"The Rupert Murdoch tabloid loves to package other people’s reporting in World War III headlines."

Writes Howard Kurtz, mocking the New York Post article that has the headline "Mary Kennedy pummeled RFK Jr., ran over family dog and threatened to kill herself for years: court papers," which begins: "Robert Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Mary, beat him up, tried to blackmail him, killed the family dog and, finally, told a servant she needed rope for a new couch — then hanged herself with it, according to a bombshell report.”

The "other people’s reporting" used by the NY Post is in Newsweek/Daily Beast, which is Kurtz's employer. That article is headlined "Exclusive: The Last Days of Mary Kennedy," with a subtitle: "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life. Then everything unraveled. In Newsweek, bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer reveals the heartbreaking story of Mary’s long decline." Heartbreaking. Love of his life. That goes to a different extreme, trying to appeal to a different audience — presumably women who adore bestselling Kennedy historians.

It's not surprising that the Post — like a blogger — would pull out the most lurid details and state them plainly, for readers who don't want the romance and don't need their suicide porn swathed in the pretense of respectability.

From the hardcore Post:

"U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson is being investigated in a felony hit-and-run case..."

CBS News reports:

According to the written statement by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, Bryson was behind the wheel of a Lexus which rear-ended another vehicle waiting for a train to pass in the city of San Gabriel. The statement says Bryson spoke with the three males in the other car, then drove away, hitting their Buick again in the process.

Bryson was then "found alone and unconscious behind the wheel of his vehicle," after allegedly causing another accident in the neighboring city of Rosemead....

Bryson is described as "a key member of President Obama's economic team working to implement the administration's top economic priority: accelerating job creation."

The first comment at the link is: "Looks like he's been busy creating bodywork jobs."

UPDATE: A Commerce Department spokeswoman says Bryson had a seizure.

How could a seizure explain the sequence of 3 accidents, with him having a conversation after the first one?

IN THE COMMENTS: Michael K said:

This how Bob Novak's brain tumor was found. It's too early to make fun of him. And too late, maybe, to make fun of Obama. 

At the Monona Café...

... late evening... write what you like.

Woodward and Bernstein on "Face the Nation" — falling short on consistency about journalistic ethics?

First, they praise their own work from the Watergate era:

WOODWARD: Well, that we were just trying to find out what happened and... we were as empirical as we could be. And, you know, it needs to be said that we work for an editor, Ben Bradley, and other editors at the Post who were not - who didn't have an agenda themselves. But their agenda was "get the f-ing story; get into it; keep digging; don't let up." And we were 28 and 29 at the time. And it is very liberating to work in an institution where they really understand what we're trying to do. And they say to you, you know, use all your resources, use all the resources of this newspaper. In fact, if there is peril, if we are not believed but we think we have good sources, continue.

Then, the interviewer, Bob Schieffer, brings up the present-day problem with national security leaks that seem to be coming from the White House and for the purpose of making Obama "look like a stronger leader."

BERNSTEIN: I think first you've got to be very careful about creating a witch hunt for sources, and a witch hunt in which you go after reporters, because now more than ever we need real reporting on this presidency, on national security, on all these areas. And the press is not the problem here. We've got plenty of laws and if somebody inside is doing things with real national security secrets that he oughtn't or she oughtn't to be doing in terms of giving them to the press, that's one thing. But let's be really careful before we start a witch hunt here.

WOODWARD: Yes, and I completely agree with that. And by having an investigation, I mean, was there real harm to the national security? I think that question needs to be addressed at a policy level. And it's very difficult, I know from doing stories like this, where you are dealing with sensitive government secrets, to modulate and be careful, at the same time hold the government accountable for what they're doing. So this is an area that needs to be handled with great delicacy and I'm not sure we have a political system that knows how to do anything with great delicacy.

BERNSTEIN: The record of the press, you know, is really quite good in protecting real genuine national security secrets which we often know about. Don't put -- you know, think of what you are carrying around in your head that you don't put on the air.

What happened to get the f-ing story; get into it; keep digging; don't let up?

Obama talks to Netroots Nation — by (echo-enhanced) video.

Much of this is the story of a little boy who uses medication that costs $3,000 a day:

Scott Walker uses his newly won influence to press Mitt Romney to go "big" and go "bold."

A fascinating interview on "Face the Nation" today. I think Bob Schieffer was trying to use Walker to portray Mitt Romney as too right wing. We heard a recording of Romney's answer to Obama's "private sector is doing fine" remark. Romney said Obama wants another stimulus "to hire more government workers," and Romney (rather stupidly) cited "more firemen, more policemen, more teachers" (instead of naming some less popular government job titles). Romney characterized "the message of Wisconsin" as a desire to "to cut back on government." Schieffer craftily framed the question, asking whether the message was that people "want fewer cops and fewer firemen and fewer teachers or was there a different message?"

Walker had the wits not to agree with the question as framed. It would have been unwise to recommend firing cops, firemen, and teachers. The message of the Wisconsin recall was, he said, "slightly different." Flipping to the positive, Walker said that the message was that people want leaders who "take on the tough issues." The point is to make people less "dependent on government programs because they have a job in the private sector where they can control their own freedom, their own destiny and ultimately lead to greater prosperity."

Shieffer tried again to get an attack on Romney going, asking — again naming the popular government workers — "Well, do you think Governor Romney is talking about getting rid of more teachers and firemen?"

The dollar is the camel of today.

"There is nothing new in the fact that infidels pay to have Muslim leaders killed... They already did that by offering camels for the head of Prophet Mohammed, and the dollar is the camel of today."

"Imagine then a world without men... Where women will have babies with other women to produce more women."

"These concepts may seem outrageous now, but they may not seem as strange in the future. 'This is because society’s changing, law is changing and families are changing. There was a time when lesbians weren’t allowed to use sperm banks. Now, they are. Our kids and their kids might not look at things the same way as we do. In fact, they might look back and laugh at us,' says [Aarathi Prasad, UK-based geneticist and author of Like A Virgin: The Science Of A Sexless Future]."

Link.

Whatever happened to those robocalls telling people who'd signed the Walker recall petitions they didn't have to vote in the recall election?

Everyone was talking about them on June 5th, the day of the recall election. The talk was of reports that some people said they got these calls. Now the election is over, and no one is talking about it anymore. Did anyone ever record one of these phone calls and put it up on YouTube? And where has all the outrage gone?

So I'll stir up outrage right now about the reports, dumped on the public on election day. Were the reports fake? If they weren't fake, where is the evidence? If they were real, who made these calls? Actual Walker supporters or Walker opponents?

Since the reports were made in a manner and at a time when it served the interests of Walker opponents, I always suspected Walker opponents of either faking the reports or generating the calls to cause the reports. I'm even more suspicious now that the subject has been dropped. If the calls were real and really made by Walker supporters, the opponents who claimed they got the calls or claimed they heard complaints about the calls would have an interest now in laying out the evidence. The silence is telling.

"Don’t sell yourself well? Think of 'you' as a superhero version of yourself."

"Make a list of your best qualities. Dress the way SuperYou would dress. Talk the way SuperYou would talk. Be SuperYou. Role play. It’s a part. Experiment. This is play."

Advice, from Susannah Breslin, via Instapundit.

Is it good advice? I don't think I want everyone following it. I think Obama follows it.



That's a great video from JibJab, which I'd never seen before. It went up in June 2009. Really interesting to watch now. I just happened upon it, Googling "Obama superman" to illustrate my little "I think Obama follows it" remark.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH links to this hilarious "Dragnet" clip ("Would your entire life fit into one small room?"):

"Zelda Fitzgerald was a Chaos Muppet. So, I must tell you, is Justice Stephen Breyer."

Dahlia Lithwick is doing Muppet Theory.

Via Throwing Things.

A farm in Perrysville, Indiana.

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Architectural detail...

Nice.



"In 1914 the Purdue State Bank, the smallest and least expensive of architect Louis Sullivan's 'Jewel Boxes' was completed in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States."



"The building cost $14,600, although Sullivan's fee was only about 10% of that; barely covering his own costs."

Cheap... but that doesn't justify treating it this way:

Tormenting Obama with the words "doing fine"...

... is Jennifer Rubin.

"40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought..."

Woodward and Bernstein reminisce about their long-ago journalistic triumph that led the President to resign.

But was Nixon far worse than they portrayed him at the time? At the time, they did what they could to make him look as bad as possible, and there was no new media to push back.

Here's an idea for a blog project. Beginning on June 17th — June 17, 1972 was the day of the break-in — let's tap the Washington Post archive and blog the Nixon and Watergate stories from exactly 40 years ago. What would we bloggers have said each day?

But it's not a realistic project, because if bloggers had been around at the time, the events would have played out differently every step of the way. It's one of my pet beliefs about blogging that Nixon would not have resigned.

"Defeated in Walker recall, Democrats vow to fight on."

At their annual convention.

And yet, in the recall, their candidate Tom Barrett, made it his central issue that he would "end the civil war in Wisconsin." We were supposed to oust Scott Walker so that the fight would end. That was always, obviously, a bogus issue. It only meant: Our side will stop fighting when we win. Did anyone fall for that?

But the Democrats, out of power, have spent the last year and a half depriving us Wisconsinites of the feeling of peace. They offered to take over as the only way to get to peace. The offer was rejected, and less than a week later, they tell us they'll keep fighting.

Now, we are headed into the election season this fall, and it is time for the political parties to gear up for a fight. Unfortunately, however, the Democrats forced us into off-season fighting that has gone on since February 2011, and we might be sick of fighting. That was Tom Barrett's theme over the last month — that we're sick of fighting.

But the Democrats are up for a fight. Or am I making too much of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline? What's the evidence that Wisconsin Democrats remain bellicose? Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (from my district) urged Wisconsin Democrats to keep fighting "our fight for Wisconsin's middle class," which "isn't a political fight, it isn't a partisan fight, it is a moral fight." (Baldwin is the near-certain Democratic candidate for the Senate seat that Herb Kohl is declining to continue to occupy.)

Nothing else sounds particularly pugnacious. Herb Kohl, Congressman Ron Kind, Party chairman Mike Tate, and Tom Barrett himself made remarks. Nothing particularly worth quoting. It sounds like they tried to minimize the significance of Scott Walker's win in the recall. Maybe people just oppose recalls. It wasn't really a mandate for Walker. We need to do a better job of getting our message out.

Is the headline justified? Obviously, the Party must fight on. That's built into the idea of a party. No vowing is involved. They didn't disband. But they sound weak — depleted by the recall fight and unready to trudge forward into the fall elections. Does anybody picture Tammy Baldwin beating Tommy Thompson for that Senate seat? Are they stoked about helping Obama win this state?

The Party needs "to do a better job of connecting with the middle-class people to make them understand that on the economic arguments, that what we are talking about is really in the best interests of everyone," said Tom Barrett, whose defeat in the recall showed that the Democratic Party in Wisconsin has no idea how to do that better job of making the assertion that it could do a better job improving life for people in this state.

They need to do a better job of impressing me that they could do a better job of getting out their message that they can do a better job.

And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel needs to do a better job of writing headlines or a better job of collecting sentences to support the headlines they've chosen to write for whatever reason. I'd like to know what the reporter (Tom Kertscher) really thought of that convention.

I'm guessing: Wow, this is lame. This is sad. Barrett is pathetic, and everyone knows Tammy Baldwin is going to lose, but there's nothing they can do about it. And no one seems to give a damn about helping Barack Obama here after the way he treated them...

"'By the way,' Jennifer blurted out, 'you know I have no legs, right?'"

Dominique Moceanu — the Olympic gymnast — finds out about her long-lost sister.

Brick and stone.

Seen today, in West Lafayette, Indiana:



This detail shows the charming placement of 2 stones to make a chevron:

"It’s unclear how Apple and Google will respond to Posner’s surprise pounding of them. .'"

Says WaPo noting Judge Posner's decision to dismiss the patent case and his related blog post:

In his remarkable ruling, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner stated that there was no point in holding a trial because it was apparent that neither side could show they had been harmed by the other’s patent infringement.....

Posner’s decision to descend from the 7th Circuit to oversee the Google-Apple trial suggests he wished to step in and do something directly about the patent system. (Ordinarily, Posner would never hear a patent case as all patent appeals are sent to the DC-based Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; that court has maintained an ideological bias in favor of patent owners despite repeated rebuffs by the Supreme Court).

And this is from the blog post, which spoke generally about capitalism and included the phrase "dysfunctional patent system":

We have a huge public debt, dangerously neglected infrastructure, a greatly overextended system of criminal punishment, a seeming inability to come to grips with grave environmental problems such as global warming, a very costly but inadequate educational system, unsound immigration policies, an embarrassing obesity epidemic, an excessively costly health care system, a possible rise in structural unemployment, fiscal crises in state and local governments, a screwed-up tax system, a dysfunctional patent system, and growing economic inequality that may soon create serious social tensions. Our capitalist system needs a lot of work to achieve proper capitalist goals.

The GOP's "Doing Fine" ad evokes the opening titles to "The Terminator."

We were just talking about the way that ad is closely modeled on an anti-McCain ad from 2008. You can see the McCain ad at the Politico link where the similarity was noted. At my post, my son Chris dropped by to say the GOP ad "uses the main theme beat from The Terminator."

Here's the new "Doing Fine" ad:



And here's the opening title sequence from "The Terminator." Sorry I can't embed that. Anyway, the beat is used throughout the movie to make the viewer feel anxious about the relentless approach of the horrible robot from the future.