Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

When we show up, we win.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The words do not have to be perfect.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

People are weird.

The revolution will be supervised.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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Fundraising Update and Open Thread

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This is kind of shocking- 106 donations for $5,640 in under 24 hours for Obama from just the commentariat here at Balloon Juice.

I think breaking the ten k mark by the NC/Indiana primary is completely doable. Maybe we should even up it to 15k.?

The key thing is to get new donors, though. New blood into the process is even more important than cash, I think, because if we can get people to make the first step and throw in 25, 50, or 100 bucks, maybe they will be more likely to head down to the local office to volunteer to go door to door, send positive energy, etc.

Regardless, I am still pretty shocked. That is a huge sum of money, and maybe after the election we should have a monthly fund-raiser for worthy charities. Something simple- everyone bring a sandwich to work instead of going out for lunch, and donate the five bucks they would have spent to Helping Hands Monkeys or OxFam or some other charity we can all choose. Something to think about.

Regardless, that is still a huge sum of money for Obama. I am glad we did it.

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More Elitism

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Apparently abstinence-only has turned out to be a miserable failure, but the administration wants to keep funding it anyway:

Programs teaching U.S. schoolchildren to abstain from sex have not cut teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases or delayed the age at which sex begins, health groups told Congress on Wednesday.

The Bush administration, however, voiced continuing support for such programs during a hearing before a House of Representatives panel even as many Democrats called for cutting off federal money for so-called abstinence-only instruction.

and while you can read the whole article for yourself, I would be remiss if I did not point out this remark:

Lawmakers cited government statistics showing that one in four U.S. teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease and 30 percent of U.S. girls become pregnant before the age of 20.

Republicans said even if some abstinence-only programs do not work, others do, and it would be wrong to end the funding.

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding.

Damned elitists with their facts and figures and numbers and statistics and fancy degrees. What do they know about public health that a regular Joe from Tennessee doesn’t?

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She’s Lost The Daily Show

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John Stewart skewers Hillary and her campaign’s unending stream of nonsense:

Also, the Charlie Cook at the National Journal says what the rest of the media don’t want to admit:

At the end of the day, the popular vote for the Democratic nomination means nothing. I doubt that having won the popular vote in the 2000 general election is of much solace to Al Gore. Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points.

The Clinton folks shouldn’t be faulted for the arguments they are making: In the big states that will determine the final outcome in November, she has done better than Obama, and she holds on to downscale white voters better than her opponent does. Beyond the fact that both assertions are true, I’d make the same arguments if I were in Clinton’s shoes, as would most of Obama’s strategists if they were working for Clinton.

But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.

Enough of this campaign already. It is over, Hillary has lost, and the only way she “wins” the nomination at this point is to completely destroy the party. The longer she stays in, the more delusional her supporters become and the more difficult it will be to rally around a candidate.

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Say Anything

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Eyeesh.

Nearly three-quarters of the attacks that kill or wound American soldiers in Baghdad are carried out by Iranian-backed Shiite groups, the United States military said Wednesday.

Senior officers in the American division that secures the capital said that 73 percent of fatal and other harmful attacks on American troops in the past year were caused by roadside bombs planted by so-called “special groups.”

The American military uses that term to describe groups trained by Iran that fight alongside the Mahdi Army but do not obey the orders of the militia’s figurehead, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, to observe a cease-fire. But Col. Allen Batschelet, the Baghdad division’s chief of staff, conceded that there was overlap between the groups.

“These two groups are so amorphous; they go back and forth between one another,” the colonel said at a briefing in Baghdad.

I bet those nefarious Iranian agents are in the east, west, south and north of Baghdad.

Wait, no they’re not. The string-pulling Persians are sitting in the Green Zone lunching comfortably with the Iraqi Prime Minister, whose Badr-allied security forces they control more than he does. After the Basra crackdown Iran sided decisively with Nouri al-Maliki and against Muqtada al-Sadr. It’s Sadr, the nationalist partisan of Iraq’s internal debate over Iranian influence vs. home rule, who has a wide lead in American casualties. Calling Sadr the Iranian stooge is like denouncing the Democratic party for supporting torture.

The weirdest thing is that a rookie reporter on the mideast beat knows all this, or can figure it out after five minutes of scanning through recent history. So where’s the context? Where is a single reference to the paper’s own reporting, or one independent expert? We’re already waist-deep in one loser of a war because the media got drunk on unsubstantiated warnings from the administration about links between a mideast bugbear and anti-American violence. Is it really too much to ask not to make the same mistake twice?

Yeah I know, SATSQ.

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More Specious Bullshit

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Renowned Clinton fluffer Lanny Davis takes to the HuffPo to bring this important list of ten reasons why Hillary should be given (and given is the right word, as she can no longer earn it) the nomination:

2. Senator Obama tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks — and was trying to win, not just lose a narrow margin.

3. He spent $11 million on media — about three times more than Senator Clinton.

And on an on and on he drones, you can see the entire piece here.

So, a question for Lanny. If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

Why is she behind him in every conceivable metric? Why is she behind in pledged delegates? Why is she behind in the popular vote (and don’t insult my intelligence by trying to pass that sheer nonsense the morons at certain pro-Clinton blogs are lapping up)? Why are super delegates flocking to Obama, while Hillary has picked up only a handful in the past few months. Why has she won fewer states? Why is she trumpeting her narrow delegate pickup in PA, when it is less than the number of net delegates Obama picked up in a variety of other states? Why is she behind in fund raising? Why was she unable to turn her double digit lead a year ago into any actual primary wins? Why, with her starting financial advantage and name recognition, was she held to a tie on Super Tuesday?

Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

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Fundraising Open Thread

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We are already up to $1700 in just a few hours for Obama. Not bad.

I would prefer it if we had more first time donors, rather than those of you who have already given. Still, not bad for a first time attempt at fund-raising. I am betting we can raise close to $10,000 over the next two weeks. That would be a significant contribution from one piddling website.

Do you all think that is a realistic goal to reach before the next primaries? And again, I don’t want people maxing out, or people giving money they can not afford, but would rather people who have not given yet to throw in a few bucks if they can.

At any rate, consider this an open thread.

*** Update ***

Goodness. $3400.00 today alone, and from 62 different donors. Plus, Genine is sending lots of positive energy, which is always nice.

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Get Used to This Bullshit

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McCain writes a letter:

Dear Chairman Daves,

From the beginning of this election, I have been committed to running a respectful campaign based upon an honest debate about the great issues confronting America today. I expect all state parties to do so as well. The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats. In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement.

This ad does not live up to the very high standards we should hold ourselves to in this campaign. We need to run a campaign that is worthy of the people we seek to serve. There is no doubt that we will draw sharp contrasts with the Democrats on fundamental issues critical to the future course of our country. But we need not engage in political tactics that only seek to divide the American people.

Once again, it is imperative that you withdraw this offensive advertisement.

John McCain

Get used to seven long months of this crap:

Step 1: GOP wingnut (is that redundant?) says something offensive, writes a nasty editorial, creates a vicious radio or tv spot.

Step 2: Ad receives widespread coverage and national attention.

Step 3: McCain condemns the ad/editorial/whatever.

Step 4: Chris Matthews and other bobbleheads in the media show off their man-crush for McCain while praising his integrity AND showing the offending ad/editorial on national television.

Step 5: I scream at the television and send another 25 bucks to the Obama campaign.

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