Dispatches from the Obama trail: Obama ventured into Hillary territory, quite literally where her father is buried, to Scranton, Pennsylvania tonight and rallied 4,800 eager fans. Under the neon lights of a massive indoor soccer field, Obama also unleashed some of his harshest criticism yet of Clinton, laying out three reasons why he’d make a [...]
State College, Pa. I’ve spent the weekend with the Democrats–yesterday with Obama, today with Clinton. I’ll have a lot more to say about the race in my print column this week…but a few quick notes from Pennsylvania: Substance: Both Clinton’s and Obama’s stump speeches have collapsed into blatant pandering. Obama doesn’t talk about hope much [...]
For my fellow Iraq obsessives out there, two new and important books: Regular Swampland readers know how much I respect the Pentagon analysis filed by Fred Kaplan of Slate. Kaplan’s new book Daydream Believers is excellent and devastating, not just on the Iraq war, but also on the Bush Administration’s fantastic devotion to anti-missile defense [...]
The New York Times this morning devotes most of the top half of the front page, plus three full pages inside, to a remarkable story by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Barstow about how the Pentagon co-opts the corps of rent-a-generals who are such familiar presences on cable television and the op-ed pages. Most of [...]
