T Minus 381/380 Days

"Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes."

- Ontario, CA, January 5, 2002

A Vote For McCain Is A Vote For Troops In Iraq For 100 Years

This was on C & L, but I had to comment on it.

What the hell is McCain thinking? He'd like to see us in Iraq for 100 years? And he hopes it's okay with us?! And there's Holy Joe LIEberman standing in the background. I'm glad we don't see their faces because I'd probably puke.

McCain: "Make it 100 [years]. That would be fine with me... As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. That’s fine with me, I hope that would be fine with you..."

Gee, John, what are the chances of Americans not being hamed, wounded or killed? Dipshit.

McCain sure does have his fingers on the pulse of the nation, doesn't he?

Music Break! Wynton Marsalis

Marsalis plays "Cherokee."

Will Bloomberg Run?

On New Year's Eve, Michael Bloomberg was asked by New Year's Rockin' Eve co-host Ryan Seacrest if he was planning on running for Prez. Bloomberg emphatically said he had no intention of doing so. But take a look at this video.

And this MSNBC news report on December 30th:

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of launching an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.

It surely seems like an awful lot of of work to be doing for someone who has no intention of running. What a wrench in the works it would be if he did.

Is Giuliani Done?

The 9/11 bloodsucker came in a dismal 6th place last night in the Iowa Caucuses. Let me repeat that: 6th place with a measly 4%. He's already using his fearmonger trump card with the latest ad campaign in Florida and New Hampshire.

He's not going anywhere soon enough, and I know it's still early (i.e. Howard Dean in Iowa 2004) but does he even have a shot anymore?

Steve Benen at C & L tries to cut through the candidates spin on the Iowa results and this one just cracked me up:

Rudy Giuliani — What Giuliani fans are saying: 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! What Giuliani critics are saying: “Frontrunners” don’t come in a humiliating sixth place, with one-third the support of a libertarian gadfly, in a state where he was once in the lead.
Who’s right? Take a wild guess.

I believe Benen is right. It's not like Mr. 9/11 came in 2nd place with 25% like Romney did. He didn't even make a showing. And Rudy fans will say he stopped campaigning in Iowa to concentrate on Florida and New Hampshire. That's all well and good if you look at it through Rudy-colored glasses.

Chances are that the constiuents in Iowa, when meeting Giuliani face to face, saw through his weak, one message platform and didn't like what they saw, heard or smelled. That's the one thing in these early states that doesn't happen anywhere else. It's not like you can sit in the same living room with these candidates three months before their respective conventions and try to make an informed decision by meeting them personally. Rudy is not a likable character and being in the same room with him reveals that.

Also, the fact remains that he had the lead in Iowa. The lead! Rudy was polling at 30% a few months ago. But then he actually went to Iowa. If you didn't click on the link above, take a look at this chart:


Put on your goggles and grab your skis, Rudy, because that purple line is you and it's going straight downhill! New Hampshire is in four days and there probably isn't enough bounce in the Giuliani campaign to make a decent showing even if Rudy had ten pounds of SuperBalls® surgically implanted in his ass.

I may be wrong, but it's my opinion.

Obama's Iowa Victory Speech

T Minus 382 Days

"I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging."

- Austin, TX, January 4, 2002, at the dedication of his gubernatorial portrait

Iowa Chooses Obama And Huckabee

The country, or at least Iowa, wants change. Barack Obama took the Iowa Caucuses handily with 38% of the vote.

Here's the breakdown:

Obama 38%
Edwards 30%
Clinton 29%
Richardson 2%
Biden 1%
Dodd 0%
Gravel 0%
Kucinich 0%

Soon after, Biden, Dodd and Gravel have all announced that they were dropping out of the race.

Obama: “They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned, to come together over a common purpose. You have done what the cynics said you couldn’t do. You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this new year, 2008. We are one nation, we are one people, and the time for change has come.”

Edwards: “The one thing that’s clear with the results in Iowa tonight is the status quo lost and change won.”

Clinton: “We are going to have change, and that change is going to be a Democratic president in the White House in 2009.”

Clinton's quote was a response to the overwhelming numbers of registered Democratic voters that came out. MSNBC was just reporting 236,000+ voters (80% Dems) and counting turned out for the Democratic Caucus; over 100,000 more than in 2004 and more than twice the amount that came out to vote for Republicans.

On the Republican side, Huckabee easily kicked Romney in the magic underpants. Here's how it breaks down on the GOP side with 86% of the precincts reporting as of this writing:

Schmuckabee 34%
HAL-9000 26%
Frederick of Hollywood 13%
Maverick McStraight Talk 13%
Ron "Read My Lips, No Taxes Period" Paul 10%
Ghouliani 4%
Duncan "Why Am I Still Running?" Hunter 0%

Huckabee: "A new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government... It starts here, but it doesn't end here. It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

I do kid, but it really is an historic moment when you stop and think that Democrats in Iowa, with a population that is 97% caucasian, voted for a man of color as their choice to lead the country. Talk about an about face for the staus quo!

Could this really be the start of something big? The turning of the page? Who knows what is going to happen in the weeks and months to come and how this will all play out?

As Arianna Huffington wrote: "...this moment may not last. But, for tonight, I am going to savor it -- and cross my fingers that it may stand as the day that fear as a winning political tactic died. Killed by an "unlikely" candidate -- as Obama called himself again and again -- who seized the moment, and reminded America of its youth and the optimism it longs to recapture. "

UPDATE: Gravel Still In The Race

Commenter Dan brought this to my attention:

MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann has incorrectly declared that Sen. Gravel has dropped out of the race following the January third caucus in Iowa. This is not true, and Sen. Gravel is still an active member in this race. We are requesting that MSNBC and Keith Olbermann retract their statement, and issue an apology to the campaign for promoting blatantly false misinformation.

Again, Sen. Gravel has not dissolved his campaign, and has no intentions of doing so.

I would expect a retraction if this is true and according to the Gravel website, it is. But the language is a little harsh, don't you think? "Promoting blatantly false MISinformation?" I'll let that one slide. It's not like Olbermann is the tool of the Republican devil, and with all due respect to Sen. Gravel, it's been over for him for a while now.

Noun-Verb-9/11 Giuliani Goes For It

Rudy Ghouliani goes for the fear jugular with his new ad, complete with videos of explosions, riots, Osama bin Laden and middle eastern music in the background. This asshole is shameless.

Is Frederick of Hollywood Packing It In?

Leave it to Saturday Night Live to capture Fred Thompson in all his lackluster glory. On October 6th, 2007, SNL's Darrell Hammond impersonated Thompson sending a message to the public assuring them that he badly wants to be President ("On a scale of 1 to 10... about a 6.") Who knew they would be so spot on?
It looks as if the Thompson Train might be going back to the yard if he finishes poorly in Iowa - as if that isn't a sure bet.

According to Crooks & Liars, "Without a solid third-place finish, there’s no point in going on,” a Thompson adviser said Wednesday. “It was an honorable race, and he turned out to be a good candidate. The moment had just passed.”

This coupled with the fact that he recently stated he wasn't all that interested in the Oval Office job makes it pretty likely that we won't have ol' Fred to kick around anymore.

I'm not particularly interested in running for president," the former senator told voters at a campaign event in Burlington, Iowa when challenged by a an audience member over his desire to be commander-in-chief.
...the former actor has criticized his rivals for launching their presidential bids months ahead of his [this past September], and continually touts the fact he hasn't harbored presidential ambitions his whole career.
"I am not consumed by personal ambition," Thompson also said Saturday. "I'm offering myself up."
"I'm only consumed by a few things and politics is not one of them."

If you're not into politics then what the fuck are you doing running for President of the United Fucking States, moron?!

The picture on the right will show you one of the few things I'm guessing Fred is "consumed with."

So much for the possibility of the hottest first lady EVER. It's time she left ol' Fred at the dog track.

UPDATE: Thompson says he's not going anywhere.

According to TPM, Thompson himself says it isn't happening. Here's what he had to say in an interview this morning with KCCI-TV in Des Moines: "That is absolutely made up out of whole cloth," said the former U.S. Senator from Tennessee.
Thompson said a rival campaign was likely the source of that rumor. "Can you imagine such a thing in politics?" he asked.

Well now that that's settled, who's taking bets on Fabulous Fred quitting after Iowa?

T Minus 383 Days

"We need to apply twenty-first century information technology to the healthcare field. We need to have our medical records on the I.T." - Collinsville, IL, January 2005

Mukasey Starts Criminal Investigation Into CIA Torture Tapes

NY TIMES: Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

...In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said they believed that C.I.A. officials had deliberately withheld the tapes from the commission. They suggested that since the commission received its authority from both Congress and President Bush, any deliberate withholding of evidence might have violated federal law.

“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation,” they wrote.

Well, I don't know what to make of this. Is it legit or is it another case of the fox guarding the hen house?

Schmuckabee Crosses Picket Line

What a man of the people. Mike Huckabee is going on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. You remember Leno... the guy who picketed with his writers for about a day and a half, then decided to start his show this year without them. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is appearing on Late Night with David Letterman. Letterman worked out his own contract with the writers.

In the meantime, Schmuckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing a picket line and believed that the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

...On Wednesday, he said he identified with the striking television workers as an author himself and believed they deserved a share of the proceeds from the sale of their work.

Mr. Huckabee’s lack of knowledge about the picket lines outside the Leno show are the latest in a string of missteps that have underscored the ad hoc nature of his campaign. Last week, he made a series of small misstatements about Pakistan that raised questions about his fluency with foreign affairs and raised eyebrows by suggesting that the situation in Pakistan could lead to special scrutiny of Pakistanis at the borders in the interest of national security.

And let's not forget the NIE report regarding Iran's lack of nuclear weapons of which Jeebus Schmuckabee© had no clue 24 hours after the fact. What an ass.

(I know it's past midnight, but) T minus 384 Days: "I believe we are called to do the hard work to make our communities and quality of life a better place." - Collinsville, IL, January 2005

Happy New Year

Well, 2008 is here. Only 359 shopping days until the next winter solstice and 385 days left until Raisinbrain peacefully leaves office. My father-in-law (thank Jeebus he's a Democrat) gave me a George Bush Out of Office Countdown Desk Calendar featuring a daily quote from Mensa Man as we watch with baited breath Curious George take the dead man walking trek out of the Oval Office.

That's right. George Dubya Bush has said at least 312 stupid things that have been used and quoted daily in this calendar (one quote for weekends). I'm sure that he's said 300+ stupid things yearly, but I guess this is a greatest hits compilation. So I thought as a daily post, I'd start each day by sharing the quotes. Enjoy... or be repulsed. Your choice depending on the day.

385 Days Left: " You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." - 2001 Gridiron Dinner

Wishing a happy and healthy new year to all.

New Bhutto Assassination Video Contradicts Pakistan Version of Events

New video from Britian's Channel 4 analyzes the last moments before Bhutto's assassination and the subsquent suicide bomb detonating.

The idea that Pakistan is tyring to pass this off as an accident when Bhutto hit her head on the way back into the car is ridiculous. As far as the US government demanding a full investigation, what are they going to do? Put those that conspired to assassinate her in charge?

Here's the video. Channel 4 Bhutto footage.