Fables of the reconstruction

Racist Republicans on Parade

Tampa:

A small but vocal group of Democratic voters from central Florida, most of them Puerto Rican, protested against Republican Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite for recently labeling Puerto Ricans as “foreign citizens,” and saying they should not be eligible for tax rebates, even though they are Americans by law.

That was just the beginning, her controversial remarks continued when she issued a press release this morning suggesting that Puerto Ricans “cool off” by visiting the Weeki Wachi water park.

A screen cap from Brown-Waite's website:

Implying, of course, that Puerto Ricans do not pay taxes to the federal government. Nice.

Orange County Republican Chairman Lew Oliver told 10 News late Thursday night that Brown-Waite's comments are “Unacceptable, outrageous, and ignorant. An unconditional apology is in order.”

Why? Your party is founded on fearing black and brown people. Embrace it, dude.

(Via PhillyBits.)

McCain's Half Million Dollar Charitable Donations - To His Kid's Schools

Ken Silverstein has a post on the Harpers blog on as aspect of McCain's finances. Here are the facts, as best as I can glean them:

• McCain has net assets of between $20 million and $32 million, primarily Cindy McCain's inherited wealth.
• When the income from the books he's written came in, McCain apparently didn't need it, and instead donated it to his private charity, the John and Cindy McCain Foundation, of which his wife is chairman and president.
• Between 2001 and 2006, McCain contributed about $950,000 to the foundation, which presumably he deducted from his taxes. Presumably, because he hasn't released his tax returns.
• Between 2001 and 2006, the foundation made gifts of about $1.6 million.
• The recipients of the largest amount of those gifts, $500,000, were elite prep schools that his children attended. The gifts to the schools were made during the time that they were enrolled there, and dropped off or ceased after they left.
• The single largest recipient of gifts from the foundation was "the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, which received [$420,000] ... . That money was earmarked for conferences that 'bring together key military officers and civilian academics responsible for ethics education and character developments [sic].'"
• The vast majority of the balance of the gifts made by the foundation during the period, almost $700,000, was to "medical causes of various kinds, with a focus on craniofacial research,                                        and the Halo Trust, a landmine-clearing organization."

Silverstein appends to the bottom of this piece:

There’s nothing illegal or improper about the foundation’s contributions, but it’s not exactly the pattern of giving you’d expect from someone who has cultivated an anti-elitist image.

Look, what people do with their money is their business. And I don't have any quarrel with medical charities or even the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, though I'd want to know if their conventions resemble Tailhook at all. It just rankles a bit that, because his wife hit it big in the genetic lottery, he could blow half a million to buy his kids' way into snooty private institutions. Where do Republicans get off calling Democrats elitist?

Who We Can Do Business With

Duncan quotes Yglesias on Bush's asinine condemnation of the idea of meeting with despotic leaders:

[I]t's bizarre for George W. Bush to criticize Barack Obama on the grounds that "it'll send the wrong message" for Obama to hold a meeting with "a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs" considering that Bush does exactly that on a regular basis. ...

The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy" that we're going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama's contention is "no." Bush's contention is "yes" but he has absolutely nothing to show for it.

That's not the question. The question is, does Bush meet with some tyrants (Mubarak, the Saudis, the Chinese, Putin) and not others because of a sincere but arbitrarily applied policy of snubbing dictators? Clearly, the answer is no. He meets with the tyrants he meets with because he finds them useful, and vice versa. A President McCain would do the same. A President Hillary Clinton would do the same, also. And a President Obama would, too.

What's clever about Obama's position is that it has the benefit of being absolutely honest. He says that he will meet with anyone, because it's necessary to have a dialogue with very bad people sometimes. That's called realpolitik. He's prospectively wiggling out of the trap that Bush laid for himself. If Obama were to say he won't meet with the "bad guys", either, if he were to be elected he would have to explain why he meets with some and not others.  This way avoids the hypocrisy.

Science in the Service of Power

If you're not aware of him, John Tierney is a science reporter for the New York Times who also writes a blog there. His right-wing political agenda is pretty unambiguous. He never touches the appalling rejection of the theory of evolution by the public and Republican politicians. He works hard to show that sexism is a myth (and that women are to blame for their body-image issues), female genital mutiliation causes no harm, pesticides are nothing to worry about, the health risks of trans fats are overblown, and - of course - global warming is no big deal. Today's post is a case in point:

After asking a national sample of more than 1,000 Americans how much they knew about global warming and how they felt about it, the researchers report that respondents who are better-informed about global warming “both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.”

Tierney describes this as an apparent paradox, and offers the explanation that the more people know, the less they are concerned because, well shucks, there is just not that much to be worried about.

Except his summary of the research is seriously misleading. From the study:

It should be noted that the information effects reported in this article are limited to self-reported information.

In other words, people who believe themselves to be more well-informed on global warming tend to minimize it, no matter where they get their information from. Are these people scientists? Or are they Fox News Channel watchers? Tierney flatly says they are more well-informed, which is not proved, at best. Again, the study says:

Objective measures of informedness about global warming and climate change might produce different effects.

And with complicated, technical topics, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. Would any layperson who had read widely on the topic really say they were "well informed"?  The more likely explanation is that people who don't want to believe climate change is a real problem rate themselves well-informed, when in fact they are deliberately ignorant. Tierney is just one of the army of corporate shills who are paid to keep them that way.

Bad News: "Chemical Ali" Execution Imminent

Uh oh:

Iraq's Presidential Council endorsed the death sentence for Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali"' for his role in the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds during a 1988 campaign of genocide.           

Al-Majid, a cousin of former President Saddam Hussein, will be executed within 30 days, President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said today on the party's Web site. Talabani, a Kurd, is joined on the council by vice presidents Adel Abdul al-Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, and Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim.           

This is bad news for purely personal reasons. Someone I know is part of the detail guarding Ali, and it's the safest gig in Iraq. Once they carry out the execution, he'll have a full year of doing stuff that's much more dangerous.

QOTD

Some astronomer dude:

[I]f there is a stupid way to do something, that’s how it will be done.

Also, interesting discussion of leap years there.

(Via PZ Myers.)

Local Programming: Temple U. Students Arrested for Hate Crime

David Scott, Michael Walsh and Steven Scott (left to right, above) are Temple University students - all now suspended - who, along with another man, are accused of this:

[T]wo men, neither one a Temple student, were assaulted. The station reported that they had left a restaurant and were standing outside the former North Broad Street house of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, which recently moved to a nearby location.

According to the television report, the Temple students asked the men if they belonged to the [Jewish] fraternity. When the men answered no, the report said, at least one of the students made an anti-Semitic remark and punched one of the victims, leaving him with a broken orbital bone in his face and a broken nose.

The "anti-Semitic" remark was allegedly, "We hate Jews! We hate Jews!" Pretty straightforward. These guys face a laundry list of charges: "ethnic intimidation, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, terroristic threats, simple assault and conspiracy."

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but if they did it, I'm glad these three are off the street. Just based on the photos, the guy on the right, Steven Scott, looks like (a) he wants his mom, (b) he's too young to be out after dark, and (c) he does whatever David Scott (on the left and presumably his older, tougher brother) tells him. Mugshots make no one look wholesome, but between David Scott and Michael Walsh, I had a hard time picking which looks more like Pure Evil personified. Initially, David's crew cut draws the attention, but then again between him and Steven they look like they share a single brain cell, alternating days. Walsh, in the middle, on the other hand, is looking into that camera lens like he's thinking of ways of making the witnesses disappear. I think I know who runs that crew.

Just also notice how different this situation is because of the identity of the accused. Imagine instead of being white, they were black, or Hispanic, especially Hispanic immigrants, or Muslim. This wouldn't be "local programming", it would be national news. Ann Coulter would get half an hour on FNC to wax nostalgic about lynching, or Lou Dobbs would have a poll up on whether they should be executed before being deported. But because they're white, no one is making generalizations about how dangerous and scary white people are, and this story isn't going to get play outside of Philly.

Funny how that works.

Chris Rock

Saw Chris Rock at the Academy of Music Wednesday night. Pretty good show, and it was the first time I've seen him live. Jokes fell into surprisingly compact categories: politics, race, class, relationships (I like the man but his comments about women, damn) and sex. Has a lot of good material on societal rules about when one person can criticize another, or complain about how hard they have it to another person. Paraphrasing: "Some of you all have jobs, and some of you have careers. You people who have careers, when you're around people who have jobs, just keep your complaints to yourself."

His political stuff was not as developed as I expected it would be, but he had two good ones.

"George Bush has fucked things up so bad, a white man is having trouble getting elected president. 'No, not another white man, did you see what the last one did? Give us anything else, anything, a white woman, a black man, a giraffe, a zebra, anything.'"

"How fucked up is it that Hillary wants a job where she will be working in the same office where her husband got blowjobs? Has anything thought this through? There's no amount of redecorating that's gonna make her forget that."

"There's That Boy Who's Suing Jesus"

Developments in the case of a lawsuit brought against the Indian River School District, the public school system in southern Delaware that promotes Christianity and discriminated against the tiny number of Jews in the district, who had to flee:

The settlement, which was approved Tuesday, includes payments to the families that both sides would not disclose. Although the settlement resolves many complaints in the suit, against the Indian River School District, the parties are proceeding with litigation over the school board practice of beginning its sessions with prayer.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and defendants said their clients were satisfied with the settlement. On local blogs, the anger many people felt toward the families for protesting Christian prayer at school events has flared anew.

Mona Dobrich, 41, whose family was a plaintiff in the suit, said such a furious reaction had exacted a profound toll on her family and might indicate that the settlement would alter little on the ground.

“I feel that it is a good settlement because the rules are out there,” Mrs. Dobrich said in a telephone interview, referring to new policies the board has agreed to adopt. “Do I think life is going to change in Sussex County or all the other Sussex Counties in the country? No.”

It really is a tragic, infuriating story. I know that area of Delaware really well, and the impression you get of the residents is absolutely accurate: Backwards, insular, ignorant and violent. Their religion, like their politics, is just a club to beat the nonbelievers and outsiders. I wouldn't live down there on a bet, although some of the beaches are pretty. Just don't wander too far in land, or go down out of season.

The financial settlement, which will be paid by the district’s insurer, will pay off the debt that the Dobriches accrued as they moved. The family has settled in Dover, Mrs. Dobrich said.

The Dobriches tried once to take Alex back to live in Georgetown and understood that they could not return.

“We tried to have Alex live with my sister in Georgetown,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “Alex was in the yard, and some kids came up and said, ‘There’s that boy who’s suing Jesus.’ ”

But as soon as one case is settled, a new one pops up:

Our 10-year-old sister, Amani, is in the fifth grade at Lord Baltimore, a public elementary school in Ocean View. Last Tuesday, her teacher “taught” her class that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that she would not vote for him because he does not swear on the Bible, nor recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Her teacher told the class that she is a Republican and that Barack Obama “believes in different things and is scary.” ...

We are American Muslim kids. We love our country. We feel that kids need to be taught the truth in school. We believe that what is going on in our schools is un-American and scary. Kids are being taught hatred and fear of Muslims. Our sister was badly hurt by what was said in her classroom.

Each of us has experienced similar prejudice in our classrooms in three different schools. We would like for people to know that we believe in peace and respect for everyone. We are your neighbors and this is our home, too. We pray for understanding and an end to hate. Please stand with us.

Fatima and Basima Abdelsalam
Bethany Beach

Good luck, kids. Pack a bag, just in case, though.

QOTD: Working Hard for the Money

Lux Alptraum at Boinkology:

Sex work is just a job.

There is nothing inherently sacred or debased about sex work. It’s not a fundamentally magical, inspiring experience; nor is it a fundamentally degrading, psychologically damaging experience.

Sometimes sex work is incredibly gratifying and wonderful: a chance to help someone access their sexual self, a chance to create a work of art, a chance to inspire. Sometimes, sex work sucks: customers disrespect you, bosses treat you like shit, you get stiffed on pay. Like any job, a sex worker’s experience in the field is highly shaped by the environment the sex work occurs in.

Yes, sex work can be a painful, damaging experience — but so can any job. And for some people, the conditions of sex work are far preferable to working in retail, or as a bartender, or as a factory worker. Because that’s what it comes down to — people choose to become sex workers because they need a job. And at the end of the day, sex work is just a job.

Cash-Counting Around the World

It never occurred to me that how people count paper currency is a cultural thing. Here's a short video showing different styles from around the world.

(Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.)

QOTD

Kinda long, but worth it, from Tbogg:

Let me see if I can explain it this way:

Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.

You don't live there.

Grow the fuck up.

Now I'm Dating Myself

A couple of years back I thought to myself that I'd never ever even watch a video on youtube - too much bandwidth.

Is the back of the hand to the mouth supposed to mean something?

Party game: spot that theme!

Political Violence!

This would be funny, except for the fact that someone got stabbed:

District attorney Risa Ferman says a heated debate over the candidates escalated into violence:

"One is a supporter of Barack Obama, the other is a supporter of Hillary Clinton, and an argument of words turned bloody when one brother-in-law tried to choke the other and the victim then responded with a knife and stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach.”

[Sean] Shurelds was taken to the hospital in critical condition. [Jose] Ortiz [pictured] is jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. Police found the knife in the dishwasher.

The best part:

If Ortiz is convicted of the felony charge, he won’t be able to vote. And voter registration records reveal that Ortiz, who supports Clinton, is registered Republican.

Clinton There Is No Way to Tell Who Leads in Democratic Votes Cast So Far

[Update 2/27: After getting sucked into this discussion (where I can't comment because they haven't approved my registration) by way of this post, I went ahead and tried to come up with a rational estimate of popular support among registered Democrats for each candidate in the caucus states. But in trying to nail down the caucus ambiguity, I realized there is another, more basic ambiguity that blows it out of the water and makes this whole exercise pointless: Eight primary states and one caucus state do not have registered party affiliations, at all! Over 38 million registered voters!

Riddle me this: How many registered Democrats voted in the primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin? The answer is the same for all of them: Zero, because there are no registered Democrats in those states. So what the hell have I been adding up? Exit poll percentages - which are subject to sampling error themselves, by the way - of voters’ self-reported party affiliation. If there is no way to objectively define what we mean by "registered Democrat", then trying to add up "registered Democrat" votes is impossible.

Just by the way, until yesterday I thought Obama fanatics were the worst in terms of being rude and divisive, but then I discovered that thread at corrente. Holy shit, they are crazy.]

Booman is very upset at this post by Jeralyn Merritt:

Who's really picking our Democratic nominee? If it's the Democratic youth or African American voters, I'm okay with that. That's fair. If it's Republicans, I'm not. We'll get trounced in November. Without reliable stats to show Obama's support is from those who will for [sic] the Democrat in November, I'd say the best way to ensure Republicans stay out of our race and don't steal another election from us is for Dems to vote for Hillary to be the nominee.

Her argument is really a non sequitur, because the article she points to says that Obama has won 64% of the independents, not Republicans, in the Democratic primaries so far. Rising to the bait anyway, Booman retorts:

In South Carolina Barack Obama won among registered Democrats 57%-28%-14%. In Virginia, he won among registered Democrats 62%-38%.  In Maryland he won among registered Democrats 59%-40%.  In Wisconsin, he won the vote among registered Democrats 53%-46%. In spite of this, I spent a good part of my day explaining to Clinton supporters (in email) that Barack Obama is not winning the nomination on the backs of Republican voters who won't show up for him in the fall. It's a ludicrous assertion.

So just for completeness' sake, I went ahead and tallied all of the Democratic votes in the primaries so far. (I left out caucus states.) If you leave Michigan and Florida aside, Hillary has received about 7.4 million Democratic votes and Obama has about 7.1 million. If you include Michigan and Florida (and assume all "uncommitted" votes in Michigan would have gone to Obama), the totals increase to 8.4 million and 7.7 million, respectively.

On the merits, Jerlayn is clearly off base. Republicans have played a trivial role in the Democratic primaries. She's essentially arguing that winning a huge majority of independents is a bad thing for the nominee, which is absurd. Also, open primaries are open because the state Democratic parties want them to be. But the implication of Jerlayn's argument is that open primaries are illegitimate, and that we should only have closed primaries. Why? Finally, just like the issue of whether the Florida and Michigan delegates should be seated, note that Clinton supporters are arguing once again that the rules should be changed mid-game so that their candidate can win.

I relied on CNN for my vote numbers. Here's the spreadsheet I created:

Update: upyernoz says in comments: "why exclude the caucuses? i realize there isn't 'vote' numbers in the usual sense, but there are exit polls that can be extrapolated into something like a vote breakdown." 

I excluded caucuses because I can't come up with a reliable way to correlate caucus votes to popular vote. For example, Obama won 75% of the caucus votes in Alaska, a margin he's not gotten near in any primary other than D.C.  In Hawaii, same story: 76% Obama, 24% Clinton. Idaho: 79% Obama. Kansas: 74% Obama to 26% Clinton. Nebraska: 68% Obama - 32% Clinton. In Colorado, he got 67% of the caucus votes to 32% for Hillary, which is more believable but still really high. Maine had the most believable margin: 59% Obama - 40% Clinton. In contrast, the highest primary vote percentage Obama got - outside of D.C. - among registered Democrats is 57%. In the D.C. primary, Obama got 75% of the vote. To believe that caucus percentages are representative of the voters, you'd have to believe that coincidentally all the caucus states had Democratic voters who favored Obama as much as voters in D.C. (with 57% African-American population). Much more likely is that a combination of factors favored Obama in caucuses: a better ground game, a different demographic going to caucuses rather than primaries (say, fewer older voters), and possibly a "me too" effect of younger, more passionate Obama caucus-goers pulling people to their side of the room.

The point here isn't that caucus wins "don't count" or are illegitimate, the point is that while we can say confidently that Obama would have won the caucus states if they had held primaries, we can't confidently say by how much because caucuses are unrepresentative of the voters at large. You just can't multiply out caucus vote percentages by numbers of registered Democrats and say that's the number of voters each candidate would have won, just as you can't include Michigan and Florida.

"The Shiny Guy Always Worries"

Bloglines is Down; Google Reader is Not

I used bloglines as my feed reader for the past couple of years, but I have noticed in the past that it takes a while to update feeds. And today it's not updating at all. And so I also discovered how easy it is to export your subscriptions to google reader. Which is not down, and which seems to update very quickly. So, just like that, I think I've abandoned one web app for another.

Ralph's In!

You want change? I got your change right here, buddy.

I actually know people who I could see supporting this idiot again.

Update: A message to Ralph Nader:

Eschacon '08

The Modern Confederate Party

I guess dimwits are always a Lost Cause:

[Bertram Hayes-Davis, head of the Davis Family Association and great-great grandson of Jefferson Davis,] says his ancestor is a victim of political correctness and of people's insistence on looking at historical events from today's perspective.

He believes, as Davis did, that the Southern states had a constitutional right to secede. When asked if he thinks secession is viable or legal today, he is noncommittal.

"I think the issue is not so much the country splitting. I think the issue is federal control over the states. And I think that you see that even today, when federal mandates come from Washington that, `You will do this, whether you want to or not...,'" says Hayes-Davis, who has represented Davis' family at more than 100 functions over the years.

But what's interesting is not that some banker from Colorado Springs is running around defending the honor of a traitor who fought to keep humans enslaved, it's that they hold a beauty contest: The Miss Confederacy Pageant, along with related events, the Wee Miss Confederacy, Little Miss Confederacy,  Junior Miss Confederacy, and - new for 2008 - the Ms. Confederacy Pageant.

There are rules (warning: pdf) for these contests. For example, Wee Miss Confederacy contestants must be at least 2 years old but no older than 5. The Ms. Confederacy Pageant has no upper age limit, but is "open to women 18 and over that are married, divorced, or single that do not qualify for the 'Miss' category", which is quite a genteel way of saying single moms.

As for who wins, the application says:

Judging will be based on costume (dress, period fabrics, hat, accessories, etc.), overall appearance, and stage presentation. In case of a tie, Miss and Ms. contestants may be asked questions during the pageant to determine the winner for each category.

Remember that there are no hard and fast rules. However, the judges will be looking for contestants that portray the typical Southern girl, lady or woman of the Antebellum Era.

"Girl, lady or woman." Hilarious. And since slaves made up one third of the population of the Confederate States, I submit that a "typical" Southern woman could include an African-American woman in ragged clothes and bearing evidence of abuse, but I bet that's why they require a picture with the application.

McCain Campaign to NYTimes: "Thank You" for Helping Us Raise Money

Like I said, this helped him:

Operating on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, many conservatives who had long distrusted Mr. McCain on a variety of issues, including his peculiar fondness for talking to reporters for hours on end, rallied to see him at war with a newspaper they revile as a voice of the left. ...

Charles Black, a senior McCain adviser who had taken heat from conservative friends after the editorial board of The Times endorsed Mr. McCain in the Feb. 5 New York primary, was pleased. Thursday, Mr. Black said, “was the first day in the campaign that McCain won the day on conservative talk radio.”

Later that afternoon, the McCain campaign began using The Times in an fund-raising appeal sent by e-mail to supporters. “Well, here we go,” the letter from Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, began, then outlined what it characterized as the newspaper’s smear campaign. Mr. Davis quickly got to the point: “We need your help to counteract the liberal establishment and fight back against The New York Times by making an immediate contribution today.”

By Friday, the campaign was tracing its jump in fund-raising directly to the article in The Times. “Thank you,” [McCain advisor Steve] Schmidt said to a Times reporter on Mr. McCain’s campaign plane as it headed back to Washington from Indianapolis.

The politics of victimhood is the specialty of the right. And after The Times' endorsement didn't help but hurt, they went out of their way to make amends.

Mein Lieber Herr Godwin

Stephen at politburo diktat 2.0:

This reminds me of the Germans during the 1924 hyperinflation trying to buy bread with wheelbarrows full of Reichmarks, only to find that yesterday morning’s money wasn’t worth much by this afternoon.

Funny, it reminds me of a politician losing supporters, not economic catastrophe.

Maybe I'll Finally Go Vegetarian

Would you buy a hamburger from either of these men? Would you let your kid eat it?

QOTD: How Low?

Bérubé:

Though after Billy Shaheen’s inquiry into whether Obama might have done a little drug dealing, exactly how much lower can a fellow Democrat go? Is someone going to start a whispering campaign that Obama has fathered a white child out of wedlock?

And:

It’s sad, really. As I’ve said before, I have no animus against Hillary Clinton, and I don’t believe that Barack Obama is the chosen one who can bring balance to the Force, end the war with the machines, and destroy all of Voldemort’s horcruxes. But Hillary really is surrounded by the gang that can’t shoot straight, and for some reason I’ve grown leery of politicians who don’t fire incompetents.

(Via Lemieux.)

The NYTimes Gift to the McCain Campaign

I predict: The net effect of the Iseman story is that McCain's popularity will rise.

Also, if Obama is smart, he will denounce the story as irrelevant to the campaign and criticize the Times for repeating the allegation that McCain had an affair without confirming it.

Update: Will Bunch at Attytood:

Simply put, as it's playing out right now, the story was -- probably unintentionally, although who knows -- timed perfectly to help out McCain. Its insinuations of an improper relationship between the powerful senator and Vicki Iseman came too late to hurt McCain with the "values voters" in the GOP primaries, but at exactly the right time to rally right-wing talk radio against the Times, and thus for a candidate they can now support in November while holding their collective nose.

But Did They Make Another Campaign Contribution?

C&L:

My first thought was that the Filipino Monkey had graduated from harassing sailors on the marine band to prank-calling CNN. But it turns out to be more mundane: The closed-captioning typist rendered "Hillary Clinton" as "al Qaeda".

No problem with that, is there?

(Via PhillyBits.)

The McCenis

McCain's aides thought he was screwing a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. Yeah, "Vicki" with an i. Who looks exactly like Cindy McCain, only 15 years younger. Do I care? No. Do I hope it hurts him? Sure as hell. Will it hurt him? Don't think so. Conservatives will just be relieved it's a woman. Does it have anything at all to do with the Presidency? None.

QOTD

Gloria (NSFW):

Ho hum, another PR-hungry starlet trying to oil herself in Marilyn Monroe lube. It's only been done a million times before. By more talented people. Some of whom looked a lot better too. One thing about the original: she could go right up to the edge of sleaze and peer over it, but she always had a kind of innocence about. Lohan looks likes like crack whore in a wig. ...

As for "girl-in-martini-glass" -- let me put it this way.  It is NOT hot.  How about girl-in-syringe with bruises up and down her arms? Better still, Paris, put on a strap-on, and quit being such a tool of the patriarchy, fer chrissake.

Hee!

Rating Pollsters

Updating this from Super Tuesday, here's how the Potomac Primary and last night look to me:

• Maryland 2/12 result: Obama 60%, Clinton 36.5%, margin 23.5

SurveyUSA, 2/9-2/10: Obama 55%, Clinton 32%, margin 23
Mason-Dixon, 2/7-2/8: Obama 53%, Clinton 35%, margin 18
Rasmussen, 2/6-2/7: Obama 57 %, Clinton 31 %, margin 26
Lowest error: SurveyUSA, .5%

• Virginia 2/12 result: Obama 63.6%, Clinton 35.4%, margin 28.2

SurveyUSA, 2/9-2/10: Obama 60%, Clinton 38%, margin 22
Mason-Dixon, 2/7-2/8: Obama 53%, Clinton 37%, margin 16
InsiderAdvantage, 2/7-2/7: Obama 52%, Clinton 37%, margin 15
Rasmussen, 2/6-2/7: Obama 55%, Clinton 37%, margin 18
Lowest error: SurveyUSA, 6.2%

• Wisconsin 2/19 result: Obama 58.7%, 41.2%, margin 17.5

Research2000, 2/13-2/14: Obama 47%, Clinton 42%, margin 5
Rasmussen, 2/13-2/13: Obama 47%, Clinton 43 %, margin 4
Lowest error: Rasmussen, 12.5%

No polling in Hawaii or D.C.

Some of this may be affected by timing of the polls as voter sentiment was moving toward Obama, and I wish SurveyUSA had polled Wisconsin to add a data point, but it still looks like they're the best. It also looks like undecideds broke for Obama heavily in all three races, much more so than the exit polls indicated. (The other possibility is that everyone got Clinton's numbers basically right but understated Obama's. I find that unlikely.)

Just for information, with 2 weeks left to go SurveyUSA has Clinton up by 5 in Texas and up 9 in Ohio. Undecideds are 5% in both states.

Also, it occurs to me that with the unions breaking for Obama, the odds of Edwards endorsing him have gone up. If I were Edwards and I planned on endorsing someone, I would do it on Monday.

Total Eclipse of the Moon Tonight

NASA:

A total eclipse of the Moon occurs during the night of Wednesday, February 20/21, 2008. The entire event is visible from South America and most of North America (on Feb. 20) as well as Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia (on Feb. 21). During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon's disk can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and (rarely) very dark gray.

The eclipse starts at 8:43 and goes total at 10:01 on the east coast. Too bad it will be mostly cloudy and 22 degrees around then.

Wisconsin

With 81% of the precincts reporting at 11:34, it's Obama by 16 points - 58% to 42%. In early February, his team projected he would win by 7%. This continues the trend of Obama beating his projected margins handily.

The Vernacular

The Ol' Grey Lady:

Which brings us back to the dilemma facing some of Clinton's high-profile black supporters -- those with titles and constituencies of their own. They are feeling some kind of crazy pressure. Last Friday, about 25 of them held an hour-long conference call to discuss what one described as an effort to "pester, intimidate, question our blackness" for not supporting Obama.

(Emphasis added.) The hell? "Some kind of crazy pressure"? How up-to-date. Oh wait, this is a political article appearing in the style section. The real point of it is this:

Remember all the commentator chatter last summer: Is Barack Obama black enough?

Well, he's black enough now.

Seriously, I think someone had that thought - whatever it means - and built the rest of the article around it.

Moral Agency Sitting at the Top of the Empire

Ogged:

Do you know how if you were born poor in 19th century London, or 21st century Mississippi, you were (or are) fucked? A victim of circumstance, with very nearly not a damn thing you can do to change your role in history: fucked poor victim. That's the position that reasonably affluent professional Americans find themselves in, but instead of being fucked poor victims, we're history's villains. You can't sit at the top of the empire, particularly an empire that fucks over millions of its own citizens, and not be a villain. I'm sorry, those are the breaks. You can pull a Paul Farmer, but there aren't many Paul Farmers. That's why things that are well-intentioned, like recycling, are absurd, because nobody cares if you spit shine the bullet before you put it in someone's head. And that's why innocuous things like Netflix are on the list, because they mark you as belonging to the group. So, whiteys, (and that includes the Cosbys, for fuck's sake) at least take a step back and realize that while you can be decent to those around you, there's no way for you to be a good person in any broader sense: the things we've let (and continue to let) happen are more than enough to damn us all to hell.

aimai:

What struck me most was the sock puppet's explanation of the necessity for the creation of internal controls like anxiety, fear, and guilt in the modern white collar worker to take the place of brute force oppression in the regular factory worker. In a democracy we can see this issue being played out in this election with people encouraged to imagine themselves "freely choosing" among a variety of competing candidates offering them a smorgasbrod of policy choices. But are they really "freely choosing?" when the candiates and the issues and the coverage have been constrained and limited by authorities and powers beyond the control, or even the ken, of the individual voter? ... [T]he battle between Obama and HRC is, in reality, largely a battle over minute and even trivial differences in the delivery of the same product (she calls it the "narcissism of small differences"). And even where there are actual policy differences for voters to choose among they are encouraged or deluded into regarding the political/policy battle as being one of taste. Even worse, they are misled entirely as to the nature of the choices before them--see e.g. Kristof's skin crawlingly meretricious but utterly standard paen to McCain's honesty in today's Times. 

So there you go, folks: You may as well act as evilly as you care to, because it doesn't matter what you do. Isn't that the moral of this story?

Waking Up in Bed Together

aimai at If I Ran the Zoo:

I ... wish that bloggers and Obama supporters would remember that the morning after the Democratic convention they are going to wake up in bed with a lot of people they've been calling ugly, and we will all be quite sober enough to be really, really, angry about it. ...

At this point the campaign to control the meaning of the campaign seems to me to be utterly focused on demonizing Clinton and her supporters by continuously transforming ordinary political acts into extra-ordinary forms of evil, anti democratic, selfishness. ...

... Obama's desires and actions are seen as unselfish because they are undertaken, we are assured, *for us* rather than for Obama. The more of "us" there are, therefore, the more unselfish Obama's actions become because the responsibility for them is shared among many. By contrast, if you believe (as many of Obama's supporters do as an article of faith) that Hillary represents a small number of deluded or angry or old line female supporters, well, her actions are deemed the more selfish because either she represents only herself or the voters she represents are too insignificant to dissipate the selfishness of her actions. ...

As far as I can see Hillary's time has come and gone and she will go down to defeat and Obama will be the nominee. I don't quarrel with that and I don't even think its a bad thing for the party or the country. But there is something deeply disingenous about reading popular democratic bloggers and progressive bloggers continually smearing both Hillary and her voters when you know that tomorrow they are going to wake up in bed next to them and need to start pleading for understanding and forgiveness. And not only that, they are going to ask us to get up and make breakfast for them.

Mrs. Noz:

It ’s not the unfairness of media coverage alone that sways me, it’s the pervasive unfairness in the way that high-achieving women are treated and perceived more generally. Many of us can point to instances in our own workplaces in which highly qualified women have been passed over in favor of less-qualified men, whose very maleness grants them authority that women have to work twice as hard to earn. The anger at that unfairness builds up, and the attacks on Clinton tap into it. It reminds me that Clinton has had to be tough as nails to make it this far, and I respect that about her.

Personally, I would be happy if either Obama or Clinton is elected in the primary. I think they each have strengths and weaknesses, and either should rightfully crush McCain in the general election. If I thought Obama was a vastly superior candidate I would vote for him. But, it ’s a toss-up for me, and the incessant Clinton-bashing pushes me to vote for her in the PA primary. The vote would not be because I feel sorry for her -- that indeed would be a terrible reason to vote for someone. Rather, the bashing reminds me of her toughness, and it also reminds me that there are a lot of bastards out there and it would do some good to see a woman stick it to them.

When it looked like Obama was going to get screwed by the Clintons' race-baiting, a lot of people talked about how much hard feelings it would engender against Hillary and how black voters would stay home in the fall. What people don't seem to be seeing is that white women are feeling very resentful about seeing Hillary being demonized, but they are much, much quieter about it. Black men who are hoping against hope that Obama is the nominee really don't seem to be seeing it, or they don't care, or worse, they're happy to "stick it" to the white candidate. Yet the anger is still real. A bunch of clueless male Democrats are indeed going to go nuts if/when Obama is nominated and then be all like, "What's wrong with you?" to the women in their life when they don't clap for the Man. Which will not help.

Sound Advice on Obamania

The "Being There" analogy is harsh because Obama is not a dimwit like the Sellers character; nevertheless, it is true that Obama's campaign strategy has been to portray himself as a positive but blank canvas onto which others can project their fondest wishes:

But she's right. Obama is Peter Sellers in "Being There." As a therapist, she's seen the danger of ungrounded expectations. "You feel young again. You feel like everything is possible. He helps you feel that way and you want to feel that way; it's a great marriage. Unfortunately, the divorce will happen very quickly." Mom is the kind of realistic tough-talker who isn't afraid to make divorce analogies to a child of divorce.

"We want what he represents," she said. "A young, idealistic person who really believes it. And he believes it. He believes he can change the world. I just don't think he can."

Thing is, I've watched too many movies and read too many novels; I can't root against a person who believes he can change the world. The best we Obamaphiles can do is to refrain from embarrassing ourselves. And I do believe that we can resist making more "We Are the World"-type videos. We can resist crying jags. We can resist, in every dinner argument and every e-mail, the word "inspiration." Yes, we can.

We also have to resist the urge to stifle every positive feeling we might experience along the way. It's a balance.

Bunny v. Snake

In case you haven't seen this already, guess who wins:

Gallup: Obama Leads Hillary By 7 Points

I predicted 5 points; it turned out to be 7:

For several days, nationwide Democratic voters' preferences have been shifting toward Barack Obama in Gallup Poll Daily election tracking. Now, the Illinois senator enjoys his first statistically significant lead, 49% to 42%, over Hillary Clinton, according to the Feb. 13-15 results. Additionally, the 49% support for Obama represents the high point for him in the daily tracking program.

As I said before, I am hesitant to say this is a lasting trend.  I still think it will bounce around until March 4 with Obama in the lead at more or less 5+ most of that time, and after that either it will still essentially be a tie or Hillary will quit depending on the outcome March 4. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I'd love for the whole mess to come steaming into Pennsylvania on April 22, but I doubt that is the best thing for the party.

That's Quite a Coincidence

Two times too many:

The online gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter said it was an unnerving coincidence that he also sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five students at Northern Illinois University.

Eric Thompson said his Web site ... sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Steven Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide.

Another Web site run by Thompson's company ... also sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in April on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself.

I dunno, if I were this guy I might find another line of work. Like working in a hospital with people paralyzed from gunshot wounds, or counseling families who have lost loved ones to gun violence. Because if it had happened twice, I might start to think it was going to happen again, and I couldn't deal with it.

"I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this." ...

Maybe Kazmierczak did a little research on Cho beforehand. He had one of the same weapons. Just think, Mr. Thompson: You and the Glock 19 could become synonymous with mass murder.

"I still feel just absolutely in shock," he said. "I feel like I was run over by a truck."

That's a pity. But I can think of a few people who feel worse.

Update: Welcome Eschatonians. Mike Dorf quotes another "I can't believe the free publicity I'm getting" story:

Jason Dunavan, a tattoo artist in Champaign, said he spent hours as recently as last month creating tattoos for [the killer]. His work included an image of the macabre doll from the horror movie "Saw" riding a tricycle through a pool of blood with images of several bleeding cuts in the background.

Dunavan said he was so proud of the tattoo that he enlarged a photo of it and placed it on a wall in his shop — a move he is now rethinking.

"I don't know if I still want that picture on my wall," said Dunavan, who also described [the killer] as timid and apologetic.

To which Mike responds, "Rethinking?  Don't know?" What else does the tattoo guy need? Like Mr. Thompson, Dunavan is shocked but not actually displeased. I think it makes a nice trifecta. The "Saw" movies, a tattoo artist selling macabre images, and the gun dealer: All you need to make money is to know your audience and have a strong stomach.

Update again: And speaking of coincidences, just like with the Virginia Tech shooting, conservatives trot out depraved fantasies like this:

Good thing the great state of Illinois, and the wise overseers of Northern Illinois University did their damnedest to make absolutely certain that those kids trapped in that slaughterhouse pen were as unarmed and helpless as victims could possibly be.

Their blood is on the hands entrusted to protect them by disarming them.

Just think…if only one of those students or teachers had been able to shoot back….

Yeah, just think if a bunch of college students were walking around strapped at all times. Not one of them could have effectively countered an ambush like the one at NIU, but hardly a week would go by without an accidental shooting, road rage brandishing, or suicide.

Why They Build Prisons

Some knucklehead, already looking at 71 years in jail for armed robbery, decided to add on a few more by trying to rape his own defense attorney inside the federal courthouse in Philly:

Before their meeting with federal authorities, [Kareem] Millhouse and his attorney were given a few moments to speak privately in an interview room, according to information from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, which handled the prosecution.

Once alone, Millhouse leaned toward his lawyer and told her that he would cut her throat if she screamed, and then showed her a razor blade.

Millhouse, federal prosecutors said, went on to tell the woman that he had not had sex in a long time and wanted to have it with her, and he also wanted her to be able to "leave alive."

Millhouse then lunged at her, and she screamed and tried to run from him. He grabbed her and threw her over a table, but several law-enforcement officials heard the screams and rushed into the room to subdue him.

Ah, the glamour of the legal world. I am so glad I didn't go work for the public defender's office.

Michigan and Florida Reject "Do-Over" Option

So much for that idea:

The DNC has offered Florida and Michigan a couple ways out in compliance with party rules. First, they could hold second nominating contests, but Democratic leaders in both states reject that idea.

They don't want a do-over. What do they want?  They want something that will give individual party insiders an opportunity to increase their personal influence, of course. They want to horse-trade:

Or they can appeal to the DNC's credentials committee, a 186-member body that usually operates in obscurity and has a complicated membership and rules process that will require deft maneuvering in this divided campaign.

Lovely. I guess it's time to see if Howard Dean is up to his job.

"Norwegian Village Pension Fund": The Mortgage Crisis Explained

Here. (Click the picture to start the slideshow.) Very informative, as well as funny.

(Via John Cole.)

Saudi Prince Bandar Threatens Brits Over Bribery Probe

Guardian:

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family. ...

Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government.

Our ally, Prince Bandar meeting with Bush at his ranch:

You just know that the British were not the first government he threatened.

(Via Phillybits.)

Horrible Story About TMobile's Treatment of Dead Customer's Family

This man's daughter was seriously injured and his grandchild and son-in-law were killed in an auto accident. TMobile decided to make his life even harder:

In the last two weeks, I was tasked with more items to complete than I can even remember. Besides making the funeral arrangements, one of the menial tasks was to replace my daughter’s phone that was destroyed in the accident. I figured, no problem, I’ll run to TMobile, her provider, and get a loaner. ...

The “gentleman” who is the manager of the TMobile store in Southlake told me under no circumstances could he give me a phone. I wasn’t authorized on my son-in-law’s account. I explained to him that my daughter had just gotten out of ICU and was needing a phone to make some phone calls. Not going to happen. I told him that I was willing to give them my credit card to secure the phone, but to no avail.

Long story short, he went up the line to TMobile USA's corporate headquarters and got no help, so he bought a new phone for his injured, grieving daughter from a different carrier.

I've emailed TMobile's media relations people to see if they have any comment.

"They Will Massively Rig"

Hilarious:

A prominent U.S.-based human rights group Friday released what it said was a recording of Pakistan's attorney general acknowledging that next week's national elections would be "massively" rigged.

Human Rights Watch said a journalist made the recording during a telephone interview with Attorney General Malik Qayyum when Qayyum took a second call without disconnecting the first, allowing his end of the second conversation to be overheard and recorded.

In the recording, Qayyum, Pakistan's top legal officer, can be heard advising the caller to accept a ticket he is being offered by an unidentified political party for a seat, Human Rights Watch said.

"They will massively rig to get their own people to win," Qayyum said, according to a transcript released by Human Rights Watch. "If you get a ticket from these guys, take it."

That's so awesome. I've often thought that we need a constitutional amendment requiring all elected or confirmed officials in this country to wear a wire at all times. It would make things so much more entertaining.

What to Do About Michigan and Florida Delegates?

I'm sorry, Digby is just wrong about this:

[T]he DNC should be taken to the woodshed for doing this. The Democratic Party "sending a message" about "rules" by refusing to count votes in Florida is simply mindboggling. They should have found another way.

What other way would that be?

Look, if we decide to abandon the rules now, you have only two options, both of them bad: Seat the delegates "awarded" by the early primaries which broke the rules, or hold "do-over" primaries. In both cases, you're signaling that you won't enforce the rules if it matters.

Let's consider: The party decided to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates, and the candidates agreed not to campaign there. If we seat the delegates based on the early primaries, in the future candidates will have no incentive to not campaign in states which break the rules, because there is precedent that those delegates will count. If we allow Michigan and Florida to hold do-overs, then in the future states will know that they can violate the rules and expect to be given another bite at the apple in the event their delegates become crucial to determining who the nominee is. And if in the future states which break the rules are not granted an exception - either seating the delegates based on an early primary or a do-over - because the outcome is already a foregone conclusion, then they won't care.

And in all cases, as in this one, making an exception to the rules agreed upon in advance in the middle of the primary season will benefit one candidate more than another. This creates a strategic opportunity for candidates to influence the decision-making process of whether or not to grant an exception to the rules, which is bad enough. But it would also delegitimate the result, more so than Digby thinks enforcing the rules in this case would by "disenfranchising" voters. If you think there is "another way" to enforce the rules - and can lay it out in writing - then enact it after the election, not now.

Update 2/15/08: The Michigan and Florida Democratic parties have rejected the "do-over" idea.

Bush Thinks Up Another Way to Screw Poor People

Al-Reuters:

Americans eligible for tax rebates of $300 to $1,200 under the new fiscal stimulus act will not receive their payments until they file a 2007 income tax return, even if they make too little to owe any taxes, the Internal Revenue Service said on Wednesday.

What possible justification can there be for this?

More Anti-Women Religious Nutbags in America

What the hell's the matter with Kansas?

Before the game started, a school administrator approached [Michelle] Campbell’s officiating partner, Darin Putthoff of Topeka, and told him a woman could not serve as referee.

That would be putting a woman in a position of authority over boys, he was told — a scenario that was contrary to beliefs at St. Mary’s Academy.

"I was upset," Putthoff said. "So I said, 'You’re telling me you don’t have any teachers at the school who are women?'"

The good part is that when the bigots at the school tried to round up a guy to take Campbell's place, he walked off the court in disgust. They had to use their own athletic director to ref the game.

Gallup: Obama Leads 45-44

The picture pretty much tells it all:

I think Obama will increase his lead this week as the poll's three day rolling average is affected by the Potomac primaries to the point that he'll be up 5 points by Saturday. Then it's Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday.

Obama's Israel Policy: Status Quo

Nik Gvosdev of The National Interest reports that while some people have suggested that Obama's foreign policy team is hostile to Israel, someone who met with Obama's principal Middle East policy advisor says differently:

"Without equivocation, [Obama advisor Eric] Lynn made clear the United States must always remain a friend of Israel—an old ally and lone democracy in the region. But even more importantly, the United States must ensure Israel maintains its military superiority in order to preserve its right to self-defense. ...

[Update: Let's be clear on what "military superiority" means in this context. It means Israel can have nukes but the Arabs and Iranians can't. That's the cornerstone of Israeli security policy and it has served them well for 30+ years.]

During the July 2006 Lebanon war, and in the face of criticism, Obama backed Israel’s use of force against Lebanon in reaction to missile attacks by Hezballah. “If U.S. soldiers were kidnapped” Obama reportedly said, “we’d be doing much worse,” according to Lynn. ...

Yes, but would we have fucked it up as badly? Probably. Obama gets points off for judgment on that, I think.

"Furthermore, Obama has no desire to drag Israel to the negotiating table. “If Israel wants peace, they will do it their own way,” said Lynn. Obama has called for the Palestinians to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist."

So much for bringing people together.

On Iran, Obama wants mid-level diplomatic contact to influence behavior directly, but would continue to threaten military action to protect Israel.

In other words, there is no daylight between Hillary and Obama on Israel, and precious little difference between either Democrat and Bush.

Will Marshall Needs a Doctor, Stat

Booman, reacting to Donna Edwards unseating Al Wynn:

And the result is stunning.  This is literally a 2x4 across the head to the Democratic Establishment.  It had to come to this.

(Emphasis supplied.) We hurt you 'cause we love you, honey.