Five Before Chaos

As expected, most of the media narratives over yesterday’s contests, are, well, for lack of a better word, retarded. Still reminds me of a bad reality t.v. show. But the headlines of the day for me is undoubtedly the “Hillary open to Obama as running mate” thing.  Kinda funny for someone who’s still over 100 delegates behind to be putting that out there, dontcha think? Aside from the fact that I doubt either candidate’s ego could deal with that scenario (regardless of who the #2 is), it’s showing to me something we’ve known along – Hillary still believes her own inevitability bullshit. It really still hasn’t sunk in yet that she’s not entitled to this.

What? The day before almost-Super Tuesday and not a word from me about it? Ok, I’ll bite. Here’s what I think’s going to happen to the Clinton campaign come tomorrow night. And I really hope she doesn’t try cheating. Watch carefully…

(h/t to Pharyngula)

I’m starting to wonder if I need another Hindenburg picture on here, this time with McCain’s face on it. You’ve probably read the news this week about him getting the endorsement af a batshit insane end-times preacher named John Hagee. Now Hagee’s name come up a lot with ‘anti-Catholic bigotry’. Catholics like to whine about victimhood quite often, often equating disrespect or criticism as ‘anti-Catholic bigotry’, so that angle’s not really phasing me much. What is sickening is what a racist prick this guy is. Media Matters has a big piece on the crazy things this guy has said, but one really stuck out. He once had a “slave sale” as a fundraiser for a high school:

A March 7, 1996, article (accessed via the Nexis database) in the San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to “meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a ‘slave sale,’ an East Side minister said Wednesday.” The Express-News reported:

Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a “slave sale” to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, “The Cluster.”

The item was introduced with the sentence “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and ended with “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.”

A July 27, 2006, Wall Street Journal article about Hagee noted the incident:

To help students seeking odd jobs, his church newsletter, The Cluster, advertised a “slave” sale. “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone,” it said. “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” Mr. Hagee apologized but, in a radio interview, protested about pressure to be “politically correct” and joked that perhaps his pet dog should be called a “canine American.”

And ya’ know how I always go on about how conservatives just aren’t funny?

Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.

Asshole.

McCain appareently not only got an endorsement from this guy, he had a “strategy breakfast” with the guy last year. I wonder if Tim Russert’s gonna go hogwild on McCain abut this like he did on the Obama-Farrakhan non-story.

Expect even more Republican implosions as the McCain campaign tries to have it both ways: denounce the haters, yet allow al the surrogates to continue. These people truly are pathetic. I really think what you’re seeing now is the culmination of Nixon’s so-called ‘Southern Strategy’, in that the GOP has been overtly and covertly embracing the racists in this country for so long that it’s bound to start biting them in the ass. Better late than never.

I’m already so weary of the way politics are continuously devolving in this country. Nixon would be proud, as would Lee Atwater. There seems to be a certain conventional wisdom, shared by Hillary Clinton and Bill Kristol, that the only way to win in this country is to appeal to the worst, anti-intellectual elements of our society. Now, Obama doesn’t need me to defend him, because he does seem to handle these attacks unusually well, but jeezus, this is getting ridiculous. On Drudge today (I’m not linking), word is a Clinton operative got some photo out there from one of Obama’s visits to Kenya, and horror of horrors, he’s wearing traditional garb, complete with headdress. Get it? He really is a Muslim, and a brown one, too! Hide the kids. And then now we also have the ‘Obama doesn’t wear a flag pin’ thing going on (a plus in my book). That one works well with the idiots who confuse nationalism with patriotism and think that the way you love your country is support its government unquestionably, put lots of flags, ribbons, and bald eagles everywhere, and deride those who dissent. Sounds like the Soviet Union.

I think what it comes down to, both for the GOP and Hillary is that they have no other choice but to attack. In the case of Hil, I think she’s just getting pretty desperate (witness the unhinged meltdowns this last weekend). To have prepared yourself for this for the last two decades, only to see it fading fast cannot be easy. In the case of the GOP, they have no choice, simply because if they really talked about what they’ve really done and what they really want to do, they’d be even less popular than they are now. They know quite well that their base is easily manipulated over jingoistic and racist ideas, so they play it to the hilt. I’m just hoping that people are waking up to it and getting tired of it.

I just read the WaPo story that broke a few minutes ago. It seems that McCain was indeed lying when denying meeting with broadcaster Bud Paxson before sending two letters to the FCC on his behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson’s quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain’s office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. “Was Vicki there? Probably,” Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. “The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.”

[snip]

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. “No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding,” the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, “I remember going there to meet with him.” He recalled that he told McCain: “You’re head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter.”

She was good, eh? Most telling, though, is the response from McCain’s attorney, Bob Bennett. Tell me if this doesn’t encapsulate the very right-wingnut mind in a nutshell (emphais mine):

“We understood that he [McCain] did not speak directly with him [Paxson]. Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?” Bennett said. “McCain has never denied that Paxson asked for assistance from his office. It doesn’t seem relevant whether the request got to him through Paxson or the staff. His letters to the FCC concerning the matter urged the commission to make up its mind. He did not ask the FCC to approve or deny the application. It’s not that big a deal.”

Get that? Did? Didn’t? No difference? Lied? It’s not that big a deal. Like we haven’t heard that a billion times in the last 8 years.

Lying is never a big deal to these people. By the time people notice, they’ve already moved on to the next one. I don’t really care if McCain was diddling his lobbyist gal pal. But in the context of what McCain may have done on her behalf, I’m definitely concerned. I hope this one gets legs. If people could tune out the right-wing noise machine for once, it will, and I’ll start to really believe things are actually starting to change.

You know, I really have to laugh at this conservative meltdown over McCain. Heck, he just got booed at CPAC, the “Cretins Pouting And Crapping” convention. I don’t get it, he’s just not as much of a prick as they expect their candidate to be (and McCain is quite the prick, from what I can gather). What’s even more astounding is how so many of ‘em were supporting Romney, who was pretty much as liberal as one could get in the GOP, at least until he started running for president. So, apparently, it’s more important to appear that you tow the far-right line, than to actually mean it.

What’s even more hilarious, as just about every Repub in the running does everything they can to sodomize the corpse of Ronald Reagan, is how unlike Reagan the party’s become. Sure, Reagan was a horrible president, and his “hate the government” rhetoric was largely responsible for the rise of movement conservatism, but I don’t seem to remember Reagan being so friggin’ outwardly nasty and downright hateful as most of these people are.

Sure, McCain’s got a shot at the WH, but I can’t think of a better representation of modern day conservatism as embodied in him: old and tired. If he’s unfortunate enough to run against Obama, the contrast will even be more apparent. It’s time to put this movement out to pasture for good.

UPDATE: this kos diarist knows what I’m talking about.

Radical cleric James “He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.” Dobson is apparently none to happy about Rambo McCain heading towards the GOP nomination. Why? Oh, it’s those occasional “maverick” moments that McCain has:

“I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

In the Republican party, a “maverick” is one who occasionally pulls his head out of his ass long enough to acknowledge some sort of truth and do the right thing (and no, this is in no way an even remote implication of McCain support on my part – I still think he’s nuts, if only a bit less than the rest of the ever-thinning GOP roster). Dobson’s little hissy fit shows the strong disconnect that these people have with the way reality works, as well as how much they really miscalculate the tendencies of Americans. It becomes ever more apparent, once the people who once had their ear are either no longer or in positions of power, or more likely, have realized they’ve milked the “Christian Sucker” voter for all they can and the game is up. James Dobson’s America is truly a nasty, horrible place, and thankfully, we’re moving further away from that now. He says if McCain gets the nod, he won’t vote. Oh, the tragedy.

It’s ok, though. he’s got his new TV superhero show to keep him busy (apologies to Adam West).

Ah, it’s good to be shrill again. Been a while.

Ralph Nader launches exploratory website. Methinks he’s not exploring the meaning behind that gargantuan ego of his.

Yeah, Edwards is out, too. That’s a bummer, since he’s the only Dem (short of Kucinich) that seems to get it. If he’s smart, he’ll hold on to those delegates, and work out a deal at the convention to get himself an AG spot. It’d be nice to have an AG that took his job seriously, and wouldn’t be squishy about going after corporate crime, too.

So this presents a real problem for me in the primary. Neither Hillary or Obama are palatable options from where I’m standing. Neither are trustworthy. I don’t trust Hillary, simply because of her DLC-triangulation history, and I don’t trust Obama because he’s big on rhetoric, short on specifics, and his approach is incredibly naive. I think if he gets in there, the GOP will hand him his ass until he learns what “fighting” is all about.

So I really don’t know what to do. One of them will more than likely be President. And big props to Edwards in staying above the childish behavior that HRC and BO have let the campaign devolve into. Let’s hope that the nudge he’s given the other candidates towards a slightly more populist slant will stick.

Ghouliani dropping out. I guess it’s hard to win when you only have one delegate so far. He plans on flying to LA to endorse John McCain, where afterwards he will be checking himself in to an undisclosed mental health facility so he can overcome his chronic “9-11 Tourettes” and get on with his life and plans to find a new mistress, now that he’ll have more time on his hands.

Seriously, though, one quote from the linked story says it all:

Giuliani’s bid for the nomination was based on his leadership. The only question was how many voters would follow. 

Well, I guess that speaks volumes about his leadership.