Papa Roach

For her

Nickleback

Chad’s a tad bitter

R.E.M.

I lost it a long time ago, and then again this year.

Zombie CDS – It Never Dies!

 

She wants our manhood!

Brian Morton at The Smirking Chimp gives an accurate description of Clinton Derangement Syndrome in the media:

There’s something about Hillary Clinton.

Well, to be honest about it, there’s something about what happens when the Clinton name itself enters the picture, whether it’s the senator from New York or the former president. It makes editors get stupid, it makes national political columnists spin into paroxysms of foolishness, and it makes cable television pontificators start thinking out loud thoughts normally not found outside of support groups for people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens.

Clinton advisor James Carville has famously described it as the “puke funnel,” where all the craziest statements made from the farthest reaches of the right wing get channeled through people like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge and end up in the mainstream newspapers and supposedly respectable cable outfits. And then a stuffy columnist like The Washington Post’s David Broder gets to sniff huffily about the effect the Clintons have on the genteel bipartisan niceness of Washington and high-school drama reviewer Maureen Dowd of The New York Times gets to toss off another column full of cutesy diminutive nicknames where she acts as if she can read minds.

I always thought a “puke funnel” was what you needed after watching MSNBC.  But Morton says something else that I found to be a unique and interesting take on Hillary’s agreement to serve as the next Secretary of State: 

Begging for money for election campaigns is the most humbling, the most humiliating, the most uncomfortable, and the most boring job a politician has to do. 

[…]

 Given the chance to get away from that and spend four and possibly eight years as a traveling policy wonk–quite likely Hillary Clinton’s idea of heaven–it seems like a no-brainer.

No wonder Morton only writes a column for the Baltimore City Paper and not for a more well-known newspaper like the New York Times or the Washington Post.  He makes too much sense.

Offspring

Handicapping 2012

Will I get a pony?

Barack Obama has been the presumptive President-elect for three weeks now (he won’t actually be President-elect until the Electoral College votes in December) so I figured it was time to make my predictions for the 2012 campaign.  I want to get on record early so no one claims I plagiarized their ideas and I can claim to be the first to accurately predict events.  On the other hand, if my predictions turn out to be inaccurate, it will be the fault of my “Magic 8-ball”

On the Democratic side the predicting is easy.  It’s 99% certain that Obama will be the nominee.  No one (Hillary) will be allowed by the party establishment to even consider challenging him in the primaries.  if anyone does, it will be someone like Mike Gravel who will not be considered a serious candidate by the media or the voters. 

It would require more than just low poll ratings for a challenge to be permitted, such as a juicy scandal that was almost but not enough to justify impeachment.  And the challenger would have to begin raising money and seeking endorsements in early 2011 (right after the mid-term elections) hoping that Obama’s poll numbers didn’t recover.  I doubt anyone will dare challenge him because of the consequences to their political career.  Ted Kennedy’s political career survived his 1980 challenge of Jimmy Carter because Carter was unpopular AND an outsider to the party establishment (and Teddy is a Kennedy.)

The GOP side is far less certain.  The first factor will be how Obama is doing around the 2010 midterm elections.  If he is struggling in the polls and the economy doesn’t look to recover before 2012 then the GOP will mount a serious challenge to his reelection and you can expect the GOP establishment to unify behind one candidate before any votes are cast, as they did in 1999-2000.  They won’t want a real competition for the nomination at the ballot box. 

If Obama looks unbeatable in 2010-2011, expect the GOP establishment to run someone like Bob Dole or John McCain as a token candidate, but don’t expect any big names with real ambitions to agree to be the sacrificial lamb.  But if the party bosses don’t commit to a “heavy-weight contender” that means that a long-shot candidate could take the nomination just like Clinton did in 1992.  In 1990 George H. W. Bush was very popular so the Democratic frontrunners like Mario Cuomo decided to skip 1992 and wait for 1996, which allowed the Big Dawg to get the nomination and win when Poppy’s popularity went bye-bye.  If Obama’s poll numbers tank in 2012 (this scenario assumes they were relatively high through 2011) then we could see an unexpected 45th President.

The Two “Realities” of Obamanation

Ever since Obama flip-flopped and voted for the FISA amendment he claimed to oppose, he has repeatedly provided evidence that he is not a progressive, let alone a liberal.  The past few weeks have provided even more evidence that Obama intends to govern somewhere from the right of center as he has been announcing Cabinet and other appointments as well as signalling his intention to delay or break keeping campaign promises.

The reaction thus far among Obamanationals falls into two basic categories:

1.  We’re still getting a pony

2.  I always knew we weren’t getting a pony

The first category includes everyone who continues to believe that Obama is a progressive and will govern as such.  They range from the people who rationalize that Obama’s moves and statements are part of a devious plan to those who put their fingers in their ears and say “La la la I can’t hear you!” when presented with contrary facts.  This group is shrinking somewhat but will never quite disappear.  Many of them will hold out hope that their pony will be delivered during Obama’s second term and if (when) he fails to win reelection they will go to their graves convinced he would have finally delivered had he won.

The second category is increasing in size and they would be amusing if their dishonesty wasn’t so annoying.  I’m  not talking about bloggers like Vastleft at Corrente or Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft who were suspicious and critical of Obama but supported him in the end.  I’m talking about the bloggers who dove head first into the Kool-aid vat back in the primaries and never came out.

With a few rare exceptions, the only people claiming during the primaries that Obama wasn’t a progressive were Hillary Clinton supporters (GOPers claimed he was a socialist but nobody believed them.)  Hillary was vilified by Obamanation for being a DLC centrist and was even accused of being a Republican by no less than the head Cheeto himself.  We also heard how she planned to be John McCain’s running mate and how her supporters were just Republican ratfuckers.

So when these same people that viciously attacked Hillary as a centrist and/or praised Obama as a progressive now claim they knew all along that he was a center-right politician it begs the question:

Were they lying then or are they lying now?

There is a third category that has not yet made it’s appearance among Obamanationals:

3.  What the f**k was I thinking?

Obama the Secret Progressive

Many years ago scientists in a top-secret progressive think-tank, seeing the ascendancy of Reagan conservatism, trained a young a young man to be a stealth candidate who would pose as a center-right moderate, so that once he was in office they could hatch their diabolical plan. From Chris Bowers:

According to Ambinder, hiring centrists and Republicans for top positions in the Obama administration actually means that Obama intends to govern in a clearly progressive direction. For Ambinder, Obama is hiring centrist and conservative advisors not to give their policy advice any credence whatsoever, but instead so that they provide public and political cover for a strongly progressive agenda which those advisors would personally oppose. It is another instance of the “secret progressive” theories, where doing something anti-progressive, like hiring all centrists and Republicans for top cabinet positions, is interpreted as actually pro-progressive.

Put down your sippy-kup Marc, and check this out:

A senior Obama campaign official shared with The Washington Note that in July 2008, the McCain and Obama camps began to work secretly behind the scenes to assemble large rosters of potential personnel for the administration that only one of the candidates would lead.

WE TOLD YOU SO!

Normally I would say “so what?”

From Politico:

OBAMA SKIPS CHURCH, HEADS TO GYM

President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.

On the three Sundays since his election, Obama has instead used his free time to get in workouts at a Chicago gym.

The usual suspects are in full knickers-twist mode:

OMG, OMG, OMG — it must be because he and Michelle are too busy making “Whitey” tapes or something!

Although, apparently Martin does have the keen eye of a stalker

Except nobody said that, nor did anyone stalk the presumptive President-elect.  This is what life in the spotlight is like for the occupants of the White House, so Obamanation better get used to it.  When GOP politicians do things that are inconsistent with their carefully cultivated public images, it’s news.  Just ask Larry Craig.  So it’s only fair when the media does the same thing to Democrats.

Now I don’t really care if Barack Obama attends a church, temple, mosque or gym every weekend.  But he’s the one who made a big deal over his religious faith.  From Flopping Aces:

This is the same guy who never missed a service at Rev. Wright’s church (”God damn America, U.S. of K.K.K.A”) for 20 years but can’t recall one sermon. I guess he no longer needs the political and social connections that church provided.

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid!

myiq2xu says

I got yer rumproast right here!

There is no such thing as bad publicity.