Still inching forward:
Not bad for a bunch of potty mouths.
*** Update ***
Via memeorandum I see that John McCain has released his health care plan. My guess- daily doses of cod liver oil and full coverage for Viagra.
by John Cole| 66 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Still inching forward:
Not bad for a bunch of potty mouths.
*** Update ***
Via memeorandum I see that John McCain has released his health care plan. My guess- daily doses of cod liver oil and full coverage for Viagra.
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, General Stupidity
Gee, I wonder why Obama, the anti-political posturer, disowned Wright today. My dad got a call last night that might explain.
I got some more information about that call.
It was a live call last night around 7 p.m., not a robocall.
Where do these wingnuts come up with this perception? I see the same sort of crap from the Hillary Clinton blogs and the pro-Clinton commenters- this notion that Obama supporters are somehow unaware that Barack Obama is *GASP* a politician.
He is a United States Senator. He is running for the highest political office in the land. He is a politician. We are aware of this. Trying to change the tone and tenor in Washington as well as how politics is conducted is not apolitical, and we are all aware of this. What we reject is the current status of our politics, not the notion of politics. What we see in Obama is a chance to change the nature of our current political mess.
What we don’t see is Obama as apolitical. That is just stupid. Some might say it is TOWNHALL stupid.
So, attention wingnuts- We are aware Obama is a politician, and your attempt at witty comments aren’t breaking news to us. All it is doing is proving that we are right to think you are a moron.
This post is in: Open Threads
…and if you like decent radio where the hosts don’t scream at you and tell you you’re stupid if you’re a Democrat / Republican, please give to WABE, Atlanta’s Public radio station. It’s a totally awesome listening experience, and I gave a buck a day – $365. I’ve been doing the same thing for 3 years (I listened for free for 4 years.) Am I allowed to solicit funds here for anyone but Obama? Hmmmm…
I guess this can be an open thread!
This post is in: Election 2008
Because I refuse to say he threw him under the bus, which is now my least favorite expression in the English language. At any rate, Obama “distanced” himself from Wright:
“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” he said.
Obama also distanced himself from the man in a way he has been reluctant to in the past.
“The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” he said. “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.”
“They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs,” he said.
“If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either.”
All the talking heads assured me he had to do this, and now he has. I am not sure why it was necessary, as it was pretty clear to me when listening to Wright the past few days that he was not speaking for Obama, but such is the guilt-by-association bullshit of the media.
As to Wright himself, well, I have my own thoughts. First and foremost, I guess I am no longer the delicate fainting flower that most other bloggers and media commenters are these days. I spent several years in the early days of this blog being all sorts of outraged about petty bullshit. I spent days calling Ted Rall an asshole (he still is, I think), days opining about what an asshole Michael Moore is, and so on. I got my panties all in a bunch about Ward Churchhill (also a dick), and stupid things Bill Maher may or may not have said, and so on.
And you know what? They may be assholes, or jerks, or whatever term you want to use, but they sure as hell didn’t run this economy into the ground. They aren’t responsible for turning a huge surplus into a several hundred billion dollar deficit. I have yet to read any memos from Barbra Streisand detailing how we should spy on American citizens.
And so it is with Jeremiah Wright. Is he a jerk? I don’t think there is any argument to be made that lately he hasn’t in fact been one big, giant, puckered asshole. His ego tour the past few days was all about him, but so what? I blame the media as much as I blame him. Is it an offensive notion that the government created aids? Absolutely, but I refuse to get all bent out of shape about it, because the government that tortures people and ran the Tuskegee experiment and wiretapped MLK for years opens itself up to crazy accusations like that.
So Jeremiah Wright has acted like a jackass the past few days, and he may have acted supremely selfishly by hurting Obama’s electoral chances. Regardless, he may be a flawed man, but that does not undo all the good he has done over the years. I don’t know of any bloggers with thirty years of service to the poor and the indigent. Get back to me when Chris Matthews feeds hungry people for three decades. And even with all his flaws, Jeremiah Wright did give us this quality bit of entertainment, and I have to admit to enjoying someone treat the media with the respect they deserve (which is to be mocked, have eyes rolled at them, and taunted as Wright did yesterday at the Press Club).
Maybe it is because I am totally and unrepentantly in the tank for Obama, but I just can’t get worked up over what his pastor said. Maybe it is because I am not religious, and I am used to religious people saying things that sound crazy. Or maybe I just refuse to spend any more time and energy getting worked up over and denouncing, distancing, and rejecting the wrong people- people who really don’t matter in the big scheme of things. If you have a memo from Jeremiah Wright to John Yoo showing how we should become a rogue nation, let me know. If you have pictures of Jeremiah Wright voting against the GI Bill, send it to me. If you have evidence of Jeremiah Wright training junior soldiers on the finer aspects of stacking and torturing naked Iraqi captives, pass them on.
Until then, I just can’t seem to get all worked up about the crazy scary black preacher that Obama has to “throw under the bus.”
*** Update ***
So it isn’t as though we really have anything else to talk about besides Jeremiah Wright. There are some countries in the world — probably most — which have so many big problems that they could ill-afford to devote much time and energy to a matter of this sort. Thankfully, the United States isn’t one of them. I believe it’s critical that we keep that in mind as we discuss him for the next seven months.
No shit.
by John Cole| 56 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008, Democratic Stupidity
Keep in mind that you should probably put as much stock in this daily tracking poll as you did every one in which Obama was leading (in my case, that is very little), but it appears that Hillary is now ahead of Obama by one percentage point in the latest Gallup. Who knows how much of this is bounce for Hillary from Pa, and how much of this is Obama being dragged down by his former pastor.
As far as super delegates go, it appears that Obama has picked up two in the past few days and Hillary has picked up one. In the Obama category go Richard Machacek from Iowa and Kentucky Rep. Ben Chandler, while Hillary picked up NC Gov. Mike Easley.
As someone new to the Democratic party, I have to admit to being shocked at how efficient we are at inflicting maximum damage on ourselves. I still don’t think there is any way for Hillary to win without ripping the party in two for at least a decade, but I am amazed that the remaining undecided super delegates seem content to sit by and waffle and do nothing as Hillary and Obama destroy each other. Profiles in courage, I tell you.
At any rate, the way this is going, by the time Obama finally has the number of super delegates he needs, Hillary and Rev. Wright can have him trailing McCain and Hillary in the polls by double digits. Awesome.
As a side note, I still do not know whether I am supposed to hyphenate the term super delegate, and I switch back and forth between hyphenated and unhyphenated, sometimes in the same post.
*** Update ***
Almost an identical post at the Great Orange Satan, which has me kind of weirded out. Apparently now I even think like the Great Satan himself.
by Tim F| 31 Comments
This post is in: Media, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
The overall press silence on contracting abuses in Iraq, despite a major and disturbing Congressional hearing yesterday, really is disgraceful.
As a side note, it’s a weird experience for me to read the American Conservative RSS feed more or less daily and find little if anything to disagree about (one has to assume that will change when we start debating single payer healthcare). They’re not even paleocon in the grumpy racist Weekly Standard National Review under William F. Buckley kind of way. Readers looking for another John Cole could do worse. However, be warned, you’ll probably miss out on highbrow content like this.
by John Cole| 74 Comments
This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
Goota love the war on your neighbor:
Brooklyn Park police were looking for a meth lab, but they found a fish tank and the chemicals needed to maintain it.
And a few hours later, when the city sent a contractor to fix the door the police had smashed open Monday afternoon, it was obvious the city was trying to fix a mistake.
It happened while Kathy Adams was sleeping.
“And the next thing I know, a police officer is trying to get me out bed,” she said.
Adams, a 54-year-old former nurse who said she suffers from a bad back caused by a patient who attacked her a few years ago, was handcuffed. So was her 49-year-old husband.
“They brought us here and said once we clear that area, you can sit down and you will not speak to each other,” she said.
Police were executing a search warrant signed by Hennepin County Judge Ivy Bernhardson, who believed there was probable cause the Adams’s home was a meth lab.
I think my favorite thing about home invasions like this is how the police maintain that they did nothing wrong. This quote, from the Capt. Roehl regarding the information that was used to invade the home, is just priceless:
“Everything this person told us turned out to be true, with the exception of what the purpose of the lab was,” Roehl said.
Idiot.