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Details:

• Jack Paar narrates a pre-Ed Sullivan Show clip of The Beatles
• Bush in his February 28 press conference tells the press “nice try” for asking about the people’s right to know
• Dana and Helen go at it (again) on torture
• Bush’s March 8, 2008, radio address on his veto of the anti-torture bill
• Snuggly the Security Bear
• Stephen Payne offers to set up meetings with top administration officials in response to big donations to the Bush Library
• Dana struggles to explain the Stephen Payne video
• Music: “She Said She Said” by the Beatles from Revolver
• Tucker Carlson lectures journalist Gerri Peev about journalistic ethics
• Hillary’s 3 a.m. ad
• Hillary’s campaign conference call: When has she been tested by crisis?
• Music: “Come Together” by Joe Cocker from the Across the Universe soundtrack
• Beatles are introduced in Indianapolis, 1964
• Beatles are introduced at the Cow Palace, 1964
• Beatles are introduced by Ed Sullivan at Shea Stadium, 1965
• Obama’s acceptance speech, June 3, 2008
• Robert Redford in The Candidate: “Marvin, what do we do now?”
• Richard Bausch reads from his story, “Letter to the Lady of the House” (from TAL #349)
• Music: “Blackbird” by Evan Rachel Wood from the Across the Universe soundtrack
• Dan Savage on commitment from Savage Lovecast #71
• Music: “Hey Jude/Sgt. Pepper’s (reprise)” by the Beatles from the Love album

Discuss.

1) The Celtics as a team, and Kevin Garnett as an individual player, were just so much better than the Lakers that there wasn’t any real doubt as to the outcome of the Finals from the get-go.

2) The NBA exists somewhere in the gray area between professional wrestling and real sports in terms of the essential fairness of the competition, with the referees serving as the main lever that gives the home team a big leg up to keep things closer than they otherwise would be.

Which is not much of a crisis; I understand that (as with pro wrestling) it’s just business: People pay lots of money to buy those tickets, and lots of money to reach the audience that watches the games on TV, and some of that money would probably go away if the officials were zealously objective in how they call the games. So it all works out; I’m not sure it even has to be arranged explicitly in smoke-filled rooms. It probably just kind of happens, as people at all levels of the organization make decisions in the knowledge of the overall institutional goal (more viewers, more ticket sales, more dollars).

And maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe this is the result of my own bias resulting from the hostile-media effect. But I’m increasingly of the opinion that the mainstream media is calling the presidential race the same way. That is, they are giving the underdog (McCain) a leg up, because a closer contest is more interesting, and gets more viewers, and since the dynamic of commercial news operations has been pretty much completely remade to be bottom-line driven, with things like journalistic ethics and fairness a distant memory, it becomes just like the NBA, or professional wrestling. It isn’t like there has to be a big shouting match between old-school referees who still call the game fairly and soulless league executives who pound the desk and talk about ratings. The people who would have made that case for fairness (or for journalistic ethics) just aren’t there any more. They’ve retired, or moved on, or just never rose to the level of exercising that kind of power in the organizations the way they’re currently structured.

I’m not sure what it means. But I’m pretty sure it’s not a good thing.

Anyway, some data points that have caught my attention lately: Max Bergmann at the huffingtonpost writes about the week that should have ended McCain’s presidential hopes, but that hasn’t, thanks in part to the referees blowing the whistle on Jesse Jackson’s “cut off his nuts” comment about Obama, while ignoring lots of more-newsworthy fouls by McCain and his entourage.

And along with the supposedly-fair news organizations skewing for McCain, there are the not-even-pretending fanboys at Fox News, and their imitators, which these days apparently includes the Associated Press. Mark Kleiman wonders the following (in Pelosi figures it out):

How completely in the tank for the Republicans is the AP? A subpoena isn’t issued, and a Congressinal investigation isn’t conducted, by “Congressional Democrats,” as the story says not once but three times. A subpoena voted by a Congressional committee has exactly the same legal standing as a subpoena issued by a judge. The story makes it sound as if Rove is engaged in partisan warfare rather than defiance of the law.

I’d have to answer, pretty much completely in the tank. I’m not sure when it happened, but it’s kind of scary, given that the AP is one of the few remaining “news organizations” that actually has reporters scattered around to gather news. Most of the rest are madly downsizing their editorial staffs, replacing them with wire reports from… the AP.

Sigh. Maybe Obama is the political equivalent of Kevin Garnett, and it doesn’t matter how hard the referees shore up McCain in their effort to make it a more interesting contest. Maybe it doesn’t matter how many former referees have traded in their blue-gray shirts for the hot pants and spangles of Republican cheerleaders. Eventually we’re going to get to that Game 6 in Boston Garden and the truth will be revealed in all its ugly, naked starkness (or its radiant, majestic glory, depending on which team you’re rooting for). McCain will try to drive the lane and Obama will just swat that weak-ass stuff away, then spread his arms to the cheers of the crowd, reveling in his moment that has finally, at long, long last, arrived.

Maybe. But in the meantime, I wish we had better referees.

Here’s the first version (which apparently was pulled by those stalwart defenders of copyright, the mainstream media, from the web site of “Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”). This photo ran on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and the Chicago Tribune, as well as on the web sites of BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, and NYTimes.com. None of these top-notch media outlets noticed (or at least, none of them cared) that one of the four missiles is a fairly obvious photoshop clone:

Today the following image was posted to the Sepah News site. Presumably this is the original from which the other one was made:

It’s kind of fun to figure out how little effort was required to alter the image, and what a big psychological difference is achieved by the alteration. (And again, what a gullible bunch of n00bs the MSM editors were to run it without comment.)

As always, I’m comparing the US military casualties in Iraq to those from the Vietnam war at a similar point in each war’s political lifetime (which some have charged is misleading; see disclaimer below). The data come from the advanced search tool at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, and from Lunaville’s page on Iraq coalition casualties. The figures are for the number of US dead per month, without regard to whether the deaths were combat-related.

The first graph shows the comparison for the extent of the Iraq war to-date. (Click on any image for a larger version.)

Next, the chart that gives the US death toll for the entire Vietnam war:

Disclaimer: I’ve been accused of comparing apples to oranges in these graphs. For the record, here’s what I am not arguing:

• I’m not saying that Iraq is somehow deadlier per soldier-on-the-ground than Vietnam. For both wars, the number of fatalities in any given month tracks pretty closely with the number of troops deployed (along with the intensity of the combat operations being conducted). There were more troops in Iraq in the early going than were in Vietnam during the “corresponding” parts of the graphs. Similarly, for later years in Vietnam, when the monthly death toll exceeds the current Iraq numbers, there were many more troops in place.
• I am not saying that Iraq is somehow “worse” than Vietnam. I include the first graph mainly because I wanted a zoomed-in view of the Iraq data. And I include the second graph, which shows the entire span of the Vietnam war, because I want to be clear about what the data show about overall death tolls — where any rational assessment would have to conclude that, at least so far, Iraq has been far less significant (at least in terms of US combat fatalities) than Vietnam.

I was just curious how the “death profile” of the two wars compared, and how those deaths played out in terms of their political impact inside the US. For that reason, I chose as the starting point for each graph the first fatality that a US president acknowledged (belatedly, in the case of the Vietnam graph, since US involvement in the war “began” under Kennedy, but the acknowledgement was made only later by Johnson) as having resulted from the war in question.

As ever, you are free to draw your own conclusions. And for that matter, you’re free to draw your own graphs, if you have a way of presenting the information that you believe would be better. In that case, feel free to post a comment with a URL to your own version. Thanks.

See this write-up from David Carr at the New York Times: When Fox News is the story. It has additional back-story regarding this item from Media Matters, showing altered photos of NY Times reporters that were run on the “Fox & Friends” show: Fox News airs altered photos of NY Times reporters.

I mean, really, guys. Can we go back to a world where grown-ups are in charge?

In the meantime, I’ve been interested in some of the bloggy meta-chatter surrounding the FISA “compromise” bill, and Obama’s support of it, and his explanation for why he’s done so, and the back and forth among supporters of Obama between those who support that decision and those who don’t. But the most interesting thing I’ve read about it lately is this piece from Kevin Drum: The FISA compromise.

In the end, everyone seems to have decided that bulk monitoring of electronic communications is OK, and that the new bill provides adequate oversight and minimization procedures. I’m not so sure myself, since I don’t trust procedures like this to stay robust. In any case, I’d say this is the core issue, not telecom immunity, and it deserves more attention. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get it.

But you might want to check out this op-ed on Lt. General Sanchez’s new book, which gives a similarly revealing look at the business end of the administration’s decision making: military strategy in Iraq. What I find interesting here is both the commanders-in-the-field eye view of the politically-driven decision making McClellan describes, but also how the “mission accomplished” event was a reality for those within the administration — they truly believed that the war was over and force could be drawn down early on, until reality quickly interfered. This to me is the most damning of explanations of how we ended up where we are in Iraq: the administration was too insular and self-deluded to realize that a brief war was not possible, and once that became clear their reaction was not to reevaluate their strategy, it was to solve the problem politically. The notion that “conditions on the ground” would drive decisions was just a convenient rhetorical trick to dismiss criticism.

If you put it together with some of the other gaffes he’s delivered in the past few months, it starts to look like a consistent pattern. Check it out:

So, can someone explain to me why McCain has any support at all?

For those who prefer their information staid and textual, as opposed to jittery and noisy, here’s a version of Friday’s events from the perspective of Katherine Q. Seelye, a writer for the New York Times’ politics blog: Clinton’s Very Bad Day.

If 1/100th of this idea is even remotely close to being true, then politics in the USA is even more horribly manufactured then any nightmare I ever imagined.

But I’ve been following the presidential campaign. In the interest of giving y’all something new to comment on, I liked the following piece about the long-distance debate that Obama and McCain had yesterday about the new G.I. bill (which Obama supports and McCain opposes). From Mark Kleiman: Bad day for John McCain, Part II: anger management.

Here’s a rule I would like every political reporter, campaign official, TV talking head, and politician in the United States to follow. Go ahead and say, if you like, that Hillary Clinton retains a serious chance of winning the Democratic nomination. If you say this, however, you must describe a set of circumstances whereby this could happen. Try not to make it sound like a fairy tale.

He goes on to explore this in detail. For an Obama supporter, it’s a reassuring exercise.

As the parent of an almost-17-year-old, I can’t condone the sentiment. But as a former wiseass, I appreciate the concept and execution.

Obama’s approach has been the exact opposite. Like in this speech:

Barring a catastrophe for the Democratic Party, Obama will be the nominee. Barring a catastrophe for the country, he’ll be the next president. And you know what? He deserves it. Not because of any sort of entitlement rooted in race, or gender, or personal history. Not because he’s willing to say anything, do anything, to get elected. Not because he’s been bought and paid for by monied interests used to getting their way in Washington.

That’s why Hillary and McCain think they deserve it. Obama deserves it for a very different reason: because he’s earned it. He’s earned it by the way he has conducted himself in office and during the campaign, by the things he’s said and the actions he’s taken. He’s earned it by being, hands down, the best choice to lead the country. Not based on identity politics. Not based on who he is, but on what he has done.

In that sense, as I’ve said before, Obama is the anti-Bush. If there’s anything I’ve seen happen over and over again in this country’s presidential politics, it’s that when the nation is confronted by the failings of a particular kind of president, we will lurch in the opposite direction. The venality of Nixon gave way to the moralizing of Jimmy Carter. The hand-wringing of Carter gave way to the optimism of Reagan. The out-of-touch George H.W. Bush gave way to the feel-your-pain Clinton.

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the national revulsion at the failings of George W. Bush. And Obama, in every conceivable sense, embodies the opposite of those failings. George W. Bush won the presidency because of who he was, in spite of what he’d done. Obama will win because of what he’s done, in spite of who he is.

It does a good job of demonstrating that aspect of Obama that I got from listening to his podcasts: That he’s smart, and thinking on his feet, and that three years ago he already had the judgement and the temperament that put him light-years beyond McCain (or Hillary) as a presidential candidate.

Experience is over-rated. George W. Bush has seven years’ experience in the White House — doesn’t seem to have changed the essential fact that he’s profoundly unqualified to be president of the United States. Barack Obama arrived on the national political stage a better candidate than Hillary or McCain, and he’s only gotten better since. I offer this video as Exhibit A of that fact.