Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts

Monday, December 22, 2008

Barney wuvs to heaw hiwmsewf tawk

Openly-gay congressmen from Massachusetts mistake reporters' fondness for Capitol Hill dial-a-quote services for Americans giving a damn about anything they have to say.

PARTICULARLY the American getting ready to move in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, D.C.

That, and general arrogance and pretension, is my explanation for this interview by Rep. Barney Frank with The Hill, and I'm sticking to it:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) thinks that President-elect Obama picked same-sex marriage opponent Rick Warren to give the inauguration invocation because Obama "overestimates" his ability to unify people.

"Oh, I believe that he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences," said Frank, the first House member to come out of the closet voluntarily.

Frank, on MSNBC on Monday, said that he's delighted Obama was elected and that the country is headed into the "best time" for public policy since the New Deal.

"But my one question is, I think he overestimates his ability to take people, particularly our colleagues on the right, and, sort of, charm them into being nice," Frank said. "I know he talks about being post-partisan. But I've worked, frankly, with Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, the current Republican leadership. The current Republican leadership in the House repudiated George Bush. I don't know why Mr. Obama thinks he's going to have them better than George Bush."
FRANKLY, FRANK underestimates his ability to annoy the s*** out of people.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Kulturekampfers für Obama



Translation:
"60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

And they laugh at the Obamaniacs. . . .


Unfortunately, you can't make this stuff up.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank captures this scene from the road in New York, at Hillary Clinton's big speech last night:

The rush of the opportunistic superdelegates toward the inevitable nominee only worsened what was certain to be an unhappy day for the Clintons, who had arrived at their Westchester home at about 3 a.m. after an awkward last day of campaigning in South Dakota. Bill Clinton had flown into a rage and called a reporter a "scumbag." At her last event in South Dakota, Hillary had lost her voice in a coughing fit. Somebody had seen fit to play an inappropriate John Fogerty tune before she took the stage: "It ain't me, it ain't me. I ain't no fortunate one."

On Tuesday evening, the crowd began to assemble at Baruch College in Manhattan for Clinton's non-concession speech. The scene was made to look festive: The Clinton campaign ordered 70 boxes of Domino's pizza for the press corps, and set up a cash bar for its fundraisers, or "honored guests." The honored guests were not in a partying mood, however. One older woman pointed at a reporter accusingly and said: "He is the one who destroyed our heroine!"

A crew from "The Daily Show" joined the party, and, hoping to keep Clinton in the race, struck up a cheer of "Four more months!"

Such an outlandish thing seemed almost plausible among the Clinton backers in the hermetically sealed Baruch gym. Below ground level, there was no cellphone or BlackBerry reception, and there was no television playing in the room. That meant that they could not see the network projections showing that, while Clinton had won South Dakota, Obama had won enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Instead, they listened to Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down."
WHY DO I keep thinking of Baal and golden calves? Or, in this case, a golden ass . . . er, donkey.

Really, though, what more is there to say about the spectacle that is Clinton '08? What words do we have for old women who unselfconsciously go around spouting angry paeans to megalomaniacal Huey Long wannabes in drag?

Is this Bosnia, or what? Run! Run! Snipers! Incoming! Incommmmmiiiinnnnnng!

ONLY ONE THING in particular comes to mind right now -- at least apart from last night's post. It's this: When a society throws the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses overboard in order to set out on a brave, new course, it's not that we mortals get over the need for a deity.

It's just that we'll start to worship any damn thing . . . or politician. Even Hillary Clinton.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

It's the end of the world as they know it


Have you ever wondered whether the Clintons are metaphors for America itself? That Bill and Hill are the story of modern (and postmodern) America time-compressed and writ small?

After all, it takes a little story to illustrate a big story, right?

BILL CLINTON was born into a family of modest means . . . and into a world of familial dysfunction, which obviously left its scars on his psyche. Yet, through sheer smarts and epic drive and ambition, he got himself into Georgetown, then into Yale Law, then embarked on a life of the law and public service -- and marriage, family and his own one-man sexual revolution -- until he climbed and clawed and "Comeback Kidded" his way to the top of the world.

From 1993 to 2001, no man on earth was as powerful as William Jefferson Clinton.

And at his side was Hillary. Born Hillary Rodham, the future first lady, U.S. senator and presidential candidate lived a bourgeois life of relative middle-class privilege. And after getting the political bug as a "Goldwater Girl" in 1964, she used her drive and considerable smarts to shine at Wellesley College . . . and then Yale Law, where one of the most formidable political mergers of the modern age took shape.

She helped the family political franchise along through those years of struggle, until reaching the pinnacle of political power with her senior partner, Bill.

SOON, HOWEVER, the ultimate power couple would find that once you get to the top, the only place to go is down.

Clinton, Inc., weathered its own private Vietnam with l'affaire Lewinsky, which left the union -- and the partnership -- bruised and beaten, but intact and ready to begin plotting Hillary's ascent after an eight-year interregnum.

They thought it was "Morning in America." Instead, their trouble was just beginning.

Tim Reid of The Times in London gets it pretty much right-o in this account from the campaign trail:
Seventeen months after she sat regally in her New York living room and calmly declared: “I’m in and I’m in to win,” Hillary Clinton stands on a stage in a stifling hot shed in South Dakota, coughing and spluttering, as her daughter, Chelsea, grabs the microphone from her hand to take over the show.

“A long campaign,” the former First Lady chokes out between sips of water. Her husband, red-faced and exhausted – and having just apologised for another angry outburst in front of reporters – looks on wistfully at the final rally of his wife’s presidential bid, an endeavour that has been transformed from an inevitable juggernaut into a costly train wreck.

It was an extraordinary moment, exactly five months after the first contest in Iowa, to see the former First Family in the dying moments of the longest primary campaign in history, a gruelling journey across America that was meant to end in a Clinton restoration and has instead bought a very different inevitability: defeat at the hands of Barack Obama.


(snip)

In this final day of campaigning, Mrs Clinton was still defiant, still giving, as she has done for months, an impressive and detailed stump speech full of uplifting prescriptions for healthcare, taxes and energy independence. Yet there was a sense of a woman with her fingers in a leaking dam, straining to halt the impending flood of super-delegates to her rival. Even as she spoke in Sioux Falls, several of her Democratic Senate colleagues were meeting behind closed doors in Washington to plot the end-game by planning a mass endorsement for Mr Obama.

At two events she became convulsed by coughing fits. At one she got the name of the local mayor wrong. In Yankton, she completely lost her voice and had to leave the stage. Chelsea again took over, the reluctant, largely mute campaigner of Iowa now a star in her own right. During the day Mrs Clinton’s event advance team was laid off. Campaign staff were urged to turn in expense receipts. Young aides were talking about vacations. Several volunteers, amid a slightly hysterical fin de siècle atmosphere, gave Oscar-like speeches listing all the states they had visited.
PERHAPS NO COUPLE has been such poster children for their generation -- and for a whole era of American history -- as the Clintons . . . Bill and Hill. Their motto just as well could have been "You can't touch this," because, well, who could?

All good things, however, come to an end eventually. Bill and Hill perhaps knew that in their heart of hearts. But they never saw it coming, not until they were wandering -- shell-shocked and desperate -- through the ruins of the Clinton '08 campaign.

Now the former president and the would-be president appear for all the world like a couple of half-crazed refugees stumbling, glassy-eyed and babbling, out of the ruins of a political Dresden of their own making. Their reputations in tatters, their futures uncertain, they can't help but mindlessly prattle about glorious days still to come.

The world, alas, has moved on.

THE CLINTONS, Bill and Hill, are America. America, behold yourself . . . soon enough.

Soon enough.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Opportunity knocks . . . in Omaha

Dear Barack Obama,


You don't know me, but I'm a registered Democrat here in Omaha (by God) Neb. I also have a little Internet music program, 3 Chords & the Truth, and this blog, all under the Revolution 21 umbrella.

Maybe you've seen the blog or listened to the show. Then again, maybe not. But that's not important now.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT is this article in
The New York Sun:

In the 2000 presidential race, Florida made the difference. In 2004, it was Ohio. This year could it all come down to just a single city, Omaha, Neb., and its suburbs?

That's a scenario being spun out by an amateur political prognosticator from New York, Sheldon Adler, who has a strong record of identifying the ultimate battlegrounds in national elections.

"It's possible. I don't think that's crazy," Mr. Adler said of the prospect that Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha and its environs, could become a tiebreaker in the November vote.

The possibility of such a decisive role for the Midwestern city exists because Nebraska allocates electoral votes by congressional district rather than on a statewide, winner-take-all basis. Maine is the only other state to use a district-by-district system.

Mr. Adler's Omaha scenario involves the likely Democratic nominee, Senator Obama of Illinois, taking every state Senator Kerry of Massachusetts won in 2004 with the exception of New Hampshire. Under this carefully chosen sequence of events, the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator McCain of Arizona, hangs on to all of President Bush's winning states from 2004, except for Iowa, Colorado and either New Mexico or Nevada. The result: a 269-269 tie, with 270 votes needed to win the presidency.

"It really may come down to, in that theoretical case, that one electoral vote," Mr. Adler said. With Maine expected to go entirely for the Democrats, the potential boon for Mr. Obama and the danger for the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator McCain, is that Omaha might turn blue.
WELL, SENATOR, it's looking not only like Nebraska might make a difference in November's election, but that the whole shootin' match might come down to who wins Omaha. And, as you well know, we Democrats are somewhat outnumbered here.

You're gonna need every single one of us at the polls . . . and a gaggle of liberal-leaning Republicans (like Mrs. Favog) and independents.

Now, I'm not originally from Omaha. I'm here because my wife is. But it's OK here, you know? Nice folks, happenin' city. Good times.

I know. You're asking, "So what if this clown isn't a native Omahan?" Actually, Barry -- You don't mind if I call you Barry, right? -- that's entirely the point.

Like I said, you just might need my vote. And my unfortunately Republican better half's vote. It's gonna be damn close. You becoming president -- or not -- well could hinge on my vote. Or on my (as I said) unfortunately Republican wife's.

Here's the deal, Cap. I'm from Louisiana, born and raised. That's the point, cher. Now, what can you do for me to ensure my vote -- and the missus' -- come November?

I AM NOT a greedy man, but I am going to be needin' a little lagniappe -- a little sumpin' sumpin' -- to be handing you this here election. Now, remember that I also can, by giving you my vote, banish those damn Republican SOBs to the nether regions of electoral politics for a generation or so.

And I would, in all likelihood, also be delivering my unfortunately Republican wife's vote to the "D" column, too. That's not nothing. Call it two for the price of one.
Mrs. Favog, I might add, is a strong-willed woman -- try to pull that typical crap on her that you do those sniveling soccer moms and she'll not only rip you a new one, she'll feed you your innards and make you like 'em.

So, how we gonna do some bidness here, Barry?

I tell you what -- and this is agin' my natural instincts and cultural proclivities, y'unnerstand -- I'll make you a sweetheart deal. Don't want a damn dollar for my vote . . . or for the better half's.

Don't want a car, neither. Nope, not a boat . . . or a new house . . . or one of those nice condos downtown.

What I want won't cost you or your campaign a dime. And it might make your conscience feel better than it has in ages. Interested?

AIIGHT, these are the brass tacks. What you can do for me to win my vote is cut out all this pro-choice, kill-the-babies, f***-the-family social-barbarian garbage.

When you use the power of government to encourage abortion . . . to enable and legitimize abortion, you're responsible for killing off our future. When you use the bludgeon of the courts -- and public policy -- to twist marriage and family relations into configurations they never were meant to endure, you are dealing a body blow not only to societal stability but also to the underpinnings of society itself.

When you persist in advocating crap like that insisted upon by your party's libertine-barbarian overseers, you'd just as well appoint Pol Pot as your Health and Human Services secretary and Genghis Khan as your head of Homeland Security. Why? Because if you're going to lay waste to an entire society, you'd just as well be as expedient about it as possible.

See, Barry, I'm the last New Deal Democrat standing. I'm for the little guy. That includes helpless babies in the womb, as well as beleaguered mamas and daddies trying to weather the cultural storms of our age and give their already-born children half a damn chance to live in a civil society.

What I'm looking for is a president who will advocate solutions to "crisis pregnancy" where nobody has to die in order for women to win. What I want in a president is somebody who realizes that freedom doesn't necessarily mean "Do whatever the hell you want, and damn the consequences."

I want a Democrat in the Oval Office who realizes that not only is our democracy a fragile thing, but also our entire civilized order. I want somebody smart enough to realize that you don't go futzing around with fragile things, relying on dumb luck to fend off catastrophe.

NOW, IT'S TRUE . . . I ain't gonna vote for that McCain fella. But that doesn't mean I'll vote for you.

And wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if you lost the White House by a vote or two? Right here in Omaha, Neb.

You gonna play ball wit me, podna? I'll give you till Nov. 3 to make up your mind.


HAT TIP: Leavenworth Street

Friday, May 16, 2008

Jokers to the right 2.0


Posted without comment. Who needs to comment when the video speaks for itself so loudly?

Jokers to the right

A body could write a thousand words -- hell, a book, even -- on how the Republican echo chamber, circa 2008, is basically a bunch of jingoistic, bleating neo-fascists who not only don't have any ideas but are without a clue, as well.

BUT THAT would take time, and that ground's been covered before.

So I'll post this video from MSNBC's Hardball instead, because these moving pictures are worth a million words on how worthless is the GOP -- and its amen corner on the public airwaves.

And to add this inside-baseball note: I, frankly, am enraged and offended that loudmouthed moron Kevin James of Los Angeles'
KRLA radio has a sweet gig like that when so many with 30 times the brainpower and 60 times the talent have been run out of that dying industry.

Unbelievable.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Make that Mongo County, WV


The erudite swells of London's The Financial Times get in touch with their inner "hill William" while following the doomed presidential campaign of the Thing Who Would Not Die through the hollers of West, by God, Virginia:

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

A landslide victory for Mrs Clinton in West Virginia will do little to improve her fading hopes of winning the Democratic nomination, because Mr Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in the overall race.

But Tuesday’s contest is likely to reinforce Mrs Clinton’s argument that she would be the stronger opponent for Mr McCain in November, and raise fresh doubts about whether the US is ready to elect its first black president.

Occupying a swathe of the Appalachian Mountains on the threshold between the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt, West Virginia is a swing state that voted twice for George W. Bush but backed Democrats in six of the eight prior presidential elections.

No Democrat has been elected to the White House without carrying West Virginia since 1916, yet Mr Obama appears to have little chance of winning there in November. Recent opinion polls indicate that Mrs Clinton would narrowly beat Mr McCain in the state but Mr Obama would lose by nearly 20 percentage points.

West Virginia is hostile territory for Mr Obama because it has few of the African-Americans and affluent, college-educated whites who provide his strongest support. The state has the lowest college graduation rate in the US, the second lowest median household income, and one of the highest proportions of white residents, at 96 per cent.

A visit to Mingo County, a Democratic stronghold in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, reveals the scale of Mr Obama’s challenge – not only in West Virginia but in white, working-class communities across the US. With a gun shop on its main street and churches dotted throughout the town, Williamson is the kind of community evoked by Mr Obama’s controversial comments last month about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion”.

“If he is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.”
IF MINGO COUNTY represents "ordinary Americans," Washington needs to sue for peace with Beijing before war has a chance to start.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Barack Obama as . . . The Soprano

This we may now assume: The next president of the United States won't know Shiite from Shinola.

ALL BECAUSE Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama -- obviously the innocent victim of some Looziana-style justice -- doesn't have the stones to deal with his Reverend Whack Job problem once and for all. And if how a man reacts when it all hits the fan shows us what he's made of -- and, indeed, where his convictions truly lie -- electing the doddering, ill-tempered Republican poster child for "senior moments" instead of yet another doctrinaire social-left Democrat probably will end up being a wash for the nation.

That, of course, is tragic in its own right. What can one expect, though, in a nation now politically riven between fascist-leaning, tinfoil-hat wearing GOP true believers and "progressive" Democrats who can muster true passion and outrage only when someone suggests women ought not have the "right" to murder their unborn offspring or, relatedly, suggests that f***ing is not an entitlement.

DO I UNDERSTAND this correctly?

Monday, not only did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright go before the National Press Club and defend some of the more offensive and crazy things he's said in the past, but then insinuated that Obama was disingenuous in the opprobrium he heaped upon his ex-pastor and spiritual mentor's rhetorical excesses.

And Wright couldn't leave bad enough alone, either. No, he had to stick the shiv in one of his own sheep's back as he threw Obama under the bus -- all the while clowning, mugging and mocking like some sort of ecclesiastical Huey Long in blackface. With security provided by the Nation of Islam -- that's Louis Farrakhan's Black Muslims to you and me.

Now, after all that, what you see in the above MSNBC video is all the fury Obama could muster?

Here's how The Associated Press reported the response from the junior U.S. senator from Illinois:

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.

After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington media Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."

Obama told reporters Tuesday that Wright's comments do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church.

"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said of the man who married him.

Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.

Obama said he heard that Wright had given "a performance" and when he watched tapes, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.

"What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for," Obama said.

In a highly publicized speech last month, Obama sharply condemned Wright's remarks. But he did not leave the church or repudiate the minister himself, who he said was like a family member.

On Tuesday, Obama sought to distance himself further from Wright.

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he's done enormous good. ... But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. ... There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."

"At a certain point if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally and then he questions whether or not you believe it — in front of the National Press Club — then that's enough," Obama continued.

OBAMA SAID he was outraged, but his demeanor and reserve belied that notion. Instead, Obama just looked whipped.

He looked like a man who was despondent over a political setback, maybe even a fatal one. He looked like a man who'd just been "owned" in an argument. He looked like a man who just got his ass whipped.

That's the problem. His is the "outrage" of personal setback; it is not the outrage of someone who has seen something bigger than himself attacked and trashed. It is not the outrage of someone who fights for something dearer to himself than himself.

Lord knows it wasn't the righteous fury of a committed Christian who'd just seen the gospel cheapened and violated by the hateful, crazy antics of one of its ministers. Perhaps Obama might have summoned that kind of righteous anger if Rev. Wright had attacked "reproductive rights" instead.

AND ISN'T THAT just the problem with "progressives"? In what do they believe apart from "Do what thou wilt"? For what are they willing to die? For what do they live?

Sadly, for the Democrats and for America, it has come to this: Not only can't the Dems beat something with nothing, they can't even beat nothing -- and that's exactly what the Bush-McCain GOP represents -- with nothing.

It takes a Democrat to lose to this GOP


Barack Obama is going to grow a pair, right now, and deal with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- his posturing, egomaniac ex-pastor -- or we're going to be in Iraq until we have no army left and America is left as a broke, broken and beaten country.

And if Hillary wins, things could be even worse.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank
weighed in Monday with a most depressing blog post:

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."

That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if Obama manages to save his campaign from Wright's one-man wrecking crew -- Live! In a speaking engagement near you! -- and if he manages to survive the John McCain (expletive deleted) storm that's headed his way, he just might end up being as spectacularly bad a president as Jimmy Carter. At best, there's no way he can live up to his billing as some sort of political messiah, which will leave his delusional hordes with a bad case of disillusionment.

Color me Not Optimistic, no matter what.

If and when the Democrat presidential candidate manages to get blown out by the GOP's McCain -- The Republicans! George W. Bush's Republicans! The morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt Republicans! -- this election year, I'm going to try to buy up the FDR memorabilia at the Dems' estate sale.

I'll be there early.



UPDATE:
The Post's Eugene Robinson nails another aspect of this silly, sickening and sad spectacle.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Desperately seeking messiahs


America, a nation that has forgotten both God and common sense, busies itself this electoral "silly season" looking for messiahs in all the wrong places.

ON THE LEFT, some of Sen. Barack Obama's sillier supporters seem to think he, if only we elect him president, might lead us to the Promised Land. After all, the man is black (and white!), he's cool under fire and he gives a hell of a speech.

Meanwhile, on the right, some of the sillier members of a stupid party are looking into the fever swamps of Louisiana for their messiah. After all, the state's new governor, Bobby Jindal, is brown, he's a scary-smart policy wonk and he's conservative, dammit . . . whatever "conservative" happens to mean this month.

Now, silly young people designing silly faux-religious icons with Obama's serene visage replacing that of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint are way up there on the silly-o-meter.

And sillier yet might be author Alice Walker writing columns in British newspapers with prose like "He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill."

BUT I AM NOT convinced that, for all its nuttery, the Obama worship is any crazier than that of Jindal by the GOP chattering classes. I mean,
get a load of this by Mary Katharine Ham on Townhall.com:
There once was a man who campaigned on a message of hope and change. In his victory speech he promised never to succumb to a worldview in which “lobbyists begin to look larger and the people begin to look smaller.” In exchange, he asked voters to help him “defeat cynicism” by believing in him and themselves.

For schools, for government, for business, “change is not just on the way . . . Change begins tonight,” he proclaimed, his quick grin and young family breathing life back into a process gone sour, his unique life story bringing voters from unexpected backgrounds.

Sound familiar? It should. You’ve heard the media tell the story a thousand times a day. They’re just telling it about the wrong guy.

These days, Bobby Jindal is working for change in a city that could eat the ethical foibles of Obama’s Chicago for breakfast, like so many shrimp upon a bed of grits. Elected governor of Louisiana in 2007, he replaced the politically deflated Kathleen Blanco, who did not seek reelection.

Jindal is keenly aware of the problematic legacy he inherits. Inside Huey Long’s sky-scraping capital building, “I wonder what crimes were committed here?” is a not infrequent visitor question, posed not quite jokingly. The state’s political history is fraught with the kind of men Southerners often euphemistically call “colorful,” who given proper federal investigation, end up being very uneuphemistically corrupt.
READY TO PUKE? No? Well hang on, then. Read this and, soon enough, you'll be purging like a New York model after a cheesecake binge:
He’s also aware of the opportunity his state offers. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were talked about, on a national level, as revelations of persistent poverty in America. In Louisiana, they were a reminder, too, of the political perfidy that’s perpetuated it.

“Shame on us if all we build is what was here before,” Jindal told a small group of bloggers at the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge last week.

Unwilling to accept Louisiana as it was — one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union — Jindal made ethics reform his first priority, working on the theory that being a national punchline doesn’t draw business investment.

The 36-year-old governor slid into a January special legislative session on the strength of his political capital and came out with one of the strongest ethics reform packages in a nation awash with attempts at reform.


(snip)

To Jindal, the big-government response to Hurricane Katrina betrayed conservatives’ lack of confidence in their own ideas, and his first three months in office have gone a long way toward showing he has all the courage of conviction he needs.

The Republican Party remains the party of ideas in Louisiana, under Jindal’s leadership. And, as the unabashed policy wonk runs through four-point plan after four-point plan in his detailed recipe for Cajun-style reform, his 3-year-old son big-wheeling through the foyer of the governor’s mansion, one can’t help but think, “So this is what real change looks like.”
OH. PUH. LEEZE. Just because the Democrats of Louisiana are, indeed, sad specimens it does not therefore follow that the state's Republicans -- headed by Jindal or no -- are exactly a bunch of Einsteins.

Before Jindal's election, about the biggest idea the Louisiana GOP had was "For a good time, call Wendy Cortez." And we see where that got U.S. Sen. David Vitter.

Then there's
this bit of political idolatry
from James P. Lucier, writing in The Wall Street Journal:
No, this is the time for change, real change. This is a time for someone whom everybody knows to be the rising star of the GOP, the new governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal.

And what a governor! Having taken office in January, after winning 54% of the vote in the open-field primary, Mr. Jindal immediately called a special session of the legislature and persuaded them to pass his 64-point agenda for ethics reform. They said ethics reform couldn't be done in Louisiana--a state whose reputation as a cesspool is legendary--but he did it in a two-week session. Now he's calling a second special session to pass the tax cuts necessary to jump-start the post-Katrina economy in his state.
I'M MIDDLE-AGED, I'm too fat, and I have a bad knee. If I went back home to touch the hem of my gubna's bidness suit, do you think I could be thin, young and have my lost hair back?

I didn't think so.

But it seems like Rebubbacans -- in some cases, the same ones who've been so aghast at the messianism of the Cult of Obama -- lust to bestow no less a plethora of mythical, wonder-working powers upon their own Great Brown Hope.

And the Rebubbacans' "theological proofs" are even more scanty than the Cult of Obama's. After all, the Louisiana savior merely jumped from wonkdom to wonkdom before losing to Kathleen Blanco in the 2003 gubernatorial race, then served an undistinguished term and a half in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now, let me return to some of that Ham-handed purple prose on Townhall.com.

Jindal is the GOP messiah because he's going to fix "one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union." Oh, yes. He will do this despite being born, raised, educated and culturally assimilated in "one of the most uneducated, unethical, and unhealthy states in the union."

See, Bobby Jindal went to my old high school -- Baton Rouge Magnet High -- almost a decade after I did. It was -- and is -- an island of excellence established, staffed and funded by the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, a governmental body Louisiana Republicans just love to hate . . . and which they regularly try to deny tax revenue because it's irredeemably awful, don't you know?

SO WHAT WE HAVE is the Rebubbacans' new messiah, educated by a school system that oughtn't have been able to properly educate a GOP savior . . . because it had not yet been healed by his policy touch. After all, Jindal was still in his messianic-formation program -- in that Louisiana public school.

In a school system many white Baton Rougeans, many of them loyal Rebubbacans, were so busy fleeing.

Got that?

Oops.

What kind of Republican messiah is this who can arise from unhealthy, unethical and uneducated backwardness? Probably an unneeded one. To steal a line from that other messiah, Louisianians themselves are the change they've been waiting for.

All they've needed all along is to just do it.

Right there in Baton Rouge, ordinary citizens and their "broken" institutions already have, after all, turned out a real-life political savior. Go figure.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Politics makes you stupid

This, from the New York Times, is a perfect example of why I have an almost visceral negative reaction to political activists of any sort.

It is, in a word, "idolatry":
But Mr. Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago, Mr. Clinton’s aides said. And as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision.

The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

Mr. Richardson said he called Mrs. Clinton late on Thursday to inform her that he would be appearing with Mr. Obama on Friday to lend his support.

“It was cordial, but a little heated,” Mr. Richardson said in an interview.
BETRAYAL? JUDAS ISCARIOT? That kind of nuclear language over a freakin' political endorsement?

James Carville -- and, frankly, the rest of Washington, D.C., too -- needs to get a damn life. What we have here is a failure of perspective.

It's not like Richardson betrayed his lord and savior. One, Hillary Clinton -- it is obvious -- cannot even save herself, and her ex-prez hubby ain't gonna raise her campaign from the dead.

Two, Barack Obama ain't the savior, either. Saviors have no need of Bill Richardson's endorsement.

Three, Carville needs to go home, pour himself a double of something mighty fine, pat his child on the head, put on some sweet music, make out with his wife and thank God for his blessings. In that is found the meaning of life.

In the Washington fever swamps is found a bad case of nothing good.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Southerners know exactly what this is


Andrew Sullivan, over at his Daily Dish, thinks the above anti-Barack Obama video is an instance of GOP "swift-boating" of the Democratic presidential candidate in the wake of the hullabaloo over his ex-pastor's sometimes-incendiary sermons.

It's not that.

"Swift-boating," named for the ginned-up controversy over 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry's days as a Navy "swift boat" commander in Vietnam, is an ideological assassination. The above hit on Obama is racial.

That makes it race-baiting, not "swift-boating." Down in Oxford, Miss. -- home of one of the video's creators, former Laura Ingraham Show producer Lee Habeeb, now an executive with the right-wing Salem Radio Network -- there is a more "colorful" term for the tactic, which is as old as Jim Crow.

The difference between "swift-boating" and race-baiting boils down to what we don't see in that odious little YouTube offering -- a single white face.

IF HABEEB and his cronies merely meant to send the message that the U.S. senator from Illinois is a wild-eyed, unpatriotic lefty, why not juxtapose the video of Obama's interviews and Wright's red-hot rhetoric with egregious clips of at least a few egregious white people through the ages?

You know, like hippie anti-war protesters from the '60s waving Viet Cong flags. Like Abbie Hoffman. Like Jerry Rubin. Like Jane Fonda in Hanoi. Or Sean Penn with Saddam.

Like the Dixie Chicks on foreign soil cracking on the neocons' lord and savior, George W. Bush.

No, instead we get "unpatriotic" images of "ingrate" black men -- Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists raised at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City . . . Malcolm X . . . all to a Public Enemy rap soundtrack. All we needed to make the argument ideological and not racial was just a single honky.

Somewhere.

We didn't get one.

And Habeeb and his fellow anonymous White Citizens' Council wannabes aren't fooling this Southern boy with bull hockey like this. From Jonathan Martin's blog on the Politico web site:

Asked directly if he believes Obama is a patriotic American, Habeeb said "absolutely." But he added that "his patriotism is not my kind of patriotism."

"I believe he is hiding his Marxism from the American people," Habeeb said.

And despite the inclusion of Malcolm X, the black Olympians and a rap song by Public Enemy, Habeeb claimed he was not being suggestive.

"I didn’t do this to make him like a scary black man."

LOOK FOR the head fake. The White Citizens' Councils were all about fighting commies and pinkos . . . whose tactics, we were to believe, centered on wrecking America from within through the mixing of the races.

This YouTube video was all about the "scary black man." And you can blame it all on some scary white men.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Jeremiah Wright is not 'out there'


This guy in Harlem ATLAH is the real Out There deal.

And
the Hon. James David Manning, Ph.D., really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY hates Barack Obama, whom he calls a "long-legged freak," adding "Obama pimps white women and black woman."

Not that that's casting aspersions or anything. From the video:

I haven't trashed Obama. His African in-heat father went a whoring after a trashy white woman. He was born trash. I said he was born trash. I didn't trash him. I'm speaking the truth about him. . . . I got a word in my mouth. I said I got the word of God in my mouth. And God's not afraid of Obama or anybody else.
AND AS YOU MAY have noticed above, Harlem isn't Harlem anymore. God said.

The good reverend tells us that Harlem is now ATLAH, which means --
at least according to the Deity -- "the land where the people shall walk barefoot, because the land is holy ground."

Well, at least the Apollo Theater.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Back when I was 4 . . . and cruel



I am why the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is so angry.

I also am why it's such a tragedy that Barack Obama's friend and former pastor has let his anger -- and he does have every good reason to be damned angry -- define him.

I am white. I grew up in, and was indoctrinated by, the segregated South. I went to a legally segregated public school until fourth grade. And, as a child, everybody I knew was about as racist as a late-June day is long.

Black folks were "niggers" -- at least in the lexicon of the common . . . like me and mine. You didn't go to school with them, it was illegal to marry them, they got all the jobs that were "beneath" white people and -- when it was your time to go -- you didn't get sent on your way via the same church, funeral home or graveyard.

It's just the way things were in Baton Rouge, La., when I came on the scene 47 years ago next Monday. It remained that way, in slowly diminishing thoroughness, up to the time I reached adulthood. And some of it hangs on to this day.

THIS MORNING, the Democratic presidential candidate -- in so much hot water over what his pastor said and when did Obama know he said it -- gave a masterful speech on race relations in America. It may have been the most blunt and honest speech on the matter I've ever heard a politician give.

Louisiana Gov. Earl Long may have given a more succinct, more colorful, more imperfect and more courageous version of that speech before a wild-eyed bunch of segregationists in the state Senate, but that was nearly two years before I was born. It got him thrown in a Texas nuthouse . . . so he couldn't exercise his gubernatorial power from his rubber room.

Barack Obama, at long last, has said what so long has needed to be said . . . in the manner it needed to be said. It's important, and his life -- and my life -- testify to why it's so important.

Having been born into a racist family in a segregated state, I was indoctrinated into America's original sin from my first moments of awareness. I did about the worst thing you could do to an African-American man -- at least, the worst thing short of murder or extreme physical violence -- by the time I was 4 years old.

I remember that I was sick, and that the doctor had called in a prescription to Andrew's Rexall Drugs. In the mid-1960s, drugstores still delivered. And we all know who the "delivery boys" were, at least in the segregated South.

SOON ENOUGH, there was a knock at the door. Back then, our house had no air conditioning. On that warm day, all the windows were wide open, and there was little fear that someone was going to burst through the screen door to rob, rape and kill you.

So the delivery man heard well when I ran toward the kitchen, yelling at the top of my lungs.

"Mama, the drugstore nigger's here!"

I think my mother had decency enough to be embarrassed as the man took her money and handed over the prescription as he muttered, "I'm not a nigger." I wonder what that poor man must have felt -- what a man old enough to be my father felt -- when this little white boy was blithely, naturally as he breathed in the air, running around the house announcing the presence of the fill-in-the-blank "nigger."

What does it do to a man to be so cavalierly dehumanized even by a small child? What does it do to a small child to so cavalierly dehumanize a man he ought to be calling "sir"? At least in a more rightly ordered society.

What does it do to a country when so much of what is considered "normality" is in reality cruel and inhuman?

It warps it, is what it does. It perpetuates an endless feedback loop of dysfunction.

I grew up in a sick society, as have many in this country. It takes a lifetime of hard work, introspection and (frankly) grace to overcome that. I'm still working on it.

Barack Obama's working on it, albeit from a different angle than I am. So is, I suspect, Jeremiah Wright, who comes from the perspective of that ill-fated drugstore delivery man . . . though it's obvious he has more work to do. Hurtful things -- the immense human tragedy of America's original sin -- have molded the retired pastor and led to anger that is righteous . . . to an extent.

BUT WHEN IT defines a man -- when it defines large segments of society -- it is no longer righteous. It just adds to the tragedy. Like the tragedy of a presidential candidate potentially going down in flames because he gave an angry old friend the benefit of the doubt.

Race (and racism) always has been a complicated matter in this country. And nowhere in this country has it been more complicated than in the Deep South.

I, the Caucasian son of racist children of racist parents in a racist land, just might be -- for all I know -- related to the angry (and black) Rev. Wright. I mean, if Barack Obama is kin to Dick Cheney, anything is possible.

A great uncle of mine was disowned by his family for marrying a Creole woman in New Orleans. Disowned by my grandfather who, I'm told, used to laugh about sleeping with black women who were good enough as sexual playthings but just not good enough to be a wife.

Or to treat as a human being.

I JUST FOUND OUT I have a black first cousin on the other side of the family. I wonder how many African-American aunts or uncles I might have on the philandering grandfather's.

And I wonder whether, in some cruel twist of fate, I might have been calling my own flesh and blood "nigger" when I was 4 -- back when evil was normative.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Aw, that really sucks

The American Catholic Church is going after the Dutch Schismatics over the inerrancy of colloquialisms in the English language. Because, as St. Walker Percy warned us in "Love in the Ruins," the center would not hold.

Neither, apparently, would Catholics' sense of nuance in . . . everything.

As is evidenced by canon lawyer Edward Peters' contention that National Catholic Reporter writer Joe Feuerherd was damning the American bishops to Gehenna in a column he wrote for The Washington Post. Here's
what Peters contends:
On February 24, National Catholic Reporter correspondent Joe Feuerherd, writing in the Washington Post, expressed his desire to see the bishops (of the United States) literally damned before he would fail to vote Democratic this Fall.

Feuerherd's words of contempt were not shouted in a heated argument wherein, say, a lack of time for reflection or "anger hormones" might mitigate one's culpability for uttering invectives. No, Feuerherd's curse, "the bishops be damned", was expressed in cold, deliberate, prose intended for maximum effect in a prominent national publication.

Now, Canon 1369 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that "a person who . . . in published writing . . . expresses insults or excites hatred or contempt against religion or the Church is to be punished with a just penalty." Canon 1373 states that "a person who publicly incites among subjects animosities or hatred against the Apostolic See or an ordinary because of some act of power or ecclesiastical ministry . . . is to be punished by an interdict or other just penalties."

I believe Feuerherd has gravely violated both of these canons.
HERE'S WHAT Feuerherd actually wrote:
The bishops seem to have forgotten that it is not simply aspirations that matter, though they seem more than willing to accept rhetoric ("I am pro-life") over results.

Why should non-Catholic Americans care about the bishops' right-wing lurch?

Because the bishops can influence a good number of the faithful, many of whom happen to be concentrated in large, electoral-vote-rich states. In the key swing state of Ohio in 2004, for example, bishops vigorously supported an anti-same-sex marriage amendment to the state constitution, which helped drive Republican voters to the polls. Bush won 55 percent of the Catholic vote in the Buckeye State, up from 50 percent in 2000 and enough to provide his margin of victory.

There's little hope, unfortunately, that the bishops will adopt a more pragmatic approach to achieving their aims anytime soon. Younger American priests, the pool from which future bishops will be chosen, overwhelmingly embrace the agenda enunciated by John Paul II.

So what's a pro-life, pro-family, antiwar, pro-immigrant, pro-economic-justice Catholic like me supposed to do in November? That's an easy one. True to my faith, I'll vote for the candidate who offers the best hope of ending an unjust war, who promotes human dignity through universal health care and immigration reform, and whose policies strengthen families and provide alternatives to those in desperate situations. Sounds like I'll be voting for the Democrat -- and the bishops be damned.
(Emphasis mine -- R21.)
IF YOU BELIEVE Feuerherd literally meant to damn the bishops to hell when he said "and the bishops be damned," I shudder to think what pictures are in your head when your teen-ager declares that something "sucks."

Take your shoes off. Pour yourself a double of something, put on some Sinatra and chill.

In the context of Feuerherd's op-ed piece, "be damned" no more means a literal wish for the fires of Hades to turn the bishops into Krispy Kritters than "sucks" -- some 30-plus years removed from my junior-high days -- connotes the full . . . er . . . glory of what it did in 1974.

AS A LINGUIST, Ed Peters is a hell of a canon lawyer. Who should have common sense enough to know that if some bishop -- using all the moral authority that Catholic bishops possess these days (Hint: little to none) -- moved against Feuerherd on such specious grounds, the resulting derision would just add to the litany of woe the American Church has brought upon itself in recent years.

I am pretty sure that I skew much more orthodox Catholic than does Joe Feuerherd. Likewise, I am much less inclined to blithely cast a vote for Barack Obama than he -- which is not to say I intend to even consider casting a vote for John McCain and the Party of Endless War, Torture and Greed. As a Catholic, I have to take the Church's teachings seriously and consider what the bishops say carefully.

But if those bishops, like Ed Peters, can't find anything better to do than crack on a liberal Catholic reporter who colorfully throws some important questions their way -- questions that deserve an answer from shepherds who need to, you know, shepherd -- then to hell with them, indeed.

In the colloquial sense. Not the literal.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Their own Bobby Kennedy

Confronted with a presidential candidate who challenges them to be more than the sum total of their desires, some young Americans have become unhinged, mistaking the messenger for the Messiah.

Or
so says ABC's Jake Tapper:
Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.

It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she's "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters. On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.“
IF I'M BARACK OBAMA, this kind of nonsense is messing with my mind. Then again, I think your mind already has to be pretty well messed with to go into politics.

Still . . . whose fault is it that some 21st century Americans are mistaking the first coming of Obama with the second one of Jesus Christ? I say it's our own damn fault, all of us.

We Baby Boomers, having thrown over God, family and tradition -- by and large -- seem to think we can raise up a new generation in a transcendental vacuum. God and family have been replaced with cynicism and stuff.

And the world we've created in our own image spiritlessly slinks off toward Sodom.

Until. . . .

The quadrennial silly season begins, and comes upon the political horizon a Democratic candidate who looks like America -- looks like America in all its messy, polyglot glory. And this candidate, Barack Obama, talks of creating a government that sticks up for the little people, while declaring to the world that our ends do not justify George Bush's torturing means.

WHEN MODERN AMERICANS once again hear rhetoric based upon enduring principles and not a laundry list of unpayable bribes . . . well, they can get discombobulated. Really, we haven't heard such unbridled apparent idealism since the spring of '68, when Bobby Kennedy appealed to the better angels of Americans' nature and got killed for his trouble.

In a nation unfamiliar with the audacity of Christian belief and praxis -- in a nation where many Christian churches are unfamiliar with the audacity of Christian doctrine and practice -- we do not know how to deal with the idealistic. When someone calls us to look beyond ourselves as the source and summit of whatever the hell it is we're looking for, why are we surprised when some who stumble in the darkness mistake the formerly normative for the supernatural?

We created Seinfeld Nation -- a country about nothing. So we have to deal with it when the ingenuous overreact to Something . . . especially when Something comes in the form of a presidential candidate.

So far, I don't think even "gimlet-eyed" journalists like Time's Joe Klein know how to deal with it and, in fact, are partially misreading it -- accustomed as journalists are to a different kind of political rhetoric. A recap from the Tapper excerpt above:

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.“
WELL, that's one interpretation . . . the cynical one.

On the other hand, what Obama just might have been saying -- in a more upbeat manner -- is:
"The change agent you have been waiting for is you. You have the power, not me. So get off your asses and effect some change."
Of course, that messianic scenario has the power to throw several sectors of American society into their own conniption narrative.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Poopy drawers. Butt cheek. Piss. DAMNATION!

Bollocks.

Sh*t.

F***.

THERE, now I'll never have to bear the horrible burden of Dr. James Dobson ever endorsing me for anything, anytime:
"I'm deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does not make the medicine go down. I cannot, and I will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."
NOBODY deserves to have that done to them -- a Dobson endorsement, that is. You could be looked upon as a power-hungry, misguided prig purely by involuntary association.


HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.