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Am I the only one that can see through the smoke? Sen. John Edwards has come under a lot of media scrutiny lately for having an affair with one of his staffers. Of course, he isn’t the first politician to succumb to such temptation. But he is claiming to have notified his church and his wife and to have asked both for forgiveness. Maybe he did, maybe didn’t. Either way, they are both covering for him. Is that ruse?

I frankly don’t care. I think the more important ruse going on is the supposed “objectivity” of the media. The Republican-controlled media is making an appeal to the Puritan public in order to justify shutting Edwards out of the running for vice president. As if having an affair with a staffer is enough to disqualify someone for being the second in command, but somehow shooting someone (even if by accident) and being in on the scandalous ruse of going to war on false grounds is, strangely, honorable. Of course, one could say that Dick Cheney never cheated on his wife, but that’s like saying that criminal isn’t guilty of theft when in fact he’s a murderer. Big Dick may not have cheated on his wife, but he doggone sure cheated on the truth.

Meanwhile, media conglomerates play up to the public’s fear of infidelity even as the war rages on.

If you’ve been reading the news much in the last couple of days then you’ve likely heard that the Democratic Party is having a little “friction” regarding the Clintons’ role in the upcoming party convention. Hey, what’s the news without a little friction, right?

Well, according to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, that friction is just plain fiction. And if he has anything to do with it, he’s going to ease the friction, and the fiction, by going to Hawaii.

Good plan. This man has an entirely different temperament than our current commander-in-chief, who seems to be as adept at his own brand of fiction as anyone in media circles. Is Obama right? Are the media creating fiction or is there real friction in the Democratic Party?

This message approved by Paris Hilton:

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According to Media Matters, yes:

It seems to me that “the Maverick” isn’t so maverick any more. He hardly ever says what he really thinks. He just delivers the GOPs talking points and he sounds more like George W. Bush now than G.W. does, except for perhaps the stupid verbal gaffes. I know beneath all of that tough exterior is a melon of a man just dying to say what’s really on his mind. He could explode any day now and it’s my hope that he’ll eventually tell the Republican Party to just go ‘F’ itself. Then I might vote for him. Media love or not.

Why hasn’t this been reported in the mainstream press? It could be that there is so much news going on right now that newspapers and magazines just don’t have the space for it. But I doubt it. Online, space considerations are nil. News websites should have it all over the place, but they don’t. Why not?

When the vice president of the United States is told by a disabled veterans group that he can’t speak at their meetings because his policies are draconian, that’s news. Particularly when that vice president is one of the chief architects of the war that caused many of the disabilities those veterans have. He wants them sequestered while he speaks? Why?

It’s just more of the reasons this administration has got to go. The sooner the better.

If you really want to know why Barack Obama will win the election in November, you’ll have to watch this video:

You’d think he was running for president of the world.

This is simply brilliant:

The surge is part of American history, and American history has a number of components. And this American history was initiated in some sense by Captain John Smith, and when I visited with him in 1607, he had already initiated that history at Jamestown, by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is American history. And he told me at that time that he believed that that history, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. [Ed. note: Did you catch that crucial move?] So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to continue our history. And so I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of American history [Ed. note: there it is again!], which means the settlement at Jamestown, declaring independence, winning the Civil War, emancipating the slaves, the New Deal, deciding to invade Iraq, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that American history.

You’ll have to read the entire article. Andrew Sullivan is the only person I know that is taking the words of John McCain himself and deconstructing them to arrive at the true underlying irrational assumptions behind them. This is true political analysis, the kind you won’t find in the op-ed pages of America’s newspapers.

I noticed the headline of a recent news story on The Smoking Gun website. It lambasted my eyes with repetitive Ps. Now, as a poet, I have no problem with alliteration. I use it often. But what about news stories trying to tell the news and attract advertisers?

The story is about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hanging out (just how much hanging out was going on was not detailed) at their home when a member of the dastardly paparazzi snapped their photo. Now, the Pitts are suing. It seems journalists can’t use high-powered equipment to capture the news from afar any more. At least, that’s the argument the Pitt attorney is making. Since his clients were on private property they deserve some privacy. Makes sense to me.

But what about that headline? Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Pitt Peeved Over Paparazzi Pix

Nice play on words. Pitt (pet) Peeved is followed by another double-P phrase - Paparazzi Pix - to show how photographers exploit celebrities for a few cheap shots. Well, I guess that’s a good reason to be peeved. But you don’t have to bop us over the head with it, do ya?

John McCain is increasingly looking like a grumpy old man on the defensive. It seems that he can’t get any media attention because the black guy gets it all.

He can’t argue that the surge is the reason voters should choose him over Obama. That’s just one issue and most voters are sophisticated enough to think beyond one victory. And given that Obama has recently turned Iraq into a public relations positive for his campaign and that he has communicated a little more clearly that his Iraq pullout policy is based on events on the ground then it makes him look a bit more practical than McCain on the Iraq War. The only negative for Obama is that he opposed the surge, but that was last year’s news.

McCain has nothing else to draw on. His Republican predecessor is laying in the political gutter on his last breath. Fair or not, many voters will give McCain the cold shoulder based on the failures of the Bush Administration. And Obama is capitalizing on that big time.

Every TV appearance of McCain is based on “but I have military experience …”, “but I was for the surge, Obama was against it”, “but, but, but …”. And you just can’t win a political race on buts. That’s why John McCain seems increasingly like he’s just a grumpy old man trying to keep up. He has nothing but ‘buts’ to run on and not even the ash can is paying him much attention now.

Rupert Murdoch is predicting more economic turmoil. And because of this he has also decided to stop writing checks for business entities, meaning his media empire is no longer in expansion mode. Could that be a sign of an impending recession?

Murdoch also says he’d be happy if the Dow Jones drops to 11,000 as long as it holds and doesn’t dip any lower. For him to make that kind of comment he’d have to have some kind of insight into what is to be expected for the near economic future. If he’d be “happy” to see the Dow Jones lower to 11,000 and hold then it must be because the market has the potential to dip lower. With Bernanke at the Fed’s helm, that’s understandable.