The Daily Sandwich

"We have to learn the lesson that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish." -Sir Karl Popper

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Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

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Thursday, December 07, 2006

Should we just inaugurate the Republican now?

There are signs of something of an awakening taking place among reporters in the last month. Some are quietly acknowledging that the press-at-large treated Gore and Kerry pretty shabbily while largely giving Bush's nonsensical policies and faux-populism a free pass in the last elections. Beyond that, the media is finally willing to use the term 'civil war' to describe Iraq's descent into chaos.

On the other hand, it's been difficult to watch the press act shocked-- shocked!-- at the ISG's findings, as though it hadn't occurred to anyone that things weren't going well.

And although the next presidential election is two years away, we're already seeing the same old routine. Will America vote for someone as polarizing as Hillary? Will Americans vote for a black man? With the potential Democratic contenders, it's all question marks and unknown quantities.

On the other hand: Commenting on Sen. John McCain's proposal to send more troops to Iraq, The New York Times' Anne Kornblut claimed that "McCain is proving that he is nothing if not an independent-minded maverick on this."

Independent-minded? Maverick? To me, this sounds suspiciously like more of the same sleazy crap that just cost Republicans the midterm elections:

John McCain just hired the worst man in the world to run his campaign, Terry Nelson. Nelson was an unindicted co-conspirator in the TRMPAC scandal as a key point of contact between Tom Delay and the RNC. He was James Tobin's boss during the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal, for which Tobin was convicted. He also worked at the head of opposition research for the NRCC this cycle, where robocalls from Republicans pretending to be Democrats were the norm all over the country. Nelson also produced the racist bimbo ad against Harold Ford.

Democrats just crushed Republicans in the election, and the cat's out of the bag that Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. But somehow, nothing's changed. Just thought I'd warn you now.