Arianna Huffington wonders what's happened to John McCain in her column in today's Huffington Post. She writes, "The big question now -- a question left unanswered on today's show -- is: which is the real McCain? The captain of the Straight Talk Express, or the one who showed up today trying to have it both ways -- expressing just enough gentle criticism to keep his 'maverick' bona fides, while at the same time assuring Bush's right wing supporters they have nothing to worry about? It's probably no coincidence that today's Meet the Press appearance looked like a hostage videotape -- the party powers appear to have McCain securely squared away. In a column I wrote about McCain after the 2000 election, I quoted Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff, telling me in reference to the resistance to campaign finance reform: 'The dam is starting to break.' You could say the same thing today about support for the president's policies in Iraq. The difference is, McCain is on the other side of the dam, desperately trying to help George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld keep it together. Here's what McCain's Straight Talk Express sounded like today: 'Look, progress has been made in many parts of the country. In the north, it's relatively peaceful. Most of the areas in the south, there's significant progress... I believe that you can see continued progress... I do believe we've made progress.' Notice the buzzword of the day? 'Progress' -- repeated four times."
Thanks to Halley Suitt for the link. Ms. Suitt, by the way, has discovered news aggregators in general and Bloglines in particular.
Howling At A Waning Moon: "New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places."
Walter in Denver: "Little known fact - if pharaoh hadn't relented after the tenth plague, the eleventh plague was to be a major political convention."
The Moderate Voice: "The failure of intelligent design. And what a grand failure it is, both as a wholly un- and anti-scientific theory and, increasingly, as a faith-based political movement."
Bull Moose: "But, most smart GOPers are not really worried about the Texas prosecution of DeLay. What does concern them is what federal investigators in the Abramoff case have up their sleeve. The Moose has been observing the Abramoff matter for the past ten years. It all began with right- wing four-star junkets to the Marianas to view the pleasures of sweat shops. It morphed into the Indian gaming scandal. And it involves not just Republican members of Congress and even some Democrats, but a good part of the conservative establishment."
Blogs for Bush: "Back in December of 2002, if you were to predict that in three years tens of thousands of Iraqis would be in an American-allied army and being described as aggressive and competant, you'd have been sent to have your head examined."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
6:54:41 AM 
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