Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He really is that stupid.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Fight them, without becoming them!

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

Everybody saw this coming.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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Archives for 2008

Open Thread

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Have at it.

*** Update ***

These guys apparently had at it:

Prosecutors are moving ahead with a case against one of two 93-year-old men picked up during undercover prostitution stings.

In the case of Frank Milio, prosecutors have issued subpoenas and plan to take him to trial in April.

Milio, according to police records, tried to pay $20 in November to an undercover officer on 14th Street West.

This should not be a crime. This should be an inspirational story. This is a goal for me, to still be chasing after it at age 93. These guys deserve a plaque or something.

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Burn, Baby, Burn

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Hillary does her Red State impression:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor made.

“He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

Obama’s lead in national polls has slipped since clips of the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright began being played on national news programs. The uproar prompted Obama to give a wide-ranging speech on race in America a week ago. The Clinton campaign has refrained from getting involved in the controversy, but Clinton herself, responding to a question, denounced what she said was “hate speech.”

“You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks), saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that,” Clinton said. “I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving.”

Is there really any doubt that Hillary will do anything she can to destroy Obama so she can win? Any at all? What an asshole.

*** Update ***

Allahpundit is having fun:

Update: Ohhhh, Hillary.

On saying last week that she landed under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996, when she was first lady:

“I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke.”

Update: Your question of the day, via commenter OhEssYouCowboys: “Wouldn’t sleep deprivation come into play at 3:00 a.m.?”

*** Update #2 ***

Let’s channel Hillary and the Republicans when she said this:

“You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

ZOMG HILLARY THREW BILL AND CHELSEA UNDER THE BUS!

*** Update #3 ***

Steve Benen:

This may sound cynical, but my guess is that media interest in Clinton’s debunked Bosnia story had become too great a distraction. The controversy (and damaging videos) undermined Clinton on two fronts — credibility and national security experience — both of which are of critical significance.

So, how better to change the subject that to revive the Jeremiah Wright story with brand new criticism?

Clinton has been offered repeated chances to comment on the Wright controversy for three weeks. She’s not only declined, she’s avoided saying a single word. Today, all of a sudden, Clinton has all kinds of concerns she’s anxious to share. What a remarkable coincidence.

What’s more, we now have a situation in which John McCain defended Obama against Wright-related charges, and Mike Huckabee defended Obama, but Hillary Clinton sat down with editors of a conservative newspaper to reignite a fire that had already largely gone out.

Less than a week ago, former Mondale campaign manager Bob Beckel said, “Many liberals like myself, who would be happy to support Hillary Clinton if she earned the nomination, would abandon her if her campaign seeks to exploit the Wright controversy either in the remaining contests or with superdelegates.”

Now, it appears she’s doing both. I’d hoped Clinton was above this.

Pretty much.

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The Path To Victory is Clear

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More Friedman Units:

Troop levels in Iraq would remain nearly the same through 2008 as they have been through most of the five years of war there, under plans presented to President Bush on Monday by the senior American commander and the top American diplomat in Iraq, senior administration and military officials said.

Mr. Bush announced no final decision on future troop levels after the video briefing by the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the diplomat, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. The briefing took place on the day when the 4,000th American military death of the war was reported and just after the invasion’s fifth anniversary.

Victory is apparently the status quo. Or maybe not.

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The Increasingly Deranged Clinton Camp

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Where up is down, down is up, and everything can be spun:

In Monday’s ed board meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked about the basic math obstructing her path to the nomination.

Specifically, she was asked her plans if, come June, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., remains in the lead with pledged delegates, how she would try to convince superdelegates to give her the nomination if Obama does end up the choice of primary voters and caucus goers?

“I just don’t think this is over yet,” she said, “and I don’t think that it is smart for us to take a position that might disadvantage us in November. And also remember that pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.“

And the bullshit continues in earnest about FL and MI:

The Clinton campaign will not let go of the discounted Democratic primary votes in Michigan, where Sen. Hillary Clinton “won’’ as the only major candidate on the ballot, and in Florida, which Clinton “won’’ in an uncontested election.

The argument seems somewhat moot, now that the Michigan legislature has given up on the idea of a “re-do’’ of the Jan. 15 primary that the Democratic National Committee refuses to recognize because it violated party rules in going so early, and with Florida’s Republican governor uninterested in financing a replay of the Sunshine State’s Jan. 29 primary vote, which has drawn the same penalty by the DNC.

Yet camp Clinton wants to place the blame for inaction in the lap of camp Obama, which has maintained that it played by the rules in Michigan and Florida.

“Sen. Obama is turning the Audacity of Hope into the audacity of nope,’’ said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, with a reference to Obama’s campaign book in a conference call with reporters this morning.

It is almost as if they inhabit a different universe than I do. I know that I am susceptible to charges of merely being a Clinton hater (because, let’s face it- I did hate them when I was a Republican. It sucked having your ass kicked in by Bill Clinton on everything through the 90’s.). I understand that I may have residual hate for them that is spilling over. But I really tried to give them a chance. I chided Sullivan for his full-on Clinton Derangement Syndome (something he admits to having), I defended Hillary from bullshit attacks. I recognize there has been a lot of sexism chucked her way.

But I simply can not be alone in thinking the entire Clinton team has gone insane, and it bothers me when I read David Brooks and he sounds like he is right. David Brooks sounds sane. David Brooks was the dumbest man at the NY Times before they hired Bill Kristol. And now he sounds sane.

Meanwhile, the constant drip of nonsense from the Clinton camp has me wishing I had never even started to follow politics. I am so turned off by a group that simply can not face reality, simply can not be honest. They can not even admit the Bosnia statements were bullshit, something that even Taylor Marsh recognizes was a mistake. Instead of saying I was wrong, it is “I misspoke” or Hillary made a “misstatement.” And I won’t even dwell on the fact that this means fucking Sinbad has a better memory and a better grasp on reality than a potential President. Think about that for a minute.

Maybe that is the Clinton camp plan- they are trying to drive us all insane with their nonsense. And then, when we are all jacked up on lithium and drooling into our jell-o cup, we can all shake our heads and agree with the latest Wolfson spin-

“Yes, Howard, you really did win Michigan and Florida. Yes, Howard, pledged delegates can vote for whoever they want. Yes, Howard, only states Hillary has won count. Yes, Howard, caucuses don’t count. Yes, Howard, super-delegates should contemplate the electoral college.”

This scenario is the only one that makes any sense.

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What the Hell is Going on In NY?

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Is it time to put the Delta Tau Chi symbols up on the NY Governor’s mansion:

New York’s new governor, who disclosed last week that he and his wife committed adultery several years ago, said Monday he used cocaine in his 20s and smoked marijuana when he was younger.

Gov. David Paterson says he told another interviewer about drug use before he was governor.

In reference to cocaine, Gov. David Paterson, 53, said in a television interview that he “tried it a couple of times” when he was “about 22 or 23.”

“And marijuana probably when I was about 20,” he said on the NY1 cable news station. “I don’t think I touched marijuana since the ’70s.”

“More Americans have tried a lot more during that period of time and gone on to lead responsible lives and hopefully have lived their lives to their fullest,” he said.

Affairs, blow, high-priced call girls. The only thing missing is a toga.

I am not judging, and I am not saying I disapprove, I just wish these guys would STFU about it and get back to governing. Or since it is New York, trying to govern.

And while we are at it, what the hell is the Mayor of Detroit thinking? Why the hell has he not stepped down? I have heard his prosecutor speak and hear interviews with reporters from the Detroit Free Press. This guy is guilty as sin.

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Four More Years of Bullshit

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The walkback on the Bosnia trip BS begins:

The Clinton campaign says Senator Hillary Clinton may have “misspoke” recently when she said she had to evade sniper fire when she was visiting Bosnia in 1996 as first lady.

She has been using the episode as an example of her foreign policy bona fides.

Roll the tapes:

Your witness, defense:

Asked today to square her recent descriptions with these accounts, Howard Wolfson, her spokesman, referred to several contemporaneous news accounts that described the region as hostile. He then added: “It is possible in the most recent instance in which she discussed this that she misspoke in regard to the exit from the plane, but there is no question if you look at contemporaneous accounts that she was going to a potential combat zone, that she was on the front lines.”

Asked at a later point in the call to clarify his comment, Mr. Wolfson said that news accounts at the time made clear that the area in which she was landing was “a potential combat zone and was hazardous.”

Four more years of defining “is” is not something we need. Just please make it all stop.

*** Update ***

The chief success of the Clinton campaign the past few months is to make many people who just a few months ago defended Hillary agree with Jules Crittendon:

It’s called Planet Clinton. Politico goes on to talk about elephants in the room but neglects to mention the biggest elephant of all. The Clintons themselves, both of them, who will fight to the bitter end, because all those negative numbers are still numbers they can turn around. Doesn’t matter what they trample in the process. Politico talks to insiders, declares the bell has rung in the mind of notoriously fickle American voters, but misses the most fundamental rule of American sports and politics, rule No. 1 in the Clinton playbook: It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Far be it from me to defend my own wretched profession, but as collectively and individually chowderheaded as the media can be, the media also knows that rule. The media also knows a good trainwreck when it sees one, and knows no one can pry their eyes off it.

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