Not in my wildest dreams would I believe that a US official could be so stupid as to say something like this in the face of unrelenting facts.

And intriguing enough is that it happened on CNN, whose reporting tends to be as supportive of the Obama administration as possible.

Of course, this is coming from the leader of the same department that earlier this year targeted “right-wing extremists” as high-risk for recruiting new members and conducting terrorist activities.

About the only spin one could put on this is that “…the system worked, but it’s broke”. That perspective behind a statement like this is part of the problem. Saying that everything worked like it’s supposed to but it’s not supposed to work that way just leaves one wondering how much thought is going into the design of the process that is supposed to be protecting our country.

Clearly the system is broke. To think that someone who has been identified as a terrorist risk like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could be allowed onto a passenger jet without careful screening is just insane… and there are 500,000 people on the list he was placed on a month ago! As I shared in my piece at the Des Moines Register yesterday, the entire focus [...]

NBC is calling Illinois before the polls are closed there… CNN is waiting. Different comments from the analysts, but personally I hate to see projections before polls are closed.

Granted the projections are coming from exit polls, but as we’ve seen in past elections, early projections can impact late voter turnout, which can impact other races.

The projections themselves are identical, which should be the case.

We’re watching CNN right now and monitoring[...]

Just now, Wolf Blitzer is talking with Jessica Yellin via, get this, Hologram. First time on live TV.

I’m quite impressed with what they’ve accomplished here. Jessica is in Chicago and Wolf is in New York. The image was a little herky-jerky (that’s a lot of data to transmit) from multiple cameras that were surrounding Jessica in a small tent.

I don’t know for sure if the image was actually projected onto the set or just merged digitally, but Wolf gave the impression that he was looking right at the image. And there was a red circle on the floor that appeared as if it could have been part of the projection aparatus.

Bravo, CNN!

Talking Heads:
No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin yet
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The House of Representatives today passed the Senate version of the $700 Billion Bail-out.  For now, it’s over.  Bush signed the bill shortly after the vote, and we have not seen nuthin yet.
In case you haven’t noticed yet, the [...]

Just a few minutes away from John McCain’s big speech.
It will be interesting to see how it compares to Palin’s.
David Gergen at CNN is apparently a little bit disconnected as HE stated that others were disconnected who said that Democrats were running Washington.  Gergen’s perspective is apparently that the party of the President dictates who [...]

I finally got time to watch a recording of Saturday night’s Saddleback Church event with Obama and McCain.  DJ made some excellent observations earlier in the week, which I thought I might supplement a bit.  If you have not seen it yet, I strongly suggest that you view this event as I think it provides [...]

Former GW Bush White House Spokesman, conservative political pundit, newspaper columnist and talk show host, Tony Snow, has died of cancer at 53.
Snow also served in the GHW Bush White House as a speech writer and Deputy Assistant of Media Affairs.
Tony will be missed.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

Reports, not official, indicate that CBS is considering working with CNN to use their reporting and research machine while maintaining their front-end anchors to maintain the CBS “look”.
According to the New York Times:
Over the last decade, CNN has held intermittent talks with both ABC News and CBS News about various joint ventures. But during the [...]

It’s been a busy day in politics…
John Edwards has apparently been paying attention to our suggestions. He has decided to drop out of the race leaving no endorsement (yet).  Any bets on who that helps?
Rudy Giuliani also has departed, providing an endorsement to John McCain. Nice.  Most people seem to agree that McCain is [...]

It seems that just when you think Mike Huckabee is seeing the light (or at least figuring out how to pretend he has), we get this…

There’s some good comments in the midst of this interview, but there’s two real issues here:
1) Huck’s comments (actually from a speech the night before) make it sound like he [...]