John McCain, presidential candidate, was hoping that his wife would enter a biker beauty contest! Like this one!

Toby Keith just called Barak Obama an Oreo!

Paris Hilton responded to attacks by John McCain by proposing a reasonably coherent, bipartisan compromise on energy policy!

Yeeeeeeeeeeehaw!!! Note to whomever put the acid in my thermos this morning: that is some first class shit! Thank you! I am tripping balls!

Heh.

…the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”

Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others,” Nagourney tells me. “I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”

No! That’s so unfair! Why would they treat you like an opponent?

Last year, when Hillary Clinton campaigned as a front-runner, Obama provided access to the press corps and won over the media. One night, during a campaign stop in Iowa, he met reporters for off-the-record drinks. He cooperated for magazine profiles and appeared on the cover of GQ. And Clinton’s relationship with the press wasn’t half as easy. “The difference is the Clinton people were hostile for no reason,” a reporter who has covered both Democrats tells me.

I can think of a reason! My hand’s raised! Pick me! Pick me!

It’s because you, the press corps, spent 8 years savaging the Clintons by playing stenographer to the ratfuckingest Republicans to come along since Nixon, continued to do so during Hillary Clinton’s senate career, and then outdid yourselves during her run at the Democratic nomination! You said things like:

…the reason she’s a US Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front runner, is that her husband messed around.

And:

I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs

And let’s not forget:

But doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?

Those are just a few gems off the top of a 16-year stack of vicious, bullshit coverage. Look, I wasn’t a Clinton supporter in the primaries per se, in fact for much of the primaries I was prohibited from publicly expressing a preference. I thought she’d be a right fine candidate, I thought the same thing about Obama. But there’s really no denying that going all the way back to 1992, there’s been plenty of reasons for the Clintons to treat you assholes like… assholes. It amazes me constantly, given the celebrity-journalism quality of political and campaign coverage, that they’re able to treat you as well as they do.

So, given the fact that this ain’t Obama’s first rodeo, and that he’s evidently really, really good at this, he’s going to work you fuckers to his advantage, and work to keep you from fucking him the way you’ve been fucking Democrats since Gingrich, Delay and Rove have had their hands up your puppet asses. It’s not new, LBJ was a master at this, and it’s not personal, any more than it is when you play video clips of Rev. Wright saying, “God Damn America!” several thousand times in a couple of weeks.

Hope this clears things up, and you’re welcome!

(h/t Atrios)

Here he comes, here comes Bob Novak
He is Satan on wheels!

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning.

He is Satan and he’s gonna be
Runnin’ over someone!

The pedestrian, a 66-year-old man who was not further identified by authorities, was treated at George Washington University Hospital for minor injuries, according to D.C. Fire and EMS.

He’s disappointed that he hasn’t killed you yet
He’s busy revvin’ up his powerful CORVETTE!

“I didn’t know I hit him. … I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.”

And when the odds are against him and there’s
Righteous cyclists…

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street. “This car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.

He said he chased Novak half a block down K Street, finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block it and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blaring, until commuters behind Novak backed up so he could pull over.

Bono said that throughout, Novak “keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.”

You bet your life Bob Novak
Won’t go to jail

I saw on television earlier this morning that for breaking traffic laws and seriously injuring a man through conduct that could easily have killed him, Novak is going to get . . . a $50 fine.

Go Bob Novak!
Go Bob Novak!
Go Bob Novak GOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I’m out tomorrow, travelling this weekend, so the singin’ and dancin’ and whatnot comes a day early. My personal 3-day weekend means early entertainment for you!

But, before we get to dessert, I thought I’d throw out something nutritious. Don’t worry, it’s funny too, but it’s something substantial to chew on. Here’s James Howard Kunstler smacking America around with its own architecture and city planning.

There’s not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel okay about goin’ down this block.

Enjoy the stinging sensations!

A young lady here in D.C. was killed riding her bicycle in the Dupont Circle area last week. Evidently she was going straight through an intersection and was run over by a garbage truck turning right. It’s the kind of story that makes my stomach knot and my heart break for her, for the family, and for the driver as well. The life of everyone involved has been redefined in that instant, and not in a good way.

The blog pundits have weighed in. Matthew Yglesias isn’t looking to accommodate, he thinks we ought to take more street back from the cars and use it for bus lanes, bike lanes, and light rail. Megan McArdle stokes flames by asking whether drivers or cyclists suck worse, and comes to the easy conclusion that it’s the drivers, and further that it’s D.C. drivers in particular. I disagree with Ms. McArdle on a variety of issues, but we’re solidly in concurrence on this one.

Ezra Klein draws attention to a study finding countries with more cyclists are safer. Sounds about right to me, the more familiar people are with mixed traffic, the less freaked out they should be sharing the road. Additionally, as more and more people turn to bicycles for relief from rising fuel costs, we’ll have a larger, more affluent, and therefore more powerful constituency. Sucks that you need numbers and money to get anyone in power to take notice, but that’s life. Mayor Fenty is already a strong supporter of alternative transportation, I’m hoping that between the growing ranks of cyclists and smart, progressive administrations we should see some real improvements in infrastructure.

And then come the comments (some of them mine) where each side shouts J’accuse!, and describes how they saw this bike/car run this red light/stop sign etc, etc. It’s predictable, like a fight in a small town bar that keeps happening between the same drunks over habitual insults and injuries. I frequently throw a punch or two, because shit, someone is wrong on the internet. But every so often, a stranger will walk through the door and throw down with something really special that just leaves jaws on the floor.

This country is not set up for bikers like Europe is, with its smaller city streets and huge population of bikers. Biking to work in most American cities is just taking an unnecessary risk. Go bike on a bike path for fun, but get the hell out of traffic.

Yeah that’s nothin’ I haven’t heard before. Blow it out your…

Biking to work is an affectation, and selfish in many ways. Look at the consequences to the family of that poor girl who was killed.

Wha-wha-Whatdidyoujustsay?!?

It IS selfish to unneccessarily risk your life if you have a family. Of course you can find cities in Europe that are not good for biking — such as Paris and Prague. Those that are, and have by COMMON practice and agreement, a large urban bike population, like Amsterdam, are the ones I was speaking of.

Paris, huh?

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city’s image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

Hey, those Frenchie bike rental stations look just like… ah nevermind. It should be noted that we do have common agreements, called laws, that lay out how we share the road. But g’head, continue.

Here, biking to work is eccentric, and therefore often done by people trying to strike a pose. There are some people who refuse to go along with the herd on most things, insisting that every single thing they do be marked by the stamp of their individuality. In my experience, that’s the person who bikes to work in a large U.S. city.

I was angry about this yesterday, but now I can’t stop giggling. Put aside the laughable Eisenhower-era attack on “eccentricity”, or the false equivalencies of cycling with eccentricity, or eccentricity with vanity. Put aside the fact that anyone who’s paying attention knows that your “stamp of individuality” in modern America comes from the products and media you consume. I mean really, c’mon, whattaya new here?

What I’m really curious about is this person’s experience. I know plenty of folks that ride to work, and I read a bunch who care to write about it. Many do it because they love bicycling, some do it because they hate driving, some do it to reduce their impact on the environment, and some believe it’s great for their health. Self sufficiency comes up pretty frequently, as does the need to respond to our country’s addiction to oil. Some even see it as an alternative to war, ambitious! At least one person believes that it saved his life. There are as many reasons for biking to work as there are people doing it, and most of us have more than one.

But I have never, ever heard anyone say, “I bike to work because it’s an expression of my individuality.” I’ve heard people say that about their hair, their clothes, their tattoos, their jewelry, their kitchens, their barbeques, and their lawns. People say it about their cars and motorcycles every day. After all, what’s a Hummer but an attempt to show the world your hairy swingin’ grapefruit-filled ballsack? But I’ve never heard anything remotely like, “I’m going to ride my bike to work and show the world who I am!” (Well, okay, there’s these guys, but to be fair, lookin’ hip is their business, and business is good.)

Which leads me to conclude that this commenter’s “experience” isn’t worth a shot of warm spit.

…in a city like DC, there is ample public transport. Taking a bike is not a practical choice, but some other kind of choice.

Au contraire, mon frer. If we leave the Brookland station of the Red Line, you on the train, and I on my bike, and we both head for Capitol South, I will have been waiting for you for about 20 minutes when you emerge from the station, and that’s if I’ve waited at every red light on the way. I will also be eating a breakfast sandwich, paid for with the $4 I’ve saved from not taking the train both ways. I will also have an extra one to three hours of my day that you do not have, due to your slower mode of transit, and the hour that you now need to spend at the gym to make up for your suffocating cubicle-based job. A gym which, I must remind you, requires lighting, air conditioning, and power so that you can watch television while spinning your hamster wheel.

Tell me again about practicality?

And so long as we’re talking public transportation, let’s return to your original point about selfishness. If you’re driving your automobile (I’ll even assume that it’s not a Ford Excursion for sake of argument) to work in this city, contributing to congestion, pollution, lack of parking, and a general decline in the quality of life for everyone else when there’s ample public transport available, then who’s being selfish?

If you drive a car and are honest about your observations, you know that the lives of bikers are entirely dependent on your driving accuracy and attention in a way that other drivers’ lives are not — you are behind tons of steel, and they are exposed. It’s just that simple — a huge risk, with utterly predictable tragic consequences for some bikers and their poor families. It’s just not a risk worth defending.

Living life in a steel box, decoupled from people and terrain, spending precious moments of a finite life hating everything is not worth defending. Vainly attempting to meet our transportation needs by escalating car-centric solutions is not worth defending. Destroying the livability of a city by accommodating the selfish desires of suburban car commuters, at the expense of our quality of life, is not worth defending. Continuing this way of life that’s wrecking the environment, changing the climate, miring us in middle-east geopolitical conflicts and transferring trillions of dollars of our wealth into the coffers of foreign dictators while our economy continues to degrade is not worth defending.

Riding bikes certainly involves some risk, but the stakes are high and the upside is huge. I think the risk is well worth defending.

Dear Congress and Senate: Fuck You.

I know that this kind of thing drives John Cole crazy, so please don’t misconstrue this as an attack on Obama solely. And it’s not like I’m going to give my vote to McCain behind this, or even stay home. I’ll certainly give money to Obama’s campaign, I may even volunteer.

But not today. Not for Obama, not for the Democratic Senators that voted against amendments to strip telecom immunity from the bill, not for Democrats that supported this subversion of our Constitutional rights and gave another victory to an outlaw administration. Certainly not one fucking dime or phone call for any organization that might channel resources to Steny “Fucking” Hoyer. No, today I’m going to do a little grieving over a couple beers, maybe pour some out for another measure of lost liberty (which I think we can all agree is no longer a “phantom”, Mr. Ashcroft).

Tomorrow, I’m going to give some money to these guys. From here on out, my political focus is on fighting these bastards who care so little for the civil liberties which I hold dear. You wanna talk about guns or welfare or immigration or energy or abortion? They’re important issues to discuss, but all of those discussions are built on the bedrock of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The War on Drugs is in dire need of reform, but what’s the point in even debating drug policy, or any issue of criminal law, if it’s not grounded on the principle that Habeas Corpus is an absolute requirement of a meaningful system of justice?

We start by restoring the Constitution and the rule of law, and then commit to squaring off with anyone, in either party, that finds it an inconvenient way to govern a nation. For me, everything else comes after.

[Update]: From commenter socalmonk at DKos:

By the time the election rolls around…
the only people left supporting Bush will be the democrats in the House and Senate.

On the commute home last night:

• Coming up T St. NW, I come upon this fellow with his truck parked across the bike lane, which was both narrowing the lane for cars and forcing cyclists out into the traffic trying to get around his pickup. He had, oh, 8 bags of mulch or soil or something like that. I let him know that there was a parking spot 14 feet behind where he was double parked, and he yelled back that he was unloading. Evidently, he couldn’t be bothered to move those bags 14 extra feet, so commute traffic had to accommodate him.
• Don’t mistake my anecdotal evidence for real data, but I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the very few cyclists in D.C. who stop at lights and stop signs downtown. So I’m stopped at a light on New Hampshire, with about a foot and a half or so between me and the car stopped next to me. A woman on a road bike in business casual mode squeezes between me and the car, then blows through the intersection forcing cross traffic to brake. I only realized she was shooting the narrow gap between the car and I as it was happening, because she didn’t see fit to break her ninja silence at any point during her approach. She looked annoyed with me as she snaked past.
• Coming down the east side of the Taylor St. overpass, where it crosses over the Red Line, I’m doing about 30, keeping up with traffic, and taking the lane. Much to my astonishment, a yuppie scumbag (now now, no need for that) young professional in a Yukon passes me on a pretty tight part of the street, with traffic oncoming, giving me about a foot of space on my left. Since I’m on pace with traffic, I actually have to slow down to let him back in (or not get hit by him as he floats right, though I can’t say for sure if he’d have actually hit me). I look into the Yuke’s window to see if he’s doing this because he’s pissed at me, and he’s got the blankest, most apathetic look on his face imaginable.

Some days, there’s just no winning. Last night’s ride didn’t trip any serious pressure valves, but it did depress me enough to consider riding the Red Line for the rest of this week to relax and maybe catch up on some reading. I woke up and shook that off, it’s a beautiful day and I couldn’t let the jerks steal my morning ride.

But it did get me thinking about whether or not it was realistic to expect anything but ignorance, arrogance, and self-centeredness from our single-strand society. If I’m not well acquainted with the people who provide my sustenance, or my entertainment, and my job doesn’t involve me directly providing anything to the people in my community, then where’s the value in kindness, consideration, or humility? Why wouldn’t I adopt a philosophy of I got mine, now fuck you? What’s the penalty for treating my neighbors and fellow citizens contemptuously in the pursuit of my own goals, or the benefit of putting my own desires aside for the good of the community (much less my country or the world)?

I mean, aside from avoiding a physical attack. But is that what it’s coming down to, where the only reason for me to signal a turn is so that I don’t end up having another driver pull a bat or a gun on me? Is that the end state of a society where we dispense money and fuel from machines that say “Thank You”, order every scrap of our Chinese-made clothes and every shiny gadget from the internet, get our food from factories a thousand miles away, and only find pleasure in entertainment made by professionals? That courtesy is self-defense, and nothing more?

(I should make clear that, for me, the answer to “why” is: “My kindness, consideration, and humility shouldn’t be a response to you as a reward or punishment. That’s about who I am, and who I want to be, not who you are or whether or not you deserve it.” I should also make clear that I don’t think I’m particularly overflowing in those qualities, but I care enough to keep workin’ on it. I don’t know what other people’s answer to those questions are.)

Makes one feel like heading into eastern Pennsylvania, growing a mustache-less beard, and learning to live Amish just to see what it’s like. Hell, I don’t even need a barn, but I’d sure like to raise one in the neighborhood just to build something with my neighbors and share some lemonade. Ya know? It also makes me want to redouble my efforts to find a local bike shop in which I don’t feel like a plebe diminished by the whithering gaze of a barrista with a bone through his nose because I made the mistake of ordering a “large” coffee instead of a “venti”. Or maybe to open one.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I’ll probably do something on the way home tonight out of obliviousness that will convince someone else that the world is gone to Hell. And maybe I just rode through the wake of a few people having a bad day. Fuck do I know, anyway?

Ya know what? I don’t think that getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down in and of itself qualifies anyone to be president either. I’m of the opinion that one’s shoddy service in the Air National Guard, barely limping through one’s tour, possibly going AWOL, drinking and snorting your way through to the end while your cohort fights and dies halfway around the world is a far superior benchmark of judgment and true grit. Haven’t we learned anything from the last 7 years?

Also, a little note to the media: up yours. Take your collective faces out of McCain’s taint long enough to do your fucking jobs. With a press corp like this, it’s amazing that we’re not already irrigating our fields with Gatorade.

[Update]: An astute commenter takes Joe Klein to task for his tut-tutting at Time’s Swampland, and notes:

Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham was a vastly superior fighter pilot in Vietnam than John McCain becoming the first Ace of the war.

Where is Duke Cunningham right now? Sitting in prison for taking bribes as a congressman.

George H. W. Bush was trained as a pilot, was shot down and then had a largely ineffective presidency.

George W. Bush was trained as a jet fighter pilot and he’s the consensus choice for the most incompetent president in American history.

Seems to me that being a fighter pilot ain’t such a great thing to put on your resume these days, eh? Perhaps some intrepid reporter will note these facts. Yeah, no I don’t think so either.

[Update Again]: Wes Clark isn’t going to back off, renounce, denounce, or reject a got-damn thing. Broadcast punditude, go ahead and invite him on your show to talk about it, but don’t be surprised if you get more than you bargained for. He’s whip smart, he’s got some service experience of his own, and he ain’t rollin’ over. Democratic leadership, please take notes as this unfolds, this is how it’s done. Take special note of the exceptional display of conviction, confidence, and spine.

[Update Yet Again]: In case there’s any confusion about what it means to attack someone’s service record:

• Wes Clark stated that McCain’s service was exemplary, and stated unequivocally that McCain was a hero. He then stated that McCain’s military experience, in particular flying an aircraft and being shot down, does not necessarily qualify him to handle presidential foreign policy decisions. Got that so far?
• Here’s McCain surrogate, on the other hand, saying on a conference call with the press:
  

  …we all know that General Clark, as high-ranking as he is, his record in his last command I think was somewhat less than stellar.

That’s what it looks like when someone attacks and demeans someone else’s service record.

So, to review: Wes Clark’s comments bring up a point of discussion, about what actually qualifies someone to be president, and argues that even exemplary, heroic military service by itself doesn’t cover all the bases. McCain’s surrogate trashing General Clark’s service as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO is just flinging shit at a political opponent.

What in the hell do people actually do at journalism school?