Veepstakes

Ok, I'm trying to write this before I fall asleep at the keyboard, so don't heckle me too mercilessly if I haven't double-checked my facts.

Two favorites are emerging in each party in the veepstakes: Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh for the Democrats and Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty for the Republicans. Kaine is at 36.5% and Bayh is at 23% on intrade.com (Kathleen Sebelius and Joe Biden are not too far back in third and fourth). On the Republican side, Romney (35%) and Pawlenty (34%) are well ahead of the pack.

I would love to see Bayh win, but Kaine would not be terrible. Both are from key swing states, although Bayh is more popular in Indiana than Kaine is in Virginia. The knock against Kaine is the same as the one against Obama - inexperience. He was inaugurated as mayor of Richmond in 1998, lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2002, and governor of Virginia in 2005.

Bayh, on the other hand, was elected governor of Indiana in 1988 and senate in 1998. So he has a reasonable amount of experience, but he's still young and vital-looking enough to make McCain look really old by comparison. Neither one is perfect policy-wise (Bayh was a big fan of the war in Iraq, although he has since said going to war was a mistake and Kaine is pro-life), but I would prefer to see Bayh. I think we'll probably get Kaine. At least he's much better than Hillary or Jim Webb, who were the leading candidates for a while.

On the Republican side, I'm really hoping it's Romney. There's been a lot of stuff in the press about how McCain really dislikes him personally, so there's some chance that McCain will have some kind of blow-up, or that they just won't be able to work together. But more likely is that they'll work together fine, but the media will be writing a lot of stories about the fact that they don't like each other and McCain has a temper, speculating on whether they'll be able to work together, etc. It's just the kind of shallow story that the press loves obsessing over, and this time it'd be to the Democrats advantage. But I really don't see why McCain would pick Romney over Pawlenty - Massachusetts is not in play and Romney is a tool. Here's what I have to say about Pawlenty: he's pretty boring. Which makes him better than Romney, who is actively bad.

DNC Ad Blasts McCain Over Inconsistency In When Troops Will Come Home

I thought this was really good: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/new_dnc_web_ad_blasts_mccains.php. It's a collection of clips of McCain saying wildly different things about when the troops will come home. One thing I really like about is that it always has a date in the corner indicating when the clip is from, which is a little thing that too many ads don't do.

And every Dem ad should include the McCain quote "No, but that's too important."

Fox "News"

I'm sure everybody reading this knows that Fox News is pretty much the worst thing to happen since the Hindenburg, but I thought this was a particularly good example of why they're terrible, which I first saw in Media Matters. The gist is that the NYT published an article that was critical of Fox, and Fox made fun of the editor and the writer of the story. That was completely unprofessional and juvenile, but that's not the worst part.

They showed pictures of the two NYT journalists, but instead of using their actual pictures, they digitally altered the pictures to make the guys look silly, and gave no indication that they were doing so. The pictures are below (along with the originals), all from Media Matters.



People on the left seem to have this attitude of "Oh, they're Fox News, of course they're doing terrible things. " But there's no way you can call yourself a news organization if you do things like this. My high school journalism teacher would have gone crazy if we had tried to pull this kind of stunt.

I did a little google search about the alteration and I found dozens of blogs that covered the story, but nothing about it from the "mainstream media" (I prefer "traditional media" or "conventional media" since "mainstream media" implies that major online news organizations like the award-winning talkingpointsmemo.com or the Huffington Post are on the fringe, but that's a topic for another post.) I didn't do an exhaustive search btw, so correct me if I'm wrong.

This is a total slamdunk case of Fox embarrassing itself, complete with pictures so it's not hard to understand. Why didn't other networks pick up on it? I think the story is newsworthy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with an actual network like ABC calling Fox out.

Why doesn't Barrack Obama pick up the story? He could denounce the story and demand a retraction and apology from Fox, and ask McCain to do the same. It could help deprive Fox of some of its undeserved legitimacely, which could help Obama next time Fox runs one of its ridiculous smears (like the "fist bump = terrorist gesture" story).

This particular distortion is very obvious and undeniable (and is based on pictures, so even USA Today could get in on the action), but Obama's challenge would be to make the case that Fox News in general is untrustworthy. This is pretty clearly true, but it's murkier and more complex than the narrow, specific falsehood of these two distorted pictures.

As a side benefit, bashing Fox would re-woo the left-wing blogs, which are currently up in arms about his changing positions and supporting telecom immunity in the FISA bill.

edit: MSNBC did do a segment on Fox's fabrication, as did a magazine I've never heard of called Editor & Publisher. NYT also responded. All three called Fox News a bunch of fuckers. Media Matters covers these here.