Well this is just great news. Keith over at DKos:

Rachel Gets Her Own MSNBC Show
by Keith Olbermann
Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 02:05:19 PM PDT

Happy Now?
The network will be formally announcing this tomorrow, but I am pleased to inform you in this fully authorized leak, that as of Monday, September 8, our mutual friend Ms. Maddow will become host of her own show, on MSNBC, at 9 PM Eastern Time.

In the last four years, not everything in progressive media has gone well. Air America continues to die a slow death by dumping progressive talent and replacing it with milquetoast offerings. The strong netroots-establishment message coordination from the days of the Social Security fight doesn't exist during this election cycle at the Presidential level.

However, the rise of Keith Olbermann and now Rachel Maddow are true bright spots. Rachel is one of the smartest people I know, a great broadcaster, and an all-around cool person. So she'll certainly bring light to important stories otherwise ignored by everyone else in cable news. But Rachel will also draw an audience not necessarily predisposed to liberalism. With Rachel on the air, viewers will get the opportunity to watch real news instead of bluster - and I bet a sizable number will jump at the chance.

(Rachel says hello during a photo shoot at Air America in early 2005)

Congrats Rachel!

Marine Officer Rob Miller is running to unseat Bush Republican Joe Wilson in South Carolina's 2nd CD. In this R+8.9 district, Wilson's approval has been pegged well below 50%.

So when Wilson commenced a district bus tour, Miller pounced, releasing a press release tying Wilson to Bush - tagging Wilson's trip as a "tour for the status quo."

Apparently, Wilson's team wasn't paying much attention, because they went ahead and pasted Miller's release all over the front of his website. I suppose the alternative is that Wilson's just quite proud to be a 95% Bush man. Maybe we'll never know.

Lacking a distant home state in which to pretend he's not a Republican <cough>Oregon<cough>, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman will be forced to walk across the street to his own party's national convention:

Coleman said convention attendance is a simple election-year decision for many Senators who are facing tough re-election battles.

"So I think those who come here will have an extraordinary time. But the colleagues who don't come are staying at home only because they have tough races. If the convention wasn't in St. Paul, I wouldn't be at the convention," Coleman said.

I just don't think Coleman's being creative enough. Couldn't Norm schedule a week-long series of town halls up in Bemidji or something?

Update [2008-8-18 14:23:28 by Todd Beeton]:Seems like a good opportunity to update our Will They Go? tally. We'd already had Coleman in the "going" category but the latest is, as Jonathan reported on Wednesday, that Pat Roberts will not.

On the fence:
• Gordon Smith (inc-OR)
  
• Roger Wicker (inc-MS)
  
• John Sununu (inc-NH)
  
• Pat Roberts (inc-KS)
  
• Jim Inhofe (inc-OK)
  
• Big Bad John Cornyn (inc-TX)
  
• John Kennedy (challenger-LA)
  
• Steve Pearce (challenger-NM)

  Going:

• Norm Coleman
  
• Mitch McConnell
  
• Jim Gilmore

• Big Bad John Cornyn (inc-TX)
  
  

  Not going:

• Ted Stevens
  
• Susan Collins
  
• Bob Schaffer
  
• Elizabeth Dole
  
• Gordon Smith
  
• Pat Roberts
  

As Tim Pugmire at MPR notes, that makes it 8 sitting GOP senators who will sit out attending their own party's convention including 3 retiring senators Hagel, Allard and Craig. We don't include them in our tally since they're not running for re-election, but it is notable all the same.

A couple items to look through this morning:

• President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan steps down to avoid impeachment.

• Paul Krugman says that if Obama gets aggressive with economic populism, he could win in a landslide.

• PPP has McCain pulling even with Obama in Ohio.

• Obama is organizing circles around McCain in North Carolina.

• Tom Matzzie aims his sights on big GOP donors.

What other stories are out there?

Obama's total down slightly from June. A record for McCain. RNC raised 26 million and has 75 on hand. Haven't seen the DNC numbers yet.

And since he opted for public financing in the general election, McCain has about $21 million of primary funds to burn through before he accepts his party's nomination. If you believe the Washington Times, one way McCain will spend it is on more TV ads...to air during the Democratic convention.

Update [2008-8-16 12:44:37 by Josh Orton]: The DNC numbers for July:

Raised: $27.7 M, COH: $28.5 M. First time DNC outraised RNC since October 2004.

So current COH totals: 94.3 DNC/Obama, 96 GOP/McCain.

Jerome Corsi seems deeply disturbed - not every kind of bad-tempered conservative can smear national figures in print and on national TV the way he can. It takes a special kind of person; perhaps the kind that thinks the World Trade Center went down from controlled demolition:

The clip has Mr. Corsi discussing the findings of Steven Jones, physicist and hero of the "9/11 Truth" movement who claims to have evidence that the World Trade Center towers collapsed due to explosives inside the building, not just the planes hitting them, during the attacks.

"The fire, from jet fuel, does not burn hot enough to produce the physical evidence that he's produced," Mr. Corsi said. "So when you've got science that the hypothesis doesn't explain-evidence-then the hypothesis doesn't stand anymore. It doesn't mean there's a new hypothesis you've validated. It just means the government's explanation of the jet fuel fire is not a sufficient explanation to explain the evidence of these spheres-these microscopic spheres-that Steven Jones has proved existed within the W.T.C. dust."

You see someone with a copy of Corsi's book? Ask them if they knew about Corsi's views on 9/11.

Someone should tell major booksellers what kind of garbage this guy peddles. And maybe ask CNN to stop booking the guy.

YouTube clip with Corsi's interview after the jump...

The Washington Post runs a piece today on the Republican party's nosedive in Nevada, headlined by Governor Jim Gibbons:

The Republican chief executive's troubles began in 2006 when a cocktail waitress accused him of assaulting her in a parking lot after a night of drinking three weeks before Election Day. Surveillance video cast doubt on the accuser's claim and no charges were filed, but the flap turned an expected Gibbons walkover into a squeaker.

Then came reports in the Wall Street Journal that the FBI was investigating Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, in a public corruption probe

This year, Gibbons has been mired in controversy over allegations by his now-estranged wife that he has had an affair, and revelations that he sent a married woman 850 text messages in one month on his official cellphone. The Gibbonses are divorcing, but Dawn Gibbons refused to move out of the governor's mansion in Carson City for two months, a further embarrassment. And last month Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre, a Republican, went public with accusations that the governor pressured him for a property tax break on 40 vacant acres Gibbons owns there.

The story neglects to mention when Gibbons locked an illegal nanny in his basement.

Looks like the GOP governor will even face a primary next cycle.

So who, exactly, is going to challenge Harry Reid in 2010? Porter?? The same Porter who's race was just added to the DCCC's Red to Blue list? Please.

But more than just the corrupt Republican party, the biggest boon to the Democrats in Nevada has been the uptick in party registration thanks to the early caucus:

In addition to how dispirited many Republicans are, the Democrats enjoyed a huge boost in registration and fundraising from its Jan. 19 caucuses. About 116,000 Democrats took part, more than double the number of Republican participants.

There's now 60,000 more Dems than Republicans in Nevada.

And the only quasi-popular statewide Republican in Nevada, John Ensign, is wearing a big NRSC anchor around his neck. Good times.

What's going on tonight?