They are really going to stick with the "he is so hugely popular" approach. Watch the latest ad - they even show the giant Berlin crowd and phallic symbol. Sure, I get it. Obama is vapid like Paris Hilton. But that is an aside of the ad - the real message is that this guy is HUGE!!

 And they brilliantly pair it with a memo that includes quotes like this one:

Only a celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence. 

That is from the McCain camp, people - for reals.

 I know, we can't rest on our laurels...must be vigilant...but it is either so brilliant a strategy that I can't fathom it, or they are the saddest, most desperate campaign in history.  

 I think TPM has its finger on what the McCain camp hopes to accomplish with it. I just still think it is sorry ass.

McCain Charge Against Obama Lacks Evidence

I said that four days ago. OK, not in print because it was so idiotic that I couldn't be bothered. And yet the media has fed off this rotting corpse of a story for four full days even when their own reporter that was there said it was false, and some even more egregiously than others. They are just now getting around to admitting what they have known all along: IT IS NOT TRUE.

Now the slanderous ad only got a very limited paid run, but thanks to the MSM it has gotten the equivalent of a truly humungous ad buy for free. 

 And now they have decided that story was getting stale, so they have chosen to flip it and start telling the truth so that they can wring more out of it. Why complain? This is good, right? The conversation is turning to whether or not going this negative (not to mention making stuff up - ie: lying ) is going to hurt McCain. Sure, but they are still playing the ad over and over and debating its veracity.  

 Kids, thank the media for knowingly misinforming you for their benefit.

 Thanks, media.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs (not a liberal org. by the way) released findings from their study of the news media coverage of Obama and McCain since Hillary Clinton conceded. They have found that while it is true that Obama gets more air time, it is also of quantifiably more negative content than the media darling, John McCain. 

Yet, McCain's camp loves to whine about how unfair the media is to them.

From the good people at Media Matters, by way of the good people at HuffPost, here is a fun video depicting the love affair.

Sarah Haskins is hilarious and you can find videos of her commenting hilariously on feminist issues.  Here are all the videos I know about:

Yogurt
Weddings
Botox, etc.
Feeding your family

This isn't the latest news item, but tonight we were discussing the Brave New Films project The Real McCain, where they document some of McCain's scariest policy positions. Little known to many are McCain's shockingly misogynistic positions on birth control -- yes birth control. You know, diaphragms, pills, IUDs and such - those things women use (if they can get affordable prescriptions) in order not to get pregnant -- that is, if they know their options because they had Sex Education, something McCain also opposes. McCain opposes these things even though they have been proven to reduce the number of abortions, which McCain would outlaw.

More recently, Planned Parenthood's ad revealing McCain's eyeroll and incompetent answer on birth control drew another anti-woman screed from Bill O'Reilly. (Warning: this last is really gross, even if Faux News did have to run the Planned Parnethood ad for free as part of it... )

www.knitfiber.blogspot.com

I stumbled on this during a lit search today.

Title:

Warning—There's a Lot of Yelling in Knitting: The Impact of Parallel Process on Empowerment in a Group Setting.Find More Like This

Authors:

Rebmann, Heather herebmann@yahoo.com

Source:

Social Work with Groups; 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 4, p5-24, 18p

This article explores the parallel
process of empowerment experienced by a first year MSW student and a
group of homeless teen mothers in a residential setting. Individual and
communal empowerment developed through the creation of an open-ended
group that focused on a client-initiated activity-knitting; an activity
that offered opportunities for the members to empower themselves. This article
traces the parallel empowerment process for the intern and the group,
moving from dependence, to self-assertion and risk-taking, to communal
cooperation by individuals and the group-as-a-whole (Freund, 1993).
Specific suggestions for instructors supervising first-year social work
interns are offered by the author who is the intern describing her own
experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of
Social Work with Groups is the property of Haworth Press and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a
listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual
use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the
accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published
version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts)

So, I'm knitting on my way from Zurich to Davos. Note, I'm ridiculously sleep deprived and jet lagged. After not knitting on my red eye flight because I didn't want to invade my neighbors' space (hate that!), the person next to me fell asleep and proceeded to occupy my personal space the entire night. Not just the usual elbow over the armrest, either. We're talking head on the shoulder. I deftly moved to slide it off, but somehow the head kept finding its way back time and again. Ew! All this goes to my state of mind: desperate, and desperately exhausted.

So I'm on this train that the conference organizers said takes 90 minutes, then I'm supposed to change for a mountain train for another 45. So I take out my knitting and try to make up for time worse than wasted on that flight. I spread out a bit to work more efficiently. About 55 minutes into the trip, I look up at a stop and it's my place to change! I scramble to grab my stuff, get off the train, then remember I left my suitcase. I run back, just in time, beg the guy in my lame half German to help me get the bag down off the impossibly high luggage rack, then proceed to exit the train, where a woman is saying something incomprehensible to me and pointing at the track. I look, and in horror see that my ball of yarn has fallen and rolled under the train. This is the ball that is connected to my nearly completed sweater project. The doors are closing. In a panic, I dig in my bag, rip out my nail clippers and cut the cord, just as the train is wheeling away.  I had this image in my head of it all unravelling, or flying from my hands as it goes with the train. Having saved the sweater and chalked the ball up to a loss, I began calculating whether my spare ball would be enough to finish. I watched as the thread did indeed catch in the wheels, and I saw the ball unravel and spin, but fortunately it broke off fairly quickly and I was able to jump down onto the track and retrieve it. Phew! By the time I recovered and looked for my next train, it was leaving from the platform across the way (it's true, what they say about Swiss trains). So I had to wait an hour ... but I couldn't feel too sorry for myself, staring at some alpine meadows and rocky crags. And having saved my project with some helpful travelers, some foggy jet lagged thinking and a pair of nail clippers.