In a political season in which Barack Obama has delighted in playing the age card—see "lost his bearings," "wander around," and multiple mentions of McCain's "half-century of service," Democrats are now demonstrating that they're even willing to use an opponent's superannuation on each other.

There I was in my upstate NY home this evening, innocently watching the Yankee game, when this ad by Dem Rob Andrews, targeting primary opponent Dem Frank Lautenberg, the–very–senior senator from New Jersey, appeared . . .

View video here.

Not waiting until the actual Friday release of John McCain's medical records, on Thursday's World News anchor Charles Gibson (who's 65) and Dr. Tim Johnson (who at 72 is older than McCain) speculated about McCain's health. Gibson wondered about “psychological damage” from his POW captivity. Assured there's no evidence of that, Gibson jumped to wonder how much longer McCain has to live, a question which led Johnson to warn, that while McCain may live another 16 years, there's a decent chance he'll develop “dementia.”

Gibson asked: “There's also an enormous amount of medical records involving the time that he was in captivity in North Vietnam to check to see what physical damage he suffered and maybe what psychological damage.” Johnson replied that Navy psychiatrists monitored McCain “for many years after his release. They found no evidence of any serious problem. And he strongly denies any symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Gibson pounced with a new line of fear: “But he's 71 years old. What do the actuarial tables say about a man who's 71 years old?” Johnson explained they say he should live to 87, but:

Much more difficult, of course, to predict any change in mental acuity. At age 71, there's about a 30 percent chance of developing serious memory loss or even dementia.

It's not often that a denizen of Hollywood is so crass as to admit that they enjoyed using their film work as a bludgeon with which to beat up a living person, but Reuters is reporting that the folks that made the upcoming HBO film "Recount" -- and actress Laura Dern in particular -- really relished making at least one person look like an idiot. Apparently Dern really enjoyed skewering Katherine Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State responsible for certifying the 2000 general election results.

Reuters helpfully informs us that actress Dern is a "self-described liberal" who "loved portraying (Harris) in the new HBO movie." And, why was it so fun for our "self-described liberal" to portray Representative, then Florida Sec. of State Harris? Because they made her look "clueless about the workings of her office," of course.

So, how is Harris depicted?

Brutal Republicanism

I've about had it with Keith Olbermann. I'm sick and tired of his liberal bullcrap! As much as he has a right to say what he wants on his program, there is this little problem called "treason". Has Keith Olbermann become that or not?

At the dawn of the Democratic primary race between Barack and Hillary, news anchors like ABC’s Diane Sawyer were caught up in the question: Is America more poisoned by racism or sexism? If like ABC, you think the country is still dragging its knuckles in the primordial slime, then the expected primary victory of Obama provides the answer: the country is more sexist.

Hillary’s now playing this card, even including the national media as an accomplice, as the rest of the poker palace is emptying out. Remember how the first President Bush suddenly discovered the "Annoy the Media, Vote Bush" tactic in the last futile days of 1992? Hillary looks just as pathetic trotting out this "Annoy the Media, Vote Hillary" angle in obvious desperation. Yet some in the press are biting. Washington Post reporter Lois Romano interviewed Hillary and asked her if her media coverage didn’t suggest mistreatment of women. Romano suggested "I get the idea that it's really pissed off a lot of women."

Washington Post reporter/advocate Tim Craig (along with Michael D. Shear) led the newspaper’s incessant "Macaca"-wielding crusade against conservative Sen. George Allen in 2006. Now, on the heels of Sen. Jim Webb’s national-media tour for his new book "A Time to Fight," Craig is back to promote Sen. Webb as an attractive running mate for Barack Obama in an article headlined "Webb Would Be a Bold Choice for Obama’s No. 2."

Craig had a long list of positives, but the negatives were more fascinating. Craig reported one down side was "Webb remains relatively unvetted because much of the focus during the 2006 Senate race was on former senator George Allen (R-Va.)." The Post’s dynamic Democratic duo certainly failed to do that. Instead of a vetting, Webb was aggressively celebrated as a novelist, a scholar, and a tribune of the poor Scotch-Irish "redneck" folks of the South.

"[up arrow] Energy conservation: The one clear winner as oil creeps toward $200 a barrel."

So declares Newsweek.com's Conventional Wisdom for May 22.

THE only clear winner? That may be a talking point suitable for Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, but it's hardly THE only clear winner for solving America's energy problems, that is, unless your "conventional wisdom" leaves out the views of conservatives.

How about drilling in ANWR, removing barriers to offshore drilling, and building more refineries? All of those are solutions furthered by conservatives in Washington, but which apparently don't dawn on the editors at Newsweek.

Update below.

CNN correspondent Carol Costello compared Cindy McCain to a "Stepford Wife" due to her "low key" role in her husband’s campaign so far, in a segment on Wednesday’s "The Situation Room." Costello, detailing Mrs. McCain’s recent photo spread in Vogue magazine, stated the feature "projects an image quite unlike the Cindy McCain we see on the trail," and a talking head described this "Cindy McCain we see" as "low key... taking the traditional role of standing by her husband's side at events." Costello then quipped, "A role critics say makes Mrs. McCain look like -- well, Glenn Close in the movie ‘The Stepford Wives.’" [audio available here]

On the other hand, Costello described Michelle Obama’s Vogue spread more glowingly: "...Michelle Obama chose a traditional black dress with pearl earrings for her Vogue spread. As The Washington Post described it, it was if Michelle Obama was saying 'I am not some scary other.... I am Camelot with a tan.'"

New York Times Congressional reporter Carl Hulse on Thursday paid tribute to Sen. Ted Kennedy, diagnosed earlier this week with an inoperable brain tumor, in "Kennedy: A Little Like Everyone, a Lot Like No One Else." But Hulse went beyond acknowledging Kennedy's influence as a legislator to push the famous Massachusetts' senator's big-government worldview: "And if some of his solutions cost the government some money, well, that is what the government is for." Doesn't he mean "that is what taxpayers are for"?

Congress is rife with types: the Serious Legislator, the Bomb Thrower, the Show Horse, the Workhorse, the Blowhard, the Orator, the Partisan, the Statesman, the Prima Donna, the Mentor, the Old-fashioned Pol and the Visionary.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy is the rare man who shows flashes of them all, making him a singular senator, one of the last towering figures on a stage where the players and the performances seem to be shrinking even as the problems expand.

On Thursday’s CBS "Early Show" co-host Harry Smith was introducing a report on the winner of National Geographic’s annual geography bee and became confused by some geographical trivia: "In which ocean are the South Sandwich Islands located? A sixth grader from Nebraska answered that question. It's in the -- is it in the Atlantic? I thought the Sandwich Islands were actually named after the earl of -- it's Hawaii. That's not right. I'm so sorry."

At that point, co-host Julie Chen showed that she was not quite ready to compete in the geography bee:

JULIE CHEN: No, it's in which ocean, so that is right. So it's the Atlantic Ocean.

Get 10 friends to agree to stop using Google as a search engine for putting Terrorist Videos on YouTube.

Get your 10 friends to tell 10 more of their friends, and so on and so forth, and it is only a matter of time before Google gets the message.

We need to start to act to change this cancerous media.

Imagine if  all of conservative America started to act, not just talk/complain:

Sold their GE stock (business with Iran and Olberman), stopped using GOOGLE, stopped subscribing to the LA/NY Times, canceled the Economist and started to send to friends subscriptions to NewsMax, National Review, or WSJ.  

Imagine if all of redstate America stopped using Google. They would get the message as their web-traffic was cut in half.

We need to act, not just write. 

Sure,

 Why don't we all start by getting 10 friends to agree to stop using Google as a search engine for putting Terrorist Videos on YouTube.

Get your 10 friends to tell 10 more of their friends, and so on and so forth, and it is only a matter of time before Google gets the message.

We need to start to act to change this cancerous media.

Imagine if  all of conservative America started to act, not just talk/complain:

Canceled their AOL, wrote to Disney, sold their GE stock, stopped using GOOGLE, stopped subscribing to the LA/NY Times, canceled the Economist and started to send to friends subscriptions to NewsMax, National Review, or WSJ.  

I hope we can act soon enough to prevent the Liberal Media from destroying this great country before we hand it over to my children.

I just wanted to provide a little follow-up to Brad Wilmouth's excellent coverage of Keith Olbermann's outrageous performance of telling the President to "shut the hell up". If you didn't hear about this you can find the transcript of his rant here. (See also video embedded below page break)

I wanted to provide this follow-up because I thought the readers at NewsBusters would enjoy this video of Fox and Friends nailing MSNBC and Olbermann for their bias.

"Good Morning America" on Thursday picked up an attack on John McCain that has grown popular in left-wing media outlets and turned it into a Brian Ross investigation of the senator's "pastor problem." In a preview, co-host Diane Sawyer solemnly intoned, "This morning, John McCain's pastor problem. Is the preacher McCain calls a spiritual guide fueling the fire of Muslim hatred in America?" Investigative reporter Ross then preceded to warn how the Arizona senator's appearance with a pastor who loudly attacked Islam has "badly complicated" McCain's attempts to reach out to the Muslim world. [audio available here]

Where did Ross find the various clips of the Reverend Rod Parsley condemning Islam and standing on a podium with John McCain? The story has already been touted in liberal outlets such as Mother Jones magazine and heavily featured on the website Brave New Films, a creation of Robert Greenwald, best known for documentaries bashing Fox News and Wal Mart. (Despite this, Sawyer touted the "exclusive" nature of the investigation.) Additionally, the web version of Ross's story featured a misleading attempt to more closely associate McCain and Parsley. The ABC News headline asserted: "McCain Pastor: Islam Is a 'Conspiracy of Spiritual Evil.'" McCain's pastor? The Republican presidential candidate sought the reverend's support in February 2008. McCain is not a member of Parsley's World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio.

Today Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made an appearance on the daytime program "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," and the topic quickly turned to the issue of same-sex marriage. The issue arose after Ms. DeGeneres revealed on her show last Friday that she will be marrying her parter, Portia de Rossi. The marriage announcement came a day after the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on gay marriage. View video here.

Here's a partial transcript of the conversation:

The popular vote should supercede statewide results for the presidential election in November, but Hillary Clinton's popular vote argument for why she should win the Democratic nomination is specious. Both points of view have been held forth by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

In "Popular Vote Poison: How Hillary's latest math hurts the party," Jonathan Alter cranks up the "Wrap it Up!" box on the New York senator's presidential aspirations.:

Everyone can agree that the primary calendar needs reform. But popular-vote pandering is poison for Democrats. For a party scarred by the experience of 2000, when Al Gore received 500,000 more popular votes than George W. Bush but lost the presidency, this argument is sure to make it harder to unite and put bitter feelings aside.

[...]

The shorthand many Clinton supporters are already taking into the summer is that she won the popular vote but had the nomination "taken away" (as Joy Behar said on "The View") by a man.

What a helpful message for uniting the Democratic Party.

Zbigniew Brzezinski says that since we talked to Likud, we should talk to Hamas. And Kevin Spacey, who has trouble keeping his disputed primary states straight, suggests that his "Recount" plays it straight, despite evidence to the contrary. All that and more on today's Morning Joe. In reverse order, let's begin with Zbig's appearance, and consider this statement.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I have joined a bi-partisan group of some prominent Americans including Paul Volcker, Brent Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton, and some others, in saying that talking to Hamas is a necessary course of action. You know, we talked to Likud when Likud was advocating the total incorporation of the West Bank into Israel. And today Likud accepts a two-state solution. Hamas will evolve, but it will not evolve if it is continuously ostracized and threatened.

View video here.