, affecting the whole global market. Financial losses continue to pile up, signaling we still have a long way to go.

"You're going to continue to get write-offs from the financial sector," he added. "Investors will either look past that or periodically they are going to stare at that with shock and cause sell-offs."

Besides the writeoff, UBS will split off its investment banking unit that made it Europe's top casualty of the credit crunch—and scared off wealthy clients—a move that analysts said signals the sale of the beleaguered business.

The world's biggest banker to the rich gave in to shareholder pressure to restructure on Tuesday, admitting there were problems with its one-bank model as it reported fresh writedowns and clients withdrawals in the second quarter.

UBS joins U.S. peers Citigroup and Merrill Lynch in taking more big hits in the quarter from exposure to risky mortage assets.They remain the three hardest hit banks and investors are still worried about yet more subprime costs.

JPMorgan said trading conditions have "substantially deteriorated" in the third quarter compared with that of the second, and spreads on mortgage-backed securities and loans have "sharply widened." The estimated losses exclude hedging, the firm said.

The writedowns were partly driven by Merrill Lynch's recent decision to sell $30.6 billion in risky debt to Lone Star funds for just $6.7 billion, or about 22 cents on the dollar, FT said.Merrill's move ratcheted up pressure on rivals to cut the values of their own subprime assets as they grapple with mounting debts and weakening economies.

So keep in mind that the commodities bust will be short-lived. Oil will rise again and soon as the Euro, pound, yuan and yen continue to weaken. The dollar and the US economy is not surging forward, we're simply dragging down the rest of the world to our level.

Be prepared.

We Come Not To Praise Caesar...

...but to sift through the ashes and giggle a bit. Tom Maguire covers The Atlantic's autopsy on the Hillary Campaign.

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel.

We didn't want a manager, but a revolutionary. Tom brings up a good lesson however:

Had Hillary won, perhaps we would be lauding the creative ferment she created by tolerating and encouraging the factional in-fighting, and we would be deriding Barack for, I don't know, having failed to anticipate the extent of his Jeremiah Wright problem. Winners write the history; losers have it written about them.

A harsh lesson, but it doesn't make it any less true. Ask John Edwards, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Al Gore (Nobel Prize or not, he's still inventing internets and feeding unborn children into his private jet's fuel tank) and oh, any other loser wishy washy non-Clinton Dem over the last 20 years.

Like Mike

Phelps, that is.

Michael Phelps carved his name among the Olympic greats on Tuesday, smashing another world record in the pool to join Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis in an elite group on a record nine career golds.

An imperious victory in the 200 meters freestyle also gave the 23-year-old American his third gold in Beijing as he seeks to overtake Spitz's other record, seven golds at a single Games.

Three golds down, five more chances to go.

Phelps could overtake compatriots Lewis and Spitz, "Flying Finn" runner Paavo Nurmi and Soviet gymnast Larysa Latynina, all on nine golds, when he swims two more finals on Wednesday.

Most dominant Olympic athlete of all time? Hard to argue against the man should he win any more auric accoutrement. Ten gold medals would make him the best of the best, even if he does fall short of Spitz's 7 golds in one Olympics. Frankly, since the relay was his least favored event for take gold in, he could very well end up with 14 gold medals, obliterating the career mark in just two Olympic games. You'd have to put him at the top of most any sports bar/water cooler argument.

Howard And Kumar Go To Ohio

How cool is this: Howard "BYAAAAAAAAH!" Dean and Kal Penn, "Kumar" from the Harold and Kumar films, will be in town tomorrow for a DNC voter drive event over on Montgomery Road.

Try to leave your nookular bong at home.

Equal time for the Other Team: McSame has a new downtown Cincy campaign office opening on Thursday.