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Sumner Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS, always shows up at the big Hollywood liberal parties and brags about how he is a great fighter for the First Amendment. But yesterday, CBS Outdoor, the billboard company that controls much of the Minneapolis market, cancelled the contracts for the Soldier Billboard Project, that would have placed a telling reminder of the War in Iraq in the face of celebrating Republican’s at the RNC. The Billboards had already been up in Denver for the DNC. Evidently the Republicans “can’t handle the truth”. The cancellation was of course too late for the artists to get another site.

In 2006, in his Keynote Address to the First Amendment think tank the Media Institute, Redstone pounded the lectern while stating that,

imposing any kind of burden or penalty on those who publish protected speech — circumvents this process(the First Amendment). This is particularly pernicious not only because it is prohibited by the Constitution but also because it can be abused by the government.

What a hypocrite.

Juan Cole publishes an amazing article translated by the USG Open Source Center. The original comes from Moscow Vremya Novostey  in Russian — a Liberal, small-circulation paper that sometimes criticizes the government. What’s surprising is the “liberal paper” suggesting Russian diplomatic moves to counter American “Encirclement”.

For instance, Moscow could strengthen its military-technical ties with Syria and launch negotiations on the reestablishment of its military presence in Cuba. However, the most serious step which the United States and especially Israel fear (incidentally, Israel supplied arms to Georgia) is hypothetical revision of Russia’s foreign policy with regard to Iran. A strategic alliance presuming the signing of a new large-scale military political treaty with Iran could change the entire geopolitical picture of the contemporary world.

New allied relations may result in the deployment of at least two military bases in strategic regions of Iran. One military base could be deployed in the north of the country in the Iranian province of Eastern Azerbaijan and the other one in the south, on the Island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf. Due to the base in Iran’s Eastern Azerbaijan Russia would be able to monitor military activities in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey and share this information with Iran.

The Mind boggles at how incompetant Bush, Cheney and Rice are. The evidence is beginning to look like Cheney actually gave the Georgians aid and advisors in their raid on South Ossetria. Pretty soon we will know who Michael Lee White is. This could be a very interesting story.

Kevin Drum has moved from the Washington Monthly to Mother Jones. After showing that she is nearly illiterate when it comes to foreign policy, Kevin delves into the reasons for Sarah Palin’s nomination, he’s just as sharp as ever.

This is all part of what I was talking about the other day when I noted that McCain is running such a palpably unserious campaign. Steve Schmidt seems solely interested in winning the daily news cycle; his staff spends its time gleefully churning out juvenile attack videos; McCain himself has retreated into robotic incantations of simpleminded talking points; and now he’s chosen a manifestly unqualified VP that he knows nothing about. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.

Kevin’s reference to the “staff gleefully churning out juvenile attack videos” reminds me of the “Brooks Brothers riot” that shut down the 2000 election recount in Florida. Its that smirky frat boy attitude of these young Republicans, who are now the brownshirts of Limbaugh/Hannity attitude that Steve Schmidt and the McCain campaign is playing to. I have experienced it here from some of the Republican trolls. Barack took this thug attitude on last night.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

Noah Milmann of the American Scene, with a full-throated defense of the Palin nomination.

I realize, of course, that she’s totally unqualified to be President at this point in time. If McCain were to die in February 2009, I hope Palin would have the good sense to appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President, on the understanding that she would then resign and be appointed Vice President by her successor. (Lest anyone say that this is an absurd, unconstitutional or undemocratic scenario, recognize that this is pretty much what would happen in a Parliamentary system where, if the head of government dies, a successor is chosen by the party.) Palin is absolutely not ready to be President now, but that is a problem that is very easily dealt with if she is and the governing party want to do so.

38 Million viewers watched Barack Obama’s speech last night, a record for a Presidential convention.

The audience estimate of 38.3 million means that Mr. Obama’s speech reached more viewers than the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final “American Idol” or the Academy Awards this year, the Associated Press notes.

Furthermore, the four-night Democratic convention ranks as the most-watched convention of either party, Democratic or Republican, since Nielsen began measuring conventions in 1960.

As Obama now leads McCain 49-41 in the Gallup Poll, I don’t see how we can’t reach the conclusion that the Establishment Media has been woefully inadequate in their assessment of the Obama campaign. The weeks of hand wringing over the phony Clinton-Obama Feud and the stupid worries about the outdoor stadium setting for the acceptance speech clearly demonstrate that most political reporters are lazy arsed note takers, who have nothing better to do than to spout the talking points of various political operatives with agendas. Even today, Chris Matthews is still giving air time to brain deadenders like PUMApac’s Darragh Murphy. She is so obviously a McCain troll pretending to be a Hillary supporter.

Whatever happened to the days of independent reporting and shoe leather?

Way back in January, I expressed my doubts as to whether the Stimulus checks would generate jobs or keep us out of a recession. Well the stimulus checks have all been spent, and as soon as they stopped coming personal income fell by an unexpected 0.7% last month.

“With the tax refund effect on spending now more or less over, we think the worst is yet to come for consumers,” said Ian Shepherdson, an economist with High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York

If McCain thinks the economic headwinds for Republicans are bad now, just wait until November. He’ll be “the big whiner”, then

Rush Limbaugh held forth this morning on why Liberal Women were not happy with the choice of former beauty pageant queen Sarah Palin as VP. . According to Rush the whole purpose of feminism is to give ugly women a leg up in the world. Ergo, “Feminazis” don’t like Palin because she’s too beautiful.

“They are jealous of her. It’s just that simple. They’re jealous”

Glad we cleared that one up.

As high school students gather around the country after summer, most questions revolve around who’s dating who. Not in Harrold, Texas.

Students in this tiny town of grain silos and ranch-style houses spent much of the first couple of days in school this week trying to guess which of their teachers were carrying pistols under their clothes.

“We made fun of them,” said Eric Howard, a 16-year-old high school junior. “Everybody knows everybody here. We will find out.”

Well at least no gum chewing teenager is going to give his teacher any lip while his back is turned at the blackboard. The pistol packing pedagogue might plug him.

Ramesh Ponnuru is one of the smartest guys writing on the National Review’s Corner. Here’s his thoughts on Palin.

The pros: She’s a pro-life conservative reformer from outside Washington, and a woman. The pick signals a boldness and willingness to mix things up that the McCain campaign, like Republicans generally, need.

The cons:

Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain’s age raised the stakes on this issue.

As a political matter, it undercuts the case against Obama. Conservatives are pointing out that it is tricky for the Obama campaign to raise the issue of her inexperience given his own, and note that the presidency matters more than the vice-presidency. But that gets things backward. To the extent the experience, qualifications, and national-security arguments are taken off the table, Obama wins.

And it’s not just foreign policy. Palin has no experience dealing with national domestic issues, either. (On the other hand, as Kate O’Beirne just told me, we know that Palin will be ready for that 3 a.m. phone call: She’ll already be up with her baby.) 

Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?

Compatibility. It doesn’t seem as though McCain knows Palin well. Do we have much reason to think they would work well together? 

Debates. Maybe, as Jonah said the other day, Biden will look like a bully going up against her—and maybe she’ll shine. But I can think of a lot of other picks who would have been lower-risk.

Personally, I can’t wait for the Biden-Palin debate.

Deputy Chief of Russia’s General Staff Anatoly Nagovitsyn showed photocopies of the passport of Michael Lee White, issued in Texas, to media in a press briefing on Thursday.

“There is a building in Zemonekozi – a settlement to the south of Tskhinval that was fiercely defended by a Georgian special operations squad. Upon clearing the building, Russian peacekeepers recovered, among other documents, an American passport in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas,” said Nagovitsyn. Neither the owner of the passport nor his remains were found at the scene, despite a thorough search. “I do not know why he was there, but it is a fact that he was in the building, among Georgian special forces troops,” Nagovitsyn said.

I don’t have to believe Putin that the action in South Ossetia was a deliberate action to try to help John McCain’s candidacy, to want to know who Michael Lee White is, and who he was working for.