Rap. Rap. Rap. Attention class. Let’s get something straight in this era of 24/7 news. Grownups say stupid things. Two examples. BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said he was sorry the Deepwater Horizons oil spill damaged the livelihoods of the “small people” on the Gulf coast. Then he said he was sorry that his choice of words were “clumsily” expressed. Class, give the guy a break....

Is Tehran considering sending an aid flotilla to Gaza because it fears Turkey’s influence and feels it has to top Ankara? According to this article by columnist Muwaffaq Matar of Alhayat Aljadeeda, a newspaper in the West Bank, while Palestinians could certainly use more help, Iran’s game of one-upmanship is destined to come at the expense of Palestinian lives in Gaza. Exposing yet another chasm...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson who notes something that several commentators on the left and right have noted: Barack Obama and his administration seem fixated on hyping a cabinet member’s credentials in talking about the Gulf Oil spill – and those credentials a)are not important to the people, environment and wildlife threatened by the oil...

Two articles have clashed in my brain with a resounding cacophony: a Tribune Bureau/Seattle Times headline screamed Obama vows 90% cleanup of oil this summer and, in Nieman Reports, Douglas Rushkoff asserted that “There’s More To Being A Journalist Than Hitting The ‘Publish’ Button.” I read the Obama story slack-jawed because no where, no where, did the reporters (there are two...

Weekend public radio is a warm cozy cup of liberal chamomile tea. Saturday is the progressive’s radio Sabbath. Weekdays are reserved for Marxist plots and socialistic schemes. Saturday is set aside for organic gardening techniques, car repair advice, word puzzle games, family fiddlers, and narcissistic human interest soliloquies. Weekend public radio is a safe, soothing blend; a tempered progressive aroma...

In the Oil Spill, the President is sounding like Ishmael but Americans want him to act more like Ahab. “My power is not limitless,” he told Gulf residents before The Speech last night. “I can’t dive down there and plug the hole. I can’t suck it up with a straw.” That exasperation is reflected in postmortems of his attempt to take political charge of an unmanageable mess that has inspired...

The title of this post is not my title nor my quote. It is what was said by my ultra-conservative, proud Tea Party neighbor (and friend) after he viewed President Obama’s speech on the BP oil well disaster last night. Compared to what is flowing in Memeorandum, seems like my neighbor (we’ll call him “Greg”) is in the minority. I asked Greg why he respected President Obama now based...

Sarah Palin had an awkward moment while being questioned on a cable TV show. She clearly could not answer an important specific question and didn’t look as good as when her words are framed by Sean Hannity et. al. The bad, mean, evil mainstream media? Yes/no (circle the one that fits your bias.) In fact, her bad moment came on Fox News when questioned by Bill O’Reilly who did not do a Sean Hannity...

Perhaps you’ve already seen this now-notorious clip of Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) confronted by a student-reporter (and a cameraman) and responding, well, let’s just say, inappropriately: Glenn Greenwald thinks that it’s a clear-cut case of assault — or at least that Etheridge should be arrested and charged with assault (I assume that Glenn does not presume guilt, which would be for...

Is the United States so desperate about impending defeat in Afghanistan that it is setting up Pakistan as a scapegoat? Continuing with our coverage of the Pakistan-media onslaught, recent charges that Pakistan Intelligence has been aiding Taliban militants appear to have triggered this angry retort from the editorial board of Pakistan’s Quetta and Peshawar-based Frontier Post. The Frontier Post editorial...

Has it occurred to anyone but me that political polling in America no longer can be considered a cottage industry and that these vultures can crunch the numbers and phrase the questions to produce answers their clients desire. I mean politicians can’t go to the bathroom without taking a poll. I exaggerate, of course. But it is getting close to that. As a student of political behavior, I consider polls...

Numerous commentaries have already appeared on the recent announcement that Afghanistan may have as much as $1 trillion in mineral deposits, including at TMV—here, here, here and here. In my post, I asked the question, “Will the minerals discovery in Afghanistan alter the course of the war?” Of course no one can answer that question with any degree of certainty or accuracy. Even the experts on such matters...

A new controversy is brewing in Seattle where police are again defending the use of force. At the center of both, in addition to the debate over when force is justified, is the role of video — which puts an action out there for all to see and interpret through their own particular prism. The latest is an incident in which a policeman stopping someone on a jaywalking violation had problems with someone...

The noises coming out of the Pakistan’s media are angry – both at the Pakistan government and particularly at the United States. Reasons include the perception that America favors India and its position on Kashmir, doesn’t appreciate Pakistani efforts in battling terrorists, and that Washington controls Pakistan’s leaders like puppets on a string. These two editorials from Pakistan’s...

RJ Matson, Roll Call This coprighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

The strategy is well-known to anyone who’s been in the blogosphere for a while. When confronted with a story that is bad for one side of the ideological divide, its partisans will let silence reign as long as possible and when they can no longer remain silent, will simply change the subject to talk about how the other guy is even worse. The well-hoed change-the-subject technique is getting a real workout...

During every World Cup there are bound to be upsets, surprises, scandals and controversies. They have become so regular and predictable that a small cottage industry has emerged dedicated to predicting, covering and at times exploiting such events. In my “Every Four Years: Viva el Fútbol ,” I summarized a charming article from an “American Way” in-flight magazine—an article that predicted some of...

Per a report in today’s NYT … The News Corporation took several significant steps on Monday toward preparing to charge readers for access to its content online. The company said that it had acquired an electronic reading platform called Skiff and had made an investment in a company that was developing pay models for newspapers and magazines. In other words: It’s the beginning of the end...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

To the legions of online and cable television critics claiming child abuse that Laurence and Marianne Sunderland allowed their 16-year-old daughter Abby to sail alone around the world, I say get a life and mind your own store. Abby Sunderland was better prepared to circumnavigate the oceans than Magellan. I was going to use the analogy of Tiger Woods father telling his son at age 16 he had to stop playing golf...

Helen Thomas and Queen Noor were in the news last week, American women of Middle East descent making career moves. Thomas, who has annoyed ten presidents with questions at White House press conferences, made the mistake of answering one herself and ended up unemployed shortly before her 90th birthday. Her Majesty, nee Lisa Halaby of Washington, widow of Jordan’s King Hussein, was in Hollywood to promote...

Can the interviews get any stranger with South Carolina Democratic come-out-of-nowhere Alvin Greene? The answer is a resounding YES. As the lively news magazine The Week and Gawker have noted, Greene’s latest interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, a very fair and serious interviewer (I know from personal experience after having been on several independent voter talking head panels on his weekend show) was...

I was asked to do an interview for the web portal Care2.com with one of the two editors of a new book called, Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists (Seal Press). Given the prominence given lately to the topic of feminism, feminists, who “is” or “isn’t” one, who can or can’t be one and so on, I thought some TMV readers might find the resulting post for it (which you can read...

Sandy Tolan, writing in Salon, articulates a theory that has been coalescing in my brain for some time now, as I brood to myself about why, why, why, does Israel keep making the same self-destructive mistakes over and over and over again? This is one of those articles that makes you feel like the author was running around inside your own head (emphasis is mine):

Centrist writer and former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani aide John Avlon got a lot of people mad in recent months. One was conservative talk show host and GOP political Godfather Rush Limbaugh, who increasingly seems to be the Republican Party’s chief tactician, strategist and decider of who is or is not a “real” Republican. The other was MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, a hero to many on the...