Our daily look at stories and topics lighting up the Internets:
Georgia on Putin's Mind
Liberals worry that John McCain is beating the drama drums (stupidly), and is doing so with the help of an adviser, Randy Scheuenemann, whose past experience with Georgia is not helpful. Matthew Yglesias argues that the fact that Russia is not actually re-creating the Soviet Union is a knock against people who suggested that it was Nazi Germany. Conservatives argue that Obama should start beating something—drums, whatever—rather than sitting quietly like...Bush. (Both McCain and Obama, by the way, favor NATO membership for Georgia.) And it turns out that the U.S. government had a sense of what was coming, just not its magnitude (maybe we shouldn't just go with implicit understandings with the Russians, eh?). Hot Air's Allahpundit sees a reach for Reagan in McCain's stance. NRO's Jim Geraghty has a rundown of what McCain and Barack Obama have said about Vladimir Putin. There may be a ceasefire in place or there may not, but it's not Obama's, and Tim Kaine didn't help himself with suggestions to the contrary. The bottom line is that there is little unity of opinion in any quarter of the blogosphere.
The Penn Is Mightier...
Lessons and tidbits from the Clinton memos that the Atlantic got hold of: One important one is that E-mails never go away. And here's a great question: What tapes? Josh Marshall asks if the Clinton campaign was intentionally race-baiting, is the McCain campaign doing so as well? Not related to the memos, but bloggers are pushing back on whether an earlier John Edwards self-immolation would have cost Barack Obama the nomination.
Obama As Pork Purveyor
Conservatives are having a ball with reports that Barack Obama has been unusually generous with taxpayer funds for special interests that have funded his campaign.
—Robert Schlesinger
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