Blog Buzz: Booming Barr, McClimate McChange, and Cons Bitter Over Obama and Israel

Our daily look at stories and topics lighting up the Internets today:

The Barr boomlet

Libs examine with some combination of bemusement, amusement, and (controlled) excitement the Bob Barr presidential run, wondering whether he might Nader McCain (to Nader: to run a hopeless campaign that garners just enough votes to cripple the major party candidate ideologically closest to you), or just undercut the Dems-are-soft-on-terrorists argument. Carpetbagger asks the key question: Does Barr get the Paul brigades? On the right, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey says that only the bloviating classes care about Barr, but both he and NRO's Ponnuru argue that Libertarian candidate Barr has distinctly different positions than GOP Representative Barr.

McCain's global warming speech thaws neither left nor right

Cons and libs dismiss McCain's Monday global warming speech as hot air, or as Kevin Drum puts it, "weak tea." Devilstower at DailyKos says that it's pretty much Bush's old plan warmed over. On the right, Ed Morrissey at—wait for it—Hot Air seconds the WSJ's blast at the plan. And NRO's Geraghty gets a good chuckle out of enviro activists' hiring a big old fuel-burning airplane to protest the speech.

From bitter to sore: The Obama Israel interview

The right side of the Net is focusing on Obama's interview with the Atlantic on Israel. Asked whether Israel is a drag on the U.S. reputation overseas, Obama said no, but that:

...this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

Conservatives seized on the quote—perhaps seeing in "wound," "sore," and "infection" new iterations of "bitter" and "cling"—brandishing it as more evidence of Obama's untrustworthiness on Israel and terrorism, one arguing that Obama sounds suspiciously like...Hitler. Obama's Atlantic interlocutor, Jeffrey Goldberg, blasted back at the conservatives, pointing out that Obama was referring to the conflict as a "wound," "sore," etc.—not Israel.

—Robert Schlesinger