Obama Pulling Out of Wisconsin?

Unsubstantiated information from the Republican Party of Wisconsin:

After a series of puff articles over the weekend raving about Senator Barack Obama’s Wisconsin operation, it was discovered Obama actually doesn’t have any campaign offices in the state.

“Perhaps Democrats realize that the most liberal member of the United States Senate is no fit for Wisconsin voters and took their field offices back to Chicago,” said Mark Jefferson, Executive Director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. “This isn’t the first time the Obama campaign has sought to mislead folks in Wisconsin, and it no doubt won’t be the last.”

Phone numbers listed on the Obama website for Wisconsin campaign offices were discovered to be inoperable this week. Obama’s national campaign said there hasn’t been campaign offices since the state’s February primary and didn’t know when they would reopen.

According to Jefferson, Obama’s visit this week could be to mask his anemic state operation or it might be a farewell visit to the Badger State.

“It will take more than overblown pep rallies to convince Wisconsin voters that Barack Obama shares their values,” Jefferson said. “John McCain has a history of independent leadership that appeals to Wisconsin. Senator Obama has never put partisan interests aside to bring about progress. Maybe that’s why Democrats have to exaggerate their campaign operations.”

Very interesting.

You Want Audacity? I Got Your Audacity Right Here*

For these fucking balls are metallic and produce an overwhelming gravitational pull:

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has issued a new directive that seeks to protect information from "telephones, text messaging devices and pagers" from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. But the Free Press says city officials and legal observers don't think the new policy will stand up in court.

Because he has a deep and unflinching dedication to personal privacy, even at the work place?  Fuck no!  Because the text messages sent on his fucking work phone are currently the chief evidence against him on a range of charges.

 

Kwame declined to comment when asked, "How the fuck do you carry those things without a wheel-barrow?" and, "Where do you buy your pants?  The elephant store?"

 

In other news, astronomers are frantically discussing the possible earth-destroying ramifications of Mayor Kilpatrick's balls.

"It really is too early to tell," said Narg Dweebson of the North American Destructive Gravitational Objects Bureau.  "If they continue to grow at this rate, we could find the Earth's orbit disrupted."   When asked about the worst case scenario, Dr. Dweebson responded, "A black hole.  Wait, is that racist?"

 

* - This was pretty much all made up too.

Superdelegates

Does anyone else find it funny that the Democrats, a party where the fucking name implies total servitude to the popular vote, is the party that has a primary process that can almost completely invalidate the voice of the people?  It fucking rocks.

 

At least the Republicans stick to their republican ideals in the structure of their primary. 

 

There you go, there's one place.

Fuck the Republicans: Where do we go from here?

dpud demonstrates just how completely useless the Republican party has become:

Okay, how pitiful is it that MSNBC of all places has a better understanding of what the problem is than the NRCC?

Let Rome burn.

Ok. I'm with you guys. Fuck the Republican Party. But we need to have a conservative party and with the inevitable wreckage caused by the implosion of a century old party we'll need to start a new one.

Is that even feasible? Do we abandon the ENTIRE party or just McCain?

Can the country recover from Obama as President and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a 2/3 majority in the house?

What about at the state and local level? Surely we don't abandon that because it would allow them to pass fucking AMENDMENTS at will and we certainly can't have that.

I'm not being devil's advocate. I'm fucking tired of the Republicans. Now where do we go instead?

Let's be honest, a total abandoning of the Republican party by its conservative base would give hyper-majorities to the Democrats and I don't have to tell you what that looks like:


WE HAVE PUT THE REINS OF POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!1111

Oh, I'm sorry about that but it had to be done. Look on the bright side, if you ever suffer from priapism you've got a handy cure.

Anyway, Captain Cheer and Light and the Socialism Brigade can't be allowed unfettered access to the reins of power. That She-Man Capitalism-Hater's Club would quickly get into shenanigans that would be less adorable than catastrophic.

Like I said, I'm all for the deep sixing the Republican Party (I don't draw penises willy-nilly, you know) but we need an intelligent alternative.

What do you think?

P.S.: Yes, I'm still giggling about those pictures. It's like I'm five.

From Hillary! to Hillary?

The "?" stands for "Is she batshit insane or what?"

Her campaign is renewing the argument that if she leads in the popular vote, she should be the Democratic nominee. Hillary is within striking distance of winning the popular vote nationwide -- a key part of our plan to win the nomination," campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said in a letter to supporters Sunday.

"That means we need every last vote we can get in West Virginia on
Tuesday and in the races to follow."

Her campaign is trying to turn out the vote in the remaining six contests, hoping the popular vote argument will persuade superdelegates to endorse her instead of Obama.

This, of course, is not going to happen.

No way, no how. If she takes this to the convention, there will be
riots.

I hope Denver paid up its Police Protection tab.

Update: Looks like she's going to take West Virginia today by a ridiculous, ass-stomping margin. Doesn't fucking matter. At all. This is a state that still elects Robert "I'm a fucking Klansman" Byrd to the senate even though he's well past his expiration date.

Also, unlike Pennsylvania or Ohio or Florida or Michigan, this state is completely unimportant in the general election. It is going to McCain. Period.

I'm am, however, beginning to doubt my earlier prediction that she will drop out of the race due to this little McCain/Feingold caveat:

Hillary Clinton may have a financial incentive to remain in the presidential race for a while. And she has Senator John McCain to thank for it.

Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $11 million in recent months. A little-known provision of a 2002 campaign- finance law cosponsored by McCain prevents candidates who drop out of the race from raising money after the nominating conventions to repay themselves for personal loans.

Should Clinton fail to come up with the funds by the Democratic convention in August, she'll be out the $11 million. If she quits the campaign before then, she may find it hard to get people to keep giving cash just so she can retire her debt.

Of course, if this is why she's staying in it means that all donations from now until the end of the campaign are basically charity to the Clintons. I think you know where I stand on that proposition no matter how much Drew M. wants her to win.

Obama Spins After Defeat

Destroys several towns in bitter, rural Pennsylvania:

You know, there were a lot of folks who didn't think we could make this a race when it started. They thought we were going to be blown out. But we worked hard, and we traveled across the state to big cities and small towns, to factories and VFW halls. And now, six weeks later, we closed the gap. We rallied people of every age and race and background to the cause. Well, actually, judging by the people standing be hind me, mostly white guys in Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts. Whatever, fuck you! I need a cigarette.*

Only the Obamessiah could play a rather sturdy defeat (look at this county map to see how racist and bitter those cousin-fuckers were) as a resurgence. Hell, it was a RESURRECTION! He LIVES! HALLELUJAH! Even in defeat we have scored a major victory! There are no American forces in Baghdad! Yes we CAN! Chains we can believe in!

(An aside: Did you see what Michelle Obama was wearing? She must be raiding Bill Ayers' closet for paisley silk shirts because I don't know where you'd buy something so hideous in the present.)

* I may have made up that last bit.

Joe Biden (D-Chodeslapistan): What's A Billion Dollars Between Friends?

That's how much federal money he wants to spend to monitor Peer-To-Peer networks for illegal activity:

A prominent Senate Democrat on Wednesday said federal and local police should use custom software to monitor peer-to-peer networks for illegal activity, and he wants to spend $1 billion in tax dollars to help make that happen.

At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders.

Things that are easy always cost a billion dollars. You know, like Joe Biden's mom! Hi-oh! (Actually, she was like tree-fitty - Ed.)

So, how are they going to implement this?

Waters describes the system as a "comprehensive computer infrastructure," housed in Wyoming, that grants law enforcement officers a "big picture" of what sort of child pornography file transfers are going on across the country. It's able to help investigators conduct undercover operations involving peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, chat rooms, Web sites, and mobile telephones, Waters said.

Well, I'm sold. I can't even imagine a way in which this system could be used to invade privacy or nab offenders for a thousand other crimes that fall far short of the severity he's discussing here. I mean, when has the government ever taken a specifically granted power and abused it?

I'm all for brutally murdering every child pornographer, rapist and abuser in the world, don't get me wrong, but giving the government a huge infrastructure to monitor your web-use seems like maybe it might backfire in the future.

I could be wrong. Seriously, who else would even be interested in that information? Nobody.

HyperboLefties

Once again, a screeching leftist demonstrates their inability to remember or acknowledge any events preceding the Clinton Presidency:

Let me reassert the obvious here: The war in Iraq has been a disaster, the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made by an American President.

Really? The stupidest foreign policy decision ever? That is a very bold statement considering the competition 230 years of history has provided. Before I list some candidates for Stupidest Foreign Policy Decision Evar™ let me remind you that these wild claims about Bush and Iraq are not intended to be factual or informative but to engender terror in the average American's heart. They have to be made to see just how bad things have become. Joe Klein is not stupid and knows full well that Iraq is a blip of an error(if you believe it to be an error at all) compared to some of the true foot-up-the-ass policy choices that have been made in our history.

Now, without further ado, my list of Stupidest U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions:

• Reagan's Retreat From Lebanon - I think it has become pretty clear over the last 24 years just how stupid this decision was. Terrorist leaders started to build their 'paper tiger' argument about the U.S. on October 23, 1983. I'd rank Carter's dealing with Iran as stupider but it is hard to call his behavior a 'decision.' More like the opposite.
  
  See also: Carter and Iran, Clinton in Somalia, Bush I in Iraq



• Spanish American War - Now, this one turned out okay but at the time had to have been one of the stupider ideas America had ever had. Trump up an explosion in Cuba in order to declare war on a major naval power for the purpose of empire building. This was obviously a great plan because we could really toss our weight around with an empire of tiny islands spread all over the globe. Brilliant.
  
  See also: Mexican-American War (Not so much stupid as just mean!)



• War of 1812 - After just barely escaping the Revolutionary War with our freedom, we decide we need to kick the hornet's nest a bit more and invade Canada. Who wouldn't want to engage the world's largest navy and army in a war? Well, most everyone except us, it seems. As you might expect, we got kicked around pretty well and our capital was burned. While we didn't lose I would be very hesitant to call this a win. Let's call it a tie.



• Johnson's Expansion of the Vietnam War - Not so stupid deciding to expand it as the stupidity of doing so without any desire to actually, you know, win the damned thing. By the time Nixon had the reins, it was clear the country was done with Vietnam and no effort of his would win the war without destroying the Republican Party. Oh well, only millions of people died when we retreated.

Have a better one? Leave them in the comments. I definitely left some room for ideas relating to our dealings with the Soviets. There were too many to choose from.

(h/t: Instapundit)

Cutesy Questions

When did asking a politician a yes or no question become 'cutesy?:'

“I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again,” [Bill]Clinton told some 3,000 members of the American Postal Worker’s Union at a convention.

[...]

“It’s fine for Hillary and all the other Democrats to discuss Governor Spitzer’s plan. But not in 30 seconds — yes, no, raise your hand,” he said.

Forgive me if I lack nuance but isn't the very purpose of a debate to determine in which manner a politician would vote on any given issue? Isn't a yes or no answer precisely what we want and deserve?

When sitting with my friends debating it is rarely that simple as we get into the meat of an issue. There are so many angles of attack you use when trying to find your opinion and while this particular issue would be an easy 'no' for me there are many that I would need more than thirty seconds to explain and end up with 'I don't know' as my answer. That's fine for a moron rube like me.

But I'm not a politician. I'm a moron. Hillary Clinton is running for President of the United States. Isn't it the very job description of a politician to make yes or no decisions on policy? I know this may be simplistic but doesn't voting on a bill basically reduce that issue to a yes or no (wide) stance? Isn't deciding to veto a bill a yes or no position? Is it too much to ask that a politician be asked these simple fucking questions during debates and that they then in turn provide a simple fucking answer? Aren't we owed that? Can't we ask a simple fucking question without Billy Jeff taking time off from banging whores in South Beach to bite his lip and wag his finger at us?

I guess I just have this zany expectation that a politician running for the most powerful position in the world, someone who spends every waking hour preparing and planning for that election, would have spent the time to iron out something as basic as whether illegal immigrants should be given official state documents. Furthermore I expect to not be lectured by a philandering bullshit artist who can't keep his pants because I have the audacity to demand a clear answer to a question a four year old could answer.

Call me crazy.

Freedom of Choice

Megan McArdle is on fire:

Forgive me--I'm about to get testy again--but this thread on 11D really does seem to me to showcase in stunning technocolor the moral bankruptcy of voucher opponents who have pulled their own kids out of failing inner city schools. They have no good answer for why their choice is morally worthy, but vouchers are horrifying; their response to the deep need of kids in failing schools is a slightly gussied up version of "screw you, I've got mine." Their children's future, you see, is an infinitely precious resource that trumps their principles of distributional justice and community solidarity, but they cannot imagine putting the futures of poorer, darker skinned children ahead of sacred principles such as "Thou shalt not allow children to attend schools run by the Catholic Church" and "Supporting the public schools (even when they suck)". I could do a better job arguing against school vouchers.

Indeed, I shall, though of course largely for the purpose of illustrating why I find these arguments unconvincing:

Arguments on taxation and public schools and health care always leave me impotently frustrated. The arguments I receive from the other side tend to be so far from logical that I'm not sure they'd pass a Turing test.

For example, I once was discussing the Bush tax cuts and was informed that the tax cuts disproportionately helped the 'wealthy.' I said, "then let's cut the taxes for the lower guys, too." It wasn't that he disagreed with this that bothered me but how. He had a flustered, "that's not the point" reaction which confused me to the point of ending the discussion. It is as if, to them, the problem isn't that we won't generate enough revenue but that we aren't punishing people enough for having money.

I feelt he same way about vouchers. It is as if allowing other people to choose where their kids go to school somehow hurts them personally. They don't react with logical arguments or lines of reasoning but instead immediately flip the personal attacks button to spray mode. Any discussion of how health care shouldn't be mandatory and universal engenders the same response.

It is as if the thing they truly abhor is personal choice. The personal choice you gain from having lots of money. The freedom to bus your kids to a more distant but superior school. The availability of good health care at a higher price or the ability to deny coverage if you don't want to pay for it. These freedoms are anathema to the left and I just can't figure out why.

It isn't just those choices that they want to take away, oh no! You shouldn't smoke. You shouldn't eat fried food. You shouldn't drink. You shouldn't eat corn. But it isn't enough to acknowledge that people, by and large, make many bad decisions. They need to find a way to prevent it. They need a way to make us all make the same good™ choices they would make.

But here's where I get confused. These people are almost universally the same people that bitch about conformity and Bush-bots and sheeple. They complain loudly that we're all just cookie-cutter versions of each other driven like a herd to consume, consume, consume!

But if that is a Bad Thing™ then why do they simultaneously think we should all have the same health care and the same education and the same diet? Why should we, in effect, all be forced by the state to become the same person?

Am I the only person that isn't getting this? Am I the only one that sees this coming?

I'll leave you with Megan's response to what I'd say is a standard nonsensical statement from the Nanny Statists:

There's no way to assure the quality of private schools Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Seriously? The problem with private schools is that they can't match the same level of quality we've come to expect from our urban public school system? And what else have you learned in your visit to our planet?

I've never heard a better argument against vouchers (Social Security privatization likewise) and that should tell you something.

Turkey vs. PKK

I started following this story a couple of weeks ago and it appears it is starting to have some very serious implications:

Concern that Turkey may attack Kurdish militants in Iraq and disrupt petroleum shipments pushed crude oil to a record price Tuesday, nudging $88 a barrel and extending a rally that has added $8 in a week.

But wait, it gets better:

The Turkish military has stepped up attacks against what it says are Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, bases in northern Iraq. The shelling comes just ahead of a vote in the Turkish Parliament on a bill authorizing a ground incursion against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The military has reportedly amassed 60,000 troops along its border with Iraq. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to refrain from any major military operation. But Washington's influence over Turkey appears to be waning.

Turkey's top general warned this weekend that US-Turkey relations would "never be the same again" if the United States House votes to declare the World War I-era mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide. Despite President Bush's plea, the House Foreign Affairs committee voted 27-21 Wednesday to call the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "systematic," "deliberate," and amounting to "genocide." Turkey recalled its ambassador to Washington last week.

And there's this too:

For the Bush administration the stakes of alienating Turkey are high. Turkey is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 70 percent of U.S. air cargo and one-third of the fuel headed for Iraq goes through Turkey.

It has been suggested that they will remove our access to the critical Incirlik Air Base located in southern Turkey near the Syrian border.

Why has the Democratic congress decided to press the Armenian issue now, when tensions with Turkey are the highest in decades and the stakes even higher?

It is hard to escape the impression that they are trying to set back the good news from Iraq and counter the great successes of the last several months. Certainly, Bush will only benefit from lower gas prices and a successful Iraq. Can't have that in an election year.

Foreshadowing

On this day in 2000, yet another major Al Qaeda terrorist attack was ignored by Bill Clinton when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in the Port of Aden:

On 12 October 2000, while under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold, the Cole was attacked from a small boat by Al-Qaida suicide bombers, while she was harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured. The U.S. government offered a reward of up to US $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of those persons who committed or aided in the attack on Cole.

Yeah, the law enforcement tactics like offering rewards have always been so effective.

Five years later a nightclub was bombed in Bali killing hundreds.

Is There No Intelligence Left in the Democratic Party?

Scarecrow at FireDogLake asks a different question:

The Republicans in Congress have argued that if a 12 year old expresses a view on a public issue, he and his family are “fair game,” allowing the meanest of their supporters to investigate his family, expose their personal finances, publish their addresses and phone numbers (thus implicitly inviting right wing morons to harrass and intimidate these people).

But why shouldn’t that child or any of America’s millions of uninsured children be allowed to speak on this issue, let alone without intimidation? The issue is whether America should expand a workable program that provides health care for children whose families don’t have insurance. Millions of families don’t have insurance but their kids could get necessary health care under SCHIP. Why isn’t any child who receives care under SCHIP entitled to tell Americans that SCHIP deserves America’s support?

So exactly what it is about expressing such an opinion that turns this child or millions like him and their families into “fair game” for mean-spirited attacks, invasions of privacy, public exposure and threatening intimidation?

The issue is the disgusting decision by Democratic political strategists to use a child as a hammer to pummel Bush's decision (for whatever reason) to veto the bill. Once again, they attempt to utilize the absolute moral authority of some victim to demonstrate how heartless our President is instead of debating the merits of the bill.

What really insterests me is why the Democrats are so stupid as to use this particular child in their campaign instead of one the Republicans could never have attacked? Why not find one of the millions of inner-city children with medical problems that don't have medical insurance?

Why?

Because, most likely, those children are already covered by SCHIP. This expansion wouldn't help at all. Instead they parade out a child who's family exemplifies the reason most conservatives are against the legislation in the first place; families that can afford health care but choose not to for whatever reason. It is unfortunate that this child is involved in the debate but the Democrats pointed the laser on him and his family. Of course, this is the family that will be used to fight back.

It is just a shame that the American political system seems incapable of logical debate and needs these show-pieces in the first place.

Paid Writer Writes Things, Gets Paid

This is what happens when, instead of having a thought and turning into words, you start needing words and desperately search for a thought:

Some people base their vote on an ideological laundry list. Other people vote for or against a candidate because of emotional attachment to a single issue — gun control, abortion rights, opposition to war. Some even admit it. But don't expect to hear many people in 2008 say they're voting for (or against) Clinton or Obama for the simple reason that one is a woman or the other is black.

[...]

So back to the question: Should people vote for Clinton because she's a woman or Obama because he's black? Of course they should.

And I should practice what I preach. Both Clinton and Obama are too liberal for an extreme moderate like me, so there has to be a reason that trumps ideology. In Clinton's, I can see one.

I'm prepared to vote for her because I'd like for my daughters to see a woman president in my lifetime. Lord knows how long it will be before another female candidate rises to the top.

Apparently that search ended in failure.

Let me try to sum up this opinion. Even if I do not agree with the politics, or even like a politician, I should vote for them because they are of a particular race or gender?

This is the most asanine bullshit I've ever read. It isn't that I find the opinion odious so much as without any intellectual merit. He claims to be a moderate and yet would vote for Hillary to show his children a role-model? Hillary is a dogged socialist who cynically stays with a politically popular husband in order to get near the only thing that she truly loves; power. Voting for her because she's a woman will only teach his daughters that being female is more important than any action they take while providing a role model that has set back feminism more than any other woman in the last 20 years.

Pathetic.

20% Fucktards

So only 20% of the Democrats think the world would be better off if America lost in Iraq. Well, I guess we're all fine and dandy.

I think I need to start commissioning my own polls. Here's one for you. What percentage of Americans think the world would be better off if all of the previously named Democrats were packed up and mailed to Iraq so they could personally explain their position to the people most effected by their retarded world view.

Seriously, in what patchouli-induced fantasy world does it improve anything when America gets sent packing by a bunch of medeivalist homo-murderers? I can only imagine that their belief is somehow rooted in my favorite of all liberal masochism fantasies; that America is constantly overstepping its authority and deserves some comeuppance.

This leads me back to the hands-down most inane political argument of the 21st century. That whole "just because I never do or say anything patriotic and, in fact, often display measurable excitement at the failures of my country doesn't mean you have the right to question my patriotism" argument. As Jeff Goldstein has often discussed, the left's obsession with gray areas has allowed them to muddy the meaning of words so far that they lack any meaning or depth at all. Patriotism's meaning has been dumbed down to imply anything I insist is patriotic instead of some benchmark of behavior. I mean, they somehow manage to claim patriotic motives while simultaneously deriding any statement or behavior that might, maybe, somehow demonstrate a mild preference for the United States over, say, a country that wants do destroy us.

I mean, I've heard the statement, "the American flag should never be worn or displayed as clothing" while simultaneously implying that it is not only acceptable but desirable for Mexicans or Africans to display colors of countries from which they don't even originate!

I'm just so fucking fed up with this pomo, transnational, we are the world view that doesn't allow people to make such basic judgements as deciding a pluralistic, free country is superior to one that routinely executes non-existent gays as a matter of national policy. Has it really gotten so bad in academia that I have to hear people equivocating sheepishly whenever the topic of national pride is broached?

If 20% of any political party in good standing yearns for America's defeat and humiliation, I dare say it has. And if a party comprised of such worthless Quislings can command the support to control both houses of congress and soon the Presidency, I have nothing but dread for the future.

Exit Question: When did it stop being fashionable to be on one's own team?

(Hat Tip: Dan Collins)