When your campaign is trailing in the polls and your ability to raise money is seriously hampered, there are certain things you should do and certain things you should not do.

Of the things you should do, making the following statement at an MTV/Myspace Forum is not one of them:

"...pretty soon we're not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They're all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two."

Who would make such a racially insensitive comment? Of all people, it was Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards and with that statement, there will be serious repercussions and those repercussions will be deserved.

What was Edwards inferring? In all honesty, only Edwards truly knows and more than likely he misspoke. However, he misspoke in an incredibly offensive matter. Consider the following: for a person to be arrested for a crime, they have to commit a crime. Examining the statement on a surface level, it would seem that Edwards' is saying ALL African-American men commit crimes. Regardless of what Edwards meant or did not mean, he needs to apologize for this statement and apologize immediately.

It's hard to quibble with the Clinton's assertion. Still, even though he is right, the MoveOn ad was lame. Decide for yourself.

I guess Hillary could see the political writing on the wall with regard to the vile MoveOn.org "General Betray Us" ad:

"I think it's important that we end these kinds of attacks on the patriotism of those who serve our country," Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "This is not a debate about an ad. This is a debate about the direction we should pursue in Iraq."

Pretty tepid and very un-Sister Souljah-like but a denunciation just the same. Of course the nutroots took this as a full-out turn by Hillary and a betrayal to the cause as laid out in highly unconvincing fashion here.

What Hamsher (the most solipsistic of the crowd who cares about small victories and has zero grasp of the larger picture) fails to see is that majority of the American public--you know, the ones who will actually vote for candidates--were appalled by the ad as well:

Twenty-three percent (23%) of Americans approve of an ad run in the New York Times "that referred to General Petraeus as General Betray Us." A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 58% disapproved. Those figures include 12% who Strongly Approve and 42% who Strongly Disapprove.

Pretty serious numbers, especially the "Strongly Disapprove". This just reinforces the theory that Americans want to win and do so with honor. Since Petraeus has taken over, things have improved dramatically and that's reflected by the consensus of nearly everyone who has seen events first-hand. Hillary does not want to get too entwined in the defeatist mentality that permeates the nutroot left and not be able to extricate herself when it comes time to woo the centrists in the general election.

It has long been rumored that Hillary doesn't take too kindly to anyone crossing her, and when they do it's usually not a pretty sight. That rumor has come to fruition with this story from the reliable Politico site, in which Hillary forced GQ magazine to spike a story discussing dissension in the Hillary camp:

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president learned that the men's magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton's aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

There was once a time that a magazine had editors and journalists with backbone who would run the story regardless of what they were threatened with. If the story was sourced well, then there was no fear of any legal retribution. That died when Michael Isikoff's piece on Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was witheld by Newsweek and Drudge ran with it launching him into the stratosphere. The liberal media became the personal mouthpiece of successful Democrats and it helped give rise to blogs such as the one you are currently reading. People wanted new forms of inforantion and the MSM's reluctance to report the good and bad about people like Clintoncontributed greatly.

Hillary will indeed be the nominee and eventually will have to answer straight-forward questions while trying to lurch back to the middle from the far-left position she has staked in the primaries. It will be interesting to see if any of the leading liberal media outlets have the guts to challenge her or if it will be left to traditionally centrist or conservative outlets. My guess is the latter.

It's been an interesting week in the free speech debate; we have Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University next Monday, A Colorado collegiate newspaper that runs an editorial of two words: F**K BUSH and Stanford students and faculty hitting twelve on the outrage meter that Donald Rumsfeld will participate in classes. In other words, we have a strong, healthy dose of reinvigorating the Constitutional debate happening and it's always a good exercise.

First on Ahmadinejad. I, for one, say, "let the man speak." Sunlight is a great disinfectant and perhaps an enterprising blogger or student will ask him some tough questions the media does not. Maybe we'll see him put on the spot for his references to erasing Israel and his steady quest for nukes. Heaven knows that free speech is effectively dead in his home country of Iran, where saying what you think will get you shot. We also see the anti-war people for who they are, rabid socialists who support Palestinians and abhor Israel.

In other words, a man that right-thinking people hate is allowed to speak because the political right values free speech more than the political left. The proof is available in two cases in California involving the aforementioned Rumsfeld and Larry Summers.

Despite the negativity in the air on the campaign trail there is mercifully still some room for levity and the humor has centered on the first true, major question of the 21st century...If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, what will everyone call Bill? Will he be the First Man? The First Spouse? The First Laddie, as Mr. Clinton previously joked?

The topic of Mr. Clinton's role in the White House pops up now and then and this week Fred Thompson jokingly mentioned that NRA convention that his wife would make a better "First Lady" than Bill Clinton. Mitt Romney has said that in terms of First Ladies, his wife would be much prettier than Bill Clinton. In a recent interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, said that he would "slit his own throat" at the prospect of being called the "First Husband." (Ouch).

The campaign trail has heated up recently in terms of inflammatory rhetoric as the controversy over the Move On advertisement has led to a great deal of animosity on both sides that has resulted in a lot of terse exchanges. Because of this, the campaign trail has taken on a somewhat grave tone. Thankfully, there exists some room for levity and it is appreciated.

In a development sure to be viewed as a turning point in the Iraq war, karate champ turned actor turned Fox News talk show host, Chuck Norris has just headed over to set things straight in Saddam Hussein's old stomping grounds. He'll be covering the conflict for World Net Daily. Well, hold on to your hat, two things have already become apparent to Chuck:

The "surge is working" and "morale is up--way up!"

Why we didn't think of sending Chuck sooner is a mystery to me. Hell, we probably just should have sent him in alone back when this whole thing began. Consider his qualifications:

MoveOn.org, the formerly extreme, now mainstream organization published a despicable ad calling General Petraeus General "Betray-us" and generally demeaned the man and his command.

Petraeus has always been a great soldier and a stright-shooter and a soldiers soldier. Anyone who has read anything about his career knows that he has excelled at every commend he has held and unbeknownst to the military-hating Moveon crowd, not just anyone can become a four-star general. It takes intense training for years, incredible amounts of education and a small bit of luck. Petraeus holds a Masters in Public Administration and a PhD in International Relations. I would suspect that neithet Pinch Sulzberger or any of the leadership at MoveOn has even remotely the experience, education or credentials that General Petraeus has. Then man is also highly decorated, in fact, Petraeus is the best Commanding General we've had since maybe Omar Bradley.

The New York Times is complicit in the smear of Petraeus by not only running the vile ad but running it at nearly a 50% discount in the first section of the paper on the day the General briefed Congress. The Times ran an ad defending the President's policies and supporting our troops paid for by Freedoms Watch, which was made to pay much more for the same type ad.

In essence, the NY Times is shilling for an organization that smears our troops, their leader and America and doing it for pennie on the dollar. This should put to rest any argument about media bias.

The General handled it with the class a military officer should:

Petraeus called portions of MoveOn.org's ad "flat, completely wrong" and the rest "at least more than arguable."

Note he was not shrill or defensive because he has much more pressing matters--such as winning a war--to worry about than a whiny, solipsistic collection of communist hacks who are hastening the steady decline of a once-great newspaper. Enjoy falling behind the Newark Star-Ledger in readership Pinch.

The New York Times has been doing everything in its power for a while now to assist our enemy's efforts to defeat us, giving cover to the Democrats as they do the same in Congress. But now, with the publication of Moveon.org's repugnant ad on the morning of General Petraeus' testimony on the Hill, they made that partnership undeniable and official.

Quick background: on Friday, The Politico publishes the following: "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV," noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us."

The outside groups do, preemptively, culminating in the Moveon.org full-page ad in the New York Times: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?", accusing the battlefield General of treason.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defies the other Dem senators' predictions and states to General Petraeus: "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief", which is simply a cowardly and elitist way of calling Petraeus a liar.

And finally, reports from yesterday and today confirm that not only did the New York Times publish an ad in a very prominent position calling the general currently leading our troops in Iraq against our enemies a traitor, they gave them over a $100k discount to enable them to do so, in an effort to sway public perception of Petraeus' testimony. As if their reporting isn't enough.

And Hillary? After taking her talking points from the NYT and Moveon.org, she has refused to denounce the ad - although other, non Presidential candidates in the Democratic Party have (weakly). Guess we know who owns the Democratic Party - and who pulls the NYT and Hillary's strings...

Former liberal-turned-Conservative-turned-liberal "Progressive" again David Corn's Media Matters is a bit of a joke as they daily try to spin every thing Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh say into proof that they're racist, xenophobic and whatever else libs believe as gospel. Check out the list of liberal all-stars that write there and tell me if you think they're unbiased in the least. The fact that Corn wrote a screed against Hillary Clinton that sold tons and then when things started getting tough on the Conservative side wrote a screed against the right says all you need to know about his character and opportunism.

Now they've compiled a breath taking report that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the media is not liberal but leans conservative. The fact that this has been debunked didn't stop the Media Matters folks from wasting time and energy.

The entire piece can be shown wrong by their listing Cokie Roberts, David Broder (who will forever be considered a "centrist" because he attacked the liberal bloggers) and Tom Friedman as "centrists". The only place Tom Friedman looks like a "centrist" is in the New York Times, a paper that runs him twice a week.

I spent some time yesterday, the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, listening to Boston's right-wing talk-radio station, WRKO-AM (680), and its country-western station, WKLB-FM ( 102.5). Call it opposition research. The results proved partially encouraging.

In the morning, WRKO host Todd Feinburg interviewed peace activist Terry Rockefeller, who lost her sister Laura in the World Trade Center attacks six years ago.

"Terry is an anti-war activist who has visited Iraq, and has made friends with the mother of convicted terrorist Zacarias (sp) Moussaoui," the program description reads.

Feinburg kept things civil, disagreeing with a caller who wanted Rockefeller's voice silenced. He did attempt to press Rockefeller into saying that President Bush lied in getting the nation into the Iraq War, but she would not do so.

You'd figure that a fund-raising scandal in a major presidential campaign that results in one arrest and possible attempted suicide of a runaway felon, the return of almost a million dollars, and the pledge that all fund-raisers for that candidate will have to undergo a criminal background search would be the subject of front page articles around the nation, if not the world. You'd be wrong.

I have to congratulate the New York Times for at least covering it, however. Not on the front page in print or on the web - but on page A14. Hey, at least the story, Clinton Sees Fear Realized in Trouble With Donor, made the first section.

Of all the possible vulnerabilities facing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton has long believed that the one of the biggest was money, friends and advisers say. Some sort of fund-raising scandal that would echo the Clinton-era controversies of the 1990s and make her appear greedy or ethically challenged.

As a result, Mrs. Clinton told aides this year to vet major donors carefully and help her avoid situations in which she might appear to be trading access for big money, advisers said. Also to be avoided, the senator said, were fund-raising tactics that might conjure up the Clinton White House coffees and the ties to relatively unknown donors offering large sums, like the Asian businessmen who sent checks to the Democratic National Committee.

This is a huge story, and will get bigger if the mainstream media chooses to investigate it. You won't see much comment from Hillary's Democratic opponents, since tainted donations have been spread among them all.

Funny thing is that if this was any Republican presidential candidate, let alone the leading one, there'd be multi-edition front page investigative stories ongoing at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. With at least one Pulitzer, guaranteed.

The depths astound every time you click on another liberal blog. I'm not talking the ten-hit a day blogs, I'm talking blogs that are mainstream, daily reads for the Democratic establishment that receive thousands of hits a day.

Now I've seen some despicable things written, that's the way it is when you have to feed the liberal masses who crave red meat every day and if you have paying sponsors, you have to increase traffic as much as possible. I'm proud to say this blog has not resorted to that technique and is has set a higher standard for political discourse than most.

On September 5, U.S. Representative Paul Gillmor was found dead in his apartment. There was no indication that his death was the result of anything unseemly or untoward. That didn't stop the sickos at Wonkette -- a blog that once featured Ana Marie Cox and put a different spin on the daily D.C. events -- from speculating that it was a sex-related death even though no one ever alluded to it being such.

They have a screen cap of the Wikipedia entry that says the Congressman died of "sexual misadventure" (since removed) and then the commenters take over after that. Several examples that are fit for posting at this site include:

-The ugly specter of auto erotic asphixiation. Or rough sex. Or necrophilia.

-I'm guessing he "wide-stanced" the wrong dude, was followed home and strangled with his own pantyhose...

-I can understand your point of view, from an angle of political correctness and all that, but...
He was a Republican, therefore his existence was detrimental to many people, and to the human race as a whole.
If it makes me a bad person to say that I'm glad he's dead, then so be it. I'm a bad person.

That's just a small sampling, you can click on the link to see the rest if it interests you.

I know it is from commenters and not the people who post at the site but the post was set up to illicit such responses and this is not the first time. This site gets some brutal comments from time to time and they are generally not posted. My criteria is if it's personal, sexual or contains strong language that is not needed, why post it? For the record, 99.999% of all comments get posted and if you look around, some are pretty tough.

We're at the point that we have to take a step back and look at the state of debate in this country. When a Web site insinuates that a man with five kids (including two young twins) died from rough sex or whatever when no evidence exists, it's time to rethink how the discourse has disintegrated.

You may recall that the Democrats wimped out when asked to appear on Fox News for a debate, the questions posed to them from Brit Hume and Chris Wallace would have been too tough I guess. I for one think it hurts their chances to connect with the electorate as Fox is the most-widely viewed cable news channel and the the number one source for news on TV.

The GOP debate the other night has the highest viewership of any debate thus far:

The Republican debate on FNC last night was the highest rated debate so far this election cycle. The debate scored 3.14 million total viewers. That beats the nine other presidential debates.

There could be several reasons for that: Republicans are more into the race on their side and watch the debates to learn more about the candidates, the Dems have ceded the race to Hillary and nothing will change that so what's the point in watching or people are starting to pay more attention as the summer has passed. I imagine it;s a mix of all three.

Whatever the reason, the Dems are shorting themselves as you have many disaffected Republicans who may consider voting for a Democrat this go around. Most Republicans watch Fox and would have had a chance to tune in and see the array of candidates. For instance, Barack Obama is an intriguing candidate that many Republicans know of but haven't seen him in the debate setting, one in which he handles well. That won't happen now thanks to the Dem establishment that has demonized Fox, a channel which airs all views, not just liberal ones.

Even the New York Times, as it furiously tries to help the Democrats by publishing as much bad news about Iraq that it can, notices that the Democrats are poised to blink again on Iraq: Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq. The Democrats are foolishly and dangerously speaking of "compromise" in war matters - there is no compromise in warfare if you're goal is to prevail. You only use that term in truce or surrender negotiations. "Compromise" is a term primarily used in business, diplomatic, and legal discussions, initially brought up by the party in those discussions that's on the losing end as a way to save face. The New York Times knows that.

A better article is up at The Politico: Democrats retreat on war end. From the article:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are calculating that it is futile to continue their months-long campaign to force an immediate end to the war, particularly after Republicans and a few Democrats returned from the summer recess intent on opposing legislation mandating a strict timetable for pulling out U.S. troops. The change is both rhetorical and substantive. Reid and others are increasingly talking of "bipartisan compromise," while top Democrats are reworking legislation erasing a date certain for ending the military operation. The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush's hand. "We are trying to manage expectations that we can't end the war today or next week or next month," said one Democrat involved in the discussions. "We have to make sure everyone understands that."

Look at the words that the Democrats are using in the article: "manage expectations", "calculating", "losing their political edge"... The Democrats view this war through politics and nothing else. If Iraq fails and gives the Republicans a black eye, the Democrats will view it as a victory for them - just as they did Vietnam.