[Posted by WLS]

With Joe Biden and Bill Clinton on tap to to speak tonight, lets start a contest to see who can predict what cliche’-ridden slobberfest stream of free-association praise and worship Keith Olbermann will have flow from his lips at the conclusion of their speeches. To give you some guidance on what you might anticipate, consider the following from Monday night after Michelle Obama’s speech:

OLBERMANN: Case, I think, closed. If that speech was to be more about tone than content, pitch-perfect. If it was supposed to be more about content than tone, pitch-perfect. If that was supposed to be friendliness and what they call accessibility, couldn’t have done it better. Couldn’t have done it better.

OLBERMANN: And the premise of this speech, to try to erase doubts that now seem difficult to voice aloud because they seem almost foolish, was also done subtly. There was a reference to, they love the country, meaning the troops. There was another one to, I love the country. There were six references to country. But if you went back and listened to that speech again and waited for the moment in which she is supposedly selling herself or redeeming herself, you wouldn’t have noticed it.

OLBERMANN: Yes, case closed. That could not have gone better for them. That could not have gone better for them right to the point with the little girls taking the mikes away and suddenly turning out to be hams. It’s wonderful. It really was terrific. And notice—did you notice that throughout that, especially as it built towards its conclusion, the women in that convention hall, the ones we saw at least, we can’t say every one was this way, but there were tears throughout among the women. And it was not a maudlin speech, it was not a—it was not a salesmanship speech, there was just a—I know, I’m beginning to sound borderline sycophantic on this.

Borderline?? Pal, you lost sight of the border years ago. You’re John-Madden-Monday-Night-Football-RV-Ride away from the border.

But lets also not forget last night after Hillary’s speech:

OLBERMANN: Grand slam. Grand slam, out of the ballpark, across the street.

OLBERMANN: Across the buildings across the street.

OLBERMANN: Five, six, maybe seven campaign slogans in that speech, starting out from the initial get-go, a sock to the jaw of disunity, a speech that started about Barack Obama, a proud American, a proud Democrat, a proud senator, and a proud supporter of Barack Obama, then a lot about her, some about George Bush, twisting it all back to get her supporters to recognize that their goals are now best served by Barack Obama, then Michelle, then Biden, then several key, probably the strongest hits against John McCain we have heard at this convention, and finally tying it all back together. I don’t know how it could have been better. I don’t know how it could have been better, Chris.

OLBERMANN: The usual Hillary approach of listing those things and those people she met who were in trouble and she tried to help, going along in that traditional manner we saw throughout the primaries, and now with a twist at the end: Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should, too.

It’s literally what we have been talking about. How do you convert her campaign into their campaign? I don’t know how she could have done it better. At the end of the speech, it is one of those speeches, I would think, for Democrats, at least, that you now charge through the doorway, and, after you are through it, you check to see whether or not it was open. You go through the wall, if necessary, what she just told you to do.

Ok — so that’s what we’ve got so far. Lets have some predictions about what Keith has in store for us tonight.

[Posted by WLS]

The lastest in a long-line of Pulitzer prize winning “fakesters” appears to be Chuck Philips of the LAT, who wittingly or unwittingly seems to have stepped in it with his latest article seeking to shine a spotlight on the “origins” of the BiCoastal Hip Hop “war” that led to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. The reason for the article is that Philips claims to have solved the heretofore unsolved beating/shooting of Tupac Shakur outside a recording studio in New York in Nov. 1994 — two years before he was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Both shootings are unsolved, but in the aftermath of the 1994 shooting Shakur blamed it on Sean “Puffy” Combs and associates at his “Bad Boy” record label.

Philips’s article says that he has now obtained heretofore undiscovered FBI “302s” — memoranda of interviews — reflecting information given to the FBI by an “informant” establishing that Combs and his associates at “Bad Boy” knew about the shooting before it happened, and were responsible for it. Philips claims this “newly discovered information,” along with “interviews of people at the studio that night,” confirm that it was Combs and his associates that were responsible for the shooting.

But it’s now being widely reported that Mr. Philips has likely been the victim of an elaborate hoax by one Mr. James Sabatino, described by Philips in his article variously as a rap “promoter,” a “fixture” in Combs’s “inner circle,” and … oh yeah, the son of a Captain in the Columbo Crime Family in Brooklyn — according to unnamed “federal authorities.” According to The Smoking Gun, Sabatino’s father describes him as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”

But, having read through the entire piece, I have a strong suspicion that it is Mr. Sabatino that is the “informant” mentioned throughout the piece. I have a long breakdown of the article after the jump.

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Posted By WLS: 

I’m in no way enamored of Obama — neither his style nor his politics. 

So, I’m looking at his speech with a very jaundiced eye.  And there are lots of things I don’t particularly like in the text:

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together…

 From what I’ve read over the last few days, he didn’t learn “togetherness” as a method of problem solving from Rev. Wright.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

Which remarks have you condemned, and why did it take until this moment for you to condenm them?  Were they not equally worthy of condemnation two weeks ago?  Two months ago?  Two years ago?  Two decades ago — because he’s been saying them as long as you have been a member of his church.  You are the one identifying — without specifying — that he has made comments in your presence that you disagreed with and considered controversial.  Tell us which of his comments you consider controvesial — so that we will know which ones you DO NOT CONSIDER CONTROVERSIAL.  That would tell the voters much more about you than you have told us in the 4 years since you hit that stage in Boston.

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[posted by Justin Levine]

A beauty queen can certainly recover from kidnapping and assault charges, but she’ll never recover from a released mugshot. Ooch!

[Posted by WLS — aka “Shipwreckedcrew” for all you coming from TPM]

The Leftwingnuts seem to believe that Chertoff is in line to be the AG — I happen to think otherwise, but that’s for another post.

But some clown named Spencer Ackerman, seriously lacking in an understanding of the Bill of Rights, or simply challenged in terms of reading comprehension, has a post up with a couple of links claiming that Chertoff lied in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee when recounting events surrounding the decision to allow the FBI to interview of John Walker Lindh without the presence of the attorney hired by his parents.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004029.php

At issue is a statement given to DOJ Inspector General investigators in 2002 by a DOJ Prosecutor named John De Pue, a 25 year veteran of DOJ.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/depue/

Bottom line — anyone reading De Pue’s affidavit would come away with the exact opposite impression given by Ackerman in his post.  Lets compare what Ackerman claims and what the affidavit states. 

Lets start with the basics — what De Pue was asked to research. (more…)

[posted by Justin Levine] 

Roger Friedman from Fox News gives us this breathless tidbit concerning the Anna Nicole Smith story –

How close was Anna Nicole Smith to the psychiatrist who prescribed all those drugs for her? Very close, it seems. Maybe too close. In fact, they were next-door neighbors.

Real estate records for both Anna Nicole and Dr. Khristine Eroshevich reveal that the patient and her doctor actually lived next door to each other in million-dollar homes in Studio City, Calif.

Umm…Note to Roger: Why did you feel the need to spend the time and effort combing through real estate records to discover this? Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to watch the Anna Nicole Smith Show? After all, Episode 18 features Khristine Eroshevich throughout the narrative and clearly announces her as being a neighbor. But then again, the second season is hard to find on DVD, so I guess only true fans of the Anna Nicole Smith Show would consider this to be common knowledge.

Note to TMZ.com:  My starting salary for such superior investigative tabloid skills starts at six-figures….

…Or so sayeth the sages at the Associated Press:

Bush Remarks May Have Spurred Iran Voters
Jun 19, 4:20 PM (ET)
By Brian Murphy
AP

[We skip several lines to rejoin our story, already in progress.]

The sharp barbs from President Bush were widely seen in Iran as damaging to pro-reform groups because the comments appeared to have boosted turnout among hard-liners in Friday’s election – with the result being that an ultraconservative now is in a two-way showdown for the presidency.

So our premise here is that, but for the clumsy and thuggish attacks by Bush, the reformers would have won the day, capturing control of Iran from what that redneck in La Casa Blanca calls the “Moolahs.” Why, were it not for the savage, bitter mockery and “ridicule” that Bush heaped upon the Iranian election, the “result” would have been two other guys winning besides hard Hashemi Rafsanjani and harder Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What a blunder! We could have had Ibrahim Lincolnjani.

(more…)

In perhaps the most stunning endorsement yet of John Bolton’s fitness for office, 76 of his classmates from the Yale class of 1970 have signed a petition declaring him unfit for office.

The 76 signers include cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who lampooned Bolton in his “Doonesbury” strip in May. Others were fellow members of the Class of 1970 who participated in a 35th reunion over the Memorial Day weekend.

“We are embarrassed and ashamed that the Bush administration has nominated someone so manifestly unsuited to represent our country at the United Nations,” the Yale classmates wrote.

“As his classmates, we do not believe that Mr. Bolton has exhibited the values of civility, light and truth which our shared institution represents.”

Wow. A bunch of privileged bobo preppy-hippies don’t like the cut of Bolton’s jib? Including cutting-edge cartoonist Garry Trudeau? Say, wasn’t Senator John Kerry Yale ’70 too?

I would love to have heard these conversations held in clenched-chin New England accents over Bloody Marys and goat cheese at Martha’s Vineyard. “Topper, we simply can’t let that man ruin all the work we’ve started. I don’t think the man even believes in international law.”

Let us remember that a spokesman for North Korea once called Mr. Bolton “human scum”. With enemies like these, Bolton doesn’t need friends.

h/t to Best of the Web.

Dominique de Villepin, appointed the new French prime minister by Crock Jacques Chirac, has said that his greatest hero is Napoleon Bonaparte. De Villepin even wrote a hagiographic account of Napoleon’s return from exile on Elba: Les Cent-Jours, ou, L’esprit de sacrifice.

Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

I’m not a historian, but my vague recollection from reading lots of Rafael Sabatini is that Napoleon, the greatest general of the revolutionary government of France, was named first consul — prime minister — following a coup d’etat in 1799; he then seized absolute power following the complete economic collapse of the First Republic. Napoleon declared the First French Empire in 1804, with guess-who as the first emperor.

Now his accolyte agitates for the massive resocialization of France, which will, of course, lead to the complete economic collapse of the Fifth Republic.

Things that make you go hm….

If de Villepin takes to having Beethoven’s Third played whenever he arrives, it may be time to say “l’addition, s’il vous plait,” and grab the first Airbus out of Paris.