And speaking of checkers players ...

Having just aired my long-winded lament about the national press corps in the previous post, I had to laugh when I came across a Time magazine piece by the easily excitable Mark Halperin. (Read it at your peril.) The article's breathless headline reads:

"Obama is in the jaws of political death: Can he survive?"

The Jaws of Death? Oh, brother. Josh Marshall of the influential Talking Points Memo blog grimmaced as well. He drolly wrote this as a "breaking news" blurb on the website. "Halperin: Almost all Washington political elites are as shallow and weather-vanish in their political analysis as I am!"

Heh. The prosecution rests, Your Honor.