Like many newspapers The Washington Post has been losing readers and advertisers.

Looking at the market they realize that it is the internet that is to blame.

Sure you could say that the fact that WaPo now (like many newspapers) is beholden to political leaders and large corporations might have something to do with it. But no, it is 100% the fault of the internet.

It is just too easy for people to have a voice.

Really, could there be any better proof that the Washington Post editorial board is wholly in the tank for John McCain than this editorial set to run in tomorrow's paper?

But, really, do the McCains' real estate holdings and his failure to keep count of his wife's Coronado condos make Mr. McCain oblivious to the concerns of ordinary Americans -- any more than their family estates made Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy incapable of feeling the pain of the common man?

Let me explain this for the folks at the Post:  McCain's disregard for the economic plight of ordinary Americans is manifest in every part of his campaign and his party's positions on every issue.

Wow, this was unexpected.  Today's Arts & Living section of the Washington Post offers us the McCain House Tour!  The tongue-in-cheek article, complete with a little slide show, is fun and shocking reading, and damning to McCain.  Let's take the tour together, shall we?

In an article in today’s Washington Post, Joe Stephens takes a square aim on the Obmas (Michelle as well as Barack) in what amounts to nothing but a hit piece filled with negative innuendos and false assertions.  It grossly asserts that Michelle Obama is responsible for patronage in hiring David Axelrod’s firm by the University of Chicago Medical Center and it also suggest that together they developed a strategy where the hospital could move always from its nonprofit mission to serve the poor in order to save money.  These distortions present themselves as fodder for the McCain campaign and absolutely lack the proper context because it fails to address to address or even mention the outstanding success, the community health services delivery model has been across the country.  Instead Stephens accuses them of taking away services and having overbearing connections to the University of Chicago.

Here's a rule that Republicans seem to understand: if you're gonna screw your own party, at least be accurate and objective, and have a good point.

Senator John McCain is quoted tonight by Politico as stating that if he is President, members of his cabinet will have to swear that from that point forward, they will never operate as lobbyists.  

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lobbyists “birds of prey” Wednesday and vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration.  “Whenever there’s a corrupt system, then you’re going to have these birds of prey descend on it to get their share of the spoils,” McCain said in a half-hour interview with Politico following a town-hall meeting in the southern part of this swing state.

Has Dana Milbank been fired from the WaPo?

The last time Milbank appears on their website is 8/7/08, where he pointedly refused to apologize for the Obama quote:

My colleague Jonathan Weisman and I believe the quote was correct as written, and that this supposed "context" is a recreation, after-the-fact, by Democratic aides who were worried about how the quote looked. Perhaps Obama didn't mean for it to come out that way, but there's every reason to believe it did. The Post's ombudsman will be writing about it this weekend, I think, so we'll see what she has to say.

Today brings us news of the GOP desperately seeking to win the presidential election for Barack Obama.  No, I'm not talking about McCain's giving away Colorado on a silver platter--though it is awfully nice of him to help us out like that.

I'm talking about the attention game.  Every Republican strategist in the their right mind knows that the GOP's only chance to win this presidential election is to make it a referendum on Obama, rather than on John McCain and the Bush Presidency.  Republicans know that by the time Obama and the DNC have spent all their advertising money, John McCain will be synonymous with Bush's 3rd term and voters will reject that option implicitly unless the election becomes entirely about the alternative, giving the GOP the chance to paint that alternative as unthinkable.  

Hello. No real substance here but I thought many of us would enjoy WaPo's humor columnist Gene Weingarten's take on how the "liberal media" is handling Obama.

For those of you who don't know Gene, he was the man who hired Dave Barry at the Miami Herald and was his editor for many years.

Some choice passages from his column to whet your whistle:

Obama's Looks: What we have here is a man whom women swoon over, even though it is plainly apparent that he is a dead ringer for one of those long-faced, spaniel-eared Easter Island heads. There hasn't been this aggressively un-handsome a presidential contender since, I guess, Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, who single-handedly preserved our nation, binding its racial wounds, and who was also known for being an eloquent speaker. A really, really eloquent speaker. Hey, do you remember when Obama said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek"? Do you realize the amazing economy of words in that . . .

It is Sunday.  I open my Washington Post, B Section, and on the inside is a piece with a long introduction by Josh White, explaining of his long interest in a man originally known as Detainee #261, who tried to kill himself when his lawyer stepped out of the room, whom the U. S. long asserted was a dangerous terrorist who had tried to recruit others and who was arrested in Afghanistan, where he had ostensibly gone to fight for the Taliban.   And yet, despite having been held  at Gitmo since January 2002 and having been subjected to brutal treatment,

Nevertheless, he was never charged with a crime, never admitted any connection to terrorism and was ultimately released to Saudi Arabia in July 2007.

White has stayed in touch with the man, whose real name is Jumah al Dossari.  And the bulk of the piece are his words, and they are entitled I'm Home, but Still Haunted by Guantanamo.  Remember, he was in the custody of our government, held and mistreated by our personnel.  This was done in our name.  And miraculously, he offers no bitterness in his words.

Yes, you read that right ...

Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."  

I hope that this provides some sunlight.

For all you scared, greedy, stupid, or cynical Representatives and Senators who voted for the FISA revisions last month, here’s a little something that got lost in the Friday Olympics-vs.-sex-scandal news dump. . . .

Admittedly this is pretty small on the scale of things but this type of thing bothers me and I think we should call out the MSM when we see it happen.

Washington Post:  Obama Tax Plan Would Balloon Deficit, Analysis Finds

Follow me below the jump for an explanation of why this headline is misleading and the article is unfairly biased against the Obama camapaign.

Quick update: Rec list on my 2nd diary...thanks, everybody! I'm proud I was able to bring attention to this in a way that has resonated.

It took me a few reads of Deborah Howell's examinationof  Dana Milbank's column, which painted Obama as the "presumptuous" rather than the presumptive nominee, to figure out whether Howell concluded Milbank practiced shoddy journalism. By decrying the "pernicious use of unnamed sources" in the column's first paragraph, Howell gives the impression that she's taking Milbank to task for quoting Obama out of context. Yet when I examined Howell's piece more closely, I realized Howell ultimately believes that, because Milbank's column is an opinion piece - intended more as entertainment rather than pure journalism -  and no tape exists of Obama's full utterance, the Washington Post is under no obligation to print a correction, despite the fact that Milbank did not make an effort to confirm the accuracy or context of Obama's quote with other's present at the closed House Democratic caucus meeting.

Last week, in the investigation of a major drug distribution network, police staged a no-knock entry into a private residence.  They seized over 30 pounds of marijuana.  Two guard dogs who were a threat to the police had to be killed in the execution of the raid.  Two people in the residence at the time were handcuffed at the scene and questioned as to their involvement in the crime.

Sound pretty straight forward?  More or less standard procedure when police are investigating a large quantity of narcotics?

Sure, the new Ron Suskind book, out today, is already drawing headlines for its revelation about a cooked CIA document linking Saddam to al-Qaeda.  And there may be much more in this vein in the book.  But Suskind's influence -- with the mainstream -- pales in comparison to that of Bob Woodward.

And Woodward, very quietly, has a new book coming out on September 8.  It's so quiet that it is still untitled and is known officially only as his Bush at War Book Vol. IV.

The Amazon page has nothing beyond that and its purported length at 486 pages.  Barnes and Noble doesn't even have the length.  But wait: there is a strong hint about the contents.

Since I was a little less than proactive about this issue last week on television (for reasons which I think will become readily apparent), I thought I'd offer a little preview of an item on tonight's Countdown.

The headline: Dana Milbank won't be on the news hour any more.