GET OVER IT!
This is an interesting collection of the buzz on the Obama magazine cover. Make sure you follow all of the links within the story.
According to insiders within Conde Nast, sales execs have been inundated with responses to the New Yorker cover, to the point where one said, "I feel like I should be wearing a bulletproof vest" One ad sales executive said this week's issue was discussed at every meeting with advertisers he attended on Monday, "and not in a good way"
WaPo: Unfortunately, as debate about the image grew, The New Yorker missed a golden opportunity to question the rather odd American relationship to satire. Why must it be broadly effective rather than just funny? Why must humor, like grief, somehow be good for us on a deeper level? Instead, the magazine fell into the deadly trap of overanalyzing the funny in public, writes Phillip Kennicott.
Slate : Although every critic of New Yorker understood the simple satire of the cover, the most fretful of them worried that the illustration would be misread by the ignorant masses who don't subscribe to the magazine, writes Jack Shafer.
E&P : Cartoonists not fond of Obama art.
Salon : The blogosphere's reaction to the New Yorker cover proves that the Bush era has killed a lot of liberals' sense of humor, writes Gary Kamiya.
NYDN : Some called for New Yorker editor David Remnick to step down, while others praised him for calling attention to the smear tactics.
FBNY : Barry Blitt: A Modest Retrospective.
(MEDIA BISTRO)

Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign | Video | AlterNet

FIGHT BACK
"Excuse me," the cop asked, all of a sudden sounding polite. "Yes, I do," I repeated, pissed off that for a few minutes I had let him scare me into a steaming pile of silent complacency. I admit it, he had scared me when he asked me if I wanted to go to jail. In those days cops were scarry things, especially Prichard Cops. They were mostly tobacco-chewing good ole boys They wore those crumply and ill-fitting uniforms topped with the soft garrison Kit Carson caps like those assholes in those photos who are grinning during their Mississippi trials for hanging black kids. These were "troubled days" and they were the lilly white front line of falangist resistance, pulled in like all of the other cops in the area for Nixon's visit to Mobile.
From the moment our group had walked past Broad Steet heading for the International Trade Center we had been bird-dogged by an all-too-obvious surveilance. Cop cars and "undercover" government cars paced behind us, some of them backing up as we walked down the street. Helicopters hovered. The scene was surreal. When we reached Water Street we were ringed by police. The cop had asked to see my sign. I handed it to him, never expecting him to rip it up. So, when I composed myself, I told him that I was ready to go to jail, that I had merely been asserting my rights and that he had been wrong. Taken aback, he answered that he was just "following orders". "That's what Calley said," I told him, "you saw how they let him hang in the breeze," and he just walked away.
To his credit, local lawyer Graham Gibbons offered to file a civil rights action for us. I found out years later that while it was happening Clay Swanzy, Jack Edwards' press secretary had voiced concerns about what he saw as a clear violation of our rights. But it went away because we didn't do anything about it.
So, when you see this video of the lady who is arrested for having an anti-Bush sign or hear about the reporter and Scalia, or any of the other reminders of just how much we have come to tolerate all of the encroachments on our liberties, take a second to recompose yourself and fight back, dammit.
(ALTERNET)

Ron Paul Campaign Cola ~ Chris Pirillo

POP POLITICS
Jones Soda launched its Campaign Colas with three limited-edition colas honoring each of the major presidential candidates: Obama’s Yes We Can, McCain’s Pure McCain or Clinton’s Capitol Hillary. Bowing to public pressure, they recently added Ron Paul’s Revolution Cola. If you're interested, here's a page that features discount coupons.
(LOCKERGNOME)

WHAT THE POLLS SHOW
The most recent polls show how Barack Obama and John McCain are faring against each other.

SEE ALSO

(CQ POLITICS)

CHENEY'S CHENEY
Think of David Addington as the id of the Bush White House. Though his hidden hand is often merely suspected - in signing statements, torture policy and other brazen assertions of executive power - Addington's unbridled hostility was live and unfiltered yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee.

FOR A THUMBNAIL SKETCH ON ADDINGTON CLICK HERE

FOR A THUMBNAIL SKETCH ON YOO CLICK HERE

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO FIND GREAT SIGNIFICANCE IN A PERSON'S FOREIGN-SOUNDING NAME:

Find out who Zalmay Khalilzad and Ziad Abdelnour are by clicking on their names.
(WASHINGTON POST)

Deputies Reprimanded After Officer Bitten By Alligator - Orlando News Story - WKMG Orlando

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME
Volusia County (Orlando) Sheriff's Deputy Keith Baughman threw a towel on an alligator he and other deputies encountered in an apartment parking lot. He jumped on its back and tried to wrestle it. Baughman was thrown off the back and then bitten, witnesses said. "His pants ripped up and blood was gushing out and everything," witness Carlos Martinez said. "He started limping away and the alligator was laughing at him. The dude then shot it twice in the head."
(LOCAL6.COM, unearthed by Fark)

The Associated Press: Texas GOP cuts off vendor that sold racist button

NOW THEY'RE PC!
The Texas Republican Party is distancing itself from a vendor who sold campaign buttons at last weekend's state convention that asked, "If Obama is president ... will we still call it The White House?
(AP)

Fairhope safe opened, marijuana found inside - Breaking News from the Press-Register - al.com

EAT YOUR HEART OUT, GERALDO
A crowd of nearly 30 Fairhope, Alabama citizens and media folks watched as a locksmith lifted away the heavy, black door of a city safe that had been abandoned and unused since 1971. The event, planned and advertised for weeks as a promotional for the new Fairhope Museum of History turned out to be a surprise. Apparently, (hopefully?), it had last been used by the Police Department prior to 1971 to store drug evidence and yielded a small cache of marijuana.
(PRESS-REGISTER BLOG)

West Virginia Blue - Democratic politics and progressive policies for WVa

MCCAIN IGNORES GOVERNOR'S REQUEST
An aide to Gov. Chet Culver said Thursday that Republican presidential candidate John McCain ignored the governor's request to cancel a campaign visit amid a massive flood recovery effort in the state.
(WEST VIRGINIA BLUE)

t r u t h o u t | Big Oil Firms Ready to Sign Agreements With Iraq

BIG OIL TO GARNER IRAQ CONTRACTS
Iraq is preparing to award contracts to several Western energy companies to help develop its vast oil resources. The two-year, no-bid contracts will be awarded to companies that have been advising the Iraqi Oil Ministry in recent years, said Asim Jihad, a spokesman for the ministry. He said officials expect that U.S.-based Exxon Mobil and Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, France's Total and British oil company BP will secure the biggest contracts.
(TRUTHOUT)

Op-Ed Columnist - Frank Rich - Do Angry Clinton Women Love McCain? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

MCCAIN'S SOFTER SIDE
While the McCain campaign apparently believes that women are easy marks for its latent feminist cross-dressing, a reality check suggests that most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends.
(NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED)

mediabistro.com: FishbowlLA

TWO AND TEN, DAMN IT!
Carlos drove his brother and I to Dauphin Island yesterday, so this video struck me as particularly funny. The video is part of a marketing strategy for a company trying to raise the awareness of some new California laws and to call attention to their hands-free mobile devices.
(MEDIA BISTRO)

Global Paradigms

WHAT A CONSERVATIVE HAS TO SAY
McCain's kind of Churchillian posturing doesn't seem to be having much impact on the American public, which notwithstanding the short-term improvement in the security in Baghdad and a few other cities, continues to regard the Iraq War as a costly mistake and wants to see the next president drawing up a plan for a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
(GLOBAL PARADIGMS)

MODERATE GOPers ABANDONING SINKING SHIP
"Swift Boaters" continue to attack Hillary's sex, her aggressiveness, her supposed lack of sexuality. They ridicule Obama's middle name and talk about his minister, while still, somehow, characterizing him as a non-Christian. They're the loud mouths who want to talk through the movie you just spent eight bucks to see. But these silly ad hominem attacks haven't masked the fact that continuing to support the war and apologizing for the fiasco that has been the last eight years is having a tremendous impact on the folks in "THE MIDDLE". The middle is not just the class. It isn't dependent on one's income. It's all of us who have been caught in the raging cultural, political, and ideological noise and want the shit to just stop. For example, a newspaper syndicate's computer analysis has found that hundreds of people who gave at least $200 to Bush's 2004 campaign have donated to Obama. Among them are Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the late GOP president Dwight Eisenhower; Connie Ballmer, the wife of Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer; and Tom Fanning, the chief operating officer of the Southern Company. Is this just the "Big Dogs" hedging their bets, a Limbaugh-like conspiracy to put up a strawman, or is the country's political DNA going through a permutation? I have friends who fall into the category that is spoken about in this story. They're not the Microsoft Execs, but they make up the bulwark of the Republican Party. They're culturally liberal and economically conservative. They work their asses off. They party just as hard, maybe not always legally. They may or may not go to church and consider your decisions about your God to be your business. I've always wondered how they could continue to make excuses for folks with whom they really share little. Judging from my recent conversations with them, at least some of them have stopped. Some of them supported McCain because he was the most progressive, some Hillary and some Obama and that could be the real Bush legacy; that the blowhards will be silenced long enough so we can get the real picture. Pass the popcorn, please. (TRUTHOUT)

t r u t h o u t | The Fall of Conservatism

BEING RIGHT
"The era of American politics that has been dying before our eyes was born in 1966. That January, a twenty-seven-year-old editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat named Patrick Buchanan went to work for Richard Nixon, who was just beginning the most improbable political comeback in American history. Having served as Vice-President in the Eisenhower Administration, Nixon had lost the Presidency by a whisker to John F. Kennedy, in 1960, and had been humiliated in a 1962 bid for the California governorship. But he saw that he could propel himself back to power on the strength of a new feeling among Americans who, appalled by the chaos of the cities, the moral heedlessness of the young, and the insults to national pride in Vietnam, were ready to blame it all on the liberalism of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Right-wing populism was bubbling up from below; it needed to be guided by a leader who understood its resentments because he felt them, too.
(TRUTHOUT)