Nothing earth-shattering in it, but here's a short, solid piece laying out how silly the whole raging McGovern Scare is. 

(If you're not following it, it's the argument that Howard Dean is the Next Big Uberliberal threatening to bring down the entire Democratic party, should they be foolish enough to nominate him.)

Despite his not being a hardcore liberal, the whole idea that McGovern got beat so badly because of his liberal politics is a joke. But that doesn't stop the chattering classes in the beltway.

I've also been meaning to point out that the first people I heard pushing the Dean-McGovern connection were the neocons--George Will was spitting it out every chance he got before most people had heard of Dean (actually most people have STILL not heard of Dean, but before even much of the press was talking about him). I've been wondering ever since whether they're secretly scared shitless of a McCain-still nonbullshitter that the country might fall in love with. So they jumped in early with a campaign to do to things: 1) Undermine his campaign for the Dem nom, and 2) Failing that, begin the process of painting him as McGovern for the fall election, which will allow them to portray him as both an ultra leftist, and taint him as a kindred spirit to an old man widely perceived as a pathetic weanie.

Nice work George! That's thinking ahead.

Seriously. That paragraph may have slight conspiracy-theory overtones, but has George Will ever once in his life opened his mouth and articulated something he truly believes? His style is not to pick the argument he most believes in, but to pick the conclusion he supports, and then use whatever dishonest tactics will help support the Cause. If he thought for one minute Dean was a scary candidate, he'd be scheming his little butt off on how to undermine him early. If he thought Dean would scare the public rather than himself, he'd be doing everything in his power to nominate him. That's how George Will operates. That's how a lot of the neocons operate. Despite their firm allegiance with the Christians, scruples mean nothing to them, as a rule. Just winning.

So I really find it oddly out of character that they would be working this angle. Now the DLC, that's another matter entirely.

(Earlier, related posts from me):

Dem's man vs. Conservative machine

More on McGovern, and wusses

All this crap about McGovern

And a semi-related piece on the insane pundit class:

a Kennedy comparison only a Simpleton could conceive

I just came across this D.H. Lawrence quote while doing some research (wouldn' you like to know what):

In masturbation there is nothing but loss. There is no reciprocity. There is merely the spending away of a certain force, and no return. The body remains, in a sense, a corpse, after the act of self-abuse. There is no change, only deadening. There is what we call dead loss. And this is not the case in any act of sexual intercourse between two people. Two people may destroy one another in sex. But they cannot just produce the null effect of masturbation.

 

D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), British author. Pornography and Obscenity (1930)

Man! Was that guy as self-loathing as he sounds, or did he just need a few pointers? Imagine how bad he must have been in bed if he could even make himself satisfied.

I don't know how to verify this, but the folks at www.DraftWesleyClark.com are claiming in their new email newsletter that they have "The second most traffic of ANY presidential candidate Web site (according to Alexa)." Hmmmm. Do we beleive that? Would be pretty impressive.

They also point out a glowing and lengthy feature on him in the August Esquire. It's called "The General," it's by Tom Junod, and it's online for free (though the goobs at draftwesleyclark got the url wrong in their email, it's corrected here).

From AP:

Yahoo! Inc. is rolling out a souped-up search engine Monday in a bid to supplant its business partner, Google, as the most popular place to find things on the Internet.

It's fascinating to watch two simbiotic organisms going to war. I believe Yahoo is Google's main source of income, and Google's engine is the underlying power keeping Yahoo viable. Either one could be cutting its throat by destroying the other. And yet . . .

(Of course Yahoo probably assumes if it ever did destroy Google, it could easily pick the engine up at a fire sale, and deprive the competition of it in the bargain.) Still, it seems a little risky, waging war on the goose laying the golden eggs. It hasn't gotten ugly yet, but it still might. Unfortunately, the story is quite vague on what the changes entail.

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Speaking of Google, I'm searching for an article someone saw on nitty gritty of how they return search results, and running across other interesting stuff. If you don't know all Google can do (like getting a phone number, plus/minus options, google images, there's a good Boston Globe story.

Still sorting out the page layout/display. Feedback?

Dale says (in comments): Masthead makes me think it's a survivalist's site. Sorry.

Yikes. I never would have thought of that, but now that I'm looking at it, I can see it. I was getting a very different impression. Anyone else seeing that? (And you mean like Michigan Militia, right Dale?)