McCain Tries For The Early Checkmate

By revealing Obama's itinerary for travel in Iraq.

Joke's on him though, Obama landed in Afghanistan.

Either a) He's trying to get Obama killed before the white supremacists can get to the Democratic nominee or b) his campaign was complicit in a disinformation campaign.

Given that you get the same effect from not saying a goddamn thing as from planting false information...guess which one *I* think? Not that I think St. John the Divine did this; just one of his Repub Frat Boy Staffer types...the ones the Repub party is so thoroughly larded with these days.

Offered Without Further Comment

George W. Bush Sewage Plant name is on ballot in San Francisco.

Republicans And Love Of Country

Basically, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Obama is making a patriotism speech where basically he says that he won't let anyone impugn his patriotism.

Which McCain has, if not in so many words. Has the man never heard of the Intertubes?? He says outrageous shit and then simply denies he said it. This may be the first year in which YouTube is used more to debunk a lying politician than to check out Leeroy Jenkins.

OK. Plug your ears and lock up the kids. I'll wait...


WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH REPUBLICANS?!?!?!?

Seriously.

Did you somehow become fucking convinced that only YOU love your Country(TM)? News flash assholes, not only do you NOT have a monopoly on loving America, I'm still not convinced that upwards of 90% of you ACTUALLY love America. Sean Hannity dry humping the country (and one sort of envisions that happening to Florida...like a little rat dog humping a leg) notwithstanding, what Republicans ACTUALLY do is TALK about loving America.

I'm going to give you a little hint. Republicans (in the main) don't love America, they love themselves. The reason they spend so much time talking about loving America is that they figure that America is the country most likely to allow them to love themselves with the least amount of interruption or inconvenience. If another country, say Albania, made them a better offer...they'd be on a plane in a second, all those country and western songs notwithstanding.

How can I say this? Simple. If, when discussing taxes, your first words about taxes are something on the order of, "It's MY money, how dare they tell me what to do with it," you love yourself.

If you are terribly concerned with a terrorist attack on American soil...putting YOU at risk...without regard to whether an attack is an existential threat to the country? You love yourself.

Are you concerned with what "Teh Gay" is doing to our moral fabric (LINK WARNING: Shower before and after clicking on the link)...mainly because it makes you feel icky (or even worse, vaguely titillated)? You love yourself.

Basically, what we have is a group of people who are like an abusive boyfriend. As long as America puts out, in whatever kinky way these Republicans want it to, they'll let America occasionally go out to the mall or see friends. If the bitch crosses them though? She'll be sorry.

So spare me your patriotic chest thumping. Go play with a tub of butter or something and leave those of us who actually care about her take her to the ER and have the broken bones looked at.

Best Line Ever

In the spirit of Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person In The World", I am instituting a "Best Line Ever" topic...hyperbole, since I intend to periodically find one. The criteria is simply that it strikes me as insightful and funny all at once.

As a result, Best Line Ever today goes to hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. She was writing about the rather foolish notion that Obama could be our first woman prez, a la Bill Clinton as our first black prez. She notes that both are absurd...Bill is NOT black and Obama, barring some radical hormone therapy and surgery is not and never will be female.

But then she gets to the good part. In noting that the reason to consider Obama feminine is to contrast that with Our Current Idiot Manchild's style of governance. She then writes, "If I truly thought that masculinity was anything like the sneering, bullying caricature that people try to foist off on us every four years at about this time, I'd either take a vow of celibacy right now or spend some serious effort trying to discover whether it's possible to become gay by sheer force of will."

Best Line Ever.

Can Someone Please Tell Me Why

given this monstrosity:



Why oh why shouldn't I be allowed to burn out all of Fox News' Studios, scatter their so-called journalists to the four winds of permanent exile and then salt the earth?

Shall We Play A Game?

For those of you, like the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Pedant, who are too freaking young, that refers to this:



It's also a brief look back at those halcyon days of the early 80s, when we could count on our adversary acting in their own rational self-interest, for what it's worth. But rather than Global Thermonuclear War, I'd like to talk about avoiding Democratic Thermonuclear War.

Hillary's campaign has put out internal guidance to not plan any further appearances after Wednesday's speech in front of AIPAC. While the Clintonites were quick to say that this was by no means the end, I think we all know it's the end. As I've stated before, Hillary pushes this past tomorrow and she'll be luck to run unopposed in the NY Senatorial campaign. Hell, she pushes much past tomorrow and I'll give money to her opponent for Chappaqua DOGCATCHER if she decided to run for THAT.

So what the fuck (that's for you, Really Mad Professor) IS she up to?

Let's play a game. Let's call this game, "Hillary wants to be a Veep." God alone knows why, but let's suppose. She's misplayed her hand up to this point in my opinion, but lord knows Bill is undisciplined enough to be a one man gaffe factory if this is actually her goal. This by the way assumes, not without some degree of justification, that some of the Hillary staffers look more to Bill than her (by the way; NOT because of sexism...by all reports Bill has BY FAR the fouler temper).

So here we have a goal, "Become the Veep," not entirely supported by the tactics of the Clinton Campaign, but not conclusively obviated by it, and a means: "Come in a close second, with an option to drag everything down with her." Not historically unprecedented.

Now, it is possible that Hillary can deliver the cracker vote (aka, Voters So Far Back Up In The Hills They Have To Import Daylight) to Obama. And he needs it, at least the Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania versions thereof. Because while he can (and SHOULD) craft an Intermountain West Strategy (the Democrats version of a 40-Years-Later "Southern Strategy"...a way to pick off traditionally Republican votes cheesed off by the current incarnation of their party) and put states like Colorado in play (way to go EnviroMom...and yes, you have your own blog-du-plume now that I have decided to file all the serial numbers off all your IDs out there)...it's mathematically "fun" to work out how he wins the Electoral College. Best to avoid the whole exercise and BURY the Sons'a'Bitches in November. Hillary CAN help there, I believe.

Maybe that's her motive, but just in case, perhaps Obama should pull her aside. And now, let's pretend we can put words into his mouth:

"Hillary, I need you as VP. It heals a party divided, and moves quickly to uniting the country. But let me be perfectly clear. I will be the President. The first time we have a policy disagreement and I read about a leak that even THEORETICALLY can be linked to the Vice-President's office? You will spend the rest of your days in the Old Executive Office Building waiting for somebody semi-notable to die so you can do SOME kind of job. There will be NO reprieve from the Siberia I put you in. You will write The Gulag Archipelago Two before I let you so much as watch a Cabinet Meeting on CNN. Just so we're clear."

I don't think she wants the job. I think she wants to finish out the whole primary season so she can say, "A woman went the distance and damn near won." Hell, if that's what she says sometime this week or next, I take back every nasty thing I've said about her, because she'd be right. But as long as we're playing games...

How about a nice game of Chess?

For God's Sake, Can We Just CALM DOWN?

The primary season's waning days have me thinking.

Well, that, and a raft of what one hopes are misstatements and the rantings of out of control staffers coming from the Clinton Campaign. Let me preface all this by saying, the reason the somewhat unhinged statements are coming from Sen. Clinton's and not Sen. Obama's campaign are twofold. First, she's lost and both she and her supporters know this; the difference being that some of her supporters seem unwilling to...well, see the title. Second, she has Bill on her campaign, and while Bill was an excellent President, his will to win regardless of cost actually exceeds hers and because he has a sense of grievance exceeded only in some Republican circles which seems to have taken hold. Thus he's lunging around like an untethered cannon on the HMS Victory. (Just click the freaking link...I can't be you guys SOLE source for unwarrantedly obscure military history)

Let's start with Hillary And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. As reported in the New York Times Blog, it seems as if Hillary really wasn't, you know, suggesting someone might do what hundreds of white supremacist's have expressed an interest in doing. Nevertheless, as Olbermann points out: for the love of GOD, you invoked Kennedy's assassination to justify staying in the race, even tangentially? Are you nuts?!?

This may be what takes her down. The only way she walks back from this, frankly, is to go through June third, and then bow out. There's no way she ends up with a Veep shot after Friday. Not that that seems to have been her idea. And if she pushes this thing all the way to the convention, the highest office she'll ever hold will be senior senator from NY. She gets out of the race and stays out after June third, maybe she gets majority leader, maybe she gets plum committee chairs, maybe she gets a shot at the White House again in 2016 or if the Dem's (god forbid) lose this year, in 2012.

But the only way she has a play this year, at this point, is to deliberately upset the applecart. I don't know if the excitement lately has been with or without her consent (with Bill it seems to have been without), but the RFK comment clinched it. RFK, Jr. can excuse her. The party can't. Either she or Obama lose in this of all years after she does something like that and she'll be lucky if she's allowed to run unopposed in the NY Senatorial Primary in 2012.

Now, let's go to the great "sexism" debate. Look, I get it. I may have a penis, but I know a lot of women, and the ones who are Hillary supporters want this to be about sexism, rather than say...she ran a crappy campaign or she has negatives out the wazoo. Hillary's in trouble because of sexism. Therefore, people who don't vote for Hillary are doing it out of sexism.

Only thing is, you can make the exact same argument for Obama and racism. In other words, if you accuse those who never preferred Hillary of sexism, then if you never preferred Obama it's because you're a racist. You simply cannot have it both ways.

People don't vote for Hillary for a lot of reasons: because 20 years of Bushes and Clintons is enough (my personal reason), because with regard to obsessive secrecy she's second only to George W Bush, because you don't particularly trust her word (Mrs. Pedant's reason), or possibly because you're sexist. It could be any NUMBER of reasons, only ONE of which is sexism.

And finally, for the argument that sexism is worse that racism in this country, I have to say, I have no freaking idea. To me, it seems like an argument about whether drowning or burning is a worse way to die. For the love of god, they're both horrible. Trying to parse out which one is marginally viler is ridiculous. I suspect that women think sexism is worse, blacks think racism is worse, black women no doubt split about equally on which is worse and black lesbians KNOW that homophobia is worse than either sexism or racism. Who CARES?

I do understand. There are a lot of women who want a woman president for what are blatantly obvious reasons. Some of them are old enough and smart enough to figure that the odds of getting another woman candidate before they die are greatly lessened if Obama gets the nomination and wins. After all, if he wins, it's 2016 before another woman runs (since if he wins he is the nominee in 2012 so win or lose in 2012 the next time a woman has a shot is 2016 because it will be a LONG FREAKING TIME before the Repub's run a woman rather than a white dude), and who other than Hillary is available in the short term? So it's "OMFG, Hillary's a victim of sexism and Obama would never be where he is unless he were black." Which argument, by the way, is as foolish as saying OJ got off because he was black (true story...I once heard a guy say that)...all those whites disproportionately jailed proves that theory. (Hint, that's SARCASM.)

Let's put it this way...until the 2004 convention, only Illinois residents knew about Obama. I can think of a couple female governors and senators that might run well off the top of my head. What do you think the odds are that someone somewhere we haven't even HEARD of can come out in 2016 and make a run? Because I want a woman president someday soon. I'd like to point the Wee Pedant to a real flesh and blood figure.

I'd just prefer that the flesh and blood female President I point to not get impeached for the high handed way she continued the Bush secrecy fetish while alienating half the country with her "win at all costs" public style.