Seen around the blogs.
Category: Presidential Campaign
Today’s Elections
Hillary stomped Barack in West Virginia….No Surprise there.
However, there are some other elections of interest, in Mississippi, you have Democrat Travis Childers running against Greg Davis in a district that went 62%-37% for Bush in 2004.
Childers won the first round, but was just short of an absolute majority, and as of about 10pm EST, courtesy of the Cotton Mouth Blog:
CHILDERS (D) 42,029 – 51%
DAVIS (R) 40,275 – 49%
(366 of 462 precints reporting)
Update: AP Calls it for Childers, and there was much rejoicing.
We also have a primary contest in Nebraska between Scott Kleeb and Tony Raimondo for US Senate. Kleeb has gotten a fair amount of netroots support, and Raimondo was a Republican until he decided he wanted to run for senate, so I’m pulling for the guy with the 5 letter name.
At this moment, the NE Secretary of State is showing Kleeb with a 68%-26% lead over Raimondo with 24% reporting.
Wanker of the Day: Ted Kulongoski
The Democratic governor of Oregon, who chose to appear at a McCain campaign event, because the sick old man threw out a couple of words on dealing with global warming.
Turkey.
Bob Barr to Run for President
He will run on the Libertarian ticket, at least he will if he wins the nominating convention.
I got nothing here, except for a bit of amusement that one of the main actors in the attempted coup impeachment is now running on a 3rd party ticket.
Howard Dean for Vice President
What the Other Matt (Yglesias) said about people who supported the war, or more accurately about the idea that supporting the war somehow creates some foreign policy “street cred”:
This reflects, I believe, an incredibly damaging mindset that’s been crippling the Democratic Party for years and the prospect of excising this mindset is the single most appealing thing about the prospect of Obama being the nominee. Clinton’s ‘street cred’ on national security consists, of course, of being massively wrong on the most important national security issue of her career. Paradoxically, a lot of folks find her massive wrongness on this hugely important issue reassuring because they and their friends were also wrong and they view having made the right call to be a suspicious quality. After all, the Iraq War may have led to thousands of U.S. deaths, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and millions of Iraqi refugees all at a cost of over $1 trillion and in ways that’s damaged the strategic position of the United States, but war opponents were all a bunch of hippies.
I say good riddance to that. I got the war wrong, and I think that gives me less ‘cred’ than I would have had had I gotten the war right and I think that, politically speaking, it makes sense to put people forward who aren’t tainted by the war. But most of all we need to ditch the mindset that says ‘cred’ on national security is composed of being hawkish even when that means being wrong.
To me, this means one thing: Howard Dean as Obama’s running mate.
McConnell Holds Out For All or Nothing FEC Vote
This is interesting. McConnell is still wants the FEC nominations voted on all at once, as opposed to individually, which effectively kills the new nominations by Bush.
Anyone have a clue as to what the heck is going on here? Why is Mitch McConnell dissing the White House and putting McCain in a bind over this?
As long as there are no new nominees, then David Mason stays head of the FEC, and he has been harshing on McCain something fierce, so there are two reasons that I he’s doing this, he hates McCain, or that van Spakovsky has some sort of hold on him.
It’s Called Journalism
John McCain’s hometown paper, The Arizona Republic, has been covering John McCain longer than any other paper, and as a result they do some journalism, and reveal that McCain’s as a maverick is not born out by his votes in the Senate, at least not the ones where his votes matters.
When the votes are close, he votes Republican….if he manages to show up at all.
1000 Words: The Election and the Economy
Paul Krugman come across this picture:
This would indicate a Democratic blowout, neh?
Obama Wins NC, Clinton Wins IN
The expected results.
Sorry for the light posting today, my son had an IEP meeting today, and between that, and the fact that my I was playing Mr. Mom this evening, not much chance to get to the computer.
Primary Day
No predictions, but the conventional wisdom is that Obama wins NC, and Clinton Indiana.
If the conventional wisdom is wrong, things either get really quiet (Obama sweeps), or even louder (Clinton sweeps).
Guam
Just noticed that hey were having a caucus.
Obama wins by 7 votes out of about 4500, which gfives a 2-2 delegate split.
7 votes….your vote does matter.
The Curious Case of the Corrupted Campaign Clip
Well, it now appears that the clip showing Mickey Kantor using the term “White N***er” is a fabrication.
It appears that Youtube clip was fabricated using footage from the 1993 documentary The War Room, or so the sources around the net say.
The editor of the clip claims that did not alter, but he did “enhance” the sound.
The interesting thing is not that someone, either as a deliberate deception or because they wanted to hear that, made a bogus clip. What is of concern is that it became the screaming point of the blogosphere.
Please, chill out.
Na Ga Na Dol It. Wouldn’t be Prudent
Presidential Polls….I look at them, but don’t have anything to add, so I suggest Talking Points Memo’s Poll Tracker.
Well, I might comment on a trend, but my attempt at using Google Spreadsheets to deep a list of polls on my site gave my reader(s) nothing, and me a headache.
Crossing the Olbermann Event Horizon
I enjoy watching Olbermann, though I differ with him on one matter, I do not think that Hillary Clinton is the devil incarnate, but NPR’s reporter Ken Rudin, who compared Hillary Clinton to Ales Forrest, the deranged character played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction:
But after comparing Senator Clinton to the insane, murderous, kidnapping, stalking, knife-wielding, suicidal, bunny-boiling character of Alex Forrest, who has to be drowned and shot to be finally stopped in Fatal Attraction, even the harshest critic of Senator Clinton is probably beginning to think, you know, that might be a little harsh. Maybe an apology is in order.
I’m just sayin’ if you’ve lost Keith Olbermann because you are hating too much on Hillary Clinton, you have crossed some sort of metaphysical event horizon, you aren’t going to get out, and all you can look forward to is for tidal forces to rend you into subatomic particles.
I’m just sayin’.
Watch it below.
Obama was Stupid, Clinton is Being F%$#ing Stupid
Hillary will be on the O’Reilly Factor on Wednesday and Thursday.
Please, I ask one thing….Find a way to use the word Falafel.
Thoughts on Obama and Wright
Let’s be clear, there are any number of Rabbis whose services I attend, but I’ve yet to see a problem that I really needed to go to them for, because I think that Rabbi Hillel’s distillation of Torah while standing on one foot * pretty much covers the situations that I’ve encountered.
I like most of the Rabbis I’ve met. But I disagree with some of the things that they believe†.
In terms of what Wright’s opinions mean about Barack Obama, the answer is that it means very little. It is only among the Christofascists who expect parishioners to act in lock step with their pastor.
That being said, the assault by the right wing on this is not swift boating. It’s Willie Horton.
Truth be told, swift boating was far more benign than Willie Horton.
The purpose of swift boating was to attack Kerry on his (only) strength as a candidate. The purpose of Willie Horton was to create an association Michael Dukkakis and a violent black criminal. It’s goal was to make him a black rapist.
Obama’s problem as a candidate, largely as a result of his skin color, is that he cannot be an angry candidate, because America fears the “Angry Black Man”, and Wright is an explicit attempt to make him into such.
It’s unfair. It has very little to do with the facts. The only thing that is important is if/how Obama puts this issue to bed.
*You can see the story here. The end state is that Hillel said, “”You want to learn a great deal quickly, don’t you? Very well, I shall teach you the Torah while you stand on one foot. This is our Holy Torah: ‘What is hateful to you, do not do unto others.'”
†They have almost all been way too hawkish on Israel, even though I consider myself an Israel hawk.
What Republican Rule Has Given Us
OK, I’m a member of a by-invitation-only BBS, and one of the members Hoop, wondered why the candidates don’t tell the American public the truth about how badly America as a nation has been screwed up by republican policies, he thinks that:
This is an opportunity that comes knocking but once a lifetime.
Yet both Democratic candidates are like deer in the headlights when it comes to outlining an economic picture of the future of the US.
Perhaps they’re not the leaders they portend to be.
So I thought about for a bit, and said to myself, “OK, let’s see…as an honest leader with vision, here is what an honest candidate with vision would say.
- 20 0f the last 28 years have had Republicans in the White House and their goal has been to bankrupt the country so that we can not take of our poor or needy and so that the ordinary folk live hand to mouth and cannot work together for a better life. They have done this because they and their rich friends and supporters do better when ordinary people are powerless.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have also decided that it is in their interest to keep the American people afraid of external threats, so they are on a constant quest to find and create new enemies to scare us, so we won’t review their policies, and so we will spend our money on guns and prisons.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have aggressively created a fear of people who don’t look like us and of random criminal violence against us in order to make us waste money on putting more people in prison than any other society in the history of human kind.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have put roadblocks in front of attempts to create meaningful energy independence, because it requires a large military to protect those supply lines.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have created a system of world trade that ignores the rights of the people and makes it secondary to the profits of the banker.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have systematically attempted to replace the public good with the concept of corporate profit in our society.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have mounted an aggressive assault on the standard of living of ordinary Americans through low wage policies.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have masked this drop in standard of living by coming up with even more obscure ways for people to go into debt, (including College debt) so that they create the illusion of well being while being a slave to that debt.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have steadfastly destroyed meaningful attempts to help people get basic medical care.
- And they have succeeded.
- They have attempted to replace a society in which the manufacture of useful items, into one where parasites make money by trading between each other to the detriment of our population and our industrial base
- And they have succeeded.
Because of this, while [insert candidate here] is in office, we sill see:
- Oil leave the dollar standard, and its price going to more than $200/bbl.
- The dollar plummeting against foreign currencies.
- Inflation in the double digits for the foreseeable future.
- Food shortages nationwide, as transportation becomes increasingly expensive.
- Many of the suburbs becoming abandoned ghost towns, because those transportation costs.
- Civil disorder and unrest.
- The collapse of our hideously expensive military under its own weight.
- Your children and your parents dying for want of proper medical care.
At this point I guess that the candidate could say, “I offer you nothing but blood, sweat and tears,” and while the historians might like that, the voters certainly would not.
Maybe it should wait for the inauguration, because if you say it before the elections, you will make Barry Goldwater’s defeat look like a ride at the kiddie park.
Ron Paul Still Freaking Out Mainline Republithugs
It appears that the Ron Paul zombies are nothing if not organized. They pushed through a rules change which would allow the Paulites to select most of the delegates, and the state Republican party recessed to prevent it from happening.
It’s a pity Paul is not younger. He’d be giving the Republican party headaches for years to come.
Too Batsh&# Insane for the Constitution Party
Yes, even that merry band of Christofascists have that Alan Keyes just isn’t their type, so instead, they nominated wingnut talk show host Chuck Baldwin for president.
When the Talibaptists eschew the most priminent right wing nut-job in the United States, he disowned his daughter for being gay, you it means that you are either too crazy, or too black for them.
For Mr. Keyes, it’s probably both.
McCain Faults Bush Response to Gulf Storm – New York Times
Gee, John McCain has finally found a place where there is a bit of light between him and Bush and His Evil Minions™, specifically the clusterf%$# known as hurricane Katrina.
When this was all going on, the very day Katrina hit, George W. Bush was at your brthday party eating your cake, you fs$#ing moron.
Moron.