Karl Rove to Join Fox News?

Well, this is somewhat predictable, I suppose. During this campaign season, I've been settling in on MSNBC as my network of choice.

They seem to cater to the junkies like myself. They don't have such a high ratio of hot-chick-time (which I'm not always opposed to, mind you) like Fox and they don't dumb it down like CNN.

But for no other reason than curiosity, I might just have to check out boy wonder over on Fox.

clipped from insidecable.blogsome.com Karl Rove to join Fox News Channel… ICN hears that Karl Rove will join Fox News Channel as a contributor and will likely be used throughout Super Tuesday coverage…

My Favorite 'Modern' Bob Dylan Song

Waxing on about what a gift to humankind the boy from the Iron Range is would just be an absurd exercise in redundancy. So I'll just say that, from the first time I heard this song, it became an instant all-time favorite of mine.

I was living in the Bay Area and picked up Love and Theft at the Borders across the street. I listened to it on a weekend drive into San Francisco and an otherwise-unremarkable day became one of those I'll always remember for having this CD with me.

This cut of Mississippi, from October 9, 2001 in Medford, Oregon is not as clean as the studio version, but you know how we roll here. Bob did a slew of great shows in the immediate post-9/11 period and as I get my bootlegs organized at home, I might edit some of them into picture shows and post up some of them later on in the spring.

Is it spring yet?

Am I Snubbin-Ya? Didn't Man to Snub-Ya

Courtesy of our friends at Bartcop

A Column I've Been Mentally Relying On

As this fascinating primary season has worn on, I've been trying to figure out why I'm so inclined to see Barack Obama and John McCain favorably.

Obama's lack of intense focus on talking about budget balancing and my irritation with McCain-Feingold over the years would seem to make it hard for me to support them.

Within-party, head-to-head, considering only on-paper policy positions, would lead me to see Mitt and Hillary more favorably.

Why can't I vote for them?

It's because I just don't like them and that overrides my thoughts about their stated policy positions.

There's something I perceive about them that I just find irritating.

This recent Times article by David Brooks argues that I'm by no means unique. He holds that we're not as smart as we think or wish we'd be.

Relying on a healthy dose of social science research, he posits that being human, we make flash judgments about people's character and that can override the sensibilities we tend to pride ourselves in.

(Space constraints being what they are in the paper, he doesn't extend the argument in this column, but you can see where sociobiologists would be able to spin yarns about how this is actually a favorable trait for us to have and what kind of survival outcomes it can lead to.)

It can be disconcerting in some ways to find out that you're only human...especially when you extend this realization to product marketing (which is really no different than a political campaign, unfortunately), but on the other hand, it does end up satisfying that I can at least rationally understand my own irrationality.

Guy Smiley

John McCain was the man with the shit-eatin' grin last night at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA.

He flew into town after handily beating the Stormin' Mormon in Florida and then picked up the endorsement of America's Mayor for dinner before the debate.

After that, he was just playing with Mitt's head for the rest of the night.

In the last week, he's really got him rattled by continually pulling out a quote where Mitt talks around whether or not we should have timetables for withdrawing from Iraq.

McCain is clearly taking some liberties with the context in which the word was used, but it's telling as all hell how things like this can get under Romney's otherwise flawlessly-healthy skin. I saw flashes last night of the South Carolina debate when the same thing happened. Mitt, when faced with someone who keeps tweaking him really has a hard time masking his frustration.

(As another example, recall how bent out of shape he got when an AP reporter kept insisting last week that Romney had a "Washington lobbyist" as a honcho in his campaign.)

McCain, of course, just sits back with an incredibly self-satisfied face as Mitt tries to clean up the mess he made on the floor.

At the end of the day, unfortunately, Ron Paul summed up their argument most accurately. He pointed out that it's just two guys who essentially agree on Iraq arguing about technicalities for show.

Ron Paul is currently polling at 5%.

If Only I Had That Winning Combination of More Cleverness and Motivation...

...I'd pen some lyrics about the John "Pretty Boy" Edwards campaign to the tune of Beauty School Dropout.

Regardless, listening to it, I'm sure you can see generally where I'd go with it.

Katie Couric...Total Psycho

For anyone who saw the arms raised in victory last night at the McCain rally, I don't think Cyndi's eyes were the globes being focused on.

This is from HuffPo's cool "Overlooked Quote of the Day" feature.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com "She looks like a husky, those weird blue eyes. Cindy McCain has the most intense blue eyes. ... They were so intense, I couldn't stop staring at her. She must have thought I was weird." -- Katie Couric, who, for some reason, thinks she might sound weird.

U2 Performs Angel of Harlem

While I rarely get the uncontrollable urge to spend an hour digging into U2's music, there are some go-to songs of theirs that I really dig and Angel of Harlem is one of them.

They released this on the wonderful Rattle and Hum album in 1988. This cut, while not as pristine as the officially-released track, is a pro-shot video from the last leg of the Zoo TV tour they did. Specifically it's from Sydney in the (northern hemisphere) winter of 1993.

Enjoy this homage to Billie Holliday.

Just a warning for the work viewers, Bono drops a quick F-bomb right up front.

Go Raiders!

Predator-

n.

1. An organism that lives by preying on other organisms.
2. One that victimizes, plunders, or destroys, especially for one's own gain.

Well, how appropriate.

With John Edwards out of the way, who will his white fight the power people go to?

The natural choice, of course, is Ralph Nader!

Ralph's a guy I can never figure out. While I can't claim to have been a student of his career, nor can I claim that his work has never aided in making some folks' lives better (did you put on your seatbelt on the way home?) there's something very narcissistic about him.

Then again, that seems to be just what you need to hang in this crowd.

I was afraid, today, that the race could be heading towards the boring with both herds thinning out some today. With just a little bit of luck, the pride of the Nutmeg State could liven things up again.

Cheers to MSNBC

I have the Florida primary coverage on in the other room and overheard a commercial for MSNBC saying that all of their online video content is embeddable, which caught my ear. (Both of them, actually.)

So I came in to the office to fool around with it and they do not appear to be lying. I could embed their high-quality video from the SOTU last night if I wanted...all 53 minutes!

It's a good idea, really. I mean I guess if Drudge linked something up, it could hurt their servers, but with the yokels like me with only a handful of visitors, it's virtually costless for them and they get a little coverage and seem to be running quickie commercials before their content, which I don't mind that much since the video quality is pretty nice.

Congratulations to MSNBC for going out on a limb like this. Let's hope other major outlets follow suit!

Got a Light?

First, kudos to the Wall Street Journal for providing embeddable video from their articles.

More news outlets should take this approach and not assume that everyone's going to click over to their site.

That said, I never knew that there was so much innovation going on in the cigarette world, but there is.

Today's New York Times

Brokeback Capitol

For all their fear of homosexuality (oops, sorry, "defending the institution of marriage") that the GOP is up to, President Bush seems to be a very affectionate guy when it comes to his ideological allies.

Last night, Chris Shays (R-CT) got to plant one on Trailblazer, but as I show below, this is not his first on-screen entanglement.

The real question, of course, is why W didn't try a little south of the border grab when he passed Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), who was also on the aisle!

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the Shays picture. They got a better screen grab than I was able to rig up.

President Bush and Peter Domenici (R)

President Bush and John McCain (R)

President Bush and Tommy Thompson (R)

President Bush and Joe Lieberman (?)

Never Been Kissed

Another Wonderful Cut from the Capitol Theatre

As the regular reader can tell, I've been on a bluesy kick lately.

Here's a really nice clip from the Capitol out in Passaic, NJ, a venue I've posted footage from before.

This is Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, performing Messin' with the Kid in 1982.

Enjoy!

Guess Who Got to Sit at the Cool Kids Table Last Night?

Watching the body language was priceless last night. There's no doubt who had a spring in their step.

I've lived long enough (including the NH experience) to know enough to not count the Clintonistas out, but yesterday really was a good day for the man from IL.

The L Word in Florida

While I guess it might be halfway clever (well maybe not) for me to superimpose McCain's and Mitt's faces into this picture, why soil something so pretty.

Anyway, the word that Ronald Reagan turned into a cuss word in some circles, is being thrown around quite, uh, liberally down in the armpit of the nation.

While Barack Talks About Uniting People

Donna Brazille had a good observation on This Week, this morning.

She said that what makes Obama different is that, by and large, he doesn't talk to black audiences in a way that's materially different than he does to white audiences. While it's no doubt intentional, I also think it's part of what I found attractive about his candidacy.

I don't get the impression that he's speaking to "members of groups." He's just talking to people.

It's instructive to compare the above to some of the buttons available at Hillarystore.com. Do you think she sees you as an American or a member of a group that's to be wooed?

(In fairness, Barack sells similar buttons, but I didn't hear Hillary throwing down much talk about the abolitionist movement until she had to run into black voters in the south. Unless directly baited, Obama's stump speech has not moved much on this spectrum since the primaries started.)

The Rolling Stones Perform Some Girls

My general preference here, as you know, is to post concert footage of my favorite songs. Unfortunately, Some Girls was not performed live all that much and I could not find anything satisfactory.

Anyway, here's the title cut from the 1978 release. Enjoy this bluesy classic, controversial lyrics and all.

This is Why The New York Times is the Paper of Record

The important news of this Sunday is that Senator Edward Kennedy will endorse the Junior Senator from Illinois on Monday.

This is how its importance is characterized in their political blog, The Caucus.

Of all the endorsements in the Democratic Party, Mr. Kennedy’s is viewed as the most weighty.

Black Like Me

I'm not sure what it is.

I was never very sensitive to or bothered by discussion of voting along racial lines by the media.

Perhaps it's because of the general reliability of the African American vote getting behind Democratic candidates. But when it came up in the news, it seemed to be like watching a weather report in San Diego...it's unclear why anyone even bothers to report that today is going to be like yesterday and tomorrow looks pretty much the same.

I find it increasingly offensive, though, during this political season.

But if I had a little more time on my hands, I'd try to get into CSPAN one day when another smart ass pollster or journalist is on, talking about who AA's are voting for these days. If I got through, I'd ask the person if, within the AA community, "light-skinned blacks vote more like whites or dark-skinned blacks."

As offensive as my question sounds, it's effectively no different than "polite" analysis of the issue done today.

Selah.

Things to Watch For

• Will the talking head class be sharing my opinion...that Obama really rose above the fray last night and sounded like a winner? I was blown away by his speech...and the English back translation of Si Se Puede, Yes We Can, is pure magic.
  

• According to MSNBC and others, Obama was down 20 points in South Carolina as recently as a few months ago, so the Clinton folks can't claim that this was a naturally-good state for him that he waltzed into, plucking already-ripened fruit from the tree. He overcame pretty significant odds (especially after the NH and NV defeats.) Whazzupwiththat and will Bob Schieffer grow a set and press the issue when she appears on Face the Nation?
• John McCain has been picking up endorsements left and right. Mel Martinez may make JM a little more palatable to the South Florida Cuban community, but I have not been hearing too much Castro talk out of the GOP contenders yet. And Governor Crist's endorsement last night also makes the McCain Train a little more attractively-crowded.
• Will Bubba be toned down? The general consensus leading up to yesterday's SC primary was that the media was getting sicker of the Clintons than the voters were. The argument goes that the wise media was seeing through The Slickster's race-baiting, but that the people still had a warm place in their collective heart for our first black president. Perhaps voters were a little bit more savvy than they were given credit for. I'm very interested to see his demeanor in the days ahead.
• Shifting goalposts. Yesterday, Clintonista Howard Wolfson was talking about moving the campaign on to Florida, with the clear implication that they want the Florida (and Michigan) delegates to count. This, of course, is not the rules that the candidates agreed to months back when the national party punished these two states for moving their primaries too early in the season. Now that it looks like this could shape up to be a delegate race, with every vote being a potential tiebreaker, the Clintons are opening up the door for changing the rules and making FL and MI votes count. What a shock.
  

The Rolling Stones Perform Dead Flowers

Dead Flowers is one of my favorite Stones' song.

Lyrically, of course, the song's not really about flowers in a vase and it really shows off the genius that is Mick Taylor.

This cut is from the Marquee Club in London on 26-March, 1971.

Enjoy!

My Seventh-Grade Sense of Humor

I had to giggle at this spell check suggestion when I was looking over the previous post.

Cool-Looking Podcast

One silly thing about iTunes (unless it turns out I'm just a dolt who can't figure out how to do it!) is that I can't seem to hyperlink you over to this listing. You need to go into iTunes yourself and find it.

That said, I happened across the Cook's Illustrated weekly video podcast this morning and it's very neat. CI has been my favorite cooking mag for, jeez, almost 10 years. I anxiously await each arrival of both it and its sister publication, Cook's Country, which has more of a home-cooking bent.

Bon appetit!

A Sad Ending for Happy Endings

Is nothing sacred in in the Chicago suburb, Elk Grove, Illinois?

Oh, the humanity!

I Know You! You're Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!

I'm not sure if Hillary's ever seen a grown man naked, but she's not getting Lew Alcindor's vote.

The sky hook man is not going along with Hillary supporter, Magic Johnson.

He's all about Obama.

Shame On You

I work in a group of 4 men in their 30s and 40s. (Well, I'm in my 30s, the others are in their 40s, but who's counting).

Anway, we're getting to the point where we have to plan our next year. If my boss were to give us the talk while a bikini-clad girl worked the PowerPoint, my boss, who is no damned fool, would have to be one if he wondered why we didn't pay a lick of attention to the content of his talk and were just obsessed with the sideshow he offered.

Yesterday, Bill Clinton scolded a reporter for asking about all the nasty back-and-forth between his, I mean his wife's, campaign and that of Barack Obama. He chided the media for not paying attention to what they were saying about issues of substance and focusing only on some of the side squabbles.

Bill, that old dog, knew just what he was doing and anyone who thinks that it's not an intentional (and perhaps-brilliantly-played) act on the Clinton's part is a damned fool.

It's becoming increasingly hard for me to envision one of the two remaining Dems up on a stage endorsing the other with anything approaching a shred of credibility by the time this is all over.

CNN's Race Obsession Continues

As I've gotten older, I've also gotten less tolerant of people exploiting race for commercial and power gains.

I'm all for a good Polish (or other protected class joke) as long as it's shared between people who get mutual enjoyment from it. But this kind of bullshit out of CNN is just annoying.

Unfortunately, like politicians who run sleazy ads, they're probably not doing it because they're mean.

They're doing it because it accomplishes the goal of getting doofuses like me to spend higher minutes in my visit reading it...with steam coming out of my ears.

Is it Twoo When Dey Say Dat You People Are...Gifted?

Barack Obama, to his credit, totally lightened the very tense mood during the CNN/BCC-hosted Democratic debate last night.

Anyone walking by my crib in Cleveland would have heard me cackling away at his answer to a question about Toni Morrison's assertion that Bill Clinton was America's first black president.

This was such a classic moment of an otherwise incredibly rough debate...more on that later.

Enough With the "Feisty Grandmother" Stories Already!

Next to the 'missing hot blonde who stripped on webcam to put herself thru college' stories, the feisty grandmother story, whether she's up to good or ill, really gets tiring!

CNN Fesses Up

Well, apparently I was not the only one who found CNN's race/gender conundrum article last night to be offensive.

They got a lot of angry emails about it...within minutes of posting.

Thanks for the tip, GB.

So, Senator...When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?

Hill and Bill are up to some interesting tricks, lately. Their strategy as of late seems to be to keep Obama on the defensive. As posted here before, all they are trying to to is spread enough seed of doubt, and force him to play a game of defusing all their tricks, rather than having any control over the discussion.

I'm not exactly surprised by it and it does seem to be working for the moment. But I really hope that this inflicts some damage on them personally, and Bubba's long-term image because it's just so beneath a former President.

Contrast this with, say, Jimmy Carter's post-White House behavior.

After last night's beatdown, Hillary's continuing to taunt him from afar.

Can't wait to see what happens on Saturday in Dixie!

CNN: Black Women Don't Have Brains

CNN's wonderful headline writers are at it again.

In their attempt to make a valid point, they make another one.

No mention is given in their article tease to black women actually thinking about which candidate is actually better for the office on their merits.

Rather, CNN believes that black women are reduced to morons, incapable of operating outside a race > gender calculation.

Happy Martin Luther King Day, brought to you by your friends in Atlanta.

The Traditional Double-Standard

This is from the fellers over at National Review...not the first time we've seen this kind of doublestandard. Nothing all that infuriating, but worthy of mentioning.

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Re: And In Hillary's Corner This MLK Weekend    [Jack Fowler] So Rev. Butts endorses Hillary, and that's jim dandy, but on the flip side of the double standard, imagine the media uproar if Cardinal Egan were to endorse a pro-life Republican. 01/20 05:28 PM

Another Gem from Perez

clipped from perezhilton.com Fill In The Blank Filed under: Politik > Fill In The Blank > Hilary Clinton Hillary Clinton chats with some locals during a campaign stop in Las Vegas this past weekend. Hillary is trying really hard to _____________. Permalink / 666 comments (RSS) »

Florida Redux

I never had much trouble believing that at least some people in Florida and elsewhere had a hard time on election day 2000.

I did think, however, that the Dems were a little bit hysterical about it and were infusing a bit too much into how systematic it may have been.

Like people on the right who believe that Lefties sit around trying to find programs to waste their taxes on and increasingly elaborate ways to take their guns so they can truly implement the government tyranny they all desire, I've always thought that Democrats tend to give Republicans too much credit for deviousness.

While the actions of the increasingly-annoying ex-President don't change the likelihood of monkeyshines in 2000, they do show the low threshold some Democrats have when it comes to making claims of systematic disenfranchisement.

Bubba was trotting around the casinos yesterday (did you like the high-cut outfits that the girls wear at Mandalay Bay, Bill?) indirectly accusing the Obama campaign of suppressing the vote of Hillary supporters.

This is kind of like finding out that your neighbor got sick from the same brand of soup that made you sick a few weeks back. While it COULD be a coincidence, it does make you stop and wonder...

Rudy Julius

Yikes, if anyone caught ABC's This Week, they saw the horrid mistake that was Rudy's makeup job.

I'm not sure if they caked too much on or they were trying to cover up the outcome from too much time in that Florida sun.

Either way, I held my OJ up to the screen and we were pretty close.

Picture of the Day

Photo by Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune

This kind of caught my eye...pic of the day from the Minneapolis Star Trib.

This guy was a referee at the US Pond Hockey Championships, which are going on up in the Twin Cities this weekend.

Funny Cartoon

by Steve Breen (San Diego Union Tribune)

Example of Anti-Thompson Push Polling

Here's an example of push-polling...often as informational as cotton candy is nutritional, being used in South Carolina in a Pro-Huck, Anti-Fred call.

Posting Viva Las Vegas Would Have Been Too Predictable...Even for Me

So I tried to come up with some other Vegas tie-in to coincide with the big Nevada caucus taking place later this morning.

I came up with something that tickled my fancy...Vegas legend Wayne Newton, performing If I Can Dream, in a tribute to the King, a few weeks after Elvis' death.

Hot Damn Tamale, Baby! You got them cotton panties on, Hillary?

John Edwards...Kingmaker?

While the theory rests on some considerably long odds, Politico had an interesting article about how John Edwards' position in the polls could bring him some dividends come the convention in Denver this summer.

The skinny of it is this...if he sticks it out, as he claims he will, through the convention this summer and continues to pick up something more than 15% of the primary/caucus vote per state, Edwards is going to show up at the convention with too few delegates to win, but potentially enough to push Obama or Clinton over the edge.

If this happens, he's going to have some considerable bargaining power in getting some promissory notes out of whoever he may decide to help out.

It's unclear, of course, if Edwards can continue to pull this much of the vote as it becomes clearer and clearer that he's simply not going to win the delegate race. Even though I think the sophistication of IA and NH voters is a little bit overblown, I don't know that the voters on Super Tuesday and beyond are going to be calculating enough to engage in this strategy (which he's not commenting on or admitting to).

Further, we are still early on in the process and natural momentum or big events could create a mass movement of Dems to one leader or the other, rendering him essentially irrelevant.

Nonetheless, it was an interesting process piece and those interested in the nuts and bolts of what's going on may agree with me.

Some Really Excellent Rolling Stones

I laid off the music for a few days, but I have a feeling I might not be able to resist throwing up a handful of things during the Nevada/South Carolina political cornucopia we are on the cusp of.

This is from a rehearsal for the 2002 tour, taped up in Toronto.

Enjoy Can't You Hear Me Knocking? It's a little bit slower, but you can hear the details coming out in the song and it's fun to watch them interact together, but not really before a full crowd.

I got a big kick out of this when I found it.

In Praise of Sir Elton John

I've been digging back into Elton John's music a little bit, lately. During most of my lifetime, I thought of him as mostly a pop guy, which he no doubt is.

But in this cut, going back to Tokyo, 1971, the dude did have some soul in him.

I really enjoy Country Comfort, and hope you do, too.

Yah, Youbetchya. Vote for Al(len) Franken!

While he's had some weirdo angry outbursts in the last few years, there's something really charming and interesting about the Franken Senate campaign up in the tundra.

Former Democrat Norm Coleman is a horse's ass and I would think of voting for Al just on that basis.

But Al's no dummy. As I think I've posted here before, his Air America show, while I might not agree with much of what he talks about, really allowed him to hone his rhetorical skills and I'm watching this race with great interest.

I had a funny experience at work today. I got hooked into a conference call with a woman in another business unit and had to ask, after listening for a moment, if she grew up somewhere in Minnesota.

"Yah, I live in Roseville. Whydoyaask?"

Anyway, here's a cute Al commercial.

I Weep For the Future

But you have to love the Aussies.

Thanks, Ryno.

Funny Kid Isnt Sorry About Huge Party - Watch more free videos

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani...Mr. Conservative

As has been documented ad nauseum, Rudy's got all his eggs in the Florida basket. If he can't make it there, he can't make it anywhere...by his own admission.

So he's going to have to pull out all the stops in his effort to woo the cadre of misfits, perverts and retirees who call the Sunshine State their home for enough of the year to vote there.

Yesterday, he pulled off a doozy, calling for the federales to basically insure the insurers down there. While I know that even the most casual observer of our government can cite examples to me of bigger wastes of money, that doesn't justify Giuliani trying to fit this package into his campaign offering.

The argument, mostly presented by his Florida campaign honcho (and former Clinton Impeachment prosecutor) Bill McCollum, is that the people who are wealthy enough to choose to live in coastal areas are having trouble finding property insurance at rates approaching the cheap rates we pay up here in the rust belt.

Now imagine that. Every winter, as they sit down there laughing at the idiots who choose to live up north in the cold, these poor souls have to spend part of their sunny days wondering how they're going to get us to help pay off their insurance tabs.

They must have cooked up this scheme over a bucket of Coronas and some grilled gulf shrimp.

While I might joke tongue-in-cheek about it, it's hard to run under some sort of conservative banner when you endorse nonsense like this.

Nothing Like Starting Your Day With a Shot of Booger Sugar

I thought I read somewhere that Slowhand stopped playing Cocaine for a while after he sobered up. I'm not so sure about that...I've been meaning to pick up his autobiography that came out this summer. Perhaps I'll grab it on audiobook from the library or something.

Anyway, this cut is from his 1988 tour and he has fellow deity Mark Knopfler at his side.

This is towards the end of the show so you have to sit thru some band intros first.

What The Voters Should be Asking in NV

In the past, Democrats (and, in fairness a few people on the right) were not bashful at all about bashing South Carolina and other states for flying parts of the Rebel Flag as part of their state flag.

And good for them.

If a state is doing something dispicable, you should complain about it. It's not at all a problem until the Feds step in and try to legislate them out of doing something that's clearly their right.

That said...when will someone have the decency to simply ask the Democrats what they think about kissing babies and asses in a state that allows prostitution in most of its counties.

I won't moralize here, but surely this issue rises to at least the same level on the Icky-Meter as having the Rebel Flag does, doesn't it?

"We May Be Against Gay Marriage, But We'll Engage in the Occasional Three-Way When Our Personal Gratification is at Stake"

Well, with Mitt pulling off a must-win in Michigan last night, this has started to look more and more like we're building up to the kind of brokered convention that Mr. Klora taught us about in high school history class.

"The smoke-filled back rooms where deals were made and candidates anointed..." he said with a tone of voice usually reserved for ghost stories.

I'm just not so attached to any of the candidates at the moment, so it's not nearly as heartbreaking as it is exciting to watch!

I'll have to find a podcast later on of the Dem debate from Sin City last night. I caught the first half hour, but decided to hit the hay...and I'll try to find some time during the day to put up a posting on the question ManTan should have (but I can wager didn't!) ask the Democrats last night.

Stay tuned...

Don't Look at This Pic If You Were Planning on Dinner Tonight!

Another great post on BigheadDC...

clipped from bigheaddc.com The rumor has taken off like wildfire that political writer Christopher Hitchens has quit smoking. Not true, a source close to the portly author tells Big Head DC. “He was seen smoking this week, in fact,” says the pal.

Another Embarassment to Cleveland

There was a time when I saw Dennis Kucinich's quixotic run for the Presidency as something charming.

No reasonable person thought he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but he was getting an opportunity to bring other ideas to the floor and try and get some momentum out of it.

That time has passed and his continued presence on the trail, in the courtroom and debates is nothing but an act of masturbation.

I don't think he should be legally banned from being on the ballots in the upcoming states. If he passed whatever local rules govern the primaries and caucuses, then let him in.

But getting the courts to intervene in the debate participant lists, and framing the argument in some kind of civil liberties sense is just downright dishonest.

On top of that, it continues to make his home district (which I do not live in) look like idiots. He better be careful or he might even lose his House seat this term.

Hillary Appleseed

You have to step back and admire the Clinton campaign's chutzpah.

The facts they are faced with: Hillary's running a competence campaign. She's stepped in and said that the feature she has that differentiates her from her two-remaining opponents is that she's ready to take the reigns on Day 1. It's not a completely unfounded assertion, either...at least in a relative sense.

The problem: The most important vote she's cast so far in her 8 years in the US Senate, is one to authorize a war she's now railing against.

She's also up against an opponent who has been, historically, much more consistent in his opposition to said war.

What does she have to do? Obfuscate. And, to date, she's been doing that. She and Bill are giving confusing speeches claiming that his position is, substantively, no different than hers. To evaluate what they're talking about would require a great deal of research (like a really funky Google search to determine when speeches were removed from his website).

Unfortunately for Obama, people are lazy and this is probably an effective strategy for the time being. All she has to do is plant some seeds of doubt in the Dem electorate and she might be able to fend him off.

This is really getting fun to watch...

A Study in Contrasts...And Other Random Thoughts

I wish I was more of a Civil War Buff (like Keith Hernandez) so I could find some more historically-appropriate metaphors here, but the South Carolina primary this coming Saturday is shaping up to be quite the battleground.

An article in The Politico this morning lays out how John McCain and Mike Huckabee are going after the different conventional-wisdom wings of the GOP base there.

On his first day campaigning in South Carolina after his New Hampshire victory
last week, McCain was flanked by cadets at the Citadel. Huckabee, on the same
day, stopped by a pregnancy center aimed at talking women out of abortion and
also converting clients to Christianity — 56 last year.

I was checking out a little bit of C-SPAN's continuing campaign coverage this weekend and Mitt's got a new hat on. Having apparently given up his claim on the social conservatives to Huck and others, he's now trying to dress up like an economic populist and telling the people of Michigan that their future is in restoring their lost manufacturing jobs.

And people call him a snake oil salesman! Shame!

Mitt Romney...The Change Candidate?

This picture in the NY Times today struck me as a little bit funny.

Kind of a mixed message they're sending here...

Senator Clinton: 'Russert is Going All Jesuitical On My Ass!'

Hillary's Meet appearance this morning was worth the price of getting up early if for no other reason than throwing down a little "Jesuitical" on us in an effort to explain, again, her vote to authorize the war we're currently in in Iraq.

In positions around her are candidates who either stick to their original vote (or stance if they were not in the US Congress) or admit that it was a mistake, as John Edwards has done.

But she continues to accuse others of navel gazing and sophistry when they attempt to nail down whether she thinks she was right or wrong at the time, and if she was wrong, exactly why she was wrong.

Did she fully evaluate all of the information that she had at her disposal? If she had been misled, what's to make us think that she would not be similarly misled in the future by other leaders, whether foreign or domestic?

I'd respect her a whole lot more if she'd just come clean.

Well, at least her little vocabulary smackdown was probably understood by the Jesuit-educated Russert.

Mittsy the Sissy

Funny little item from Bighead DC.

clipped from bigheaddc.com Mitt Romney, when asked by People magazine what he couldn’t live without on the campaign trail, revealed that he just might be the biggest sissy running for president, especially compared to the other front runners: McCain: Iraqi GI Bracelet Clinton: Blackberry Obama: Webcam Edwards: iPod Huckabee: Travel Bible Romney: Homemade granola with Dora the Explorer bowl Saturday January 12th, 2008 12:12 PM by BHDC Staff Filed under: Silly, Elections