Up is Down and Out is In.

Over at TPM Josh Marshall points out that up is down:

Halperin's World

Here I think is an example of news judgment within the DC bell jar.

As I noted below, the 'news' today, as in things that have happened today and are newsworthy, is the fact that John McCain has dropped his position on Afghanistan and embraced the one Obama has been pushing for the last year. (As a secondary matter, we can note that McCain doesn't have the troops for his new position because they're tied down in Iraq. But let's not expect too much.)

And look at the headline at Mark Halperin's The Page: "Obama Acknowledges "Shift in Emphasis" on Issues."

And here's Halperin's gloss on McCain's new Afghanistan strategy: McCain "highlights the success of the surge (and Obama's opposition to it), says the troop increase strategies used in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan."

It's almost comical. It doesn't fit the script so it didn't happen.

But its actually worse than that, because more widespread. I heard the NPR commentator discussing first Bush's speech and then Obama's. He led into his intro to Obama's speech by letting us know that it had "been reported FIRST" by the New York Daily News that Obama's campaign had mysteriously and secretively scrubbed all references to "the surge" and Obama's complaints about the surge from the Campaign Website. I did not tarry to listen further because I was afraid I'd crash the car.