Pokemon McCain Battle

In honour of Barack Obama's victory, the final word on electability:



Screw you, Terry McAuliffe!

(h/t to sickbastard)

This is the End

After a bruising, exhilarating and unprecedented six months of Democratic primaries and caucuses, our neighbours to the south have finally run out of states. And despite what Terry McAuliffe is saying right now, it looks like sanity will prevail in Hillaryland and she will concede and move on rather than burn the party to the ground in her naked quest for power.

I feel kind of sorry for Clinton's supporters. Watching them weep and scream and tear their clothing in grief after the DNC's decision on Michigan and Florida, it seems to me that the Clinton campaign has done them a great disservice. They set up Hillary Clinton as a historic figure who represented the only hope for America to see a woman in the Whitehouse (thus casting their opponents as misogynists), and have worked her supporters into a frenzy based on a series of politically expedient lies.

They tell them that Clinton is leading the popular vote, even though that is both untrue and irrelevant. They go from supporting the exclusion of Michigan and Florida's delegates to invoking the nightmare of 2000 by painting the voters in those states as disenfranchised victims of a rigged system. And week after week, long after it became obvious that Obama was going to be the nominee, they continued to string these people along with the false hope that somehow Clinton could still win IF ONLY life was fair and wishes were horses and they all continued to support her to the bitter, bitter end.

Even now, as Clinton campaign workers are being told to get their affairs in order and donors and supporters are being called to New York for an important speech by Clinton - EVEN NOW her campaign chairman is calling up CNN to vigorously deny that Clinton plans to concede tonight and admit that the race is over.

Most of us can see this for what it is: a calculated, strategic effort to appear to go down fighting while positioning one's candidate for the best possible spot in the Obama administration. But to those poor women at the DNC meeting (and they were all women as far as I could tell), this all appears to be a sincere effort by Clinton to claim her rightful place in history despite all she has suffered at the hands of the male-dominated party establishment.

They sincerely believe everything the Clinton campaign has been telling them, even though Clinton obviously doesn't believe it herself.

They say that Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line, and to a large extent this sort of passion is one of the great strengths of the Democratic Party. But to continue to lie to these people, to continue to breed false hope and righteous fury among one's ardent supporters while using their dreams and passions as a political tool is not only damaging to the party - it's downright cruel.

Stop it. Stop it now.

She Did Not 'Mis-speak'

I almost believed it.

Despite my initial disgust at Hillary Clinton's comments about the RFK assassination and the subsequent piling-on from all quarters, I was almost ready to believe that it was all just an unfortunate choice of words. That she only meant to illustrate that the nomination process going undecided into June was nothing unusual, and that she only mentioned Bobby because she had the Kennedys 'much on her mind' because of Ted Kennedy's recent diagnosis.

Upon further reflection, I can think of at least two significant reasons why this explanation is utter bullshit.

The first is that while she may have had Sen. Kennedy's brain tumour in her thoughts when she referenced the assassination this time, what exactly was she thinking the first time she did it two and a half months ago?

The second has to do with her equation of the current contest with the '92 and '68 campaigns. In 1992, hubby Bill did face a little more of a fight than he had bargained for in Jerry Brown, and yes, things were officially undecided until June because there was one big prize left to the end - California.

In reality, Bill had it all pretty much sewn up by early April, but still, you can understand why she would make that particular comparison.

The equation of the current primaries with 1968, on the other hand, is so ludicrous that one can only assume that it was a conscious attempt to raise the spectre of political assassination.

Yes, the California primary was held in early June of 1968. What she neglects to mention is that primary season didn't even start until March back then, which means that RFK had been campaigning for less than three months when he was killed. Besides which, party primaries back then were an entirely different affair. They weren't at all binding, and only thirteen states even participated that year.

It's not even comparing apples and oranges - it's more like comparing apples with Hillary's left shoe.

Hillary Clinton is not a stupid woman, and she is of an age that I can guarantee she has some very clear memories of that year and that campaign. So while I cannot believe that she is actually staying in the race in case "something bad" happens to Obama, I also don't believe that it never occurred to her to plant that seed in the minds of the voters.

Olbermann, as always, gets it right.

Happy Primary Night!

Just because I've been sick and haven't posted in a while...

As of 1:00 am:

NORTH CAROLINA:

OBAMA      56%   888,979   60
CLINTON   42%   655,482   47

INDIANA:

CLINTON   51%   606,497   38
OBAMA      49%   589,888   29

So NC is a rout, and the split in Indiana amounts to about four square blocks in Decatur. Eeeexcellent.

Dear Hillary,

Please, PLEASE, for all that you hold sacred, put an end to this! I can't take it any more. The pandering, the slurs, the phony good ol' gal accent... it's beneath you. You're a classy lady, so show a little class. You fought the good fight, but it's time to face facts.

Your Party has spoken. YOU CANNOT WIN.

Sure, we'd all like to see a woman in the Whitehouse someday, but the longer this goes on, the greater the chance that McSame will pull off another four years of Republican rule - and seriously, having to face even one more year of creepy corporatist neo-cons on BOTH sides of the border just might drive me to apply for citizenship in fucking Iceland.

Sincerely,
Your Neighbour to the North.

______________________________

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE:

I did some quick math, and if the six remaining precincts in Indiana fall out the way their counties have, the final totals will be (drumroll please)... 642,390 for Clinton, 624,363 for Obama.

That's a difference of just over 18,000 votes out of over a million. That's 50.71% vs. 49.29%, and THAT is what I'd call a statistical tie.

Put a fork in her. She's done.

Happy Pennsylvania Primary Day!

Courtesy of The Onion:


Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Pennsylvania, Brenda Martin, Earth Day, In and Out... it's gonna be a HELL of a day!

Idle Hands

Watching US cable network news these days is like watching a broken engine running wildly out of control, waiting for it to finally thrash itself to death in an explosion of smoking gears and motor oil.

The problem, of course, is the interminable six-week gap between the last Democratic primary and the upcoming one in Pennsylvania. As one wag put it, the gap has created “a ‘news’ vacuum that has essentially forced the national media into a sort of 1950s, pre-technological childhood, playing Sputnik with an old refrigerator carton."

Under any other circumstances, Barack Obama's comments at a private fundraiser would have provided the media with an afternoon's entertainment as Clinton and McCain tried desperately to make hay out of it. Then Obama would have simply pointed out (as he did) that what he said was, in fact, true and representative of what people in Pennsylvania had been telling them. And that would have been the end of it.

Instead, the media and the Clinton and McCain campaigns have spent the entire weekend engaged in a mutually masturbatory frenzy, keeping the story alive and erect through sheer will alone. And now the term 'Bittergate' is being bandied about.

[headdesk]

One of saddest spectacles in all this has been watching Hillary Clinton using terms like 'elitist' and pandering to working-class voters by painting Obama as some sort of ivory-tower intellectual snob, "out of touch" with their simple needs and concerns. In other words, exactly like Republicans have been portraying Democrats like her and her husband all these years.




It could be worse, I suppose. At least she hasn't mentioned the orange juice yet.

For a breath of fresh air in the midst of all this, I highly recommend that you read what former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has to say on his blog. He is deeply critical of both the media and of Clinton, and concludes:

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment – all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

One can only hope.

__________________

QUOTE OF THE NIGHT: Complaining that being 'elite' should be a positive attribute in someone who aspires to be President, Jon Stewart asks, "If you don’t actually think you’re better than us, then what the fuck are you doing?"

Earth Hour, John McCain, and the Texas Two-Step

Miscellaneous Sunday blogging:

EARTH HOUR

I don't know how the rest of Milton fared in observing Earth Hour last night, but we of the Milton Choristers did our bit despite the rather awkward timing of the event in the middle of our concert. We turned out all the lights at 8:00, processed back into the church by candlelight, and sang a lovely arrangement of 'What a Wonderful World / This Is My Father's World' along with our angelic-voiced child soloist.

Unfortunately this didn't take up the entire hour, and since we didn't have the Schubert memorized we had to put the lights back on a little early. Still, it was more than Stephen Harper could be bothered to do.

_________________________


JOHN MCCAIN: CONSERVATIVE MEAT PUPPET



Just when you thought no U.S. politician could possibly be any stupider than George W. Bush, the Republicans manage to find themselves another one.

Reporter: “Should U.S. taxpayer money go to places like Africa to fund contraception to prevent AIDS?”

Mr. McCain: “Well I think it’s a combination. The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn. He believes – and I was just reading the thing he wrote– that you should do what you can to encourage abstinence where there is going to be sexual activity. Where that doesn’t succeed, than he thinks that we should employ contraceptives as well. But I agree with him that the first priority is on abstinence. I look to people like Dr. Coburn. I’m not very wise on it.”

(Mr. McCain turns to take a question on Iraq, but a moment later looks back to the reporter who asked him about AIDS.)

Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

Oh sweet Jesus on a stick.

The Dr. Coburn he refers to would be Senator Tom Coburn, head of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, whose knowledge of science and medicine is only exceeded by his overwhelming ideological fervour in promoting abstinence-only programs, dismissing the effectiveness of condoms in the prevention of STDs, advocating the death penalty for abortionists, and warning us all about the icky icky gay agenda.

I can't wait to find out who's been advising McCain on foreign policy.

__________________________


BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: THE TEXAS CAUCUS RESULTS

The media seems to have forgotten all about Texas after Clinton took the primaries and was declared the winner. However, Texas has both primaries and caucuses, the latter of which have taken a ridiculously long time to calculate given the vagaries of the 'Texas Two-Step' system.

Although preliminary results were released soon after the caucuses were held on March 4th, it was only yesterday that Texas started their caucus conventions to officially sort out their delegate counts. And guess what? It looks like Hillary didn't take Texas after all.



Numbers are still coming in and it is still uncertain how this will all wash out in terms of total Texas delegates. However, most projections are putting Obama 1-3 delegates ahead by the end. Not a big margin to be sure, but then again it's Clinton who has been making such hay out of her "winning all the big states".

Now... not so much.

From Da Kos: The Hillary Clinton War Diaries

Again, I had to share:

Things had started going wrong while we were still in the air and only gotten worse from there. So here we were, pinned down, choking on the acrid tang of cordite and the heady scent of human blood. The mission was even simpler now: survive. Whatever the cost, survive.

There was a grunt and a clatter of equipment as Sinbad threw himself down at my side. Sweat glistened on his bare arms, and I could see tendons contracting and relaxing as he squeezed off bursts from his M14. The motion was hypnotic, like a snake about to strike. Perhaps, when all this was over-

No. Concentrate. Focus on the mission. Survive.

Oh yes. It goes on.

(Yeah, yeah, I know. Another lazy blog post. Blow me.)

More Musings on Clinton and Obama

So. Clinton. Yeah.

Honestly, I didn't have any particular problem with Hillary Clinton at the beginning of this campaign, other than a sort of lingering doubt over whether she would prove to be as much of a disappointment as her husband. But she seemed smart and serious and tough and had a lot of great policies, so I would have been perfectly happy to see her become president.

In fact, in any other campaign her tone and her tap-dancing approach to awkward questions like the one about mountain-top removal would have just seemed like politics as usual. It's only when you hold her up next to Obama that the contrast becomes glaringly apparent.

Obama on MTR:

"Strip-mining is an environmental disaster! ...We have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains."

See? How hard was that?

Now, Barack Obama is hardly the poster-boy for the environmental movement. His support of so-called "clean coal" technology, bio-diesel and ethanol is naive at best. At worst it may have something to do with his being from a state that produces large amounts of both coal and corn. However, there are signs that he is starting to educate himself and consequently modify his stance on some of his more controversial environmental platform positions. That in itself is pretty unusual for a politician.

But back to Hillary.

Another glaring example of political fuckery from Camp Clinton this week was her heart-stopping tale of her arrival in Bosnia in 1996 on her mission to... well, whatever the hell it is she's claiming she did to beef up her foreign policy resumé as First Lady.

"I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Wow! That must have been really exciting and scary. Like something out of a Van Damme movie. Too bad we can't see... oh, wait... do we have... yes, we have video!

Cue the video, Hank.



Hillary must really hate Al Gore for inventing the internet.

And before you ask, yes, that was the only time Hillary ever landed by plane in Bosnia (as verified by her newly released schedules), and yes, that's her daughter Chelsea with her, and no, there was no "running with their heads down to get into the vehicles to get to their base" because the base was right there.

Again, in any other campaign this kind of blatant lie embellishment would be considered business as usual. But somehow Obama has changed all that. Our tolerance for bullshit has decreased. Our sensitivity to political obfuscation has increased. It's like that commercial where the picture looks normal until they peel back the haze and it all becomes so much brighter.

We're Claritin Clear!

Even the pundits have been inspired to pull their heads out of their asses once on a rare while, to step back and ask themselves "What the hell are we doing?!" Like this little exchange on CNN last week between Anderson Cooper, Carl Bernstein and Roland Martin:

BERNSTEIN: Obama has called for an elevated conversation about race. And what are we seeing here, is the bottom- of-the-barrel conversation, a talk show nation hysteria, picking words out.

We need to look at all of these candidates, including Hillary Clinton, including John McCain, in the context of their lives. And the remarks that they make need to be understood in the context of their lives. And the choices they have made in their lives about pastors, about marriages, all about -- every aspect of their lives need to be looked at in the totality.

And, as long as we keep pulling these threads out, we're not going to have any kind of meaningful debate in this campaign…

…COOPER: It's interesting, Roland, because these are not the kind of conversations that -- that television or radio programs -- well, maybe radio does it better -- but, in this heightened atmosphere, does very well, that this is the kind of -- I mean, it's a difficult conversation to have, and it's a very nuanced conversation to have. And we live in an environment which is all about sound bites and -- and people yelling on television.

MARTIN: Yes, but we -- but we don't have to do what they do.

We -- we can call for something different. You know, last year, Anderson, when I hosted three faith specials on CNN, it was amazing the number of people who said, thank you for having a real conversation about faith on television that just didn't deal with abortion and homosexuality.

We can do that. The question is, do we have the courage to do that?

Well no, of course they don't, because then they went right back to pulling threads. But still, how often do moments of clarity like that happen on the newsnets?

I don't know. Maybe I'm seeing a trend here that doesn't really exist. Maybe the small changes I'm noticing are only temporary, and once the real campaign starts it'll be back to business as usual. Probably.

I'll keep watching, though. You never know when some of this new clarity might stick.

_______________

UPDATE: Oh, I'm sorry. She didn't lie - she MISSPOKE. Wait... where else have I heard that word recently? Oh yeah, that's right.

'3AM Girl' Endorses Obama

Oops. I guess Team Clinton should have blown the big bucks for an actual Clinton supporter to appear in their fear-mongering ads, huh?



(H/T to Giant Political Mouse)

And in other Clinton-related news, someone recently had the nerve to ask her what she thought of mountain-top removal coal mining, which I blogged about here. You'd think this would be a no-brainer given that a) it utterly destroys mountains, valleys, entire ecosystems, and the health and homes of any humans living anywhere nearby, and b) it is almost entirely automated, resulting in a 90% decrease in mining jobs in West Virginia.

Hillary's response:

I am concerned about it for all the reasons people state, but I think its a difficult question because of the conflict between the economic and environmental trade-off that you have here.

I'm not an expert. I don't know enough to have an independent opinion, but I sure would like people who could be objective, understanding both the economic necessities and environmental damage to come up with some approach that would enable us to retrieve the coal but would enable us to do it in a way that wouldn't damage the living standards and the other important qualities associated with people living both under the mountaintop and people who are along the streams.

You know, maybe there is a way to recover those mountaintops once they have been stripped of the coal. You know, I think we've got to look at this from a practical perspective.

Aside from once again demonstrating her mastery of the art of political equivocation, she is, in fact, LYING when she says she doesn't know enough about it to form an opinion. Hillary Clinton has sat in on Senate Committee hearings on mountaintop removal since 2002, so she knows damned well what is going on here.

More on this nonsense later - gotta go to work.