When the post-mortems are written on the now diseased McCain campaign and — more generally– on the demise of the Reagan Era, the three top contributing factors of death will be listed as Katrina, Sarah, and Gustav. As I wrote at the time, the ebbing flood waters of New Orleans exactly three years ago where [...]

There’s one big difference between Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin. The latter is a hockey mom. The former was a hockey puck. Not that Quayle’s inert condition ever really got in the way of his political fortunes. I remember very clearly the night Quayle was named Veep. Via a crackling Grundig short-wave radio I heard [...]

Easy to sum up: The most impressive campaign speech from an American presidential candidate I can recall in my lifetime. The money quote:”Enough…Eight years is enough.” The message to McCain: Bring it on, mofo.

What a mistake for the Democrats to have allowed Barack Obama to close out the DNC by addressing 85,000 people in the Invesco outdoor stadium. Do the Dems have any idea whatsoever just how many people this has offended on so many different levels? What an insult to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. [...]

The only news worth reporting out of Day Three of the Democratic National Convention is that at 4:48 p.m. for the first time in American history, a black man was officially nominated to be President of the United States. I think that’s enough said and we need not belittle the moment by wasting any words [...]

Oh those poor, poor deluded PUMAS and other assorted and crazed Hillaryoids. Senator Clinton spends months and millions (which she still owes) during the primaries to artificially inflate their expectations about her winning the nomination — which was already lost. Then she stokes them some more by attempting to lamely game the party over the [...]

I admittedly had put in a long day Monday before settling down to watch the DNC ’08 show but the sucker did cause me to nod off at least 3-4 times. Sorry. There were a few high moments… like the great video of Teddy Kennedy’s formidable yachting skills. And only a numbskull could remain unimpressed [...]

As I wrote below, I am trying to take a break until Monday. It’s a very hectic time as classes resume on Monday, my wife is in Chile dealing with an ailing mom and My Brilliant Daughter is heading for Moscow via Berlin (No she has not been hired as a military advisor to Putin) [...]

Until Monday. See u then.

The good folks at the Sunlight Foundation have started publishing The Party Blog, a running compilation of who’s paying for what and whom at the Democratic and Republican Conventions. Please bookmark this blog immediately! They’re compiling some great stuff. Like, a party at the Denver DNC hosted by the biggest scumball of them all, the [...]

I do have a platinum American Express card but I don’t have a Democratic Convention Premier Package. So I don’t think I’ll be going to the DNC 2008 big bash in Denver next week. The former costs me $300 a year and is well worth it. The latter, which is being furiously peddled among corporate [...]

When I heard that Bill Stulla, known to us L.A. area boomers as TV’s Engineer Bill, had died the other day at age 97 I promised myself that this weekend I would blog a fitting tribute to him. Fortunately, the very talented critic Robert Lloyd has beaten me to it. And he’s eloquently expressed why [...]

Friday I’ll be guest-hosting Left, Right and Center on L.A.’s NPR flagship station KCRW 89.9 FM. I’ll be chewing over the week’s politics with Arianna Huffington and Tony Blankley. You can catch the show streaming live at 2:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. PDT here on join in on the LRC blog here. UPDATE: Here’s a [...]

We surf fishermen like to think we know how to “read” the shore for holes that aggregate food and therefore fish. And when we get skunked, we are likely to say to each other something like “the only holes on this beach today were us.” Not today. The two biggest holes were on the air. [...]

Don’t you just love this story? The leadership of The Los Angeles Times making up it’s stated page count by adding in 350-page advertorial IKEA catalog inserts? I suppose the good news is that we no longer have to worry about these folks’ future. When and if the The Times goes under, these guys will [...]

If we had to pick the single most obnoxious, repulsive, and simply loathsome individual to bob to the surface during Campaign ’08 the winner would be Howard Wolfson — hands down. Strand me on a desert island and let me choose as sole company either Wolfson or, say, the decaying corpse of Lee Atwater and [...]

We briefly interrupt the war in Georgia to announce that The Daughter has written a fine piece on the rise and fall of the lad-mags. Now I know why I don’t write for Playboy anymore!

Wow, the Russian offensive into Georgia has revived all that pent-up mental muscle memory among idle and nostalgic cold warriors. They needn’t bother any longer trying to correctly pronounce, or spell Al Qaeda, al-Qida, Al Qaida, We’re back to bi-partisan, throaty denunciations of “Russian aggression.” Damn, that phrase is as comfy as one of Ronnie [...]

So you think John Edwards’ timing of his confession — on the Friday night before the Olympics– was shrewd? Well, then, how about them Russians? Valdmir Putin is many things but he ain’t a panty-waist liberal. He’s unleashed a hellish full-scale war against the former Soviet republic of Georgia and the casualties are already mounting. [...]

Not that it comes as any great surprise by now, but the confirmation that John Edwards lied about an extramarital affair that started during his campaign is certainly a saddening disappointment. It’s easy to say that a politician’s sex life is his own business. That it’s a personal matter. That it’s something to be sorted [...]