Karl Rove in today's Wall Street Journal:Private people like Mr. McCain are rare in politics for a reason. Candidates who are uncomfortable sharing their interior lives limit their appeal. But if Mr. McCain is to win the election this fall, he has to open up.
Americans need to know about his vision for the nation's future, especially his policy positions and domestic reforms. They also need to learn about the moments in his life that shaped him. Mr. McCain cannot make this a biography-only campaign – but he can't afford to make it a biography-free campaign either. Unless he opens up more, many voters will never know the experiences of his life that show his character, integrity and essential decency.
A biograhy-free campaign? What the fuck? McCain's entire election strategy is predicated on his war hero status. He just finished a cross-country "biography tour," where he stopped at every Christ-forsaken hamlet he's lived in over the past 70-plus years to snicker at memories of hookers past. His biography IS his campaign.
What discount brand of Wal-Mart crack is Rove smoking?
Wrightmare
What Barry Crimmins said: Yes, if you want to know how much Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the
media disrespect you, all you need to do is consider who is the president while
they ask us to agonize over whether Barack Obama has what it takes to reside at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Face the facts, the threshold to that building was
torn out nearly eight years ago. Those trying to scare us with questions of
Obama's trustworthiness, assume we're bigots and play us as chumps. Sadly,
they're probably right.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the next Vice President of the United States
Mrs. Jean Weiss, 82-year-old peacenik. She's got a lot more energy than whippersnapper John McCain. And after 8 years of E-ville at Number One Observatory Circle, a good woman's presence could perform a much needed exorcism.
Mean Mr. Mucus
This bastard, who bears a strong resemblance to the menacing boyfriend of the lady who lives across the street (similar taste in shirts), has taken up residence in my bronchial tubes. But first, he packed my sinus cavities with Drano crystals and set up a battery-acid drip in the back of my throat.
And then he extracted all the sunshine, rainbows and ponies from my skull and pumped it full of bile and crabbiness. May he not visit similar horrors on you.
The most muthafuckin marvelous mavericky maverick evah!
Andrew Sullivan still falls for the old McCain Mavericky Magic:McCain Gets It
I know that it's possible to infer cynicism on the part of McCain and the GOP with respect to the North Carolina race-baiting ad. But I don't share that cynicism and believe McCain is sincere in not liking or appreciating this kind of politics. With a couple of exceptions (the South Carolina moment that McCain himself has regretted), McCain just isn't a Rove-style sleazebag. That's why his candidacy remains one that many of us alienated from the GOP in recent years still take seriously. Money quote:
"They're not listening to me because they're out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable... I've done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue."
Good for him. If Republicans cannot win on the merits of their own policies and are reduced to the guilt-by-association racist smears on Obama, they deserve to lose.
Uh, only McCain also said this today:"All I can tell you Jennifer [Rubin] is that I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States," McCain said. "So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare ... If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."
Yeah, McCain "gets it," alright. He gets that if denounces a pack of yokels for putting out an ad that associates Obama with Scary Black Folk on one hand and then personally insinuates that Scary Brown Folk are down with Obama on the other, a certain percentage of gullible jackasses will continue to fall for his "maverick" bullshit. Mr. Sullivan is Exhibit A.
I'm cynical enough to believe that it's possible McCain cooked this whole Reverand Wright ad up with the North Carolina goons so he could have a Sistah Souljah moment with the most cretinous elements of his own base to impress fence-sitters. Honorable, civil campaign my ass.
UPDATE: Now he gets it! Good work, Mr. Sullivan!
Anti-Science Dumbasses, Part Deux
Sweet weeping Baby Jesus in a petri dish. Elected officials in Florida will not rest until the sidewalks are littered with indigent grannies, every workplace lunch-bucket contains a 9mm Glock, the state constitution is defaced with anti-gay graffiti and each school child is dumber than a bag of hammers about basic science.
State Senator Ronda Storms, a braying jackass who is an incarnate insult to every person in her district with an IQ higher than room temperature, wept tears of self-righteous joy this week when the Senate approved her anti-evolution bill. Storms' "Academic Freedom Act" (an Orwellian name if I ever heard one) is supposedly about allowing "teachers to teach a 'full range' of scientific views regarding Charles Darwin's theory of evolution."
But of course, there's no serious disagreement in the scientific community about evolution. This is all about shoving creationism (in the guise of "Intelligent Design") down children's throats:"I know that the bill doesn't even mention creationism but that's what it's about," said Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa.
Storms' bill still has to be reconciled with the House version, but I have no doubt she and her fellow wingnuts will work it out once they get done hacking away at social services, enacting laws to oppress gays and ensuring that we're up to our asses in firearms. Hurricane preparedness, immigration, mass transit, Everglades development, busted levees on Lake Okeechobee and the economy? Who cares? There's the Gay Menace to combat and unarmed employees in the workplace! Priorities, people!
A debate about evolution has been brewing in the Capitol since before the start of the legislative session, when the state Board of Education adopted new science standards mandating teaching evolution.
Activists persuaded the board to qualify evolution as a "theory," but the board did not write in any special provision for teaching alternative beliefs.
Although Storms' bill aims to protect teachers who disagree with evolution, no teacher has ever complained to the state's Department of Education about feeling attacked about his or her science beliefs, according to a staff analysis of the bill.
If Storms hadn't figured out a way to parlay her self-righteousness into a career pandering to like-minded assholes, she'd probably be a top district manager at Mary Kay by now, tooling around Valrico in a sweet pink Cadillac. But she found a way to tap into the ire of fellow rage-o-holics, and the rest is history. She'll probably become governor one day, thanks to boneheads like this guy:Evolutionists' ongoing effort to indoctrinate our children seems to have no end. Evolution, also known as Darwinism, is a lie. Darwin was a naturalist; naturalists believe the universe of matter and energy is all there is. This rules out God and all spiritual beings or supernatural revelation. It is materialistic, atheistic, communistic, but most certainly not the true American way.
Mind you, this isn't some letter to the editor written by a fringe kook. It's a column written by a fringe kook, to whom my local rag, The Tampa Tribune, devoted a quarter of op-ed page real estate. Thanks to the efforts of drooling idiots like him and Storms, I'll spend hours that I might have devoted to sweet indolence to tutoring my child in science instead. Bastards.
Unholy Alliances
Quick -- who said the following:
In fact, on Tuesday night she actually grabbed the popular vote lead: If you include the Michigan and Florida primary results, Mrs. Clinton now leads the popular vote by a slim 113,000 votes out of 29,914,356 cast.Was it Terry McAuliffe? Bill Clinton? Howard Wolfson? No, silly! It was Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal, hailing Hillary Clinton's 9.2% "landslide" in Pennsylvania. (H/T, Andrew Sullivan, who actually saw all of this coming even if he's wrong about much else.)
Mr. Obama will argue he wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and didn't campaign in Florida. But don't Democrats want to count all the votes in all the contests? After all, Mr. Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot; it isn't something he was forced to do. And while he didn't campaign in Florida, neither did she.
Lifting the lid on the sewer
I try to avoid lifting the lid on sewers that used to be so-called "progressive political blogs" these days; it's just too depressing. But when braver souls than I do it, the reports of hair-raising racist and homophobic slime and wing-nut political hackery they bring back must be seen to be believed. Here's such a dispatch from Kevin at Rumproast, who quoted these tidbits from this morning's #1 recommended diary at MyDD, entitled "A Sobering Question: Is Obama Electable?":
And Obama’s arrogance, most vividly displayed recently when he “flipped off”"Uppity." Nice. It might interest author "TexasDarlin" to learn that while there are no doubt millions of Americans who would like to "flip off" Hillary Clinton, most of them would have enough sense to execute the gesture with ONE finger rather than TWO. I wonder if "TexasDarlin" needs TWO fingers to emit a racist dog-whistle, or if just one will do?
Hillary Clinton doesn’t help his image with average Americans either. Along the
same lines, today David Axelrod audaciously insulted white working class voters
by declaring them irrelevant to a Democratic victory. This uppity attitude
likely explains why 32% of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania told a pollster
that they would never vote for Barack Obama.
More dreck uncovered by Kevin in the same thread, this one by "Puget Sound Island Girl":
Then there’s Rachel Maddow. What the heck happened to her and her Ph.D. in
Political Science? I think that woman has truly lost her mind. She is so in love
with Obama that I am beginning to wonder if she bats for both teams! Yeah. . .
maybe I shouldn’t have said that----but I did. She obviously has some built-up
hatred for Hillary. Don’t believe me----then listen to Dr. Maddow sometime or
better yet catch her on TV. Ms. Maddow is nowhere near being neutral on this
subject. Nope. . . she is deep in the Hillary hatred camp along with righty
Rush!
Gee, isn't it one whopper of a coincidence that people they used to admire like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann suddenly lost their minds at the exact same moment when former objects of derision like Pat Buchanan, Joe Scarborough, Richard Mellon Scaife and Fox News were miraculously transformed into voices of reason?
Kevin graciously invites these morons to go fuck themselves. I heartily concur, adding only the suggestion that they accomplish it using a cactus.
Yeah, and if my granny had wheels, she'd be a go-cart...
From Newsweek, a tortuous tale of twisted arithmetic in which Hillary Clinton's aides (and the candidate herself) lay claim to the popular vote -- IF -- you count states where voters were told before hand that their votes wouldn't count , one of which included only Clinton on the ballot, and IF you discount caucus states or factor out those that don't report vote totals, etc.:Talk about playing the numbers. The morning after her Pennsylvania primary win, Hillary Clinton's aides staked out the aisle of the press plane and proclaimed that with Pennsylvania's big victory, Clinton had surged ahead of Barack Obama in the popular-vote total. But they added two big careful caveats: this scenario would hold true only if Michigan's and Florida's votes are counted (the states were stripped of their delegates for holding primaries early in violation of party rules) and if caucus states aren't counted. One baffled reporter challenged the aides, accusing them of "making up a metric." The aides pushed back. And then they realized their own spin was wrong.
Hours later, they announced their new formula. It turns out Clinton's aides had undervalued their candidate's position—and in doing so, revealed the absurd lengths they will go to in trying to persuade the media to discount the delegate math, which gives Obama a virtually insurmountable lead. As it happens, Clinton is now ahead in the popular vote total even when caucus states are included—if Michigan and Florida are also included. But that's a big "if": Obama's name wasn't on the ballot in Michigan, and neither candidate campaigned in the two states.
The media has every interest in seeing this thing drag out to the bitter end. It's been great for ratings. But I hope they'll do their jobs and keep calling bullshit on "IF" scenarios like the one outlined above.
Pennsylvania Victory Song
This deranged autoharpist comes to you courtesy of Kevin K at Rumproast, where you can also view a clip of the...musician...cornering Chelsea Clinton at a campaign event and making her endure an a capella version of the same song. The Clintons have a lot to answer for, not least of which is the suffering of poor Chelsea.
Before Mr. Cracker and I fled to the sticks several years ago, we used to live in what passes for a big city in this part of Florida. One of the bracing facts of city life is encountering crazy people on a daily basis. I used to work downtown, and there was a tall black gentleman with an imposing demeanor who was invariably dressed in a black suit (even in the 98-degree summer heat). He had a long black beard, shot through with impressive white streaks. He would stand on a corner and stare at passers-by, looking furiously at them and pointing a bony finger accusingly. In the 6 years I worked nearby, I never heard him say a word, though he did occasionally bum cigarettes off me by pantomiming what he wanted. He seemed to disapprove of menthols.
Of course, there are nutbags galore in the sticks as well, though their madness tends to manifest itself in an excessive fondness for firearms and explosions. But they aren't generally as in-your-face -- even the explosions rattle your windows from a distance. Still, as autoharpist reminds us, there's a large, sad army of the mad marching through this country. Through the world! And some, like the autoharpist, apparently have accomplices.
Crazy Math
Math is not my strong suit, but I'm wondering if the prevailing media narrative about last night's PA election results -- that Hillary covered the spread by achieving a double-digit win -- will hold up in light of this from the PA State Department site:
*** 9,203 out of 9,264 Districts (99.34%) Reporting Statewide ***
President of the United States
OBAMA, BARACK (DEM)
1,043,174
45.7%
CLINTON, HILLARY (DEM)
1,237,696
54.3%
Doesn't 54.3% - 45.7% = 8.6%? And even if Hillary takes 100% of the remaining .66% of precincts outstanding, wouldn't she still come up short of the double-digit victory all the pundits decreed was necessary to claim momentum? Or are we now into rounding up after spending 18 months splitting hairs? What am I missing here?
Another amusing bit of information from the PA Department of State website: Ron Paul received 15.9% of yesterday's GOP votes, and good old Huckabee got 11.4%. GOP turn-out was slightly more than a third of the Dem turn-out. Hmmm.
UPDATE: With 99.44% reporting, the PA State Department website currently posts a 9.2% margin for Clinton. Elderly uterine math dictates that this number be rounded up to 10%.
Syphilis More Popular Than Bush
Well, that hasn't been put to the test. But Bush's disapproval rating broke a 70-year-old Gallup polling record:WASHINGTON — President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove.
So who are the syphilis-and-Bush-loving 28%? It's a mystery. But if you drew a Venn diagram, I'm guessing a sizable subset would include the 15% who believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim and the 8% who admit to pollsters that they would be uncomfortable voting for a black candidate in a recent AP-Yahoo poll. Or, as an unnamed prominent Republican told Politico's Roger Simon, they are John McCain's base.
Lil' Mac
Is McCain a petty, vindictive little runt who shouldn't be trusted around buttons connected to nuclear warheads? A former Republican colleague quoted in a fascinating article in today's Washington Post says so:
Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."
Last month, McCain flipped out on a NYT reporter who questioned him about rumors he talked to John Kerry about serving as his 2004 running mate. There's actually quite a bit of evidence to support those rumors, including this from McCain's own yap:
"John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years," McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. "Obviously I would entertain it."
Some would attribute such a radical step to McCain's "maverick" nature. But McCain's behavior over the years, as recounted in the article, suggests another motive: McCain comes off as extremely vindictive, and considering the knee-capping he took from the Bush organization during the 2000 primaries, he must have been nursing a rather massive grudge.
After being subjected to every trick in Rove's voluminous bag o' dirt, it's not surprising on the one hand that McCain might consider sweet revenge in the form of joining Kerry to knock Bush out of the Oval Office. But on the other hand, what about Kerry's stance on the war?
Kerry ran in part on a proposal to start getting US troops out of Iraq. He said Bush had bamboozled him and the country into the war. McCain now stakes his candidacy on continuing Bush's Iraq policy. Perhaps the media will get over their McCrush long enough to explore this apparent contradiction? Nah, probably not...
The picture of McCain that emerges in the WaPo article is of an often petty and occasionally vicious bully who is particularly fond of going after underlings (his own and those of colleagues). There were a couple of incidents where McCain went over political operatives' heads to their bosses to try to get them fired. The bosses told McCain to shove it. Good for them.
McCain also gets really pissy if he doesn't have something to stand on while following taller candidates at a podium. The article describes a 1982 GOP victory party incident:
After McCain finished his speech, he returned to a suite in the hotel, sat down in front of a TV and viewed a replay of his remarks, angry to discover that the speaking platform had not been erected high enough for television cameras to capture all of his face -- he seemed to have been cut off somewhere between his nose and mouth...
McCain...left the suite and went looking for a man in his early 20s named Robert Wexler, the head of Arizona's Young Republicans, which had helped make arrangements for the evening's celebration. Confronting Wexler in a hotel ballroom, McCain exploded, according to witnesses who included Jon Hinz, then executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. McCain jabbed an index finger in Wexler's chest.
"I told you we needed a stage," he screamed, according to Hinz. "You incompetent little [expletive]. When I tell you to do something, you do it."
Hinz recalls intervening, placing his 6-foot-6 frame between the senator-elect and the young volunteer. "John, this is not the time or place for this," Hinz remembers saying to McCain, who fumed that he hadn't been seen clearly by television viewers. Hinz recollects finally telling McCain: "John, look, I'll follow you out on stage myself next time. I'll make sure everywhere you go there is a milk crate for you to stand on. But this is enough."
"What happens if he gets angry in crisis" in the presidency?" Hinz asked. "It's difficult enough to be a negotiator, but it's almost impossible when you're the type of guy who's so angry at anybody who doesn't do what he wants. It's the president's job to negotiate and stay calm. I don't see that he has that quality....I've just seen too much. That temper, the intolerance: It worries me."
Hmmm. Maybe Obama can swipe the podium riser before their first debate and send McCain into a televised meltdown. That would be one way to keep him out of the White House.
Hillary Clinton: Karl Rove's Sockpuppet
"We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the
activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into
Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out
in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and
it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't
agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these
caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to
support me."
"Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the
war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points."
The ones down South used to be called Dixiecrats, who voted Democratic solely because the Republicans put them in mind of Reconstruction -- even 100 years after Lincoln's assassination. They finally got over that and switched to the GOP the minute the Republicans implemented their thoroughly evil yet brilliant "Southern Strategy," which boiled down to race-baiting. It worked like a charm, as the red-blue electoral map has indicated in every fucking election since Nixon.
So what Clinton is arguing over now is the Rust Belt "Reagan Democrats," whom she claims are critical to Democratic prospects in the fall. But meanwhile, she's crapped all over African American voters and the liberal "activist base" voters who make up the backbone of the party. If anyone has an electability problem at this point, it's Senator Clinton.
And the fucked-up thing of it is, the bloc she pissed on African Americans and liberals to pursue is never gonna vote for her over McCain in the general election anyway, no matter how many shots of crown she tosses back, how Jesus-y she claims to be or how many varmints she slays with her mighty gun. For a campaign that rests its legitimacy entirely on its political savvy, this is a stunningly stupid strategy.
Hopefully, all of them...
Hypocritopoulos, plus Rachel Maddow: Still a goddess
Yesterday, former Clinton-operative-turned-Sean Hannity sockpuppet George Stephanopoulos defended his and Charlie Gibson's ambush-style handling of Wednesday's debate, which focused almost exclusively on lapel flag pins, whether or not Reverend Wright loves America and 60s radicals with whom Obama has a passing acquaintance:"Stephanopoulos strongly defended his handling of the debate. He dismissed
But back in the 90s, when Stephanopoulos was trying to get Bill Clinton elected and defending Bill from a media hammering over numerous "bimbo eruptions," he was singing a different tune:
criticism that it had focused too heavily on "gotcha" questions, arguing that
they had gone to the heart of the "electability" that, he said, is forefront in
the minds of voters evaluating the two Dems...
"Overall, the questions were tough, fair, relevant, and appropriate," Stephanopoulos argued. "What he's going to do in this campaign is focus on what's important to the
American people, on the jobs and the education. That's what the American people
care about. They want to move into the future. They don't want to be diverted by
side issues, and they're not going to let the Republican attack machine divert
them."
What a difference 16 years makes. Now Stephanopoulos thinks it's perfectly okay to spend an hour of debate time on side issues. Why? Because that's what the GOP will do in the fall:"If you look at the fall campaign, there are some clear signals from Senator
Maybe next time he can ask Senator Clinton if she murdered Vince Foster or if Bill Clinton has raped anyone or molested an intern lately. After all, if she wins the nomination, the GOP will surely raise those issues in the fall...
Obama's opponents that all of these issues are going to be put together in a
general argument. They all go back to that same theme."
Rachel Maddow: Goddess II
Rachel Maddow takes Taylor Marsh's favorite talking head, Joe Scarborough, to fucking school! Again! Watch the sniveling bastard have a hissy fit...
Li-EEYORE-berman, plus the view from Planet Clinton
Joe Lieberman to be keynote speaker at GOP convention?
As Kevin at the indespensible Rumproast has pointed out here and here, self-styled "Independent Democrat" Joe Lieberman is doing his utmost to get his pal McCain elected and thinks Bill Kristol's red-baiting of Obama in the New York Times is a perfectly legitimate line of questioning. There are apparently no depths to which this loathsome tool won't sink.
He's worse than Zell Miller, and if the Dems don't strip the bastard of every committee chairmanship when they beef up their numbers in Congress (or actually, now would be good), they should stop calling themselves the Democratic Party because the label will be utterly meaningless. If Harry Reid doesn't have the nads to whack Lieberman, get someone else in there who will. Let's see if the citizens of CT will re-elect this tool when he's no longer able to shovel Congressional pork their way.
But cozying up to McCain and Kristol isn't enough. Now Lieberman lauds Rush Limbaugh for his "big heart." Yes, that's the same Rush Limbaugh who savaged Lieberman and Gore relentless during the theft of the 2000 election.
There is some speculation that Lieberman will deliver the keynote address at the upcoming GOP Convention -- he has publicly indicated his willingness to do so. I sure hope they take him up on it. Whereas Zell Miller's performance was riveting -- the spittle-flecked rantings of a crazy-eyed loon are interesting in the same way a particularly hideous bug is fascinating -- Lieberman's soporific droning is likely to produce a mass incidence of narcolepsy. I sincerely hope they've penciled the fool in.
It's not how you play the game; it's whether you win or lose
There's been much speculation about Hillary Clinton's motives for attacking Obama using plays straight from the Karl Rove handbook. Does she sincerely believe that only she can beat McCain, and thus she's gone all Tonya Harding in an attempt to save the party from itself? Does she think that tagging Obama as an inexperienced elitist who doesn't meet the Commander in Chief threshold like she and McCain do is just political gamesmanship that won't damage Obama's prospects in the general election should he prevail?
A pollster and long-time advisor to Bill Clinton, Douglas Schoen, removed all doubt in a piece in yesterday's New York Times:"...For Clinton to capture the nomination she needs to completely abandon her positive campaign and continue to hammer away at Obama... As the underdog, Clinton's positive message will not work unless she is able to undermine Obama's candidacy...
Although voters and the media look favorably upon a positive campaign message, and Clinton is acutely conscious that too much negativity and too many personal attacks will hurt her party in November, a positive message is simply not enough to alter the race at this point. It is too late for Clinton to wait for Obama to make another mistake. She must seize the opportunity that Obama's self-acknowledged mistakes last week presented to her campaign; it is almost certainly her last chance."
So there we have it. A Clinton insider acknowledges that Clinton is "acutely conscious" that her negative attacks will hurt the party in November. But she doesn't give a shit. This is her last chance. It's all about her. She's starting to remind me of Lieberman.
Food-gate: Cindy McCain busted -- again!
Cindy McCain, who clearly hasn't eaten anything since 1972, has been busted for trying to pass off recipes from my beloved Food Network as her own. Several recipes posted on the McCain campaign website as "Cindy's Recipes" are identical to those attributed to chefs at Food Network; here's one of several examples:
This is just so stupid on so many levels. First of all, the whole exercise is pointless. I get that the campaign posted the recipes in an attempt to show that the McCains are real folks just like you and me who cook their own dinners. But c'mon. Raise your hand if you thought Cindy McCain cooks?
If she eats at all, she gets a servant to whip up something for her. And that fact need not even interfere with the "Maverick" image the media helps McCain cultivate. According to one of McCain's knob-slobbering pet reporters, one of the things that makes McMaverick so "cool" is that he married "a rich girl, 17 years his junior."
Campaign reporters are so in the tank for McCain that they almost never mention the one time we know of that Mrs. McCain actually ingested something: pilfered narcotics from her own charity. (As I mentioned earlier, I can't say I blame her. If I were married to a comb-over gnome who occasionally called me the c-word, I'd be scarfing down handfuls of Vicodin too. That or ripping the fire extinguisher off the wall of the Straight Talk Express and bashing his head in.)
Secondly, such hoity-toity recipes! Just yesterday, the McCain camp, trying to make whatever hay out of Obama's "bitter" comment that Hillary hasn't already eagerly gathered and baled, mocked Obama as "a guy who thinks the whole country is worried about the high price of arugula." O'Rilly? Passion Fruit Mousse? Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms? Not exactly standard diner fare. People who live in fancy-pants "Napa Cabbage" cottages shouldn't throw arugula stones, ya know?
And lastly, it would have been so easy to get away with stealing the recipes, for godsake! Just rearrange the list of ingredients -- and subsitute a couple. Re-word the cooking instructions. Substitute "frying pan" (which has the advantage of being more folksy) for "skillet." Jesus, people, this isn't rocket science. A 5th grader could have avoided this bust.
I eagerly await the fall-out from Food-gate. I expect CNN's "I Want All the Candy" Crowley to really shine in her reportage, breathlessly comparing every single one of "Cindy's Recipes" to the Food Network database. Fair's fair, right? Yeah, when Oven Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Braeburn Apple Puree flies, maybe.
Bill Kristol: Now with even MORE wrong, plus "Reagan Dems"
Failure to simultaneously walk and chew gum
It's not surprising that wingnut-welfare case Bill Kristol utterly fails to grasp Obama's point about embittered rural folk; comprehending Obama's statement requires entertaining two facts simultaneously: 1) Living standards in former manufacturing areas are in steady decline, and 2) It's easier for cynical politicians to gin up outrage over flag burning, gun control and gay marriage than to address said decline.
It's also not surprising that, having demonstrated an inability to walk and chew gum simultaneously, Kristol reaches for the comforting old Red blanket of commie-baiting -- Obama must be a godless Marxist to hold such views. What is surprising is that the New York Times writes checks for the privilege of publishing such inane, clueless drivel.
Driving a stake through the heart of "Reagan Democrats"
No, not literally, silly! What I'm proposing is a change in terminology to describe this much ballyhooed voting bloc. Afterall, it's been 20 years since Reagan occupied the White House and four since he shuffled off his mortal coil. It seems a bit dated (and gross!) to tie his mouldering corpse around the necks of 2008 voters, many of whom weren't born when he left office.
A guest poster at "Reagan Democrat" Taylor Marsh's site defined the group as "ethnically diverse people" who are descendents of "Scots-Irish clans" (apparently this makes perfect sense in some quarters). Shorter TM guest conclusion: The group's primary trait is an aversion to latte-sipping, effete intellectual nancy-pants Obama supporters. I propose we call these voters "Republicans."
WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton, Duck-Slayer
Hillary Clinton, duck hunter? Kinda sounds like John Kerry, windsurfer or Michael Dukakis, tank commander. Though to Kerry's credit, he really is a windsurfer, and apparently a pretty darn good one. Doesn't matter. Being photographed in a tight wetsuit was enough for the GOP to paint the genuine war hero as an effete nancy-pants, while former Andover cheerleader and draft-dodger George W. Bush got the press to burnish his codpiece by playing dress-up in a flight suit.
Such is the state of American politics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the advertising industry (which also owns the media). Image is everything, and when Clinton saw an opportunity to paint Obama as a snob, she and her surrogates pounced like a pack of Taylor Marsh glama-shot photographer agents.
It may come back to bite her on the ass if she's not careful. The image of the former First Lady as a mighty duck-slayer is as incongruous as Mike Dukakis in command of a tank. Here's Clinton in full-on pander mode:Hillary Clinton further seized on the opening provided by Barack
Obama's "bitter" remarks, telling a crowd in Indiana that she herself is
no stranger to guns.
"You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather
built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how
to shoot when I was a little girl," said Clinton.
"You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their
grandchildren. It's part of culture. It's part of a way of life. People enjoy
hunting and shooting because it's an important part of who they are. Not because
they are bitter."
She later added, however, that she is not herself an expert with
firearms: "As I told you, my dad taught me how to shoot behind our cottage. I
have gone hunting. I am not a hunter. But I have gone hunting."
I didn't hear the audio, but it wouldn't surprise me if she channeled Mudcat and spoke in an affected drawl. I mean, a hick's a hick, right? Clinton might get away with such a silly remark in the age of imagery since the spoken word is no longer king. With Mr. Penn on the sidelines and no longer imparting Rovian bits of wisdom, Senator Clinton has not yet rushed out to be photographed standing over her kill cradling a shotgun. Or has she? Hmmmm.
That's no way to win the PETA vote, Senator. And it may just be a pander too far...
Bottom-feeding "Mudcat" resurfaces briefly
Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, the professional hick who used to run Edwards' campaign, says Obama has "got a bunch of explaining to do:"“I’m a southern boy myself,” Saunders told CNN by phone. “I don’t have
a gun because I’m bitter, it’s because I’ve always had one. I don’t pray to God
because I’m bitter. I pray to God because it makes my life better.”
“The one thing that I preached during this whole deal is we can’t
be stereotyping anybody,” he said. “Well, Barack Obama just stereotyped my
people out in rural America. “Here’s a guy who says he shouldn’t be stereotyped,
but yet he stereotyped us.”
"Mudcat's" reference to himself as a "Southern boy" might be puzzling in this context since it was the rural folks of thoroughly Yankee-fied Pennsylvania whom Obama allegedly offended with his "bitter" remark. It would be puzzling, that is, if "Mudcat" didn't compulsively use the words "Dixie" or "Southern" every 10 seconds as if he suffered from some corn-pone variation of Tourette's syndrome.
Actually, the person who should apologize for promoting stereotypes is Saunders, who is to Southerners what drag queens are to the gay community and mistrel shows are to African Americans. With a wildly exaggerated drawl and a manner suggesting a recent escape from the cast of Deliverance, Saunders is a cringe-making incarnate insult to Southerners.
He is also full of shit when he claims he preached that "we can't be stereotyping anybody." His entire political strategy was based on stereotyping the very people whose virtue he now purports to defend, which is why he claimed repeatedly that only white dude John Edwards could beat white dude John McCain.
Saunders' brilliant political strategy consisted entirely of wearing a NASCAR hat, speaking in a phony accent and encouraging Edwards to repeatedly remind everyone that he's the son of a millworker. We can see how well that worked out.
Now, you'd think that since he's a Democratic strategist (albeit an unemployed one), Saunders wouldn't want to bloody up the likely Democratic nominee. But Saunders has identified himself repeatedly as an "elitism hating Southern Democrat." If a guy like Obama wins with the support of Birkenstock-wearing, wine-sipping elites, where does that leave ol' Mudcat? Flushed down the electoral toilet like a belly-up guppy, that's where. So long, stinky little fishy.
What if they gave a rally and no one came?
There was a truly massive and important rally yesterday in NYC: The Protest Against Media Bias, Hate Speech and Voter Suppression. Outraged throngs turned out on Rockefeller Plaza to support Senator Clinton and protest the unfair media bias in favor of Barack Obama. The rally was so huge and important that it made the 1963 March on Washington look like a small-town PTA meeting by comparison.
Didn't hear about it? That's because the media hates Hillary Clinton and loves Barack Obama. You have to read "Democrat" Taylor Marsh's site to get the real news these days. Or confine your media viewing to brave truth-tellers like Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and Bill O'Reilly. Main Stream Media tools like Keith Olbermann don't want you to know the truth. But the pictures are in, and the outraged throngs are too numerous and powerful to be ignored. Hear (okay, see) them roar!
So where were you, Main Stream Media? Huh? Huh? Were you too busy ignoring the Wright controversy and pretending that Obama didn't say Pennsylvania voters are a bunch of embittered, god-bothering, racist, gun-fondling morons?
Or could it be that a scrum of deranged cat ladies just isn't the media draw it used to be? I think we know the truth. Your silence in the face of such concentrated outrage is deafening, Main Stream Media.
Note: I had vowed to stay out of the internet sissy fights between Obama and Clinton supporters since I fully intend to vote for Clinton in the fall if she wins fair and square. But thanks to Mssrs. Kevin K. and John Brown, it's become just too hilarious to ignore.
Obama's mama and the audacity of hippies
There's a really great story about Barack Obama's mother in the current issue of Time. You can find the whole thing here, and it's well worth a read.
If you know his story, you kinda figured Obama's mom was a free-thinker, a prototypical hippie even. After all, in the early 60s, it was pretty uncommon for a white chick to marry a Kenyan and then an Indonesian. An excerpt from the article:"When I think about my mother," Obama told me recently, "I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn't comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box."
This is a common pattern for those of us who were raised by hippies -- we Birkenstock-wearing, Volvo-driving, latte-sipping legions. My mother was a hippie too, and her nomadic ways (though confined to Florida) are one reason I put such stock in sinking roots in a single community.
Obama's mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.
Today Obama is partly a product of what his mother was not. Whereas she swept her children off to unfamiliar lands and even lived apart from her son when he was a teenager, Obama has tried to ground his children in the Midwest. "We've created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn't do for us," he says. "My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing."
Like Obama, I too am the product of parenting by commitee, with my hippie mom sharing duties with her redneck ex-husband (my father) and her Southern Baptist missionary parents. Not as exotic as Obama's family, but believe me, such a legacy lends a unique perspective on the world.
The children of hippies are often driven to make choices that can seem a silent rebuke to our parents' mode of life and child-rearing. We may be a little more into setting boundaries for our kids. We tend to be a bit more fond of creature comforts. We are perhaps more cautious. We may value the trappings of security a little more.
That said, I think it would be a mistake to read into our generational differences a wholesale repudiation of our hippie parents' values. We absorbed their ideals; we just have a different strategy of living them. Another excerpt from the article:But Obama is his mother's son. In his wide-open rhetoric about what can be instead of what was, you see a hint of his mother's credulity. When Obama gets donations from people who have never believed in politics before, they're responding to his ability—passed down from his mother—to make a powerful argument (that happens to be very liberal) without using a trace of ideology. On a good day, when he figures out how to move a crowd of thousands of people very different from himself, it has something to do with having had a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems.
There's been a lot of talk during this primary season about the natural constituencies of the candidates and what it says about generational differences. We've had two Boomer presidents -- Bill Clinton and the Current Occupant.
Bush shares a generation with the Clintons, but he didn't apparently experience the 60s in true Boomer form. To paraphrase a line from Field of Dreams, Bush seems to have had two helpings of the 50s and moved straight on into the 70s.
Bill Clinton was a true Boomer president, coming of political age during the Vietnam War, etc. As ambitious a man as he was (and is), I'm sure he dreamed of having power one day even way back then and thought about what he would use it to achieve.
So what did he do? It wasn't bad. (If George W. Bush has done anything for American politics, he's recalibrated our modern sense of what is bad.) But was it the culmination of what those 60s dreamers -- Bill and Hill (and my mom) among them -- would have hoped for? Nope. The Democratic Leadership Council's notion of progressive politics found expression in Bill Clinton's presidency with policies such as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act and NAFTA. The Age of Aquarius it was not.
So how would a post-Boomer president like Obama govern? It's hard to say. He would have many forces arrayed against him, so he's not going to be able to completely transform the way Washington works. And despite the liberal slinging around of stereotypes in this post, I am reluctant to read too much into Obama's demographic and what it may mean.
But I was struck by another phrase from the article: romantic pragmatist. The writer used it to describe the mother, but I think it accurately describes the son as well. Can a romantic pragmatist save post-Boomer America? I don't know.
But we've seen both sides of the Boomer coin in Bush and Clinton. McCain would represent a return to the past in more ways than one. Maybe it's time to try something new and see how the audacity of hippies plays out in the next generation.
Holy McSadism, Batman!
Why does Lindsey Graham's (R-Confirmed Bachelor) get off on being abused by John McCain?
If anyone else called him “little jerk,” Sen. Lindsey Graham might be
offended. But the jab comes from Sen. John McCain, so he wears it like a badge
of honor. “If John’s not belittling you, you’re in trouble,” Graham said. “He
calls me lots of other names, too, but they’re not appropriate for the
newspaper.”
McCain and Graham aren’t just friends. They’re inseparable, so much so that
colleagues, staffers and journalists have begun making cracks about the
relationship between the freshman senator from South Carolina and the man who
would be president.
[snip]
“Lindsey! Lindsey! Get over here!” McCain said, his raspy voice wafting up
to the gallery, when Graham strayed momentarily and walked in the other
direction. A few days later, when McCain flew home to Arizona for a weekend of
relaxation and barbecue, he took Graham with him. Then, together with Lieberman,
they traveled on an eight-day journey to Iraq, Jordan, Israel, England and
France later in the month.
On the trip, like at so many other times, Graham had what he called “a
name-ID problem” as he traveled with two more widely known senators. “Everyone
was saying, ‘Hey, John! Hey, Joe! And then there was me,” Graham said. “But John
was very good about making sure everyone knew my name.”
At the Western Wall, Graham said he was literally run down by 100
photographers trying to get to McCain. Graham ended up on the ground. “I almost
dislocated my knee, and John is screaming, ‘Get up! Get up!’” Graham recalled,
laughing. “Apparently, my fate in life is to be instructed.”
So Graham was trampled by a herd of photographers, and he enjoyed Big Mac's subsequent screeched instructions, even through the pain of a nearly dislocated knee. Life would be so much simpler if guys like Graham would just come out of the closet already.
Sure, they might lose their Senate seats due to the bigotry they whip (oof) up for political purposes among their constituency. But it's only a matter of time before they get busted trolling an airport pay toilet anyway. There are healthier modes of sexual gratification out there, guys! Come out, come out, wherever you are!
The douchebaggery of "Democrat" Taylor Marsh
However, if you have heard of noted silly person Taylor Marsh, if you have wondered how a relentlessly self-promoting, solipsistic, talentless hack could parlay a penchant for monotonously bashing Obama and extolling the virtues of Clinton into a kind of bloggy fame while simultaneously creating a McCain campaign hit-job resource repository, well, your BFF John Brown has the scoop here.
McCain's turn to denounce, reject, etc.
Only he didn't, even though he was right there on the stand as his supporter called Obama "Tiger Woods." The crowd's audible gasp indicates they got the reference (and ate it up with a spoon, of course). Perhaps McCain was silent because he thought the comparison was made due to Obama's and Woods' remarkably similar golf swings? Bowling scores? Policy positions? It couldn't be their black dudeliness, could it?
Meanwhile, McCain's campaign is having a hissy fit because Obama didn't "personally" reject, denounce, disown, revile, etc., a talk radio host's description of McCain as a "warmonger," the accuracy of said description being amply demonstrated in the speech McCain made immediately after being introduced by his supporter, who is apparently not only a fellow warmonger but a creepy racist and inarticulate bonehead as well. What's worse than a warmonger? How about a hypocritical and racist-tolerating warmonger...
Joe Biden states the obvious. Plus, a SUMMIT of McCain's doctors?
Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered a pre-buttal to General Petraeus' upcoming report, flatly calling the surge strategy a failure:"The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically," said Biden, D-Del., in this week's Democratic radio address. "Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together."
He later added, "There is little evidence the Iraqis will settle their differences peacefully any time soon."
"I believe the president has no strategy for success in Iraq," Biden said. "His plan is to muddle through, and hand the problem off to his successor."
Mr. Biden may be 100% correct. On the other hand, things may be considerably worse than Biden suspects; maybe Bush plans to double-down on his Iraq gamble and drag us into a war with Iran in a last-ditch effort to seize the glorious mantel of Victorious War President that has thus far eluded him. That seems to be the gist of this report:British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.
A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention
in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.
In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
Of course, it would be completely insane to widen the war by attacking Iran. But this is the Bush administration we're talking about. They've repeatedly demonstrated that they lack scruples and insight. Now add desperation to the mix: They must know on some level that they're trapped in a dead-end; they must sense the mighty whisk broom of hisory poised to sweep them into its dustbin. Under those circumstances, the Bush administration might very well be stupid and evil enough to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
We'll have to see if Petraeus provides a pre-emptory fig leaf next week. And whether or not the Senate has the wit to recognize it for what it is and put a stop to it before Bush and his cronies fuck things up even more spectacularly than they already have.
[Note to countrymen: See, this is what happens when you put a dim-witted, aging frat boy with an Oedipus complex the size of Texas in charge. Don't let it happen again, m'kay?]
McCain's doctors: apparently, they are legion...
Speaking of aged frat boys with Oedipus complexes, John McCain, who really, really, really wants to be president, is convening a "public summit of his doctors" to reassure voters that he is in tip-top shape and ready for the rigors of office.
Hmmm. If you have so many freaking doctors that they can convene a summit, maybe that says more about your health than whatever the cast of thousands might actually say...
Behold his mighty bong!
So Charlton Heston is dead. Sad. Sure, he was a gun-fondling wingnut jackass in real life, but he was also a one-of-a-kind actor. Even though I have absolutely no use for religion, The Ten Commandments is one of my favorite movies, as is Ben Hur. And who could forget Heston in the Planet of the Apes series? Even if you really want to?
Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher
Mar 4, 2008
JERUSALEM (AFP) — High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs
when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious
rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive
psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind
journal of philosophy.
"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural
cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either,
or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people
of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on
Tuesday.
Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush,"
suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such
substances.
"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he
said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are
used that induce people to "see music."
McCain: Warmonger AND whoremonger?
As John McCain rambles about the country revisiting old haunts to showcase his warrior cred, the love-struck press corps performs its role in the Magical Maverick Mystery Tour, helping gild the legend of the Greatest American Hero Patriot Evah. It's striking sometimes to read their stenographic reports and imagine for a moment what the reporter might seize on if he were covering a candidate other than McCain. Take this interesting biographic tidbit, for example:There aren't too many politicians in America who would dare admit they
once frequented a strip club. Fewer still would cop to dating one of the
dancers, especially if she had a nickname like the "Flame of Florida," or a
habit of packing a switchblade in her purse. And among that select crowd, there
are barely any who call themselves conservative Republicans, or would ever dare
dream of running for President.
But then, this nation has historically afforded certain privileges to
its military personnel, and the old Navy flyer John McCain is confident he has
earned a pass. "I enjoyed every single moment of my life here," he announced in
a prepared speech Wednesday in Pensacola, Fla., "from learning to fly to blowing
my pay at Trader Jon's."
The otherwise conservative crowd of more than a thousand supporters
burst into approving applause and laughter at the mention of their storied
downtown watering hole, which had dancing girls back when McCain served in the
area as a young pilot. McCain's own knowing smile only added to the moment.
"I remember with affection the unruly passions of youth," he said
Monday in Meridian, Miss., where he once helped organize an off-base toga party
— the furniture swapped out for mattresses — for his military buddies and some
local girls.
The writer is Time's Michael Scherer, who told us all we'll ever need to know about his objectivity on McCain when he wrote:Here's one thing you need to know about John McCain. He's always been the
So how would Scherer have titled the headline to an article in which a candidate other than McCain had revealed he swapped furniture for mattresses while arranging a toga party for compatriots and local chicks? "Hillary Hustled Hos for Bros?" "Obama Pimped Red-Hot Mamas?" Somehow, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been as pedestrian as "McCain: Loving His Misspent Youth."
coolest kid in school. He was the brat who racked up demerits at the Naval
Academy. He was the hot dog pilot who went back to the skies weeks after almost
dying in a fire on the U.S.S. Forrestal. His first wife was a model. His second
wife was a rich girl, 17 years his junior. He kept himself together during years
of North Vietnamese torture and solitary confinement. When he sits in the back
of his campaign bus, we reporters gather like kids in the cafeteria huddling
around the star quarterback. We ask him tough questions, and we try to make him
slip up, but almost inevitably we come around to admiring him. He wants the
challenge. He likes the give and take. He is, to put it simply, cooler than
us.
Once this interminable Democratic primary contest finally ends, it'll be interesting to directly compare the coverage McCain gets with that whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee receives. Will it finally become widely known, for example, that the current Mrs. McCain once pilfered narcotics from her own charity to feed her drug habit? Or will the press continue to focus obsessively on whether or not Michelle Obama is sufficiently proud to be an American?
I think we know the answer to that already. Digby was spot-on when she wrote, "Pushing back on biased, anti-Democrat and pro-Republican lies and editorial judgment is supposed to be one of our [bloggers'] primary raison d'etres... The press is in love with McCain, that...is very dangerous for Democrats and...we need to work hard to combat that, starting now while the Democrats are still settling their primary."
Amen, sister. I don't give a crap that McCain hooked up with some Florida floozies back in the Paleozoic Era. God knows there are plenty to go around, and it's been a carpetbagger tradition for ages. It doesn't really bother me that McCain's trophy wife used to scarf down handfuls of Vicodin either -- hell, if I were married to an ancient comb-over gnome, I might raid the medicine cabinet myself.
What bothers me is the blatant double standard in how the candidates are treated. Digby is right -- even bloggers with a readership of two like yours truly need to call the bastards out on the unfair treatment. If we don't do it, who will? Not Michael Scherer.
Rachel Maddow: Goddess
Rachel Maddow sees through the bullshit McCain-as-Maverick media narrative. Watch her smack Joe Scarborough's ignorant ass down in mid-McCain-fluff:
Oh, it's a thing of beauty -- Scarborough furiously blinking his piggy little eyes and trying to shout Maddow down by reciting past "maverick" positions that McCain long since jettisoned to appease the wingnut GOP base that hates his guts. And Maddow challenging "Morning Blow" to alter the narrative to fit the facts rather than vice versa. Memo to MSNBC: more Rachel, please.
