Blah Blah, Politics, Blah

Stuff Happens

Brokered Conventions
Ignore the folksy tone of the article, for it does contain some interesting insight into just how... parochial.. nominating conventions used to be. As well as fractious.

Source: The Washington Post (no insults to women here I swear)

Give Me a Break
Certain doe-eyed lefties are crying racism over a Clinton campaign ad that uses the old trick of washing out the image of your opponent while using the scary muzak on Barack Obama.

See, on a black person, it sorta makes the skin darker.

Of course, what it really does is make him, and anyone else, look like a zombie from the original Dawn of the Dead.

But zombie movie is the new minstrel show, I guess. If you're way, way overly sensitive.

Source: Daily Kos

Rezzzzzz
Speaking of Obama, Tony Rezko goes on trial soon.

That could be a real minefield, especially if he rats out his, ahem, friends from Chi-town.

Source: The Chicago Tribune

More on Charlotte Allen
The dumbest woman alive continues on her march to Stupidtown. This next piece is from her chat on the WaPo website defending her article.

New York: In addition to writing here that women are “dim,” at the Independent Women’s Forum you’ve written that Hurricane Katrina might have been “the best thing” to happen to New Orleans, which is full of “whiners … chiseling us taxpayers” out of money. Is that supposed to be satire too? Your sense of humor sure does seem hateful.

washingtonpost.com: What Really Happened After Hurricane Katrina (Independnet Women’s Forum, Oct. 11, 2005)

Charlotte Allen: I said Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it finally opportunity to a huge number of New Orleans residents living in passive dependency on welfare to get out of New Orleans and change their lives for the better.

Yes, that's right. Those shifty chiselers deserved it.

Still want to stand by this hack, Washington Post? How many more skeletons do you think she has in her closet? She's not even trying to hide them!

Source: Sadly, No!

Progress, With Caveats
The Dems in Congress are looking to repair our battered finances a bit, once the Man-Child is out of office.

House and Senate Democrats rolled out election-year budget blueprints Wednesday that would produce sizable surpluses by 2012 by allowing President Bush's tax cuts to expire as scheduled.

The $3 trillion budget plans for 2009 would award greater-than-inflation increases to domestic programs. The White House said Bush would veto agencies' spending bills.

...

The Democratic plans do not to take on the exploding growth of Medicare, Social Security and other benefit programs. Doing so would be a painful exercise in an election year.

"Our budget ... is no grand solution, but it moves us in the right direction," said Democratic Rep. John Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the House Budget Committee chairman.

Even breaking even would be a huge step forward.

Though, to do that, we have to stop bleeding money in Iraq...

Source: Raw Story

The War on Stupid

Posts from the Front Lines

Grope Your Children Well
Some teachers with grab-hands.

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. - A class of third-grade students got a lesson in civil liberties when an envelope containing $5 disappeared from their teacher's desk.

The students at Martin Luther King Elementary in Hopkinsville were asked to remove their shoes and socks during a search. Some were patted down and had their pockets checked.

Some parents were angered by the Feb. 15 searches, which did not turn up the missing money at the western Kentucky school.

Of course it didn't. Even if one of them had the money, how are you going to find an envelope, or just a five dollar bill, with a pat-down search? THEY'RE KIND OF THIN WHEN YOU LOOK AT THEM, MORONS.

(The paper/cottony paper products, not the children.)

This did take place in Kentucky. I guess that helps to explain things.

Source: AZ Central

Dissection
An El Reg military analysis article on the likelihood of robot drone insurgent weaponry. Basically: very expensive, unlikely to work as well as the stuff they do today, and beyond their capability.

Of course, you could read the longer article, but that would use up precious brain energy that can be saved for reality tv.

Source: The Register

Shocking Loss to Forces of Dumb
On Sunday, the style section of the Washington Post lobbed a stupid Weapon of Mass Destruction directly into our camps by publishing an op-ed by one Charlotte Allen, who has refined stupid to such a level that she must qualify as a Mad Scientist of Moron.

"Women 'Falling for Obama,' " the story's headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women "are only children of a larger growth," wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

In your case, I think 'children' is a bit generous. How about 'stunted twits of a larger growth'?

Alternately, the growth you're part of could be a tumor. On my brain.

Then there's Clinton's nearly all-female staff, chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas or Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

Mark Penn is many things. A moron. A clumsy, inept pollster. The sloppiest dresser alive.

But, err, not a woman. He's the head of her campaign, her chief strategist. And male.

Her long-time political fixer, brought in to try and salvage Penn's abortive campaign? A very well connected man named Harold Ickes.

Also, err, not a woman.

What great research!

Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

So let me get this straight. Women have slightly over 10% more accidents per mile than men. But men have 200% more fatal accidents than women.

And this makes WOMEN the worse drivers? Come again? Could we have that in ENGLISH please?

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

Please, follow your own advice. Stop writing, go home, and start making doilies. I promise to never miss you.

Source: The Washington Post

One Two Punch
Not content with merely asserting that women are stupid, the WaPo published a second op-ed in the same section, on how women are shallow and fickle.

Seriously.

And there we have one of the most puzzling conundrums of the 2008 Democratic contests. Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

For the Clinton campaign, this is devastating. A year ago, chief strategist Mark Penn proclaimed that the double-X factor was going to catapult his candidate all the way to the White House. Instead, the women's vote has fragmented. The only conclusion: American women still aren't strategic enough to form a meaningful political movement directed at taking power. Will they ever be?

People fail to vote according to her predictions. This, obviously, implies a flaw with the people.

Riiight.

So many feminists' turn to solidarity with their own class is a surprise. For decades, they've been loudly proclaiming their loyalty to working-class women and criticizing reporters for writing chiefly about elite women who resemble themselves. Before the election got hot, Ellen Bravo, longtime director of 9 to 5, a national association of working women, asserted that working mothers "with more opportunities" must "take a stand with those who have fewer." I've been the target of some of the more pointed criticism myself, for writing a book about educated women quitting their jobs for motherhood. Nation writer Liza Featherstone "guessed" that my life did not look "very much like that of a Starbucks barista."

This is the part where she asserts that all feminists are wealthy.

Female too, for that matter.

Yeeesh what a tool.

Maybe Obama is the best candidate, and these highly educated women, with their greater political savvy, have recognized his value. A less charitable explanation is that college-educated women don't need the social safety net as much as their less fortunate sisters do, so Clinton's early stand on family leave or her slightly more generous health-care plan aren't as important to them.

Yes, her ever-so-slightly-earlier endorsement of one position and ever-so-slightly broader position on health care must surely be the only explanation.

There can be no other choice! The 'elite' women are gyno-traitors!

Or maybe it has to do with what Pollitt expressed in a recent blog posting: "On foreign policy Obama seems more enlightened, as in less bellicose." Educated women focusing more on foreign policy fits with what we know about women and politics. Although at every class level, women know less than men do about politics in general, they know more as their education level goes up. So it may be that foreign policy issues are more salient to women with a college degree.

Or it could just be that women with more education (and more money) relate on a subconscious level to the young and handsome Barack and Michelle Obama, with their white-porticoed mansion in one of the cooler Chicago neighborhoods and her Jimmy Choo shoes.

Hur, women are dumber than men. Nevermind that men vote for Republicans, the party OF Idiots, far more often than women.

Also, dur, Obama is wealthy. Clinton meanwhile lives a hard-scrabble life on the streets, fighting with the rats for her dinner.

Err, no wait. She's also a wealthy Senator. Huh.

When faced with a "movement," resistance is costly. And for weeks now, online and on cable news channels, almost anyone who expresses criticism of Obama or support for Clinton has elicited a firestorm of disapproval. Obama's scores of defenders -- "Obamabots," they're called -- immediately recite the anti-Clinton litany: Billary, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary's Iraq war vote, identity politics. Well-regarded activists such as Planned Parenthood's Feldt or successful writers such as Tina Fey who support Clinton are excoriated as worthless pieces of nonsense. After Steinem wrote an op-ed on Clinton's behalf in the New York Times, the New Republic published an article titled "Gloria Steinem's Awful Op Ed." Not wrong. Not misguided. But "awful."

Call me cynical, but I read a lot of political news.

A lot.

And I've never heard this "Obamabot" term.

I would remember hearing it. Retarded crap sticks in my brain.

So who precisely calls them that?

Also, GASP, people who support a candidate may have to endure slight criticism from others! "Awful"!

Has this rhetorical firestorm had an effect on the political decisions of college-educated white women?

Seriously, 'firestorm'? A firestorm is when napalm turns your village into cinders and schoolkids running around with their skin falling off.

"Awful" is not a firestorm.

Whatever the explanation, the Clinton campaign could now be stuttering to its close, and Mark Penn has been criticized for everything from short-sightedness about the primary schedule to overspending on sandwich platters. But those failures pale beside the biggest one of all: not recognizing the fickleness of the female voter.

If they're so fickle, why are these trends so hard to overcome? Surely Clinton can just bribe them with chocolates, right?

God what a twit this woman is.

Source: Again, The Washington Post.

Reyes

The House Intelligence Committee chairman expects a compromise soon on renewal of an eavesdropping law that could provide legal protections for telecommunications companies as President Bush has insisted.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, in a television interview broadcast Sunday, did not specifically say whether the House proposal would mirror the Senate's version. The Senate measure provides retroactive legal immunity to the companies that helped the government wiretap U.S. computer and phone lines after the Sept. 11 attacks without clearance from a secret court.

Hey Reyes.

Go fuck yourself.

Source: Raw Story

Gun Incident Near Bush Ranch
Now now, don't get your hopes up. Cheney only shoots *really* old men in the face.

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) — A Danish journalist came this close to getting shot Saturday by an elderly woman packing a pistol near President Bush's ranch here in what was easily the strangest incident I've ever witnessed covering the White House.

It all started so innocently as I sat with a group of Danish journalists just down the street from Bush's ranch during a visit by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The two leaders were having lunch on the ranch, so I was waiting at a nearby historic one-room schoolhouse with White House staff to interview Rasmussen after the meal. Then the prime minister was going to do a brief press conference with the Danish press corps.

Terkel Svensson, a writer for the Danish News Agency, could not get wireless Internet access at the schoolhouse to file a story. But Svensson could get his cell phone working so he called his editor in
Copenhagen and started wandering across a quiet country road as he chatted away.

"I was just so occupied dictating my story that I didn't really see where I went," Svensson told me later. "I was just walking and talking."

What Svensson didn't realize was that he had stopped walking a couple hundred feet away, on the front lawn of an elderly woman. An elderly woman who looked through her window and didn't like that a strange man was standing outside her house. An elderly woman who had, um, a gun.

Texas, ladies and gentlemen.

That's it. That's the joke. Texas.

They don't need parody.

Source: CNN.com

Marriage
No, not in general. One in particular.

An Iranian court has ordered a man to buy his wife 124,000 roses after she filed a complaint against her "stingy" husband to claim her dowry, a press report said on Monday.

"After 10 years of marriage Hengameh had decided to claim her dowry of 124,000 red roses to punish her very stingy husband," the Etemad newspaper said.

"Shortly after marriage I realised that Shahin was very cheap. He even refused to pay for my coffee if we went to a cafe or restaurant," said the woman, identified only by her first name Hengameh.

But Shahin told the court he could only afford five roses a day and complained that it was "her billionaire friends who had put such ideas in her head."

The court has seized his apartment worth 600 million rials (64,000 dollars) until he has bought her the entire 124,000 roses. A long stemmed red rose costs 20,000 rials (about two dollars) in Tehran.

Under Iranian law, a woman can claim her dowry or mahr, which is a gift pledged by the man at the time of marriage, at any time during married life or when getting a divorce.

So she's demanded, and a court has agreed, that her husband buy her 248,000 dollars worth of roses.

Right. She's a moron, he's one for marrying her, the courts are full of morons, and.... argh. I can't stand it anymore!!

Source: Raw Story

Idealists
Isn't it fun when idealists crash on the cold, hard, merciless rocks of reality?

A British peace activist aiming to walk to India to prove a money-free world is possible has turned back at the first hurdle, after getting to France and finding he needed to speak French.

Writing on his blog Friday, 28-year-old Mark Boyle said he and two friends accompanying him ran into problems the minute they arrived in the French port of Calais.

"Not only did no one... speak the language, they also see us as just a bunch of freeloading backpackers, which is the complete opposite of what the pilgrimage is really about," he wrote.

"That really scared us, and given that we now were pretty much out of food, hadn't slept in days and were really cold, we had to reassess the whole situation.

"We spoke to a few people who were willing to talk and they said that France would not go for this unless we could speak fluent French, which none of us could."

...

"He has not given up his project," she told AFP. "He is currently walking in the southeast of England. He will tour around the UK, learn French and leave again for Porbandar."

So in a few years we'll see a repeat when he manages to mooch his way to the German border, only to discover he doesn't know the 43 syllable word for 'Help, I am a mentally deficient individual in need of food or a damn good kicking!'

Fortunately, they're German. They'll give him one anyway. It's their charitable nature.

Source: Raw Story

The Name Game
So Greece and Macedonia are having a spat.

Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis said today that his country will block Macedonia’s entrance into the EU and NATO if the country does not change its name. Macedonia expects an invite to NATO at the organization's summit in April and could possibly start EU negotiations this fall.

So what’s wrong with “Macedonia”? According to Greece, the name belongs to its northern region, an area that covers what was once ancient Macedonia back in the glory days of Alexander the Great (and they were glorious). Greece claims that use of “Republic of Macedonia,” as Macedonia calls itself in its constitution, not only violates Greece's historic cultural claim to the name, but also suggests territorial ambitions. Instead, Greece, and the U.N. by default, have continued to call Macedonia by the outdated name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia seventeen years ago. It’s an awfully long name for a tiny country, but you can call it FYROM for short.

Greece's historical claim to the name? What? They only have an area called Macedonia because the Macedonians beat them silly!

It's just like how, apparently, there are a rather large number of towns in England with French names. BECAUSE THE FRENCH CONQUERED ENGLAND REPEATEDLY.

Honestly, Greece, don't be such prats. Nobody's looking to conquer your backward, imporverished country.

Macedonia, your Southern neighbors are being jerks. Pick a longer form of the name. Like "The Better-than-Greece-by-a-Long-Shot Republic of Macedonia.

Source: Reuters

Math Major He's Not
So Mark Halperin, the same jackass who recently said that McCain should go racist on Obama, now says that Clinton has to stay in the race because she'd be too damn old to run again in 2016, assuming Obama got two full terms.

"I think people are underestimating how badly she'd like to continue and not give up," said Halperin, who edits Time's online tip sheet The Page. "This is probably her one chance to become the Democratic nominee, given everything else going on in the world, and in her actuarial table, and Obama's chances of winning, and I think if she does not win this time she probably realizes that is it."

...

At 68, Clinton would still be younger than presumed Republican nominee John McCain is now. The 71-year-old Arizona senator has also faced questions about his age.

Clinton also would be younger in 2016 than Golda Meir was when she became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, at age 71. Ronald Reagan, the oldest US president in history, celebrated his 70th birthday just after he was sworn in in 1981.

Combine that with the fact that McCain is already in shaky health, and that women live longer than men, and you can see why Halperin is in the running for Dumbest Man Alive (Not Named Bush Edition)

Source: Raw Story

Wiki-Love
So, let's say, and why not, that you're Jimbo Wales, one of the big muckity-mucks at Wikipedia. You've been trying for years to earn an image of legitimacy for the online news-o-rama, and constantly fighting off accusations of bias, incestuous editing, and general hamfisted amatuerism.

Surely the best course of action is to then use the site to dump your girlfriend.

On one level, it's an encyclopedia. On another, it's The Comedy of Errors.

Over the weekend, in response to a story from Valleywag, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales used the world's most popular online encyclopedia as a means of dumping his girlfriend - onetime Fox News pundit Rachel Marsden.

Marsden responded by sending Valleywag an IM conversation that indicates Wales ordered changes to her Wikipedia biography in an effort to further his, shall we say, personal agenda.

In discussing his sex life on the "free encyclopedia anyone can edit," Wales says that his sex life is not something anyone should be discussing. "Over the last few days, a few gossip websites have decided that my personal life is somehow of interest to people and, against my wishes, are publicizing details about a brief relationship I had with Rachel Marsden," explains the man who calls himself Wikipedia's Spiritual Leader. "While, typically, this would not warrant a response, because my role with Wikipedia is being dragged into it, I felt the need to set the record straight on a couple of issues."

...

But according to the IM conversation Marsden shared with Valleywag, Wales was well aware that in ordering changes to her bio, he was breaking one of Wikipedia's cardinal rules. Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia with a "neutral point of view," and contributors are told not to edit articles where they have a conflict of interest.

During the IM chat, Wales asks Marsden to approve several edits to her bio, and he says that he forwarded these edits to his OTRS team. Wales also explains that in emailing the team, he told them he would be meeting Marsden to "give her advice about her website" and that it would not be appropriate for him "to directly edit the article with a conflict of interest."

Then he tells Marsden that he wasn't exactly honest with his OTRS team: "The truth is of course a much worse conflict of interest than that :) but that will do."

So, slutty ladies out there, if you want a positive Wikipedia bio, just sleep with Wales. He'll handle the rest.

lolz.

Source: The Register (your primo source for Wikipedia dirt)

Comic Strip

Eight British soldiers have been forced to return home from Norway after they reportedly stripped naked and urinated on each other in a bar during an Arctic training exercise, the defence ministry confirmed Tuesday.

"It's being taken extremely seriously," a spokesman for the defence ministry in London said.

Only an Englishman could say that, in this situation, with a straight face.

"They were drunk and there was a problem in the bar, but we are quite used to dealing with British soldiers like this," Harstad police spokesman Gair Pederson was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying.

Oooh, burn.

Source: Raw Story

One Toke Over the Line
Some marijuana legalization advocates wrote to Senator Tom Harkin, asking him why medical pot should still be illegal.

His rambling, incoherent response may go down in legend.

It's 2008, and that teenager drug marijuana is still raping our children. But why does that have to be illegal? According to The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), some person wrote to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin "asking him to justify why medicinal cannabis is still illegal" after the American College of Physicians recommended it shouldn't be. It merited a hilarious reply from Harkin, which noted many of pot's notorious doom scenarios: "the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix." Harkin knows the routine: smoke up, eat gyro, play Legend of Zelda, sell children to pirates for more pot, repeat.

Seriously. He said that. Amongst a lot of other nonsense

Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.

Similarly, the Knitting Awareness Network, of which I am the founder, editor, President and Chairman, reports that the number of knitting emergencies in my apartment has nearly reached the number of Cthulhu related emergencies.

Accusations of a conflict of interest, or that I have a very good reason to over promote this issue as a fundraising tool, are clearly vicious lies from the Pro-Knit agenda.

The victims of the drug war are many - the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the police officer's family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry. These are the people I think of when I say that drugs pose a significant threat to the security of this nation.

See, it's the pot that causes the damage. Not the war.

Similarly, all those civilian casualties in Iraq? Iraqis' fault. They should have known we'd carpet bomb them and become fireproof.

Source: Wonkette

The Clinton Campaign

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying My Ever Increasing Annoyance

Goalposts Moving?
Clinton initially swore that Texas and Ohio would more or less win her the nomination, and that if she lost there, she'd go home.

Not so much.

Hillary Clinton's camp vowed Sunday she will resist calls to abandon the White House trail after pivotal nominating contests in Ohio and Texas, where rival Barack Obama hopes to land a knockout.

...

But Clinton's communications chief Howard Wolfson was adamant the race would go on after Tuesday, into the next key showdown in Pennsylvania in April.

"What I'm saying is, we're going to have a great day on Tuesday. We're going to win this nomination. This nomination fight is going to go forward after Ohio and Texas," he said on ABC television.

"We're going to go to Pennsylvania, where a lot more Americans are going to vote, and we're going to be the nominee in Denver."

And then the magical ponys will come down from the sky on a beautiful rainbow with sparkling glitter and a chorus of happy guardian angels!

Or not.

Source: Raw Story

Fictional Murderers for Clinton
Obama gets Dodd, Clinton gets.. The Joker.

Seriously.


As Far As She Knows
So Hillary is hedging her bets on the "Is Obama a Muslim?" question.

“You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?” Kroft asked Sen. Clinton. “Of course not. I mean, that, you know, there is no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that,” she replied. “You said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not…a Muslim. You don't believe that he's…,” Kroft said. “No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know,” she said.

Of course, he could in fact be A LYING MANCHURIAN MUSLIM CANDIDATE OH NOES!!!

She has a good reason to hedge, though.

A widely debunked smear campaign attempting to convince voters that Barack Obama is Muslim maintains a foothold among some rural Ohio voters, 60 Minutes found in a segment aired Sunday.

Anything to win, eh?

Source: Raw Story

Politics

Dirty Business

Clarence Thomas
When I was taking a con-law class, the Professor told us that it's a well known and open secret in the legal community that Clarence Thomas regularly sleeps through oral arguments on the Supreme Court, but for whatever reason, the national press doesn't report on it.

Regardless of how often he naps through his job, one thing is certain: he contributes far, far less to the Court than any other Justice. He writes almost no opinions, and barely participates in Court business. He's a cipher, only there to vote staunchly conservative.

It seems the press is finally taking notice of his half-ass work ethic.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two years and 142 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments. It is a period of unbroken silence that contrasts with the rest of the court's unceasing inquiries.

Hardly a case goes by without eight justices peppering lawyers with questions. Oral arguments offer justices the chance to resolve nagging doubts about a case, probe its weaknesses or make a point to their colleagues.

Left, right and center, the justices ask and they ask and they ask. Sometimes they debate each other, leaving the lawyer at the podium helpless to jump in. "I think you're handling these questions very well," Chief Justice John Roberts quipped to a lawyer recently in the midst of one such exchange.

Leaning back in his leather chair, often looking up at the ceiling, Thomas takes it all in, but he never joins in.

...

"I can't really say that it's unfair to say that I'm silent in that context. I would like to, though, be referred to as the 'listening justice,' you know," Thomas said. "I still believe that, if somebody else is talking, somebody should be listening."

Ooh, ooh, can I be known as the 'Listening Law Student'? Just show up to class, nap or stare at the walls, and get an A without any work?

Pleeeease?

It's good enough for the Supreme Court!

Source: CNN.com

Blackout
So 60 Minutes did a story on Governor Don Siegelman's show trial in Alabama, run by Republican operatives and a judge who admits to a rivalry with the Governor and refuses, after 20 months, to produce a trial transcript that is legally required to be presented within one, and that Siegelman needs to make his appeal and get out of jail, etc etc.

The CBS station for Northern Alabama, owned by Bush operatives, mysteriously went off the air during that part of 60 Minutes. They say it was 'technical' problems.

Yeah, sure it was.

Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine reported late last night that CBS was directly pointing back at the local outlets as the cause of the problem.

"I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that 'there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.' I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama 'could only have been an editorial call.'"

Ahh, Republicans. Shout down your opponents, silence them, intimidate them whatever it takes. Any way you can, to get them to shut up and behave. Or else.

Source: Raw Story

Sniggering Children
So there's a long-time GOP operative named Roger Stone. He's one of the original 'Dirty Tricksters', having worked for Nixon himself at the age of nineteen. He's then had gigs for a wide variety of Republicans running skullduggery of one type or another.

Now he's running a 'group' against Hillary Clinton. Of sorts.

So what's Stone up to? Fortunately, he laid the whole scheme out to The Weekly Standard.

It's this simple: it's all about the group's acronym, which, used in conjunction with Hillary Clinton, is supposed to be irresistibly humorous. That is the beginning and the end of it. The group will not be running ads in any form and will not be making any robocalls. They'll be making T-shirts. That's it. You can buy them for $25 on their website:

TPM is a bit shy of using the acronym, thoguh they do show the graphic. Here, let me clue you in. It's called Citizens United Not Timid. C.U.N.T., in short.

Their logo is designed to suggest a woman's anatomy too. They expect to make a brisk business calling Clinton a cunt on t-shirts to sell to Republicans.

I wouldn't bet against their success.

Source: TPM Muckracker

Mark Halperin
So Time Magazine employs this hack, Mark Halperin, as a political writer. If you can call his ignorant screeching into the void 'writing'.

His latest take is a column on how McCain should attack Obama, specifically ways he can that Clinton cannot get away with. On that last part, getting away with it, he might be right.

11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

OH OBAMA IS A SECRET MUSLIM MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE OH WE MUST DEFEAT HIM NOBLE REPUBLICAN VOTERS.

Give me a break already. Haven't we had enough of this?

Source: Time Magazine

Tucker Carlson Is A Moron
Good old boytie boy is apparently mad that, when assigned a client by the court to defend, Clinton did her job instead of betraying her professional ethics and failing to represent a client that he, Tucker Carlson, doesn't like.

Summary: Referring to a Newsday article about Hillary Clinton's representation of a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, Tucker Carlson said on his MSNBC program: "Now their defense is, 'Well, that's what lawyers are supposed to do.' In other words, it's legal, therefore it's allowed. I guess my response would be, it's still repulsive and immoral." In fact, the Newsday article made clear that legal experts agreed that Clinton was simply fulfilling her legal and ethical obligation as the defendant's lawyer, a job she was reportedly assigned by the court.

You only get legal representation in Tucker's world if you're accused of something he approves of. Unless you're a Republican; then you can sleep with as many underage boys as you like and that's ok, I suppose. I don't remember Carlson trying to railroad Mark Foley.

Source:Media Matters

Hillary Clin-Ton, Alien Overlord
So Hillary's really getting desperate now, and her campaign, staffed by incompetents and scum (or both in one like Mark Penn), have decided to go with a whisper campaign. Hey, it worked for Bush against McCain in South Carolina!

As I noted with a link in the update to the post below, the Clinton campaign got even sleazier over the weekend when they sent an email to the media featuring a picture of Obama dressed in the traditional regalia of a Somali elder he had donned during an official visit to Africa. The email had its desired effect--it's already feeding into the right's "Obama is a secret Muslim" attacks. Rush Limbaugh was ranting about the "Obama dressed like a Muslim photo" earlier today.

How did the Clinton campaign respond when asked about it? Well, lets look at the statement issued by Clinton spokesperson Maggie Williams:

If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed.

Yes, she really blamed it on Obama. You see, the Clinton press team thinks you are stupid.

Yes, they've officially jumped the shark. They're trying to inflame the 'Obama is a Secret Muslim' smear that Halperin thinks is so clever.

I'm officially done with these morons. I wish I'd gotten around to researching my post about Obama's corruption issues before now though. Sigh. I think I'll just write in Joseph Stalin this year for preznit. It's not like it'll be close, with Obama the nominee and St. John McCain's financial woes.

Source: Jesus' General

Super Tuesday: The Dems

Clinton vs. Obama vs. McCain vs. Romney vs. Huckabee vs. My Near-Complete Lack of Interest

So it's Super Tuesday, or Monster Tuesday, or whatever term the cable news people will come up with next. Can you feel the excitement?

Wow.

Gradually the primary process has done its job, acting as a perverse gatekeeper to drain all the time, money and enthusiasm, along with qualified ideologically motivated candidates, or alternately, genuine whackos, out of the race, leaving us with bland, lowest common denominator gruel on the Democratic side, and sort of middle of the road crazy Republicans, instead of the truly inventive crazy Republicans.

It's an exciting time to be alive!

On the Republican side, you've lost your open race-baiters like Tancredo, who actually ran an ad saying that Mexicans were going to team up with Al-Queda to put nuclear bombs in your local mall. You lost Ghouliani, whose campaign was brilliantly summed up by otherwise useless tool Joe Biden as 'a noun, a verb, and 9/11'. You lost Fred Thompson, the first man to ever try to sleepwalk his way into the White House.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Bill Richardson, who was stupid enough to say that being gay is a 'choice' at a GLBT debate, fell on his sword. Chris Dodd, who's fought the good fight for many long, hard months to protect us from warrantless mass-searches and wiretaps, along with immunity for corporate lawbreakers, bowed out, as did John Edwards, a man who's spent his entire career fighting for the poor, the victimized, the blood that greases our mighty economic engine's cogs.

So, what are we left with?

Not counting Ron Paul (hahahaha.... loser), you have McCain, a man most of his own party hates, Romney, a man most of his own party claims to love, but secretly hate (because he's a Mormon, or because he only claims to believe what they want him to believe to get votes... take your pick), Huckabee, a corrupt Southern caricature, Clinton and Obama.

Gah. Our collective wrists are ready to be laid bare if this is the best we can do.

But the worst of it, the very worst thing, is the inability of most people to ACKNOWLEDGE how lousy our choices are, that we're stuck with the lesser of the lesser of several evils now. Instead you get foaming at the mouth partisans raving about how, if you don't vote for THEIR candidate, you're some kind of anti-American whacko.

Case in point: two Washington Post op-eds by an Obama supporter, and a Clinton supporter, that could leave you tearing your hair out in frustration.

First up, Michael Chabon, author, about how if you don't vote for Obama you're against hope and puppies:

There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama's candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.

It's nice that Chabon was given the gift of omniscience. Could he please tell me where I put my keys?

Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up -- with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit's show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism -- their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty -- not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.

Oh, how he suffers for our sins. Like Jesus on a cross, he reads the newspapers and turns on his teevee, every day.

Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

Yes, that's precisely what those of us who are critical of Obama want to do. We want to take nails that are not made of gold and use them to board up a nonsensical metaphor, thus destroying America.

But now, with everything seeming to come down, at last, to the first Tuesday in February, and in the wake of an all-out, months-long push by the cynicism industry to cook up an entire line of bad reasons ready to heat and serve, I admit that I'm getting tired of listening to rationales from people who know that Obama is a remarkable, even an extraordinary politician, the kind who comes along, in this era of snakes and empty smiles, no more than once a generation.

Ok, see, you can't use four metaphors in two paragraphs and still call yourself an author. You are now officially a hack.

Oh, sure, most of these people tell me they would like to see Obama become president. No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quick-witted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble.

I'm honestly surprised you could type all that out with Obama's cock in your mouth. I guess Chabon has a wireless keyboard.

Things are so bad we just can't afford to waste our votes, people tell me, on some fantasy super-president with magical powers. We need someone electable, someone, as I have been told repeatedly in the past year, who can win.

Well, I for one AM against Superman being President. It's dubiously Constitutional, and he's a dick. I'll admit that. On the other hand: how could he not win? Is Batman running?

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Yes, Bush, and his minions (do they have wings and little organ grinder costumes like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz?), the big lobbies, the media, etc, they're all blameless. It's OUR fault. Michael Chabon gives out indulgences now, too!

Since I started talking and writing about Obama I have come to see that this ruling fear, and nothing else, lies at the back of every objection or reservation people raise or harbor regarding the man and his candidacy.

Really? Huh. Here I thought I disliked a crass political opportunist who changes his positions to suit whatever wind is blowing, a man with ties to corrupt developers and criminals, a man with an empty, silly, outright stupid message of 'bipartisanship' that is sure to lead to more gridlock and less progress for Americans. But silly me. I'm a coward! Thank you Michael Chabon for showing me the error of my ways!

But the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul.

Dude, no matter how many times you repeat it in one article, 'phobocracy' is not a word. It's just too stupid to tolerate.

Also, he's radiant? His every step is divine? For the last time, OBAMA IS NOT JESUS

Meanwhile, they run another op-ed by a Clinton supporter in much the same vein.

"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," said Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday, one of the many "news" outlets to expose Kristol's reliable sexism. "The Democratic establishment would be crazy to follow an establishment that led it to defeat year after year," Kristol continued in his woolly, repetitive style. "White women are a problem, you know. We all live with that."

Bill Kristol has been much criticized for his war mongering, arrogance, poor writing and lack of fact checking. But at least the guy is honest. He considers women a problem -- especially white women. And he feels confident enough as an alpha male to be open about it. "I shouldn't have said that," he demurred. But he can say anything he likes and still fall eternally upward. He's a white man, lord of all he surveys -- including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I'm lord of all I survey? SWEET. I can survey a LOT!

I'm hardly the only woman who sees my life mirrored in hers. She's always worked twice as hard to get half as far as the men around her. She endured a demanding Republican father she could seldom please and a brilliant, straying husband who played around with bimbos. She was clearly his intellectual soul mate, but the women he chased were dumb and dumber.

Ahh, this is that feminist 'solidarity' I hear so much about. Charming! Could we get a criticism of their fashion sense next?

Nothing she did was ever enough to stop her detractors. Supporting a politician husband by being a successful lawyer, raising a terrific daughter, saving her marriage when the love of her life publicly humiliated her -- these are things that would be considered enormously admirable in most politicians and public figures. But because she's a white woman, she's been pilloried for them.

She's had to endure nutcrackers made in her image, insults about the shape of her ankles and nasty cracks from mediocrities in the media like Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews and Kristol.

Oh no, a nutcracker made in her image! SHE MUST IN FACT BE JESUS!

Nor are poisonous women pundits any more kind. Maureen Dowd regularly gives her a drubbing. And "progressives" from Susan Brownmiller to Oprah Winfrey sport Obama buttons.

If you're a woman and you don't support a woman, you're a sex-traitor. Apparently.

I, too, was a bluestocking from a woman's college, straight-A student, Phi Beta Kappa, who found my voice as a writer while exiled to the boonies with a husband who cheated. With every book I published, I saw more clearly how uneven was the playing field for women. We were let into the literary world on sufferance. Unless we wrote unreadable academic tracts that nobody bought, or mysteries or romances or something called "chick lit" (whatever that is), or biographies of Great Men, we were booed off the stage.

I'm so glad this election is about YOU.

She cannot have enjoyed her husband's playing around. She certainly never condoned it. But he was clever enough for her, he supported her dreams, and they both loved their smart and beautiful daughter.

Besides, what does anyone know about anyone else's marriage?

Well, apparently you know about how she feels about Bill, his adultery, and their daughter, so, some people know quite a lot...DID YOU NOT READ WHAT YOU JUST WROTE?

As a senator she has learned compromise and negotiation. She has gotten to know red America as well as blue. If she could win over the rednecks in upstate New York, she can win over any American. She knows this country is full of "security" moms as well as soccer moms. Since she is a woman, she has to show she's ready to be commander in chief. Hence her "triangulation" on Iraq and her signing the absurd Lieberman-Kyl resolution, which calls on our government to use "military instruments" to "combat, contain and [stop]" Iran's meddling in Iraq.

Good of her to win over the 'rednecks', and good of her to show her bold leadership by caving left and right. Is that what you're saying?

You will point to Hillary's complicity. You will quote crazy-like-a-fox Ann Coulter, who claims to be voting for her.

You will also quote left-wing bloggers who love Barack Obama, and MoveOn.org peaceniks (I am one) who see no evil in him (nor do I). But I see little experience either. Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he'll be president someday.

Yes, I quote Ann Coulter, a lot. I base my views almost entirely on what she says.

Also, I'm glad you find Obama 'attactive'.

He was lucky enough not to be in the Senate when the Iraq war resolution was floated after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell lied about WMDs. That was the true tragedy of race: a black man lying for a corrupt white administration that was using him as a token, much as they use Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice now.

Obama is also a token -- of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.

Alternately, the true tragedy of race could be when a national newspaper runs an op-ed calling a credible black candidate for President a 'token'. Either/or.

I understand my hopeful friends who think an Obama button will change America. But I'm sticking with Hillary. I trust her because all her life, her pro bono work has been for mothers and children. And mothers and children -- of all colors -- are the most oppressed group in our country. I trust her to speak for our children and grandchildren -- and for us. She always has.

Her for profit work was for Wal-Mart, amongst others, but when she wasn't busy cashing Sam Walton's checks, or triangulating to protect her image, why, she spoke for our... well, your... children and grandchildren.

This is why reading the paper can drive you to drink.

Sources: WaPo on Obama (Literal Title: Obama vs. the Phobocracy)

WaPo on Clinton (Literal Title: Clinton vs. the Patriarchy) You cannot make these titles up. They're like episodes of The Tick.