The Nightowl Newswrap

U.S. News & World Report calls McCain a liar in print The column starts with all the things McCain did to earn the "maverick" label in the first place - crossing over to cut deals with Democrats - but since that does nothing to endear him to the wingnuts, so he is left with one arrow in his quiver at this point, and he's taking the only shot he has — launching a series of distracting attacks on Barack Obama, with slim regard for truth.

Joe Klein's redemption is all but complete And he opens with one of the most image-evoking sentences I have ever read: "It's been really enjoyable watching the neoconservatives splash and play in the mud and defecation of the McCain campaign."

Crap like this makes it fun to imagine Bill Kristol splashing in a puddle of effluvia.

Government by continuing resolution - again With the new fiscal year starting on October 1, Congress appears to be cutting the current occupant out of the loop entirely - exactly one spending bill has been introduced in both chambers - the bill to fund the VA.


I really wish they wouldn't do this... The Department of Defense is moving forward with plans to sell guided, small diameter bunker buster bombs, designed to penetrate heavily fortified targets to the Israeli Air Force, in spite of apprehensions that the IAF will use the weapons to strike suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. These are conventional weapons, not the "tactical nukes" you have heard about. But still...

Sunni leader who advocated reconciliation assassinated in Baghdad Fouad Ali Hussein al-Douri, an imam at a Sunni mosque and director of a group of about 65 guards in the Jihad neighborhood in western Baghdad, is the latest victim in a string of attacks on members of the so-called Awakening Councils. The killing occurred in a climate where relations between the Awakening Councils and the Shiite-led government have become increasingly strained.

A power sharing agreement in Zimbabwe Mugabe will retain the presidency and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be the Prime Minister. Many details of the long-awaited deal remained either unresolved or unannounced, Mr. Tsvangirai said the agreement “sees the return of hope to all our lives.”

Krugman: '1931 Revisited' Best read the whole thing - a passage out of context might lead you to go out into the street with a pitchfork and a torch.

Remember that company Carly Fiorina drove into the ditch before she was the McCain campaigns designated offense-taker and outrage conveyor? Hewlett-Packard, continuing to recover from her inept leadership, acquired Electronic Data Systems (E.D.S.) in August for a $13.9 billion - and announced today that 24,600 jobs would be cut from H-P employment rolls. About half of the job cuts will occur in the U.S.

South American presidents convene emergency summit in Chile to address the escalating violence in Bolivia that threatens to topple the state. President Evo Morales said he would explain to his fellow presidents how his political foes in Pando province in Bolivia's rich eastern lowlands have mounted a "civic coup," inciting "crimes against humanity by groups massacring the poorest of my country."

Church of England Owes Darwin an Apology So says the Rev. Malcolm Brown, who heads the church's public affairs department. The statement was issued to mark Darwin's bicentenary and the 150th anniversary of the seminal work "On the Origin of Species," both of which fall next year.

Long you'll live and high you'll fly... The family of Pink Floyd founding member Richard Wright announced today that he has gone on to the great gig in the sky after a short struggle with cancer. He was 65.