Did Election Season really just end before a single debate?

By Nathan Rothwell

Fuck it. I'm just gonna vote for Hypnotoad.

I was already planning to write a piece on how the Romney campaign had become so desperate following the big party conventions, they were literally heaving Hail Marys. Hoping to seize on the debacle at the DNC where the word "god" was removed from the party platform and then reinserted, Romney seemed to bizarrely suggest that the word might also disappear from our coins if he's not elected, saying "I will not take God out of our platform. I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart."

And even though Romney pledged to refrain from politics for a day to honor the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, his unofficial surrogates over at Fox & Friends kept up the motif by attacking Obama for not including the word "god" in his proclamation commemorating the solemn anniversary. To provide a little context, President Bush also did not use the word in any of his similar proclamations in 2006, 2007, or 2008. This of course was met with silence from Fox News, so it's really hard for the champions of "Fair and Balanced" to wash off the stink of selective outrage in this case.

From the moment Republicans decided to center their convention around a quote from the President that was deliberately and almost gleefully taken out of context, it had become painfully clear that the Romney/Ryan ticket was growing desperate. Their further attempts to paint Romney as a man of piety and President Obama as a godless socialist moved them into almost comical desperation. But with Romney's mindless criticism of Obama following the tragic attacks on the U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt yesterday, the campaign may have very well driven off the proverbial cliff, and all before a single presidential debate could even take place.

Nailing Murdoch: media mogul's influence in UK gov leading up to Iraq War revealed

Getty Images via  The Telegraph

With no signs of the Conservative FOX behemoth slowing in the midst of the election cycle, here in the UK, the man behind the curtain appears to be increasingly vulnerable to scrutiny (and maybe even the law).

Thanks to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Communications Director, Alastair Campbell, detailed diary entries which describe conversations between Rupert Murdoch and Blair have become public. The diary reveals that Murdoch did indeed put pressure on the Blair Administration to speed up British involvement in the Iraq war. Murdoch had previously testified before the Leveson Inquiry that he had never used his position to influence the actions of Prime Ministers. However, the new evidence, detailed extensively by the Guardian, shows that Murdoch made a series of calls to Tony Blair in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war.

Here we go again...back to the Twilight Zone

By Nathan Rothwell

FUN FACT: If you google “santorum”, hilarity ensues.

But if you google “Rick Santorum,” you might find an interesting news item – a moment that could very well have secured failure for any Republican hope of retaking the White House in November.

At a recent town hall meeting, the former Pennsylvania senator and presidential hopeful Santorum fielded a question from a Florida voter who might best be described as “unhinged.”

"I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not," the woman began. “He constantly says that our constitution is passé, and he ignores it as you know and does what he darn well pleases. He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president."