Best of The Streak 2008

First appeared September 3, 2008
Digging through Wasilla’s municipal records is a lesson in the very essence of tedium. You’ve got pages of proposals to rename streets, assess sewers, build skateboard parks, buy lawnmowers, rent “pop” machines, carve snowmobile trails, congratulate high school football teams — the kind of stuff that makes small towns run, but [...]

First appeared August 21, 2008
Is it fair to expect Sen. John McCain to pay attention to trifling details — like how many homes he owns? He is a busy man after all. I’m sure it’s hard to keep track of such things when you’re running for president. In an interview with Politico yesterday, McCain could [...]

First appeared July 22, 2008
Marc Ambinder brings us John McCain’s interview with Katie Couric, in which he re-writes history about Iraq and claims Obama is the revisionist.

Kate Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite [...]

First appeared July 16, 2008
ST. LOUIS — Also from Tuesday’s town hall meeting in Albuquerque, Sen. John McCain attacked Sen. Barack Obama for flip-flopping on the success of the so-called “troop surge” in Iraq. Undoubtedly, McCain was referring to the New York Daily News report that the Obama campaign had scrubbed criticism of the surge [...]

First appeared July 16, 2008
OMAHA, Neb. — This is simply too good not to flag. We’ve been talking about the sticky relationship the McCain campaign has with the media of late — well, here’s a visual aid, via Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney. This morning in St. Louis, Sen. John McCain gave interviews to the local [...]

First appeared April 22, 2008
Some powerful lawmakers are cheering news that several African nations recently blocked a large shipment of Chinese weapons to embattled Zimbabwe, where chaos has reigned since a contested national election was held late last month. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement today calling [...]

First appeared April 29, 2008
Battered by his performance among the regular folk of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Barack Obama’s campaign is working hard in North Carolina and Indiana to fight any suggestion that he is elitist.
And what better way to say “I’m not a snob” than with a car magnet, the automobile adornment of the masses. [...]

First appeared March 14, 2008
Jon Michael Turner’s tattoos cover his arms almost entirely. They peeked out under the rolled up sleeves of his crisp blue shirt, on which were the medals and ribbons he earned as an automatic machine gunner with the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines in Anbar Province in 2006. One of them is [...]

First appeared March 4, 2008
Usually I limit my blogging to environment-related topics, but this was just too good to be true (though I assure you, it is). Tom Waits’ publicist verified last night that Waits is in fact going on tour this summer. It will be a U.S. and European tour, with no dates determined [...]

First appeared February 26, 2008
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said it was a mistake holding a Valentine’s Day-Eve hearing into whether Roger Clemens took steroids or not. But Waxman also said Clemens lied and now “The Rocket” could be facing some serious charges.
The New York Times reported this [...]