God Help Me, I'm A Political Geek

Donna Brazille's statement at the end of the RBC meeting was worth the wait. Look for it.

The session ending with Harold the Yechy trying to take pot shots at David Bonior -- who wasn't even there anymore -- and being ruled out of order for being a smarmy, pedantic douche-bag (I may be mistaken about the exact wording of the ruling), was Teh Awesome.

UPDATE
from Taegan Goddards Political Wire

"My momma taught me to play by the rules and respect those rules. My mother taught me, and I'm sure your mother taught you, that when you decide change the rules, middle of the game, end of the game, that is referred to as cheatin'."

-- Donna Brazile, quoted by NBC News.

Is This RBC Thing For Real?

Are we really talking about a net difference in Michigan Delegates for Hillary of about 20 or so warm bodies?

I'm seeing Hillary supporters agreeing to a 73-55 split of the delegation vs a 50%-50% solution. By my abacus this still won't give Hillary enough as long as uncommitted delegates are slated by camp Obama -- which seems to be the way they are doing things.

Give. Me. A. Break.

We end this damn argument the same way I ague with my wife. We give her what she wants so she'll shut up. And Hillary really needs to shut up.

I miss the smoke filled room. Make mine a Romeo y Julieta.

Link(s) Of The Week

This one from the only journalists actually doing their job in the run-up to the war in answer to Scott-Bot McClellertron is a keeper"

Memo to Scott McClellan: Here’s what happened.

If Maha, Glenn and The Spin Zone did't convince you to read it, maybe now you will.

Also, Liberal Fascism was a Typo ... sorry for any confusion.

Oh Dugan, does this answer your question?

"What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan
I knew for two years. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I
knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or
Washington reporter."

--Jeff Gannon on Scott McClellan's new book

Finally, everything you didn't know, but need to know about Moqtada al-Sadr, but were kept to in the dark to ask.

Why Yes, Yes I Will

HuffPosts Seth Colter Walls interviews some of the organizers of the Hillary Clinton supporters planning to demonstrate outside the hotel where the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee is set to meet and address what the hell to do about Michigan and Florida.

"You're not going to write that we're a bunch of hysterical women trying to create havoc, are you?"

CRY HAVOC! And Unleash The Hounds Of Protesters Pressuring Obscure Parliamentary Procedure Committee Meetings!!!

You Know Things Are Getting Bad

This is just sick.

Copper thieves force shutdown of Ohio soup kitchen
May 30, 2008 07:36 EDT

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Copper thieves have struck a major soup kitchen in Columbus, forcing it to stop feeding the needy.

The Holy Family Community Kitchen and Pantry says two large
refrigeration compressors were unbolted from their concrete pads and
taken away over Memorial Day weekend, and the thieves also stole copper
piping.

Director Frances Carr says the soup kitchen couldn't
keep the food cold, so it spoiled and had to be thrown out. Carr says
that was tough to do at a time when so many people are in need.

By Wednesday, the facility had to shut down.

Carr hopes to reopen Monday but isn't certain that will be possible.

The news isn't just that they robbed a soup kitchen is Columbus, Ohio, rather There Are Soup Kitchens in Columbus, Ohio!

Other Uses For Women's Underwear

ARVADA, Colo. -- Police are looking for two crooks who tried to disguise their identities by covering their faces with women's thong underwear during a robbery of an Arvada Diamond Shamrock gas station. . . .

The man wearing the green thong over his face is in his early 20s. He's 6 feet tall and weighs between 160 and 180 pounds. He has short black hair and was last seen wearing a dark blue shirt, blue jeans and dark shoes.

The man wearing the blue thong over his face is in his early to mid 20s. He's between 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, 180 to 200 pounds. He has short black hair. He has a 6-inch cross tattoo on his right upper arm and a tribal tattoo on his left upper arm.

. . . and Thongs over their faces!

Panties For Peace?

Am I missing something? Mind you, this is fun, even interesting. I just don't think it'll have much affect on a hardened military Junta.

MONTREAL: Women are being asked to volunteer their undergarments in an international effort to shame Myanmar's ruling junta into giving citizens greater access to humanitarian aid and human rights.

Organisers launched the Canadian edition of the Panties for Peace! campaign this week with a call for women to send underwear to the Myanmar embassy in Ottawa.

Great cause, weird message.

Maybe there's a severe panty shortage in that devastated nation. They seem to need just about everything else, food, water, freedom. Why not?

Could be they might get the message that the women of the world have had it with their repressive ways, and they better put their big girl panties on and deal with it.

Why I Can't Wait Until Hillary Concedes

Because I'd like to be able to read good stuff from bloggers like Taylor Marsh and the folks at Corrente Wire again without feeling like I'm reading a Terry McAuliff version of pre-epiphany Scott-Bot McClellertron's rantings.

Sadly, although it took a bombshell of a story like Scott McClellan's mea culpa to break through the all-Hillary, all-the-time programing at some of the Clintonista blogs, there still is no sign of intelligent life at the Talk Left Kool-Aide stand. It's a Hillary 527 in everything but the paperwork.

Gender And Race Bias Are Not Created Equal

At least not if you put together all the recent polls regarding race "being a factor" in the Democratic Primary and Loyola Marymount's study of women's underrepresentation in public office reported by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post revealing an "ambition gap" as opposed to any overt preference by the electorate favoring men over women.

This actually challenges some of my own preconceived notions, and blows much of what Bill Clinton has said lately about why Hillary hasn't dominated the race for the Democratic nomination right out of the water.

"Somewhat surprisingly," write political scientists Jennifer Lawless of Brown University and Richard Fox of Loyola Marymount,
women's underrepresentation "is not because of discrimination against
women candidates. In fact, women perform as well as men when they do
run for office. In terms of fundraising and vote totals, the consensus
among researchers is the complete absence of overt gender bias."

If you're a Hillary supporter, or just a supporter of women's rights in general, this is both good and bad news. Good in that, "You've come a long way, baby." Bad in that pointing the finger at me and claiming I'm sexist for saying it really, loses it's sting.

McCain's Econ Advisor: Sorcerer's Apprentice of Instability and Disaster

It sounds like John McCain is joined at the hip to one of those Disaster Capitalists Naomi Klein warned us about in her book Shock Doctrine. Hilzoy (guesting for Kevin Drum) quotes James Galbraith's discription of former Texas Senator (figures), recent lobbyist, current campaign Co-chair and economic guru for John McCain ...

"Phil Gramm's career was as the most aggressive advocate of every predatory and rapacious element that the financial sector has," Galbraith said. "He's a sorcerer's apprentice of instability and disaster in the financial system."

Hot on the heels of Keith Olbermann's revelation that Gramm, whose deregulatory scemes played a direct role in the Enron scandal, was/is on the payroll of a Swiss bank lobbying Congress (and evidently McCain himself) on how the U.S. should handle the mortgage crisis.

McCain and Gramm have been friends for more than a decade. McCain chaired Gramm’s 1996 presidential run and Gramm says the two men speak every day. McCain reportedly has hinted Gramm might serve as his Treasury secretary.

Last summer, Gramm was widely credited with saving McCain’s presidential campaign.

[snip]

After Gramm passed a law easing regulation of energy-commodity trading, California experienced a sharp run-up in energy costs. The energy-trading company Enron was blamed and soon collapsed.

In 1999, Gramm successfully undid the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, removing the decades-old wall between commercial banking, which was heavily regulated, and investment banking, which was not. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not extend significant new regulation to investment banking.

This may be the last gasp of the anti-New Dealers, but they've come leaded for bear. Or was that Bear Sterns? Hilzoy is flabbergasted.

But it just defies belief that McCain would have, as his main economic advisor and one of the people responsible for his plan to deal with the mortgage crisis, someone who was a paid lobbyist for a bank that was heavily involved in that crisis, a firm that has just advised some of its employees not to travel to the US for legal reasons, and that stands to gain or lose a lot depending on what the federal government decides to do about it. What's next: the revelation that McCain's policy on Iran is being written by a lobbyist for the makers of cruise missiles? Or that he has outsourced his health care policy to a lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association?

Without a trace of irony, John McCain's spokesman the GOP nominee "preferred to focus on homeowners "truly in need" and opposed bailouts for affected banks." However, instead of supporting legislation that would have allowed bankruptcy judges the authority to modify loan terms to help home owners stay on their property, he in effect said on March 25th, "The mess you are in is your own fault. Don’t expect any bailouts from me."

Interesting that this is exactly what the banking industry, and Phil Gramm, wanted. The legislation died.

The sooner we are rid of the cancer these "compassionate conservatives" have foisted on us, the better. Let's just hop the rumors that Bush will start bombing Iran to help keep his buddies in power is just that, a rumor.

Scott McClellan Sounds Like A Moonbat Blogger

I remember it almost like it was yesterday, trying to outdo other bloggers with cute little names for the guy I called Scotty McManequin: Scott-bot 3000, McClellatron, Scottie McLiar, McClerrator -- good times.

Today, Politico's Mike Allen bypassed the embargoed publication of McClellan's tell-all book by (get this) buying it in a Washington DC bookstore a week before its scheduled release date and documents the atrocities Scotty lays bare in "whacking" Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby and the whole merry band of criminal conspirators who "propagandized" us into war, lied about outing Valerie Plame, and twiddled their thumbs "in shock" for a week during the Katrina mess (much like Bush did upon learning the news of planes crashing into building as he sat stupidly in that classroom).

McClellan also skewers the mainstream press.

"If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

"The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

Next thing you know, Scottie will be referring to the Beltway establishment as Villagers. Funny how some decidedly non-mainstream media folks, my favorite rhetorical bomb throwers The Young Turks, were on this story six months ago, as was Shakes and a few other easily dismissed libs.

I love these guys. Figures that they're not even on Air America anymore. What a shame.

Cynics

In one of his more twistier pieces of pseudo-logic, George Will pronounces, quite cynically, that Americans are not cynics -- merely too idealistic.

Feh!

No surprise that he manages to lay the phenomenon of unrealistic expectations we Americans "suffer" from at the feet of that bogeyman of the right for generations, Franklin Roosevelt. I guess I'm too much of an idealistic naif, a product of a nation founded on ideals that we could form a More Perfect Union, that we were endowed with Inalienable Rights.

How is it possible to trace back the history of Presidential Rhetoric elevating the office to something more than the mere head of an ungainly bureaucracy and ignore the trust we put in Presidents since at least Lincoln to ensure that a "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Ya just don't get such banalities and pragmatism like that anymore, do you. Nearly as pedestrian as "give me liberty or give me death." (No wonder Patrick Henry never became president when he would utter such nonsense.)

At least Will is one of the few (very few) voices on the right who sums up the last administration as an exercise in Presidential overreach:

Today's president has claimed the power to be the "decider," deciding on his own to start preventive wars, order torture prohibited by treaty and statute, and arrest American terrorist suspects on American soil and hold them indefinitely without legal process.

However he misses entirely the idea that elevating the Presidency to cult-like status is a product of right-wing authoritarianism in practice as he dissects Cato Institute's Gene Healy's analysis of America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.

Liberals think boundless government is beneficent. Conservatives practice situational constitutionalism, favoring what Healy calls "Caesaropapism" as long as the Caesar-cum-Pope wields his anti constitutional powers in the service of things these faux conservatives favor.

How perfectly droll.

As usual, Will has no desire to truly understand how liberals think or what we think about. At least he is more generous than most. He gives us credit for at least thinking at all.

The same tired meme of "big government liberals" is uncritically lobbed out today by Tom Coburn at the WSJ. They spew this as if it actually has any meaning when the Reagan and Bush astronomical deficits, juxtaposed against the Clinton era surplus, should prove for all time what a lie such notions as fiscally responsible Republicans are. It's truly absurd.

Yet Coburn, like Will, dances around the simple-minded follow-the-leader mentality of right-wing authoritarians. they acknowledge it in passing without understanding it for the disease it is.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

The authoritarian mentality is not a side-effect, a mere symptom. It's is the root cause of the disease whose exploitation has metastasized in the body politic to the current cancer of Bush/Cheney. The "cure" is not returning to fictional glory days of Republican administrations that guarded the purse and wisely administered competent, honest government. they don't exist except in the romanticized minds of deluded pontificators like Will and John McCain.

Please tell me the last time such could be said to describe a GOP administration? Reagan and Bush's myth of responsible spending is a joke since no previous presidents could come close to their deficit spending. Nixon left paying for Vietnam to Carter, and his followers blame Carter for the wrecked economy to this day. Ike? 90% tax rate on the wealthiest? Puhleeze. Before that you've got Hoover, the Nero of the Great Depression and Harding selling off the country to the highest bidder (Teapot Dome still being at the top of corruption scandals despite the intervening history of Watergate, Iran/Contra, and the litany of GWB's criminal excesses).

Are these guys harkening back to the era of Teddy Roosevelt, maybe? No way. That guy was way too liberal of a tree hugger.

The cure for the disintegration of the Conservative Movement is a strong dose of reality. Quit deluding yourselves by foregoing inconveniently accurate truths in favor of revisionist history and spin. Take the halo off Saint Reagan for one, and recognize him for the nice, yet dottering fool he was -- who for all his good intent allowed a secret, illegal war to be run right out of his house -- and didn't have a clue. A guy who raised taxes as much as he cut them, and nearly bankrupted us all while spending the money on crooks and crap.

Next, understand that Conservatives have institutionalized the nurturing of sheeple, lemmings that are valued more for their loyalty than competence without which the modern Republican Party would have ceased to exist long ago. That a monolithic, top-down power structure may be very effective in the short term by sheer force of it's efficiency -- it is decidedly un-(small-"d")-democratic, un-American even. The power-structure of the modern Republican party is hardly a model of even "republican" principles, violating the very spirit of representative government. When they not only campaign, but govern through these crony-capitalist structures, their effect is more fascist than free.

Seriously, if all they truly want to stand for as conservatives is responsible economic policy, who would say that's a bad thing? Clearly there is much more, and most of it bad, to Replublicanism.

But no. They will give prominent media pedestals to liars like the ever Stupidest Guy on the Planet to try and spin us on how the first draft of the history of the the Iraq War should be re-written, again. My oh my how fun to watch the neocon intelligencia blame their idiot salesman for their shitty product.

Lousy Time To Quit Smoking Dope

Bob Barr is the official candidate for the dope smokers who like to shoot stuff, more affectionately known as the Libertarian Party.

Did We Already Win?

First of, I'm not trying to be cocky. So if this sounds cocky, well ... that's just me.

All would agree that there's been a steady trickle of sentiment towards a more liberal mood in America for some years now. You could almost track it with the inexorable downward slide in our approval of the Bush regime.

There have been signposts along the way, the rejection of Harriet Miers and John Bolton's nominations, collective disgust at the political exploitation of Terri Schaivo, the 2006 election was a sobering moment for everyone.

But the clearest indication I was on to something was the nomination of John McCain. His promotion to standard bearer of the Republican Party, to me, indicated a clear rejection of the neoconservative agenda by the folks who gave it breath: the Republican Party's rank and file.

Interestingly enough folks far more clever than I, and not especially noted as flaming batshit crazy liberals susceptible to wishful thinking that probably taints my take on the situation are coming to the same conclusion -- but from a completely different perspective.

See I tend to agree with George Packer's The Fall of Conservativism at The New Yorker (via: Cho at ePluribus Media) opinion that:

"The fact that the least conservative, least divisive Republican in the
2008 race is the last one standing—despite being despised by
significant voices on the right—shows how little life is left in the
movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan
gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized,
and Bush allowed to break into pieces."

You've seen the disgust throughout Right Wing Blogistan with McCain, running the full sequence from outright rebellion, defection to plugging their noses. I believe an appropriate concluding clause to the above quote would read ... "Bush allowed to break into pieces ... and McCain buried."

They broke their own back, much the way the Soviets fell apart largely due to ignoring the economics of their predicament while ignoring the internal inconsistencies of a faulty and poorly executed ideology. Ironic that a movement whose nadir saw the death throws of communist imperialism believed it's own hype that they defeated the "Evil Empire" as opposed to simply watching it die has succumbed to a similar fate -- hubris leading self-immolation.

No doubt there will be Democrats who will spin this as "their" (ok, our) victory, but one only need glance at the record of Congressional Democrats since losing Congress in 1996, and Bill and Hillary Clinton's rejection of the progressive agenda since then to expose the lie that any Democrat brought about the end of the extreme right wing any more than Reagn somehow "Destroyed" the Iron Curtain. They just happened to be the folks in opposition when the nutbags lost it.

Bob Burnnet's HuffPost piece takes a different view on what McCain represents, however. To him, John McCain is the epitome of conservative orthodoxy, and he makes a very persuasive case. McCain indeed advocates the traditional pillars of conservativism: "gargantuan military ... small (innefectual) government ... tax reduction ... incompetent (corporate run) management." All of it combining into the unwieldy and corrupt industrial/military complex warned against by Ike.

So which is it? What does McCain represent? The death knell of ideologically driven right wing extremism, or more of McSame? I ask this more as an intellectual exercise since the prospect of a true empirical analysis of the question would require study of a McCain administration -- which I find to be not only a remote possibility but a horror to even contemplate.

Back when the GOP was parading their fractured coalition on nationally televised debates, they entertained us all as each out-of-touch representative of various splinter groups vied for the affections of the Republican voters: the robber barons represented by Romney, the evangelicals following Huckabee, the xenophobes cheering for Hunter and Tancredo, the media wing pushing Grandpa Fred, the libertarian insurrection led by Ron Paul, the Christianist favorite Brownback, the one-percent of the party's black supporters shaking their head each time Alan Keyes opened his mouth, and the neocons's darling of course was Giuliani -- but the military wing held on and allowed McCain to survive. Even then it was clear the days of the GOP presenting a unified front were long gone.

McCain himself may represent the blandest version of Republicanism, and therefore his orthodoxy is to be expected. However, the fact that one really must describe his status as their "presumptive nominee" because he survived, he's the "last man standing" says a lot. He didn't "win" so much as he didn't lose. By no means can he be described as the "Party Favorite." He isn't. He certainly didn't overwhelm his rivals through irresistible popular support. There's no "movement" behind him propelling him to the White House.

It's just his turn. It's his time and he's been set up to be a sacrificial lamb by people who haven't had an original idea since 1968, and are still fighting those same culture wars.

The Clintons too are veterans of the Baby Boomers' battle of attrition between the hard-hats and the hippies. Hillary's failure to hold back the tide of a movement that is sweeping Obama forward is not a signal that the hippies won, but that we are declaring the war is over and moving on.

The winning move here is not to play the same old game.

That means we must not simply replace Republicans with Democrats, enact liberal policies to fix the things conservatism has broken. We must (as an Obama Administration promises to do) completely transform the culsture of Washington D.C. The people are demanding, and the country desperately requires not only new people at the helm, better managers, more responsible financial stewardship, a smaller and more flexible military, a restoration of diplomatic respect, and an end to corrupt corporate cronyism; but also a change of attitude.

We need to hope again. We need to listen to our better angels, both here and abroad. We need to remember that America is the land that helps the rest of the world rise up and improve their lot in life, not exploit the rest of the planet's people and steal their resources.

We need to actually BE the people we are so proud of being.

If we do that, everybody wins.

Any Questions?

Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

(H.T.: Oliver)

I Have No Problem Disenfranchising Racists

"If something is distasteful to a racist, my guess is usually that it’s a good thing!"
~ Oliver Willis

Oliver checks out Newsweek's poll on Racial Resentment Index that pretty much confirms what we all knew, and the media almost -- but not quite -- has been been trying to say for months.

Racists won't vote for the black guy.

All those "bitter" folks, the so-called "white, working class" voters that Hillary attracts and won't pick Obama are mostly older southerners with little or no college and a chip on their shoulder. Duh!

I truly believe that it's high time this nation stopped catering to this element and moved on. Forget about lobbyists and special interests. Any candidate for public office that owes his or her future to people clinging to ignorance and hate has no business being put in charge of anything.

I Got Yer Dream Ticket Right Here

Survey USA:

HT: Steve Soto

Hillary's RFK Brain Fart

No doubt Senator Clinton is sorry for invoking the tragic memory of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination as a reason to stay in the race. No doubt she was not thinking like some Wise Guys making a not so subtle threat. That's not what happened.

Senator Clinton said she had been attempting to point out that previous campaigns had also continued into June.

Democrat Robert Kennedy was running for his party's presidential nomination when he was shot dead in June 1968.

A spokesman for rival Democrat hopeful, Barack Obama said Mrs Clinton's comment "has no place in this campaign".

She was not making Obama on offer he can't refuse. Not really.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June... We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

Observers say the remarks could be damaging if people were to interpret them as an indication that Mrs Clinton believes the assassination of her rival would benefit her campaign.

Throughout this campaign, the memories of JFK, RFK and MLK have been invoked to describe the inspiration and agendas of Barack Obama and John Edwards, but not Hillary Clinton. Maybe she was feeling left out.

Unfortunately, Hillary did not talk about Robert Kennedy today as an icon of the progressive movement, a man whose leadership stands as a cornerstone of what it means to be a Democrat to a generation. She spoke of him as just another politician doing what it takes to win, and she didn't even get that right.

Here's a hint. Don't use seminal historical figures to justify your hacktakularness. Say that you want to be like them, not that your sorry-ass behavior wasn't anything worse than they did -- unless of course you're a Republican making your own icons look bad by association with you.

Just leave our heroes alone.

Dream Ticket Bandwagon

It looks like MyDD's Todd Beeton has gotten on board the Kum-By-Yah '08 bus tour for the Obama/Clinton Dream Ticket. There's a lot of rethinking going on right now, at least among the saner parts of the reality based community.

Mind you, signals couldn't be more mixed right now with Clinton insisting that that the reports of her asking for, and Obama refusing her the VP slot, are unfounded, but still being reported on as accurate rumors -- because for all we know there might actually be rumors out there (ya think?) which may or may not make some self-important whiny-assed cry babies act more mature? so they stop their incessant Obama bashing, (or Clinton bashing). (HT: S.No!)

You almost have to ask yourself the question: Is it better to have Hillary's supporters out there doing McCain/Lieberman '08's job for them, questioning the very legitimacy of Obama's all but sure nomination from now until 2012? Or, despite going out of her way to just piss everybody off, and as much as it would suck to give in to what amounts to blackmail due to the poisoned atmosphere, should we learn to live with Hillary on the ticket just to avoid fighting this thing on two fronts?

Frankly, even if Hillary whole-heartedly supports and campaigns for Barack, many of her die-hards will never give it up unless they get what they think they deserve. I just can't help thinking that all this would have been just that more easier on my developing ulcer had Hillary's name been Bill and (s)he had been running against some nice Irish guy named Barry O'Banyon.

Peak Wealth?

As more and more of us begin to appreciate the ramifications of "Peak Oil," or at least its artificially growing myth on our current state of affairs from the gas pump to the how and why the lid has been kept on Iraq's sea of crude since at least 1928, even proven skeptics are joining the throng who upon seeing storm clouds on the horizon pronounce in grave tones that the sky is falling, the end is near, and that you're gonna look fondly on the good old days of $4.00 gas.

But a couple of throw-away statements running 'round Blogtopia (Y!Sctp!) that the price of gold was going up against the weak dollar, yet nobody talks about "peak gold" -- and coincidently we are faced with a housing bust that will most likely suck dry a good deal of pension fund capital right into the Big Shitpile, got me shining up the old tin-foil hat.

It stands to reason that if the folks in big oil (who consider George Bush some kind of savant for getting that MBA from Harvard) can figure out a way to rig the system for maximum profits by exploiting and prolonging the peak oil syndrome where production capacity is maxed while demand keeps growing by keeping the world's 2nd largest proven oil reserves locked up in war or embargo or artificially low quotas for generations; then really smart guys like corporate raider Carl Icahn specializing in real estate and stocks & bonds would find a way to tap into the last great untapped sources of wealth in this country: pension funds and family homesteads.

All that potential liquidity just sitting there, doing nothing. It might as well be rotting for all the good it's doing. If assets aren't trickling up or down or at least somewhere, what good are they.

But there's another source of wealth in America those smarty-pants Wall Street types overlooked. All that dirty, old, gold jewelry in your dresser drawer! What use is it just laying there? Don't you know there are nice gentlemen who will even send you a pretty envelope so you can mail back that tarnished junk and they'll send you a nice, new, big, fat check in exchange! Doesn't that sound great?

So, here's the plan:

First, I'll send you a nice envelope, see, and you send me all of your gold you aren't using right now. Any precious metal will do. That old class ring, the extra-backs and orphaned earrings whose mate was lost who-knows-where. You might as well face facts and get rid of that extra wedding ring since s/he ain't coming back.

Chains? Really? That's so 80's. Junk 'em.

But instead of sending you back a check any pawn shop owner could give you, I'll be sending you a stock certificate in my new venture capital investment plan, see. They've got all these audio-cassets (real cheap now since they're from 2006) on how these guys called hedge-fund managers can make oodles of dollars investing other people's pension money and refinacing their second mortgages. I'm going to listen to most of them and get cracking.

It's easy money and you can be part of this exciting opportunity just by sending me all of your precious metals and I'll give you ... something really neat my daughter designed using her certificate-maker module from iWork's Pages.

That's right. I'm asking you to give me something of value for absolutely nothing in return. But what the heck? It might make you feel better squandering your wealth on someone who's at least honest about stealing from you instead of the swindlers picking your pocket at the gas station, bank and whatever arm of government that put out its hand this week. And it sure as hell will make me fell better.

Cuz Obama ain't buying me no Jet Ski, and I can't afford one without your help.

OK, This Frivolous Law Suit Thing Has Gone Too Far

Via: U.S. House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices.

That's right, we're bringing out the big guns and suing Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela for violating American antitrust laws. Cartels and other such price-fixing monopolies are just unAmerican! If those bastards can't play by our rules, we'll bury them in litigation.

Problem solved! I expect gas to drop to pre-Bush $1.60/gallon levels any day now.

Drive By Thought

When did the Stalkerazzi replace Britany, Lindsay and Paris with Ted Kennedy?

Helicopters outside the guy's home? Really?

The great question of the day being, "Can he go sailing?"

Ugh!

Go Tribe!

Again with the dumb bets I get shamed into making.

I'll be sporting the Detroit Piston's lovely red, white and blue, Flag Pin imitating excuse for a logo until they too choke like the Cavs did tonight in Bean Town -- unless they win it all in which case ... I'm still taking it down.

go pistons

they are da bomb

yay team!

raw, raw.

kill me now.

Epiphany Watch, Peggy Noonan Version

I don't know if Peggy Noonan ever read any of Bob Altemeyer's study of the authoritarian personalities that are the heart and soul of the conservative Republican political infrastructure, but sometime in the last several months of reading the scribbling on the White House walls, she's reached the beginning of understanding why the current incarnation of the GOP coalition was doomed, eventually, to fail.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership,"

I say she's only reached the beginning of understanding. The key here the last sentence, and it bears repeating: ... not serious about leadership, only followership.

Tim the Soldier reminded me of the words of Paul Wellstone, who while using the word "politics," really was talking about leadership, or rather the ideal of leadership:

"Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

The leadership of the conservative movement, now gasping for air, never once led with any sense of altruism -- ever. Power for power's sake, for money, for winning simply to "prove" they were every bit as good as the "elites" they scoff at who think they know better. Winning not to lead a better way forward, but simply so the other guys lose.

Peace, justice? Making life better for everyone? If life in the early 21st Century has shown us anything so far, it's that these concepts are the antithesis of Republican Party rule.

40 years ago, a much more thoughtful and principled Senator represented the State of Arizona than the current aging incarnation. When Barry Goldwater was the icon of conservative leadership, there was a consciousness to the party. His last noble act was to inform Nixon that the thuggery that had usurped the conservatives' cause and betrayed the nation was through.

Nixon was gone, but his thugs and misanthropes stayed on in the party leadership, one of whom holds the record for the longest serving Defense Secretary whose answer to GOP electoral disappointments is not to govern more effectively but to invite an attack against our country's interests; and another who picked himself as the nation's most powerfully sinister Vice President. The intellectual soul of the party, unfortunately, (more interested in good politics in the Wellstone tradition) were relegated to mere tools used by the factions that cared more about "winning" than governing. Peggy Noonan was and is one such useful tool.

The hard-built paternity of 40 years that Noonan eulogizes was effectively neutered the day they allowed a win-at-all-cost criminal like Nixon to take control of an authoritarian political culture that survives more on loyalty than lofty ideals. Promoting incompetent politicians who can act the part, and do it well as long as they have good writers like Noonan authoring the script, they never understood that "big" government or "liberal" government is not the enemy of the people. Bad, incompetent, corrupt government is the insidious evil that can destroy a nation and it's society. Real leadership can cure that sickness.

Noonan has taken a first step, but has a long way to go to understand that this former Reagan speech writer is just the other side of the coin that laid the stench on America's body politic. Her old boss was given pass after pass, defended vehemently by Peggy herself for betraying the Constitution and conservative orthodoxy, making deals with terrorists, conducting illegal wars, "fixing" illegal immigration through amnesty and never enforcing the laws against employers who created the demand for cheap labor in the first place -- and living in a perpetual "Senior Moment."

I doubt seriously that Noonan will ever get to the point where she will acknowledge that the doddering buffoon she and her friends spent so much effort lionizing wasn't really "leader" they believed him to be. Ronald Reagan was an opportunist, like Nixon before him and the two Bushes who followed, and every bit the pandering flip-flopper the Republics collectively are holding their nose and offering up as a sacrifice to the political gods today.

Come on, Reagan was a union president and a Democrat before he saw a clearer path to power as a Republican and in his first major act as President busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union. Call him many things, but someone who stood on long standing principles he most definitely was not.

Peggy's recognized that in a party with no leaders, just opportunists and blind followers, there is a dim future. What she many never come to terms with, much to her unending confusion, is that she was merely 18 years old when the thousand points of light that illuminate that shining city on the hill started going out one-by-one. Now there's none left.

Wet Panties Department Store ... ies

Pammy Atlas, always good for a laugh to those of us who enjoy making fun of Kool Aide drinking, mentally deranged wingnuts, is so "freaking terrified of Obamanation nomination," she has implored "all decent Democrats to come to their senses," and either overturn the results of all the primaries to date and nominate Hillary Clinton, some how, some way -- or follow Hillary in a third party bid for the Presidency.

If Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination, she should abandon
the Democrats as the party of appeasement and defeat, and make a
third-party run for the White House. She owes it to herself and her
country to seriously consider this option. Her party could be truly
progressive in the best sense of the term--a voice for the middle class
and the working poor, a party rooted in traditional Democratic values,
including a strong stand on defense and security.

Leaving aside the fact that this swooning neocon harpie was not to long ago smearing Senator Clinton as a lesbian with a muslim girlfriend, (and in Pammy's world, there is no greater sin than being a muslim, unless you are a mulim-o-nazi appeaser), I really have to ask: ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?

Convinced as she is that Barack Obama is a super-secret Islamic stealth weapon of mass deception, the next 4 to 8 years of President Obama's terms in office should provide endless entertainment as goof-balls like this nut case completely melt down.

Hey Pam, Sweety! Next time the Democrats need some advice, uh ... don't call us, we'll call you.

Most Insidious Bushism To Date

Slate's Jacob Weisberg has tracked the verbal train-wrecks that emanate from Commander Guy's pie-hole. But this is one for the ages ...

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what
happened inside this Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

I hope I live long enough to see the day.

Indeed, I hope George W. Bush lives long enough that if History hasn't quite got around to judging him, at least a jury of his peers will have the opportunity.

Yet Another Reason ...

... to fight for Obama and to make my dream come true of appointing John Edwards as Attorney General ... it would drive Jonah Goldberg off the edge.

... the suggestion that John Edwards would be even considered for Attorney General is horrifying. I really can't think of any mainstream political figure more inappropriate for that job than Edwards.

See, since the day Edwards bowed out of the race, I couldn't think of anyone MORE appropriate for the AG job -- and now I know my instincts were spot-on.

Seriously, can you think of someone who has been more stupid, more wrong about more things than the guy who made the absurd notion that fascism is a phenomenon of the Left the running joke of Blogtopia? [Y!Sctp!]

If this is what it will take to keep the Doughy Pantload awake at night, quaking in his pee-stained footie PJ's, I'm all the more for it.

In fact, I can think of a fairly long list of bed-wetters who should lose sleep with John Edwards in charge of the Justice Department, starting with this fool.

From His Cold Dead Fingers

This is priceless.

Secret Service: No guns allowed at NRA event with John McCain

McCain's on the campaign trail in Kentucky, and he's coming after your guns.

Guns are not barred from the state-owned south wing of the Fairgrounds Convention Center and John McCain's campaign folks said it was fine with them if NRA members with valid concealed carry permits brought guns into his speech. But since our story last week, the Secret Service has stepped in.

But NRA members who walk through the doors will be greeted by metal detectors, they won't be allowed to carry in weapons, even if they have a valid concealed carry permit.

According to an NRA spokesperson, Secret Service members have stepped in and said while firearms will still be allowed in the convention center, they will not be allowed in the Celebration of American Values Forum.

Attention Hillbilly Hassassins: Plan B.

(H.T. Memorandum)

Don't Sweat It, uh ... Sweetie?

Avendon reminded me of one of the Raisons d'Entre for the continuation of Hillary Clinton's campaign:

"I think she's running all the bases," I said. "She's the first woman in history to win a state primary, and she's won a lot more. She's running pretty close to the front-runner. It's a major historic moment." And the more I think about it, the more I think it has to be part of what's driving her. There's a bit of climbing the mountain because it's there, and wanting to be able to stand up in the end and say something like, "Never let it be said that a woman can't go the distance." It doesn't matter if someone else breaks the tape, just as long as she finishes the race. (And think how she'd feel if something did happen before Denver to tank Obama and she hadn't.) I've been unhappy with a lot of things about Hillary, but there's a part of me that kind of admires that. Because she wouldn't just be doing that for herself - she's doing it for every little girl who was ever told she can't.

Now that reminded me of something awkwardly pointed out by her husband -- Barack Obama wasn't the first black man to win a State's presidential primary; and this historical situation was elaborated upon by an even blunter instrument in the form of Chris Matthews -- black men we granted the vote via the 15th Amendment fully 50 years before women were enfranchised via the 19th Amendment.

From an historical perspective, Hillary has already accomplished more politically than any woman before her. There will be more, a lot more who follow the trail she's blazed. Obama has done more than any black man who came before him, but only marginally unless and until he accepts the nomination at the Democratic Convention. At that point, it can be said that both reached threshholds of truly historic proportions.

And that's saying something folks.

And we're going to do a lot better than that with the assclowns the GOP has put up for the sacrifice.

Did The House Of Representatives Just End The War?

Not quite, but this is certainly movement in the right direction.

Today, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting 'present'. They are trying to hand off the war to the Democrats, but even Democrats were able to increase their 'no' vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed. In a separate bill, Republicans also voted against timelines, for torture, and accountability for military contractors, including various elements of a Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq. This bill passed with 227 votes; last year, it passed with only 218 votes, for a gain of 9.

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs. This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans.

It's nice to know that Congress has finally discovered it controls the
purse-strings, even if it hasn't figured out how they're supposed to
use them.



We've been assured by Matt Stoller that the Senate will put money for Baghdad bullets back in the bill and give the C+ Augustus enough cash to pay for more mayhem in Mesopotamia. I'm not sure how that works since the Constitution states that all revenue bills must originate in the House, not the Senate. But who pays attention to that quaint old document anymore.

All of this is begging another veto by the time it gets to the White House. And of course, that's all part of the game I guess. The sad reality is that this game costs lives every single day it plays out.

Obama Grabs the Megaphone

I found this item from Greg Sargent to be very interesting and perhaps with very large consequences down the line: ...

A few weeks ago, Media Matters' David Brock announced to great fanfare that he was taking over Progressive Media USA, a third-party group that would, he vowed, raise $40 million for ads to soften up John McCain in advance of the general election.

Now the group is quietly shuttering those efforts with barely a whimper.

Barack Obama's fundraising team has been quietly putting out word to major donors that they didn't want any money to go to such third-party groups. Instead, they wanted the cash to go to the Obama campaign, so Obama advisers could be in sole control of the campaign's message.

It's a bold move on the part of the Obama campaign. No guarantee that it'll work to his benefit. On the face of it seems counter-intuitive. But I appreciate the risk he's taking -- it could pay off big.

• It basically reinforces his message that he's not part of the same old politics, e.g., smearing your opponent by standing by the side of the road while someone else does it.


• Also, by giving his campaign all the money to control, it makes his megaphone that much bigger.


• Lastly, it highlights the difference between him and St. John McCain on campaign finance reform. Essentially it highlights the fact that McCain skirting the law that has his own name on it.

P.S. David Brock is probably the closest thing our generation has to producing our own Whittaker Chambers. Look it up and tell me if I'm not right.

Bush Breaks Godwin's Law

UPDATE: Biden calls BULLSHIT!

I don't recall Barack Obama offering Osama bin Laden the Sudetenland (or a slice of the Afghan/Pakistan border). Did anyone catch Obama offering Hamas any Israeli territory in exchange for peace, or Hezbollah their own section of Lebanon to call their own?

No.

The fact is, Obama has said exactly the opposite:

"Obama and McCain have the same position on Hamas —no talks, no recognition, no outreach."

But mere facts have never, ever prevented George Bush and his crime family from creating a myth out of whole cloth and fighting the strawman with every ounce of venom their being.

It's not just that George Bush implied the Democrats are no better than Nazi appeasers with this bit of nonsense (via) before the Israeli Knesset ...

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you.

... it is an outright lie!

Unless the Dickhead in Chief is talking about Ron Paul, no legitimate office seeker in this country wants to break ties with Israel. No one is trying to appease, or psychoanalyze, or give aid and comfort to extremists and terrorists -- unless you count John McCain sucking up to homophobic, bigoted preachers ... or listening to Don Rumsfeld's solution for using terror to increase GOP loyalty.

So, the Question Is ...

JET SKIES BITCHES!

Aw Shucks

by Mark Adams

The Queen is feeling oppressed, upset about a wingnut welfare program for conservative scholars (an oxy-moron if ever there was one) and calls it "Affirmative Action".

Affirmative Action is something that should slowly lessen as the struggle for equality among minorities and women increases. We should not be looking to create more "oppressed" people.

I really thought she was a better writer than that. But then again I don't think her head is completely in the game.

See, if the struggle increases, that means it's more difficult, not less, for women and minorities to achieve parity with their white-male overlords. Get it?

I know, we all understand what she thinks she means. But words mean things.

As for blaming liberals for oppression of conservatives ... you only have yourselves to blame. If you feel oppressed now, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Get used to it.

Bigoted Catholic Accepts Anti-Catholic Bigot's Apology

Nothing to see here, nothing at all.

Just remember two things. The Catholic League's pompous leader, the homophobic Bill Donohue (last seen running bloggers off of John Edwards' campaign) is a partisan hack who will forgive anything if it gets more Republicans in office, or more face-time for him on Teh TeeVee. But he doesn't speak for anyone but himself.

Second ... IOKIYAR.

Mississippi: A Blue State?

3 out of 4 House seats are now in the Democratic Party's hands!

With 89% of the precincts reporting Democrat Travis Childers won Mississippi's 1st District 52% to 48% in this traditional GOP stronghold. This is the third Republican district to embrace the Democrats in as many months, Robo-calls by the President and Laura Bush or John McCain couldn't save it, a surprise appearance by Dick Cheney couldn't save it.

Not even race baiting comparisons to Barack Obama worked there, unlike what seems to have happened in West By God -- which evidently still prides itself on it's bigotry despite owing its very existence to a rejection of the break-away slave-owning Confederacy.

If I were an aid to a Republican politician, one thing I'd set aside time to do this summer is updating my resume. It's going to be bleak for these folks.

I Did Not Know That

From WaPo's Dana Milbank:

As a Republican candidate for the House in 1994, he rose to national
attention when reports alleged that he had licked whipped cream off the
breasts of two women at a charity event.

Run Bobby Run! Now that scene from Borat makes sense.

Barr returned to the public eye when, appearing in the film "Borat," he
made a pinched expression after being told that the cheese he had just
sampled came from a woman's breast milk.

Surely these next several months are going to be filled with gold from the ongoing Conservative Comedy Capers. Target rich environment indeed.

Dividing The (Other) Party

Because really, there's nothing much more to write about in Versailes on the Potomac I guess. We've see story after story interpreting the gulf between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in this demographic or that regional group. Is Hillary's persistence hurting the Democratic Party? Has Obama's rhetoric alienated parts of the consituency he needs for the Fall? Has Hillary been too divisive? Are the traditional "big" states Obama needs hopelessly out of his reach?

Folks, this is nothing, I mean nothing compared to the divide on the right. This division is not between candidates or factions, but between the GOP nominee and the people who, you know, vote for the GOP candidates, uh ... religiously.

There of course is the continual insurgency by the Ron Paul Blimpies, the third party campaign of former Clinton witch-hunter Bob Barr, and the polls that show the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of self-identified Republicans have had it, just f*cking had it with the way things are going. I was of course going to link all these separate developments but John Cole's "Double Heh" with a twisting "Indeed" dismount beat me to it.

A five gallon drum of popcorn won't be enough to satisfy the schadenfreudeliciousness of documenting the GOP's dismal prospects for the White House or Congress -- where the Democratic House majority should expand dramatically and we even have a shot at the elusive filibuster-proof 60 seat Senate(or 59 plus LIEberman).

But the funniest thing I saw out there in Wingnuttistan today after noting Michelle Malkin and the gang pissing themselves over the prospect of Huckabee as McCain's VP (a.k.a. Sgt. Carter/Gomer Pyle 2008), was that the GOP's bid to re-brand themselves has run smack up against Karma -- their new slogan "Change You Deserve" is the registered slogan for the anti-depressant Effexor, a drug used to combat the very strategems utilized by the Republican Party ever since Khrushchev was the boogieman in charge of the Red Menace that Goldwater and the Nixonites used to scare their bed-wetting followers.

See, the Republicans try to create and exploit while Effexor is the cure for "depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder." However, the side effects of both, "nausea, apathy, constipation, fatigue, vertigo, sexual dysfunction, sweating, memory loss," may be enough to decide the cure dubbed the "Change You Deserve" is worse than the Republican inspired disease.

Even more delicious is the slogan was deemed inappropriate for it's "unsubstantiated superiority claims" by the FDA. Heh, indeedy doody!

Just Brilliant

The essence of the problem with our superficial media's political discourse.

The Cult of the Offhand Comment

Phrase coined by Somerby via Digby

Missing The Point On Losing Our Bearings

In an indication of things to come as shots are traded faster and faster between presidential campaigns, it's easy to miss the point -- or lack thereof -- when Barack Obama, John McCain and their surrogates trade barbs.

What we should all know and so many missed in the recent back and forth about Hamas preferring Obama and McCain losing his bearing is the simple fact that "Obama and McCain have the same position on Hamas —no talks, no recognition, no outreach."

Pay attention. The media may just throw this identity of position out there as a parenthetical as the Newsweek quote above. Or not, and ignore it for the more juicy yet wholly irrelevant coverage of whose zinger was more witty, or unfair.

It's easy to see how the presidential campaign could swiftly descend into tit-for-tat name-calling. Obama's advisers insist that the race will be about the big issues because there are stark contrasts between the candidates on Iraq and the economy. But if McCain thinks he can't win on those issues—if the war remains unpopular and the Bush downturn goes on—he will be sorely tempted to run down his opponent. The McCain campaign is now poring over Obama's record, looking for weaknesses that can be exposed without race-baiting or hitting below the belt. They want to brand Obama as a "superduper liberal who is out of the mainstream," says one McCain adviser who did not wish to be identified discussing internal campaign strategy.

Issues are boring, both to the electorate and the media. Even when the candidates are diametrically opposed on something it's difficult at best to both highlight those differences and make the case that Obama holds the superior position.

Forget about making noise when they see things the same way.

But on certain issues, it's vitally important that where they have no sunlight between them the GOP not get away with painting Obama as somehow weak or indecisive, or any of the standard canards they've been lobing at liberals for the past forty years.

Obama didn't hesitate to "fire" an "informal, outside" foreign policy adviser who spoke to Hamas as part of his real job in a conflict resolution think-tank, the International Crisis Group. [Just the sort of expert you might want some day to, you know, resolve the conflict there. No?]

The man's actions of course didn't comport with Obama's stated policy recognizing that Hamas is

“a terrorist organisation [and] we should not negotiate with them unless they recognise Israel, renounce violence”.

I think it's partly the fact that the media will quite understandably lead with the most intriguing controversy de jure, and partly the subtle agenda Rupert Murdock's London Times which broke the story with a headling that Barack fired an Hamas friendly adviser -- engaging in a not-so-subtle attempt at undermining Obama's as he is trying to persuade pro-Israeli factions here and abroad that their suspicions he would negotiate with terrorists are unfounded. This kind of headline speaks volumes

Barack Obama sacks adviser over talks with Hamas

The fact that ABC's Jake Trapper uncritically passed the story along complete with the with an Americanized headline announcing to those who are susceptible to the GOP's preferred suggestion that he would be too cozy with an adviser who spoke to Hamas in nearly identical fashion means to me either he's a Fox News plant, or just lazy -- or both.

Obama Fires Foreign Policy Adviser for Meeting With Hamas

Now I ask you, do those headlines, or even a quick reading of their associated stories leave the reader with the facts? Has the public been educated about the candidates respective, or rather identical positions when it comes to Hamas by reporting on this story this way? Of course not.

Could Camp Obama emphasized this fact better? Sure. But the way McCain's people shifted the story into a silly cat-fight, and the media's inability to do anything but highlight spectacle over substance is a disheartening harbinger of what is to come in the next several months.

McCain Is Making This Too Easy

John McCain being in bed with lobbyists is not really news, even when he's actually, you know, "in bed" with them. His notorious escapades as the "most culpable" of the Keating Five would certainly have left a less well connected politician spending more time with his family.

But this one goes way beyond schmoozing and playing the system. Johnathan Singer informs us that McCain tapped one of his lobbyist pals to run the GOP Convention this August, but let him go hours after Michael Isikoff's Newsweek story disclosed that the guy was the CEO of a firm representing the Burma Military Junta -- hired to whitewash their image with Washington insiders.

Singer then connects the dots with a Marc Ambinder note that a McCain Campaign regional manager was the stooge directly in charge of that Burmese (Myanmar) Junta account for the very same influence pedaling firm -- and he's still on the job.

Just calling John McCain a continuation of the Bush nightmare is giving him too much credit. This guy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate kleptocracy. It doesn't matter if McCain fires this lobbyist or distances himself from that one. He's so swamped with them another would take take the place of an inconveniently notorious one in a heartbeat.

George Bush sold the American government to the highest (no)-bidder. A McCain administration would represent the new owners taking up residence.

Sweet Jesus I Hate Bob Novak

If you ever had a doubt that Kool-aide Drinking Hillary Supporter Armando (Big Tent Democrat) has completely sold his soul to the dark side, his jumping all over a bit of the usual unsourced gossip by Novakula should relieve you of such wishful thinking.

"Close-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama."

Please explain to me what retard inside Camp Obama is giving Bob Novak the time of day.

One thing we know, it ain't Michelle.

"My wife does not talk to Bob Novak on a regular basis," Obama told the reporters gathered around him, who included The Times' Robin Abcarian.

Does the very idea of how ludicrous is would be for any prominent Democrat to confide in a Wingnut propagandist like the CIA agent-outing Novak even begin to penetrate the walking, typing talking-point Open Left has become?

Uhh, nope:

... petty nonsense ... Obama will lose in November ... [blah, blah ... blah] ... juvenile ... heartily disgusted ...

And of course, [speaking only for him and the horse he rode in on], in the typical method most of right wing Blogistan has adopted, he once again closes his post with the epithet, "Comments closed."

Aren't ya glad this guy's on our side fellow liberals.

Grumpy McSame Knows All The Tricks

So he doesn't need to learn new ones.

McCain aid, Mark Saller: "We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is."

He would know....

Here's the thing for all those who would argue that "playing the age card" is no better than racism or sexism when selecting the next president: BUNK!

Every day John McCain will get a little older, a bit more weary, a toll that saps the life out of everyone who ever took the job will work on debilitating McCain.

Barack Obama ain't getting any blacker, nor is Hillary getting more female for that matter. Indeed, once the numskulls get used to the idea, the racial and/or sexist attitudes will soften. With McCain, his age as a limiting factor on his ability to do the job will grow with each birthday.

No, it's not fair, and hardly a "liberal" attitude. And yes, many people -- including John McCain's mother -- remain vital and productive well into their 90's. But his advanced years are indeed a legitimate consideration on picking him for the job. A far better factor to weigh, in fact, than anyone's association with a wacky pastor, homophobic minister, or voodoo witch doctor for that matter.

However, close association with voodoo economists is quite the other thing.

Bottom Line On Spending Bills

The War Funding Bill

"However, President Bush has announced his opposition to any bill that contains veterans' benefits and unemployment insurance in addition to the war funds."

The Farm Bill

"House and Senate negotiators yesterday reached final agreement on a new farm bill that will spend close to $300 billion on nutrition, conservation, energy and farm subsidy programs over the next five years, but administration officials immediately announced that President Bush will veto it."

What perplexes me is not that the C+ Augustus in the White House hates anything rational or that helps anyone on a personal level -- like tuition in exchange for years spent in a combat zone or increasing nutritional programs for poor kids, or funding alternative fuel programs so someday we won't have to send our emaciated children to fight for oil.

No, what perplexes me is that our so-called representatives would go along with someone 71% of the nation can no longer stand and not laugh at his puny veto threats -- even those dastardly "Blue-Dogs" are still doing Bush's his bidding.

Ugh!

Fat Lady Dress Rehearsal Report

Clinton vows to stay in race "until there's a nominee."

Which apparently will be in about two weeks.

"Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

"It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race."

Democracy is a great thing, and generally that's that's what we participate in when selecting a nominee for a major political party. However, by now even those who didn't pay attention to your social studies teachers understand that the primaries are only an exercise in representative democracy in a pro forma way.

What with "Super Delegates," rules made and broken behind closed doors, campaign finance laws thwarted, "street money," and the inordinate influence of the corporate media, you can't miss the fact that there's a lot more afoot than simply one-person, one-vote.

And that's okay. It's all good because it all moves towards something more important that which candidate "wins." It builds a consensus.

As in most things in America, it starts and ends with money. It takes millions to even get a foothold in the early primary states, and the first major contest that the media reports on is months before any straw polls are taken. The end of the first quarter financial reporting deadline is examined with a fine tooth comb -- even to the point of documenting just how much a candidate spends on combing his or her hair -- much to John Edwards chagrin.

Until we found out about $400 hair cuts, we also assumed that Hillary Clinton had an enormous if not insurmountable advantage in cash, especially since she was able to transfer millions from her Senate campaign to her presidential run. But when the numbers came out the narrative changed when Obama proved what a formidable fund-raiser he was.

The chattering class chattered, the donors took note, the Clinton machine was vulnerable! At this point many of the super delegates who weren't with Hillary from the start froze and we all watched the back and forth as momentum built for Obama. He won Iowa, Hillary a distant third, and the chattering class chattered about momentum and polls that would crown a new inevitability in New Hampshire.

And they were wrong, and they were burned, and the supers remained frozen, and the battle was on because the people hadn't made up their minds. Burned once, the media discounted Obama's huge South Carolina win. Looking for trends, examining demographics in exit polls for an explanation, not trusting conventional or unconventional wisdom and astonished at how evenly matched the talking heads sounded to each other when they talked to themselves, they froze.

The supers hid, the money flowed, and after Tsunami Tuesday, with only a slight lead in states won and delegates awarded, nobody was ready to come close to declaring an advantage even though half the nation had spoken. By then both Obama and McCain had only won two more states than their second-place rivals. But where Obama only edged Clinton out by 12 delegates that day, McCain claimed 401 more delegates in a Party that only has about half as many at stake as the Democrats select via popular vote. (Oh yeah, they have super delegates too.)

Then as now, with Obama's win-streak prior to their tie in Texas and Hillary's win in Ohio -- a win big enough to freeze the narrative once again about anything being "clear" although even then Obama's lead was formidable enough that we knew she needed a miracle -- there was no consensus among Democrats who we would (or should) get behind.

"Winning" the primaries does not equate to a winning candidate in the fall. A united party is what it takes. If it were simply just about winning and not building a consensus, conventions would still be free-for-alls and not marketing devices. Stage one was the media declaring a victor, giving the supers cover upon coming out even if deciding against the indications of their own constituents.

Now, with more undeclared super delegates than pledged delegates at stake in the coming weeks, the dog and pony shows staged for the benefit of us riff-raff who's only power is our vote, is over. The democratic nomination now lies in the hands of those who always controlled things -- the media (who made up their minds as soon as their Grand Poobah Tim Russert declared Obama a winner), the politicians and the big money folks who are as influential as ever.

The party leaders' new roll, including all of the winning and losing candidates, is to form a narrative that will rally us around the winner and bring the losers back into the fold, to wean the media off the horse-race coverage to a more thematic story before they go back to covering this fall's horse race.

For the rest of us, much as you may hate the process that is so far removed from what they taught you about in grammar school, opting out is not an option.

[You can read more of Mark Adams' work at his blog, Dispassionate Liberal]

TIME Shocks With Hillary Epitaph

Karen Tumulty at TIME documents five mistakes Clinton made, and the blogs are abuzz with the incomprehensible lack of a basic understanding of the system by the campaign's favorite scape-goat, Mark Penn.

Naturally, anyone who is paid millions of dollars as a chief campaign adviser should know a thing or two about how this whole nomination thingy works. For instance, you'd think it would just be expected Mark Penn knew about proportional delegate allocation and that unlike the Republicans, Democrats don't have winner-take-all contests.

You'd think, but you'd be wrong. And Hillary was wrong to ever rely on him, let alone put his ugly puss in front of a TV camera.

Atrios has a hard time believing it. Armando, speaking only for himself, is cheered by the "utter demise" of Mark Penn's political career.

"Astonishing," Obsidian Wings

"Amazing," Tapped

"What a Pennhead," Talking Points Memo

"Anything is possible," TPM Election Central

Ironically, despite the smaryness of the traditional practice of the magnanimous winner paying off the debts of a gracious loser in these things, Mark Penn will probably be paid by the candidate for whom his indispensable advice was most helpful -- Barack Obama.

I Take It Back, She Is Done

The Tea Leaves?

NBC News reported the New York senator had cancelled morning television appearance and all public appearances on Wednesday.

The night before John Edwards called it quits he was still making speeches and rallying the troops, the volunteers were still working hard at assigned tasked and most of the campaign staff didn't have a clue that the sudden unexplained cancellation of the event scheduled for the next day should have told us the jig was up.

Now she's gone back to Washington to meet with Super Delegates and the party leadership where, like well meaning heads of the family will chart out the future for their chosen Golden Child and figure out how to help Barack Obama become the next President of the United States of American and end our long NeoCon nightmare (Thank whatever diety you may or may not honor).

The New York senator was upbeat but conciliatory Tuesday as she addressed supporters in Indianapolis.

"I can assure you, as I have said on many occasions, that no matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party, because we must win in November," she said, even while vowing to continue the race.

Obama celebrated his North Carolina victory by sounding like an eventual nominee.

"Tonight," Obama said, "many of the pundits have suggested that this party is inalterably divided; that Senator Clinton's supporters will not support me, and that my supporters will not support her. Well, I'm here tonight to tell you that I don't believe it."

She's thrown everything she had at Obama, and he's stronger for it. She doesn't have anything left, and no money to do any more damage. For all that, she ends up the evening losing North Carolina and tying Indiana, a net loser in both delegates and popular votes in two big States that were really her last hope.

After Pennsylvania, the narrative coming from Camp Clinton was why can't he close the deal. Now, the reality is nothing, not even a "nuclear option" can stop him.

Hillary Gracious, But Not Done ... Quite

There's something pathological about someone who will sit through yet another set of post election speeches this season. Just call me loony.

Tonight Hillary Clinton's tone was a tad more humble, a bit more like someone facing the inevitable than a candidate claiming a "game changing" victory. While vowing to go on, knowing she got crushed in North Carolina (one of the "Big Swing States" for those paying attention) and as of the time of this writing her margin of "victory" in a State her buddy Evan Bayh was supposed to deliver in a big way is only 39,000 with over 200,000 votes left to be counted in Obama strongholds, I was left with the idea that this was a bow before the encore which will bring down the final curtain.

[Update 12:45 est, the margin is down to 16,000 votes, Clinton 51%, Obama 49% -- a tie]

She said they would fight for Florida and Michigan's delegations to be seated and fight on in the few States that are left. However, there was an fondness in the way she spoke of Bayh tonight that reminded me of the wistful way you say goodbye to a good friend after a long visit. Her genuine affection for her husband and especially her pride in their daughter, all spoke unconsciously that this long journey was nearing an end.

Most intriguing was her pledge to fight "for the Democratic nominee," an emphatic conciliatory gesture to camp Obama.

Unlike so many GOP tools, when Hillary tips at windmills like gimmicky tax holidays that will never pass and are terrible ideas, or even true Quixotic quests to fight on in a campaign that can't be won -- she really knows better. She's really too smart for some of the political posturing she's been up to lately, way better than that. When John "Ace" McSame says the economy or Iraq are just doing fine, and that all our problems will be solved if the Federal Government gives everyone a free tank of gas, what frightens me is that I really think he, like the current C+ Augustus in the White House, actually buys this crap.

If Hillary really believes some of the junk and pandering we've seen over the last couple of months she just ought to get it over with and run as an independent with Joe Lieberman and quit the Democratic Party. She's also smart enough to know that dumb and underinformed people vote too.

Here's the lowdown at this point:

1. Tonight Obama erased the effects of his defeat in Pennsylvania -- at least mathematically in the popular vote and delegate count.



2. Who's going to give her any more cash at this point? Ridiculous. Hillary's broke, millions in debt, and the chattering class at MSNBC are speculating that part of the wind-down to this will include Obama's campaign assuming some of her bills -- including Mark Penn and the Clintons themselves -- as well as seating Florida and Michigan "her way" now that they really don't matter.
   



3. There are now more Super Delegates up for grabs than pledged delegates to be elected in all the contests that are left, WV, KY, Puerto Rico (bigger than most think) etc. which look to be pick-ups for Hillary (he wins Oregon solidly) that still will not put her over Obama's lead -- the "real" campaign now moves behind closed doors.



4. She really lost Indiana tonight, a State that I picked long ago on Tsunami Tuesday to be delivered in a big way by Senator Bayh as her clincher and his ticket to the Vice Presidency. That's why I stick to post even analysis instead of prognostication. Winning the Bigot Vote in a Democratic primary -- when those folks will never, ever, vote for the Democrat in the fall -- is no victory whatsoever.



5. Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos is in full force with hard-core Republicans voting in the Democratic primary.



6. While saying Indiana is still too close to call even after midnight, MSNBC'S big guns, Russert, Matthews, Todd all joined Olbermann calling the election itself, nationwide, for Obama. Once the chattering class who infect Versailles on the Potomac have made up their minds and line up to fight Johnny McSame, it's really all over. You know it, and so do the Super Delegates.

With all due respect to contrarian voices (Luv ya Rachel Maddow!), Hillary is really a nice, more gracious person than the candidate she plays in front of the cameras. At least I hope so or much like that sad filly on Sunday, she's going to cripple herself by running too hard to finish second in this race.