Huckabee: Demonizing Obama is a ‘fatal mistake’

Huckabee suggested questions about whether he might join McCain on the ticket were premature. “You can’t accept an invitation to the prom until the football captain asks you. So I’m not going to go out and buy the outfit just yet,” said Huckabee, according to AFP. “

Weird. Just weird. With all of our connotations about prom and the football captain, I’ll tell you what this sounds like to me. McCain is the football captain and Huckabee is the little sophomore girl in a dress.

What happens at the post-prom party?

BOO.

-MC Spanky McGee

Have you ever noticed that conservatives think that they have a monopoly on the word “whine”?

Check it out this example.

What tickles me–what amuses me–is that conservatives spend so much time CRYING about liberals’ whining. And Peter Scweizer gives us a great example in his crying about whining.

Almost nothing pleases me more than a conservative in pain. I don’t care what the source is. I relish it.

Conservatives don’t like to think that they complain, although they do all the time. Listen to the pathetic inflection that accompanies such utterances as “These bleeding-heart liberals….”

See, conservatives cry because they don’t feel obligated to their society. They believe that they deserve all of their money. But the fact of the matter is that they owe their society a great deal–and they must pay taxes towards education and defense. Their own welfare depends on the cohesion of society.

But forget all that. When cons play the “whine” card, just remind them that they are doing their share of bitching.

I love their bitching. I encourage it. It’s an indication of their misery, and I eat it up.

-MC Spanky McGee

P.S. I love you, cons. xoxoxOXXXoo

According to this story, Hillary Clinton will concede that Obama has enough delegates to secure the nomination for the democratic presidential candidate:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.

Obama is 40 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, but he is widely expected to make up the difference Tuesday with superdelegate support and votes in South Dakota and Montana. Once he reaches the magic number of 2,118, Clinton will acknowledge that he has secured the necessary delegates to be the nominee.

The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City.

She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over. [...]

The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.

How much leverage should she have though if Obama has secured a necessary and sufficient number of delegates? Presumably she will have leverage via her supporters and Obama’s need to make nice with them. But if this is true:

A tsunami of superdelegates is poised to rush to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over the next 12 hours, giving him a mathematical lock on his party’s presidential nomination.

The superdelegate surge is likely to swamp a few holdouts within the camp of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-Ill.) who have been resisting a prompt concession.

Then Clinton isn’t really doing Obama any kind of “favor,” nor can she say she is conceding out of good will for the democratic party, since she won’t have an f’n choice anyway. Or am I being uncharitable here? The last report continues:

Aides say Clinton does not plan to concede or bid supporters farewell when she speaks in New York tonight, but instead will salute her supporters and argue for the strength of her candidacy.

But her clout is ebbing by the hour. At 6:56 a.m. Eastern time, the Obama campaign announced the first of the day’s slew of endorsements by superdelegates – the Democratic Party officials who have a vote on the nominee and will determine who it is, since neither Obama nor Clinton have won enough delegates in primaries and caucuses to put them over the top.

Cheney apologizes to West Virginians for inbreeding joke

Vice President Dick Cheney apologized Monday for what his spokeswoman called “an inappropriate attempt at humor” that implied that inbreeding is common among West Virginians, a remark that elicited outrage from the state’s senior senator. “

“So, I had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don’t even live in West Virginia,” Cheney cracked. After pausing for laughter from the crowd, Cheney added, “You can say those things when you’re not running for re-election.” “

Cheney had the nerve to front-load the “joke” in way that reflected his belief that he didn’t have to apologize. In fact, I think in light of the addition to the joke, we don’t have to take the apology seriously. The addendum showed that this was not a misstatement; he deliberated–and delivered.

He meant it–as much as he meant to go to war with Saddam. He basically said: “And I won’t have to take it back.”

It does probably get frustrating to measure always what one has to say in the spotlight. I’m sure that these people probably cuss up a storm behind hermetically-sealed doors.

But politicians don’t get a free pass when they’re not up for re-election. They can’t just insult at anyone at will. But it’s not as if this kind of disrespect for the common person is new from the Bush administration. They’ve been dissing us all along.

-MC Spanky McGee

(Original pic here.)

Florida, Michigan Dems make their cases

Members of a Democratic rules committee voted on Saturday to seat all of Florida’s and Michigan’s delegation to the party’s national convention and give their delegates a half vote each. “

Half a vote is half a vote too much.

I’ll say it again and again. I don’t care: those states got their voices heard when they voted to elect the turkeys that decided to try to cheat and to move up their voting.

They weren’t disenfranchised. We heard them cheating.

“Winners don’t cheat and cheaters don’t win.” -Sydney Fartknocker

-MC Spanky McGee

A few weeks ago in May, there was a big hub-bub as Bush spoke at the Israeli parliament.
Bush famously said this:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. “

(Full text here)

Bush is certainly right that you can talk with everybody. I would consider him to be someone who is beyond discourse. There are plenty of religious fanatics of all kinds–Christian, Muslim, etc.–that just don’t listen to argument.

But, let’s turn this around on Bush. How many goddamned times have we heard him talk about how democratic societies are free and peaceful societies? What Bush has been saying, in effect, is that all we have to do is either (1) bomb a country into democracy (which is a policy that has failed many times) or (2) talk them into it.

You can’t convert someone to think democratically at gunpoint. You have to change their cognitive “operating-system.” (Griff doesn’t like the phrase “world-view.”)

So, Georgie, don’t give me this shit that you don’t believe in the power of dialogue. You’re already a fan, jackass.

-MC Spanky McGee

This is pretty funny and informative about the subprime mortgage fuck up (requires power point):

http://boombustblog.com/images/stories/what_happened_in_stick_figure_simplicity.pps#256,1,Slide%201

Here is the main chunk of this report:

The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) was started by Bill Gates, Michael Dell and other technology titans concerned about the declining performance of American students in math and science. The public-private partnership funds efforts to increase the number of students taking advanced placement courses in those subjects. But thanks to the Washington Education Association, a teachers union, the initiative’s recent efforts in Washington state have been torpedoed.

Earlier this month NMSI announced that a $13.2 million grant slated for Washington state was being scrapped. Why? The contract ran afoul of the union’s collective bargaining agreement. NMSI wanted to compensate teachers directly and include extra pay based on how well students performed on AP exams. But under the teacher contracts, the union is the exclusive agent for negotiating teacher pay and union officials refused to compromise. They were willing to turn away free money for their teacher members rather than abide this kind of merit pay.

Does anyone know any details not mentioned that would make this less retarded on the part of the union?

McCain: Obama has no experience or knowledge on Iraq

“Look at what happened in the last two years since Senator Obama visited and declared the war lost,” the GOP nominee-in-waiting told The Associated Press in an interview, noting that the Illinois senator’s last trip to Iraq came before the military buildup that is credited with curbing violence.

“He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,” the Arizona senator added. “If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn’t had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly.” “

Look, what’s the point in Obama going over there? Who cares?

Every time McCain has gone to the middle east, he’s confused our enemies with each other, or he’s told some lie about how it was sooooo safe to walk down the street. (See John McCain and that pesky law of noncontradiction)

I don’t care how many times McCain has been there. His foreign policy views are still fucked up.

-MC Spanky McGee

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/26/bill.clinton.mon/index.html

Here some highlights:

Clinton also suggested some were trying to “cover up” Sen. Clinton’s chances of winning in key states that Democrats will have to win in the general election. “

“She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence,” [Bill] Clinton said. “And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running.” “

My favorite part:

Clinton did not expound on who he was accusing.

Hillary will be bitter after this election. She thought she was going to stomp B.O. in this thing, and now the truth is dawning on her, although in a hazy kind of way–like how a drunk remembers there are still microwave burritos in the freezer. Bill will harp on this election for years.

The Clintons are soooooo confused, soooooo tired that they can’t even tell you who they’re fighting against. Bill is just lashing out at THEM. THEY are holding little Hillary back.

People don’t follow politics because of assholes like the Clintons. They grate on your nerves, and you’d rather just play xbox or watch “Flavor of Love III” until your goddamned brain has turned to tapioca.

-MC Spanky McGee