Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Earaches, on a scale of suck ranging from 1 to Mark Penn, score an 11.
Especially when all 15 pharmacies in your town do not have your medicine and you need to wait until the morning for it to be shipped overnight.
Discuss.
*** Update ***
Please, folks, I went to the damned doctor already. He prescribed some penicillin steroid combo (the name eludes me), and advil. The pharmacies, all of them, are out of the medicine.
And advil ain’t cutting it.
by John Cole| 43 Comments
This post is in: Military, Outrage, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
I don’t know why this surprises me, but it does:
The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.
It really is like they want to be compared to the old Soviet Union.
As an aside, I wonder how that moron the Gateway Pundit is spinning this.
This post is in: Election 2008
Of course Mark Penn said that Obama can’t win the general election and I am not sure why this is such a big deal. That is essentially what the Clinton camp has been saying since Super Tuesday. It is, in fact the thrust of their entire campaign at this point- Obama can’t win the big one, he can’t win the big states, that is why it is justified for super-delegates to vote for Hillary and not for Obama, who has the most delegates, has won the popular vote, and has won the most states.
I don’t know why anyone thinks this is controversial- of course he said it, as that is what they have been saying all along. At some level, though, I think it does boil down to this:
At the risk of being offensive, etcetera, it’s because they can’t scream “nigger!”
I know. Bad word. But it’s the word that they are GOING CRAZY from not being able to say, and, thus, this.
Has anyone else noticed this shitstorm of absolute and utter trivial nonsense? I mean, Geraldine Ferraro finally screamed her lunatic meme (“He’s only leading because he’s a black man”) and everybody flibbered and flabbered about the 1000 pound gorilla in the room. Obama was right: it was “ridiculous.” But the crypto-racist press can’t grow up and can’t move on, and so they endlessly parse, in hopes that they can scream the word they desperately want to scream.
That is what I have grown to see as the not so subtle argument of the Clinton campaign- America isn’t going to vote for a black man in the general election. It is their own version of fear-mongering- the Republicans have terrorism, the Clintons have the fear of a third Bush term. Be afraid, and vote for Hillary, because America is the ugly place you don’t want it to be.
*** Update ***
Listen to this interview (via Sully). Hillary Clinton is insane. I don’t know what else to conclude after listening to her state, the Michigan and Florida elections were fair, to state that she never claimed McCain was experienced and Obama was not, to claim she has not hinted that Obama would be her VP. It was like Say Anything, the political edition. Sullivan is right- she is a sociopath. There really is no other way to describe it.
by John Cole| 51 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Video Showdown
Obama:
Someone is lucky elections don’t work like American Idol.
Consider this an open thread.
by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Military, Politics, War, General Stupidity
The Politico:
According to late February polling conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 53 percent of Americans — a slim majority — now believe “the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. That figure is up from 42 percent in September 2007.
The percentage of those who believe the war in Iraq is going “very well” or “fairly well” is also up, from 30 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent today.
The situation in Iraq remains fluid, of course. A surge in violence or in troop deaths could lead to rapid fluctuations in public opinion. But as the war nears its fifth year, the steady upturn in the public mood stands to alter the dynamics of races up and down the ballot.
The Washington Post:
Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.
The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.
Discuss.
*** Update ***
Now In the Role of Bluto Blutarsky, the American PublicPost + Comments (16)
This post is in: Election 2008
I see the intertrons is all aflutter about Obama’s apparently crazy-ass minister:
Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”
In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.
This apparently does not sit well with the rubes:
Wright isn’t just someone with whom Obama is friendly. To criticize Obama for having friends with controversial, or even abhorrent, views would constitute guilt by association. But Wright is Obama’s spiritual leader. To be sure, no thinking person always agrees with his minister, priest, or rabbi on political and social issues. But it’s unusual for a thinking person to retain an affiliation with a church whose leader attacks his country unless, at a minimum, that person considers those attacks not “particularly controversial.”
Obama should explain why he retained his apparently close affiliation with Wright and his church in more persuasive terms than he has to date. Otherwise, I think it’s reasonable to draw adverse inferences based on that affiliation, including the inference that Obama doesn’t quite measure up as a “post-racial” figure.
Why does anyone give a shit what Obama’s minister thinks? Seriously? Why does anyone care what Hagee (McCain’s gay-bashing BFF) thinks? They are religious leaders. Who cares what they think- they are paid to peddle mythology to the masses, so who cares what sort of nonsense they spout? Is singing “god hates America” any crazier than telling people if they refuse to follow the wishes of an unknowable, invisible, unverifiable yet presumably omnipotent deity (as documented a couple thousand years ago by people who saw things in the desert after days without water) they will be damned to a fiery eternity in hell. That hell, of course, is conveniently located AFTER you die, so we can’t prove anything about that fiction, either.
So really. Who gives a shit what Obama’s minister thinks? He is just another bullshit artist.
And I know, I know, I am going to go to hell for writing this. Whatever.
by John Cole| 75 Comments
This post is in: I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
This has to be the best reaction to the news that Spitzer’s hooker had been identified:
The low-hanging fruit would be a nude photo shoot, for which she would be paid a lot of money, but if she is smart she’ll think bigger. She is said to be an aspiring singer, so now she can probably get a record deal and a night club career. Or she can perhaps break into films if she is so inclined. But that’s not all: my guess is that she will be interviewed by journalists, and quoted as though she were a serious social critic.
If anyone knows something about low-hanging fruit, it is a Powerline front-pager.