(parenthetical remarks)

Clintonian Democracy

2008-06-03T21:55:00.003-05:00

A horrendous and narcissistic non-concession concession speech, as if that's a surprise.

New odds: Hillary Clinton will concede when Guns 'n Roses releases Chinese Democracy.

Hillary Clinton: Feminist

2008-05-28T19:39:00.001-05:00

From Hillary Clinton's letter to superdelegates:

I am in this race for all the women in their nineties who've told me they were born before women could vote, and they want to live to see a woman in the White House. For all the women who are energized for the first time, and voting for the first time. For the little girls – and little boys – whose parents lift them onto their shoulders at our rallies, and whisper in their ears, "See, you can be anything you want to be." As the first woman ever to be in this position, I believe I have a responsibility to them.

Yes, let me imagine having that conversation with my own daughter:

See, you can be anything you want to be. All you have to do is grow up to marry a very powerful man and then use his fame to win a seat in the U.S. Senate in a state where you've never lived and without ever having held any prior elected office. Then, when you finally run for president, you can unleash your ultra-famous ex-president husband as your attack dog and co-campaigner, all the while complaining about what a disadvantage you're at because (sniffle, sniffle) the boys are so mean.

Do that, and you could join a long line of female heads of state who got where they did for similar reasons: Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan was the daughter of the first prime minister, Megawati Sukamoputri of Indonesia was also the daughter of a beloved former prime minister, Corazon Aquino in the Philippines was the widow of an assassinated senator and leader of the political opposition, and the current president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, is the wife of the ex-president.

What's that? Yes, it would be quite an honor for the United States to join that illustrious group of nations. Quite an honor, indeed. And what a step forward for women, too!

Lieberman Jumps Shark - With Sharks!

2008-05-27T11:57:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan says Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Asshole-Conn.) has "jumped the shark", thanks to his wise decision to headline Pastor/Screaming-Bigot John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit in July.

You may remember Hagee as the kind-hearted soul who referred to the Catholic Church as the "Great whore" and, perhaps hitting a little closer to home for Sen. Lieberman, blamed the Jews for their own history of persecution because they denied Christ and said that Hitler was doing God's work by "helping" to convince the Jews of Europe to establish the state of Israel. (Thanks, God!!)

So Lieberman isn't just jumping the shark. He's jumping a cage teeming with hungry tiger sharks while waterskiing astride two massive great white sharks that are being pulled by a dozen frenzied hammerhead sharks.

Just to be clear.

Image of the Day

2008-05-11T11:03:00.002-05:00

Up next? Campaign surge.

ABBA Drummer Found Dead

2008-03-17T18:21:00.002-05:00

I'm guessing it was a "bizarre gardening accident".

News for Kids

2008-03-17T00:24:00.001-05:00

Being a new parent can really change your perspective on things like family, values, priorities—and cable news anchors.

My 8-month-old daughter and I have been watching a lot of coverage of this protracted primary battle, and I've noticed something weird. She really perks up whenever Chris Matthews or Lou Dobbs comes on the air.

And I think I've figured out why: she thinks these moon-faced babblers are babies just like her. She may be right. Consider:

Mercifully, she hasn't started hating immigrants yet, but I'm getting worried that her first words are going to be "border fence".

Bonus observation: Tim Russert looks like a 4-year-old who's eaten Christopher Hitchens.

Or is that the other way around?

What's In a Name?

2008-03-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

A new rule for Wall St. investment firms: you really shouldn't put the word "Bear" in your name.

Why tempt fate?

According to the Wall St. Journal, J.P. Morgan Chase has agreed to buy venerable investment firm Bear Stearns for the low, low price of $236 million. That's million.

For the sake of context, BS (heh) was valued at $3.54 billion at the end of business Friday. It was worth in the neighborhood of $20 billion back in January 2007. That would be a one(ish)-year drop in value of over 98%.

Perhaps I'm just spitting into the wind, here, but maybe it's not a good sign for our economy when a respected 85-year-old Wall St. firm could conceivably be bought by a PowerBall winner.

The Obama Steamroller

2008-02-13T13:45:00.001-06:00

A huge day yesterday for Barack Obama, who swept primaries in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. In all three races Obama got more votes than all of the Republicans combined.

He beat Hillary Clinton by at least 23 points in each race and won 63.9% of all Democratic votes in all three races to Clinton's 36.1%

And there's good news for the Democratic Party as well. Double the number of voters turned out for the Democratic primary in Virginia as for the Republican primary, and that's in a state that went for Bush in 2004. There were 2.6 times more Democratic voters in Maryland, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, 19.8 times more Democratic voters in D.C.

That's good for the Democrats—and good for Obama in particular—since he's clearly responsible for the overwhelming turnout that has been seen in Democratic primaries all across the country.

In head-to-head polls with presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, Obama holds a 3.7% edge, while Clinton actually loses to the Arizona septuagenarian by 1%.

The writing is, as they say, on the wall. What with Obama's demonstrated ability to garner critical independent votes, it would be insane to nominate Hillary Clinton to run in the 2008 general election. So, is the Democratic Party insane?

Good question.

Headline of the Day

2008-02-12T10:56:00.000-06:00

Drudge links to an article using the following headline: World's Biggest Christ Struck by Lightning

Jolted Jesus

No word on whether ElectroChrist came to life and wreaked havoc in the streets of Rio. Here's hoping.

Spinning in a Downward Spiral

2008-02-12T09:38:00.000-06:00

The New York Times has an article this morning about Hillary Clinton's campaign woes which quotes a number of donors and supporters worried that the nomination campaign is slipping away from her.

Enter Clinton spinmeister Mark Penn:

She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have [sic] made her a winner... Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.

It's true that Obama won his Senate seat against carpetbagging Republican Alan "Crazy Eyes" Keyes after his much more formidable opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race amidst a sex scandal that surfaced during his divorce from Star Trek: Voyager actress Jeri Ryan.

That said, Penn's spin is a load of crap. Hillary has never faced a serious Republican challenger, either.

In 2000, Hillary was poised to run against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was expected to make it a very tight race. In May of 2000, however, he was forced to drop his Senate bid after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Oh, and because he had been very publicly cheating on his wife.

His replacement was a Long Island Republican named Rick Lazio who had little more going for him than the fact that he had an attractive wife and couple of cute kids, whom he shamelessly exploited in countless campaign ads touting his 'family values'. He gave it his all (one unintentionally hilarious NY Daily News headline read "Lazio Pitches Tent in Swing Country"), but Clinton, with her massive name recognition, steamrolled the relatively unknown Lazio, winning by a 12-point margin.

In 2006, Clinton was expected to face Jeanine Pirro, the ambitious and somewhat well-known Westchester County District Attorney. After a few months of lackluster campaigning, Pirro withdrew from the race, leaving the Republicans to offer up John Spencer, former mayor of Yonkers, as its sacrificial lamb. Clinton held on to her Senate seat by crushing Spencer with a 36-point margin.

Does Mark Penn consider either of these races to have been seriously contested? If he's an honest man, he couldn't possibly. So I suppose that leaves it an open question.

George Bush: Hope Peddler

2008-01-10T09:20:00.000-06:00

President Bush wants a legacy. A good one, that is.

Hence his little trip to the Middle East where he hopes to unite (not divide) the ornery folks now squatting on land ultimately set aside for the Miraculous Second Coming of Jesus Christ^TM—after which, conveniently, all the squatters will be evicted straight to the fires of hell.

In the meantime, G.W. wants to take care of some business. Forgive him if he's unclear on the concept. Yesterday, Bush predicted that the Israelis and Palestinians would sign a peace treaty before he leaves office a year from now.

Nearly in the same breath, however, he conceded that it was unlikely for the problem of Hamas to be solved within that timeframe. How Bush plans to get Israel and Palestine to sign a peace agreement while the Palestinian Authority still has no control over the Gaza Strip—from which Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel—is beyond my meager capacity to understand. Maybe it will be a faith-based initiative.

So we're really faced with three possibilities here: President Bush is a bold leader with innovative ideas about international diplomacy (no), he is a hopeless naïf with an unjustifiable optimism over matters about which he knows little (yes) or he's screwed everything else up so badly that he thinks, "what's a little more garbage on the pile?" (this requires some self-awareness and the admission of error, so, no)

Sound Familiar?

2008-01-07T09:41:00.000-06:00

Here's Josh Marshall of TPM talking about the panic and confusion over at the Hillary Clinton campaign as her presidential dreams circle the drain:

I find it difficult to conceive of how unprepared her team was for this not-that-hard-to-predict turn of events.

What it tells me is that they never really planned for this. And they literally have no idea what to do at the clutch moment. For the now they are grasping for anything and everything.

How long until Hillary declares "Mission Accomplished"?

We already have a president with tunnel vision; utterly irresponsible and incapable of contingency planning. Do we really want to go down that path again?

Spam Poetry

2008-01-01T23:09:00.001-06:00

Constructed entirely from my spam subject lines:

Exquisite Replica

Dearest
like others, allows
scalding democratic
skeptically smoking
of quality face time

And itself
As my tide
Find that special someone
Don't be shame
Napoleon enjoyed this,
Stop flossing now!

Happy New Year!

Romney-bot 3000

2007-12-06T15:18:00.000-06:00

More proof, as if we needed it, that Mitt Romney is a plasticized empty vessel—all facade, no content.

Andrew Sullivan has the side-by-side comparison of his obviously staged Kennedyesque "respect mah religion" pose.

Governor, you're no Jack Kennedy.

Quote of the Day

2007-12-06T13:46:00.000-06:00

He warned that if Democrats succeed in forcing a quick end to the war, the American people will be at greater risk.

"I think, among other things, it would encourage [Al Qaeda terrorists] to launch further attacks," he said. "I think it would encourage them, if we were to operate in way that said, 'You're right, if you kill enough Americans, you can change U.S. policy,' they'll kill more Americans."

That's from a Dick Cheney interview in Politico.

Of course, we've already sent the message that "if you kill enough Americans, you can change U.S. policy" to the terrorists loud and clear. They killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001 and U.S. policy changed drastically. Now we have gulags and torturers, a multi-trillion dollar military mistake in Iraq, warrantless wire-tapping of U.S. citizens and an executive branch that disdains the Constitutional rights and responsibilities of the other two branches and of the American people. America is at a low ebb in popularity worldwide because of these and other changes in U.S. policy, brought on by the killing of many fewer Americans than have died in Iraq.

This is the kind of policy change that Cheney likes, however. Naturally, what he really means is policy changes that weren't his idea. But he's not just being hypocritical, here. Look at the implication of what he's saying. If no number of killed Americans is "enough" to justify a policy change (a proposition that has never been true in the history of this nation, by the way), then an unlimited number of Americans could be killed and the 'appropriate' response would be to change nothing.

That's a pretty handy philosophy to have when you're trying to wage permanent war.

Trivial Yet Ridiculous

2007-12-05T10:40:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not talking about George Bush. He's not trivial. Yet.

I was logging in to a certain financial website where I track my meager 401(k) holdings and was greeted with this strange screen:

Looks pretty normal on the surface, but look at the lower half. If you have forgotten your e-mail address? Are they serious? Out of all the things you need to remember to log in—e-mail address, password, username—your e-mail address is the last thing you're going to forget.

Beyond useless.

Ok, now that I've shattered your world with this investigative report you can go back to reading about how Incurious George either knew all about the NIE on Iran's nuke program and lied about it all this time, or didn't find out about this huge news until last freakin week even though this vital information was available at least six months ago. Either way, it inspires confidence, no?

Hey, maybe the White House folks had some hand in designing that login screen.

I Knew It!

2007-11-30T15:26:00.001-06:00

Scientific proof that Republicans are delusional: Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others.

I guess this explains how they can sleep at night.

Gay Flap Flop

2007-11-29T10:17:00.000-06:00

Who cares about this flap over the "gay question" asked at last night's debate—allegedly by a member of Clinton's campaign apparatus?

It is as if people think that candidates should not be subjected to challenging or hostile questions during a debate. Well, they should. We're electing a president, here, not a beauty queen (as was all too clear from the pallid and dour faces on display last night in Florida).

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr has some 40-odd years of experience in the U.S. military and is gay. He has as much of a right to ask questions as the next guy. Do the Republicans getting all bent out of shape over this really think that the debate questions should be nothing but softballs? ("Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?")

All this hyperventilating (I'm looking at you, Drudge) looks suspiciously like an attempt to change the subject from the abysmally poor answers the candidates gave to Kerr's question.

If Kerr really isn't a military veteran, then you've got a scandal. Otherwise, quit yer whining!

Getting Away With Murder

2007-11-23T22:31:00.000-06:00

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides in 2007—the lowest number in over 40 years.

How do you know I don't have a dirty bomb in one of my fists?

Something is obviously wrong, here. How could this be possible? Everybody knows that Mayor Giuliani was entirely responsible for the drop in NYC crime during his reign, thanks mostly to his manliness and his "I don't give a crap what you think" moxie. (Can you simultaneously have both manliness and moxie?) But America's Mayor left office in 2001 (not long after 9/11^TM, as he might have mentioned once or twice), back when there were 661 murders in the city—the lowest figure for his years in office.

If NYC murders continue at the same pace for the last month of the year, there will be 487 murders in 2007. That means Rudy's lowest total would be 35.7% higher than this year's figure.

This raises some troubling questions. Does this mean that Mayor Bloomberg is a better mayor than Rudy (the greatest mayor of anywhere for all time), or, gasp!, 35.7% more of a man? Or could it be that Rudy was a beneficiary of serving as mayor during a time of drastic crime reductions across the entire country and his tough-on-crime tactics were only a part of a much bigger puzzle?

If you take away his anti-crime superhero cape and couple that with his serial exaggeration of the super-big role he played in keeping America safe from Islamofascists (and their $10,000 donations), all of a sudden Rudy doesn't appear to be even slightly qualified to run for president.

And that just can't be.

Birds of a Feather?

2007-11-12T15:32:00.000-06:00

See, the Bush White House does have something in common with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after all.

An Inside Job

2007-11-07T16:29:00.000-06:00

The people who did this to a harmless Japanese tourist on the Amtrak from New York to Boston—these people, and the unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians to whom they answer, who live only by fear and fiat—are the true threat to America and its way of life.

Terrorists can blow up buildings and bomb trains. They can kill people, but they can't kill America. That can only be done by people with the power to shred the Constitution and plunge our government into a state of paranoid vigilance.

The "Truthers" have it all wrong about 9/11. The real inside job's right here.

Strange Bedfellows

2007-11-07T13:51:00.000-06:00

And they say irony died on 9/11.

Today Rudy Giuliani accepted the endorsement of charlatan/preacher Pat Robertson. This is a little odd, since Pat Robertson believes that America "deserved" to be attacked on 9/11 because God had withdrawn his protection from our once-beatific nation on account of Internet pornography, secularism and, of course, abortion.

Rudy "9/11" Giuliani, as we all know, has built his entire national political reputation on the fact that unlike President Bush, he didn't instantly crap his pants when we got attacked. (Suffice it to say our standards for leadership have slipped a bit.)

During a GOP debate not long ago, Rudy lashed out at Ron Paul for having the temerity to suggest that certain US policies toward the Middle East may have played some part in the radicalization of the 9/11 terrorists. From TPM:

"I don't think I've ever heard that before...I would ask the Congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

Actually, Rudy has heard something similar to that before. And far from asking the fellow who said it to withdraw his comment, today Rudy cheerfully accepted his endorsement. Go figure.

But, as they say, politics makes strange bedfellows. Especially when the politician in question is a shallow and cynical opportunist who (perhaps rightly) has no respect for the intelligence of the American voter and who regularly exploits the true victims and heroes of 9/11 for his own political gain.

Still, I never thought I'd see Giuliani get in bed with one of those Blame America First characters.

Especially not one who probably thinks that Giuliani is going to hell for being a Catholic. And a cross-dresser.

Moratorium

2007-11-05T09:18:00.000-06:00

Drawing comparisons between liberals and fascists is a time-honored tradition on the right. It's not just lunatic exhibitionists like Ann Coulter, either. Even slightly less lunatic figures like Jonah Goldberg have gotten in on the act.

Maybe it's time to place a strict moratorium on this kind of rhetoric. It all rings a little false when the Republicans and their mouthpieces are simultaneously in full embrace of detention and interrogation techniques actually used by Stalin, Hitler and the Khmer Rouge.

Don't you think?

Vote For Me!

2007-11-02T23:17:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to announce that I have inexplicably been named as a finalist for a 2007 Weblog Award. I am competing in the "you get as many hits in a year as Andrew Sullivan gets in 10 minutes" category. You may vote for me here. Chicago-style ballot box stuffing is strongly encouraged.

Here are a few "greatest" "hits" from the past year that I invite you to peruse. Please wait until after you cast your ballot, though; I don't want to lose any votes.

A Moment of Stupidity, in which the author opines on school prayer. He's against it.
Lost in Translation, in which the author meditates on the strange phenomenon of a Turkish politician named Ufuk Uras.
Separated at Birth?, in which the author notes some striking and disturbing similarities between Kathy Griffin and Brian Eno circa 1973.
'What's Wrong With Being Sexy?', in which the author uses the words "sexy" and "Don Imus" in the same post without causing a rip in the space/time continuum.
A Whiff of Bigotry, in which the author notices that Andrew Sullivan loses control of his critical think faculties when writing about Islam.
The Myth of Global Warming in which the author glumly notes that global warming naysayers are trying to run out the clock on our lives for their own personal gain.
Atheism Is Not a Religion, in which the author pops an evangelical bubble and chides some militant atheists just for good measure.

Curveball in the Dirt

2007-11-02T12:23:00.000-05:00

Turns out that "Curveball", the secret intelligence source used by the US to bolster the WMD case against Iraq, wasn't a "prominent chemical engineer" after all. His name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan and he is a failed chemical engineering student who spun his tales of pure fiction to help gain asylum in Germany.

A presidential intelligence commission found that Curveball, who mostly told his stories to German intelligence officials who passed them on to the U.S., was a fabricator and an alcoholic.

It just goes to show: put your trust in a liar and an alcoholic and you'll end up in a horrible, pointless war.

We're still talking about Curveball, right?