tim kaine: vp finalist for obama... ?

I'll buy this. It would significantly increase the chances of turning Virginia blue. And if he can't have Mark Warner (whom I'd like better in the Senate anyway) Kaine's only draw-back I can see at the moment is an endorsement by the greasy Terry McAuliffe, which brings me full circle to the fact the old girl & I were getting a little bit nervous by all this "taking a second look at Hillary" talk.

Like, brr, Dude!

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Update: On second thought, I take it back. Kaine's just another DINO apparently.

Wes Clark! Where you at!?

whither "zoomass"... ?

Princeton via HuffPo has the Top-20 Party School List.  Toto, I don't think this is the 70s & 80s anymore.

1. University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.
2. University of Mississippi, University, Miss.
3. Penn State University, University Park, Pa.
4. West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va.
5. Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.
6. Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Va.
7. University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.
8. University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
9. University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Calif.
10. Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla.
11. University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.
12. University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
13. University of Colorado, Boulder, Co.
14. Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.
15. Tulane University, New Orleans, La.
16. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Ill.
17. Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.
18. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn.
19. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
20. Loyola University-New Orleans, New Orleans, La.

yah, like they would know...

Now herrrre's a revelation:

Obama Would Drag US Into Depression: McCain Camp

Like, these are the same malignant yabbos who gave us the Bush recession, right? The same cynical bastards who now say McCain the candidate doesn't necessarily represent the McCain For President campaign on economic issues? More tax cuts for the obscenely rich? No trickle-down? Jobs outsourced overseas? Gas over $4-a-gallon? Food prices sky-rocketing? Mad cow imported? Canadian pharmaceuticals kept out?

Man! I'm already depressed. And the McSames are on say anything mode.

wrong in sooo many ways...

I may give up watching baseball altogether.

Not so much a h/t to those Deadspin bastards.

shove yer flag lapel pin already... !

I met Charles Krauthammer over a chess table about 10-12 years ago. He's as dreary in person as he projects on TV; but he's not incapable of projecting wry:

Obama will probably win. That snake in the grass Maliki just threw the election Obama's way. And he doesn't even wear an American flag lapel pin.

So le'me put to rest this bit of bovine excretia for you losers who actually believe wearing star-spangled bling is a testimony to your *cough* patriotism. I'm assuming most of you won't vote for Obama anyway and use the fact he was resistant to being bullied into adorning his finely tailored wear with cheap costume jewelry for even cheaper reasons as proof of his squishiness toward some kind of Old Glory nationalism. Your belief system is wholly similar to that of fundamentalist Christianists. That being the case, I refer you to the book of Matthew:

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

The principle's the same: A man foisting his piety/patriotism on others, and expects others to respond in kind, merely displays a false pride. If you're keeping it real, others don't have to see you doing it. And I realize that's an over-simplification, particularly as it pertains to trolling for "low-information" voters in a presidential campaign.

One might note Obama wore his flag lapel pin during the Berlin speech, and probably now has to sleep with the thing. What's next then, a matching decoder ring?

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By the by, Matthew's admonition applies particularly well to the school-prayer debate.

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Update: Oh darn! That wasn't Krauthammer's quote after all, just a Kos writer's summary. Oh well! Guess Krauthammer isn't even wry.

except batman doesn't beat up or beat down the innocent...

Kos writer excerpts this piece from the WSJ:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

I've read my share of Batman comics dating back to the 60s. Batman goes after bad guys, not sorry bastards caught in the middle. And if we could merge the reality-based and faith-based for a nano-second, Batman would go after Bush with prejudice.

End of story.

just before 9/11...

What's that lyric from Sgt. Pepper's... ? Oh yeah: "It was 7 years ago today... !!" Okay, not 7, but 20 years, and not today; a week or so, here or there -- big deal!

But I seem to recall '01 as a fun summer!

berlin cops estimate obama's crowd at 200 thousand...

John McCain says he'll wait until he's president to speechify in Berlin, which, if we're lucky, means he won't be giving speeches in Berlin; or he's just afraid he'd cause a stampede if he let off with one of those ghoulish smiles of his -- either that or he wouldn't draw a coupla hundred, let alone a coupla hundred thousand.

All of which leaves me with the certitude that after 8 years of inflicting the likes of Dubya on the world, We The People of the United States owe it a whole lot better than John McCain.

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Update: Hmm, not alone in my thinking here:

"I'm not an American ... It's your election first," Solvit says. "But I am a world citizen, and what you do will affect us ... If we see that the U.S. is changing, it's good for all of us." Solvit also believes it's a Republican thing to say that foreign support is bad. "Everything is moving. He [Obama] is a symbol of this new evolution."

could it be americans are simply incapable of doing the right thing... ?

Polls: McCain Coming On Strong In Battleground State

Choose your cliche: Snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory; Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people; Americans are fat & stupid! They all apply, and never more so should McCain, the blithering buffoon (or did you sleep this week?), prevail this November.

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Update: Er, no. Looks like it's just the pale faces (with *sigh* pale personalities) who're fat & stupid. Quelle surprise!

mad men...

The old girl & I did up the marathon of Mad Men on AMC the other day. Upshot: We're both champing at the bit for season 2 coming Sunday night at 10. Season 1 out on DVD if yer curious.

oh, kiiiiiids... !

Was just washing dishes in the kitchen when I overheard a commercial, referencing a "back-to-school" sale, on the tube. It's still July, isn't it?

Consumer hell, that is America. Used to be when Christmas commercials weren't inflicted on us until the day after Thanksgiving; now we get 'em 'round Halloween.

Boo!

while dubya was reading "the pet goat" (while) upside down...

Cheney (Dick!) ordered the hit:

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. U.S. officials have never stated it was shot down although rumors saying that abound to this day.

And here's a lot more they haven't been telling you.

and the dogs said, "whaddya mean we gotta stop!?"...

Their names are "Lucky" and "Buddy" (no lie!)...

The nation's largest animal sanctuary has agreed to accept two dogs that authorities say were trained to have sex with women.

A coupla thoughts here:

1) They're dogs, and one can only imagine dogs as not minding this bit of business, like, at all;

but 2) Society frowns, and therefore the dogs must now frown.

Frown now, brown dogs!

sauce for the goose...

Fair's fair (or is it Vanity Fair's fair?), except the constitution burning in the McCain fireplace and the Bush portrait on his wall, rather than the flag & bin Laden's respectively, vis a vis Obama, hits a whole lot closer to the reality-based universe.

h/t to therawstory...

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Update: Wow! Looks like I'm ahead of the curve once again:

If Vanity Fair's cartoonist wanted to flip the New Yorker cover on the GOP, they'd have to portray the media's lies about the candidate. Not the true stuff.

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Update 2: And it only now occurs: With the comic McCain employing a walker, the artist might have rendered him in a hospital gown, his wrinkled tookas peaking out the back door. Now that would've sold the concept (and upset my appetite greatly)!

mccain's people: "we're f*cked!"

in today's news:

"Overall, however, Obama cleared a crucial bar in today's press conference. He looked and sounded presidential at a moment when the eyes of the world were on him.

"Will it dramatically affect the race at home when Obama returns? It's hard to tell. But, rest assured that if Obama today had come across as flip or not sufficiently versed on the issues in Iraq and the Middle East, it would have been a major problem for his candidacy. Obama cleared that hurdle with ease."

triangulate *this*, bill... !

Obama: I'll End Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell

One gets the sense that when Bill Clinton acquiesced to this abomination as an homage to equal justice under law (not), in keeping with his too-comfortable approach of caving to the Newties in Congress on so many other issues, i.e., as his default position, and calling it "triangulating," his had t'be the mindset of one prepared to quite literally split the baby down the middle had it been made necessary.

Another reason to believe the running theory of Clinton's basic problem with Obama as being a fundamental envy of a better man.

h/t to TPM...

down goes frazier... !!

Lovely haymaker, this:

The clear endorsement of Senator Barack Obama by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Saturday morning came as a strong blow to the McCain campaign.

McCain has claimed a superiority to Obama in matters of foreign policy as a major selling point to his candidacy for president, but that position is more difficult in the wake of al-Maliki's statement.

After hearing of the announcement, a sometime adviser to the McCain campaign said in an email, "We're f**ked," according to Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic.

while watching "mad men" on a sunday afternoon...

This exchange between Lieberlips and fellow neocon Evan Bayh got me thinking about the Pentagon's long-held certitude about being able to maintain a "two-front" war. The U.S. did it during WWII of course, and they -- we -- thought we could do it now in Afghanistan and Iraq. The difference, however, was Roosevelt wasn't a truculent little bastard without an ounce of humility, and thus had the entire nation backing his play.

Meanwhile the current resident of the oval office and his wannabe heir apparent John McCain insist we're winning in Iraq. But note how they're not so hubristic about our chances in Afghanistan, which ought to give you every indication as to how dire the situation must be there. And since there's no draft, the chances of even holding serve diminishes by the day. The Afghanis and Iraqis have nothing but time and we're growing broke and perhaps broken.

You may now do the math.

don't let manny be manny anymore...

Tea leaves say he could be out the door?

desecration of the flag...

... is when a Republican wraps himself in it:

At one point, Ashcroft said he was so moved by the give-and-take with Bush administration colleagues he was near "standing up and singing the national anthem."

Illustrating the distinction between patriotism and nationalism as well...

netroots nation '08...

I imagine that, at some point, I'll be attending one of these things. They're lookin' t'be a hoot:

The convention’s biggest political get this year is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will participate in a question-and-answer session. The convention will also hear from some of those whom the netroots have propelled into office, including Representative Donna Edwards, Democrat of Maryland, who beat a 15-year incumbent in a primary earlier this year and then won a special election to fill the remainder of his term after he resigned.

If sparks fly, many expect them at a debate between Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the DailyKos and inspiration for the conventions, and former Representative Harold Ford Jr., the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, on how to bring about change in Washington.

I mean, le'me at 'er, the simpering footstool! True or False, Madame Speaker: You got your job provided you took Impeachment off the table; or was there any other justifiable reason, other than CYA, yours and your colleagues', for not only not taking down a war criminal at first opportunity, but capitulating at every turn as it pertained to the occupation of Iraq?

Meanwhile, note Obama's convenient, reasonable excuse to avoid those whom he's, yes, betrayed, i.e., supporting Dodd's FISA filibuster back during the primaries (when Edwards was still in the race) only to switch and vote for the damnable thing when the only option for us then would be to jump to -- >gak!< -- ol' Mr. 894 out of 899.

Mr. Obama must prep for his big trip overseas! -- True enough, but it strikes me to have been a far better bet had he gone during the Republican Convention. Talk about sucking all the oxygen outta that room.

"Ideological purity," bourgeois NYT writer? Not so much. Feeling used from the slick maneuverings of an evidently greasier-than-was-believed politician? Yeah, that pisses me off. Somebody oughta tell Slick that it wasn't being called a liberal that killed Dukakis, Gore, or Kerry; it was the running toward the mushy middle in response.

My kingdom for some imagination.

thoughts while picking my nose...

If John McCain has such difficulty working the internet, how the hell did he ever be allowed to climb into the cockpit of a fighter jet? -- Yes, yes, I know, Daddy had pull.

I've said it here before, and I suspect it'll bear repeating from time to time along the campaign trail: The surprise isn't that he was shot down; the shocker would've been had he not.

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Update: OK, we're apparently talking about one seriously dumb fuck!

McCain: My GPA earned me fifth from the bottom of my class at the Naval Academy status. So, the GPA was based –since that was in the Coolidge administration it was a different measurement, but I can assure you in today’s standards it would be barely passing.

john mccain at his job interview...

So why do you want to be President, Mr. McCain?

"I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."

Well, before I employ you, Mr. McCain, can you give me an example where you've actually won a war before? Let's see here...

- Ah! Shot down and held prisoner for a number of years, mm hmm. A war we lost, I note.

- Voted aye on the invasion and occupation of a neutral country, yeahhh! Uh huh... And how's that going these days?  Hmm? Oh yes, your assurances are, uhm, reassuring, but you don't mind if I get that independently corroborated, do you?

- Well you certainly know how to wage war, Mr. McCain, that much is clear. But what makes you think you know how to win one?

Uhh, Mr. McCain?

[crickets chirping]...

Well, we'll keep your padded resume on file and get back to you.

NEXT!

file this one under "aww darn!"...

Cheney Thought He Had Lethal Anthrax Dose

The betting here is it's a load of crap, a hook upon which Cheney could hang his ugly hat.

olberman & moyers alone cannot a "liberal media" make..

Moyers: Corporate media colludes with democracy's demise.

Now the dominant media is saying, "Well, we did ask. We did do our job by asking tough questions during the run-up to the war."

But I've been through the transcripts. And I'll tell you, you will find very few tough questions. And if you come across them, you will discover that they were asked of the wrong people. . .

Sadly, in many respects, the Fourth Estate has become the fifth column of democracy, colluding with the powers that be in a culture of deception that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom, and that is the truth.

The plus side to excising the nightly news and orbiting news programming from one's viewing agenda is one watches less T.V. overall.

... except that it was the programming I used to enjoy watching.

sanity in our federal courts... ?

Meanwhile, the bet here has the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse literally itching for a piece of this 13 year-old.

weird goddamn dreams lately...

Actually, it's Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog! Go!

goodbye from the world's biggest penile implant...

Oh! He said "polluter"?

Did the Euros bother to make a distinction?

pelosi drops a shoe...

One imagines this Speaker as having a lot of shoes, but none can be as big as this:

"This is a Judiciary Committee matter, and I believe we will see some attention being paid to it by the Judiciary Committee," Pelosi told reporters. "Not necessarily taking up the articles of impeachment because that would have to be approved on the floor, but to have some hearings on the subject."

Pelosi added: "My expectation is that there will be some review of that in the committee."

The guess here is Conyers whispered in her ear, telling her he'd move with or without her consent, i.e., if she didn't get on the stick even as another contempt citation against Karl Rove just wouldn't cut it. Wondering also if this isn't a preemptory move in anticipation of wholesale pardons from the War Criminal in Chief.

webb out as vp...

Bummer!

who demolished WTC 7... ?

Put it this way: It wasn't flight 11 or 175 (which, contrary to popular lore, had nothing to do with the collapse of WTC 1 & 2 either).

And just how did the BBC know WTC 7 was going down 26 minutes before it did? These and other unanswered questions the 9-11 Commission glossed over and/or ignored completely...

a day late but not a dollar short...