So, I’m signing off guys–for a couple hours, at least. As you guys know, I’ve had a crush on the Atlantic peeps for awhile. In a bout of insanity, they’ve decided that I’m not so bad myself. This blog will be moving at some point today. Any comments made here after 12 noon, may not make it over. See you guys on the other side. Thanks so much for your support these past few months. If you guys didn’t read, this wouldn’t be happening. I am not afraid to say it–I love you all.

The latest dustup between the Republican presidential candidate and the “All the News that’s fit to Print” big-name newspaper centered on the editorial board’s back-to-back criticisms of McCain, one dispatch accusing him of taking the low road and another contending that he was playing politics with race.

The second editorial, which appeared on the Times Web site, said McCain’s ads conjured up loaded racial images and raised the specter of O.J. Simpson.

“The presumptive Republican nominee has embarked on a bare-knuckled barrage of negative advertising aimed at belittling Mr. Obama,” the editorial board wrote.

The response from the McCain campaign was equally cutting.

“If the shareholders of The New York Times ever wonder why the paper’s ad revenue is plummeting and its share price tanking, they need look no further than the hysterical reaction of the paper’s editors to any slight, real or imagined, against their preferred candidate,” said McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb.

Goldfarb compared the editors to a blogger “sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons.”

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis declined to comment on Friday.

The relationship between McCain _ a frequent reader of the newspaper _ and the Times has been rocky. Yet such a grudge could pay political dividends for the presidential candidate, as criticizing the liberal media often improves a candidate’s standing with Republican Party conservatives. That’s critical for McCain, who has never been their favorite.

Back in January, the Times endorsed McCain’s candidacy for the Republican nomination, saying, “Sen. John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe.”

Since then, it’s been McCain v. The New York Times.

In February, the newspaper printed a story about McCain and a female lobbyist, reporting that unnamed McCain associates years ago had become concerned the relationship may have become romantic. Both McCain and the lobbyist have unequivocally denied that it was, and the newspaper’s editor said he was surprised at the reaction to the story.

A month later, McCain flashed his temper at a Times reporter, repeatedly cutting her off when asked whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice president in 2004.

Then last month, Republicans complained that the paper rejected an Op-Ed piece by McCain about the Iraq war after one by Obama was printed and received widespread attention. The paper said it had only tried to get McCain to rewrite the piece to be more specific about his plan.

“McCain is still, I think, upset about the Op-Ed not being printed,” said Mike Paul, a former aide to New York Republicans who is now a consultant.

Paul said several recent moves by McCain show the presidential candidate is consciously moving away from his role as an unconventional politician.

“A lot of the maverick positioning is now turning into more conservative positioning, and some of that includes not being afraid to go negative, not being afraid to call a liberal a liberal, and not being afraid to go after a newspaper,” said Paul.

Beyond any personal pique there may be, there is a strategy to attacking the Times because it is a bogeyman of conservatives who still may not be entirely sold on the Arizona senator.

Senior advisers are fully aware that assailing the Times could help endear McCain to his talk radio skeptics and their followers.

So, they go after the newspaper often _ and send the message: McCain stands with you.

Advisers also recognize the power of the newspaper to influence how other media organizations cover the campaign, so they are aggressive in pointing out where they feel McCain was wronged.

McCain, though, is hardly the first Republican to want to tear up the paper.

Back in 1992, aides to President George H.W. Bush complained that the Times and other media outlets had mischaracterized his examination of a grocery check-out scanner by suggesting he was unfamiliar with the long-used technology and implying he was out of touch with everyday Americans’ economic issues.

In the 2004 election, a conservative anti-tax group called Club for Growth ran an ad decrying Democrat Howard Dean as a “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” tax-raiser.

“It’s not complicated,” said Club for Growth spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik. The paper, she said, “has really become a symbol for a lot of conservative grievances.”

“For starters, their editorials are decidedly liberal. That’s a no-brainer. And there are often complaints that even their general reporting is biased in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The New York Times has come to be associated with the Northeast liberal establishment.”

Paul, the consultant, said he thinks the McCain campaign’s criticisms of the paper may look good to some but won’t work in the long run.

“You might get that base, but you won’t win the election,” he said. “It goes back to the old saying, ‘Don’t throw rocks at people who own ink barrels’ … and people have gotten sick and tired of the excuse that all media is liberal.”

Full Version

Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama’s press office. The campaign was irked by the Times’ latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee’s accompanying front-page piece titled “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” which was running in the morning’s paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.Barack Obama

But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”

By one pressman:

I noticed that Marvin’s politics were marked by a strong aversion to taxes (“natural fact is/Honey, that I can’t pay my taxes” and “There’s only three things that’s for sure, taxes, death and trouble”), a disdain for foreign occupation (“Father, father we don’t need to escalate.”), and a strong belief in the right to privacy (“I want to get it on/You don’t have to worry that it’s wrong.” or “There’s nothing wrong with love/If you want good loving, just let yourself go.”)

This Biography has been taken from the Allmusic.com

One of the most gifted, visionary, and enduring talents ever launched into orbit by the Motown hit machine, the career of Marvin Gaye blazed the trail for the continued evolution of popular black music: moving from lean, powerful R&B to stylish, sophisticated soul to finally arrive at an intensely political and personal form of artistic self-expression, his work not only redefined soul music as a creative force but also expanded its impact as an agent for social change.

Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. (in the style of his hero Sam Cooke, he added the “e” to his surname as an adult) was born April 2, 1939 in Washington, D.C. The second of three children born to Marvin Sr., an ordained minister in the House of God – a conservative Christian sect fusing elements of orthodox Judaism and Pentecostalism which imposes strict codes of conduct and observes no holidays – he began singing in church at the age of three , quickly becoming a soloist in the choir. Later taking up piano and drums, music became Gaye’s escape from the nightmarish realities of his home life – throughout his childhood, his father beat him on an almost daily basis.

After graduating high school, Gaye enlisted in the U.S. Air Force; upon his discharge, he returned to Washington and began singing in a number of street-corner doo wop groups, eventually joining the (1) Rainbows, a top local attraction. With the help of mentor Bo Diddley, the Rainbows cut “Wyatt Earp,” a single for the Okeh label which brought them to the attention of singer Harvey Fuqua, who in 1958 recruited the group to become the latest edition of his backing ensemble, the Moonglows. After relocating to Chicago, the Moonglows recorded a series of singles for Chess including 1959’s “Mama Loocie”; while touring the Midwest, the group performed in Detroit, where Gaye’s graceful tenor and three-octave vocal range won the interest of fledgling impressario Berry Gordy Jr., who signed him to the Motown label in 1961.

While first working at Motown as a session drummer and playing on early hits by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, he met Gordy’s sister Anna, and married her in late 1961. Upon mounting a solo career, Gaye struggled to find his voice, and early singles failed; finally, his fourth effort, “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” became a minor hit in 1962, and his next two singles – the 1963 dance efforts “Hitch Hike” and “Can I Get a Witness” – both reached the Top 30. With 1963’s “Pride and Joy,” Gaye scored his first Top Ten smash, but often found his role as a hitmaker stifling his desire to become a crooner of lush romantic ballads ran in direct opposition to Motown’s all-important emphasis on chart success, and the ongoing battle between his artistic ambitions and the label’s demands for commercial product continued throughout Gaye’s long tenure with the company.

With 1964’s Together, a collection of duets with Mary Wells, Gaye scored his first charting album; the duo also notched a number of hit singles together, including “Once Upon a Time” and “What’s the Matter With You, Baby?” As a solo performer, Gaye continued to enjoy great success, scoring three superb Top Ten hits – “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “I’ll Be Doggone,” and “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” – in 1965. In total, he scored some 39 Top 40 singles for Motown, many of which he also wrote and arranged; with Kim Weston, the second of his crucial vocal partners, he also established himself as one of the era’s dominant duet singers with the stunning “It Takes Two.”

However, Gaye’s greatest duets were with Tammi Terrell, with whom he scored a series of massive hits penned by the team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, including 1967’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Your Precious Love,” followed by 1968’s “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.” The team’s success was tragically cut short in 1967 when, during a concert appearance in Virginia, Terrell collapsed into Gaye’s arms onstage, the first evidence of a brain tumor which abruptly ended her performing career and finally killed her on March 16, 1970. Her illness and eventual loss left Gaye deeply shaken, marring the chart-topping 1968 success of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” his biggest hit and arguably the pinnacle of the Motown Sound.

At the same time, Gaye was forced to cope with a number of other personal problems, not the least of which was his crumbling marriage. He also found the material he recorded for Motown to be increasingly irrelevant in the face of the tremendous social changes sweeping the nation, and after scoring a pair of 1969 Top Ten hits with “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby” and “That’s the Way Love Is,” he spent the majority of 1970 in seclusion, resurfacing early the next year with the self-produced What’s Going On, a landmark effort heralding a dramatic shift in both content and style which forever altered the face of black music. A highly percussive album which incorporated jazz and classical elements to forge a remarkably sophisticated and fluid soul sound, What’s Going On was a conceptual masterpiece which brought Gaye’s deeply held spiritual beliefs to the fore to explore issues ranging from poverty and discrimination to the environment, drug abuse and political corruption; chief among the record’s concerns was the conflict in Vietnam, as Gaye structured the songs around the point of view of his brother Frankie, himself a soldier recently returned from combat.

The ambitions and complexity of What’s Going On baffled Berry Gordy, who initially refused to release the LP; he finally relented, although he maintained that he never understood the record’s full scope. Gaye was vindicated when the majestic title track reached the number two spot in 1971, and both of the follow-ups, “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” and “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” also reached the Top Ten; the album’s success guaranteed Gaye continued artistic control over his work and helped loosen the reins for other Motown artists, most notably Stevie Wonder, to also take command of their own destinies. Consequently, in 1972, Gaye changed directions again, agreeing to score the blaxploitation thriller Trouble Man; the resulting soundtrack was a primarily instrumental effort showcasing his increasing interest in jazz, although a vocal turn on the moody, minimalist title track scored another Top Ten smash.

The long-simmering eroticism implicit in much of Gaye’s work reached its boiling point with 1973’s Let’s Get It On, one of the most sexually charged albums ever recorded; a work of intense lust and longing, it became the most commercially successful effort of his career, and the title cut became his second number one hit. Let’s Get It On also marked another significant shift in Gaye’s lyrical outlook, moving him from the political arena to a deeply personal, even insular stance which continued to define his subsequent work. After teaming with Diana Ross for the 1973 duet collection Marvin and Diana, he returned to work on his next solo effort, I Want You; however, the record’s completion was delayed by his 1975 divorce from Anna Gordy. The dissolution of his marriage threw Gaye into a tailspin, and he spent much of the mid-1970s in divorce court; to combat Gaye’s absence from the studio, Motown released the 1977 stopgap Live at the London Palladium, which spawned the single “Got to Give It Up (Pt. 1),” his final number one hit.

As a result of a 1976 court settlement, Gaye was ordered to make good on missed alimony payments by recording a new album, with the intention that all royalties earned from its sales would then be awarded to his ex-wife. The 1978 record, a two-LP set sardonically titled Here, My Dear, bitterly explored the couple’s relationship in such intimate detail that Anna Gordy briefly considered suing Gaye for invasion of privacy. In the interim, he had remarried and begun work on another album, Lover Man, but scrapped the project when the lead single “Ego Tripping Out” – a telling personal commentary presented as a duet between the spiritual and sexual halves of his identity, which biographer David Ritz later dubbed the singer’s “divided soul” – failed to chart. As his drug problems increased and his marriage to new wife Janis also began to fail, he relocated to Hawaii in an attempt to sort out his personal affairs.

In 1981, long-standing tax difficulties and renewed pressures from the I.R.S. forced Gaye to flee to Europe, where he began work on the ambitious In Our Lifetime, a deeply philosophical record which ultimately severed his long-standing relationship with Motown after he claimed the label had remixed and edited the album without his consent; additionally, Gaye stated that the finished artwork parodied his original intent, and that even the title had been changed to drop an all-important question mark. Upon signing with Columbia in 1982, he battled stories of erratic behavior and a consuming addiction to cocaine to emerge triumphant with Midnight Love, an assured comeback highlighted by the luminous Top Three hit “Sexual Healing.” The record made Gaye a star yet again, and in 1983 he made peace with Berry Gordy by appearing on a television special celebrating Motown’s silver anniversary. That same year, he also sang a soulful and idiosyncratic rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the NBA All-Star Game which instantly became one of the most controversial and legendary interpretations of the anthem ever performed; it was to be his final public appearance.

Gaye’s career resurgence brought with it an increased reliance on cocaine; finally, his personal demons forced him back to the U.S., where he moved in with his parents in an attempt to regain control of his life. Tragically, the return home only exacerbated his spiral into depression; he and his father quarrelled bitterly, and Gaye threatened suicide on a number of occasions. Finally, on the afternoon of April 1, 1984 – one day before his 45th birthday – Gaye was shot and killed by the Reverend Marvin Gay, Sr. in the aftermath of a heated argument. In the wake of his death, Motown and Columbia teamed to issue two 1985 collections of outtakes, Dream of a Lifetime – a compilation of erotic funk workouts teamed with spiritual ballads – and the big-band inspired Romantically Yours. (Vulnerable, a collection of ballads which took over 12 years to complete, finally saw release in 1996.) With Gaye’s death also came a critical re-evaluation of his work, which deemed What’s Going On to be one of the landmark albums in pop history, and his 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame permanently enshrined him among the pantheon of musical greats. – Jason Ankeny

The gender gap in Pew’s poll is huge — 17 points among women in Obama’s favor, and only four points among men in McCain’s. And Obama has a double-digit lead in the swing states.

Quinnipiac’s latest set of swing states polls finds Palin with a net negative impression in several states, including Florida, where she’s spent quite a bit of campaign time. The numbers in Florida are stunning, in a sense; there’s been a net swing of 13 points in Obama’s favor during the past two weeks. He’s even competitive among white voters, with McCain besting him by only five points.

I have always felt that while the democrats, if give free regein, would try to tax me and our economy to death, I’m a clever enough guy that I could earn my way out of whatever nonsense they tried to pull.

Also, it’s really really hard to kill an economy. For example, dd you know that even as Allied forces were crossing the Rhine, Germany was still making soda pop? I can’t fathom that; a nation engaged in a struggle to the death is still able to make soda pop! Ordinary germans still had electricity and hot and cold running water when the Allied tanks rolled in. It’s really really hard to kill a modern economy. Since I don’t think the democrats are going to engage in a massive military offensive against the US of A, I don’t worry too much about my standard of living. As long as I’ve got electrity and hot and cold running water, I’ll be okay

Conversely, I have always figured that the GOP, if give free reign would thrash the constitution and take away my liberty. And hey! Guess what? That’s exactly what they did, or at least tried to do in the wake of 9/11. God bless ‘em, they tried to do exactly what they had been promising to do for my entire adult life. (Take a moment to think where this country might have gone if the officer corp hadn’t revolted on the torture question.)

After HRC disqualfied herself with the Annie Oakley nonsense and the “hard working white Americans” I was ready to vote for BHO with something resembling enthusiasm. Mostly it looked to be (yet another) vote against the GOP, but at least this time I was voting against torture, suspension of habius corpus, unitary executive power; you know the BIG issues that go to the core of what it means to be free. (Before that I just voted against them because the GOP just wanted to put me in jail, take away my house and property, and leave my wife and children destitute.)

So there I am, all ready to vote for BHO, and what do he say? “Windfall profit tax!” Mutherfuck! Windfall mutherfucking profit tax? Hey zoos criso, and fuck me bllind. What the fuck is a “windfall profit tax?”

If I buy Qualcom at $5 and it goes to $100, is that a WINDFALL PROFIT? If my wife buys Apple at $12 and it goes to $240, is that a muther fucking windfall profit. You gonna lay some extra juicy tax on my ass cause I bought something when it was cheap and now it’s expensive?

See, what you got me started on?

Anyway, that just a small example. A windfall profit tax on oil co profits is a terrible stupid idea for a about a million reasons, and that was only compounded by the idea of giving the proceeds of that tax BACK to the people who bought the overpriced oil in th first place. I can’t think of a better way to encourage over consumption that by stripping the oil companies of the lawful profits and giving those monies back to the asshole idiots who are driviing around solo in vehicles that get 20mpg.

Anyway, that’s the highly caffinated, slightly agitated version. I’ve worked for myself my whole life, and every other time the democrats pop off on money, I have to ask myself, “Have any of these assholes ever once, in their entire life, had to make payroll?” I don’t think so.

Of course that’s a pretty fucking good reason to vote against McCain. Mutherufcker’s been on the government tit since he was wet behind the ears.

If Wright’s comments will be the reasons Hillary runs on the Democratic ticket or will be the reason McCain wins a single state he wouldn’t otherwise win during the general election then we’ll have identified the key problems that plague our nation most, the average voting American’s miseducation or the average voting American’s dumbassedness. We’ll know a little more about why poorer nations’ children are besting ours in academic tests. We’ll know a little more about why we don’t value or reward superior academic achievement nearly as much as we should, even when selecting our presidents, who should have (1) superior judgment, (2) superior character, (3) superior wisdom, (4) superior knowledge, AND (5) superior intellectual ability.

And my number 1 political issue will no longer be promoting nationwide cultural competence, which I believe is the core prerequisite for a meritocratic nation. My number 1 issue won’t be ending our Southwest Asia wars as quickly as we can, decreasing the unjust social affects and effects of U.S. poverty, providing quality health care to our poorest mothers and their children, or making and preserving quality white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs, or green-collar jobs in the U.S.

My number 1 issue will be significantly improving the quality of U.S. public education. Because if Wright’s comments, and nothing else, will make our nation pick Hillary over Barack or McCain over Barack then that will signal to me that our public education system is criminally inadequate, churning out far too many robot-like zombies and far too few responsible citizens capable of thinking independently or well.