Friday Mashup (3/7/08)

So Samantha Power of the Obama campaign has resigned after calling Hillary Clinton “a monster” (as noted here). To me, an apology would be good enough for that, but I think she deserves credit for acting so honorably.

Now in turn, the very least the Clinton campaign can do is identify the person responsible for the utterly guttural depiction of Barack Obama (above - hat tips to HuffPo and Americablog, also in the mouse-over attribution) and sending him or her packing. Purposely darkening Obama and distorting his features is, to quote a notable person, “right out of Karl Rove’s playbook.”

Update 3/8/08: Yep, this is a good idea also.

I know I’ve taken more than a few shots at lazy reporters, so I should definitely publicize those trying to do their jobs to the best of their ability, and Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times definitely falls into the latter category. Not only did she write this excellent column holding “Straight Talk” McCain’s feet to the fire several days ago, but she riled “Senator Honor and Virtue” here by following up in her questioning with the persistence not demonstrated by the Repug presidential nominee’s chummy pals in the press.

Memo to Times management: Bumiller deserves credit for her work, not some unceremonious burial of her reporting in the National Report just before the Op-Ed page in Section A. Would that more of her peers at the paper followed her example.

Update 3/8/08: Here's more on what Bumiler was asking about; smintheus is right - McCain is a poor liar, and that's why he has the media run interference for him.

Update 3/10/08: Ah, indeed.

So now that Ron Paul has been eliminated from the Republican presidential nomination (uh, he really isn’t going to try and stage some convention coup over delegates, is he?), I would like to ask the same question as I asked while back: what is going to happen to all of his campaign dough, and exactly how much are we talking about?

By law, he could not use it in his U.S. House congressional primary campaign against Chris Peden (not that he would have needed it anyway, since Paul beat him by a 2-1 margin), but if I’d given money to his presidential campaign, I’d want to know this (and more importantly, how much of it is going to be siphoned back into the RNC to help Saint McCain, someone who is going to hasten the Repug descent right off the cliff, as it were, and away from the direction advocated by Paul and his supporters).

Oh, and by the way Dr. Paul, class move not to call McCain and congratulate him, as noted here by Lew Rockwell; I don’t like him either, but it would have been the sporting thing to do.