TBogg: Decision-making and why it fails.

The Non Sequitur: That's icky, your argument is invalid.

The Progressive Puppy: West Virginia gay man assaulted by police.

skippy: RIP Robert Byrd.

Annals of Journalism: The 119 words you can't use on the radio... Embrace the wonk... Political analysis and BS... Thanks for protecting us from relevant information... Clowns to the left of me, jokers on the right... Conservative exclusion is a right-wing delusion... The Atlantic has found its perfect idiot... Debunking a "Christian nationalist pseudo-historian”... BP "reporters" give flowery account of disaster... Unknown parties kill jobless aid in Senate... A message to Jeffrey Goldberg's anonymous sources... Mencken would get the boot, too.

Last guest post by Batocchio. Thanks! Next up is Blue Gal. Temporarily e-mail tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

Facing South: Another disaster waiting? Shell Oil running "sister rig" in Gulf nearly identical to ill-fated Deepwater Horizon

Sensen No Sen: IOKIYAR: A Case Study

Balkinization: Glenn Beck as civil libertarian, Joe Lieberman as authoritarian, John McCain and Peter King as terrorist sympathizers and authoritarians

The Agonist: Spill The Beans

The Washington Independent: J.P. Morgan economist calls Senators 'ignorant'

ANNALS OFJOURNALISM: NYTimes Fail...Papal pity-party...Jake Tapper Fail...Bias against bigots...The Blogging Journalist...Mediaite's Ann Coulter...Virtuous Kristof...Fox News' environmental catastrophe...100,000 Rally, media yawns...NPR Check...Paid links...Par-Tay...Facebook stirs up trouble...Fox News ratings dive...Watching America

And he's supposed to be a lefty pundit. Sometimes I think we need to clean out the whole crew.

As for his substantive views, they do (now) closely resemble Bush's. Yet the upside to a candidate who changes his philosophical orientation as often as McCain is that he could always switch back. While I certainly wouldn't recommend that anybody go so far as to vote for him on that basis, it still offers some grounds for hope. The Bush presidency is like being married to a sociopath. A McCain presidency would be more like being married to a drug addict -- however badly he behaves, he could always sober up.

Say, what?

Liberals tend to view the press's love affair with McCain as a wildly unfair act of bias. They have a point. On the other hand, they should take some heart in the fact that McCain obviously cherishes the approval of the mainstream (and even liberal) media. His accessibility to the press and public is something small-d democrats should cheer. McCain has conducted interviews with very liberal publications like Grist...read on

We should love him because he's nice to the MSM. Please make it stop. A flashback to an old Digby post reveals much more wankery.

For all of the misguided talk about Mike Huckabee being a "populist," his enthusiastic support for a regressive national sales tax should effectively end the discussion.

In case there's any lingering confusion about just how ridiculous this policy is, Jon Chait sets the record straight:

Basically, trying to explain why the Fairtax is a bad idea is like trying to explain why having trained elephants perform open-heart surgery on every first-grader in America is a bad idea. The whole idea is one bit of lunacy stacked upon another, so when you focus on any one element of it, you let the other side suck you into into arguments about details -- Maybe there could be benefits to preemptively fixing the hearts of six year olds! Perhaps elephants do have the potential intelligence to one day perform this task!! -- that inadvertently make the plan sound semi-credible.

If you're still not convinced, take a look at Brad DeLong's piece in Salon this week.