The Washington Post covers how the Yearly Kos convention has expanded and become Netroots Nation, but Kos himself knows it’s Obama’s World: “It’s not a question of who needs whom. Fact is, the Netroots are not going to be the decisive factor,” Kos says, fidgeting with his iPhone as he sits on a lounge chair at the Hilton, across the street from the convention center. “But having said that, we’re

The Washington Post has a column from German journo Christoph von Marschall noting that Barack Obama’s campaign has refused multiple requests from international reporters to travel with the candidate on his current international junket: Perhaps Obama considers members of the foreign media a risk rather than an opportunity. His campaign learned the hard way how comments to foreigners can resonate at home — recall adviser Austan Goolsbee’s hints to a

In his latest posting, Glenn Greenwald (a/k/a “Rick Ellensburg,” “Thomas Ellers,” “Ellison,” “Wilson” and “Ryan”) claims that “certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight — simply prohibited — even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens.” His primary example is a recent poll by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), which shows that 71% of Americans say

Yesterday, the Television Critics Association named AMC’s Mad Men – a period piece about the world of advertising set in New York in the early 1960s — the program of the year, the outstanding new program and the year’s best drama.  It received 16 Emmy nominations last week.  The show and lead actor Jon Hamm both won Golden Globes.  It was the recent subject of an in-depth piece in The New York Times

Senior Democrats are done playing nice.  Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler and DNC Secretary Alice Germond are expressing — wait for it — “fatigue and irritation” at those Hillary Clinton supporters withholding full support from Barack Obama and demanding that they get behind him “without conditions or demands.” Thus, they have resorted to the proggressive weapon of choice — the sharply-worded e-mail: I must confess a bit of fatigue and

Taking Aidan to Camp Howe today, 3 1/2 hours each way, with 2 hours of dithering while there, so I won’t be posting anything till this evening. Hope your Sunday’s a bit less regimented. Ta! Karl’s got some excellent stuff in the pipeline, and you can muse over change we can alter to/hope we can hope for in the short meanwhile, in furtherance of our national continuation. It could be

Pope flies over sea of young pilgrims Believers or not, that must have freaked them out. Bogie at 11 o’clock! Hey, this is the way I feel about PP’s arguments: Chechen strongman calls on Russian army to give up premises BREAKTHROUGH: Human stem cells provide therapeutic options for mice Obama uses “regal we,” admits need for much better intelligence Russians like the old czars better Their arms aren’t THAT short

Preview of coming retractions, courtesy NYT: An alternative path is to put in place more means testing throughout Medicare. For instance, higher-income older Americans have already been paying larger Medicare premiums and receiving a lower prescription drug benefit; that’s part of what made it possible to expand the prescription benefit within budgetary constraints. This could be taken much further. Of course, the idea of cutting some government transfers provokes protest

Donald Douglas at American Power, a companion piece to Karl’s, below: Today’s big foreign policy spin is the report that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has apparently backed Barack Obama’s amorphous troop withdrawal plan for Iraq. There’s a malevolently otherworldly reaction to this around the leftosphere, where many appear to suggest that the success of the surge somehow validates the radical left-wing surrender agenda of the Democratic Party and the

As the blogosphere is abuzz with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s comments to Der Spiegel about Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq, I would note that Allahpundit (with whom I diagreed elsewhere this morning) catches all the nuance, saving us all the time.  Maliki’s comments are based on the assumption that positive trends continue, that al Qaeda and the militias are being defeated and that political reconciliation is