The Vice President today, in a Mississippi radio interview with an obviously friendly host:
INTERVIEWER: . . . You know, I look at this, and every once in a while, we’ll see a story, Mr. Vice President, things like an amusement park opens in Iraq or in Baghdad, which is totally counter to what we’re hearing over here, as far as the marketplaces being open, the schools, and things such as that. But I saw a story several weeks ago about an amusement center maybe over there, and I’m thinking this is not what you get in today’s media.
VICE PRESIDENT: No, that’s true. It’s — what gets covered obviously is bad news. That’s — you know, if everything is going swimmingly, then that’s not news, so it doesn’t get the kind of attention.
Add Joe Conason to the list of those dismayed by the direction of Hillary’s campaign.
A little bit of on-the-ground blogging from Beirut, where things today are still very much in flux.
Late Update: A reader points me to another Beirut blog.
One of Hillary’s most prominent independent backers — the American Leadership Project — is not spending any money on Tuesday’s West Virginia primary. There’s an ostensible reason for it: Hillary has a commanding lead in the polls, and Obama has all but conceded the state. But it will be interesting to see whether the indy groups who have been supporting Hillary continue to plow money into her race. We’ll keep an eye out.
WNBC reports:
Several top New York Republicans said that Congressman Vito Fossella’s resignation will come within the next 72 hours — if not late Friday then certainly by Monday.
There was political concern about how best to preserve the seat for the Republicans — questions about immediate resignation versus finishing out his term and retiring — but the calculation is there’s nothing to be gained from Fossella sticking around. While Staten Island Republicans believe Fossella could at least serve out his term (the rest of the year) national Republicans want him gone. Now.
LA Times/Bloomberg poll, conducted May 1-8:
Clinton 47, McCain 38, Undecided 11.
Obama 46, McCain 40, Undecided 9.
Margin of error: +/-3%.
McCain taps former lobbyist for Burmese dictatorship to run GOP convention.
(ed.note: For longtime TPMers, also note that Doug Goodyear is CEO of the DCI Group, the pioneering GOP astro-turf organizing outfit.)
TPM Reader EW sent in this little snippet from that DOD document dump about the Times military analysts story …
(ed.note: This would appear to be the post in question. And this is Dan Senor’s WaPo Oped. Senor, you’ll remember, originally didn’t exist but (living out the old adage) was later created by critics of the administration’s Iraq policy because of the felt need for a living caricature of the Bush White House political operatives and hacks sent to mismanage the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq.)