Yes, It’s Ok to Dream

That’s the point of three new websites: I Dream of Barack, I Dream of Hillary, and I Dream of McCain.

The idea is simple, people are out there having dreams of the candidates, and maybe by reading these we will learn something about the collective unconscious.

My favorite thus far has got to be the woman who has a dream where she meets Barack, then her boss wants her to use the connection to get him to write a story about kids’ room storage solutions. Hilarious, weird.

Political Jeopardy: What is the definition of Doublethink?

Alex Trebek: Answer. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.

John McCain: <buzz> What is Doublethink?

Trebek: Correct. And we also would have taken your Iraq War policy.

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Since the beginning of the campaign John McCain has been saying that the troop surge in Iraq is working, just give it time. Things might be bad, but be patient. Then there was a drop in levels of violence and everybody (the media) praised General Petraeus for a job well done. Yesterday, however, Petraeus claimed that while violence was down from previous levels (not an indicator of stability), political progress was virtually nonexistent. The reason for the surge was to clamp down on violence to provide elbow room for political reconciliation. Thus the surge has not accomplished its objective.

So, today John McCain plants a new seed.

Old line: If you see less violence in Iraq it’s because the surge is working, i.e. vote for me, because I knew the surge would work and I won’t surrender. We gotta kill ‘em over there and I got the guns.

New line: If you see more violence in Iraq it’s because terrorists might try to harm my campaign to show that the surge is not working, i.e. vote for me, because the terrorists will be dancing in the streets if a Democrat is elected. We gotta kill ‘em over there and I got the guns.

So there you have it. John McCain is correct no matter what happens in Iraq. Politics is the beautiful art of deception.

One News Cycle into McCain-Lobbyist-Maybe-Sex/Corruption-Gate: No Legs

The McCain story has now gone through a full news cycle and it SEEMS to be more Jayson Blair than Watergate.

Here are five questions the Columbia Journalism Review has for Bill Keller at the Times.

It strikes me that the Times piece that doesn’t have a core claim. McCain is implicated in getting too close (innuendo of sex suggested but nothing to prove it) to a lobbyist. That’s bad for the maverick, but they don’t really show much by way of proof that this closeness affected his votes.

If this is all they have then it helps McCain on the campaign trail–he’s already working it into his new stump speech I’ll bet.

If a follow-up names some names, shows a pattern of voting, or produces a Monica moment, then his campaign is done and Mitt Romney will re-enter the race.

Don’t hold your breath.