Stanley Kurtz has been looking more deeply into Barack Obama’s politics and political alliances:

While a small group of bloggers have productively explored Obama’s New Party ties, discussion has often turned on the New Party’s alleged socialism. Was the New Party actually established by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)? Was the New Party’s platform effectively socialist in content? Although these debates are both interesting and important, we needn’t resolve them to conclude that the New Party was far to the left of the American mainstream. Whether formally socialist or not, the New Party and its ACORN backers favored policies of economic redistribution. As Obama would say, they wanted to spread the wealth around. Bracketing the socialism question and simply taking the New Party on its own terms is sufficient to raise serious questions about Obama’s political commitments — questions that cry out for attention from a responsible press.

Yes. Well, as (Democrat) Orson Scott Card points out, we haven’t had a responsible press in quite a while.

…in Saint Barack.

People, wake up.

So, is Obama as inevitable as Hillary! was?

Just a cautionary note for those who don’t think the obituaries in the press on the McCain campaign premature.

Treacher (who has been on fire lately–scroll around the site), in response to the “argument” that the Annenberg Challenge was funded by Republicans:

“Well, how about that. Did you know the planes used on 9/11 weren’t built by terrorists?”

Yup.

[Update a while later]

If the Obama campaign think that the Senator’s relationship with Bill Ayers is no big deal, why are they trying to hide the evidence?

[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]

Fact checking factcheck.org (which it’s becoming increasingly obvious is badly misnamed). And this seems part of a pattern:

The press seems more interested in attacking Rep. Bachman than in doing its job by asking Obama the many legitimate questions that flow out of his past dealings with Bill Ayers.

Can’t disrupt the narrative, particularly two weeks before an election.

There was a total lack of accountability at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. And as is point out, this makes Powell’s endrsement of Obama particularly clueless:

The mistake in bringing up Ayers was not in doing so per se, but in focusing on his sixties activities, and not paying more attention to their partnership in attempting to radicalize Chicago schoolchildren in the 90s. Not to mention the ongoing dissembling and (yes) lying by Obama about the relationship.

And of course, the biggest mistake with all of this “negative” (i.e., truthful) focus on Obama was not doing it last summer, because now it does have the appearance of desperation.

Lileks has the thankless job of once again deconstructing his fellow ten-thousand-lakes scribe:

It’s the usual Keillor twaddle – a humorless, scattershot ramble of run-on sentences and unsourced assertions, and I didn’t see anything that set it apart from the dozens of sour broadsides that preceded it. He doesn’t like Sarah Palin, although if she was on the Obama ticket he would have found a few nice words before falling silent on the matter, just as the wisdom and august judgment of Biden seems to hover beneath his radar. He is also angry about Republican economics, because, as he stated in a previous column, they deregulated everything and caused the whole mess. In his imagination, sixteen GOP Senators dressed like the fellow from the Monopoly game took a break from playing polo – with slaves dressed up as horses, of course, ha ha, capital idea, Smidley – and somehow did something which was totally unrelated to the sub-prime mortgage issue. I suspect he believes that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd woke nightly from sheet-soaking nightmares in which the loan standards were loosened just a bit too much, and every time they went to the office intent on fixing this mess, gol dang it, John McCain dragged them into a coatroom and administered ether. Amazingly strong fellow.

It doesn’t matter what Clinton signed; it doesn’t matter that Bush and McCain tried to raise alarms; there’s not an jot of responsibility on Keillor’s side, because if anything goes wrong it can be traced to the one simple fact that shapes his world: the other side is composed of despicable, cowardly, dishonest, cynical bastards still upset that Jolson’s reputation is sullied by his use of blackface. On his side: angels. The man makes a Manichean look like an agnostic Unitarian.

You have to ask yourself how the media would cover a long-standing association between John McCain and a fellow who, in the hurly-burly-mixed-up-folderol of the Civil Rights Era, went a little too far and burned some Black churches, or led a group devoted to blowing up abortion clinics. Mind you, he was never convicted – technicalities, which was ironic, because Conservatives hate those – but he went on to serve on school boards and charity foundations that advocated for States’ Rights, an issue dear to conservative hearts. Imagine the deets are the same – cozy fundraisers, serving on the same boards, McCain’s name on Bomber Bob’s memoir. Add to that some other parallels – say, McCain attended a church that praised a fellow who believed black people were descended from the devil, and believed Jesus was an Aryan.

John McCain wouldn’t be the nominee, and if by some chance that happened, this association would be draped around his neck every day.

You may disagree with this, but I don’t think I’ve attempted any deceit here. Deceit would entail lying about what Ayers did, and insisting they had a connection when there was none. You could say it’s almost deceitful to say there’s nothing there whatsoever, but that’s up for debate. But you can imagine Keillor writing 14 pre-election columns that never mentioned the McCain friend who tried to blow up a Planned Parenthood clinic. I think it would matter, and it wouldn’t be “desperation” to point it out.

Of course, Keillor’s been full of this nonsense for years. What’s really appalling is that the so-called “objective” media have given up the pretense this year.

A non-humorous post from Iowahawk: “I am Joe.”

There are two Americas: one that is Joe, and one that thinks that Joe should have to show his papers to question the Dear Leader.

[Afternoon update]

“I am Joe. Flush Socialism.”

I can see this really taking off.

[Update a while later]

Mark Steyn says that Joe must be punished because he didn’t go with the flow.

And McCain used the S-word in his radio address this morning. Why not? When you take money from high earners, and hand it over to low earners, and say that you’re doing it to “spread the wealth,” in what way does that differ from “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”?

Of course there’s no relationship between Barack Obama and ACORN.