Two Must-Read Posts by Driftglass

Now that I've crawled out of my grant writing burrow (although I expect a slight relapse soon), I realized I missed two great posts by driftglass.

First, on McCain's fundamental problem:

This is because McSame doesn't just need The Base; he needs them on fire.

He needs them whipped into a peak of howling, manic, batshit, fuck-you-let's-kill-'em-all, political wilding frenzy...

Because these people had been promised things. Weird, scary things.

Sometimes bareback and shrieking and sometimes with a dog-whistle, but the Base was were promised that Commander Guy was gonna deliver cheap gas from his Dear Uncle Saud.

They were promised a permanent wingnut majority. They were promised a savage, worldwide comeuppance to every variety of Scary Brown Persons who haunt the bedwetty dreams of White Rightard Christian Patriots everywhere....

He is stranded between a Base of hardcore, shit-house-rat-crazy thugs who he absolutely must have and who threaten to bolt ever time he comes within a thousand miles of disavowing the Existential Awesomeness of Commander Guy and even whispering anything genuinely bipartisan or reasonable...

...and a block of "independent" voters of unknown size who desperately want McSame to run like Hell away from Commander Guy and start talking in Mavericky bipartisan, reasonable ways. Who are repulsed by the Base and will flee like blind mice from the Farmer's Wife if they catch McSame in the parking lot handing out foot massages to the 27%-ers.

Driftglass also writes about Tim Russert:

...well, in the end, when you sweep aside all of the thousands of sincere words spoken over the death of Tim Russert, the fact remains that only way to judge the value of the Spam factory is by the quality of it's potted meats.

So...how many important national stories were ever rooted out and broken on Meet the Press? (And no, "being forced to testify about your own ignominious role in a major national security scandal" does not qualify as "breaking" a story. Neither does "acting as a launch pad for Administration Trial Balloons")

How many traitorous douchebags were ever brought to book by a Russert journalistic crusade?

In a country where Russert is held out as the ne plus ultra of his profession, has the Mainstream Media been doing a consistently better or worse job of ferreting out the Truth over these last twenty years?

Take a wild guess: Have Americans grown more or less ignorant?

And finally, a bonus post that will scare the crap out of you: Dave Neiwert on the crazies and Obama.