As I watched Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs offer an unconvincing defense of Treasury Secretary-in-waiting Tim Geithner's tax-challenged ways during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, I found myself thinking: if this were a Republican nominee, liberals (e.g., me) would be rightly incensed.

But as the Globe's Joan Vennochi notes today, the double standard that Geithner is benefitting from might not just be about party.

I have a running argument with a friend about which anti-Obama attacks are racist. For example, I thought the McCain camp's Obama-disrespects-Palin ad played on toxic racist sentiments involving black men and white women. My friend didn't see it.

So I'd be interested to hear what readers think of Fox News's coverage of pro-Obama excitement in Kenya, his father's country of birth.

For the past day or so, Fox News and the McCain campaign have been pushing the whole LA Times-Rashid Khalidi videotape story. In case you've missed it, the Times apparently has a videotape of Obama saying nice things about Khalidi, a former U. of Chicago professor who now teaches at Columbia, at a 2003 shindig. The Times has already written about Obama's relationship to Khalidi, a Palestinian-American who's been harshly critical of Israel.

Did a big black guy really rob and mutiliate a young white female in Pittsburgh after spotting a McCain-Palin sticker on her car?

Fox News suggests it's legit. TMZ is withholding judgment.

Here's a photo of the alleged victim. My prediction is that this is a stunt. If I'm wrong, feel free to point that out:

I'm loathe to give even bad publicity to Sean Hannity's bogus anti-Obama infomercial. But this South Florida Sun-Sentinel post on Andy Martin, who played a starring role in the program, deserves to be quoted in full:

On an hourlong documentary over the weekend, Fox News aired an innuendo-driven program narrated by Sean Hannity called "Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism."

ST. PAUL--Spent some time this afternoon in "The Fox Experience," which is basically just a great big Fox newsroom located across the street from the Xcel Energy Center. After going through security, delegates and other visitors can pick up some free Fox memoribilia and watch Fox's journalists do their thing. It all happens underneath a great big projected American flag (or something reasonably flag-esque):

It would look bad, period, if Gustav hammered New Orleans and environs while the Republicans waxed ecstatic over John McCain's impending nomination. And it would look especially bad since the current Republican president didn't exactly dazzle the last time a hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast.

But to make matters even worse for those charged with figuring out whether the RNC should happen or not, the theme for the first day of the convention happens to be "Service."

Earlier this week, Blue Mass. Group's Bob Neer concluded--on the basis of interviews with three female, pro-Hillary Clinton Massachusetts DNC delegates--that the prospect of disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters not backing Barack Obama is a bogus invention of the GOP and a complicit media.