Some of the stories that’ve caught my eye in the past twenty-four hours or so.
· “If voters vote with their hearts, [Obama's] experience problems might not matter that much. His candidacy also will test how voters assimilate their feelings about George Bush. . . voters are so depressed after the Bush presidency (seventy percent of the public thinks the country is going in the wrong direction) they might rush to a candidate who seems able to electrify the country.” John Dickerson puts the “foreign leaders” flap in the context of what each candidate is trying to get out of it.
· “You will drool at the splendor of these magic stools. / It’s the rule! Everyone has a stool! Just three legs. / It’s the thing for which a monarch begs, / hock your jewels, use your money for stools!” Mitt Romney, prop comic.
· The toxic Texan: “By the way, we invited White House officials and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend Attorney General Gonzales,” said Wallace. “We had no takers.” Maybe they’re just catching on.
· In the WH briefing room, Colbert’s “answers were almost intentionally bizarre, as if to provoke awkwardness and embarrassment.” Pelosi signs his cast.
· So I finally listened to Hugh Hewitt’s clips from questions submitted for the GOP YouTube debate, and you know who sounds the craziest? Hugh Hewitt. He mocks utterly reasonable questions about Blackwater contractors, universal health care, the need for nukes in a post-cold war world and black on black crime (to this, he simply responds that it’s “not the government’s problem). I don’t think candidates are afraid of these questions, but they should be afraid of Hugh.
· John McCain, getting his mojo back: “He’s back to being the old McCain,” says Judith MacDonald after watching McCain holding court in the back corner of the brewpub. “People to people, person to person. He’s back among us.”
· “Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?” Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter. “How about a compassionate misanthrope?” [She shoulda been a blogger.]
· Mainstream media orgs can feed the trolls too: And they are hungry.
What’s in your sights?
