Hillary Clinton never had a better hit-man on the blogs.

I slammed Obama here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and in other venues too numerous to mention.

Now I quit!  

Everybody loves a cheap high.

It may be benign, like clear mountain air or singing in a gospel choir. It may be naughty, like an unexpectedly potent bag of ditchweed. Or it may be evil, like a phony sense of superiority based on lies.

Geekesque's diary about Larry Johnson and the hundreds of recommendations that kept it on top of the recommended list at Daily Kos are examples of the third category: A phony sense of superiority based on slander.

Geekesque calls Larry Johnson a "piece of racist trash," based on weirdly truncated quotes and innuendos, and it's a disgrace to Daily Kos that his diary appeared on the recommended list.

This has nothing to do with Barack Obama. I often criticize Mr. Obama, but on the worst day of his life he still had infinitely more class than the abject Geekesque.

The media have been flooded with paternalistic excuses for Jeremiah Wright, and Barack Obama's was the most condescending of all. First, Reverend Wright was Obama's crazy old "uncle," and now he's a dinosaur mired in the tarpit of segregation:

For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

Poor old guy! He thinks it's still 1951. Don't wake him up!

It just gets worse.

Asked why he didn't denounce the controversial comments when he first heard of them more than a year ago, Obama noted Wright was on the verge of retirement.

Poor old guy! Put him in a nursing home and forget him!

There is no resemblance whatsoever between this miserable picture and anything about Jeremiah Wright that I have seen or read.

Early this morning the pro-Obama diary on top of the recommended list at Daily Kos was celebrating the disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida at the Democratic National Convention. "Delegations from those states should get to attend the convention, but not vote."

"Sounds good to me," says the diarist, Hope08.

2,313,746 Michigan voters voted Democratic in 2004, and now they get no vote at the Democratic Convention.

"Sounds good to me."

3,964,522 Florida voters voted Democratic in 2004, and now they have no voice in choosing the Democratic nominee.

"Sounds good to me."

It sounds good to Obama and his friends because both those states were likely to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Somebody killed Jamiel Shaw Jr. with a handgun on March 2, 2008, just like the 4000 other black teenagers killed with handguns every year in the United States.

Barack Obama's support for overturning Washington's ban on handguns in Heller v. District of Columbia is one of the most important reasons why I oppose his candidacy for President.

I cannot understand how a black man could possibly support a Bill-of-Rights recognition of the individual right to bear arms, which would undermine every gun control law ever written.  
 

It's sort of a paradox that Jeremiah Wright disappeared as soon as he became famous.

If he gave a few interviews, maybe he could answer some specific questions that the mainstream media and the blogs have somehow forgotten to ask Barack Obama.  

What did Barack Obama know about the "God damn America!" sermon and when did he know it?

So far Mr. Obama is very, very vague about what he knew. There were some "controversial" sermons, and some "inflammatory" sermons, and now that Obama has finally heard about them, he "vehemently disagrees." But nobody is asking specific questions about what and when, and Mr. Obama isn't volunteering any specific information.

So maybe if Jeremiah Wright came out of hiding and gave a few interviews, he could expand the discussion beyond the usual platitudes and excuses.

What did Barack Obama know about the "God damn America!" sermon, and when did he know it?    

Any reasonable supporter of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will probably admit that neither of them has much more than a 50-50 chance of defeating John McCain in the general election.  A "dream ticket" including both of them might not do any better, and Obama has already rejected that possibility.

I like Wesley Clark, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, Al Gore, and Chris Dodd among possible Democratic candidates, but of all of them it seems to me that General Wesley Clark is most likely to nullify McCain's only advantage in the polls, on the issue of national security. Otherwise, the voters are either indifferent or confused by policy differences among Democrats.

My own guess is that if Wesley Clark were nominated, he would have about a 70-30 chance of defeating John McCain in the general election.

If neither Clinton nor Obama wins a majority on the first vote at the Democratic National Convention, and the intransigent supporters of neither side defect to the other, then Wesley Clark could be a unifying option for the deeply divided Democratic Party.

Jeremiah Wright screamed "God damn America!" and Barack Obama didn't have the balls to confront him.

It isn't about race.

It's about hypocrisy.

Obama talking about racial harmony AFTER he got caught playing along with Jeremiah Wright is about as dignified as Eliot Spitzer talking about marital fidelity AFTER he got caught with a hooker.

In his nationally televised speech tonight, Barack Obama tried to convince American voters that when Jeremiah Wright screams "God damn America!" in Trinity United Church of Christ, and the congregation cheers, it's just a holdover of bitterness from the days of Jim Crow, just an isolated outburst of justifiable indignation.

But "God damn America!" is a fundamental component of Pastor Wright's world-view, systematically developed in the black power theology of his mentor, Professor James Cone of the Union Theological Seminary.
 

"God damn America!" This is the money quote for the 2008 elections.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Ohio shows John McCain leading both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by identical 46% to 40% margins.

Pastor Wright screamed "God damn America!" and the congregation cheered for "God damn America!" and Obama sat in that same congregation for 20 years and never spoke a word of disapproval until he started running for President.

And NOW after 20 years in the same congregation that cheered "God damn America!" and "the U.S. of KKK-A" and all the rest of Jeremiah Wright's brain-dead hate speech, Obama thinks it’s finally time to speak up! Deny everything!

I never heard those sermons!

NOW Barack Obama "vehemently disagrees" with his hate-freak pastor after 20 years!

Thanks to the tireless arithmetic of David Terr at usaelectionpolls.com for providing a break-down of exit polls in the primaries so far by race and ethnicity.

Clinton leads Obama by 53% to 39% among white voters.

Clinton leads Obama by 58% to 39% among Hispanic voters.

Clinton leads Obama by 71% to 25% among Asian voters.

Obama leads Clinton by 80% to 17% among black voters.

Obama amassed his lead in delegates mainly in southern states where black voters predominate among Democrats. For example, in South Carolina black voters accounted for 55% of the total vote in the Democratic primary.

In Presidential elections, black voters typically make up approximately 11% of the electorate.  

Barack Obama's disciples keep blowing smoke and waving mirrors at the memo written by a Canadian consular official in Chicago, outting Obama's double-speak about NAFTA. But in spite of all the spin and wishful thinking, the memo won't go away.

This spin-doctoring comes in various flavors, the crudest of which is a diary on the recommended list with 500 recommendations on Daily Kos, CBC Exonerates Obama.

Weirdly enough, in this "refutation" of the story about Obama's lead economic advisor Austan Goolsbee talking to the Canadian consul and another consular official at the Canadian consulate in Chicago, the words consul, consulate, consular, and Chicago do not appear.

The "refutation" of a story about the consul never mentions the consul. It never mentions the consulate. Forget about Chicago! Forget about the Canadian consular official who wrote the memo.

Forget the memo!

Please!

Barack Obama's lead economic advisor says that "Obama's tough talk on the North American Free Trade Agreement is just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously."

As reported in the New York Times today, Austan Goolsbee, who has been Barack Obama's economic advisor since Obama's Senate campaign in Illinois, told Canadian consular officials in Chicago that "much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy."

Obama's double-speak about NAFTA was revealed in a 1,300 word memo written by a Canadian consular official, Joseph DeMora, recounting a meeting between himself, Goolsbee and the consul general in Chicago, Georges Rioux.

I've written a couple of diaries that Hillary Clinton's supporters interpreted as more unsympathetic to their candidate than they really were, and some of their comments were harsh, but Ms. Clinton's supporters never tried to shut down discussion by jamming threads with empty comments and even empty titles. DemocraticLuntz is the worst, posting "  " only 36 seconds after one of my diaries was posted, no title, no comment, don't bother to read the diary, and not just for me, but also on a very halting diary by yangwenli, where JeffLieber, kismet, RumsfeldResign, Irishkorean, Hannibal, MKS, and MichaelPH also posted empty title lines or typographical doodads over empty comments.

Hannibal likes this trick so much that on the list of his comments, 14 in a row were nothing but meaningless typographical doodads, many of them clogging a reasonably substantial pro-Hillary diary by ManOverBoard.  

Six months ago, the other passengers on a cruise ship threw me overboard, because my political opinions are so annoying. I washed up on this desert island still clinging to my laptop and satellite phone.

Here I have plenty of coconuts, a lizard for a pet, and after a couple of months I began to hallucinate Pam Anderson. It's fair to say that all my needs are taken care of.

Better still, I have a perfect excuse for blogging: I'm a castaway. I don't have a life.

What's your excuse?

Here's a quote from VirginiaDem's celebration of Obama's "Reagan-like ability to attract his listeners to his positions," which was recommended by about 500 Kossacks:

"There's a Supreme Court case that's going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I've got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably -- it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That's what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that's a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families."

Then came the pivot:

"Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community . . . So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don't think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out -- what are you doing?"

Here's Prez and Lady Day...

Billie Holiday and Lester Young, the real President and First Lady of the United States!

On October 30, 2004, Usama bin Laden released a videotape full of insults to George W. Bush, most of the Old Media immediately interpreted it as an endorsement of John Kerry for President, and it probably cost Kerry the election.

Some of the tape touts UBL's power over his silly little puppet, George W. Bush...

All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make [U.S.] generals race there to cause America human, economic, and political losses...

Some of it has a weirdly Homeric quality...

But the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight...

And some of it sounds like a diary on Daily Kos, to the delight of the media multinationals...

So [George H.W. Bush] took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot Act, under the pretence of fighting terrorism.