McCain’s run of bad luck

No, I’m not talking about the NYTimes story today about John McCain’s close ties to a female telecom lobbyist.
What caught my interest while reading through McCain’s Wiki bio entry was the number of times he was involved in a flying mishap that resulted in the loss or near loss of his airplane. There are five all totaled, four of which resulted in the loss of an aircraft and one that was “a close call.”
Not all of these were McCain’s fault, in fact, it’s not clear if any could be directly blamed on him (except possibly the close call incident). But it sure does seem like an amazing run of bad luck for one pilot. How common was it for pilots to lose aircraft like this?

The first incident occurred sometime prior to 1960 while McCain was in flight school in Texas.

During a practice run in Texas, his engine quit while landing, and his aircraft crashed into Corpus Christi Bay, though he escaped without major injuries.

Next came the “close encounter” in 1962:

His aviation skills improved, but he had another close call when he and his plane emerged intact from a collision with power lines, after flying too low over Spain.

The third incident occurred in December 1965:

...he had his third close call when a flameout over Norfolk, Virginia led to his ejecting safely, and his plane crashed.

Then, perhaps the most bizarre and deadly incident occurred onboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin in July 1967:

The crew was preparing to launch attacks, when a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom was accidentally fired across the carrier's deck. The rocket struck McCain's A-4E Skyhawk as the jet was preparing for launch. The impact ruptured the Skyhawk's fuel tank, which ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose. McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, working himself to the nose of the jet, and jumping off its refueling probe onto the burning deck of the aircraft carrier. Ninety seconds after the impact, one of the bombs exploded underneath his airplane. McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel. The ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, injured 62 others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control.

Wow! Talk about bad luck! This guy seemed to be destined for trouble. It makes me wonder if anyone was really surprised when McCain got shot down and taken prisoner just a few months later:

McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids. McCain's A-4 Skyhawk had its wing blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile[48] while pulling up after dropping its bombs. McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane.

He parachuted into a lake where he nearly drowned before being dragged out by an angry mob that nearly beat him to death. He might have died from his injuries, except that the Vietnamese figured out that he was the son of an Admiral and decided to keep him alive so that they could torture him and try and use him as a propaganda tool.

Legislative achievements

Wow. Obama really kicked some butt last night in Wisconsin. He blew out Hillary worse than John McCain blew out Mike Hucakbee. Just think about that for a minute. And then consider that Hillary recieved more votes than McCain and Huckabee combined, and still lost by nearly 20 points. The Republicans better wake up and smell the coffee, because they are heading toward the short end of a Reaganesque landslide in this fall’s general election.
The Obama phenomenon is continuing to surge ahead and it looks like it will finally swamp the struggling Hillary campaign right here in Texas. If Obama wins in Texas, it’s all over for Hillary.

On a slightly different topic, I want to comment about political hit that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pulled on Texas State Sen. Kirk Watson who was on air last night as a surrogate for the Obama campaign. Watson had obviously been prepped with the latest campaign themes to regurgitate in short bursts, but instead got hoodwinked by Matthews who wouldn’t let him talk about those things and instead insisted that he list Obama’s “legislative accomplishments” in the Senate. Poor Watson could only stare blankly because he did not know what to say and had obviously not been prepped for that question. Matthews clearly knew this and made great sport of embarrassing Watson over it.
First, if Watson had been a little quicker on his toes he would have shot back and turned the tables by asking Matthews to list the legislative accomplishments of John McCain, who has been in the Senate much longer than Obama, and has no better track record of authored legislation signed into law. He could have also pointed out that if people were interested in who had the biggest list of “legislative accomplishments” they could have gone with any one of the other candidates with far more experience in the federal legislature (Dodd, Biden, Richardson).
But Obama really does have some “legislative accomplishments” under his belt despite his short time in the Senate. And the interesting thing is that most of them were achieved by cooperating with and co-sponsoring legislation with Republican lawmakers - including John McCain on at least two occassions. Obama co-sponsored immigration reform legislation with McCain. He also co-sponsored with McCain a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Other interesting bi-partisan efforts include the Lugar-Obama act that expanded a cooperative threat reduction agreement to include conventional weapons; and the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act which funded a website run by the Office of Management and Budget where people can see how federal funds are being spent. He has also worked on legislation with Republicans Kit Bond and Chuck Hagel.
I think the fact that Obama seems to work so well with Republicans speaks well of his sincerity in building a broad coalition that can actually change the partisan tone in Washington.
I’m sure the next time the Obama campaign sends out a campaign surrogate on MSNBC, they will be stuffed full of talking points about Obama’s “legislative achievements” and it is probably a good think in the long run that Matthews rubbed their noses in the dirt now rather than saving it for later when it might have hurt more.

Obama endorsement

Is this what it was like in Iowa and New Hampshire?
San Antonio, and the rest of Texas, is being inundated by the political campaigns. We’ve already had Hillary Clinton make an appearance here. Today we have Barack Obama conducting two townhall-style meetings. On Thursday, Sen. Ted Kennedy will be here on behalf of Obama and Gov. Mike Huckabee will also drop in as part of his Quixotic crusade against Republican frontrunner John McCain. Then, on Sunday, Hillary Clinton is supposed to be back again. I’ve also heard that former President Bill Clinton will be campaigning here on behalf of Hillary soon. And I’m sure that is not all. This thing is just getting started with two weeks before the make-or-break primary.
Obama is expected to continue his post-Super Tuesday winning streak today with primary victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Unless a miracle occurs for Hillary in Wisconsin, she will have her back against the wall in Texas and Ohio where she will have to win by large margins to avoid being forced out of the race. By contrast, Obama does not HAVE to win here, but if he fails to knock off Hillary then, it will probably mean that we are headed for a brokered convention and that could end up being a lot uglier than anyone wants to see.
I tried to stay neutral in this race for as long as I could, believing that either Hillary or Obama would make an excellent president. But I don’t want to see anything happen that could damage the Democrats chances of retaking the White House in November. Another four years of the Bush presidency with his surrogate John McCain would be unspeakably disasterous. Our nation’s superpower status is hanging in the balance.
Therefore, I’ve gone full bore toward supporting Obama because I see him as having the best chance of winning the nomination outright at this point, and of going on to victory in November. I’m hoping for a clear Obama victory in Texas on March 4 followed by a gracious withdrawal by Hillary so that the Democratic Party can come together in time to weather the onslaught of political attacks being put together by the rightwing spin machine.

Update:
It looks like Obama is sweeping the San Antonio Progressive Bloggers Alliance here and here.

Meanwhile, the local wingnut blogs have endorsed: Rudy! Huckabee! Fred! Romney! ummmm Huckabee?

Political comebacks

As someone who had written John McCain off long ago (just like everyone else did), I’m wary of dismissing other candidates too early. While it would seem that Hillary is in a heap o’ trouble right now (and indeed she is), things could still turn around for her on a dime as this article makes clear.
Still, the people who are saying that Hillary can win in Wisconsin next week are the same ones who said she could win in Washington and Maine and Virginia, etc. So I’m not convinced, but I’m also not going to write anybody off.

Meanwhile, I love to read stuff like this where the Republican Party realists are forced to face up to the reality of their dismal election prospects in November.
With both Obama and Hillary drawing twice the number of voters as all the Republicans combined in a Red state like Virginia, it is very clear that the general electorate is swinging very heavily to the Democratic side this year regardless of which candidate ultimately wins the nomination.

By the way, Hillary was in San Antonio last night for a rally at St. Mary’s University where she got introduced by County Judge Nelson Wolff. The crowd seemed big and enthusiastic, but that is to be expected in a state that has been starved for some attention from these national candidates. I’m sure a lot of people who went may end up voting for Obama, but just wanted to be at the rally to see a Democratic superstar.
And I think the archbishop showed extremely poor judgement by sticking his nose into it and whining about how some candidates’ views don’t match up to all of the Catholic church’s hardline dogma. It was reported that the archbishop had been prompted to speak by local Catholics upset by Hillary’s presense at a Catholic university. I would’t doubt that one of those people complaining most loudly is my old friend Mark.
I just want to hear the archbishop next dress down Sen. McCain for his support of the death penalty and the War in Iraq. Fat chance.

E-N endorses McCain, trashes Hillary

I just caught up on my newspaper reading and saw today that the San Antonio Express-News made their presidential endorsements on Sunday here and here.

Boy! If it wasn’t alreadly plainly clear which side they are coming down on there can be no doubt after this.
The first clue is the prominent placement of the McCain endorsement on top of the Obama endorsement. Sure, this might be quibbling, but the visual impact is unmistakeable.
Then when you read the “endorsements” the contrast becomes distinctly clear. They practically gush over McCain calling him a “war hero” and “political maverick” in the subhead.
There are no such gushing descriptions for Obama. Instead, they set up a rhetorical trick in the lead sentence saying that “America needs a president that tries to create unity out of diversity...” and then follow that by saying that Obama is “the Democratic candidate that offers the best chance to reach that lofty objective.
In other words, they don’t really think Obama can do it, it’s just that he has “the best chance” among the Democratic candidates (i.e. not Hillary).
By the third graph they jump into the political fray, mentioning that Hillary Clinton is “bracing for the fight of her life.”
By contrast, in the McCain editorial they never once mention the name of any of his primary opponents. Instead, they wax philosophically about how all of McCain’s “maverick” positions will prove to be “attractive points for independent voters.”
The only good things they have to say about Obama are done when making a negative contrast toward Hillary.
The main difference, they claim is that “Obama expresses a message of hope that emphasizes what is good for the country, not the party.” With the implication being that Hillary is doing the opposite.
Then they claim, incredibly, that “Obama tends to falter in debates” which is clearly a matter of perception on their part. Before noting that Obama is a powerful speaker on the campaign trail.
From that point on the editorial deteriorates into what can best be described as an anti-Hillary screed. They bring up the failed health care reform of the Clinton years. They talk about the “polarizing baggage that undoubtedly would hamper a Clinton presidency.” They talk about how Hillary and Bill have run a campaign “that has been, at turns, nasty and undignified.” They mention Hillary’s “win-at-all-cost approach” that “is a turnoff to many voters.”
And they wrap it all up with this doozy:

Obama may have a hard time translating his words into action. But embracing his message of hope and a new approach to American politics is a far preferable gamble than the prospect of another era of Clinton politics.

Sheesh! Thanks for that backhanded endorsement E-N.

We Can’t Do It

Atrios is right. This is wonderfully funny in a scary kind of way...

Inspired by the new Obama video making the rounds on the Web, some talented satirists did this competing video for John McCain.

A bad week for Hillary

Obama swept all of the Demcratic primaries and caucuses over the weekend - Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maine and even the Virgin Islands.
And he is favored in the polls to win in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. this coming Tuesday.
The only thing Hillary did to make news was to dump her campaign manager in the biggest shakeup of her campaign so far.
Hillary’s campaign is now saying that they expected Obama would win all of those states and they are concentrating on the big states like Texas and Ohio coming up in March. But that is not entirely true. It was thought that Obama would win Louisiana because of the large number of African-Americans there, and in Nebraska because of its close proximity to Kansas where Obama is considered a favored son - his white mother’s family lives there. But Hillary was supposed to have a good shot at Washington where she had the endorsement of the state’s two female senators, and everyone said without question that Hillary would win in Maine and that it would at least be the one bright spot she could hold up after a long hard weekend.
But the endorsements in Washington didn’t make enough of a difference and she got blown out in Maine.
Quite frankly, I think Hillary has her work cut out for her if she expects to win this nomination race. Obama clearly has the momentum and the advantage right now. Saying that she is waiting for Texas and Ohio makes her sound too much like that other New York politician who claimed that he would jumpstart his flagging campaign with a big win in Florida. If Hillary doesn’t start to turn things around now, she will continue to bleed support in the other big primary states coming up.
I’m not ready to write her off quite yet, but she is getting close to the point where I may have to declare that it’s all over.

Voters prefer Democrats 3-to-1

This is the most telling result from Super Tuesday.

Democrats turned out more than twice as many voters as Republicans did. Just look at the vote totals recieved by each of the major candidates:

Clinton: 7,347,971
Obama: 7,294,851

McCain: 3,611,459
Romney: 2,961,834
Huckabee: 1,796,729

Clinton and Obama each recieved more than twice as many votes as McCain did and nearly as many votes each as all Republican votes cast period. Simply put, there is great enthusiasm for the Democratic candidates and much less enthusiasm for the Republican candidates. If this trend continues through November, it should be a blowout election regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.

And then they blew it....

Good post over at The Agonist: The influence of conservatives has collapsed, and they have no candidate for president

The conservatives have lost their influence in the U.S., and that loss has been quick and dramatic. There is no better proof of this than having no viable conservative candidate for president.
I don't recall ever seeing an enfranchised political group so quickly blow their franchise. After 2000 and 9/11, I was fully ready to expect that liberals and Democrats could face decades of minority power, like the Republicans did during and after FDR. In 2000 conservatives secured the presidency and both houses of Congress. They re-elected their president by a better margin in 2004, and kept both houses of Congress in 2002 and 2004. They successfully nominated and approved new conservative members to the Supreme Court. They promoted and undertook a pre-emptive invasion of a country on the other side of the world, unsupported by NATO, the UN, or world opinion. They were looking unstoppable.
But the invasion of Iraq was no victory. And as the occupation of Iraq continued with no end in sight, thousands of Americans were killed, tens of thousands were critically injured, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and displaced. The war is expensive in so many ways, and it drags at our economy, at our standing in the world, and at our image of ourselves as a friendly and accepting nation.
So now conservatives don't have a candidate. They really don't. John McCain's record on immigration, campaign finance reform, global warming, and Native American issues has never been conservative. And Mitt Romney's record in Massachusetts is moderate to liberal, no matter how hard he panders to conservatives. In Massachusetts Romney actually approved the first state-wide program for comprehensive healthcare coverage. He also made no attempt to roll back gay marriage in the only state where it's fully legal.
So the conservatives don't have a candidate, and are shut out from influencing who the Republicans nominate for president. They are shut out because they lost touch with what Americans need. They need safer and cheaper healthcare, and conservatives offer nothing. They need solutions to Peak Oil and global warming, and conservatives go into full denial. They need home loan regulation and banking reform, and conservatives turn a deaf ear. They need the Iraq war over and their children and spouses home from it, and conservatives want to keep fighting. They need less government expense, but conservatives have spent monstrous sums on two wars and hundreds of earmarks. They want reasonable and fair taxation, and conservatives gave the richest Americans a huge and unfair tax break.
Conservatives don't represent most Americans, and independent voters and many Republicans know this. Which is why only McCain and Romney are left standing as viable candidates for the Republicans. (Although after Feb 5, even Romney's viability has faded.)
Now Rush Limbaugh, along with conservatives like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, are screaming that McCain has abandoned conservatives. They have got the truth turned around, though. It's conservatives who abandoned America, by forgetting a vision and practice of America that is fair, kind, equable, open, and generous -- just like its founders wanted it.

Making sense of Super Tuesday

Just kidding!!
I don’t have a clue as to what happened last night or why. It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I’m completely confused.
Other than the obvious ones - Hillary wins New York and Arkansas; Obama wins Illinois and Kansas (where his mother’s side of the family is from) - I’m at a loss as to why any of the states voted the way they did.
Overall, it would seem that Obama did exceedingly well despite losing some of the big delegate states like California and New York. But, as Kos pointed out, he won enough of the other states to make California almost irrelevant. In fact, if Hillary had NOT won in California she would have been in trouble.
You could say that Obama won in states like Alabama and Georgia with large black populations, but he also won in lily white states like Utah, Alaska and North Dakota. One concern for Obama is that he seemed to have trouble in states with heavy Hispanic populations like California, Arizona and New Mexico (although it looks like he may have squeaked out a victory in the latter state).
I think Hillary has her work cut out for her. Although she is winning the delegate race so far, thanks mostly to the fickle super delegates, she is almost out of cash and facing an energized Obama campaign that has been striking a chord with a large segment of the population. I guess my biggest fear is that Hillary will ultimately prevail, bloodied and broke, only to face a Republican Party that is suddenly enegized at the prospect of facing off against their favorite punching bag.

Lame Duck Budget

It is hard to look at Bush’s lame duck budget and not be totally disgusted.

But I don’t think I could say it any better than the New York Times did this morning:

President Bush’s 2009 budget is a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president. And even that requires you to accept the White House’s optimistic accounting, which seven years of experience tells us would be foolish in the extreme.

Just read the whole thing.

Bush's Legacy of Deficits

There has been so much that I’ve wanted to blog about lately, but I just haven’t had the time. It’s very frustrating.
Like the story in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal titled “Bush Legacy of Deficits will Constrain His Successor”. I mean, that headline says it all, doesn’t it?

George W. Bush took office in 2001 with budget surpluses projected to stretch years into the future. But it's almost certain that when he returns to Texas next year, the president will leave behind a trail of deficits and debt that will sharply constrain his successor....
Mr. Bush failed to work out a deal with Congress to tackle the spiraling costs of government health and retirement programs. The next president, if he or she serves two terms, could find the U.S. government so deeply in hock that it would face losing its Triple-A credit rating, something that has never happened since Moody's Investors Service began grading U.S. securities in 1917.
As a result, the ambitions of Mr. Bush's successor to cut taxes, institute universal health care or aid troubled homeowners might have to give way to the reality of soaring costs for Social Security, the Medicare program for the elderly and the Medicaid program for the poor.

Mission accomplished!!! Woohoo!!!
This is precisely what the movement conservatives wanted with their “starve the beast” prescription for massive deficits combined with mega-tax cuts. Make it so that future presidents will be “constrained” and unable to push forward with new initiatives.

The president's critics say his failings are twofold: He has squandered surpluses that could have helped pay down the $5 trillion federal debt. And he has let two terms pass without persuading Congress to take action that would preserve the government's social programs. According to the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group, the shortfall in Social Security and Medicare through 2080 will total $72.3 trillion, a number that dwarfs the impact of Mr. Bush's spending and tax cuts.

I’d say his failings are more like twentyfold or a hundredfold. In fact, his “failings” are what define his entire presidency.

When Mr. Bush took the oath of office in 2001, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected $5.6 trillion in federal budget surpluses through 2011. Through most of his tenure, the president managed to have his guns, butter and tax cuts without creating enormous budget deficits, at least as measured by their share of GDP. One reason was a surprise increase in federal tax receipts from corporations over the last couple of years. Now those revenues have flattened out and the economy is teetering on the edge of recession.

Mr. Bush and Congress, meanwhile, increased federal spending by 25% between 2001 and 2007, adjusted for inflation, according to Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation. By Sept. 30, the U.S. will have spent almost $800 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A new Medicare prescription-drug benefit for seniors costs almost $80 billion a year. Mr. Bush's signature tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003, sapped tax receipts and sliced the projected budget surplus by about $1.7 trillion through 2011, according to the CBO.

And then there was this story in the WSJ on Monday: Rising Cost of Iraq War May Reignite Public Debate

Boosted in part by rising fuel prices and the expense of repairing or replacing vehicles worn down by the long war, U.S. spending on Iraq hasdoubled in the past three years. Last year's buildup of U.S. troops -- known as the "surge" -- and the military's growing use of expensive heavy munitions to roust Iraqi insurgents also have contributed to the cost increase. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, the average monthly cost of theconflict -- by CRS's measure -- hit $10.3 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, 2007, up from $4.4 billion in fiscal 2004.

$10.3 billion per month. PER MONTH!!!!! That’s more than $125 billion a year!!!!
And despite all that massive spending, the Republicans still claim that if we pull the troops out anytime before Hell freezes over it will constitute a defeat for the U.S.
We cannot win with this crowd. There is no objective definition of victory that they can point to. So we have these bizarre debates where the Republican candidates dither about who will leave the troops mired in Iraq the LONGEST!!!
Good luck winning the election with that campaign theme.

Obama is a Liberal!! Eeeeek!

Did you hear that Barack Obama is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate? At least according to the National Journal, a wonkish political magazine that circulates mostly around Washington, D.C.

While I don’t have a problem with people being “liberal” per se, I am highly suspicious of this latest designation by the magazine which seems to always determine that whoever is the Democratic Party nominee for president is also “the most liberal”. In 2004, the magazine determined that John Kerry was the “most liberal” member of the Senate.
Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly explains the flaws in the National Journal’s methodology.

Sure, Obama is liberal. I think that is fine. But you can’t tell me he is the most liberal in a Senate that includes Bernie Sanders, the avowed Socialist from Vermont. Plus, there are a number of other Senators who are known to be more highly partisan and ideological than Mr. Obama. So how did he get tagged as the most liberal?
Simple, he spent a lot of time last year campaigning for president and missed a lot of votes. And because the National Journal’s methodology is screwed up and doesn’t account for missed votes, he came out on top. The same exact thing happened four years ago with John Kerry.

But don’t expect to hear that explanation attached to all the media reports about this. And, of course, it will become the standard line in every Repubican stump speech and political ad from here on out.

Rats and sinking ships

The total number of Republicans leaving the U.S. House is up to a record 28 so far. That compares to just five House Democrats who are vacating their seats. In the Senate, there are six Republicans stepping down and no Democrats so far.
Combine that with the fact that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has seven times as much money in the bank as its Republican counterpart (there is most likely a similar disparity on the Senate side, but the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee refused to make its fund-raising figures available) and the stage is set for a very good election season for Democrats.

Dodging responsibility

This rightwing rejection of McCain, while real to a lot of the movements devout followers, is part of a larger practice by the movement’s leaders of always ducking responsibility and avoiding blame.
If McCain had a prayer of a chance of winning the next election, I don’t think we would see this intense of a negative reaction to him from the rightwing base. But because it’s nearly a foregone conclusion that Repubilcans are going to get their asses kicked in November, it is imperative for the conservative movement’s leaders to make sure that it does not appear that the country is rejecting their candidate or their ideas. Thus, this rejection of McCain for being “too liberal” is an effort to insulate themselves from the electoral drubbing that will undoubtedly take place as a consequence of Bush’s absymal failure these past seven years.

Likewise, the movement’s leaders are hard at work trying to extract themselves from the disaster of the Bush years by claiming in retrospect that Bush was not a “true conservative” and putting the blame for everything on his supposed liberal tendencies and, of course, the Democratic Congress which has had only tenuous control of the legislative branch for the past year in the face of veto threats and Republican filibusters.
They have to do this to maintain the myth of superiority and invulnerability that props up their base of supporters. They cannot admit or acknowledge that their ideas have been tried repeatedly during the past several decades and have failed miserably each and every time. So the charade continues....

Rightwing revulsion to McCain

John McCain is going to win the Republican nomination for president and the rightwingers are NOT happy about it.
My friend Nick at Conservative Dialysis had denounced McCain as a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

Texas Fred says “Conservatives have some work to do now, and that work is the job of keeping McCain OUT of the White House.”

Jimmyk is distraught because he believes “John McCain is for amnesty.”

And Owen at Boots and Sabers is prepared to sit out the next election in protest if McCain is the Republican nominee.

I’m jaded.  The McCain surge has me completely disillusioned about national politics.  I can’t vote for McCain.  I won’t. 

Before going poof and disappearing into the blogospheric ether, my old friend Bill Crawford had written off McCain and even when he was starting his comeback, was still convinced he could not win the nomination.

And rightwing radio yakker Mark Levin spells out some of the reasons for the conservative revulsion to McCain.

Update

Texas Fred is now making it clear that he will NOT vote for McCain regardless of what happens:

I will officially go on record, here and now, and I make this a public disclosure to any and all that have doubts as to where I stand, IF John McCain is the candidate chosen by the RNC to run for the White House, I will NOT support the Republican choice, I won’t vote Dem, that’s not even an option, but I may very well be writing in a candidate for POTUS…

And most of his readers seem to agree. I certainly hope that he sticks with his convictions.

Meanwhile, comedian Rush Limbaugh is throwing down the gauntlet claiming that the nomination of McCain will fracture the GOP’s conservative base.

"He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key," Limbaugh continued. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong.”

I’ll have more to say about this later.

Edwards exits, Rudy goes splat!

John Edwards decision to quit the presidential race is really only surprising in its timing. I had expected that he would stay in at least through Super Tuesday to collect as many delegates as he could to use as leverage later on assuming that the Hillary-Obama race goes down to the wire. But instead he has bowed out now clearing the way for a two-person race in the Democratic primary. I’m sure there will be speculation that he may have cut a deal with Obama for a possible VP slot on the ticket. Wil Democrats go with the same VP candidate two elections in a row? I’m quite sure that it will have to go to a white male candidate for “balance” regardless of whether Hillary or Obama wins the race. But if not Edwards, then who?

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani’s collapse is finally complete with his weak third-place showing in Florida. Rudy had been a walking corpse for some time now, so his departure was pretty much a given. Hit the road, Rudy! And don’t come back no more.
Huckabee is washed up too, but isn’t ready to admit it yet. I’m sure the party is encouraging him to stay in the race for now to keep the religious wingnut faction from totally freaking out.
McCain is now the clear frontrunner on the GOP side and could swamp the struggling Romney campaign on Super Tuesday.
Florida was a tough loss for Romney, who finished a close second but walks away with nothing because of the state’s winner-take-all delegate distribution policy. Until now, McCain was lagging behind Romney in the delegate count, but now he is caught up and then some.
McCain’s political resurrection which I predicted back in early December is the most interesting thing on the Republican side right now. But it also sets the stage for a replay of the 1996 election with McCain playing the role of Bob Dole, the war hero and GOP stalwart.

No subpoena for Knoblauch

Chuck Knoblauch has agreed to meet with the House Committee investigating steroid use in baseball and the reported subpoena was never issued.
It now seems as if the whole big fuss made over his initial failure to respond to the committee’s request was much ado about nothing. Maybe he was on a cruise or something when the notice came. Who knows? The point is that all the abuse he recieved - including being listed as one of the “Worst Persons in the World” on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” show on MSNBC - was overblown and unwarranted.

Trusting the people

I did not watch President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night. I usually don’t have time to sit down and watch the TV during primetime anyway since that is when we are in the midst of herding our children up the stairs, bathing them and reading books to them before putting them to bed - a process that generally starts around 7:30 and ends around 8:30 p.m. if we are lucky.
But I didn’t bother to record the speech either, which is unusual. I’m so thoroughly disgusted with and disappointed in this president that I don’t think I could have stomached his final, pointless SOTU address.
About the only thing I was curious about was whether or not Bush could keep a straight face when saying “The state of our union is strong”, which I think is required by law for every president to say at some point in the speech. Did anyone in the audience snicker at that moment?
But now I see today that Bush did not speak those words at the beginning of the address as is tradtionally done. Instead, he saved them for the very end and added a rhetorical twist like this:

"So long as we continue to trust the people, our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure and the state of our union will remain strong."

And there in a nutshell is the entire problem with the past seven years which have been nothing short of disasterous for our nation. Back in 2000, we did not “trust the people.” For if we had, Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote, would have been named president. Instead, we trusted a screwed up electoral college system that should have been junked long ago, and a sharply divided, partisan Supreme Court which foistered the popular vote loser down our throats.
And so, for the past seven years we have had the Worst President Ever, who, in league with one of the Worst Congresses Ever, has managed to shrink our nation’s superpower status by leading us into a quagmire in the Middle East that has weakened our military infrastructure and reduced our standing in the world, while at the same time pursuing a fiscally irresponsible domestic agenda at home that has left us with record deficits and an economy on the brink of recession.
Hopefully, by this time next year, assuming that we “trust the people,” the person giving the next SOTU address will either be Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama, and the person sitting behind the president next to Nancy Pelosi WILL NOT be Dick Cheney.
That, by itself, is something to look forward to.

Blogging pays off

Thanks to a couple of paid ads that ran on my site late last year, I accumulated enough money in my PayPal account to order the Danger Mouse DVD collection on Ebay. WooHoo!
I used to watch Danger Mouse when I was in college. Particularly one summer it became a late afternoon ritual for me and several of my friends (Mark Ude, Mike Miller) to gather in my dorm room and watch DangerMouse, which was then being broadcast on the Nickelodeon cable channel.
Something about the silly British humor caught our fancy back then.