Oh, the Irony!

I have a very close friend from high school who now lives in Philadelphia and I go there to visit him periodically, so I tend to keep up on the Philly news. Which is how I discovered Will Bunch and his Attytood blog on philly.com. Now I try to read it on a regular basis, and that's where I discovered this little gem: McCain: Most. Ironic. Comment. Ever.

In a CNN interview late last week, McCain said the following: "...every candidate's wife should be treated with respect, and if there's any disrespectful conduct on the part of anyone, those people should be rejected".

Now there is a noble sentiment from Grampaw McCain, no doubt about it. But I guess it's too fucking bad about first wife Carol, who was disfigured in an automobile accident and consequently was callously dropped, like a hot coal from the grasping hands of recently-released torture victim McCain, who, you'd think, would have at least a modicum of sympathy for her plight.

And that's not to mention his publicly dropping the c-bomb on trophy wife Cindy back in 1992. Now there's some real respect for a candidate's wife.

No kids, Irony is NOT dead. It's not even on life supports (unlike McCain, who was voted most likely to be, within the next 18 months...).

In the words of Mark Twain, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

I'm Voting Republican Because...

No, not really, but there's an absolutely hilarious viral video making the rounds, featuring people who say they are voting Republican because... well, you just have to see it.

Wesley Clark on John McCain -- Must See Video

Here's retired four-star general Wesley Clark appearing on MSNBC's The Morning Joe. It's a must-see video.

Clark demolishes -- totally-- McCain's claim to having the military creds to be Commander-in-Chief. And while he's at it he beats back the Obama criticism on the same topic.

I've met Wesley Clark on a couple of occasions, and he is a brilliant man and a dynamic public speaker (I was an early supporter of his for his run for the presidency in 2004).

Wesley Clark for VP? Obama could do worse.

History Being Made

Today marks the first day that gay and lesbian couples can legally marry in California, and a large number of them wasted no time in tying the proverbial knot.

I say hooray for them, and hooray for California for its history-making decision that a marriage contract is just that, a contract, and the relative sex of the persons entering into that contract is immaterial.

So put that up your nose and smoke it, Mister and Missus Rightwing-Focus-on-the-Fetus-Alliance-Defense-Fund etc. Assholes. You are on the wrong side of history and you'd best just move over and let the real world pass you by.

Of course that's just a fantasy. They are already gearing up for a fight on this issue, probably by getting a ballot measure to vote on in November.

Which is why most gay couples in California are hurrying to get married before election day. Given the vagaries of the election process and the innate ability of the Religious Right to provoke their mindless followers into voting against human rights, we don't know what will ultimately happen.

But in the meantime, boys and girls, enjoy yourselves. You've earned it, you have a right to it, and you should bask in it.

Swiftboating and Obama

Speaking of rightwing slander, I'm glad to see that the Obama people are fighting back against the exaggerations, distortions and the outright lies that are being thrown around the Internets like handfuls of shit at the monkey house. They've set up a website called Fight the Smears and are ready to take on anything that the Rethugs throw our way.

While I'm not really sure how effective it will be -- the people who read and buy into and pass along this crap are not known for being even part-time residents of the Reality-Based Community -- it certainly beats what John Kerry did four years ago to counter the unhinged personal attacks on him.

Which was, if you will recall, nothing. And yes, even four years later, I'm still pissed off about it. No wonder he doesn't want to show up anywhere I'll be.

Is John McCain an Alcoholic Serial Rapist Wife Beater?

No, don't get your hopes up. This is not a scoop. I of course have no way of knowing whether he is or not. But that shouldn't prevent me from asking, in all innocence, the question.

That seems to be the thinking by the Washington Post, a flagship of the "liberal media", and other MSM outlets, including CNN, when they asked "Was Obama ever a Muslim?" Apparently one Floyd Brown, the guy who created the infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988, is trying to one-up himself by making this accusation-disguised-as-a-question about Obama. It's over at his scurrilous and slanderous website, which I refuse to link to, but you can Google it yourself.

It's pretty much been proved to everyone's satisfaction that Barack Obama is not a Muslim (why it even fucking matters is another story, especially since the US Constitution clearly states that there shall be no religious test to hold office). It's one thing to watch these assholes thrash around and make fools of themselves on the fringes of reality, but when the MSM/SCLM gets hold of it and elevates it to national importance, on the pretext of "fact checking" or whatever, then that's something else. And it's exactly what Ole Floydie B. wants -- national news converage. After all, he's pleading for donations on his website so he can put his ad on the air. Without the MSM driving people to his site, he wouldn't collect those ever-important slander bucks.

BTW, no one really thinks that Obama is a Muslim except cretins, morons, assholes and racist bigoted wingnut dipshits -- you know, the Michelle Malkins, the Michael Savage Wieners of this world, the ones who never, but never, say Barack Obama's name without putting the HUSSEIN in the middle of it. Usually in capital letters.

So that's why I have no qualms at all about asking that question about McCain. After all, inquiring minds want to know.

More on the Disgruntled Feminist Vote

I guess there's still a number of disgruntled women out there who will lodge a protest against the democratic process by casting their presidential vote for McCain, in an effort to show the rest of us how they feel about Hillary's loss of the nomination.

Sadly, these appear to be mainly activist progressives, true feminists who would never in a zillion years vote for someone like McCain on the issues. Especially his stance on a woman's right to choose.

And especially when you consider that McCain, during the course of his 1992 campaign for the Senate, in public called his wife the c-word. And this was his "trophy wife", the one with all the money, the one he threw over Carol, his "old" wife for, after he got back from being tortured in Vietnam to find that she had been disfigured in an auto accident.

No, I am not making this up.

Report on the State Democratic Convention

It was my first convention and I didn't quite know what to expect. So I wasn't disappointed. But I can say this: It was long periods of tedium interrupted by brief moments of excitement and angst. It was in some ways reminiscent of the Democratic party in 1968 (yeah, I know that's not a good sign...) in that you had the "old guard" who seemed, in some ways, almost desperate to keep the control of the party out of the hands of those uppity Young Democrats, the ones who came out in record numbers at the caucuses and therefore were represented in larger numbers than ever before at the convention. I don't need to tell you that those uppity youngsters are the future of the party, and we need to encourage them, not try to stifle them.

But I won't bore you with any more details, except to say the the "one person one vote" concept was missing. As were about half of the elected delegates -- there were supposed to be 2000 delegates, and only 970 showed up, along with 250 alternates. So even though all of the alternates who showed up were seated as delegates, there was not a sufficient number of votes to pass any of the requested platform amendments. And that was because of some arcane rule that to pass an amendment, it had to get a majority of the votes from the delegates "to" the convention (as opposed to those "at" the convention).

Which meant that any amendment had to have 1001 or more votes to pass. And since the amendments were, by and large, intended to give the Young Democrats more say -- and more clout -- in the party, the Old Guard was successful in voting them down.

Oh yeah, John Kerry was supposed to be the keynote speaker. Naturally he didn't show up. This is the fifth time I have been in attendance at a gathering where he was supposed to speak, and every time he was a no-show. I'm beginning to think it's me...

I'm Back

And Jesus, what a week it was to be gone! I was out of contact with the outside world for most of the time I was gone, and while I wasn't watching, the shit hit the fan. The Supreme Court decision over Guantánamo, Dennis Kucinich introducing his j'accuse articles of impeachment against Der Monkey Fuehrer, the McClatchy papers exposé of routine torture and death at the hands of Americans against Muslims, Baby Doc trying to molest the German chancellor (again), the untimely death of Tim Russert, John McCain looking and sounding even more out of it than usual, the floods in Iowa, etc etc etc...

I can say, however, that She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and I had a great time on our mini-vacation. We watched the laser light show on the spillway of the Grand Coulee Dam, dug fossils out of a 50-million-year-old lake bed in Republic, saw a moose in a mountain lake northeast of Colville, got ticks on us from walking in the woods, and finally attended the Washington State Democratic convention in Spokane.

Going Dark Again

Okay, kiddies, I'm off for a minivacation in the wheat fields of Eastern Washington State, prior to the state Democratic Party convention in Spokane this coming weekend.

See you all when I get back. And thanks for reading.

--The F Man

Already it's Begun...

It didn't take long for some disgruntled Hillary supporters to put up a website for something called The National Organization of Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McCain (Google it yourself if you want to see it, or click on the link in the story -- I don't want to give them a free link).

So the joker behind it is a rancher down in Texas. Yeah, right -- a Texas rancher supporting Clinton.

Well, it turns out that the guy appears to be for real, and is registered as a delegate to the Texas Democratic convention.

So what's really behind this? I'm sorely tempted to say that it's the Rethugs up to some more of their dirty tricks, and despite the fact that this guy claims to be a Democrat, he's been a McCain stalking horse since the beginning. Don't forget that it was Texas that profited hugely from drug addict pimple-assed Rush Limbaugh's anarchistic plan to stuff the ballot boxes with Rethug votes for Hillary. This guy could be a direct recipient of that movement.

Right now he's claiming some 5000 members. Wow, I'll bet the Obama camp is shaking in its collective boots over that number.

But watch for more of this crap as the season wears on. I think this is just the opening salvo in what will prove to be a long and depressingly angry campaign.

Still Not Convinced?

Are you still not convinced that a McCain presidency would be the "third term" of Der Monkey Fuehrer?

How about this story from one of McCain's top advisers, who wrote in the ultra rightwing National Review, that Grampaw McCain says that "neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001"...

Well, how about that? Especially since a short six months ago, McCain took the exactly opposite tack in a Boston Globe interview: "There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is."

Jesus, why can't this guy get his stories straight? Or at least his answers. And can you believe that just four short years ago, John Kerry was vilified for being a "flip flopper".

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation:
2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 28652888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952 3960 3974 3987 3992 4004 4032 4036 4052 4073 4077 4080 4092

Total coalition forces dead: 313
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2446
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1905
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1854
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 837
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 673

It is still 239 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information--outside the administration."

Chicago, Sept 30, 2003

Two Words: Supreme Court

We can't emphasize this enough. I saw a blatantly gay man at a Hillary rally come right out and say if "they" steal the nomination from Hillary, he will vote for McCain. There are some ardent feminists who believe that Hillary lost the nomination because of ingrained misogyny, and they are going to vote for McCain, to "send a message".

People, people, people. Don't do it. If Grampaw McCain wins this election, he will have the chance to appoint two -- and worse-case scenario, three -- Supreme Court justices.

He's already said that he will appoint judges in the mold of Antonin "Tony Quack-Quack" Scalia. So here's an analysis of what Tony QQ really believes, from Michael Dorf over at Findlaw.com:

Scalia claimed that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment should not be construed to forbid government from favoring "religion over nonreligion." Justice Scalia has made this point before, both on and off the bench, and he may be correct when he says, as he did before Agudath Israel, that such a prohibition "does not . . . represent the American tradition," but only if one excludes from that tradition the last forty years of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
[...]
However, when one closely examines what Justice Scalia means by non-sectarianism, it turns out to be non-sectarianism among monotheistic religions. He says so explicitly in McCreary, and not just as a matter of what the Founding generation believed. Justice Scalia writes of Twenty-First Century America: "The three most popular religions in the United States, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—which combined account for 97.7% of all believers—are monotheistic." Because the holy books of all three of these faith traditions say "that the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses, and are divine prescriptions for a virtuous life," Justice Scalia concludes that "publicly honoring the Ten Commandments . . . cannot be reasonably understood as a government endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint."
Justice Scalia does not say exactly why the number of adherents to a particular religion is the measure of sectarianism, but even if it is, note that according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, taken together, American Buddhists and Hindus outnumber American Muslims. Hinduism is expressly polytheistic while neither Buddhism nor Hinduism regards the Ten Commandments as a holy text. And that is to say nothing of the four million atheists and agnostics, or the more than six million unaffiliated secular Americans, identified by the Pew Forum survey.

Go read the rest of it. It's a bit scholarly, but it is still incisive and to the point.

When you get right down to it, there is so little standing in the way of this nation becoming an American-Taliban-based theocracy.

A McCain victory would push us so much farther down that road that we may not be able to come back.

Here's What We're Up Against

This is the email that got sent out immediately after Barack secured the nomination. No, I'm not on this list, but a friend of mine is, as a "stealth recipient".

And so it begins...

Dear Rethug Moron:
Barack Obama wrapped up the Democrat presidential nomination last night.
The liberal special interest money machine is already rallying around their presumptive nominee.
Big Labor, Trial Lawyers, MoveOn.org and other radical protest groups have pledged to spend at least $750 million to defeat Republicans and elect liberal Democrat Barack Obama president. One union head has said, "Losing is not an option, so money is not an object."
These leftist special interests expect payback in the form of passing their tax-and-spend, ultraliberal agenda if the Democrats seize complete control of the government. And since he is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, they know Obama will succumb to their demands.
On top of what the left-wing establishment plans to spend, Obama has raised more than $277 million during his campaign. And tonight he plans to add to his campaign coffers by hosting a fundraiser in New York City to celebrate his victory.
We can overcome the Democrats' mountains of campaign cash and elect John McCain and Republicans at all levels committed to lower taxes, a strong national defense, limited government and individual freedom. But we need your help to do it, Rethug Moron.
We already know Obama's vision for the future:
a.. Implement massive tax increases that punish hardworking American families in order to pay for new government bureaucracies;
b.. Government takeover of our health care system;
c.. Sit down for talks in his first year with tyrants like Cuba's Castro and Iran's Ahmadinejad without any preconditions; and,
d.. Raise the white flag of surrender in the war against radical Islamic extremism and cut off funding for our men and women in uniform.
We cannot allow a return of the high taxes, big government, and weakened national security style of governing Barack Obama embodies.
Please make a secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $25 to help the RNC provide all our Republican candidates -- from the Courthouse to the White House -- with the resources they need to win.
Your help is vital. America's security and prosperity are at stake if left-wing extremists get their way and Barack Obama is our next president.
That's why I hope you will take a moment right now to make a secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $25 to help fully fund the campaign programs and spread our message of reform and renewal to voters. Thank you.
Best Wishes,
Robert M. "Mike" Duncan
Chairman, Republican National Committee

Okay, so there you go. That's what we are up against, so I encourage all of you to donate as much as you can spare to the election of Barack Obama, and not only that, but contact your local Democratic Party HQ and volunteer your time to canvass your neighbors, make calls from phone banks, wear pins and bumper stickers, and do everything you can to defeat the Rethugs this fall.

This is the most important election of your lifetime -- it's the most important election of MY lifetime (which is most likely longer than yours...). Don't let the Rethugs steal it again.

Now it's Time to Attack McCain

I was more than a little disappointed with Hillary's non-concession speech last night, but I'm willing to overlook my own shortcomings in the Clinton Department -- as I would have been had she actually secured the nomination -- and encourage us all to struggle together and work hard to overcome our real enemy, John McCain.

After a few days I hope that cooler heads will prevail in the Clinton camp and that they will all come to the realization that our interests lie in overcoming the Rethugs in November.

Remember, this is a political party that will do anything -- literally anything -- to secure victory in a presidential election. Only by turning out Democrats in such overwhelming numbers to vote for Barack Obama will we be able to overcome the election fraud and the voter caging and the thousand other dirty tricks that the Rethugs are so professional at.

So please, all of you Clinton supporters: Go ahead and grieve for a little bit, but then let's all pull together to defeat McCain.

Or, in the last words of labor activist Joe Hill, "Don't mourn -- organize!"

The Way It's Supposed to Work

It's a sad commentary on the state of our national media, when a comedy show has to demonstrate what used to be standard operating procedure for talking-head journalism.

I am speaking of course, about yesterday's Daily Show, wherein Jon Stewart takes Little Scotty McWeewee to the woodshed over whether the revelations in his new book proves intentional lying on the part of the whole BFEE power structure.

It's definitely worth watching. Check it out here for Part One and then here for Part Two.

Thank the whatevers that we have Jon Stewart. If it weren't for him, some of these questions just wouldn't get asked. Probably wouldn't even have been thought of. And that's the sad commentary.

Barack Seals it Up

According to an AP story today, Barack Obama has enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.

Of course the die-hard Clinton supporters are still fighting it, but it looks to me like it's a done deal. Now we have to find a way for us all to work together against our common enemy, John "Grampaw" McCain.

I heard several whiny bitter people on talk radio today insist stridently that they will never vote for Obama. Instead they want to write in Hillary, to "send a message".

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The only "message" they'll be sending is that of a spoiled toddler who wants to take your toys and go home. Like that crazy granny at last weekend's Democratic Rules Committee meeting.

Oh, yeah, they'll be sending another one as well: A vote not cast for Barack Obama is a vote for a McCain victory and the continuation of the Bush "Third Term".

If that's what you really want, then go ahead and do it.

Just remember the old saying, "Be careful what you ask for..."

I'm Back...

And, in the words of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, "I'm feeling much better now"...

But man oh man, did a bunch of weird shit happen while I was away. Scotty McWeewee's almost-mea-culpa, Hillary's constantly-changing "fuzzy math" over the delegate count and her campaign throwing a tantrum over the democratic process in Michigan, Grampaw McCain having so many "senior moments" -- now he's up to three or four per day! -- that I'm thinking he's gone over the edge into full-blown senility, former senator Phil "I-Look-Like-A-Thumb-Only-Dumber" Gramm (R-Texas Windbag) surfacing in yet another in a long line of lobbyist problems for Grampaw Mac ... well, the list goes on.

For those of you who are interested, I am now officially a non-smoker. Yeah, I know, it's probably too soon to count my chickens, etc., but thanks to a helpful cocktail of high-test psychoactive drugs (ingredients on request), I was able to whip my addiction in record time and now I am, as "they" say, tanned, fit, rested and ready.

With the caveat that I will also be MIA for about a week, more or less, surrounding the weekend of June 14-15 -- that's the weekend of the state Democratic Party convention. I am an Obama delegate to the state convention as well as the Third Congressional District caucus (where, you may recall, I stomped Ted Danson's ass in the ratings...), and that duty requires my presence all the way across the state, in Spokane. So we're making a mini-vacation out of it and we're going to do some fun things, such as digging for fossils at the Stone Rose Center in remote Republic, Washington, and watching the laser light show on the spillway of the Grand Coulee Dam.

Nevertheless, I'm back and I'm ready. Let the games begin. And a huge thank you to all of you who offered words of encouragement and support. It really means a lot.