A collection of haiku, from readers of various political beliefs, concerning the great event:
Hooray Bill Clinton!
Finally gets a reprieve
From all of the blame
"Shit" says the great man
Remind me again, will you
Why I wanted this?
Jesse Jackson steams,
As the men in black impound
Jackson's ball cutters.
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Baroque Obama
Headline: City-owned cars in Orlando, Florida are vandalized with anti-Obama (and some anti-McCain) graffiti, including racial slurs.
How do partisan political forums react?
Well, at Free Republic, of the 50 comments on the front page of the comment thread about the story, 23 (or 46%) suggest that it was a put-up job by pro-Obama forces. This crew loves the phrase "Reichstag fire."
Meanwhile, at Democratic Underground, as of this writing the comments accuse followers of "KKKarl Rove," abortion opponents, "bible thumpers," members of Free Republic. No Reichstag Fire reference, though there is a Germany in 1927 reference.
Al Gore, I hope you're happy.
Five Thirty Eight, one of the myriad election projection sites around the web, has a piece far more interesting and entertaining than another story on how divide the number 538: the Electric Minor Political Scandal Acid Test.
We all have our biases, and we all wonder how it is that some story we just don't care about, like what's on Obama's lapel or McCain's use of his wife's jet as opposed to her car, takes off on the web while important news like Zimbabwe goes undiscussed. 538 has an explanation for this, and based on about 26 years of watching politics like a hawk I think he's mostly right. The test boils down to:
1. Easy soundbite.
2. Appearance of hypocrisy or other serious political negative.
3. Does it tell us something we just know is true?
4. Is it safe for the opposition to use?
5. Are people bored?
Based on these criteria (more fully explained at 538), we can see why Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem took off. BLACK NATIONALIST OBAMA PREACHER YELLS GOD DAMN AMERICA IN CHURCH ON 911!
Perfect.
But you can apply the test to any of them. WARMONGER BUSH USED DADDY'S CONNECTIONS TO DODGE VIETNAM DRAFT! would have been dynamite, had it not been superseded by something even easier: LIBERAL MEDIA SMEARS REPUBLICAN WITH FAKED DOCUMENTS!!! And so Dan Rather lost his job, and John Kerry lost his election.
In fact, you could probably condense the test even further. Can you put the scandal in capital letters, and if so, how many punctuation symbols can you add before it gets embarrassing? Based on all of this, I can see two potential scandals becoming major embarrassments if further evidence or events warrant: McCain's explosive temper (SHOULD THIS MAN HAVE HIS FINGER ON THE BUTTON?!?), and the fact that surrogates claiming to support Obama are sabotaging his candidacy by minimizing or laughing off McCain's heroism (LIBERAL BRIE EATERS SPIT ON MCCAIN'S SACRIFICE!!!) That or something to do with arugula.
Of the two, I expect the temper to have more legs when it matters. Obama can throw Wesley Clark and any number of idiot bloggers under the bus. His bus has 18 wheels. McCain, on the other hand, has to drive his bus, or someone will have an accident.
Via John Scalzi.
A special thank you goes out to DaveSid in our forums, who provided me with the badges and banners for each faction. To recap, setup and strategy for the Obama-Clinton-McCain three way free-for-all Dawn of War slugfest were covered in the first entry in this series.
Alright, so now you have a sense of who the players are. Now it’s time to see the actual game, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their strategies. But before I drop the science on you, let’s get some things right out in the open.
Focus on the Family chief James Dobson, who will always resonate with me for his assertion that the words "tolerance," "diversity," and "Spongebob Squarepants" are buzzwords that mean "homosexual agenda," has a problem with Barack Obama. Specifically, he has a problem with this statement:
I can't simply point to the teachings of my church, or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Inartfully phrased perhaps, but as I read it, and as he clarifies for himself, Obama means simply that one's religious views should not be the lens through which one interprets the Constitution. Or in other words, that in America the law is what it is, and that it stands apart from holy books such as the Bible, which provide us moral guidance and which may guide our votes and legislative decisions on new laws but don't guide interpretation of the law as it is now written, a view with which I believe Dobson would agree were the book in question the Koran or perhaps A Book of Five Rings.
That isn't exactly a controversial view among lawyers, as Antonin Scalia, a most observant Catholic who's shown no qualms about applying the death penalty, has made clear in interviews.
Yet it is for Dobson, who describes Obama's remarks as a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution." Though I shouldn't, I'll assume that Dobson is not implying that Barack Obama is a homosexual by using the word "fruitcake" in this context.
Specifically Dobson, who also disagrees with Obama's interpretation of the Bible and may have more authority there, says:
What the senator is saying is that I can’t seek to pass legislation that bans partial birth abortion because there are people who don’t see that as a moral issue,” Dobson said. “Now that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution. … We don’t have to go to the lowest common denominator of morality which is what he is suggesting. Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?
That isn't what Obama said at all. Whether it's moral or not to abort tiny babies, Obama, a lawyer, is speaking of a Constitutional right which has been upheld by the Supreme Court in multiple decisions, and, again as I read him, says that the existence, or non-existence, of the right should be found in the Constitution (which can be amended) rather than in the Bible, the Koran, or A Book of Five Rings.
Stick to your day job Jim.
Troll: "A joke disguised as an outrageously stupid statement or question, intended to trap people into believing it is serious." I'll add, a person who makes such jokes, and a person who, using the strawman technique, attributes opinions to others that they have not expressed and do not possess. Taken in part from the Urban Dictionary.
My worlds just collided. One of my favorite columnists at ESPN is the author of Tuesday Morning Quarterback over on their Page 2, Gregg Easterbrook. Am I the only one that didn't know that he is a member of the Brookings Institute, a contributing editor to The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly, and a editorial contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and author of a book called "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse"?
I guess I shouldn't have stopped reading when I got to the "In addition to writing TMQ…" part.
I've decided that I am going to employ Hillary Clinton logic to declare that I am by far the most active blogger, and that since I have the most blog posts on this site, I am the most logical candidate to be declared the Supreme Ruler of Popehat. Explanations after the fold…
I'm not a terribly big fan of Rep. Wexler. But damn did he just skewer Harold Ickes in that meeting. And he also gave one of the Clinton supporters from CA a good smashing. She wanted to know why a full restoration of the FL delegation wouldn't be unifying – to which Wexler correctly pointed out "I wish you would have asked that question last year". Ouch. Her explanation was even more ridiculous "I voted to strip them of 100% of their delegation because I couldn't predict that Floridians would be interested in the Presidential race."
But I didn't know until this day that it was Clinton all along.
We previously covered the news that anyone on earth can create an official Barack Obama blog, and some strange people take advantage of the opportunity. The My Obama blogs are part of a phenomenon known among web cognoscenti as social networking sites. The existence of such sites has been covered in fringe publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Stung by the not-so-tough questions ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked its favored candidate in last week's debate, moveon.org and its fellow travelers are pleading with ABC to show more bias.
Apropos of nothing, the Chronicle's political gossip column has some quotes that a volunteer making calls for Obama in PA heard. Here are the 4 top responses they got when calling to urge people to vote for Obama:
"Isn't he a baby killer?" (In reference to his abortion-rights stance.)
"Gee, I don't know. Isn't he a minister?"
"I don't like his wife."
And of course, "Why won't he wear a flag pin?"
Not exactly the most cosmopolitan answers. I actually like his stance on not wearing a flag pin.
Funny, yesterday I post about electoral pandering, and then I read an article about the 3 presidential candidates taping comments for the WWF's Monday night wrestling show. (I'm not even going to mention Shrub's appearance on Deal or No Deal..) I watched all 3 clips on Youtube, and here are my thoughts.
Continue Reading »
BET founder and Charlotte Bobcats owner Bob Johnson want you to know that Geraldine Ferraro was right:
Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called 'Jerry Smith' and he says I'm going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?" Johnson said. "And the answer is, probably not."
"Geraldine Ferraro said it right," Johnson added. "The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything.
Now Johnson knows all about selling a product by linking it to race, and this may color his views. But those who diminish Obama's performance on the grounds that he's gotten where he is simply because he's locked up the black vote, or simply because of white Democratic guilt, ignore the man's other virtues at their peril.
I can think of several ways Obama distinguishes himself from other candidates running in the 2008 primaries, apart from race and apart from charisma exceeding that of John Edwards (which was Edwards' only selling point), a charisma which is independent of race: He sticks to core principles while reaching out, rhetorically at least, to opponents; up until now he has studiously avoided insulting the intelligence and good will of his constituents; he lacks that Fonzi-like inability to say "I was wrong," which certainly has hurt Hillary Clinton this season; and he is the political equivalent of a judo master, allowing opponents to injure themselves with just a tiny assist from his hands.
The Harvey Gantt approach hasn't worked so far.
Via Pandagon.
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Jan 15, 2009 
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