It doesn’t matter whether you support Obama or Hillary, it’s got to give you pause that the leading Democrat in the race (at least in terms of delegates) can’t handle these predictable attacks more effectively.

I am not convinced that there is any good way to address this nonsense, because its so off the deep end. Its not the same as the swift boat attacks which made specific claims (John Kerry was not a war hero) that had to be addressed by the campaign. Rather, these types of comments are intended to create sort of feeling out there that Obama = terrorist coddler. This can only in my opinion be counter by ignoring the claim and staying on message about terrorism, defense etc. Create a positive message. If Obama goes on TV and specifically addresses this attack it will make it bigger, you don’t want to be caught on TV saying “my middle name, Hussein, will not cause terrorists to dance in the streets when I win”.

This is a classic tactic, make a spurious claim hoping to get the candidate on TV denying it: “I do not eat babies. I have never eaten babies”.

PS: Elliot, we hardly knew ye. Word to the wise: don’t sleep with prostitutes.

Make your own album cover! Here’s what you do: The article you get when you click this link is your band title.

The last four words of the last quote on this page is your album title (you will probably need to reload the page if you do more than one, if you’re like me.)

And the third picture, the upper right hand, will be your cover photo.

I’m adding a rule that you have to square off whatever picture you get, so that it’s a realistic album cover.

Mine after the jump:

(flickr image stolen. I would have looked for a non copyrighted image, but that would be against the rules of the game. If Mr. Mcmullen-smith asks, I will take it down.)

Cost of Iraq war: $141 billion

Mega lefty Chalmers Johnson on military Keynsianism.

He thinks our economy has been the beneficiary of a lot of foreign investment:

In particular, third world economies…were shaken by a series of financial crises beginning in 1997…they abruptly switched from being destinations for capital to sources of capital, as their governments began accumulating huge precautionary hoards of overseas assets.

The result, said Mr. Bernanke, was a “global saving glut”: lots of money, all dressed up with nowhere to go…

In the end, most of that money went to the United States. All of this was right, except for one thing: U.S. financial markets, it turns out, were characterized less by sophistication than by sophistry, which my dictionary defines as “a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” E.g., “Repackaging dubious loans into collateralized debt obligations creates a lot of perfectly safe, AAA assets that will never go bad.”

…Directly or indirectly, capital flowing into America from global investors ended up financing a housing-and-credit bubble that has now burst, with painful consequences.

What does this mean for us? After the jump, a different view:

What will be the consequences? Certainly that will affect the election, it will be very interesting to see how.

But then it occured to me…dishonesty can work. This is a guy who managed to get elected in Massachussets. If he gets the nomination he will run to the center as fast as he can. He will suddenly be the reasonable candidate. And with our useless political press he might even get away with it.

The big showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could come down to California’s “beer-drinking Democrats” versus its “wine and cheese” liberals - with the Bay Area playing a pivotal role in the outcome.

Can we stop talking about politics in the terms of beer, pizza, coffee or other class markers that may or may not exist? Gah.