Who Needs 527s

With McCain flailing and no 527s coming to his rescue, who better to put in one last super McEffort than NPR? ATC on Wednesday had not one, but two McCain Country campaign ads. One was an "opinion" piece from NPR favorite, Rich Lowry of the National Review (let's see how often NPR turns to The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel - I'd say 1 to 41 seems pretty fair and balanced to me...) The other was a McCain background feature from fetid baloney reporter, Ted Robbins, who serves up a big heaping helping of McMaverick b.s. (nothing new here, here, or here.)

In case you missed these fine pieces of radio journalism, here's a few excerpts:

From Lowry's piece:

• "...he salvaged his reputation after the political hell of the Keating Five scandal."
• "Even the most hardened Democrat has to appreciate the man's pluck."
• "But there's another enduring McCain quality — and that's courage. He has been willing to root out corruption in his own party; he has bucked his own party's leadership..."

From Ted Robbins "report":

• "McCain entered the U.S. Senate and gradually adopted his own Western theme. The persona fits well with Arizona's Old West image — a place for rugged individualists to make a new start. After all, that's what McCain did when he married his second wife, Cindy, and moved to the state."
• "...political pollster Bruce Merrill says the voters have embraced the brand. 'They admire him as a POW. They admire him as a maverick, a gunslinger kind of a guy,' he said."
• "The problem is that McCain has taken stances opposite of his own party."
• "State Republican leaders differ with McCain on campaign finance reform, embryonic stem cell research and, most notably, on immigration."

Well, dang...at least cigarette ads now have to have the Surgeon General's warning label affixed to them.