When I was 14 years old and living in Cuba, I anonymously submitted 6 cartoons to a communist magazine. They published 5 and printed an announcement asking for the author to come forward. This constituted both an exciting and scary developement. Since we had a visa to emigrate to the US, I was not allowed to participate in any government sponsored activities.
I never did commmunicate with the magazine and my friends who knew about it never told. My parents were worried sick about any negative implications my possible notoriety in government publishing circles could have on our planned trip out of Cuba.
You could understand how this little episode could have an effect on the creative manifestations of a young person. I didn't attempt to publish another cartoon--especially a political one--for thirty eight years. Enough time has gone by.
When I told my wife what I was up to (she knows about my Cuban experience) she was very encouraging. I told her that now all I had to worry about was finding my name added to a Department of Homeland Security List. I am OK with that.

So, here we go. I hope you guys like it.

The media is all abuzz about Jerome Corsi's hit job of a book on Obama. But a rising discussion ios the role of Mary Matalin in choosing and defending the book for her Simon & Schuster imprint Threshold Editions as a work of scholarship.

Timothy Noah at Slate has a great piece on Matalin and conservative imprints at major publishers. A money quote, literally:

This isn't to say that, through her Threshold imprint, Matalin is subverting Simon & Schuster's pursuit of profit to partisan ends. Quite the contrary. Simon & Schuster and the other big publishing houses have started conservative imprints, at arms' length and with noses held, because they recognize them to be a gold mine. The Obama Nation, the Times reports, will debut on its best-seller list this Sunday at No. 1. But part of the deal, clearly, is that conservative imprints aren't required to adhere to the same standards of truth as the grown-up divisions.

Why are these books such a gold mine? Why are these hack jobs debuting at No. 1 on bestseller lists?

So I have a chance to hear James Carville and Mary Matalin speak next week. Before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, no less.  

Note: I'm the author of a book about Obama, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama campaign.

Jerome Corsi's book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has instantly soared to the top of the bestseller lists. But its popularity is in inverse proportion to its quality. This is one of the worst political books ever written. Corsi piles distortion upon innuendo to create a gigantic heap of right-wing garbage, with a seemingly endless parade of basic factual errors running through the text like rats. Corsi's book is an embarrassment to the craft of journalism, and any of the conservatives who have praised and promoted it should feel humiliated at how bad it truly is. The Obama campaign just came out with a critique of Corsi's book; it includes some of the many examples which I found independently and detail below.

MSNBC is currently running a NY Times piece which reports that Jerome Corsi, the "author who launched Swift Boat attacks in '04" is prepared to swiftboat Obama through unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate accusations. These are found in Corsi's book, recently published, entitled The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.

It turns out, too, that Corsi's hatchet job are the lies of a chickenhawk and opportunist (as well as active Freeper.)

Corsi, as some will remember was co-author (with John O'Neill), of Unfit for Command, a book written in cooperation with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and provided the blueprints for swiftboating John Kerry - i.e., to smearingly and inaccurately challenge the legitimacy of each of Kerry's combat medals and to decontextually criticize Kerry's later antiwar actions.

Incidentally, Corsi's editor is right wing harpy turned editor, Mary Matalin.

The 'who could have known' defense

Longtime Clinton political operative James Carville appears regularly on CNN to make the case for his candidate, arguing why the race is not over, how she can still win, and of course, famously calling newly-minted Obama endorser and superdelegate Gov. Bill Richardson, a "Judas".

But in the meantime, the $3.9 million DC-area home he shares with his wife, GOP-insider and former Darth Cheney counselor Mary Matalin, is on the market.  

h/t lgcap

What's up with that? (More under the fold)

Ah, the glory days! How we miss them!

James Carville, front and center, as the know-it-all political genius (married to the Republican public relations mastermind, Mary Matalin, who built the phony case for war in Iraq, to which Carville's good friend, Senator Hillary Clinton, subscribed).

The same James Carville who, today, reiterates his insult of fellow Democrat Bill Richardson for having the audacity to endorse Barack Obama.

[Author's note: Having read Carville's justification for reiterating his insult to Richardson, I have to ask... What has Hillary Clinton ever done for Richardson? Carville's piece seems to be all about how Bill Clinton boosted Richardson's career. Does that mean Richardson owes lifetime allegiance to  Bill's wife? Odd reasoning, indeed.]

Can we get enough of these guys in Washington? Carville, Terry McAuliffe, Mark Penn, the Clintons and their never-ending sagas and dramas?

Hey, superdelegates, can you please bring all of that back for us to enjoy?

(more)

The true character of Hillary Clinton is revealing itself with every dirty, shameless, racist trick she pulls out of her sleeve.

We're now seeing the Hillary who supported Barry Goldwater's war on Civil Rights in 1964. We're seeing the Nixonian Hillary who attended the 1968 Republican National Convention.

It's the same Hillary that used Republican hacks like Dick Morris to divide the Democratic Party when she was in the White House. It's the same Hillary who voted with George Bush to invade and occupy Iraq and then went on to vote with him against Iran. It's the same Hillary who claims she'll run a civil campaign with John McCain, the man who wants to be in Iraq for 100 years, while running the slimiest of ones against her Democratic opponent.

Rarely has one political analyst gotten so much wrong in the span of one segment as Mary Matalin did on CNN Wednesday:

MATALIN: Because [global warming is] a largely unscientific hoax. And it's a political concoction.

BLITZER: But he believes with [Sen.] Joe Lieberman [I-CT] -- he's co-sponsoring legislation on that.

MATALIN: He's going to have to put together an energy policy that has elements of conservation but productivity, and reduces our dependence on oil. He has said that. Some of the other issues, though --

BLITZER: But on global warming he's a true believer.

MATALIN: But he's not going to prioritize that, because that's not where the country is right now. And you haven't heard him prioritizing that.

Whew. All that nonsense is going to take some time to sort through. In the words of the immortal MC Hammer ... let's break it down:

Today's panel:

Mr and Mrs Mary Matalin, 8 time loser Bob Schrum, Mike Murphy.

No matter how hard I try I can’t shake the Sunday Talk addiction even though every week I bellow at my poor girlfriend that it’s the absolute last time I will put myself through it, etc...

I just received this in my inbox--a Harry Reid fundraising note from that asshat James Carville, titled "What is Your Halloween Costume."

It begins with:

Dear Friend,

If you really want to scare your friends, I recommend dressing as a Washington Republican.

Here's a group of people so shameful they oppose the SCHIP bill that would give health insurance to ten million children. On top of that, they launched a vicious political attack on a twelve-year-old boy, Graeme Frost, who suffered a near-fatal car accident, after he delivered a radio address imploring the President to sign the children's health care bill. They went to his house, spread lies about his parents' finances and even posted his address on a website so his family could be harassed.

I just received the a fund raising e-mail from James Carville, who is asking for  donations to the re-election campaign of Lousiana’s Democratic Senator, Mary Landrieu.  It reads in part:

I'm a Louisianian through-and-through. My hometown, Carville, population 1108, was named for my granddaddy. So when I write to you about our senior Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, I'm writing from my heart and soul.

What a surprise, I didn't think James Carville had a soul; I know he doesn't have his heart in Democratic politics.

Carville, who modestly claims on his web site to be "The man who has devised the most dramatic political victories of our generation" holds no official position in the Democratic Party but who is continually put forward by the "main stream" media as "a leading Democratic political analyst", has been one of the most destructive voices in the Democratic Party since his vicious attacks on Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee after their success in the 2006 election.

You see these books by Coulter and O'Reilly and Hannity at the top of bestseller lists sometimes and you get disgusted and scared, right? Well, it turns out that that's really all these conservatives are reading.

Which is kind of scary, I guess. But I'm willing to bet that the sales are due to the heavy promotion on conservative talk radio--free advertising that's the conservative equivalent of the Oprah Book Club...(continued)

I SPENT ALL DAY UPLOADING VIDEOS OF THE LIBBY ANNOUNCEMENT TO GOOTUBE

Matt Groening's "Angriest Dog in the World" comes to mind...

Letter to Judge Reggie Walton re: Libby sentencing [The Smoking Gun]

Hey James!

Just a note for you, old friend: