Libertarians dream of seagoing "Sea World"

Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Alternet.org posted a really funny article by Brad Reed headlined, Seasteading: Libertarians Set to Launch a (Wet) Dream of 'Freedom' in International Waters.

Imagine a group of egoistical, coordinator class* assholes on a platform at least 200 miles from any recognized, national shoreline setting up their own philosopher king and queen republic.

It begs the obvious question: Who'll take out the trash? I mean, here in collectivistland isn't that why coordinator class libertarians hire illegal immigrants?

* a tip o'the spoon to Eric Patton for his definition of a pervasive, though little studied, class.

Stirring the pot when it doesn't need stirring

The Senate confirmation hearings have not even begun and already I'm experiencing "Sonia Sotomayor ethnicity" fatigue. I mean why should it make any difference if President Oreo's initial nominee for the United States Supreme Court is "Latina" or not and will it effect her decision making?

Of course it will but what the fuck! I'm sure Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr's decisions are influenced by the fact that he grew up a white boy in a managerial/coordinator class household in an affluent, small Indiana town on Lake Michigan.

So CNN this morning asked the musical question:Sotomayor nomination: Is it about ethnicity? To their credit CNN reporter Rachel Rodriguez ends the news story by asking "Are we focusing too much on her ethnic background rather than her judicial history and qualifications?" By that I think she must mean the mainstream media as I don't give a flying fuck.

Karl Rove on Ivy League grads

Shitstorm alert! Top Obama donors get ambassadorships

Batten down the hatches, boys and girls! President Oreo has just named the top three contributors to his successful presidential campaign to the ambassadorships of the United Kingdom, France and Japan!

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
Three of President Obama's top fundraisers are getting plum jobs as United States ambassadors.

Among the 12 ambassadors named last night by the White House, three -- Charles Rivkin, Louis Susman and John Roos -- were so-called "bundlers" for candidate Obama.

Rivkin (named ambassador to France) and Roos (named ambassador to Japan) both raised $500,000 or more for Obama, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
MSNBC.com

Oh, fuck! Has anything like this ever happened before??!!!

Bush’s patronage appointments to ambassador exceed father’s, Clinton’s
Posted on June 25, 2007 by Dr. Denny

During the presidency of George W. Bush, nearly four out of every 10 of his nominees for ambassador have been “non-career appointees” — or what many would consider “political” appointees. Neither his father nor President Clinton had such a high percentage.

President Bush’s 36 percent rate exceeds the 29 percent of President Clinton’s ambassadorial nominees who were non-career appointees. During George Herbert Walker Bush’s presidency, about 31 percent were non-career appointees.

Many of George W. Bush’s nominees have been significant donors to his election campaigns or have personal and political connections to the president.
Scholars & Rogues.wordpress.com

Is everybody in Alabama this stupid or only Sessions?

Jesus Christ, is everybody in Alabama this stupid or only U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions?

The Senate Republican who is charged with grilling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor during her confirmation hearings told USA TODAY's Matt Kelley this morning that she needs to explain a 2001 speech in which she said a "wise Latina woman" might make better judicial decisions than a white man.

"The American people need an answer before she goes on the bench as to exactly what she meant by that," said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

"It's on its face a troubling statement," Sessions continued. "It goes against the idea of color-blind justice -- blind justice, not just color-blind justice."
USAToday.com, May 28, 2009

To it's credit the USAToday article linked to the original 2001 speech

...Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

Keith Olbermann and his guest Eugene Robinson busted this canard on Countdown last night. I guess the stupid Sessions didn't get the memo.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

California, government as good as its people

It should come as no surprise that the California Supreme Court in its ruling on Proposition 8--a voter initiated, voter approved amendment to the state constitution codifying marriage between a man and a woman as the only legally recognized state of matrimony thereby cutting the so-called LGBT community out of the marrying business--handed down a decision yesterday guaranteed to please no one and solve nothing.

In their infinite wisdom the California Supreme Court justices decided to keep Proposition 8's constitutional limitation of marriage while recognizing the legitimacy of the 18,000 lesbos and queers who had the foresight to get "married" before last November's election. So of course the religious right is disappointed that the state can't tear up the marriage licenses of those 18,000 same married carpet-munchers and fags while the rest of California's unmarried dykes and fairies have their tits in an uproar because they can't legally march down the wedding aisle.

A base of what ails California is one of the late Nineteenth-early Twentieth Century Republican progressive and Democratic populists' best ideas gone very, very wrong, direct public initiative and referendum. From its inception in 1912 until 1978, Californians wisely used their initiative and referendum sparingly and only in the face of general legislative incompetence.

Proposition 13 changed this pattern.

The success of Proposition 13 marked the beginning of a new trend. The initiative was no longer viewed as a means to correct the Legislature. Rather, it became an instrument to govern. Between 1982 and 1988, voters passed 22 measures. In the 1990s, they passed 24 more. In the 20 years since Proposition 13, Californians passed more initiatives than in the preceding 6 1/2 decades.

Many of these measures further limited the Legislature's ability to govern.

The initiative remains popular among all segments of the California electorate. Liberals are still wedded to the dream of popular sovereignty, and once-skeptical conservatives embrace it as a way to remove many issues from the jurisdiction of elected officials.

In truth, the initiative has, in effect, strangled the republic and made California less governable.
Why the California Initiative System is Undermining Democracy, By Jules Tygiel, HNN.us, October 31, 2005

Since California's initiative and referendum system are only as good as its citizens one wonders how many heterosexual, serial monogamous "Christians" voted for Prop 8 to keep the "light-in-the-loafers" crowd out of the state's overworked divorce courts? Then again, how many of California's minority citizens, victims of past and on-going racial discrimination, voted for Prop 8 because homosexuality is taboo in "their" community (RuPaul, ain't gay, he just dresses that way!)

With the passage of Proposition 8 Californian got what they deserved.

A little bit about a lot of things

First up in America's hit parade of stupidity is 13-year old Daniel Hauser and his mother Colleen who ran away from Minnesota last week because the poor little flower just couldn't stand any more chemotherapy. I guess the poor little bastard couldn't take anymore puking and hair loss so it was off to Mexico for some herbal enemas while U.S. authorities spend a bazillion bucks trying to drag the little s.o.b. and his goofy mom back to Minnesota.

Let me clue you in, folks in Minnesota law enforcement, if the kid's parents want to kill their kid with herbal teas, let them.

Let us now move on to our president. Over the weekend the lapdog media (MSM) widely reported that President Oreo was under no pressure to appoint a woman, replacing retiring centrist and life-long milquetoast, David Souter, to the Supreme Court. So this morning the MSM is all gaga over Oreo's pick, a Puerto Rican-born, New York woman,Sonia Sotomayor.

It can only get better if she's a lesbian-Catholic who is for on-demand abortion and the confiscation of all firearms. At least the reactionaries would have something legitimate to bitch about. It'd even be better if on the first first Monday in October she rolls up a copy of the U.S. Constitution and sticks it up Scalia's ass! But that ain't gonna happen. What we are in for is a long, hot summer of idiot Republicans smearing the poor dumb bitch while the feckless Democrats, her allies, mince around like a bunch of sugarplum fairies. Oh, she'll be confirmed but Sotomayor will most likely be President Oreo's Clarence Thomas, though with better hygiene (no pubes on the Coke can.)

What other really stupid things can I bitch about? Oh! How about this letter-to-the-editor of in today's edition of The Des Moines Register:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is smart, articulate and knows his stuff. I still remember the two vice-presidential debates in which he participated. With his straight forward, quick witted, no-nonsense debating style, he easily won those debates with opponents Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. The fact that the main-stream media scored it different is proof of its bias and fears.

Now Cheney is taking on President Barack Obama. A review of the two speeches last week that has people abuzz reveals the former vice president is someone who can still maintain command of an audience with articulate oratory while the president is aloof and naïve and has to rely on teleprompters to be effective. I scored it Cheney 1 and Obama 0.

As a Republican, it’s our misfortune that Cheney never ran for president. He would have been a great one. Thank God, though, he’s still center stage in the public debate surrounding national security and the issues that confront us today. Right now, America can use a man with Cheney’s talents. He speaks truth to idiots.

— Jeff Jorgensen, Treynor

hmmm...Is Mr. Jorgensen referring to himself in his concluding sentence? That's enough stupidity for one day.

I seen some stupid things but...

So yesterday I go with the old man to decorate his parents' and grandmother's graves in Indianola, Iowa. Afterwards we stop at a local roadside cafe, which has been there for what must be a thousand years though I've never eaten there, for lunch (which, by the way, was excellent if you have a hankering for a deep-fat fried pork tenderloin and onion rings.)

Anyway there was a group of people in their motorcycle togs and on a nice day that's no big deal.

However I did notice one of the ladies in the group was coving her head with a stylish American-flag design "do-rag." This led me to conclude she was undergoing cancer chemo-therapy as she was hairless, the portions of her body that the public could see at any rate. Really nothing out of the ordinary here.

Bear in mind, Iowa's a good place to go organ harvesting in the summer. We have a strong lobby of rugged individualists who successfully make the claim that wearing a helmet when riding one's motorcycle at 40-miles over the posted 65 miles per hour speed limit on primary two-line highways is an infringement of their First Amendment rights. So nary a helmet was in sight as the group of Harley-Davidson-licensed, official sportswear clad folks mounted their gasoline-fueled steeds to ride off into...the rest of the afternoon.

I seen some stupid things but here was a lady fighting a life-threatening disease and the only thing between her head and the hard, hard pavement of U.S. Highway 65-69 was an American flag do-rag.

Shitstorm clouds loom over Iran

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran could be within one to three years from developing a nuclear weapon and time is running out for diplomacy to defuse the problem, the top U.S. military officer said on Sunday.

The United States and other Western powers are concerned that Iran could combine elements of its uranium enrichment and missile programs to create a nuclear weapon, although Tehran denies it intends to do this.
Reuters.com Iran within 3 years of nuke: U.S. military chief, by Alan Elsner, May 24, 2009

Oh, crap! Iran could, maybe, have a nuke in one year...or three...it depends.

Please, everybody cut the crap, because it's the worst kept secret in the world that Israel has had nuclear bombs since the Sixties. In fact one-eyed Israeli defense minister Moshe Dyan was so shook at the early success of Egypt and Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that he contemplated nuking both of them.

Here's what the Federation of American Scientista says in the introduction of an essay on Israel's nuclear capability:

Israel has not confirmed that it has nuclear weapons and officially maintains that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Yet the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is a "public secret" by now due to the declassification of large numbers of formerly highly classified US government documents which show that the United States by 1975 was convinced that Israel had nuclear weapons.

Here's old ET's common sense solution to this Middle Eastern nuclear conundrum: Force Israel into fessing up that it indeed possesses nukes, then proceed with disarmament talks between them and the other nuclear power(s) in the region, Pakistan and Iran. The U.S. could step up and unilaterally get rid of a few of our old, out-dated nuclear warheads as a gesture of good faith and example. Simple, no?

Unfortunately, the dumb fuckers who run this world will never let that happen.

It's been a long time since I posted anything

And, as of right now, I'm not in the mood to write. I've hit one of my periodic writer's blocks plus the fact that others are more eloquently saying what I am thinking.

But, the other day I changed my Internet browser homepage because the editorial content was utterly ridiculous. It seems that the editor of BuzzFlash.com took exception with a bit of fluff posted at The Huffingpost.com.

I'm not going to rehash the topic, suffice it to say, however, it was a prime example of where the "ideologically" pure left and the reactionary right agree, the further shores of politics and all that. In fact it is distressing how the reactionary right and the ideologically pure left agree on so many topics, though attacking from different angles.

The biggest bugbear of both the ideologically pure left and the reactionary right is pornography.

I've little interest in pornography, though I will admit to enjoying photographs and printings of nubile young, and the occasion not so young, women in various stages of undress. A predilection that indicates I am a fairly "normal" heterosexual male.

But it was a fairly innocent, albeit stupid, bit of fluff on celebrity "boob jobs" posted at The Huffington Post.com which got BluzzFlash.com's panties in a bunch. To which I say, so what.

From now on I will keep my eyes and ears peeled for the further shores of politics.

Separated At Birth???

Gasp!!! Oh, The Phony Outrage!!!!!!

Wot A Bitch!

McCain/Palin, Drillin' in ANWR

YouTube: "If I Were A Terrorist"

Unintentional Haw-haws

Here's a item currently being sold by one of my favorite mail-order/Internet retailers:

Wear your pride on your sleeve (and every place else) with this very patriotic Polo. Classically styled Shirt has images of both the U.S. Flag and the Declaration of Independence printed on it.

100% cotton knit with 3-button front, rib-knit collar and cuffs. Straight hem with side-split seams to ensure unencumbered flag-waving. Double-stitched hem. Machine wash / line dry. Imported[!!!!!!!!]

Now, don't get me wrong, I buy a lot of clothes from this particular retailer, and I won't embarrass the company by including an Internet link. I still want to buy things from'em. And they've embarrassed themselves enough by prominently displaying this "patriotic" shirt on the cover of their current mail order catalogue.

I'm sure the company will sell plenty of these shirts and the majority of the purchasers will never see the irony in a shirt emblazoned with the American flag and Constitution made in China, Bangladesh or some other Third World shit hole.

A fighter for the non-bitter, "common" man

I guess Hillary's ready to go out and slop some hogs, chew some chaw, noodle some catfish and maybe, just maybe, talk Chelsea into enlisting in the All Volunteer Force because it's such a great job opportunity.

I had the TV on during breakfast this morning and caught the tail-end of some ridiculousness about Hillary Clinton and John McCain's campaign saying that Barack Obama insulted small-town, under- and unemployed Pennsylvanians for pointing out that these people are in fact bitter and cynical after twenty-five years of political pandering, outsourcing, layoffs, tax breaks for the rich and a no-win war where their kids go to die.


It seems the elitist, effete, intellectual Obama had the temerity to say:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Mayhill Fowlers, Huffington Post.com April 11, 2008

But these good Pennsylvanians aren't bitter, responds Ms. Clinton. They're just happy-go-lucky "folks" who think that stocking shelves and chasing down shopping carts in the parking lot is the best job in the world, now that the steel mill moved it's operations to Bongo-Congo in order to remain competative in a worldwide "free market" economy. Said Ms. Clinton of these happy-go-lucky "folks":

"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who've faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."

Certainly these non-bitter, resilient optimists know how Ms Clinton fought for workers' rights during her six-year tenure as board member and general counsel for Wal Mart. And they must also know she fought her husband, Bill, tooth and nail over the ratification of NAFTA.

That was yesterday. Today this tireless fighter for the little guy, Ms. Clinton said:

"[I'm]taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America."

"Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist and out of touch, they are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans, certainly not the Americans I know, not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York."
CNN Political Ticker.com

Now if that kind of crap isn't enough to make one bitter and cynical you're just not paying attention.

More Who Writes This Shit??

The things one finds in his email Inbox:

DO I HAVE THIS STRAIGHT?

HIS FATHER WAS AN BLACK AFRICAN MUSLIM FROM KENYA.
WE HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIS AFRICAN FAMILY.

HIS MOTHER WAS A WHITE AMERICAN ATHEIST FROM KANSAS.
WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF HIS AMERICAN FAMILY?

HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER WHEN HE WAS ONLY TWO YEARS OLD AND WENT BACK TO AFRICA BY WAY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HOW? WAS HIS FATHER WEALTHY?

HIS MOTHER MARRIED AN INDONESIAN MUSLIM AND THEN MOVED TO JAKARTA WHERE HE WAS ENROLLED IN A MUSLIM SCHOOL.

WHEN HE REACHED HIGH SCHOOL AGE HIS MOTHER SENT HIM TO HAWAII TO BE WITH HIS WHITE GRANDPARENTS AND HE WAS PUT INTO AN EXPENSIVE PRIVATE SCHOOL. HE LATER WENT TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HOW? WERE HIS GRANDPARENTS RICH?

HE LIVES IN A $1.4 MILLION HOUSE OBTAINED THROUGH A DEAL WITH A WEALTHY FUNDRAISER. HOW?

HE "WORKED" AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CHICAGO. HE HAS NEVER HELD A PRODUCTIVE JOB OR RECEIVED A PAY CHECK THAT WAS NOT GOVERNMENT-FUNDED AND/OR TAXPAYER SUPPORTED.

THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS POSITION, NOR IS IT SUBJECT TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SET ASIDES; ON-THE-JOB TRAINING WON'T CUT IT.

HE ENTERED POLITICS AT THE STATE LEVEL AND THEN THE NATIONAL LEVEL WHERE HE HAS MINIMAL EXPERIENCE.

HE IS PROUD OF HIS "AFRICAN HERITAGE" (A FATHER WHO GOT A WHITE GIRL PREGNANT AND DESERTED HER).

WHERE IS THE PRIDE IN HIS "WHITE HERITAGE"? (A MOTHER WHO FLAUNTED CONVENTION AND DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD).

SOME MIGHT THINK THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO BE PROUD OF EITHER WAY.

HE BELONGS, AND HAS BELONGED FOR OVER 20 YEARS, TO AN "AFRO-CENTRIC" CHURCH IN CHICAGO THAT HATES WHITES, HATES JEWS, AND BLAMES AMERICA FOR ALL THE WORLD'S PERCEIVED FAULTS. (INCLUDING CREATING THE AIDs VIRUS IN ORDER TO INFLICT IT ON AFRICANS).

HE REPEATEDLY WHITEWASHES THE PASTOR, HIS CHURCH AND THE MEMBERS WHO CHEERED AFTER HEARING VITRIOLIC TIRADES AGAINST AMERICA.

HE COULD NOT CONFRONT HIS PASTOR BUT HE WANTS US TO BELIEVE HE CAN CONFRONT NORTH KOREA AND IRAN ?
YEAH RIGHT ! !

DURING HIS VERY BRIEF TIME IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE HE HAS MANAGED TO AMASS THE NUMBER ONE ULTRA LIBERAL VOTING RECORD OUT OF THE ONE HUNDRED MEMBERS.

HE HAS VOTED CONSISTENTLY FOR BIGGER GOVERNMENT AND HIGHER TAXES. HE HAS VOTED FOR BIG ENTITLEMENTS AND LEGISLATION THAT WOULD SEVERELY CURTAIL AMERICA'S ABILITY TO FIGHT TERRORISM AND TO PROTECT OUR BORDERS AND OUR NATIONAL INTERESTS AROUND THE WORLD.

BUT, HE IS A GOOD ORATOR. ISN'T THAT A COMFORT?

YEAH, I THINK I SEE HOW WELL HE COULD UNITE THE COUNTRY.

I THINK THE TRUTH IS THAT HE HOPES NO ONE WILL PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO OUR NEW CHIEF PILOT. HE HAS NEVER FLOWN AN AIRPLANE, IN FACT HE HAS NEVER EVEN SAT IN THE COCKPIT, BUT HE SAYS HE HAS RIDDEN ON PLANES BEFORE. WE ARE SURE HE WILL GUIDE US SAFELY THROUGH THE STORMS WE MAY ENCOUNTER ON THIS FLIGHT. PEOPLE WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD THE STORY ABOUT THE WOLF HIDING IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING SO HE CAN DESTROY THEM FROM WITH-IN ? THE HAND WRITING IS ON THE WALL, DO YOU NOT HAVE EYES TO SEE IT ?BINGO IS THE ONE !

THINK LONG AND HARD BEFORE YOU VOTE FOR THIS GUY!

You would think that by now people would be savvy enough, sophisticated enough to question an anonymously authored, unattributed email purporting to be truth. But, alas, no.

Of course the most stinging "criticism" this list of half-truths and innuendos raises against Obama, besides being mothered by an atheist and being pastored by a "racist," Black, Christian minister, is that he never in his life worked a "productive" job, meaning in the private sector for a bank, lending institution, real estate, so on and so forth.

Of course this e-missive overlooks the fact that the never-mentioned "Senator" John McCain has sucked off Uncle Sugar's tit for his entire life. He was born on a Navy base in the Panama Canal Zone, both his father and grandfather were admirals in the U.S. Navy; after graduating fifth lowest in his Annapolis Naval Academy class of 1958 he went on to an distinguish himself by promptly getting shot down over North Vietnam and taking up residence in the so-called Hanoi Hilton for five years.

Here we pick up the narrative of McCain's life from the Web site Biography.com:

Though McCain had lost most of his physical strength and flexibility, he was determined to continue serving as a naval aviator. After a painful nine months of rehabilitation, he returned to flying duty, but it soon became clear that his injuries had permanently impaired his ability to advance in the Navy.

His introduction to politics came in 1977, when he was assigned as the Navy's liaison to the U.S. Senate. In 1980, after marrying his second wife, Cindy Hensley, McCain moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and began working on establishing connections in politics. He was first elected to political office in 1982, easily winning a seat in the House of Representatives when his well-known war record helped overcome doubts about his "carpetbagger" status.

So were is McCain's experience in the vaunted "private" sector. The only reference I find is this line from the Web site Keep and Share.com, "In 1980, McCain married Cindy Hensley and moved to Phoenix, where he went to work for his father-in-law's Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship." So two years working in his father-in-law's beer distributorship is all the experience in the "private" sector John McCain has on his resume. Two years later off to the U.S. House and back on Uncle Sugar's tit up to the present. Talk about your "Washington insider."

Of course our wing nutty friends rationalize this away. "Duh, McCain spend five years prisoner of war...he hero...he only get from 'Murican people what he deserve."

And, as I've pointed out before, this garbage works particularly well on white, suburban men, and women, who like to proclaim loudly and often how hard working they are at down at the bank, lending institution, real estate office and so on, as they put their feet upon the desk and lace their fingers behind their heads. The other audience for this type of propaganda are lower-working class whites, those most adversely effected by the looming economic depression (which "President" John McCain says he will do nothing about.) Perhaps this email, and others like it along with electronic lynchings by association, helps explain McCain drawing even with Obama in the latest presidential polls. These types of sub rosa campaigns are very effective because they appear to be written by an average Joe, like me, and so appear to echo the thoughts of the person, or persons, forwarding the email. But they are dishonest.

Once again let me paraphrase Jimmy Carter in noting that America deserves a government as good as its people. And if John McCain wins in November that can only mean that the American people are truly stupid, easily influenced, emotional babies who get exactly what they deserve.

News item: Obama aide calls Clinton "monster"

Samantha Power, the able foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama who referred to Hillary Clinton as a "monster," has quit her role with the Obama campaign.

Power's comment about Clinton was a rough one: "She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything... You just look at her and think, 'Ergh.' But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

But let's be a little serious here: What Power said is no different from what campaigners say about their opponents on a daily basis -- except perhaps for the use of the rather sophisticated word "monster" as opposed to the usual explicatives. It's just that Power said it in a setting where her attempt to take the word back with a "that is off the record" grasp was not going to work.

No good comes from sidelining frank and outspoken "rookies." Obama and Clinton both need more aides like her. And we all need to accept that campaigns and campaigners can make honest mistakes -- indeed, the mistakes are what tell us these are human endeavors, as opposed to mere spin machines.
John Nichols, The Nation

O.K., Samatha Powers has now apologized, something I do not think she need have done. And she has quit the Obama campaign as unpaid foreign policy consultant.

Well done, Mainstream Media! Bravo! You've done Hillary's bidding and you've done it well. You've kneecapped Obama's campaign. And you've looked to other way as Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson likened Barack Obama to Bill Clinton's nemesis Kenneth Starr, chief semen-sniffer of the Lewinsky affair.

And of course no one in the upper echelons of the Clinton campaign have apologized, publicly at least, for this:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan elder who presented Barack Obama with a traditional outfit that fueled false rumors he was Muslim says the garb was cultural, not religious — and that had President Bush visited he could have "dressed him the same."

Pictures of the Democratic presidential candidate wearing the robe and turban over his Western-style clothing spread on the Internet.

The gossip and news Web site The Drudge Report said the photo was circulated by the campaign of Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. But Clinton aides said the campaign had never sanctioned its distribution.
AP, march 8, 2008

No word if the "volunteers," who slipped the offending photograph the way of Internet sleazemeister Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, have resigned. The Clinton campaign does acknowledge that unnamed "volunteers" who sent e-mails alleging Obama's adherence to Islam have quit though.

What unsubstantiated smear on Obama will slide from the Clinton campaign? Will be the above mentioned Samantha Powers--author, lawyer, human-rights activist and "professor of practice and founding executive director of the Carr Center at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG)"Harvard Crimson, July 29, 2005--, often described as one of Obama's closest advisors and friend, be rumored as the "other-woman" in Obama's life? She is, after all, 38, tall, pretty and, most importantly, white.

And a cheating husband is something Hillary Clinton has experience with.

From Bill's Private Stash

Hillary lookin' better than she has a right to be