I want to watch the Phillies game, but don’t want to spend $200+ on DirectTV’s MLB package or $120 on MLB.tv’s package. So, it’s MLB.com’s radio player instead. Not quite the same as being able to watch any game, any time at my desk.

Quickly, because I’m in the middle of some stuff here, is James Fallows’s take on yesterday’s news:

That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s.

That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque.

If this wasn’t clear in my ramble last night, that’s what this is about. The American Spectator and Scaife haven’t had some epiphany and suddenly decided to behave like normal, if opinionated, magazines. They have simply decided to back a different side.

This isn’t an improvement for those of us not in the Clinton campaign. In fact, it’s encouraging the same crappy behavior they exhibited during the Clinton years. It’s wrong, period.

I’ve been sitting back basically wishing Hillary Clinton would drop out of the race but believing that she had every right and reason to stay in the race purely on principle (if she’s able to raise money, clearly people think she can win, ergo she should stay in).

As I’ve watched the race get dirtier and stupider, what with Clinton demonstrating that Sinbad has a better memory than she does, and her tactic of boosting McCain in order to put down Obama, that wish has gotten stronger, but I’ve refrained from joining the call for her to drop out.

That changes today. Today, she showed exactly how far she’s willing to go to win this nomination. It’s not going to seem like much to people who aren’t political junkies, but it’s significant. Today, she sat down with the editorial staff of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. Here’s TPM on the significance:

This afternoon Greg Sargent and I were talking this over and one of us realized that this wasn’t just any Pittsburgh paper. It was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more.

…

This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.

Even the fracking National Review post about this was entitled “Hell Has Officially Frozen Over.”

This man was behind or involved in most of the nastiest smears against the Clintons during Bill Clinton’s time as President. Not only would I expect there to be some animosity, I would expect her to blacklist the outlet. Seriously. This isn’t just some political opponent but a man who literally made up accusations and put our nation through some of the most ridiculous political moments, funded by taxpayer dollars, just to advance his party.

As usual, Atrios has it right:

Remember back in junior high, when you had that friend that the bullies picked on all the time? And you defended that friend, who really never did all that much for you, which led to you getting your ass kicked a few times yourself? And then you got to high school and your friend joined up with the bullies? It’s kind of like that.

This is nuts. This is beyond nuts, it’s insulting to everyone who has ever defended the Clintons against the Whitewater attacks, who supported them, and eventually Gore against these attacks.

It’s insulting to everyone that wants to see Washington stop being filled by win-at-all-cost partisanship. That, more than anything, has characterized the paralysis in Congress, particularly the Republican side, as beating Democrats has been more important than good policy.

This clearly seems to be part of the Clinton campaign strategy as they’re now now passing on fake stories from the American Spectator claiming Obama has a problem with Jews. Bill Clinton today accused the Obama campaign of disenfranchising voters, which he knows is a lie. And on, and on. These aren’t just negative attacks, they’re false negative attacks.

I am done defending her or giving her the benefit of the doubt. By allying herself with Scaife and American Spectator, she’s joined Limbaugh and company in the irredeemable category. If she wins, I won’t give her money, nor will I fund raise for her. $0.

She needs to drop out. She’s crossed the rubicon.

PS. I am not alone in this.

PPS: Yes, I would vote for her in November (she’s still better than McCain), but it will no longer be enjoyable.

Yahoo has made a pretty significant change to their fantasy baseball game. I’m not sure if this is new for Yahoo (I didn’t play football there), but the new interface is pretty nice. All drag-and-drop YUI goodness. Here’s a screenshot of me fixing my roster:

It’s pretty well executed. The yellow rows are the only slots that Fielder is eligible for, and the symbol on the far right conveys whether I’m dropping the player in the right slot. More importantly, this will cut down on the cryptic error messages in most fantasy games when you forget to move someone to the bench or accidently put two people in the same slot.

Useful Ajax and a nice addition.

This could be the first time a Single of the Week artist from iTunes may actually work out as something I want to listen to.

Neat song and neat video.

A week ago or so, I posted a link to a Political Wire piece that implied that Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone had something to do with Spitzer’s downfall. BadMD correctly pointed out in the comments in the Novak piece cited in the PW column didn’t say what PW claimed.

I said then that I had just posted the link and hadn’t read the Novak column (just skimmed it), but that the story fit a larger set of threads emerging about how this investigation took place. I just picked the PW piece because it was the last one I read.

McClatchy just reported that Stone was involved, though it’s unclear if his information kicked off the investigation:

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ”used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida.

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ”a social contact in an adult-themed club.” It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn’t taken off his calf-length black socks ”during the sex act.”

Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton’s presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.

Read the rest. There were rumors of this floating around soon after this broke, and the timeline on all of this is interesting, to say the least. It’s also interesting to see how many resources the FBI brought to bear on Spitzer vs. the Vitter case or Randall Tobias. Harpers has the details.

None of this excuses Spitzer, but that doesn’t excuse any political motivation, if there was any, on the part of Justice, either. Worth keeping an eye on this story.

(via TPM and Balloon Juice)

Update: Wow, what horrible writing. I fixed the opening paragraph to actually, um, make sense.

While I’m not as fond of Hillary Clinton’s campaign as I am Barack Obama’s, I’m certainly going to vote for the Democratic nominee. If it turns into an exercise of holding my nose because they can’t keep Mark Penn quiet, then I’ll do that and vote for Clinton.

Josh Marshall over at TPM has been highlighting some emails he’s been receiving from supporters of both Obama and Clinton who have sworn off voting for the other candidate in the general. He has a a thoughtful post up reflecting on these kind of emails and the polarization they imply. In particular, I want to highlight this:

That’s not to say that these small differences are reasons to choose one of the candidates over the other. But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.

Perspective, folks. A McCain presidency, where we continue to spend far above our means for a war that doesn’t serve our strategic interests is the surest way to accelerate and guarantee the end of America’s hegemony in the world.

I’ve said it before, but perhaps not clearly: George W. Bush’s presidency is responsible for the largest decline in American soft (economic) power in a century, at least. We are going to face a decline in our economic power because we can’t spend within our (rather significant) means. The national debt has nearly doubled during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and will possibly cross $10 trillion by the end of his term.

All of this was preventable. All of this would’ve helped mitigate the end of the housing bubble (though that would’ve been severe anyway), and help us deal with more threats around the world, but instead we’ve spent like mad and run up a huge deficit every year. Then, the government has done its best to hide the deficit in off-budget supplemental spending. The reserve then stopped reporting on the M3 money supply measure (removing, from what I understand, one of the concrete accountings of how much we’re issuing in debt).

The next president is going to have a lot on their hands to prevent further erosion of American soft power. Faced with a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, or specifically Clinton/Obama vs. McCain, the choice is clear. 2008 the right vote is voting D.

This is from the “My Better” campaign. Good stuff. Track is available on iTunes. No luck on Amazon MP3.

Update: I have more on the song and this commercial in this follow on post.