Come out to Drinking Liberally tonight, 6:00 PM until whenever, at the Tangier Bar, located at 18th and Lombard Sts. in Philadelphia. Follow the returns from West Virginia - I predict Clinton 65%, Obama 35%. Drink specials and free wings for early birds, bring a friend! Bring an enemy! Bring cash, or don't - drinks are on that upyernoz guy, but after a couple he tries to get you to take him home. He's shameless.
MoveOn.org ran an ad contest. This is the winner:
Kick in to help them run it here.
(Via US News & World Report.)
From John Cole:
Went down to Delaware to take mom out for Mother's Day brunch. Driving back, over the 40 miles or so on I-95, I looked for presidential bumper stickers. My count: Obama 3, McCain and Hillary 0. Don't read too much into it, though. Being a Sunday, all of Hillary's and McCain's "regl'r folks" supporters were probably in church.
So, Philly Carshare has a Smart Passion (it's $8.90 an hour), so I took it to the grocery store today:
Yeah, it's tiny. Check those wheels - crying out for rims, aren't they? Do they make rims that small?
More pics and my evaluation after the jump.
I simply cannot communicate with words to you how big a deal this is.
I can only use my own family as a barometer and like most normal people they rarely talk politics. Ever since Obama got in the race, and especially after Iowa, it constantly comes up. And this is from my grandparent’s generation, my mom’s and my own. I’m pretty sure the same thing is going on in black families from coast to coast now. John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, were all great guys and black Americans were glad to vote for them (I sure voted for all three) but it just ain’t the same. To paraphrase an exchange I’ve had several times with a friend of mine (who is white):
Friend: Dude, can you imagine?
Me: I know.
Friend: The president’s name will be Barack Obama?
Me: I know.
Friend: And he’s black.
Me: I KNOW.And then I get a crazed smile.
People talk about how this is an historic year, when the Democratic nominee will either be a black man or a woman, either of which will be the first in history (and likely the first to be President). I am sure something similar was going on in the minds of Hillary supporters when it looked like she had it all locked up, but being an Obama supporter working with African-American people in Philly a lot, it's their emotional reaction that I see the most.
That reaction is a sort of pleasant daze, tinged with a goodly amount of disbelief and sometimes fear that it's all a trick. It's not just the prospect of Obama being the nominee, I don't think. It's the realization sinking in that a good chunk of white people are on his side, and so to a certain extent on the side of all black Americans. I think the day-to-day reality for most black people is that whites predictably will support other white people. I could be reading too much into this, but whites enthusiastically supporting a black politician for President when a perfectly good white alternative was available is just a bit stunning.
Oh, yes, please make these kinds of statements, Republican party:
For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:
The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.
The Black Republican. I just have to chuckle. I hear in the 30s there was a publication called Bavarian Jewish National Socialist Monthly. In German, it's all one word, so it sounded better.
More seriously:
The publication comes out as Republicans, under Gov. [Charlie] Crist, have reached out to Hispanic and black voters. Crist and the GOP Legislature this year changed racially offensive lyrics in the state's song and also issued an apology for slavery on the state's behalf -- something Rice says the Democratic Party should do as well.
Crist was nicknamed Florida's first black governor because of his support for issues important to blacks. His 2006 Democratic opponent had once opposed compensating two wrongfully convicted black men, a fact that helped Crist garner about 18 percent of the black vote in Florida -- the highest of any Republican in recent history, according to exit polls. An estimated 90 percent of black Floridians traditionally vote Democratic.
I have to believe that, given the first African-American presidential nominee in history, that 90% is not going down. But it would be good for the party - if the Florida Democratic Party can get its shit together, that is - to counter this stuff.
If Republicans could get 25 percent of the black vote nationwide, according to [Frances] Rice's magazine, the party would win Congress and the White House.
Republicans are going to have to work to hold onto white people this year. Twenty-five percent of blacks? Forget it.
But to do that, Rice said, she wants black voters to know the Democrats' history of "slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.'"
What's that, like queen high? I've got three of a kind: The Southern Strategy, the War on Drugs, and Katrina. I win!
Bringing up the sex scandal stuff seems a little demented, especially given Republican penchant for being huge self-hating closet cases who fuck other dudes in, uh, inappropriate venues:
Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski quickly rattled off the names of Republicans caught in sex scandals: "There's no Mark Foley, no Larry Craig, no David Vitter. Where's Bob Allen? He's the guy who said he was afraid of black guys and that's why he offered a police officer $20 to perform a sex act.''
Then there's this:
One of the articles in the magazine says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican.
HAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. AAAAAAAHAHAHAHA.
Seriously. J. Edgar Hoover. How many black people don't know what that son of a bitch was all about?
I went out on South St. and then Pine St. today for a couple of hours with another volunteer who had driven down from Reading for the day. It was singularly unproductive, but I think we'll do better when it gets warm again.
There are still people on the street wearing Clinton buttons.
Sign up here to join us.
Total for day 1: 3 registrations.
Shorter NYTimes:
Barack Obama is a politician.
Ran across an anti-Scientology protest today in Center City:
They were wearing those creepy "V is for Vendetta" masks and handing out the leaflets above. Apparently, the "Anonymous" people who protest Scientology remain anonymous because they claim harassment by the church. I believe it.
One of the protesters had a sign that said, "What Kind of Church Has a Secret Police?", and I thought, "The Catholics, but that's a slightly different story."
Also, considering the source from which "We Are Legion" is derived, it's a strange subhed.
I hope for obvious reasons, no comments on this post.
Chris Bowers is running a Vice Presidential straw poll.
To whoever showed up here looking for kinky medical toys shop in Phila area, please go either here or here.
Interesting Jeffrey Toobin article in the April 14 New Yorker (that I hadn't read before now because of the primary) on the possibility Bush will propose the creation of new "national-security courts" which will limit the fair-trial rights of Gitmo detainees:
[A]ccording to lawyers inside and outside government, the Bush Administration may launch a proposal for a national-security court this summer or fall, after what they presume will be its next loss in the Supreme Court [in the case regarding the denial of habeas corpus to Gitmo defendants, Boumediene v. Bush]. “It looks like when Boumediene comes down the Court may say to the President and Congress that they need more procedures for the detainees,” [former Bush Administration lawyer Jack] Goldsmith said. “So, to correct the problem [sic], the President might consider sending something up to Congress this summer or fall. It would help the Republicans in the fall election.” The measure would force congressional Democrats to take a stand on the issue in the middle of the campaign—just as Bush did successfully with the Military Commissions Act after the Hamdan defeat [holding, among other things, that the Geneva Conventions applied to Gitmo detainees]. “It worked very well in 2006,” Goldsmith said. “The only way the Democrats have to not make it an election issue is to give the President the powers he seeks.”
If Congressional Democrats don't prepare for this eventuality, Goldsmith's analysis sounds right: The Dems will roll over for Bush. But "this summer or fall" -- I don't know when Boumediene will come down -- seems to provide plenty of time to prepare an alternative plan that can be introduced when the time comes. The key issues, as I see it, are truly impartial juries and viable avenues of appeal against questionable evidence, like hearsay. Clearly, it's not possible politically to argue for full trial rights, but we can make the case that enabling defendants to vigorously defend themselves on the facts will produce better decisions and raise our standing in the eyes of the world.
Fun facts: The notorious Camp X-ray is closed but left intact as evidence by order of a federal judge. Detainees are now housed in Camp Delta.
Also:
The head of the Guantánamo Task Force is Admiral Mark Buzby. Moments before he entered a conference room for our interview, an aide brought in the Stars and Stripes and a one-star admiral’s flag and set them behind his chair. Buzby is relentlessly on message about the continuing value of the interrogations. “We ask them, ‘Tell us how you did that forgery stuff.’ That’s as timely now as it was back then,” he told me. “We are filling in the mosaic.” Buzby noted that the detainees’ interrogation sessions were sometimes catered by the base’s fast-food outlets. “They want those Subway sandwiches!” he said. “Sometimes they just want to talk. Meanwhile, he’s chomping on his Subway B.M.T. It’s all about that give-and-take and that rapport-building. We still get regular questions in for us to ask from the front in the field. We’ll show him a map: ‘Thanks a lot, have a Big Mac.’ ”
The Subway B.M.T. is a sandwich made of pork salami, pork pepperoni and ham. Pork is forbidden under Islam. Either Buzby's facts are wrong, or these terrifying Wahhabist terrorists are such lax Muslims that they don't keep halal.
In response to the news that al-Qaeda Second-in-Command Ayman al-Zawahri would answer questions from the media and public, the April 28th New Yorker:
Dear Ayman al-Zawahiri:
Please find attached my homemade terror video, entitled “Death to America.” In it, you will see that I brandish an AK-47, make angry facial expressions, and threaten the infidels with imminent doom. Am seeking a full- or part-time position with Al Qaeda making spooky tapes. Have own cave.
—Fingers Crossed in Peshawar
Ayman al-Zawahiri writes:
Thank you for sharing this with us. While I’m afraid your terror video does not meet our needs at the present time, we would be interested in seeing anything scary you do in the future. ...
Dear Ayman al-Zawahiri:
Does Al Qaeda ever endorse political candidates? If so, I recommend that you give a big thumbs-up to Barack Obama. I guarantee you he hates America as much as you do (if not more)! It would be great if you appeared in a bunch of TV ads and called him “the evildoing President that evildoers have been waiting for.”
—Bill in Chappaqua
Ayman al-Zawahiri writes:
Al Qaeda is only interested in American elections to the extent that we can plunge them into abject chaos. So this year, as in every other year, we are supporting Ralph Nader.
Greetings and compliments to you, my good sir:
I am the widow of the late Nigerian head of state, General Sani Abacha. Please wire $15,000 in U.S. funds to the bank information provided below and in two weeks’ time you will receive $150,000 for your kindly services, my goodly gentleman.
—Mrs. Maryam Abacha
Lagos
Ayman al-Zawahiri writes:
What kind of simpleton do you take me for? I sent you $15,000 last month and I never heard back.
Authorities say one person is dead and several others are ill on board a train that has been placed under quarantine in northern Ontario after the outbreak of a mystery illness.
Ambulances rushed to the hamlet of Foleyet, Ontario, where medical workers are treating people for flu-like symptoms and trying to determine the cause of the outbreak.
Authorities say there are 260 passengers and 30 crew members on the train which was quarantined on Friday.
Via Rail spokeswoman Catherine Kaloutsky confirmed that one person died. Police say as many as 10 people are ill with flu-like symptoms.
Police say no one is being allowed onto the train without full protective gear.
The past few months, people around Philadelphia have been laid low by a variety of viruses that have lingered for weeks on end. I'm still wheezing from the flu I caught April 6th. Other people have reported coughs that don't end after a month. I was joking with someone the other day that the government is not telling us everything it knows about these bugs, and she said in all seriousness that she thinks the government is creating and spreading them. I was about to call her crazy, then hesitated, and said it was unproved.
Duncan asks, "What happened to the future?":
It's occurred to me recently that all the whiz-bang gadgets predicted either already exist in some form, or are unlikely to exist anytime soon. If one were to write a technology-centric non-dystopian novel about, say, the year 2040, what neato things would we imagine?
I can't come up with much.
All the recent (post-1975) technological innovations were outgrowths of trends and cultural desires that existed long before then. Using that as a framework, I think we can come up with a few ideas about where things might go. I don't know if my predictions are "non-dystopian", but here they are:
Perhaps all this is wrong, and the future is dystopian: personal body armor and anti-pollution full-body suits. Wait and see.
Apropos of nothing: It just occurred to me that wikipedia links are not true permalinks, because the content is by definition constantly changing. Should you have the ability to link to a specific snapshot of a page (hosted by wikipedia, of course) that existed at any given time? That would create a huge multiplier for the number of pages hosted there, which may be impossible. Also, it requires the creation of a tool that compares two snapshots and highlights the differences automatically, which is a relatively trivial task.
Here:
I think at this juncture, I should defend the men that came to see me. There was nothing wrong with them, and they were not perverts. Most of my clients were single, unhappily married or married to a person that couldn't understand their needs. One even had a wife with cancer. I know you're probably thinking that he's the worst of all, but sex is important. He needed the comfort and solace of flesh against flesh, and in today's society, the only way to get the flesh against flesh comfort is sex.
I guess my role as a sex worker was to reclaim the human contact that has been lost with our island centric way of living. When was the last time you truly just held a person that wasn't your lover with no thoughts of the sensuality of the situation? Touch used to be a very important thing for people. We want to be touched. We need to be touched. Truth be told, I did more pillow talk snuggling with my clients than anything else. Even the submissive clients, after their fill of their fetish, wanted to be cherished. The older men and the lonely men, which seemed to go hand in hand, raced through coitus and settled down for the rest of their time with my head on their chest to talk about their days. This is not the behaviour of deviants and perverts. This is the behaviour of a person reaching out for affection.
I think this explains why women hug so much, are so physically connected to each other. It's support. Men's culture denies them that. (They support each other in other ways, but not that way.) It's not a choice, it's imposed from outside then internalized.
(Via Susannah Breslin.)
Consider the source, but Politico says:
Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.
It’s a train wreck waiting to happen ... .
Clinton bloggers are outraged, naturally. One of the most unhinged says, "Why doesn't he declare himself the King of Spain while he's at it?" James Joyner, of all people, talks sense:
[O]ne could argue that not declaring victory after passing the 2,025 threshold would be a tacit admission that Clinton is right.
Yes, one could. Going back to my post about how elections are games:
Like all games, an election has contestants who win or lose by competition, there are rules which set forth the means of measuring who wins and rules which govern the competitive conduct of the contestants, and someone must set the rules in advance and someone must enforce those rules during the game. ... There will [always] be disagreements about rule interpretation and application ... .
If Obama does not claim to have won once he has a majority of the total pledged delegates, he would be abandoning his interpretation of the rules. And if Clinton accepted his victory at that point, she would be too. In this sense, far from being a "trainwreck", it's the normal course of how this particular game is conducted.
Taking the insane Clinton blogger's analogy literally, let's say someone was widely acknowledged to be next in the line of succession to the spanish throne, but there was someone else who claimed to be the rightful heir under a different interpretation of the rules of succession. When the old King dies, both of them would make their claim, believing themselves to be in the right. To do otherwise would be bizarre and self-defeating.
One peculiarity of this game is that the referee might not blow the whistle to end it and announce the winner for a long time after the condition for victory has been met, at the convention in August. But this game also has more than one ref, and more than one way of blowing the whistle - the superdelegates and party leaders, and the losing candidate accepting defeat, respectively. Given that the last primaries are only two weeks after Obama will (presumably) claim victory, I think those alternate refs will wait until then and declare him the winner shortly thereafter.
Go here and sign up for this:
On May 10th, Barack Obama is launching Vote for Change, an unprecedented 50-state voter registration and mobilization drive. More than 100 events will be held across the country that day. Obama volunteers will register new voters as the start of a six-month voter registration drive.
During the internet boom, my law work consisted mainly of company-side venture capital deals, raising money for web and high-tech startups in the Valley Forge area. Startup venture capital is raised by issuing preferred stock at different stages of the company's development, called the "A round", "B round", "C round", etc. Since the situation all startups face during each round is similar, the letters began to take on a meaning other than just identifying the order of the financing: An A-round company meant one that was newly-hatched, a B-round company was one that had experienced initial success and required more capital to continue growing, etc. The usual paths to success for a company was to either make itself into an acquisition target so that both the preferred stockholders got their cut and the original owners could cash out, or the company became self-financing for future capital needs. Obviously, as you got further down the alphabet, the prospects of the startup becoming a successs began to dwindle. At some point, the idea of yet another financing was referred to as the "T round" - T as in turkey - because it was a lost cause.
Experts disagree on whether or not Clinton will actually stick in the fight until the Democratic National Convention in August. But the date looms large for another reason—at least, if she hopes to recoup any of the millions she has sunk into the campaign. Thanks to a little-known provision in 2002's McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, a campaign must repay the loan to a candidate before Election Day. In this case, that's the nominating convention. After the election has passed, a bankrupt campaign is limited to gathering just $250,000 from contributors, which means that modest sum is all it can give back to a candidate. In short, Clinton stands to lose $11,150,000. "If she wants to be repaid, she'd have to move on that between now and the national convention," says former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner. "Otherwise, it just becomes another contribution." The campaign, meanwhile, has other debts to consider as well. According to her latest FEC filing, the Hillary Clinton for President campaign committee owes millions to vendors, including more than $4.5 million to Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, the consulting firm of her former chief strategist Mark Penn.
That adds another wrinkle to her decision to stay in the race. Time is running out to pay off friends, allies, and vendors. Plus, by all accounts, Clinton's most ardent supporters are tapped out, either unwilling or unable by law to donate any more.
The article speculates that Hillary and Obama could work out a deal which would involve him fundraising on her behalf. I doubt it, but the idea is out there.
At least, I hope it's the conclusion:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"Hard-working Americans, white Americans". You don't get any clearer than that: Hillary Clinton says black Americans are lazy. Also, any whites who vote for Obama must be those elitists who do whatever the "creative class" does, meaning not real work. I hope this ends any uncertainty over whether the Clinton campaign is using the tactics of playing on white working-class racial and class resentment, and that it's self-evident that doing so disqualifies her, and has disqualified her since the South Carolina primary, from being the Democratic nominee.
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said. ...
Yes, Senator, there certainly is.
Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."
The Democrats have not won a majority of whites since Johnson. I wish we could appeal to a majority of all people this time around. But it's not going to happen Hillary's way. The way it could happen is by encouraging people to identify with those who don't look like themselves or work the same kind of jobs as themselves, and realize that we are all must work together, that we're all in the same boat. It could happen Obama's way.
The only good thing that will come out of this is that, as with Rev. Wright, Hillary is using a watered-down version of the same attacks McCain's surrogates will use in the general election campaign. This tends to innoculate Obama somewhat from the far more virulent version which will come down the road.
(Via Duncan.)
No one threatened to kill me today. Instead, I had the best political volunteering experience of my life.
In the precinct I was assigned to, North Carolina's Cumberland County Lr-63, at Engine 11 Fire Station in Fayetteville, it was record turnout: Obama 637, Clinton 83. That wasn't the good part, though. I got to actually get people to vote who were turned away by clerical errors or other glitches. I managed to stop one woman who was about to leave, got Obama headquarters to contact the county general counsel, who contacted the board of elections general counsel, who placed a phone to the precinct 20 minutes after I called it in, saying that she should be given a new ballot.
It rocked.
The numbers I heard statewide are Obama 65%, Clinton 35%. I also heard that they initially called Indiana for Hillary but now it's too close to call.
Time to party.
A drunk, one-armed man just threatened to shoot me.
I'm in Raleigh to do poll watching tomorrow, but got in early and joined in the canvassing. Went down a dusty gravel road and knocked on a few doors. Most were not home, as usual, but one house had Johnny Cash on the stereo. The inhabitant was as drunk as anyone I have ever seen who was still standing. He took so long to answer questions, staring blankly, that I thought he had passed out on his feet. Finally determining the voter I was looking for had moved, I said goodbye and he said he would shoot me if I came back. I said thanks. Probably a Hillary supporter.
Looking forward to barbecue and standing outside a fire station for 13 hours tomorrow.
Maybe somebody can loan me a chair.
Hillary's new Indiana mailer.
Nice, right wing frame you got there, Senator. You should have crosshairs over his face, though. That would complete the picture.
“The gun in the photo does not exist,” said Val Forgett III, president of Navy Arms in Martinsburg, W.Va. Forgett's company was Mauser’s agent in the United States when the gun was released, and it sold Mauser guns here again in the 1990s. “The bolt is facing to the left side of the receiver, making it a left-handed bolt action rifle, indicating whoever constructed and approved the mailer did not recognize the image has been reversed.”
Forgett said the error would be obvious to sportsmen.
“I find it laughable on its face,” he said. “It’s like a picture of Babe Ruth hitting right-handed.” ...
The Mauser 66, released in 1966 and no longer manufactured, is a high-end hunting rifle that found military use as a sniper rifle. In Clinton’s mailing, it’s pictured with a double-set trigger, a customization that’s popular in Europe but “almost unheard of in the United States,” Forgett said.
“It’s a $2,200 German import — it’s hardly typical of what the average workingman in Indiana uses,” he said.
Oops. It's like sending out a mailer saying "Barack Obama doesn't care how much you have to pay to put gas in your car" with a picture of a Cayenne turbo. Pretty gun, though.
Oliver is right, she sounds just like Bush:
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," the New York senator said when asked to name a credible economist who supported her proposal.
"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.
We don't need no economists telling us how to run our economy, or scientists telling us what the facts are on global warming, or fancy-pants lawyers telling us about habeas corpus. What's a habeas anyway?
Ogged calls her "GW Clinton". Ow.
Since his assistant has not been approving my comments for publication, I'll just have to wait to see if Krugman defends this. It's a test, Paul.
I am setting this post up on May 4, 2006, to see how my predictions on this day are looking a year later. I said I thought that McCain would be the GOP nominee, and if Giuliani were the nominee, the Democrat would win in a walk. The Republican Convention is now 4 months away. How are my predictions holding up?
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