Matthew Yglesias

Washington Post: "For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true." Unfortunately, much of the rest of the article proceeds as if harshly-phrased dishonest attacks exist on a continuum with harsh, accurate attacks. More »

So it seems that Barack Obama said something like: It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions. One could dispute that theory, but it's not a particularly remarkable thing to say. You have a candidate who was greeted enthusiastically in Europe saying that the… More »

US Senator Sam Brownback is outraged that China may monitor the internet use of hotel guests in Beijing for the Olympics. I mean, what kind of a country would engage in electronic surveillance without any kind of warrant or due process? Only an authoritarian nightmare like China. Or, well, the United States of America. Brownback explains the difference thusly: We don't put the hardware and software on hotels. If there is a targeted individual that seems to be a… More »

I say right on to this. But what's more, there's something revealing about the sense of entitlement among Joe Klein's antagonists at Commentary. As he says "They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me." The people on the hawk side of this issue are used to getting their way through bullying, and to terrifying a large number of people who disagree with them out of ever saying so. One thing I think the blogosphere has been helpful in doing is opening up the… More »

It seems that with the Bush administration now agreeing to a "time horizon" for the withdrawal of US forces, the Iraqis are ready once again to talk about a Status of Forces Agreement. This, as I've been saying, is both as it should be and reflects the Iraqi-side case for a withdrawal timeline. American troops clearly aren't going to leave immediately so some kind of SOFA is needed. And the Pentagon will demand that the SOFA include provisions that are reasonable… More »

Media Matters goes after the press and its worshipful relationship with John McCain: I'll freely admit that Barack Obama gets about the best press I've ever seen a Democrat who doesn't just constantly trash other Democrats get. But the specter of watching John McCain -- who gets the best press of any politician anywhere -- spend the past few weeks whining about the media is more than a little infuriating. More »

Joe Klein talks to Jeffrey Goldberg about neocons, Israel, Iran, etc. Klein makes a lot of sense. More »

Josh Marshall wonders how John McCain can be described as "ambivalent" about running on his war record when his war record is such a major theme of his campaign that "At many of his events, his campaign sets up a screen and plays for the crowd a three-minute film called "Service with Honor," telling the story of McCain's more than five years of captivity in a North Vietnamese prison after his Navy plan was shot down in 1967." But this is easy. As many pundits… More »

I'm happy to learn that Ta-Nehisi Coates will be joining the Atlantic blog team in the near future -- he's an absolutely great choice. More »

Ezra Klein called attention earlier today to some alarming predictions about the future of the American waistline. Often when people contemplate the unsound eating habits of the average American they suggest that the typical diet of Mediterranean countries would be a better model to emulate. Unfortunately John Boonstra notes that the reverse seems to be happening and Mediterranean people are shifting to American-style larger portions, more meat, and worse health… More »

Another sign of desperation at the McCain Campaign as they seem to have hired Matt Yglesias to do their copy editing. Meanwhile, one thing I admire about Barack Obama is that he's taken a principled stand against a pointless overemphasis of manned space exploration even as Hillary Clinton and McCain both sought consistently to pander to the small number of beneficiaries of the status quo. More »

As he got his presidential campaign going, John McCain wound up flip-flopping on several crucial issues saying he would vote against his own immigration bill, repudiating his record on taxes to embrace Bush's record, etc. But lately the campaign just seems to be off the rails, and unable to decide what McCain's stance is on various topics. For example, McCain and McCain's spokesman can't agree on whether or not increasing the payroll tax cap should be "on the… More »

Chris Bowers proclaims that if Barack Obama picks Tim Kaine as his VP nominee that "would also signal that Obama has no intention to govern as a progressive" whereas "by contrast, Obama / Sebelius would be fine, and Obama / Dodd would be exciting." This seems to me to be reading way too much into the VP selection. Ronald Reagan's selection of George H.W. Bush much more presaged Bush becoming a conservative than Reagan becoming a moderate. The best guide to how… More »

I didn't see this AFP story last week: The Iraqi officer leading a U.S.-financed anti-jihadist group is in no mood for small talk -- either the military gives him more money or he will pack his bags and rejoin the ranks of al-Qaeda."I'll go back to al-Qaeda if you stop backing the Sahwa (Awakening) groups," Col. Satar tells U.S. Lt. Matthew McKernon, as he tries to secure more funding for his men to help battle the anti-U.S. insurgents. This, I think, does more… More »

John McCain is asked whether he would order US forces to strike Osama bin Laden in Pakistan if they had a read on his location, and he bizarrely doesn't commit to doing so citing Pakistani sovereignty as his concern. That seems a bit odd to me; it's well-known and well-understood (though perhaps not by McCain) that the Pakistani government doesn't exercise effective control over significant swathes of its nominal territory and that this is a large part of the… More »

I saw this photo the other day and thought to myself "that looks delicious, too bad it's vegan fake chicken . . . mmm I should go to the Eden Center and get banh mi sometime soon." But now via McMegan I learn that it may be all in my head: The clever experiment went like this: a large group of people were given a "human values" test which seeks to measure fifty six different values (loyalty, ambition, social order, etc.) Then, the subjects were asked to rate a… More »

Patrick O'Connor reports on the new GOP political strategy: They’ll also begin to use “Pelosi-Reid-Obama” in the all-in-the-same-breath way that Democrats now use “Bush-McCain” — to make the parties’ popular candidates indistinguishable from their less beloved incumbents. This was more or less Bill Kristol's column a couple of days ago. The trouble is that as best I can tell, Pelosi isn't nearly unpopular enough for this to work. Her approval… More »

As you may recall, back during the 2004 campaign John Kerry said something about counterterrorism being primarily a question to be dealt with through law enforcement and intelligence rather than something that should be understood as primarily a kind of war. George W. Bush was eager to pounce: Some are skeptical that the war on terror is really a war at all. My opponent said, and I quote, "The war on terror is less of a military operation, and far more of an… More »

According to Jonathan Martin, the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) is good news for John McCain (R-AZ) because it will "at least subtly remind voters about the clashes between the two senators over the years" over pork. More »

Gareth Porter reminds us that this isn't the first time Nouri al-Maliki has tried to get the Bush administration to agree to a timeline for withdrawing from Iraq, writing about a summer 2006 episode that the Bush administration tried, successfully, to walk back. Jim Henley wonders if Bush could have saved the GOP's electoral prospects by just agreeing to what, at the time, pretty much all the major Iraqi factions were looking for. It's a bit hard to say, but it's… More »