Dudchik: News Aggregator or the Big CON?

Most "news aggregators" are meant to misinform. This is even truer when they are run by ideologues and propagandists more interested in hyper-partisan talking points than reality.

In order to be shocked by this I would need to be licking the inside of a light-bulb socket. If anyone else is shocked by this perhaps they should be licking the inside of light-bulb socket? This kind of stupid should hurt. Might just realign their synapses in a functioning manner so they can begin using the basic skill of critical thinking.

Sadly, aggregators like that are the first bastion of the lazy journalists as evidenced by the fact that too many of them seem to think Drudge is a legitimate source, as well, and repeat the same mistake of leaving their browser open on it all day long waiting for their next big news story and expecting a different result than the last time they did that.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel Maddow's piece continues on and expands on the brigade of right wing GOP talking pointy heads concerning their fake "ACORN" and "Climategate" scandals and a litany of stupid regardless of the issues below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Grayson's Message Embraced By Florida Republicans

That all mythical squishy middle centristy stuff that The Village preschoolers can not read or write beyond? The one that Obama keeps trying to to pander to and live off of while producing medicocre to pure crap legislation, IF he can get anything to pass at all, which is pissing everybody on all political sides off. Needless to say they, not one single one of these bipartisan hacks, just don't get it:

Republicans like a politician who stands up for what he believes -- even if he believes the Republican Party is populated by a bunch of "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals."


The candidate leading the Florida GOP primary to determine who will take on Rep. Alan Grayson, the Democrat who represents the Orlando-based district, is none other than Grayson himself, according to a poll paid for by his campaign. Grayson is a freshman congressman who has drawn scorn from the GOP and has quickly built a nationwide following of progressives.


The poll has Grayson leading the 13 Republicans -- among Republicans -- with 27.8 percent of the vote. The congressman who mocked the GOP health care plan by saying that it amounts to telling people not to get sick and if they do, to die quickly, received more support than all of the Republican candidates combined.


No GOP candidate scored above 3.7 percent; 57.7 percent said they were undecided.

If Grayson were running as a Republican candidate he would the runaway leader of the pack.

What will The Village idiots say? Look no further than below...

Naturally, the national GOP establishment dismissed the results -- "This is the most bogus thing I've ever seen in my life," said Andy Seré, Regional Press Secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Can we just take The Village to a YMCA, toss them all in the deep end of pool and let their idiocies drag them down?

Boehner at CPAC calling all of Obama's Policies Socialist

Flushing out Boehner's lie on Meet the Press and a David Gregory that doesn't follow politics well enough to be able to call him out on the obvious:



Boehner is no different then any other Bircher whackjob.

Hartford Courant Demonstrates Ethics

What?!?

Bad ethics are ethics too... As we are fond of saying at MLN... Time for a Bloggers ethics panel, right?

Maybe we should have a Bloggers ethics panel because some in the traditional media could learn from it.

If Stupid Had to Face Their Educated Conscience in a Mirror

Jane Hamsher kicks stupid's butt here:

As Emptywheel notes:

Look at what was happening here. Mitchell was trying to talk down to Jane, to suggest that she was being naive for suggesting that Bayh, and not progressives, should back down and accept the public option. In doing so, Mitchell was committing journalistic fraud--anyone presenting these issues and pretending this is about Bayh's "conservative Democrats in his state" and not his wife and donors is simply committing journalistic fraud. So Jane turned it on Mitchell, suggesting Mitchell was the stupid one.

I am still waiting for Blue Cross Dems to come out doing their insurance corporation choreographed Kabuki dance to explain how flipping a few Senators is impossible but flipping a hundred House Reps. is easy...

NY Times is late for April Fools Day?

I am guessing they got tired of me spamming them with applications to work for their Blogs?

What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias,
or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone — “snark.” If
something could easily fit in a satirical Web site for young adults, it probably shouldn’t go into the news pages of nytimes.com. Our ethics code promises that in all dealings with readers, “civility applies.”

A quote from my application cover page:

“It has always been my dream to work alongside the great snark writers of our time. Judy Miller, Bill Kristol, Joe Klein, David Broder, Gordon Smith, and a long list of the many leaders in snark that grace the pages of the NY Times on a regular basis. Sadly, they are all so good at what they do that their snark is seriously misunderstood by the unwashed masses, who honestly think they should be taking those writers seriously.

I know the NY Times are a little shy when it comes to admitting this fact, but it is truly award winning high brow snark, indeed. The void I would hope to fill is in providing the everyman's snark so the little people can begin to understand that the Op Eds or articles printed in jest in the NY Times, and clearly misunderstood by the readers, should never be used to justify wars or for making any serious policy decisions at all. It is, after all, only printed in one of the many infotainment sections.”

I guess I may need to update my resume since they seem to have found Billy Kristol’s particular brand of warmongering snark to be just a tad too high brow and sent him off to find work for a new right wing snark tank? (h/t Mock, Paper, Scissors)

Chuck Todd's Misguided War

Via Heather at Crooks and Liars, where they have the video, Chuck Todd is doing some kind of Mr. Moneybags two step:

Here is what I thought was one of the more infuriating moments of last night's press conference. Chuck Todd with this doozie:

Todd: Some have compared this financial crisis to a war and in times of war past Presidents have called for some form of sacrifice. Some of your programs whether main street or Wall Street have actually cushioned the blow for those that were irresponsible during this economic period of prosperity, supposed prosperity that you were talking about. Why, given this new era of responsibility that you're asking for why haven't you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?

Really, Chuck Todd? You're joking, right? If you had asked what he should have asked Wall Street to sacrifice, that would have been one thing. But the public? Unbelievable.

While Todd wishes the workers would rise up to protect the the lifestyles of the rich and blameless, Driftglass has monopolized the proper context for this war on banking error, and it ain't in our favor:

Well, diplomacy failed.

And sanctions failed.

Inspectors failed.

And regulatory systems failed.

This being the case, I believe according to the Bush Doctrine only one course of action remains open to us.

Regime change, baby!

Do not pass go until you have read the whole thing.

Alan Grayson On Oxy-Rush

Via DownWithTyranny, and frickin' hilarious:

The members of Congress I was able to coax into commenting didn't just talk about Limbaugh locution. Alan Grayson, the outspoken member from Orlando, as usual, wasn't mincing words: "Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we'd all need pain killers."

Yeah. Some Politicians know what they are doing.

This Modern World Downsized

If you read any of the papers that have carried Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World... Ya just might want to let them know you like his work before they do some more of that infamous conservative downsizing:

So this is what I was alluding to last Friday: Village Voice Media is hurting in this economy like everyone else, and their corporate response is to “suspend” cartoons and (I think) all other syndicated material across the chain, said suspension to last at least through the rest of the first quarter, and quite possibly beyond.

We don't want to see this poor guy become extinct, do we?

Kristol Loses His NY Times Welfare

h/t to suburban guerrilla, The ever wrong and eternally warmongering neoconservative Bill Kristol's wingnut welfare provided by the NY Times runs out. I guess they were tired of him making the Times a punching bag?

I have edited out all of the right wing junk and neoconservative spew to condense the full piece down to the only important information - coincidentally, it is the only factual information - contained in Kristol's final NY Times column that you need to know:

"This is William Kristol’s last column."

May he get all of that he truly deserves in life.

I wonder what tired, old right wing media gas bag will replace him? Or will they pick a screecher from the over fertilized - and full of it - young republiCON crops?

[update] Sadly, I must note that Kristol will be peddling a monthly pile of crap at the WaPo. If we are lucky he will explode having to hold it in that long. Note to Kristol's friends: Keep a lot of baby wipes handy if get near him, just in case.

Forbes: People Cons wish Libs gave a damn about

Yeah, there are a couple of people on that list that merit being there, even if they are Reagan Republicans or moderate conservatives, and a couple of other people that might even be considered liberal. Anyways, the rest - the overwhelming majority of them - are a bunch of gas bags and media failures that are influential amongst other gas bags and media failures that liberals don't pay attention too other than to kick for their stupidity on a daily basis.

It is pretty much Forbes conservative's wet dream of what they wished influenced liberals:

Barack Obama's inauguration was the formal point at which the reigning ideology in Washington changed from "conservative" to "liberal." We use those terms without apology, as they are used in American political discourse.

Broadly, a "liberal' subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman's right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

In Depth: The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media

In recognition of the role played by the media in our national debate, Forbes.com nominates, here, 25 of America's most consequential liberal journalists and media personalities.

Most of the people on that weak list had little to do with driving the last couple of elections and nothing to do with liberalism.

Palin's 15 Minutes Ticks Off Right Wingnuts

Via the far right wing Newsmax, it appears even the wingnuts are tiring of Sarah Winky Palin's never ending quest to become relevant:

Palin is fueling the stories she condemns by talking about them instead of ignoring them, said Janis Edwards, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Alabama and an expert on women candidates. One of Edwards' classes monitored Palin's role in a project called "The Palin Watch."

Palin "does seem to have ambitions, and this is one way of staying in the public eye," Edwards said.

The governor's complaints about the media assure continued coverage, said Lisa Burns, associate professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

"The media interest will wane. I think it already has," Burns said. "I have to wonder if this is something she's doing to keep her name out there."

When your own side is writing stories that are calling you out for your hypocritical attacks on the media you have jumped the shark. And though I must admit, Winky, we did thoroughly enjoy the comedic value you brought to the news cycle in your 15 minutes... Even down to your very last brain-emptying flatulated sputter of hollow charges:

Tick - Tick - Tick - Tick - Tick - Tick -
Time's up, Dingaling!

Will CT Investigate Ann Coulter For Voting Fraud?

Gotta love those fraudulent GOP values voters. Via C&L, Ann Coulter getting caught with her hand on the wrong voting lever AGAIN:

Ruh roh...another Coulter voter fraud issue...will she be able to weasel out of this one too? News Hounds:

Ann Coulter was cleared in a 2006 voter fraud investigation in Florida after an FBI agent/friend "intruded," but new questions have arisen about her previous voting record in Connecticut. The New York Daily News reports that Coulter voted there via absentee ballot in 2002 and 2004 while records show she actually lived in New York City. Given FOX News' obsession with voter fraud, can we expect an investigation from the "we report, you decide" network? A prime time discussion covering one of their most frequent guests on the "fair and balanced" network? Don't hold your breath. The Daily News reports that Connecticut will begin a formal investigation if they receive a complaint under oath.

Anyone feel like testifying? And should The Hartford Courant try to inflate their website stats with this story?

I thought I should point out that the Hartford Courant is inflating their website stats, Drudge-style, by including this on their homepage:

< : meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="900" / : > (Ed Note: slightly and symbolically modified with two colons to make the code viewable here- CM1)

They should knock it off.

How low do you have to sink to have someone honestly and factually compare you to Drudge?

If you can't trust them when it comes to something as basic as their web stats, how in the hell can you trust anything they have written on those inflated websites of theirs? That goes for both Drudge and the Courant. I don't need nor do I want them to refresh my page for any reason whatsoever. Though, I don't read Drudge because he is just plain stupid. You have to be completely brain dead to think he has anything of value to offer on those wingnut fantasy pages of his.

Meanwhile, over at Firedoglake they catch another wingnut, Peggy Noonan, doing the two faced two step:

How can you tell a Democrat is about to move into the White House? When Nooners writes something like this:

The Founders, who were awed by the presidency and who made it a point, the early ones, to speak in their inaugural addresses of how unworthy they felt, would be astonished and confounded by the over-awe with which we view presidents now. We treat them as if they are the Grand Imperial Czar of the Peacock Throne, and we their 'umble servants. It's no good, and vaguely un-American. Right now patriotism requires more than the usual candor. It requires speaking truthfully and constructively to a president who is a man, and just a man. We hire them, we fire them, they come back for photo-ops. They're not magic.

Yep, presidents are just ordinary, regular schmoes who we hire and fire every 4 years.

Unless of course, they're Republicans.

GOP wingnuts with absolutely nothing of value to offer come in 3s:

Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter and the eggman,
Matt Drudge, strolling down wingnut lane together.

Sorry if that pic made you taste yer puke there... Maybe this story will make ya all feel a little better?

Dead Tree Media Dethroned

And the internet media reigns supreme:

According to a report by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year.” The popularity of newspapers did not decline, but rather, the number of people naming the internet as their primary news source nearly doubled.

The inerrant ability to fact check instantaneously on comment threads as well as the real clash of ideas that happens there surely added to the internet numbers but there is more to it than that:

Michael Dimock, the Pew Center’s associate director, credited the presidential election, which he said lent itself to online coverage. “People often don’t want the general overview of an election,” he said. “They may want to follow their candidate, picking and choosing what they’re looking at in a way that mainstream media doesn’t allow.”

Print media better learn that we don't want their nonsensical opinions anymore. Just the facts and some hard investigative reporting and local coverage. We can form our own opinions from that.

Up until a couple of years ago I would have thought that the print media was salvageable. I no longer think that is true. I just don't care about newspapers anymore. Not American papers, at least. None of them have any credibility to say they are really a "paper of record" anymore. When they stopped doing real, hard investigative news and substantive local reporting that was fact checked they ceased to have a legitimate purpose.

If I want fluff and fiction I'll buy a tabloid at the supermarket.

As long as we have to suffer through the fact free garbage put out there by the fanatical likes of the Kristols, Coulters, Novaks and Millers of the world they are not producing a product that is even worthy of lining a bird cage with.

We have all heard that Greg Sargent (TPM Media) was just picked up for a new Blog by the WaPo. Now that he has to deal with editors that may refuse to print the truth does anyone here think his work may suffer? I hope not BUT the reality is that the entire newspaper industry structure is, now, a failed one. Adding a few decent and savvy voices and tagging stories on the net with WWW3 compliant tags does not change their structure enough.

2nd best use of shoes I've seen...

Calling someone a dog and showing them the soles of your shoes - especially up close and personal like - are kind of like ultimate insults in their culture. An Iraqi journalist tosses several insults at Bush on his farewell to Iraq tour:



And ya want your So Called Liberal Media? There it is in Iraq... 99% of our right wing corporate owned and controlled media don't have the balls to editorialize like that. Most of them have problems just telling the plain truth.

(h/t Booman for the story and bumblebums for the MSNBC video)

[update] Via Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors:

Our own Scissorhead Laura has a great idea.

Awesome idea!

I had thought that holding a shoe in the air would be a great at demonstrations. One of those few things that the Preznit’s SS wouldn’t take from you as you enter a place where he is scheduled to mangle the English language.

“Bare your sole for Bush!”

But Laura's idea is much more practical...

A lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing here: "He’s got great reflexes for an old dude."

You would too if your BFF was the shotgun wielding neoconservative cheney. Bush is lucky the irate Iraqi wasn't playing horseshoes with hand grenades...

Hang this Albatross Around Shays' and the GOP's Necks...

Now I'm looking for the correct bird simile for Shays. It can't be the dodo, that gawky, waddling, flightless, 40-pound joke of an animal that was killed off by the late 1600s on their Indian Ocean island.

Shays' defenses -- particularly in recent years as the demographics of the 4th Congressional District were changing -- were always formidable, and the 17-town district was surgically redrawn by state lawmakers back in 2001 for a Republican.

No need for a comedic double take there. In a district that was redrawn, Tom DeLay Texas style, to make it easier for a Republican to win... And Jim Himes won it. Handily.

Dixon is a dodo...

Proving once again what an out-of-touch right-wing rag Connecticut Post really is, its columnist Ken Dixon published this snarky cheap shot at congressman-elect Jim Himes in his Sunday column:

Himes is essentially a 42-year-old blank slate, a Greenwich millionaire who was in the right place at the right time.

The entire Republican party is a political albatross if the right place and right time for a communist/socialist/liberal/progressive is a district that was redrawn for Republicans.

If I were a bankrupt Neoconservative

Not just morally bankrupt, but having lost all reigns of power...

Staring down the likelihood of losing my last well placed chickenhawk, Liebercon, at a point in time when all of my pitiful warmongering ideals were being shunned by anyone that wanted to be viewed as respectable...

Desperate to keep the fear alive for the sake of power...

What if Syria never had any nuclear program? What if my bestest warmongering friends forever gave me an ace in the hole to pull out at just the right time?

If I were a bankrupt Neoconservative I would never let the fear end. Because that would be the end of my reign of terror. I want you to think about this:

Lynching is sometimes justified by its supporters as the administration of justice (in a social-moral sense, not in law) without the delays and inefficiencies inherent to the legal system; in this way it echoes the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, which was justified by the claim:

"Terror is nothing other than
prompt, severe, inflexible justice."

Hey! It's not like anyone in our government would ever encourage this kind of terrorizing behavior with its own actions. Especially during an election... Right? And it is not like anyone in our government would find ways to demonize impotent pawns in order to create their own wars of choice... Right?

Fear has always been their tool. Lies and deception are their only game. These modern day Jacobins, the Neoconservatives, know no other way.

The "traditional" conservative Claes G. Ryn has argued that neoconservatives are "a variety of neo-Jacobins." Ryn maintains that true conservatives deny the existence of a universal political and economic philosophy and model that is suitable for all societies and cultures, and believe that a society's institutions should be adjusted to suit its culture, while Neo-Jacobins

are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that they believe should supplant the traditions of particular societies. The new Jacobins see themselves as on the side of right and fighting evil and are not prone to respecting or looking for common ground with countries that do not share their democratic preferences. (Ryn 2003: 387)

Further examining the relationship between Neoconservatism and moral rhetoric, Ryn argues that

Neo-Jacobinism regards America as founded on universal principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They demand, among other things, "moral clarity" in dealing with regimes that stand in the way of America's universal purpose. They see themselves as champions of "virtue." (p. 384).

Thus, according to Ryn, neoconservatism is analogous to Bolshevism: in the same way that the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy established ways of life throughout the world to replace them with communism, the neoconservatives want to do the same, only imposing free-market capitalism and American-style liberal democracy instead of socialism.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the following to say in a December, 2005 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel:

"They are not new conservatives. They're Jacobins. Their predecessor is French Revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre."

I, for one, do not trust the media to be a fair arbiter of this kind of information. They have been prone to do the bidding of these Neoconservatives time and time again. The Neoconservatives have known this day was coming. The day when they would be cornered with nothing left to do but lash out at anyone and everyone.

So... If I were a bankrupt Neoconservative, would I ask my Likudnik brothers in everlasting wars to deliver a dirty bomb, one that would leave uranium traces on a target of my choice, to an impotent enemy in order to keep the fear alive?

Deep down you already know my answer!

And I would be laughing at you as you coward in fear, yet again, and were lead like lambs to the slaughter in my newest, greatest war for freedumb.

NO GLITCHES in ConnPost Article

At MLN they have this up on the front page:

Glitches In ConnPost Article

ConnPost: "Glitches didn't affect election outcome" <read>

CTVotersCount.org: "Not So Fast, Please"

A ConnPost article gives a broad brush feel good assessment of the election. We are not ready to agree that everything went fine. We have no reason to doubt that the results were accurate enough that the voters' intent was realized in the results, however, we will wait for the results of the post-election audit and other analysis. Unfortunately, unless this audit goes much differently than the last three we will still be left with a level of uncertainty.

We also have some comments on the details in the article.

The Article says:

Some individuals filled in circles for Jim Himes on both parties.

"Those votes counted and would register under the Working Families party for qualification purposes.," said Bysiewicz. She said the machines would not reject those votes unless the ballot was filled out incorrectly elsewhere.

There must be some confusion on the part of the Secretary of the State or the ConnPost:

Fact: For voters that fill in bubbles for a cross endorsed candidate twice, they should be counted by the machine as Himes Unk (Unknown). When only one bubble is filled in then they would be counted for Himes Dem or Himes Wkf etc.

So unless the particular machine was programmed incorrectly, the article is incorrect.

There is no glitch in the article... I was at the New Milford Town Hall as the results were coming in and they had the exact same issue. I wrote about that on election night. We had the exact same problem with New Milford results for Murphy.

A couple of machines failed early on in Gaylordsville and at the Hill and Plain polling station. They switched them out and things rolled smoothly after that.

Murphy and Obama won. Appropriate NOs and YESs are winning. And Himes won too!

There has been some minor issues with people voting for candidates on their regular party line AND on the WFP line. The votes are, apparently, counted only once for the candidate BUT the vote is given to the WFP. (or something like that?) The software glitches on...

The ConnPost has it right. The votes were being given to the WFP if the voter filled in both lines for Murphy here. And the machines did not catch it.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 5

Wick Allison hits the entire McCain campaign problem upside the head with a brutal dose of reality from a real and honest conservative point of view:

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don't work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his "conservative" credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world "safe for democracy." It is John McCain who says America's job is to "defeat evil," a theological expansion of the nation's mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

The faux brand of warmongering conservatism coupled with a total lack of fiscal restraint and big brother government practiced by the neoconservatives controlling the GOP and their supportive cast of Christianists has been a bitter lesson for real conservatives that have watched their party's hijacking destroy any credibility and sense of decency it once had.

The Christianist Now Own The GOP

Packer sees what the GOP has now become:

[McCain] gambled, all right, but it was in the direction of orthodoxy—for Palin is a creature and an icon of the Republicans’ evangelical base, which came into full possession of the Party this week and completed the G.O.P.’s conversion to identity politics...No wonder Pat Buchanan was so fired up on MSNBC, while Mike Huckabee wore the look of a man who missed his train because he was given the wrong departure time.

Part of the GOP base is in a Christian trance... The rest of what is left of conservatives from previous defections is jumping ship. This could one day be called "The McCain/Palin Bailout of 08" in history books.

What do Conservatives think of John McCain? 4

After the economy was hit with the credit derivatives disaster, he showed his utter lack of understanding about how McCain's own career of championing of deregulation was at fault for it and tried to shovel blame onto anyone or anything but himself and his party's ideologies. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal mocked McCain's incompetent knee-jerk reaction:

To give readers a flavor of Mr. McCain untethered, we'll quote at length: "Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

"The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him."

Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.

After praising the fundamentals of the economy in the morning, after disaster had already struck and following up with a series of incomprehensible statements begging for more of the same, McCain's erratic reactions finally turned McCain into a scapegoating Cox-sacker.