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Adam Serwer writes that Rep. Stephen Cohen's primary challenger, Nikki Turner tried to exploit the same fear of outsiders John McCain has used against Barack Obama:
Fox's Hannity and Colmes invited the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson onto the show to say what white right-wing pundits would feel less comfortable saying. Peterson blamed the entire black community of the 9th District, declaring that “most blacks” in Memphis are “so racist that they don't even realize that white Americans have moved on, and so whenever there is a campaign like this, such as this, they always use racism in order to intimidate white Americans.” Hours later, the virulently racist black community of Memphis strapped on their black berets and, clutching copies of Soul on Ice, handed Cohen a landslide win with 79 percent of the vote to Tinker’s 19 percent. She got a larger share of the vote in 2006, running against 13 other people.
Dean Baker has the latest economic news:
While John McCain was busy complaining about Obama's similarity to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, the Commerce Department released new data providing more evidence that the economy has in fact sunk into a recession. The new data show that the gross domestic product grew at a 1.9 percent rate in the second quarter of this year and that growth in the fourth quarter of 2007 was -0.2 percent (revised down from a previously reported 0.6 percent positive growth rate). Since the fourth quarter was when the economy first started shedding jobs, this makes it a likely starting point for the dating of the second recession of the second Bush presidency.
And Tara McKelvey writes that Generation Kill lacks emotional depth:
The good news is that the show is accurate, with lots of funny lines, South Park riffs, and comical scenes. The bad news is that, even with dead-on realism and one-liners, it’s not good television. The show is one-dimensional. The people behind it may have had the best of intentions: They put a lot of effort into producing a realistic portrayal of war, and they have managed to provide a clear-eyed view of combat. But the film leaves out everything else -- what happens to the men before and after; how they got to Iraq, politically and personally; and what happens to them afterward when they can no longer exist "In the Moment" of combat.
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--The Editors
