The Washington Post has announced the nominations for its “Best Blogs — Politics and Elections Readers’ Choice Awards,” and reaction in the blogosphere is predictably mixed. “I call bullshit,” writes Roxanne of Rox Populi. “The fact that The Corner was nominated in virtually every category of the WaPo’s Best Blogger Contest only helps to prove that [William F. Buckley] was probably up for nights on end creating new Yahoo and GMail accounts to stuff ye olde digital ballot box.” Roxanne is so put out, in fact, that she’s created her own contest. Our favorite category? “Best I-Don’t-Know-What-The-F*ck-You’re-Talking-About-Half-The-Time-But-You-Seem-Like-You’re-An-Expert Blog.”
Taegan Goddard blogs the Seattle Post-Intelligencer‘s report that Campaign Desk saluted yesterday. As Goddard puts it, “Vice President Dick Cheney was against the Iraq war before he was for it”:
Dick Cheney more than a decade ago defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, telling a Seattle audience that capturing Saddam wouldn’t be worth additional U.S. casualties or the risk of getting ‘bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.
Quips Goddard: “Say what you want about him; he had stunning foresight at one time.”
Speaking of the I-voted-for-it-before-voting-against-it sound bite, Kerry went on “Good Morning America” yesterday to try to explain it away. “It was a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those moments late in the evening when I was tired in the primaries and didn’t say something clearly,” said Kerry. “But it reflects the truth of the position, which is, I thought, to have the wealthiest people in America share the burden of paying for that war. It was a protest. Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.”
The only problem? As The Corner’s K-Lo points out, he made the infamous quip at a noon event.
Pandagon’s Ezra Klein, meanwhile, has Ralph Reed in his sights. When Reed appeared on “The Daily Show” Tuesday night, Jon Stewart asked him to explain why the war in Iraq wasn’t a distraction from the war on terror. In his response, Reed three times mentioned page 66 of the 9/11 Commission report, which, he said, described damning ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Page 66 does indeed detail some links between the two, but as Klein points out, Reed conveniently neglected to mention the Commission’s conclusion on the matter, which appeared on the same page:
… to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.
Finally, Electablog worries that Bush and Kerry’s upcoming appearances on the “Doctor Phil” show “marks a new low point for American politics and maybe for American culture.” After all, he says, “W should avoid Phil’s couch because an appearance with this quack soils the office of the president more than any Oval Office oral indiscretion possibly could.” And Bush won’t be the only loser, says Electablog’s Dave Pell. There’s also Dr. Phil’s regular viewers. “Are you feeling depressed?” he asks a hypothetical Dr. Phil devotee. “Feeling like there is an absence of truth and meaning in your life? Well, take it from me. The last thing you want to do is to start paying closer attention to national politics.”
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.