In Your Dreams

If there's absolutely anything to this, we might be able to start reading these folks again without feeling like we just found the Hillary infomercial channel on the intertubeZ.

Mona Charen @ The Corner:

I was just on the John Batchelor radio program. He says that Chuck Todd, NBC News political director, has heard from Hillary's people that she would accept the number two spot on the ticket.

It's the dream ticket people. Rejoice!

As long as he's winning, ahead in delegates, ahead in superdelegates, there's simply no way Obama's people or the rank and file of the party are going to get behind Hillary without resenting her and knowing she manipulated the situation, period. She may have the party machinery, but Obama has the boots on the ground -- the phone-bankers and door knockers the party will need to win this thing.

Independent voters being split between McCranky and Obama is better than all of them voting for Johnny Ace McSame because they refuse to vote for Hillary. Together, it's an unstoppable ticket that suits their personal styles. The VP should be the attack dog and draw enemy fire while the top of the ticket remains aloof from the fray and "presidential." I can't think of a better good-cop/bad-cop coupling -- and it doesn't work if Obama is the number two.

The "Bubba" problem is solvable easily enough according to this brilliant blogger we all know and love. There'll be a NY Senate Seat opening up that Bill could be appointed to if Hillary decides she won't be stuffing her spouse in the man-sized safe she inherits from Dick Cheney. (Just keep a hard count on the Senate Pages, and it's all good.)

MoDo's Insatiable Quest For Testicles

Today's Loose Translation of Dowd the Destroyer: If Obama doesn't want me and my fellow Villagers to do to him what we did to Al Gore, he better not accept the Vice Presidency under Hillary.

The superdelegates are watching to see if Obama can stiffen his backbone. After seeing their candidates lose races they should have won in 2000 and 2004 because they flinched at Republican political waterboarding, Democrats do not want to watch the bully swipe their lollipop a third time.

No Maureen, the superdelegates are watching you mete out exactly the same schtick you used to bludgeon the last two Democratic candidates, both of whom were Vietnam vets and vastly more qualified than the Disgustus Tex you and your ilk foisted on the nation, and praying this time the rest of the Villagers in Versailles on the Potomac ignore your insipid penis envy.

... he will now have to come to grips with something he has always skittered away from: You can’t be elected president unless you prove you’re tough.

Unless of course your name is Hillary, and then you have to prove you can be feminine, but not too feminine, since everyone already knows you're tough. Seriously, it must take a tremendous dick to satisfy this succubus? No doubt her vibrator has a kickstand.

How many clever dog whistles can we find to alert the rest of the press corps to grab their torches and cry, "Homo!" as they launch their tired game yet again -- this time to in support a broken old man whose time is long past, yet one of the few GOPers who didn't duck out of putting their ass in harms way some 40 years ago.

She describes Obama as, "... slender, chewing Nicorette and perfectly groomed in his crisp white shirt ..." and complaining, or actually, "whiny." Translation: "Obambi" is gay, insecure, metrosexual, bitchy.

Man the battlements boys! To Arms!

In the world according to Dowd, Senator Obama's advisers are a decidedly French sounding, "coterie." They lack all the asshole gene that enables Hillary to be ""shameless" and her "kneecapper" hacks to be complete hypocrits, "with a straight face," as if that's a desirable quality in public service -- superior to any "egghead ... effete and vaguely foreign," member of Obama's staff.

If he thinks Hillary has cut him down to size lately, he’d better imagine what his life would be like as the Clintons’ vice president.

Actually Maureen, I think we have a very good idea exactly how deeply you plan to rhetorically emasculate Barack Obama even if he is at the top of the ticket. Would you feel better if he bought himself a ranch?

And Don't Forget Kids

McCain is a liar ... and wants you off his lawn Right Now!

Please Turn In Your Keys and Membership Card

Anyone who can write this...

We are limited to a choice of a Black Man who is beholden to the crime syndicate in Chicago and will be a pawn of Jesse Jackson, or a woman who changes positions so frequently that the word chimerial takes on a much broader meaning. Perhaps we should rename them: Barak the Bought vs. The Chamelion.

... is no longer permitted to use the pronoun "We" when referring to any member of the Democratic Party.

Go Away. You are no longer welcome.

The Women Who Vex Me

So, Hillary Clinton's TexOhio firewall held, sorta, to my wife's delight (she really doesn't want to hear about the numbers thingy any more than anyone else who isn't an obsessive blog reading political junkie). Nothing is more annoying than someone doing a little victory dance, who isn't me.

IMAO via Rosemary

Then Clinton's campaign went on to piss me off some more (delighting all those who get some morbid satisfaction by my spitting invectives at my television -- like my loving wife) by insisting that John McCain is more qualified to run the country than her fellow Democratic candidate (all to the delight of the right).

Is Hillary really looking for the Lieberman vote?

Chris Bowers nails the absurdity by pointing out that you can't say one minute that you'd consider your opponent as Vice President and in the next breath say you don't think he's qualified for the top spot. You pick a VP because that person is "ready on day one." (Dan Quayles need not apply.)

Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson pissed me off some more when he compared Obama to Ken Starr after the campaign already compared him to Karl Rove and George Bush. Now it turns out it was her people who were giving a wink and nod to Canadian officials about her NAFTA stance, and not the Obama camp as we were all led to believe just a day or two before the biggest NAFTA hating state in the union voted.

But is even this the whole story?

OTTAWA (AFP) — US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's campaign, while rapping rival Barack Obama for telling US voters he is anti-NAFTA and saying otherwise to Canada, tried to reassure Canada too, local media said Thursday. A top aide of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper meanwhile was identified as the likely source of an alleged leak that provoked a diplomatic fiasco involving both US Democratic presidential contenders.

Canadian PM Harper just made my list of Canadians who just piss me off -- like my mother-in-law. (Okay, it's really not that long of a list, but Celine Dion is on there somewhere, and Alanis Morrisette also makes both my list of Canadians and women who are getting on my nerves.)

Obama was making severe inroads on Hillary's poll numbers and certainly looked like he would at least come even if not surpass her last Tuesday but ran out of time. If the trend continued for another week he looked to pass her up -- but in the last days before the election his numbers went flat, even backwards.

I don't think it was the 3am phone call thing. That commercial wasn't even playing in Ohio. It was NAFTA-Gate. (Or maybe there really is something to the SNL Bump.)

If Pennsylvania is really more like Ohio than ... Ohio, then surely this won't be the last chapter in this sad saga. Of course, as a long-time Cleveland Browns fan, Pittsburgh ... in fact the whole Keystone State long ago made my list of things that are simply too annoying to tolerate.

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Time to Choose

by shep

I don’t envy Hillary Clinton. If you assume, as I do, that she wants what’s best for the country as well as for the Democratic Party she has a tragic choice to make. She has to concede the Democratic nomination for president to Barack Obama.

The simple fact is, there is no way for Hillary to win the nomination without fracturing the Democratic Party and alienating vast numbers of young and independent voters who are ready and excited to pull the lever for a Democrat for their first time. In the process, she will dramatically weaken the Democrat’s chances to win the presidency against John McCain, which is why Republicans such as Rush Limbaugh and Charley Crist and much of the McCain-worshiping, Clinton-hating corporate media is working so hard on her behalf.

And, in the end, even if she were to defeat McCain, her governing coalition would amount to little more than half the Democratic Party, against Obama Democrats, Independents, Republicans and the mass media gasbags.

If she cares for the good of the Democratic Party and the country and the rest of the world, Hillary Clinton has only one choice to make and she has no reason to delay that choice and inflict additional damage on the likely Democratic nominee. Even though this is a relatively bloodless campaign, certainly compared to the nasty, dishonest shit we’re used to seeing from Republicans, and it’s actually (historically) quite early to settle on a nominee, for her to choose otherwise would be a tacit admission that the thing that ultimately matters most to Hillary Clinton, is her own ambition to be president.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Nigga Please

Imagine for a moment that Charlotte Allen's vapid piece in the Washington Post denigrated African Americans as stupid and worthless as her hit job on Female Americans and you might appreciate how horrible is is to see this on the pages of a major American newspaper -- especially at a time when a woman is knocking on the door to the highest of glass ceilings.

Is it possible to conceive such a blatantly sexist screed being equally as in-your-face racist and expect the paper still be in operation tomorrow?

Hilzoy's advice to Allen is spot on.

Note to Charlotte Allen: if you find yourself having to argue that you
are an idiot in order to make your case, you might consider the
possibility that an idiot like yourself is unlikely to get much right
about women, or for that matter about anything. You might therefore ask
yourself what earthly purpose it serves to have idiots like the one you
take yourself to be publishing their thoughts. Is your gig at the Post
noticeably different from those game shows in which we get to watch
people humiliating themselves on national TV? If so, how?

Maybe highlighting her self-loathing was the point, and that some thoughtless male editor elected to publish her indictment of half the human race ironically proved her wrong, that men are just as if not more stupid than women. Perhaps she proved you can hate women with impunity but never come close to hating minorities so publicly and get away with it -- or that the entire thing was an homage to Gonzo Journalism of a (thankfully) by gone era.

Or maybe there's a reason fewer and fewer people buy newspapers every day.

Rotten Kids

I knew it! I just knew it.

Newspaper discovers college kids go out drinking Thursday, skip Friday classes, like terrible music, are unconcerned about your lawn.

from
Fark.com

This wasn't news back in 1980 when I avoided Friday classes at all cost. But then again, Ohio University taught the rest of the world how to party. Why do you thing The Junction's 4-for-1 special on Thursday Nights was so popular?

(Full disclosure, the Friday Bowling class was my roommate's idea -- and as punishment he always had to buy the first pitcher.)

...and the lawn thing ... let's just say I still own more frisbies than mowers.

Mary Matlin, Objectively Pro Obama

Maybe it's because her husband, James Carville is in the tank for Senator Clinton and they are psychologically incapable on agreeing with each other on anything, but watching GOP shill Mary Matlin on the Tim Russert Show (not to be confused with Meet the Press) her bias towards skewering Hillary while giving Barack Obama a pass was clear.

In an almost breathtaking double-take, Matlin "poo-pooed" talk about Senator Obama's stance on publicly financing his campaign as irrelevant -- that people don't care and are more interested in "Kitchen table issues" like paying bills, health care, etc. She was clearly unimpressed with such inside-baseball issues.

Less than 60 seconds later, Matlin turned around and proclaimed that pseudo-scandals like the Travel Office and Rose law firm billing records were Hillary's "Achilles Heel" and would be her undoing.

I guess in the Carville/Matlin household, Vince Foster's fate is riveting dinner conversation.

I know that's not what we talk about at the kitchen table here in Ohio's Heartland. No doubt the Carville/Matlin clan considers us some kind of elites and just don't know what's important -- like Mary, Timmeh! and the rest of the Potomac Villagers do.

Believe. Believe In Karma

Arianna Huffington via Political Wire:

"Should Barack Obama end up winning his party's nomination, he will
give his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in
Denver on August 28 -- 45 years to the day Martin Luther King delivered
his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”