Mark Casey Online

Joe Scarborough is the host of the relatively popular show “Morning Joe” on MSNBC mornings. I like Joe, and I like his show. I really do — that’s not a joke, I swear.

But this morning, Joe got into an absurd tiff with David Schuster, who is an MSNBC reporter and was on the show acting as a guest commentator/analyst. For those of you who don’t know, Joe is a lot like Chris Matthews, only right-leaning (Matthews is left-leaning). Each of them are fairly laid back, curious guys with a genuine interest in politics and public policy. This genuine interest makes their respective shows immensely watchable.

Today, though, as often happens, Joe was going a little Right Wing on us, saying that if the president of Iraq wanted us to leave, we should, and he would be assassinated, and Joe said he didn’t care if that happened (in fact, Joe seemed to enjoy the thought). This was out of line, but in my opinion, Schuster was the one who brought up partisanship by calling Joe a Republican as if it were an insult. …okay, so maybe it is a pretty good insult these days:

But it comes on the heels of Keith Olbermann telling Scarborough to “get a shovel” (for his bullshit, you see) on national television last night, while Joe was making a legitimate claim about McCain gaining on Obama in the polls these last few weeks. If referencing polls is what qualifies as “bullshit” on MSNBC these days, I fear for the future:

And all of this seems to be a part of a larger theme, coming just a week after MSNBC hired Rachel Maddow for their third prime time TV slot along with Olbermann and Matthews, thus cementing their role as liberal antidote to Fox News. As a result, the liberals in the network seem to be far more bold and combative than they were even a few weeks ago — and that have Scarborough in their sites.

For the record, Fox news does need a liberal antidote — but not one that behaves exactly as Fox does, by suppressing viewpoints and demonizing well-meaning dissent.

I don’t always agree with Scarborough, but that’s the point. And that’s why I’m in his corner on this one.

Last week, I wrote that the reemergence of Clinton employee Paul Begala on CNN was a very bad sign for the Democratic National Convention, and lo — this weekend proved to be worse than I even thought.

Over the last 48 hours on their “political ticker,” there have been 10 stories about the Clintons, all of them aimed at stirring up rabid, anti-Obama Clinton supporters.

Here are just a few of the headlines:

• Did Clinton Get Snubbed?
• Some in Clinton Circle ‘Outraged’
• Clinton the Star of New RNC Ad Attacking Obama
• Bill Clinton Not Happy With Convention Speaking Role
• Angry Clinton Backers Targeted

Note that ALL of these articles use that old Fox News trick of saying “some people” when they don’t actually have an example of an actual person or quote.  Most of these articles have no byline, because CNN is professional like that.  And furthermore, they all use the most classically dubious of references — anonymous sources from people “close to” the Clintons (read: Paul Begala).

Thank you, CNN, for making election season 2008 as enjoyable as a yogurt enema.

Nothing’s going to predict the future better than the past, as I’m sure some famous guy said at some point. So, with that in mind, here’s a good bit from the Daily Show:

And regarding LOTS more great video, nyceve over at Daily Kos has done better than I ever would at finding some juicy Biden moments, so head over there and enjoy the clips.

Unless he’s planning the biggest bait and switch this century, Obama has selected Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his Vice President.

At the risk of behaving like the rest of the media and reporting every little bit of non-news related to the Obama campaign, it’s interesting to note that Obama is supposedly calling the runners up in the Vice Presidential race to let them know that they’re ‘not the guy.’  Or gal.

The reason this matters is, it signifies the fact that Obama’s veep selection has been informed and accepted the job.  This wasn’t the case, I believe, Wednesday.  Joe Biden, for example, who is roundly considered the front runner, spent all week yucking it up with reporters who were staking out his house, bringing them bagels and cracking jokes.

Then suddenly, yesterday and today, he’s sneaking out the back exit, keeping himself hidden.  Curious, indeed.  But so is the fact that Obama was on the East Coast all week, but didn’t make any announcement, instead opting to wait until his Illinois speech on Saturday — Illinois being suspiciously close to the Indiana home of Senator Evan Bayh, with whom Obama will be appearing before the scheduled VP event.

The bottom line:  you just wasted more time reading pointless speculation!  Muhahaha!

For no apparent reason other than the fact that the Democratic National Convention is next week, CNN has once again trotted out its own private Clinton employee, Paul Begala, to lament the current choice of presidential candidates (read: no Clinton to vote for), as well as to lament the fact that Bill Clinton wasn’t named president for life.

No, really:

[Clinton’s environmental speech] was a tour de force: so deep in the details that the propeller-heads were swooning, yet simple and compelling enough that I could follow it. On the day before his 62nd birthday, I couldn’t help cursing the 22nd Amendment, which limited Clinton to two terms. Heck, he’s still 10 years younger than McCain.

Now might be a good time to mention that Begala has been an employee of the Clintons for nearly two decades, and as a senior political correspondent for CNN during the most recent Democratic primaries (not to mention during the entire 2000 era), he was the clear architect of their unabashedly pro-Hillary bias.

After Hillary lost in the primary, Begala has been relatively scarce on CNN — apparently, he didn’t have anything left to say about the presidential race now that a Clinton wasn’t involved. (Note: CNN took so much heat for regularly featuring Begala and James Carville’s political commentary while they were paid staffers for Hillary Clinton, they briefly kicked them off the air for the final part of the primaries. Now, CNN has a massive disclaimer at the beginning of all his articles disclosing all his Clinton affiliations and promising that he’s no longer on the Clinton dole. Right.)

But now, just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Begala reemerges to claim that neither the Obama nor the McCain presidential tickets are likely to be good enough, and that no one should care who they choose as vice president.

This is an ominous sign for the Denver convention, as Democrats are still worried about what sorts of antics the Clintons and their rabid fans might pull. Clinton is already going to ask that her delegates are seated — it’s considered an “honorary” measure, but it will do nothing to make the party appear unified behind Obama — and Bill Clinton has been wildly unpredictable and bitter regarding his post-primary remarks about Barack Obama.

Most people think the Clintons will do all they can to help Obama win. I’m not so sure. They seem to still be considering an Obama win tantamount to a Clinton loss. And Paul Begala’s timely reemergence is not a good sign.

I know exactly what they’re doing.

As the media twists itself into knots wondering who Barack Obama will choose as his Vice Presidential running mate (and when), Obama and company are sitting back and enjoying all the attention lavished on their campaign by the endless procession of speculation. And the media, for its part, is all too happy to oblige. Monday it was Joe Biden, Tuesday it was Kathleen Sebelius. Today, it’s Caroline Kennedy. The media needs something new to talk about every day — so a new person gets suggested daily, and the 24-hour discussion takes root.

In short, it’s genius.

As each name gets mentioned, the discussion centers on what they’ll do for the Obama campaign, and why Barack Obama likes them. When they discuss Bill Richardson, it’s because Obama wants to appeal to Hispanic voters. When it’s Joe Biden in the spotlight, it’s because Obama wants a foreign policy maven. If it’s Tim Kaine of Virginia, Obama is looking to reinforce his ticket as one of change and departure from “old politics.” If it’s Evan Bayh, Obama’s looking to court down home Midwesterners. If it’s Kathleen Sebelius, he wants to appeal to women.

And what is the conclusion people reach? Simple. No one in the media seems to notice it (nor do most people on this site), but as this procession of “what this person adds to the campaign” stories parade themselves across front pages of websites and rattle around in the day-to-day opinion columns, a narrative starts to take shape that Obama cares about YOU.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

• The latest Bigfoot hoax has been a pretty fun one. These guys say they discovered a “nest” of Bigfeet in Georgia, where one was dead and the others were alive. So, naturally, they stuffed the dead one into a refrigerator and shipped it to Palo Alto, CA — where else? Completely ignoring the idea that they found “several” Bigfeet, they are now demanding a book deal, and their DNA “evidence” was confirmed today to be one sample of human blood, and another sample of Opossum blood. Good try, boys.
• If you’ve been watching the Olympics for the past week, you’ve undoubtedly noticed — or at least heard about — some strange things happening in the gymnastics competitions. First, there was China’s age scandal, where at least one of their competitors has been proven to be just 14 years old. Now, the scoring itself has come under fire. Sports Illustrated’s E.M. Swift has a good analysis of what’s wrong with the system.
• Barack Obama is expected to announce his Vice Presidential pick this week, as the convention looms just around the corner. Speculation has amped up over Senator Joe Biden, which is great news. The other likely pick is Evan Bayh, a Democrat from my home state of Indiana. Bayh may bring Indiana, but is it worth losing a Democratic senator from a conservative state? Nor does Bayh have any sort of foreign policy cred, unlike Biden, who is a heavyweight. More on that in a post yet to come.
• Obama and McCain were interviewed this weekend about their faith and values by megapreacher Rick Warren. Warren stated repeatedly that, since the candidates were to receive the exact same questions, McCain — the second to be interviewed — was sequestered in a room with no TV to prevent him from preparing his remarks. On Sunday, however, Warren — who passionately endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 and demanded that his minion preachers do the same — admitted that McCain was not even in the building during Obama’s interview, and he had no clue what he was doing.
• In other VP news, Tom Ridge, the brilliant inventor of our color-coded, politically motivated “terror alert” scale, has been discussed as McCain’s possible VP, but also immediately dismissed, as he is one of those pro-choice conservatives. In response to this discussion, Ridge stated Sunday that conservatives would “accept” a pro-choice candidate. If that were true, I’d say it would be better news for Mr. Obama than it would for Mr. Ridge.

The current Democratic congress is reminding us all that it’s an election year.

In an effort to shore up their image after their highly damaging approval of the executive branch’s illegal wiretapping programs, Democrats are going after corruption, bias, and improper conduct in the government.

All good things. But they’re also attempting to limit the penalties and prosecution of “casual” marijuana use. Essentially, they’re interested in making more room for medical marijuana use, and to lighten frivolous convictions of casual users so that people caught with marijuana are treated more like people caught doing something illegal with alcohol.

I’m a civil libertarian, and nothing pleases me more than seeing the government stepping back from regulating people’s lives and behavior — but only one thought occurred to me when I read that congress was considering this, and that thought was: now??

There is nothing better for our country than to decrease the amount of frivolous criminal court cases and jail space spent on prosecuting recreational drug use, including both alcohol and marijuana. Limiting the amount of time our cops, our judges, and our jails have to spend on nonsense “crimes,” opens up their ranks for the speedy prosecution of property crime, violent crime, and corruption.

But, nothing is going to get social conservatives more riled than some hippie congress being seen as endorsing drug use — no matter how wrong they may be in their opposition to it. So, if the Democrats are looking to keep their chances of a landslide victory in November alive, I would advise them not to wake the sleeping giant of social conservatism.

When Hollywood D-lister and political wonk Ben Stein released “Expelled,” his confoundingly misguided movie attacking the whole of Western science, and Evolution in particular, theories abounded as to whether he had always been as crazy as that movie suggested. If not, people wanted to know, what made him go over the edge? Eric Jensen, critic for Melted Reel Online, suggested that it might be the fact that he wanted more attention, since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was made 20 years ago, and Ben Stein wasn’t on TV anymore.

Today, I can conclude that Jensen is undoubtedly correct. Stein’s pseudo-celebrity status and history of being a part-time speech writer for Republicans 40 years ago apparently earns him the right to be interviewed by CNN.com, and what he had to say was pretty revealing.

First, he said that John McCain needs to hire Karl Rove. Yes, the man responsible for the collapse of the current Republican party. The man credited with not only cheap campaign trickery, but inspiring his candidates to employ a king-to-servants relationship with their supporters. The man who continues to expand the power of the executive branch to such a degree that most constitutional analysts doubt it will ever go back. The man who essentially doomed the Republican party by convincing red staters that voting was about culture, not about governing. The GOP’s own version of Larry the Cable Guy — phenomenal success… through short-term gimmickry.

But that’s not important. What’s actually important is, Stein used this opportunity in a national interview (which he apparently held in a special, super-creepy room filled with past GOP yard signs), to call for a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Mystery solved. The guy just needs some love.