Author: Greg Saunders

Sarah Palin, tonight :

“Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”

Mystery Men :

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? “If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right.” It’s…

The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage…

Mr. Furious: …your rage will become your master? That’s what you were going to say. Right? Right?

The Sphinx: Not necessarily.

I like to think of conventions like reunion shows for a band that nobody listens to anymore. For the Dems last week, the band sounded like they did at their peak. The nailed every song and even the stuff they played from their new album was really good. Even the guys you were completely sick of kicked ass.

For the Republicans, however, you’re just reminded why you hated their band in the first place. They’re playing the same crappy songs you’ve heard a million times before and you can totally tell their hearts aren’t in it. Then again, it’s hard to avoid seeming stuck in the past when your two frontmen are a patronizing old guy from TV who always sounds like he’s tired and an attention-seeking droopy dog who thrives on publicly trashing his bandmates.

I know the veepstakes anticipation is feverish, but there’s no way this is real :

Just compare the sticker above the an actual Obama sticker :



The legit sticker is very well-designed. Notice how the “O” and “8” are slightly larger and frame the text portion of the sticker. And how it uses multiple shades of blue to great effect. And that it includes both the now iconic campaign logo and the address for the official site (which is also well designed in terms of font choice, size, color, and spacing).

Now keep all of that in mind as you take a look at the monstrosity of a sticker that’s making the rounds purporting to be proof that Obama is picking Evan Bayh. It uses the most boring and basic shades of blue and red imaginable, a silly wave of a white line that looks like it was borrowed from a Pepsi can, and truly bizarre choice of font for the “08” in the corner. The star in the “0” finishes it off as if to imply that this sticker was a class project from a Learning Annex Photoshop class rather than the work of design professionals.

If this is real, then it would mean that despite all of the perfectly executed planning and coordination by the Obama team, they handed over the design of their campaign merch to amateurs who shouldn’t even be in the same room as those who have been so successful in the campaign branding so far. Personally, I don’t buy it.

Earlier today, I just got around to commenting on the recent shooting at a Unitarian church, noting :

I don’t think it’s fair to say that people like Limbaugh and O’Reilly are directly or even indirectly responsible for the shooting, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the limits of what’s considered acceptable commentary among mainstream conservative commentators has moved to the extreme right over the past 10-15 years. Sean Hannity has a book titled “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, Michael Savage describes liberalism as a “mental disorder” and considers us “the enemy within”, Jonah Goldberg’s latest book features a Hitler-mustached happy face under the title “Liberal Fascism”, Ann Coulter’s best sellers describe liberals as being “Godless” and guilty of “Treason”, Bill O’Reilly routinely compares liberal activists to the KKK and Nazis, Glenn Beck describes Barack Obama as a “marxist”, etc. If this is the voice of mainstream conservatism, is it any wonder that the extremists on that side would grab a gun and shoot up a liberal church?

I’m starting to see a pattern here :

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died Wednesday, hours after a shooting at the party’s headquarters, police said. Police block off the streets surrounding the state Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday in Little Rock.

Chairman Bill Gwatney died at 3:59 Wednesday afternoon after a gunman entered his Little Rock office and shot him several times in the upper body, Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said.

While we should reserve judgment until we know more about the shooter, when a party chairman gets murdered by a stranger who walks into his workplace demanding to speak to him, I think it’s safe to assume politics might be involved. Moreover, regardless of whether or not this guy was a crazy loner, actions like these don’t occur in a vacuum. I mean, is anybody really surprised when violent lunatics erupt from a mindset in which this passes for humor? (h/t)

Wait a sec….I thought Iraq was responsible for the anthrax attacks :

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Is there any proof at all that Hussein is involved in the anthrax scares?

MYLROIE: There is no proof that Saddam is involved in the anthrax scares, but proof is different from evidence. Proof, according to the dictionary, is conclusive demonstration. Evidence is something that indicates, like your smile is evident of your affection for me. There is evidence that Iraq is behind the anthrax scares. First, it takes a highly sophisticated agency to produce anthrax in the lethal form that was in the letter sent to Senator Daschle. Not many parties can do that. Second, there is an additive in that anthrax, bentonite, which is used to cause the anthrax to not stick together, and float in the air. Iraq is the only party known to have produced anthrax with bentonite.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Should the U.S.take action against Iraq?

MYLROIE: Yes. It is necessary for the United States to take action against Iraq. The 1991 Gulf War never ended. We continue it in the form of an economic siege whose origins lie in the Gulf War. And also, we bomb Iraq on a regular basis, and Saddam continues his part of the war in the form of terrorism. It is unlikely that that anthrax will remain in letters. It is likely that it will be used at some point, for example, in the subway of a city, or in the ventilation system of a U.S. building. Saddam wants revenge against us. He wants to do to the U.S. what we’ve done to Iraq. One way he can do that is terrorism, particularly biological terrorism.

Then again, who would believe the “crackpot” theories of Laurie Mylroie? Well, there’s this guy :

At the Pentagon, Wolfowitz was an insistent force behind an invasion of Iraq, bringing it up at the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration, months before Sept. 11. For years he had been a firm believer in the crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie, a neoconservative writer, who argued that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and even the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

…and these guys :

For those of you playing “six degrees of neoconservatism”, Laurie Mylroie also co-wrote a book with Judy Miller about – you guessed it – Saddam Hussein.

Now that the neocons have mostly moved on the greener pastures, I’m sure we can expect the “evidence” that Bruce Ivins was an Iranian double-agent to surface any day now…