Here, There, and Everywhere

Peter Carlson of the WaPo writes a nice article on the Bull Moose known only as Marshall Wittman. I read both DLC blogs daily and I'll admit that I have corresponded back and forth with both of them. Yes, I even come to their defense on the major blogs. It is nice knowing more about Marshall and his background other than what I have seen on the blog.

She's right. Wittmann is a quote machine, a sound-bite jukebox. The American Journalism Review ranked him right up there with the legendary Norm Ornstein, Tom Mann and Larry Sabato -- guys who would be in the Quotemeister Hall of Fame if there were such a place, and maybe there should be.

But Wittmann isn't like those guys. They all have PhDs in political science. They're academics and professional analysts -- Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute, Mann at the Brookings Institution, Sabato at the University of Virginia. But Wittmann is an activist. He came up the hard way. He's been a Trotskyite, a union organizer, a lobbyist, a government bureaucrat, a think tank cogitator, an aide to Sen. John McCain and -- despite the fact that he's Jewish -- the official spokesman for the Christian Coalition.

Which raises a perplexing question: Why the hell would anybody listen to the political thoughts of a guy knuckleheaded enough to get mixed up in movements formed by both Leon Trotsky and Pat Robertson?[...]

Before he got out of grade school, he was stuffing envelopes for the campaigns of Texas Democratic heroes Ralph Yarborough and Lyndon Johnson. In high school in 1968, Wittmann worked for antiwar presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, then drifted into radical politics.[...]

"She never told people I worked for the Christian Coalition. She told them I was a political consultant," Wittmann says. "It became a big issue with the family. Nobody felt too comfortable with it."[...]

In the fall of 2004, Wittmann quit the Republican Party, changed his registration to Independent, endorsed Kerry for president and took a job at the Democratic Leadership Council.

"Marshall is one of the most effective critics of the Bush administration," says Bruce Reed, the DLC's president, who hired Wittmann. "We thought a guy with that mind should be on our side and not the other side. And he's an awful lot of fun to have around."

That settles that then.

I don't know about you but I've reached that stage. I'm worried. Very worried. I don't want to sound like a hawk for war with Iran but I feel that they are more of a threat than Iraq ever was.

A confidential intelligence report says Iran has searched throughout Europe for parts to build both nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, the Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Israeli officials say Iran may be only a few years away from producing a nuclear bomb.

Did Lindsay Lohan have an intervention? I believe so. However, I just read what film she is shooting now and I will refuse to see it. Not because of Lindsay but because of the subject. That film will not be named.

Lohan became so thin that a Saturday Night Live producer held an intervention following the actress's appearance on the show. "I just started bawling. I knew I had a problem, and I couldn't admit it," Lohan says. "I saw that SNL after I did it. My arms were disgusting. I had no arms."

The producer was Lorne Michaels.