Matt Welch on John McCain’s popularity:

He’s a hawk on the war, yet independent-minded voters who are sick of Iraq are voting for him anyway.

But there’s a bizarre disconnect in the warm embrace between McCain and the electorate’s mavericks. They hate the Iraq war, while he’s willing to fight it for another century. The most pro-war presidential candidate in a decade is winning the 2008 GOP nomination thanks to the antiwar vote.

Welch seems to be stumped by the lack of consistency.

I would submit that he consider a different perspective—one which is probably the despair of every campaign strategist out there, because no one knows what to do or who to pander to (or not to pander to). It looks to me that previous voting blocs, including the so-called “antiwar vote,” the “Latino vote,” the “gay vote,” the “blue-collar vote,” the “black vote,” and the “youth vote”—to name just a few—no longer apply.

It’s a big free-for-all.

Is it possible to do anything but sit back and gawk at the twenty-ring circus otherwise known as the primary campaign of 2008?

As if an endorsement from the Kennedys didn’t take us far enough back in time, now Ike’s granddaughter Susan Eisenhower is backing Obama:

Today we are engaged in a debate about these very issues. Deep in America’s heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population.

I am not alone in worrying that my generation will fail to do what my grandfather’s did so well: Leave America a better, stronger place than the one it found.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than see John McCain become president:

What just happened? Earth hit a wormhole?

Archconservative writer Ann Coulter: “I’m a Hillary girl now. She lies less than John McCain. She’s smarter than John McCain, so that when she’s caught shamelessly lying, at least the Clintons know they’ve been caught lying. McCain is so stupid, he doesn’t even know he’s been caught.”

What the hell is going on around here?

Challenging times lead to innovation, and now technology is allowing individuals the world over to fight back against the trends that they see as dangerous.

Haaretz reports on a half-dozen bloggers around the world who are fighting the strong anti-Israel bias in their respective countries’ media by reporting only bad news about their own countries:

What began six months ago as a brazen attempt to counter a perceived anti-Israel slant in the Dutch media, has evolved into a network monitoring the media in eight countries across the world. The idea is simple: Beat press bias at its own game by advertising only bad news about one place.

Over the past months, seven activists from Israel and elsewhere have been exposing online readers to scandalous yet accurate reports from media in Britain (violent drunk teens), France (high homeless mortality), Norway (serial child molesters), Finland (sexual harassment in parliament), Sweden (soaring suicide rates), The Netherlands (menacing Muslim unrest), Mexico (rampaging flood victims) and Los Angeles (drive-by killings).

Clever, and I’m all for it.

The anti-Israel campaigns in the West—particularly in Western Europe—are conducting conducted via shaming. It’s an effective method.

It also works two ways, though, and it’s about time the show was placed firmly on the other foot. More, please.

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