Category: Presidential Campaign

What the F&^% is Wrong With the Obama Veep Team?!?!

No Comments

Ann Veneman??? They are floating the name of Ann Veneman as a name under consideration?

She’s a Republican, she prevented farmers from testing their cows for Mad Cow disease, and she is a former member of the Bush administration.

These folks want a former Bushie as Vice President?

Obama needs to get whoever is leaking this to STFU, and to get whoever suggested this to STFU too.

BTW, it turns out that The Nation is all over this, and goes into some more detail, calling Veneman “uniquely awful”:

  • Her political strength is in California, which is redundant.
  • The rural and farmer communities distrust her, and in fact booed her when she visited “fly over” country.
  • Her background is as a vociferously absolutist supporter of free trade deals.
  • Her tenure as Ag Secretary was, “strictly pro-agribusiness, pro-pesticide company, pro-pharmaceutical.”
  • Is a big supporter of Frankenfoods.

Additionally, I think that some of Obama’s staff miss the bigger point: While his current supporters will ALL vote for him, this is the sort of choice that would demoralize them.

Note that the original source is Politico, and so is a bit suspect though.

Is the Media Beginning to Explore the Hypocrisy That is John McCain?

No Comments

John McCain has argued that Barack Obama has not attended enough hearings on Afghanistan. Well, ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf burnt a very small amount of shoe leather, and determined that McCain has attended no hearing on at all on Afghanistan in the past two years, though McCain is apparently asking for a get out of jail free card on this because, “McCain’s years of previous foreign policy experience make up for his recent lack of attendance at hearing.”

It’s amazing that the McCain loving press is actually mentioning that he’s criticizing Obama for things he’s done worse.

What a Bunch of F&%$ing Whiners

No Comments

Yes, we are now seeing hand wringing from the pampered self-centered Washington press corps.

The example given is when Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee write a piss-poor article on polling about Obama, Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race, and he’s offended, when the Obama campaign launches a point by point rebuttal that makes him look like a complete pratt.

If you don’t want to look like a pratt, stop being one.

The press needs to get over itself.

Why John Sidney McCain Didn’t Talk to the Exorcist

No Comments

I mentioned that the sick old man was going to Louisiana to talk with Bobby “The Exorcist” Jindal, and the scuttlebutt was that he was sizing him up as a VP running mate.

Well, he also intended to fly to an oil rig, to talk about the safety of oil rigs, and to falsely state that there was not a single oil spill post Katrina:


Dennis Knizley looks out on an oil rig beached just off of Dauphin Island, Ala., Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 30, 2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the island and brought the enormous structure a few hundred yards from shore. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Jan-Michael Stump)

In fact, there were somewhere between 146 and 595 oil spills, depending on whose numbers you use, that spewed 9 million gallons of oil.

In any case, the McCain campaign canceled the flight to the oil rig, claiming that the “weather” was to blame, though the weather was actually pretty good, it further south, on the Tex-Mex border where Dolly was hitting.

More likely what stopped him from giving the speech was the fact that there was a barge accident on the Mississippi that day, which spilled 419,000 gallons of oil, and it would have made the campaign stop look like a clown show.

Come to think of it, the entire campaign is starting to look like a clown show, and I’m beginning to wonder if God hates the John McCain campaign.

More Media in the Tank for John Sidney McCain III

No Comments

Well, in the aftermath of CBS’s selective editing, we have Howie Kurtz, “Mr. Conflict of Interest”, alibiing for CBS deliberately mis-editing the interview.

Seriously, someone is in the tank for McCain…Hell, everyone in the media has this “man crush” for McCain, which is why this is not wall to wall 24/7 news right now, because they “know” McCain, and they “know” it’s not fair to hold him to his word.

Barack Obama: Fire Cass Sunstein

No Comments

BTD at Talkleft has the goods:

It appears that Sunstein has suggested that only the “Egregious Crimes” of Bush and His Evil Minions™ be pursued under an Obama administration.

While both BTD and I agree that the standard of Jonathan Turley on Olbermann, that all crimes by the executive are “egregious”, is excessive (Turley supported impeachment over “Monicagate”).

I would further argue that pursuing all the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of the Bush administration would not be possible, as there are simply too few lawyers in Washington, DC to do this.

That being said, there are certain crimes that must be pursued, because otherwise it subverts the rule of law, which is already quite weak inside the Beltway.

What sort of crimes? Things like illegal wiretapping, WHICH CASS SUNSTEIN SUPPORTED, and the military kangaroo courts of Gitmo detainees, WHICH CASS SUNSTEIN SUPPORTED (See here and here).

He justifies them by supporting the proposition that we elect a king with unlimited power every 4 years.

This should be reason enough to remove him completely from the campaign, and from any position in your future administration.

McCain’s Meets With Jindal

No Comments

So it appears that John Sidney McCain III is spending some time in Louisiana, but besides mentions of a visit with governor Bobby Jindal, nothing else is specified.

Maybe they want the performing whack job, he has claimed to have performed an exorcism, to be VP. It certainly would be entertaining.

Of other note, it article indicates that Bob Novak got owned on the leak that McCain would announce a VP pick this week:

Robert Novak, the columnist who helped trigger the VP frenzy with a blog posting Monday, told Fox News on Tuesday that he might have been duped by a McCain campaign aide.

Novak said he was encouraged by “a very senior McCain aide” to put out the story that McCain would name his running mate this week. He said he since has been told by “certain people” he “may have been used.”

Gee….You think????

The Sick Old Man Can’t Even Get the Facts Right on His Signature Issue

No Comments

John Sidney McCain III barely graduated from Annapolis, 894 of 899, and then only because because daddy was a high ranking admiral.

Now, he gets the escalation in Iraq wrong, claiming that the so-called “Anbar Awakening” was the result of the “surge” even though it pre-dated Bush’s first mention of escalation in Iraq by 6 months.

Of course, this is Katie Couric’s CBS, so when the gaff was made, they edited it out, because by the rules of the “kule kidz” in the press corps, any gaff by McCain is an honest mistake, and the public must be shielded from seeing the “straight talker” when he shows himself to be a complete pratt.

I Cannot Believe that I am Quoting Robert “Traitor and Proud of It” Novak

No Comments

But he says something that I the punditocracy has studiously avoided saying until now:

In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama’s emphasis on Iraq — her Senate vote for it, his against it — defeated her.

While this is blinding clear to everyone else in the world, to the pundits, where being wrong on Iraq is a sign of good judgment, acknowledging this fact is the political reality that dare not speak its name.

I will note that he gets one part wrong: Obama wasn’t in the Senate for the vote.

A Top Obama Fund-Raiser Had Ties to Failed Bank

No Comments

Well, it looks like I just beat the Wall Street Journal by 4½ months.

But they have now discovered Penny Pritzker and Superior Bank.

The bank, closed in 2001, basically created the securitization of subprime loans that is at the core of much, though IMNSHO not a majority, of the credit crunch.

And she is now Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman.

Well, we’ll be hearing this 24-7 for a while, if just to ignore the latest McCain flip-flops and screw-ups.

They Have the Tape, Maliki Endorsed the Obama Withdrawal Proposal

No Comments

The New York Times reviewed der Speigel’s tape of the Maliki interview, and has pronounced the original statement endorsing Obama’s plan as accurate:

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

(emphasis mine)

What’s more, we now have a statement from Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman who walked back the statement under pressure from Bush and His Evil Minions™, that having all troops out in 2010 would be a good thing, so they just endorsed Barack Obama’s position again.