I GOT YOUR CONTACT FROM A CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE THAT INFORMED ME YOU HAVE THE CAPABILITY OF TRANSACTING A BUSINESS OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE.
I wish to introduce myself to you. I am SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, wife to former deposed president BILL CLINTON of the United States, who has been overthrown by tyrant GEORGE BUSH on 21 January 2001 who has ruled America with an iron fist.
It's really touching: my fellow Obama supporters are incredibly protective of the guy. I know the feeling. Every time it looks like he's face down at the bottom of a dogpile, like during last night's debate, we react as though the end is nigh. But it never is. We're afraid, I guess, that this beautiful dream is going to be ripped away from us, maybe because of how much we like him.
The three presidential candidates each made a televised statement in support of Idol Gives Back, American Idol's annual fundraising drive, which raised around $60 million this week. The statements aired last night, with Hillary first, McCain second, and Obama last.
Hillary and Obama each gave pretty standard "thanks for helping out such a great cause" statements, but check out how Old Man Tone-Deaf started things out:
"American Idol is a lot like a presidential primary election, except for people who live in Michigan and Florida; their votes actually count."
Classy! And his statement ended with this:
"As for me, it's back to work on my new immigration plan. Watch your back Simon!"
Watch the video of all 3 statements below the fold:
The near-certainty of an Obama nomination, and the recent Jeremiah Wright faux-outrage, have both prompted some of my Republican friends to start trumpeting their newfound confidence in their general election prospects.
To which I say, good for you guys! If I were a Republican, I wouldn’t be worried either!
Word on the street is, Barack Obama is the emotional candidate. He's all heart, hope, and big feelgood rallies, while Hillary Clinton is the grownup who won't mince words when she's telling you the weather.
Ironic, then, that when it comes to the nominating process, the Obama campaign is emphasizing reality, and the Clinton campaign is desperately appealing to fuzzy feelings.
It's no secret that George Allen has a little problem when it comes to nonwhite folks. You know; the Confederate flag and noose he used to display in his office, his opposition to certain legislation connected with civil rights, etc. etc.
But it was his recent "macaca" remarks that truly led me to believe he'd be a fan of musical theater.
Mark Green, who's running to replace Eliot Spitzer as New York's Attorney General, blogged about Martin Luther King and wiretapping today (highlights after the jump):
It's time to face the facts: the United States is a one-party state, and will be for many years to come. For those of us involved in elections and campaigns, those of us who bat about strategies and hypotheses and wedges and frames and the like (even in an armchair capacity), it's tempting to look at the 2004 election from a tactical perspective: i.e., we got beat on issues (a), (b) and (c), and we need to work harder at appealing to constituencies (x), (y) and (z). This is appealing because it simplifies the situation, reducing the scope of the next four years to a few small, targeted goals. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're up against. Addressing our electoral troubles with this approach would be like seeing Genghis Kahn's army on the horizon and suiting up to play a tennis match against it.
Blah blah values voters. Blah blah culture war. Blah blah retro vs. metro. Blah blah Brad Carson. Blah blah Thomas Frank. Blah blah Red State reactionaries. Blah blah Christian fundamentalist resurgence.
I know everyone's dividing themselves up into camps. And the biggest cleavage among the kos community right now (as I see it) is between those who believe that we need to ignore the Values-Cultural-What's-The-Matter-With-Kansas voters (the "F. The South" camp) and the ones who believe we need to continue to build our local base in the rural hinterlands wherever possible, and craft a national platform and party brand to that is more culturally acceptable to these folks (the "Values Matter Most" camp).
But both sides seem to be operating under an either/or dichotomy that I think misses the point. Are many of these voters voting strictly on cultural issues? Yes. Is this phenomenon about culture? No.
WASHINGTON - Bolstered by his decisive re-election and claiming a "mandate" to boldly reimagine the role of the church in our bedrooms, President Bush announced today that he was commissioning a new translation of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
The new translation, already being dubbed the "King Bush" version, will draw upon some of the most forward-thinking theological minds in the United States -- names such as Rev. Pat Robertson, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Fred Phelps, Pastor Michael Savage, Friar Bill O'Reilly, Sister Ann Coulter and Gurus Alan Keyes and John Ashcroft have been mentioned as possible contributors.
The Bush campaign is nothing short of a miracle. There's simply no logical or historical reason that Bush should be polling above 40%. That he still has a chance of re-election is a result of many things -- an easily-manipulated press corps, a ruthlessly sophisticated BC04 messaging center, one-party rule, an opposition that has (at times) struggled to find its voice -- but all of these factors shrink in comparison to The Spell.
We're not the party of talking points. But in my secret bizarro fantasy, we'd have a sophisticated operation that pinged a crisp message from online media to talking heads to op-ed columnists to the collective unconscious of the print and cable marionnettes who "report" the "news."
If that were our way, a terrifically potent talking point would be this:
