Joss Whedon has a new show: Dollhouse. Looks great.

Update: It looks like there's a sitemeter problem that is affecting Internet Explorer all over the internet. Many websites won't open if they have sitemeter. Working on it now...

"Hate to Say I Told You So" from their album Veni Vidi Vicious.

There’s probably a general impression among voters that the House of Representatives is a silly, dysfunctional institution, made up of a few too many people who love to hear themselves talk, but aren’t especially fond of governing.

Today is perhaps the single best example in recent history of lawmakers going out of their way to prove that caricature right. John Bresnahan has the story:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi’s refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m. and are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) was speaking, the lights went back on, and the microphones have been turned on as well.

Before you rush to C-SPAN to watch the circus unfold, don’t bother — C-SPAN isn’t broadcasting this. In fact, no one is actually watching this unusually stupid display except the Republican House members, their staffers, some tourists in the gallery, and some reporters who happen to be around.

But the GOP seems quite excited to play this little game, whether anyone can see it or not.

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In the spring, Democratic primary voters didn’t fall for misguided gimmicks on energy policy. But if recent polling is any indication, Americans in general are so worried about gas prices, many of them are actually falling for the scam being pushed by John McCain and the rest of the Republican establishment. A CNN poll this week found strong support for coastal drilling, and more than eight in 10 Americans believe laws on offshore drilling are contributing to the recent increase in gasoline prices.

Given this widespread confusion, and the fact that so many Americans have come to believe demonstrably false claims, Barack Obama took the offensive yesterday.

Mr. McCain’s corporate tax plan, he claimed, would yield $4 billion a year in savings for oil companies while his proposed federal gas tax holiday would pay for half a tank of gasoline over the course of an entire summer.

“So under my opponent’s plan, the oil companies get billions more and we stay in the same cycle of dependence on big oil that got us into this crisis,” he told more than a thousand people in a college gym here. “That’s a risk that we just can’t afford to take. Not this time.”

The Democratic candidate then turned to his own plan: A $150 billion investment over 10 years in alternative energies and fuels. (The funding of this plan is not entirely clear.) He counseled optimism, promising a transition to an economy based thousands of new businesses working on wind, solar and bio-fuels.

“We can’t have a policy that tinkers around the margins while going down an oil company’s wish list — it’s time to fundamentally transform our energy economy,” he said. These steps are not far-off, pie-in-the-sky solutions.”

First, this is the right message at the right time. Second, voters almost certainly didn’t hear a word about this, because someone used the phrase “race card” and the media, Pavlov-style, couldn’t resist.

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Wall Street Journal:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.[..]

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

This would be a great opportunity to recommend that you rent Robert Greenwald's documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices to see just how anti-union Wal-Mart truly is and what you compromise to get those super low prices.

The G Spot has more...

It’s easy to rail against the political media’s fascination with trivia, but the frustration often misses the mark. Some reporting on human-interest stories relating to presidential candidates is normal; news outlets aren’t going to be all-substance, all-the-time. Adding some trivia to the mix can help make coverage of the campaign, for lack of a better word, “lively.”

The problem is when the media treats trivia as if it were serious. I don’t mind frivolous reporting, so much as I mind when news outlets pretend it isn’t frivolous reporting.

The media covered John Edwards’ haircuts as if they were important. Reporters scrutinized Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and cleavage as if they were legitimate subjects of journalistic inquiry. Questions about lapel pins have actually managed to make their way, not only into the media’s coverage of the campaign, but into nationally televised debates.

And as of today, we're actually supposed to believe that Barack Obama's "low body fat" is an important campaign issue in 2008.

Seriously.

In this unretouched screen grab from McCain.com [no link you go find it yourself] ...McCain Nation? A powerful grassroots tool? Featuring Cindy? Oy. I can't figure out if they're paying Comedy Central for this stuff, or if some staff infiltrator is being incredibly ironic...

Thanks to a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, we got a better sense this week about the extraordinary — and illegal — efforts to politicize Bush’s Justice Department.

But let’s not forget, the problem of basing employment decisions on politics went well beyond the Justice Department. Charlie Savage picks up on an email that went largely overlooked.

On May 17, 2005, the White House’s political affairs office sent an e-mail message to agencies throughout the executive branch directing them to find jobs for 108 people on a list of “priority candidates” who had “loyally served the president.”

“We simply want to place as many of our Bush loyalists as possible,” the White House emphasized in a follow-up message, according to a little-noticed passage of a Justice Department report released Monday about politicization in the department’s hiring of civil-service prosecutors and immigration officials.

The report, the subject of a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday, provided a window into how the administration sought to install politically like-minded officials in positions of government responsibility, and how the efforts at times crossed customary or legal limits.

To be sure, Bush didn’t invent political patronage, and practically all modern presidents have made at least some efforts to, as Savage put it, “impose greater political control over the federal bureaucracy.”

But none have gone as far as this gang. “The Bush administration is unprecedented in how systematic the politicization is and how it extends both across the wider organization chart and deep down within the bureaucracy,” Professor Rudalevige said. “They’ve been very consistent from Day 1 in learning the lessons of previous administrations and pushing those tactics to the limit.”

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Friday bloopers!

Sean Hannity was in fine form last night as he had his fresh new Obama--GOP--attack--talking points ready to go. (I don't think Scott McClellan passed them off this time.) He wanted his audience to see Obama's newest ad to help lower gas prices, but unfortunately for him he aired an ad that criticized John McCain's energy plan instead. Oppps. He thought McCain had principles. Thanks for the extra publicity. I'm sure Obama thanks you too.

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Hannity: Here is Barack Obama's plan to lower gas prices, in his own words.

Ad: Sen. McCain, you let me and my kids down.

Fire that tech already Sean. You got punked. (h/t Moe)

The Daily Show exposed the McCain hypocrisy in full detail. Their recent attack ads against Obama that included Paris Hilton might make the Hiltons a little unhappy since they donated the max to McCain's camp. Attacking their daughter wasn't so nice. Then Stewart takes a look at all the uppity remarks that McCain has made about the McCain Presidency.

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It's another brilliant segment on the election. The GOP knows that anything they float out there will be debated by the media like "Is Obama arrogant?"and they will fail to look at McCain's own arrogant behavior when Obama hasn't actually been arrogant.