S&R: Rep. Boehner, Chairman Bernanke called yesterday for Congress to pass a stimulus plan to help stabilize the U.S. economy. Studies have shown repeatedly that stimulus plans directed at the poor are the most likely to both help those who need the money the most and to have the greatest economic benefits for the country – the poor are most likely to spend any money given them instead of save it or use it to pay down existing debt. The same studies have shown that your preferred stimuli – corporate tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, an “all of the above” energy development plan, etc. – fail to provide significant stimulus to the economy in less than one to two years and are not cost effective for that reason. Given these facts, why should Americans who are suffering from a bad economy right now support your plan when they won’t see any improvement for at least another year?

As usual, I checked out the early polls this morning, spilled hot tea all over myself, and have spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the @#$% is going on.  As the day has gone on, the polls have only gotten squirrellier.

First, the overall picture is that Obama has gained a bit.  The Real Clear Politics average is back up to a 6.9-point lead for Obama after dropping down to nearly four.  That’s the average.  But the spread on the most recent polls is stunning. Full story »

Editor’s Note: Yet another intercepted voice mail from John McCain. He’s starting to sound a little desperate. Full story »

Here’s how the blurb at CD Baby puts it:

Cinematic ethereal, spaghetti western flavored retro-futuristic music with powerful female vocals. // A sweeping, cinematic, wide-screen journey that combines ethereal sound scapes with surf-tinged guitar. Perfect for those late night rides across the desert with the top down.
…
Uniquely original retro-futurism.

Yeah, that’s fair. But there’s a lot more to say about The Lost Patrol and their new CD, Midnight Matinee, which has quickly vaulted onto my list of likely 2008 platinum awards. Full story »

The media continues to present this phony moral equivalency: Obama’s ads are somehow just as negative as McCain’s. On Meet the Press Sunday, Andrea Mitchell exemplified this ludicrous meme, unintentionally entering Onion and Saturday Night Live territory when she called the following “a remarkably negative ad”:

Here’s the specific context in which Mitchell presented this specious notion:

TOM BROKAW: Can they continue to tag John McCain with George Bush?

MITCHELL: They can, and, in fact, they’re doing it with a remarkably negative ad. I mean, we talk a lot about the negativity on the Republican side. But the fact is that Barack Obama has so much more money, and some of these targeted ads, one that they unveiled on Thursday and Friday of this week and it’s on national television, has John McCain in his own words saying, in another interview, in another context, “I voted, I supported George Bush 90 percent of the time.” So they’ve got him on videotape. And the fact is, that this ad is running and running and running. …Yes, the robocalls are reaching hundreds of thousands of people, the negative robotic calls from the Republican side. But these ads are reaching millions and millions of people.”

With all due respect to planetary travel, what planet is Mitchell on? Full story »

by Alexi Koltowicz

As the story goes, G.W. Bush won the presidency in 2000 because enough people wanted to “have a beer with him.” Bush was a reformed alcoholic, so the idea was metaphorical. What people meant was that they felt that they could relate to G.W. Bush. Of course few of us really could. Was your daddy a president? Did you go to Yale and Harvard? Have you ever had dinner at the bin Laden house? No. None of the people who spouted the beer rationale could actually relate to Bush. The trick was that he didn’t talk about his father or Yale or what it’s like to roll around in oil money. Full story »

Part two in a series.

There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence

- Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”

When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust me to tell the truth about these folks, maybe you’ll trust their own words.

Full story »