Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

People are complicated. Love is not.

So many bastards, so little time.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Everybody saw this coming.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

It’s possible to be a liberal firebrand without crapping on the party.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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Another Friedman Unit

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A shocking development in the Petraeus testimony:

Gen. David Petraeus said Thursday that by September he is likely to recommend whether further force reductions in Iraq are possible.

The four-star Army general, who has been leading troops in Iraq, is slated to become the head of U.S. Central Command. He told a Senate panel he now believes he can make a recommendation for possible force reductions before changing command this fall.

“My sense is that I will be able to make a recommendation at that time for some further reductions,” Petraeus said. “I don’t want to imply that that means” a particular brigade or major combat formation.

“But I do believe there will be certain assets that, as we are already looking at the picture right now, we’ll be able to recommend can be either redeployed or not deployed to the theater in the fall,” he said, while repeating his past caution that conditions on the ground could change.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded: “That’s good news to most of us.”

On a less-optimistic note, Petraeus said it is unlikely that Iraqi security forces will take the lead in all provinces this year, as was recently predicted by the Defense Department. Petraeus said events in the past month and a half — alluding to a spike in violence in Basra — have pushed that goal to 2009.

It never ends.

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What Else Is It Like?

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Kos:

Okay, today we found out that counting the fake Florida primary is, according to Hillary Clinton, like:

Woman’s Suffrage
Civil Rights
Florida 2000
Zimbabwe

It’s also like the Big Bang, Jesus, and cute kittens.

Actually, Kos, McCain is like Jesus.

What else is it like?

I would argue it is like the Grinch that Stole Christmas. And the War of the Roses. And the Reichstag Fire.

Have fun, and consider this an open thread.

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Clinton Parables

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More relevant than ever:

I will say this one more time. All the times over the past few years when the Republicans would repeat their mantra that the “Democrats are worse,” they were not talking about the Democrats, they were talking about the Clinton family.

And they were probably right.

Consider this an open thread.

*** Update ***

Now that I have calmed down, that probably was a little over the top.

*** Update #2 ***

Crazy person. Point and laugh:

Desperate to get attention for her cause to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton explained. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

I think it is time to stop taking her seriously. Let’s run a contest to see who can come up with the stupidest comment from any member of a Clinton campaign between now and June 3rd. Winner gets a 25 dollar gift certificate to Amazon or a $25 donation to their charity of choice.

And no, you can not use crazy statements from Hill-bloggers.

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All About Me

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No graceful exit in sight For Our Lady of Inevitability:

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is willing to take her fight to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to the convention if the two states want to go that far. In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton was asked whether she would support the states if they continue the fight.

The presidential candidate said Wednesday, “Yes I will. I will, because I feel very strongly about this.”

Clinton is calling for delegates from both states to be seated at the convention based on the primaries. Both states were stripped of their delegates because they voted early, violating national party rules. Clinton won both states; Barack Obama’s name wasn’t on the Michigan ballot.

Translation: “If this party doesn’t give me the nomination, I am gonna blow shit up.”

Once again, the hostage crisis metaphor is appropriate. A roll down memory lane, when Hillary discussed the Michigan election last October:

What a contemptible wretch Sen. Clinton has turned out to be, and I find it stunning that many Democratic blogs who routinely bitch about the various and numerous violations of rules, law, and international agreements by the Bush administration sit by and swallow this nonsense from the Senator Clinton.

*** Update ***

After courting the white vote for months in Appalachia, Mrs. Nixon informs us that seating Florida and Michigan are akin to the Civil Rights Movement. No. Seriously:

“This work to extend the franchise to all of our citizens is a core mission of the modern Democratic party,” she said. “From signing the Voting Rights Act and fighting racial discrimination at the ballot box to lowering the voting age so those old enough to fight and die in war would have the right to choose their commander in chief, to fighting for multi-lingual ballots so you can make your voice heard no matter what language you speak.”

What an asshole.

*** Update ***

Chait nails it:

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

Misogynist!

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And Another Thing About Democrats In Appalachia

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TPM links to the Oregon exit polls:

The Oregon exit polls lend a bit more weight to the theory that Barack Obama’s real problem is more with Appalachia than it is with working class whites in general, as the Hillary campaign has repeatedly suggested.

In Kentucky yesterday, Hillary slaughtered Obama among these voters. But the Oregon exits show a different story.

Obama beat Hillary by sizable margins among all ages of white voters except those 60 and older. And he beat Hillary among voters with no college degree, too — and since the state is overwhelmingly white, these voters are the ones he’s supposed to have trouble with.

Late Update: The exits also show that Obama also beat Hillary by seven points among voters making less than $50,000 (though she won among voters making between $15,000 and $30,000).

What’s more, Obama also won among voters from a household with a union member. I’ve edited the above to make that point.

One point that is often not made enough is that many Democrats in WV and Kentucky and elsewhere are often times people are Democrats simply because it is the only game in town. One of the things that kept me reflexively a Republican is that in WV, pretty much the entire state was run by Democrats at every level.

Until recently, in WV, if you wanted to vote in a primary that mattered, you had to be a Democrat. My mother, who has voted Republican in pretty much every Presidential election in my lifetime, at least as far back as to Ford in 76 (I am not sure about Nixon, but I do not see her as McGovern voter), is a registered Democrat and has been all her life (she grew up in Maryland, moved to WV in the late 60’s with my dad, who was from Ohio). As a registered Republican in WV until very, very recently, quite often there simply was NO CANDIDATE to vote for- if you win the Democratic primary, you have won the race. The only credible challenger to Alan Mollohan for years was a libertarian named Richard Kerr, a local Doctor.

This is something else to keep in mind when you hear all these exit polls in Appalachia in which Democrats state they will not vote for Obama or Hillary in the fall- it isn’t because they necessarily hate Hillary or Barack, it is because for all intents and purposes they are Republicans. Ticket-splitting is alive and well here in rural states.

*** Update ***

For example, McDowell County here in WV:

The Democrats are expected to rule Tuesday in McDowell County.

There are no Republican candidates competing in Tuesday’s primary contest, according to County Clerk Don Hicks. However, several Democrats are competing against Democrats for their party’s nomination. Without Republican opposition, the winners in Tuesday’s primary will most likely be unopposed during the general election in November.

“Whenever you have just Democrats running with no Republican opposition, normally in the primary that is pretty much it,” Hicks said. “Unless there is a write-in candidate.”

It went to Hillary 72-22.

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If I Ran The Asylum

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The super delegate situation (more accurately, the need to reform this mess) was mentioned in the comments in another thread, so here is how I would handle the situation. Some off the top of my head thoughts, which, no doubt, will have flaws

First, the seating of Michigan and Florida. It seems to me that since these were not to count and many feel completely not seating the delegation is too draconian, the fairest thing to do is to punish them by halving the total number of delegates (pledged) from the states. Then, the appropriate way to apportion them would be to take the pledged delegate lead from the other 48 states and assorted territories and the like (DC, Guam, Puerto Rico), and apportion the Michigan/Florida delegates according to the percentage that both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama have from those states. For example- If Obama has 52% of the pledged delegates from those 48 states+, he would get 52% of the delegates from Michigan and Florida. I have no idea what to do with the supers, but I am inclined to tell them to pound sand.

This would accomplish several things. First, it would stop the “seat the FL and MI delegates” nonsense. Second, it would be a strict punishment. Third, since there really was no election, it would fairly distribute the delegates according to the way they were determined in the rest of the country. Fourth, it would not impact the outcome of the election (and it wouldn’t if Hillary were in the lead of delegates, either). Finally, it would ensure that the DNC is still respected by the state delegations, and crap like this would not happen again in the future.

Second, solving this mess from the future. Unlike many, I like the proportional representation. It allows for campaigns to last longer, it really allows non-institutional candidates a shot, and I think it is a good thing. Keep it. I would also get rid of the sense of entitlement that Iowa and NH have, and make the primary system run on a regional basis, rotating every election. Break the states into appropriate and manageable regional blocs, set a start date for primaries, and every two weeks a different bloc votes. Depending on how long you want the primary season to last, you could tailor the size of the blocs and the start date for the election. States would be free to determine whether they want to be a primary or caucus or hybrid.

One last thing. I would create a sort of political quasi-holiday for all Democratic candidates running nationally prior to the start of voting in which they the rules of the contest, the metrics that will be used to determined the outcome and the nominee, and all that stuff are read, agreed to, and then have the candidates sign a statement agreeing to them. Publicly. Turn it into a celebration, make it a big deal so everyone knows it happens. Get all the party heads there, take a time to remember past party giants who may have died in the past few years, present awards to people who have done great things for the party. Have fund-raisers, do meet and greets, introduce rising stars in the party, etc. Call it “Signing Day” or something. But make it big, known, and public. The bullshit goalpost moving a certain campaign has done the past few months is unacceptable.

Just some random thoughts. What would the flaws in this be?

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Funny Because It is True

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Obama, speaking live in Tampa, just described McCain’s foreign policy (and I paraphrase):

McCain’s entire foreign policy is “I won’t talk to that guy. And I won’t talk to that guy. And I won’t talk to that guy.”

Heh.

*** Update ***

Now a Clinton surrogate is telling Andrea Mitchell that “Clinton has won more votes in the past few months.” I understand that they need to make an argument for Clinton over Obama, but could they quit making such stupid ones?

I want you students to try this on your professor next semester. Don’t do any work the first few months. Then with a week left in the semester, go to your professor, and point out that you have “done more work than any one else the past couple of weeks.” Get back to me.

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