Home ice. Make us proud.
*** Update ***
For those of you not interested in hockey, here is a story about baristas being legally permitted to serve coffee while wearing a bikini. Another sign of our defeat of the Islamofascists.
by John Cole| 54 Comments
This post is in: Sports
Home ice. Make us proud.
*** Update ***
For those of you not interested in hockey, here is a story about baristas being legally permitted to serve coffee while wearing a bikini. Another sign of our defeat of the Islamofascists.
This post is in: Election 2008
This:
I keep coming back to this speech, and I really can not get over how bad it really was. If a student gave a speech this bad in a public speaking class, not only would he be failed, it would probably spark mandatory drug testing.
This is so awful, strained, and off-key, that it really does almost cause physical pain to watch. Did he even practice it? Hell, did he read it before he delivered it? I really had thought that Bush was one of the worst public speakers I had ever seen, but McCain seems to be lowering the bar.
This post is in: Election 2008
According to ABC News:
Sen. Hillary Clinton will hold an event with supporters by Friday, likely ending her historic bid for the White House and ceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, ABC News has learned.
I don’t know why she has to wait till Friday, but it’s good news. We can now get on with defeating McCain in November.
by John Cole| 20 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Another GOP outrage, this time Dana Rohrabacher discussing our behavior in Gitmo:
ROHRABACHER: They seem like more like pranks, hazing pranks from some fraternity than some well-thought-out policy of how do you torture someone and get information from them. […]
I will have to tell you, when most people hear the word “torture,” which has been bandied around here, I don’t believe that they think of it as holding a growling dog near somebody but not the growling dog — you know, it’s one thing to have the growling dog eating someone’s leg or arm versus — which is absolute torture. It’s another thing to have a growling dog around, or putting panties on someone’s head, or discussing — telling him he had repressed homosexual tendencies in his presence. I mean, I’m sorry, these are acts of humiliation.
First, can we get Sen. McMavericky “Torture Is Wrong” Straight talk Express on the record on this?
Second, the Republican platform and brand has already been repeatedly described as toxic the last few months, and it appears that just isn’t good enough for some of these wingnuts. Apparently they want to really push the limit, and I suspect that torture and violations of the Geneva Convention will not be enough to prove how tough we are, and by November these jackasses will be running on a platform of child rape and puppy murder.
by John Cole| 74 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008, I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Clinton Campaign
For Charlie Rangel:
In an interview with ABC News, Rep. Charles Rangel said he thinks it is time for Clinton to publicly clarify what she is doing and allow her supporters to switch their allegiance to Barack Obama.
“Unless she has some good reasons– which I can’t think of– I really think we ought to get on with endorsements (of Obama) and dealing with what we have to deal with… so we can move forward,” Rangel said.
Rangel last spoke with Senator Clinton privately on Tuesday during the day. On Wednesday he took part in a conference call Clinton had with the NY congressional delegation.
Asked why the Senator told supporters Tuesday night that she needed more time to consider her future, Rangel said: “I have no clue.”
In fact, Rangel said he was surprised by last night’s speech.
Rangel has been blind-sided before, during the RFK gaffe fall-out:
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top African-American supporters, was none too pleased with Clinton’s comments this week to USA Today that she has broader appeal with white voters.
The statement was “the dumbest thing she could have said,” Rangel told reporters before a Clinton fundraiser in a midtown hotel ballroom Saturday.
So I guess maybe I don’t feel bad for him after all. Really, the only people who are surprised by Hillary’s behavior last night simply have not been paying attention. I know, I know, I have Clinton derangement syndrome, but does this really surprise people that this is ending this way?
by John Cole| 61 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008, I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Clinton Campaign
TPM has excerpts of this Robert Johnson interview in which he states that as long as a month ago she authorized him to lead her quest to become Vice-President:
Johnson said he began discussing the vice presidency with Clinton last month and that they talked about it at a dinner in Puerto Rico last Saturday and again by phone and e-mail on Tuesday. “Let me be clear,” Johnson said in a telephone interview Wednesday morning. “She said if asked to do this, she must accept because she believes that it is in the best interest of the party that the party come together and win in November.”
Putting aside the fact that she has been leading her increasingly bitter die-hards astray for at least a month, knowing full well she could not win but still telling them she could and milking them for donations, it is important to remember who Robert Johnson is:
Robert L. Johnson, the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television, injected himself into the middle of a flaring campaign controversy on Sunday. During an appearance with Sen. Hillary Clinton, he seemingly raised the specter of Sen. Barack Obama’s youthful drug use.
Speaking to a crowd in Columbia, South Carolina, the African-American business tycoon chastised Obama for a memo his campaign put together documenting instances in which Clinton or her surrogates made allegedly racially-insensitive statements.
“I am frankly insulted,” Johnson declared, “that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book - when they have been involved.”
The comment was greeted with ire by the Obama campaign. In the past, Clinton surrogates have raised the drug issue. Hours later, Johnson claimed he was simply referring to Obama’s work as a community organizer.
THIS is who she thinks is her best chance at negotiating a spot on the ticket? This guy? Seriously?
Please let this guy just be making it all up, because the thought that Hillary could have been the nominee, with this kind of judgement if this story is true, is just terrifying.
*** Update ***
Damnit to hell. As soon as I hit publish I remembered my vow to ignore her. At least I made it a few hours. I guess I will have to start over.
This post is in: Election 2008, General Stupidity
A comment in another post reminded me of this Ta-Nehisi Coates post about Michelle and Obama giving each other “dap” last night. I wasn’t even aware it was considered a “black thing” (nor did I know the name), since I remember my thoroughly white lacrosse team doing it in undergrad, and as one of Ta-Nehisi’s commenters noted, “Is that really “so black”? Howie Mandel does it on his show, for heaven’s sake.”
Again, I didn’t know there was an ethnic/racial component to this, since it seems to be something pretty widely dispersed in American culture, but this just may be more evidence that I have no idea what is going on in the larger world around me. However, this post at Slate describes the difficulty that reporters had describing the event:
The presidential campaign—well, one in particular—has introduced a new greeting to the political world: the fist pound (also known as daps). Last night, we saw perhaps the most high-profile pound of all time, as Michelle and Barack Obama bumped fists on national television before he took the stage. (Video here.)
What’s hilarious is watching the formal, AP Stylebook-loving media trying to figure out what to call it. In an article about Obama’s body man Reggie Love, the New York Times called Love’s preferred greeting a “closed-fisted high-five.” Last night produced other assorted references…
He then goes on to list numerous reactions, my favorite of which is this comment (since scrubbed) from this Cal Thomas Human Events piece:
Michelle is not as “refined” as Obama at hiding her TRUE feelings about America–etc. Her “Hezbollah” style fist-jabbing–mouth-twisted anti-American speeches is STRAIGHT from ISLAM!
It is going to be a long election year.
*** Update ***
I wonder what people think of this COMMUNIST-STYLE CHEST BUMP.
*** Update #2 **
Due to the unbearable whiteness of being me, I have been mistakenly calling this fist-bump as “daps,” when it is more accurately referred to as “dap.” Duly noted.