Obama Resigns From His Chicago Church

In other news, Obama has announced that he is officially leaving his Chicago church, that he hasn't attended in some time and obviously couldn't attend as president. He made the decision after the media went after a sermon that a (white) guest pastor gave a sermon and mocked Hillary's sense of entitlement. It was a stupid thing to do, but obviously had NOTHING to do with Obama, yet the media went after it nevertheless. Obama, saying he didn't want his church to distract from his campaign anymore, and didn't want his church to suffer anymore from negative attention (people have been harassed and some have even received death threats), and he didn't want to have to be held accountable for everything everyone in his church said, just as he didn't want them to be held accountable for his campaign.

It is pretty sad that it has come to this. The media ought to be ashamed.

Here is the video:

Our Long Florida-Michigan Nightmare Is Over

Today the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee finally put an end to the Florida-Michigan fiasco, and in probably the best way possible. Here is a breakdown:

• Both Michigan and Florida get 100% of their delegates seated, thus giving their voters a voice at the Convention, even if the votes represented illegitimate elections in the first place.
• The delegates from Florida and Michigan only receive half a vote at the Convention, which represents the punishment for breaking the rules, yet is gracious considering the original penalty was no vote at all. This was necessary because without a penalty there would be no reason for them, and every other state, to break the rules next time around. People never mentioned this, but Michigan has broken the rules THREE presidential elections in a row (2000, 2004, 2008), they knew what they were doing, and they keep breaking the rules anyway, sanctions were necessary to maintain order in the Democratic Party and to not be a HUGE slap in the face to the 48 states that actually obeyed the rules. Hillary wanted them to not be penalized at all, apparently not caring that such a decision would mean chaos for the next contested primary season.
• Obama received the "Uncommitted" delegates from Michigan, the vast majority of which obviously voted for Obama (and then some for Edwards, who endorsed Obama). This was quite obviously the fairest outcome, since it comes closer to mirroring the actual will of the voters than the alternative solution, which was Hillary's contention that Obama should get ZERO votes from Michigan. Yes, they think that was the fairest outcome. No one in the entire state of Michigan voted for Obama apparently. That is what the Hillary camp would like us to assume.

In the end, Hillary got 19 more delegates out of Florida than Obama, and 10 more out of Michigan, meaning that after their votes are cut in half, she gets 14.5 more delegates than Obama, which changes nothing. I should also mention that this was the exact solution I was supporting as the ideal compromise, for everyone.

What is really important here is that the Florida decision was UNANIMOUS, meaning every single Hillary supporter on the Committee voted in favor of the compromise, signaling how ridiculous her position was, and how the Party is unifying around Obama, despite her scorched earth strategy. The Michigan vote was 19-8, so 8 Hillary supporters hung on to the outrageous demand that Obama get zero votes out of Michigan, apparently thinking it is perfectly acceptable to disenfranchise every Obama (and Edwards) supporter in the state, even though they just spent and entire day calling for the DNC to "count every vote" that helps Hillary. But even that vote shows that the Party is essentially behind Obama now, and that Hillary has no place to go. Although her spokesman Harold Ickes did close with a threat that Hillary "reserves the right" to take her complaints to the Credentials Committee (i.e. scorching the earth).

Hillary's supporters in attendance and protesting outside put on a pretty pathetic and petty show though. They repeatedly booed when Obama supporters on the Committee were making points, while Obama supporters never booed Hillary's supporters on the Committee, as apparently they've been house trained, while Hillary's supporters obviously have not. Outside Hillary's supporters were angry, and vowed to vote for McCain in November (yes, obviously they were great Democrats in the first place). There were also reports of some of her supporters handing out right-wing propaganda about Obama. Here is a sampling:

"[Obama] is a cult. His campaign is an anti-woman cult."

"I will actively campaign against him."

"You know who is backing him is George Soros. It'll be George Soros, not Obama, who is running the country."

"South Dakota is totally rigged for Obama because of Tom Daschle. Obama's going to win South Dakota because he's buying it and rigging it."

"[Obama] is a socialist! You know what the Nazi Party was before it was the Nazi Party? It was the Socialist Party."

It was not all that different from the mood outside, where signs read, "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen," and some pamphlets detailed Obama's supposed dealings in drugs and gay sex.

"Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?" Eve Fairbanks, a reporter with The New Republic, was asked by one protester.

[And this shows who's side they are on:]

"HuffPost sucks! HuffPost sucks!" and later, "Fox News, fair And balanced! Fox News, fair and balanced!"

Yes, Obama is a murder apparently, and a gay one at that. And these despicable people pretend to be Democrats. Even Ann Coulter doesn't say crap that vile and ridiculous. All a pretty sad display, and I'd be embarrassed by their conduct if I was Hillary, or a sane Hillary supporter.

Anyway, I'm glad Florida and Michigan are behind us, Hillary is out of ways to distort the delegate math, and essentially everyone won, aside from Hillary and her supporters who were less concerned with a fair outcome than they were with Hillary's political games.

Update: Apparently Obama actually had the votes to press for an even more favorable option on Michigan, a 50-50 split, but chose not to, in order to be more charitable to Hillary, and to help Party unity.

Geraldine Ferraro Decries Racism, Against White Americans While Justifying Actual Racism

Geraldine Ferraro is at it yet again. She has taken her bigoted, sexism-baiting roadshow to the Boston Globe, and I'm going to address her ignorant and bigoted comments, yet again.

She starts out with this to frame her argument:

Here we are at the end of the primary season, and the effects of racism and sexism on the campaign have resulted in a split within the Democratic Party that will not be easy to heal before election day. Perhaps it's because neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman or what is fueling the concern of Reagan Democrats for whom sexism isn't an issue, but reverse racism is.

So, she contends that there are two issues at play in this election, sexism and racism. You may think she is speaking of racism against Obama, but you'd be wrong, she is talking about the magical thing called "reverse racism", which is something you only hear from bigoted conservatives who, not content with simply denying racism exists, take it further by claiming that whites are the true victims of racism, that they are persecuted by the liberals and their affirmative action who have elevated the non-whites so much that they rule everything and now the poor whites are at the bottom of the barrel, treated like second class citizens who can't open their mouths out of fear that the blacks and the liberals will beat them up. This is something you'd expect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan. Watch American History X, watch Derek Vinyard's father talking about "affirmative blacktion" and how whites are on the losing end of some neo-nazi culture war, that is the type of people who make these arguments, and they don't have to drop the N-bomb to convey their bigotry. And yet we are hearing them here from the likes of Geraldine Ferraro. She continues her ranting:

If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Wow. So where to start? Let's go in order. So first we see that "If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist." This is CLASSIC bigoted "reverse-racism" talk. If you are racist, but won't admit you are racist, and you open your mouth and spew racist or bigoted comments, as Ferraro has repeatedly in the past, and people come forward and call it racist or bigoted, this is what they always come back with "If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist." Yes, it isn't the fault of the racist, it is the sensitive blacks and those bleeding heart liberals with their affirmative action and political correctness that are ruining things for the whites. The poor persecuted whites can't say anything about Obama without being accused of being racist! OR, maybe a more sane interpretation, perhaps you actually said clearly bigoted and racist things? It's funny that she keeps running into this problem of opening her mouth and being accused of being racist, when no other Hillary surrogates have the same problem. Howard Wolfson is constantly spewing ignorant crap about Obama, but no one to my knowledge has ever accused him of being racist, same goes with 99% of Hillary's surrogates and supporters. So apparently the "If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist" excuse is certifiably bankrupt. Perhaps--and I'm just going out on a limb here--perhaps if you open your mouth and bigoted or racist things come out of your mouth, perhaps that is where you are running into a problem Ferraro. Perhaps that is why you constantly have people responding to you in the way they do. Moving to the next part:

They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening.

So here we see an absolutely baseless accusation that Obama has played the race card throughout his campaign, without a SINGLE example, without a SINGLE shred of evidence. You may remember Bill Clinton got some press a few weeks back by making this same baseless accusation, and then when asked about it, he claimed he never said it, even though he said it in a radio interview and the evidence clearly proves that he said it. Neither of them have EVER been able to point to a single example of Obama injecting race into this campaign, indeed Obama has been very very careful to NOT make race an issue in this campaign. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, has quite the track record of exploiting racism to hurt Obama. No Ferraro, what is frightening here is that you live in this delusional land, and you have no concept of reality, and it makes you relate to the real world in a disjointed, confused manner. You are railing against the media for not having a problem with something that never happened! You are dangerously close to becoming the crazy crackhead on the street screaming at a tree. And it is just a little disconcerting that she can't see any racism in all of the race-baiting that the Clinton campaign pulled, yet she sees racism against whites and sexism against Hillary everywhere she looks, to the point where she has made a personal vendetta out of running around various media outlets attacking Obama and everyone else for nonexistent malfeasance. I think that gives a very striking look at her worldview.

In the following part she is talking about what she calls "Reagan Democrats". Let me preface it though by dispelling this myth of "Reagan Democrats", in the words of another blogger:

There is no such thing as "Reagan Democrats." They are called Republicans. It's been nearly 20 years since Reagan has been in office, and nearly 30 since he's been elected. All the Democrats who followed him have long left the party. The voters she, and the media, may be referring to, tend to be working class whites who are either soft Democrats or independents.

Okay, so here is Ferraro on those elusive "working class whites":

They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Emphasis mine. So I should point out she is running with the tired and disingenuous "white problem" spin from Hillary's campaign. I'll say it again, Obama has no white problem, he has no blue collar worker problem. His big wins in places like Oregon and in the West and Midwest prove this. The exit polls and public opinion polls prove this. There is no "white problem", it is an Appalachian problem, that is to say there is something specific to the Appalachian region which makes uneducated, or undereducated people refuse to vote for Obama, while he often beats Hillary among this demographic in other parts of the country. This missing piece is RACISM. It is bigotry. You can explain it as a result of poor education and socialization, but all the sociology in the world doesn't change the fact that they hold racist and bigoted views. So here we see her defending these people who won't vote for Obama because of his race, she says it isn't racism, it is "racial resentment". She is actually trying to legitimize their bigotry by saying they are validated in feeling resentment toward blacks because of this "reverse racism" she hates so much. She wants to have us believe that they aren't refusing to vote for Obama because he is black, they are doing it because they are resentful of how great the blacks have it, and the fact that they can't open their mouthes without being accused of being racist. Yeah, Ferraro and them have a lot in common it seems. Ferraro is implying that whites aren't treated fairly simply because they are white. Can you believe this woman?? I can't imagine anyone more out of touch with the reality of race in this country. I'd say she is on par with Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh here. It is unbelievable. Whites are the ones discriminated against on the basis of race??? Have you lost your goddamn mind??

It reminds me of when I moved to a large city and I was trying to find a job, and a conservative family member warned me that I wouldn't be able to find a decent job because I'm white. His belief in this "reverse racism", his disdain for political correctness, affirmative action and other examples of "liberal" racial consciousness actually twists things so much in his head that he thinks that I'll be persecuted in the job market because I'm white, and that in the big cities all the best jobs go to the blacks. I actually laughed at his ignorance. He knows nothing of race or socioeconomics, just as Ferraro knows nothing of these things, instead they both reside in their realm of bigotry, where they don't say "nigger", and would never self-identify as racism, but espouse these dangerous and bigoted beliefs and resentments nonetheless. No, African Americnas aren't getting all of the cooshy jobs because of their race, in fact almost all of these jobs are held by whites. No, I wouldn't face intense competition in the job market from African Americans because I wasn't applying for those positions. If I were applying for shitty service jobs that no one wants, yes, I'd be competing with many African Americans then, but they aren't there because they are getting a free ride over "hard working white Americans", no, they are there because they have no other choice. They get screwed socioeconomically, they get substandard education, they are constantly getting shit on and constantly getting the worst jobs. How's that for reverse racism? How's that for whites being treated unfairly relative to blacks? Give me a goddamn break.

Anyway, she then goes on to try to make it seem as though Obama is out of touch and has some irreconcilable racial differences with white America which make him an inferior candidate, she says they believe that Obama doesn't "understand them and their problems." She goes on to say that "when he said in South Carolina after his victory 'Our Time Has Come' they believe he is telling them that their time has passed." These people no doubt see the rise of a black man as an indication that "their time has passed", the time of bigoted people that is. Obama is a sign of social progress in our society, it is something that couldn't have happened as recently as a few decades ago. Yet you have this place, Appalachia, mired in this outdated, bigoted ideology and they are getting passed over by the rest of society that isn't stuck in their bigotry. So yes, some people fear this, some racists who already think that whites are on the run and blacks and immigrants are taking over the country are afraid and angry that their white nation is, in their perception, falling down around them. But Ferraro is defending this, and it seems to be the same ideology, more or less, that she espouses. From her previous comments we can see she has a real problem with successful African Americans, especially African American men (Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, Bob Herbert, etc), and she seems to think very low of them, and she thinks they are only there because they are black, that there are more deserving whites who would be there instead if they weren't being persecuted for their whiteness. It is illogical, it is crazy, it is bigoted, it is very much conservative, but that is what Ferraro feels inside, and we can see that through her consistent hangup and antagonism against successful African Americans, and race more generally.

And that hangup is the most interesting part. She goes out of her way to make comments about race, she goes out of her way to attack Obama and single out other black men. It keeps coming up with her over and over and over again. Why? She has a hangup. She is fixating on her own bigotry, and then attacking everyone else and accusing them of "reverse racism". Here is what I think. From watching the Republicans over the years I've learned one thing: If someone has a hangup on something, say homosexuality for example, they are generally the ones that end up being gay. We've seen it time and time again. And even Eliot Spitzer, he dedicated a large part of his career to fighting prostitution rings, and it turns out he was the one involved in multiple prostitution rings. I think Ferraro is hung up on blacks and "reverse racism" against whites, because she is actually the one who is racist. She is the one who is bigoted. And she is projecting it on everyone else around her. That isn't to say that everyone who fights against anything is actually a closet hypocrite, but Ferraro is definitely hung up on this issue, and she doesn't seem to understand why everyone else thinks something is wrong with her repeated bigoted comments.

One last thing, the sexism. No Ferraro rant would be complete without her accusing everyone of being sexist (especially the blacks), although this time she doesn't go as far as to explicitly accuse Obama of being "terribly sexist" (apparently she got enough backlash against that she thought better of it this time):

The truth is that tens of thousands of women have watched how Clinton has been treated and are not happy. We feel that if society can allow sexism to impact a woman's candidacy to deny her the presidency, it sends a direct signal that sexism is OK in all of society.

Here she explicitly says that sexism cost Hillary the presidency. If it weren't for sexism, Hillary would have won, or so Ferraro thinks. Yet she fails to give a SINGLE example of any sexism in this campaign, let alone from Obama or Democratic leaders who may have the ability to influence the course of the campaign. How has she been treated unfairly? Never an example, never an explanation. Do you know why? Because she hasn't been treated unfairly. In fact, she has had HUGE advantages in this campaign, especially in the media, which her supporters usually point to as their example of sexism and unfair treatment. As Donna Brazile recently pointed out:

when the senator held a lead in every national poll in 2007, the media described her groundbreaking campaign as being inevitable. No one called that sexist.

Not only that, the media never questioned her claims of superior experience, which were the foundation for her entire candidacy. Even after examples of her grossly exaggerating parts of her "experience", the media never took a look at the big picture, to question what was so special about her experience that made her so much better than Obama. They just accepted her talking points that she was "more experienced" than Obama, that became conventional wisdom, no vetting. How's that for unfair treatment toward Hillary? And after Obama won 11 primaries in a row, and the math made it essentially impossible for Hillary to win, the media carried her campaign by reporting on it like it was still a virtual tie, even though they knew damn well there was no way she was going to be able to make a comeback. They've kept her campaign afloat for the last few months with their nonsense. And after North Carolina and Indiana, when they couldn't pretend anymore and started reporting on the math, Hillary and Bill and Ferraro and their surrogates started attacking the media, calling them sexist, just because they were no longer giving them a free ride.

Anyway, yet again she can't give a SINGLE example of any major sexism in this campaign, yet she makes the outrageous claim that sexism cost her the presidency. No examples of sexism, and no explanation of how sexism supposedly cost her the nomination. And of course Hillary didn't lose the nomination to Obama because he was the superior candidate who ran the superior campaign with a superior message, NOOO, it can't be because he was the better candidate, couldn't be, in Ferraro's mind Obama is completely undeserving, and he is only there because she is black. In her mind a successful black man, a black man who beats a white person, is nothing more than an affirmative action candidate. Just like my bigoted family member, Hillary's failure must be because all the blacks get the best jobs, just another example of the plight of the whites, disadvantaged now that the liberals are letting blacks and immigrants run everything.

Add irrational paranoia of sexism verging on McCarthyism to that, shake, don't stir, and you have Geraldine Ferraro on the rocks.

Donna Brazile Calls For An End, Says It Has Nothing To Do With Sexism

Democratic activist Donna Brazile calls for an end to the race after June 3rd, saying Hillary's willingness to go beyond the end of the primary season is "just awful":

There are some media reports suggesting that Clinton is now willing to extend the primary fight beyond the last set of primaries. That's just awful. No matter on which side of the fence Democratic primary voters have decided to stand, a convention battle is not in the party's best interests.

Democrats are eager to win this year, and it's time for the noble warriors who are backing the candidates to take their aim or their political swords and focus on John McCain and his allies. It's time to rally around the nominee as soon as the fourth day of June breaks upon the horizon.

Why not? What would Democrats gain by taking this debate any further, especially when the party is now engaged in the kind of polarizing politics that we once denounced the GOP for using for partisan gain. What can be won by tainting the process, arguing the rules are now unfair, or worse, the Republican rule of winner-takes-all should have guided the Democrats as well? All this fuss is simply about saving face and waiting to see whether some awful thing tarnishes the presumptive nominee. It's shameful, short-sighted, mean-spirited and morally unacceptable. Now, I said it.

She also takes on the ridiculous accusations of sexism coming from Hillary, Ferraro and her hardcore supporters:

To my longstanding friends in the feminist community who have called out the media as being culturally sexist and misogynistic, it is time to help educate the American public about the corrosive impact of sexism in politics and elsewhere. But we can have this dialogue without using divisive language and political tactics that further threaten to divide our country and party. If another woman comes up to me in an airport and suggests Obama should wait his turn, I might scream, "Stop it!" This is not about who should be first, it's about who has the most delegates and who might make the best president of the United States.

The most tragic thing I have heard is this need to link the Obama camp to pundits inside the media who have used the "math" historically used to call an election with attempts to push Hillary out of the race. After all, when the senator held a lead in every national poll in 2007, the media described her groundbreaking campaign as being inevitable. No one called that sexist.

That last one I emphasized because I've been saying that repeatedly, all of their claims of unfair treatment and trying to be pushed out ignores the fact that the (supposedly sexist) media all but wrote every other candidate off for the majority of this election campaign, while Hillary enjoyed a HUGE lead in superdelegates over Obama, which essentially stacked the deck against Obama, making him fight uphill with a huge handicap, and he never claimed any mistreatment. Can you imagine if Hillary had started out with the entire Party establishment against her? Can you imagine how much whining she would be doing about that, about the unfair sexism? Can you imagine how much red-faced, finger-pointing Bill Clinton would be screaming about how everyone is against his wife?? They would raise hell. They are already raising hell even though they have received EVERY advantage from the very beginning. And Obama never complained, he never made excuses, he just pressed on against all odds, against the "inevitable", and the people chose him, and he has won gracefully, never calling on Hillary to leave, never declaring victory. The differences between these two candidates couldn't be more different, and unfortunately that is something that hasn't gotten much attention in this race.

Dem Leaders Tired Of BS, Say It Is Time To End The Primary Battle (Hillary, This Means You)

It looks like Party leaders are finally reaching the end of their patience with Hillary and this primary season. Today Speaker Pelosi warned Hillary's supporters (and essentially Hillary's campaign, although she wouldn't say it) who are threatening to divide the Party by taking the fight all the way to the Convention that they are pursuing "a scorched earth philosophy" (as if they didn't already know that) that would seriously damage the chances of electing a Democratic president in November, and she vowed to step in to prevent that from happening. She continued:

"There is too much at stake in our country for us to be thinking that we can afford the luxury of intra-party battles eight weeks before the election," said Pelosi, in her strongest words yet on the battle over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan. "We've had many months to have a debate, to come to a conclusion. And one way or another ... we have to come together."

She also hit back at Hillary about trying to break the rules for her political gain:

The American people have to know the Democratic Party can run its own delegate selection process ... if they want to govern America. The rules are what the rules are.

And she addressed the failure of the media:

"Instead of talking about process," Democrats now need to "talk about how we have a progressive economic agenda. ... That's what the American people want to hear about," she said. "That's how we can take America in a new direction."

And she also mapped out how she envisions this primary process ending:

"This is the democratic process ... we take it one step at a time. This weekend the (party's) rules committee will act," followed by the final three primaries - Puerto Rico on Sunday, Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Then, she predicted, "there will be some movement of the superdelegates after that ... and we'll make a judgment at that time on what is needed."

All indications are that this time will be soon, as Reid made clear on Wednesday:

There are only three places to go for superdelegates, the Senate the House and the DNC," Reid told the Writers Bloc at Town Hall Los Angeles on Wednesday. "I have talked to Governor [Howard] Dean. I talk to [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. We are pretty much in tune. We are going to tell our folks there are only a couple days to make a decision for those who haven't made a decision."

"We are not going to choose a candidate at the convention. We are going to choose the candidate a week from today."

You can't get much clearer than that. He also took aim at Bush, calling him the worst president "we have ever had in the history of this country." And he went after Greenspan as well too, who he called a "fraud", the "J. Edgar Hoover of the financial world", and "the biggest political hack in Washington."

It sounds like the Party leadership is about tired of bullshit from every source.

And I like it.

Oh, and I shouldn't have to point this out, but I probably do: Pelosi isn't saying this because she hates women. Oh, and Ferraro, Pelosi isn't saying this because you are white either. Sometimes you are just wrong, grow up and deal with it, you are giving women everywhere a bad name.

Anthropology Pop Quiz Time!

Q: What do you do when you find an indigenous tribal group that has never had contact with outsiders or technology, and that you want to keep protected in its natural state?

A: Apparently, you repeatedly fly over their village in a giant metal bird monster taking pictures, which is just what the Brazilian government did:

Notice the freaked out tribespeople trying to shoot at the giant metal bird monster with arrows.



Yeah, that seemed to go over well with the natives. Now that they think the world is coming to an end, I'm sure they'll just go about their daily lives..

According to the BBC:

The first flight had an obvious impact on the tribe. By the time the plane returned, most of the women and children had fled and those who remained had painted their bodies.

Update: Hillary is demanding that the DNC not end the primary campaign until every painted indigenous warrior's vote is counted, unless they support Obama, of course. There are reports that she will go on a hunger strike unless the DNC seats the painted warriors at the Democratic National Convention, again, only if they vote for her.

Bush, McCain, McClellan & The War

The DNC has released a video using Scott McClellan's recent confessions to attack John McCain, using John McCain's own words, check it out:

Hillary's "Count Every Vote" Hillpocrisy

Here is a fun bit of hillpocrisy, for those jonesing for an early morning fix. This didn't make the news anywhere, but at the same time Hillary has been running around the country decrying the terrible disenfranchisement of voters in Michigan and Florida who voted for her (she wants to disenfranchise every single voter who voted for Obama in Michigan), equating their struggle (okay, actually her struggle because they don't seem to really care) with the suffrage movement and the fight against slavery, and comparing the Florida-Michigan row to Mugabe's anti-democratic actions in Zimbabwe, she has been trying to disenfranchise voters in Texas. Yes, we all know she also doesn't want to count any voters from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, but now she is going after caucus goers in Texas, who just happened to have voted for Obama. Hillary's campaign tried keep an entire county from being seated at the state convention because that county's senate district conventions were held a day late, because there wasn't a large enough venue in the county for the day it was originally scheduled. So Hillary's campaign wants everyone in the county (again, the county went to Obama, just a coincidence I'm sure..) disenfranchised, for breaking the rules, because they essentially had no other choice.

This of course directly contradicts her moral standard she has employed in the Florida-Michigan fiasco, which is that "whenever we can understand the clear intent of the voters, their vote should be counted." Hm, I'm pretty sure these people intended to vote for Obama, so why are you trying so hard to get everyone in that county disenfranchised if you are supposedly the new hero of democracy? What happened to fighting for every single vote to be counted?

Oh, and a Hillary supporter on the credentials committee that would decide the ultimate fate of the votes from Collin County said "What is troubling me...is that it seems to me that this rule is crystal clear." Which is funny, because the rules of the DNC were also crystal clear, even clearer actually because they were warned of the consequences, and yet they violated the rules anyway. In Collin County the local Democratic Party didn't want to break the rules, but they had nowhere to hold their county convention that day, so they had to do it the next day. But regardless, what we see here is that on one hand you have Hillary demanding that every vote (that was for her) be counted, and saying screw the rules, and then on the other hand you have her trying to disenfranchise 40% of the voters from Michigan, not count the votes from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, and now trying to disenfranchise the voters of an entire county in Texas, and defending the rules as "crystal clear". Funny how that works huh?

But that's hillpocrisy for you!

But this story has a happy ending, for democracy, not Hillary, because last night the Texas Democratic Party's temporary credentials committee voted unanimously to deny the challenge aimed at unseating the entire Collin County delegation from attending next week's state convention. The reason? The man Hillary's campaign had file the actual challenge with the committee on the grounds the change could have confused some voters in the county wasn't even from the county in question!

Blog Notice: Searching For John McCain

Today something was posted on Daily Kos, which is going to lead to some minor changes in my blog. Here is the gist:

Searching for John McCain is a massive, online activism campaign designed to make at least ten million non-partisan, poll-tested, on-message voter contacts that reveal the damning truth about John McCain entirely through mainstream news reports and McCain’s own words. Through mass blogger participation and the use of embedded hyperlinks, Searching for John McCain will connect millions of curious, low-information swing voters to negative, mainstream news articles about John McCain without 99% of those voters even knowing that Searching for John McCain exists.

To learn how to participate, and to learn how it will work, read on into the extended entry.

Essentially it is a strategy to make it more likely that casual internet searchers who type in "John McCain" will find news articles which expose his true nature. These aren't opinion pieces or exaggerations, they are just mainstream news articles that accurately reflect John McCain's positions, but might otherwise be subsumed by less informative or important results. Read the original post if you'd like to know more about the project.

So how this affects my blog. Basically, from now until some time in the future, every time I mention John McCain, I'll link his name to one of nine news articles about him. Unlike my normal links, these generally won't be relevant to the content of what I'm writing about, so don't get confused if you click on "John McCain" in a post about how ignorant John McCain is on foreign policy, and find it is an article about the minimum wage. Please note, though, that if I have a link that covers more than just McCain's name, like the one in the preceding sentence, it isn't part of this project, it is a real link worth checking out.

I'll also be posting a new McCain blogroll at the bottom of the right side of my blog listing all of the articles. If you'd like to join the effort, read the original post, and jump right in!

It should be interesting to see how this goes..

Obama's Presidential To-Do List

Yesterday Obama was asked what he would (will) do in his first 100 days in office, and Obama's response was music to my ears:

"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system.

While the latter part is very important and necessary, the first part is my favorite, because there has been barely any mention during the primary of Bush's executive overreach, and undoing the damage he has done. I'm glad that Obama will make it a priority to begin undoing Bush's damage as soon as he is sworn in.

I hope he doesn't stop there, because there is a lot more damage that Bush did that was constitutional, for example his gutting of government regulations, which has had very damaging impacts on everything from the food we eat and the toys our children play with to the environment and private contractors getting rich by defrauding the government at the expense of taxpayers. Undoing that damage also needs to be an immediate priority. If I were Obama I'd be having my staff make a list of every single decision Bush made while in office and then I'd go down that list and work to undo every single negative thing Bush did, and after I finished filling in Bush's holes, I'd go to work on making those regulations and protections stronger than ever.

If you have some suggestions on other things Obama should do in his first 100 days, in particular things that Bush did that he should undo immediately, post them in the comments.

The Popular Vote, A False Measure Even If It Were Within Her Reach (Which It Isn't)

Many have been taking on Hillary's ridiculous math that she is trying to use to claim she is ahead in the popular vote, and thus entitled to the nomination. Contrary to her repeated claims, she has NOT won the popular vote. Her math only works if you count the invalid results from Michigan and Florida, even though Obama wasn't allowed to campaign in either state, and so they were little more than name recognition tests against someone who has been on the political scene for almost two decades, then, assume Obama got ZERO votes from Michigan, then you don't count ANY votes from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, and then you count the popular vote for Puerto Rico, even though they don't have an actual say in the general election (which flies directly in the face of her alternative claims that only states that factor into electoral votes for Democrats in November count). Simply put, she has most definitely not won the popular vote.

I've also attacked her popular vote argument from another angle by pointing out that changing the rules after the game is over and then claiming victory is outright bullshit. Her claims assume that Obama would have been playing by the same strategy if the rules had made the popular vote the goal from the beginning, which is ridiculous. Obama played by the rules, and played for delegates, and he won. If the rules were different, he would have developed an entirely different strategy. Let's use an example.

You have Obama and Hillary playing blackjack. Obama gets two 10s, so he ends up with a 20. Hillary gets dealt a 4 and a 2, she hits, gets another 4, hits again, gets another 2, and stands with 12. Obama wins, as he is closest to 21 without going over (the goal of the game), but right before he declares victory Hillary yells "Wait wait! If we were playing poker I would have won, two pair beats two of a kind!!"

This is essentially what Hillary is trying to do (plus maybe adding a few cards, Florida and Michigan, to her hand by cheating). Do you see the problem with this? Does she really expect us to believe that Obama would have stopped at two 10s if the goal hadn't been getting close to 21, but had instead been winning at poker? C'mon now. And the sad thing is, like I said before, in real life she still hasn't won at blackjack OR poker.

Anyway, today I read an article which took on Hillary's popular vote argument from a completely different, more existential angle, and I thought it was worth sharing. The gist of the critique is this:

But a general election for president has two qualities that a presidential primary campaign lacks, and which make it reasonable to talk about the national popular vote in the former but not the latter: (1) all fifty state elections in a general election are synchronic, i.e., they take place at the same time; and (2) the fifty state elections are all open to the same pools of voters and governed by roughly the same procedure.

No two elections that lack either quality can be combined into a meaningful aggregate result.

Give the whole thing a read here, because it successfully adds yet another dimension in which Hillaryland math is outright illegitimate, as if we needed another:

Hillary Clinton and the Popular Vote: Not Wrong, But Meaningless
by Daniel Koffler, The Huffington Post

And for my less word-inclined readers, a few pictorial representations:





Update: Donald Sutherland has also had enough with Hillary's popular vote nonsense:

Hillary's Popular Vote Notion only 'Popular' with the Punditocracy
by Donald Sutherland, The Huffington Post

McCain's Baghdad Market Strolls Didn't Prepare Him For His Daily Ass Kicking By Obama

If we know anything about McCain, it is that he doesn't understand foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East (and particularly particularly in Iraq), and he loves lying to the public about the war. We saw this beautifully executed during his own "mission accomplished" tour around a Baghdad market a little over a year ago, where he boasted about the security gains saying that Americans weren't getting the "full picture" about the amazing success of our war in Iraq:

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told CNN that that President Bush’s escalation in Iraq is going so well, "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee." On Monday, he told radio host Bill Bennett that there "are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today."

Republican Congressman Mike Pence, who accompanied McCain on his love stroll, backed him up saying that the Baghdad market was just "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

And McCain and his entourage took an open-air stroll around the market to prove the point.

Only the Americans weren't getting the "full picture" from his little photo op. That is, unless the last time you went on a casual stroll through a farmers' market in Indiana you arrived in a convoy of armored vehicles, wearing a flak jacket, and accompanied by 100 heavily armed American troops, while sharpshooters provided cover from rooftops and three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships circled above providing additional cover. I know that's how I usually walk through a safe farmers' market, but I have to admit it gets kind of annoying when I want to listen to the hippie playing the guitar but I can't hear him because of the roar of gunships overhead. But yes, apparently McCain's "armor free" stroll is what is passing for "straight talk" nowadays.

Oh, and it also turns out that Gen. Petraeus doesn't go on joyrides around the city in unarmed vehicles either:

John Roberts rebutted McCain’s assertions, stating, "I checked with General Petraeus’s people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee." He added that a new report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey "said no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat reporter could walk the streets of Baghdad without heavily armed protection."

So much for John "facts on the ground" McCain.

Petraeus wasn't the only one to disagree with McCain's whitewashed, ultra-rosy crackhead fantasy version of the situation on the ground in Iraq, apparently the Iraqis, who live it every day of their lives weren't so cheerful about the whole charade:

Several merchants said Monday that the Americans' visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents. "Every time the government announces anything -- that the electricity is good or the water supply is good -- the insurgents come to attack it immediately," said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.

But even though he was fearful of a revenge attack, he said, he could not afford to stay away from the market. This was his livelihood. "We can never anticipate when they will attack," he said, his voice heavy with gloomy resignation. "This is not a new worry."

Yes, the Iraqis lives were put in danger by McCain's little propaganda stunt, but why should he care, he will be whisked away back to the Green Zone by his multi-billion dollar armored security force. The Iraqis, not so lucky:

21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

Now you tell me, who knows the conditions on the ground better, McCain, who got us into this catastrophe in the first place, or the Iraqis, who were executed for trying to earn enough money to feed their families, and were unfortunately visited by the angel of death?



Not to be outdone by himself when it comes to being a lying asshole, McCain again boasted about his superior knowledge of our awesome successes in Iraq, despite the nearly 1000 American soldiers who have died since his last propaganda stunt, by pulling another: accusing Obama of not knowing how great things are in Iraq, and challenging him to go on an open-air market stroll with him to prove his point. I think we know how this one goes. (Perhaps McCain has finally realized that the only way he will become president is if Obama is assassinated, which seems to be the conventional wisdom for Obama's opponents lately)

Doesn't it seem weird though that you apparently can't understand the situation in Iraq without walking around Baghdad, yet McCain can know exactly what is going on in the mind of Ahmadinejad and know enough to be a tireless advocate of bombing the hell out of Iran, all without setting a single foot inside Iran? And apparently he also knows what is best for Cuba (a policy that has failed for 50 years) without actually setting foot in Cuba. And apparently he knew the best way to save New Orleans from Katrina, without being there, because he was eating birthday cake with Bush while the citizens of New Orleans were dying. It is weird that Iraq has some special magical phenomenon about it that prevents anyone from understanding what is going on there without going on a heavily armed photo op in a Baghdad market, while in all these other situations he knows everything despite never getting anywhere near the place in question. Oh, but apparently the armed photo ops don't make you any more knowledgeable when it comes to understanding the basic dynamics of the sectarian violence in Iraq, you know, that whole Sunni vs Shia thing that McCain has so much trouble with. Or having a passing knowledge of combat operations within Iraq. Oh well, details details.

Anyway, Obama responded to McCain's challenge with a verbal carpet-bombing:

John McCain's proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don't need any more 'Mission Accomplished' banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don't want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.

Ouch, you had that coming McCain, yet you walked right into it.

McCain shot back with Bush's trademark constipated "mission accomplished" spin:

To say that we've failed in Iraq and that we're not succeeding does not comport with the facts on the ground. So we've got to show him the facts on the ground.

Yes, the same BS Bush has been feeding us for over 5 years now, and the same BS McCain has promised at least 5 more years of if elected president. Funny it should take so long to get out if everything was going so well.

Obama's campaign drops McCain with a cold kick of reality:

What does all his experience get us? What do all those visits [to Iraq] get us?

The fact that he goes to Iraq and gets a tour apparently does little to provoke the kinds of questions that should be asked, and what Sen. Obama has been asking since the beginning. So it is not a question of longevity in government. It is a question of judgment, it is a question of a willingness to challenge policies that have failed. And he seems just dug in.

On the day after the former White House press secretary conceded that the Bush administration used deception and propaganda to take us to war, it seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq. Senator Obama challenged the President's rationale for the war from the start, warning that it would divert resources from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Al Qaeda and mire us in an endless civil war.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Now that was something that Hillary could have never said, because she ate up Bush's crap just like McCain. Hopefully by this point people are starting to see why Obama being against the war from the beginning was such a big deal?

Update: John McCain gets basic (common knowledge) facts about Iraq wrong again, and then claims Mosul is now "quiet", while the same day Mosul is rocked by three suicide bombings. Another typical day of lies (or perhaps just total incompetence) for McCain:

Speaking about Iraq at a townhall event on Thursday evening in Greensdale, Wisconsin, Sen. John McCain declared, "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks..." (Video is below.)

McCain was wrong on two points. First, U.S. forces have not returned to pre-surge levels. Before the surge, there were 130,000 troops in Iraq; even if the scheduled troop reductions are carried out as planned, there will still be 140,000 troops in Iraq in August.

Moreover, McCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet" was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings -- two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town -- left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports.

Update #2: Kerry hits McCain over not knowing how many troops are in Iraq, while McCain's aides say it was a mistake, and McCain himself says he said something he didn't:

It is very disturbing to have John McCain continue to raise questions about what he knows and what he bases his judgments on. If you don't know the number of troops, it is difficult to make a judgment as to whether they are overextended. ... It raises serious questions about his comprehension of this challenge.

Update #3: Oh yes, and on his most recent trip to Iraq McCain didn't visit that market, he wanted to, but was told it wasn't safe for Americans, and that it was now controlled by Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army. Yay for the surge, apparently security is getting WORSE, not better!

McCain Exposes His Foreign Policy Ignorance, Yet Again

Moira Whelan over at the Huffington Post points out McCain's latest foreign policy gaffe--well, not so much a gaffe as yet another sign he doesn't know what he is talking about when it comes to many things, especially foreign policy:

Yesterday, in his big non-proliferation speech, McCain took his gaffes to a new level. He actually invented 20 years of negotiations between the United States and Tehran. In his speech, McCain said:

"Today, some people seem to think they've discovered a brand new cause, something no one before them ever thought of. Many believe all we need to do to end the nuclear programs of hostile governments is have our president talk with leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran, as if we haven't tried talking to these governments repeatedly over the past two decades."

McCain has clearly forgotten what Max Bergmann points out: The stated policy of the United States since April 7, 1980 has been that we don't talk to the Iranians. Never has the United States had communications, or tried to have communications, with the Iranian government on their nuclear program. Iran's nuclear communications have been limited to working through the European Union (led by France and Germany, countries John McCain has referred to as "vacuous" and "posturing").

This is why I love that McCain has it in his head that attacking Obama on foreign policy is a smart strategy, when every single day he does it he highlights more of his ignorance, and more of how closely he clings to Bush's failed policies. Obama loves it too, which is why he has repeated said that the foreign policy debate is one he is happy to have with McCain.

And again, these aren't just isolated examples of ineptitude, all of these taken together paint a crystal clear picture of what kind of failed leader McCain intends to be.

Taken with his other many gaffes on Iran (repeated Sunni/Shia screw up, the use of Khamenei and Ahmajinedad interchangeably) there should be real questions about whether McCain has any knowledge of US-Iranian relations. Given that this one was in his prepared text, it also makes you wonder what his foreign policy team actually knows about Iran. For a man running for President on his foreign policy aptitude such confusion should sound alarm bells.

It says something when McCain is setting off more alarm bells during his campaign than Bush did during the 2000 campaign when it comes to ignorance. The question is, when will the media start doing their job with McCain?

Obama Endorsement Watch

Three superdelegates have endorsed Obama so far today:

Colorado superdelegate Pat Waak:

I believe that Sen. Obama and his message of change is what Colorado wants and that he will defeat John McCain in November. In fact, the most recent Rasmussen poll on May 19, 2008 shows a Sen. Obama with a 6-point lead in a head-to-head race and I think that margin will only increase as voters see the clear difference.

Finally, I believe that our country needs the type of visionary, uplifting leadership that Senator Obama has shown during this long campaign. In the state of Colorado his message of hope has attracted young people, new Democrats and Independent voters who will make up a winning coalition this fall.

Oregon superdelegate Meredith Wood Smith:

Why Obama? Because he received the majority of the votes in the Oregon primary, and he demonstrates the leadership needed to get us out of Iraq, restore our economy, begin the tough job of providing health care for all Americans and, most of all, heal the divisions in our nation. His commitment to grass-roots organizing, similar to Howard Dean's "Fifty State Strategy," will help Democrats win our down-ticket races. His deep understanding of our Constitution ensures that he will appoint judges, to both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, who will truly defend our constitutional rights and freedoms.

and Guam superdelegate Ben Pangelinan:

Senator Obama is my choice. I believe he is the best candidate to deliver on the promise that is America, for all of America.

In speaking to members of both teams, I have come to trust in Senator Obama's commitment to turning the promises on the issues that are important to the people of Guam, into progress for the people of Guam.

If I'm not mistaken, this puts Obama a full 200 delegates ahead of Hillary, or essentially 10% of the racetrack ahead going into the final few feet. It may not sound like a lot, but picture a sprinter 30 feet behind on the 100 meter dash, is that a close second? Definitely not. Is there any chance of closing that 30 feet? No way in hell. And Obama is only picking up speed.

Reason #89416 Why Obama Rocks

Obama's spot in Puerto Rico:

Failure In Leadership Begets Failed Policies (Cuban Edition)

Today I read an article about McCain's policy toward Cuba, which closely mirrors what I wrote about it a few days ago, namely, that instead of leading with smart new policies as Obama is doing, McCain is wholeheartedly embracing policies that have failed for half a century. No, worse than that, these policies have actually kept democracy out of Cuba, as I pointed out and the author points out in this article:

There is little doubt that had the US normalized relations with Cuba, opened up trade, encouraged travel and exchanges, Cuba would have been transformed long ago. The détente that worked its magic on the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe would have been much more powerful in Cuba.

So has the embargo been a success? Depends on how you measure success:

The embargo has helped, no doubt, to impoverish the Cuban people. It has also helped to make Castro a nationalist hero throughout Latin America and much of the world. It has done nothing for nearly five decades to advance democracy, civil liberties or capitalism in Cuba. Even its economic effects have diminished over time. It once cribbed tourism, and, once the Soviet Union went belly up, put a squeeze on oil. Now the Europeans and Canadians populate the Cuban beaches. And Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is happy to provide Cuba with the oil it needs.

In the end the author and I come to the same conclusion, McCain's Cuba policy is a perfect example (one of MANY) of why McCain isn't qualified to be president of the United States. McCain is not a leader, he does not pursue good policies, indeed he goes out of his way to pursue failed policies. McCain is the exact opposite of Plato's philosopher king, cut from the same cloth as our national embarrassment George W. Bush and the rest of the Republicans. This is what Americans need to come to realize. And that is what I'm going to try to do for the next five months. But for now, read the article, it is a good one:

McCain and the Cuba Libre
by Robert L. Borosage, Campaign for America's Future

Challenging McCain On Reproductive Rights

Here is an excellent article from Arianna Huffington which takes on McCain on reproductive rights, and challenges Hillary's most loyal (supposedly feminist) supporters who are now saying they won't vote for Obama just because their nominee didn't win. Here is the gist of her argument:

I get the anger and the disappointment.* But to quote SNL's Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers: Really? You'd rather vote for John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman's right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade "must be overturned"? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be "a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement"?

Really?

Now read the rest here:

Unmasking McCain: His Reactionary Record on Reproductive Rights
by Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post

*Note: I can't be absolutely sure what Huffington means when she says "I get the anger and the disappointment", but I'm thinking it is along the lines of my take on it, which is that we can understand that some of her most loyal supporters are angry and disappointed, but we don't accept that that anger is justified. Anyone who's candidate isn't picked will inevitably be disappointed, sad, etc, but angry? There is no reason for them to be angry because that would imply some kind of wrong was done against them, which none was. If she had won more pledged delegates than Obama and yet he was given the nomination via some backroom deal, that would justify anger, but she did lose fair and square, and to a very good candidate that everyone should be happy about having as our nominee, and it had nothing to do with sexism or anything of the sort (indeed she was given many advantages that no other candidate had). Sure, be disappointed, but you have no one to be angry at, with the possible exception of the Clintons and their advisors, who messed it up terribly. It is time to come together, but misplaced anger will only help McCain, and deal a huge blow to reproductive rights.

Republican War Crimes

I wrote a few months ago about the four-day Winter Soldier event held by Iraq Veterans Against The War which brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence to give an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. Here is some chilling video from the event:



There can be no doubt that the individual soldiers who committed these atrocities are, or were, monsters. But they were also kids, kids who were exploited by the US military, who were reconditioned to be killers, sociopaths, so that they could further the commercial and political agendas of the Republicans and the corporate elite. These individual actions are why I refuse to give a blanket endorsement to "the troops", because I refuse to blindly proclaim my support of those committing these atrocities. These individual actions are also why I believe Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others involved in orchestrating this war are guilty of war crimes, because they aren't just snapshots of a few bad apples, this behavior is systematic, institutionalized, endemic in our occupation. These men and women will have to live with the psychological scars of their actions for the rest of their lives, yet those who are truly to blame will most likely never face any sort of punishment, not even a slap on the wrist. It is criminal what they have done to Iraq, and it is criminal what they did to these soldiers.

And this is what McCain wants to continue for at least 5 more years. Nothing less than war crimes, terrorism.

War is terrorism.

A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words, Maybe A Couple Trillion

What Do Hillary, Bush, Mugabe and Saddam All Have In Common?

In a great article in The Guardian, "Clinton Has Run Her Campaign The Same Way Bush Has Run The Country", Gary Younge quite aptly compares Hillary's modus operandi with that of Bush, pointing out the same willingness to lie to voters and distort reality (along with a whole host of other ills like fearmongering and exploiting racism) to further their political agendas. He starts off by setting the groundwork, "In her cynicism-sustained attempt to defeat Obama, she has shown contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy." Even though he is on the other side of the pond, he gets right what the MSM (with the exception of Olbermann) have failed to grasp:

As the primary season draws to a close it has become increasingly apparent that Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with the same contempt for intelligence, decency and democracy that Bush has run the country. Like the Bush administration, her campaign has been sustained by cynicism, divisiveness and fear-mongering, leaving a toxic and rancorous rift in its wake. Like the White House, her aim has been to win at all costs. And like the White House, it has produced the same result. Failure.

It is a continuum not of policies - on that front she is closer to Barack Obama than either of them would concede - but a mindset that has served America ill these past seven years. Creating a bespoke reality out of whole cloth and then hoping people will not just buy it, but wear it.

Younge then proceeds to explain her dance of deception and hypocrisy over Michigan and Florida, and how she unabashedly switched her entire position on those primaries when it served her political interest to do so (and amazingly the MSM here in America never points this very important fact out):

But then she won both. Now everything is different. Speaking before a crowd of senior citizens in Boca Raton, Florida, last week she went into metaphorical hyperbole, comparing the battle to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan to the suffragettes, the civil rights movement and Zimbabwe - where more than 40 people have been killed in election-related violence. "We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," she explained to a crowd of senior citizens. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

Clinton insists she is winning the popular vote. She's right. But only if you tally votes with the same degree of selectivity as Robert Mugabe. For her claim to make sense, you would have to count the discounted Florida and Michigan primaries and discount the legitimate caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington state, three of which Obama won. These four states do not reveal popular vote totals. It's like saying if you include your goals that were ruled offside and don't recognise your opponents' headers (it is football [soccer] after all) then you really won the game.

The reason Clinton has had to resort to this sophistry reveals another trait she shares with Bush - hubris. She believed she would have the nomination sewn up by Super Tuesday. She woke up on the following Wednesday out of money, ideas and volunteers. It was a month and nine contests before she won again. By then the momentum was Obama's and, though he has stumbled, he has been running with it since. By most reckonings he leads by about 190 delegates and 400,000 votes. Even if Michigan and Florida were counted, she would still trail in delegates.

I would also like to add that in order for her to win the popular vote, not only would she have to count the discounted Michigan primary, she would have to give Obama ZERO votes in the entire state, even though it is clear that over 40% voted against her, and that the vast majority of those would go to Obama (and the rest mostly to Edwards, who now supports Obama).

Hell, you think Bush bastardized democracy in Florida in 2000, well, you ain't seen nothing yet. Over the weekend Lanny Davis, Hillary supporter and complete idiot, proposed a Michigan "compromise", which gives Hillary all of her votes, and then basically splits the non-Hillary votes between Obama aaannnddd...?

You'd be thinking Edwards right? Well that would be wrong. According to Lanny Davis, around half of the people who didn't vote for Hillary even though she was on the ballot, actually wanted to vote for Hillary. Yes, this complete imbecile thinks Hillary should get half of the votes that were cast against her, and that Obama should get the other half. That makes sense, right? Yes, this is the kind of idiocy that comes from the Clinton camp, and you know why? Because they can't "win" the popular vote without making up asinine "compromises" like that. That should tell you something. So much for when Hillary said this:

Now I’ve heard some say that counting Florida and Michigan would be changing the rules. I say that not counting Florida and Michigan is changing a central governing rule of this country, that whenever we can understand the clear intent of the voters, their vote should be counted.

Okay, so let's set aside your utter hypocrisy here, since you and your top aids supported stripping both states of their delegates when the DNC voted, and you had it within your power to stand up for the voters then but didn't. Let's look past that and look at that last part, "whenever we can understand the clear intent of the voters, their vote should be counted." Okay, so 40% of voters in Michigan CLEARLY did not want to vote for you, so how should that "clear intent" (can't get much clearer than that) guide us? Well give half of those to Hillary! Apparently the best way to count the voters according to their clear intent, at least as far as hypocritical Hillary is concerned, means either:

• 40% of voters voted against Hillary, either for Obama or Edwards, but let's assume not a single voter voted for Obama, or
• 40% of voters voted against Hillary, so around half of those must have intended to vote Hillary, and just couldn't find her name on the ballot, even though it was the only name there.

And yet she still gets away with this self-righteous talk, this blatant hypocrisy, and the media doesn't bat an eyelash. She can talk about the fight ag