Blam! Kapow! Splat!

Anyone wondering what the real legacy of George W. Bush will be (I mean apart from the Iraq war, of course) need look no further than yesterday's ruling by the Supreme Court on the newest interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

Because Justices Roberts and Alito are on the bench- both courtesy of George and his willing accomplices in the Senate- the Court reversed nearly seventy years of precedent and basically told America to stock up on ammo and get ready for a dad-gum shoot 'em up.

The rulings of the Roberts court have been simply breathtaking in their stupidity, cruelty and complete lack of justice. Ironically, Chimpy tells us that the thing he hates the most about the Judicial branch are the "activist" judges who create law from the bench instead of merely interpreting it. Well, excuse me, but could you please point me toward a less "activist" court than the one presided over by Roberts?

Let's just review the past couple of sessions by this court, shall we?

From abortion rights, integration, affirmative action, voting rights, campaign finance laws, cutting off employment sex discrimination claims, even cutoff dates for filings, the Roberts court has consistently decided (usually in a 5-4 vote) to overturn precedents, find on behalf of the government or the corporation involved, dismiss issues important to everyday Americans and, over and over again, to take a huge jump to the right.

Antonin Scalia, that piece of slime, is having a great year.

And now this. More guns! In cities! Isn't that just what we need, folks?

Thanks, Chimpy. It's gonna take us years to undo what your idiot justices have wrought. Thanks a whole freakin' lot.

Asshole.

The Polls

Lotsa new polls coming out, all over the country, most of which are showing Obama with a slight (or sometimes HUGE) lead over McCain. On this subject, I have exactly two things to say:

1) Isn't that nice?
2) It doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

Polls are comforting but, as we all know, the popular vote in this country means doodley-squat. It doesn't matter if, say, a million more Americans dig Barack than dig Mean Ol' Man McCain. Because all Johnny needs to do is win the Electoral College votes to win. And that means Barack has to do very well in the states that liked Gore and Kerry AND he has to do well in states that went for the Chimp.

The bad news? Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida could tip red. Obama is making inroads toward capturing the blue-collar vote, but he isn't nearly there yet. Without those voters, these three states could very well drift to McCain.

The good news? North Carolina, Mississippi and...our very own Colorado. Traditionally red states that, thanks to the vast outpouring of black voters and the changing political landscape (the "Obamacans"), could very well go blue in the fall.

So forget about national polls. This is a ground war. It will be fought on the local level. And it will require vast amounts of money to cover the right-wing onslaught that is sure to come.

LOTS of disinformation out there about Barack (he's a Muslim...scary!....He's unpatriotic!... He was sworn in on the Koran!....He hates the flag!....He has black children!....wait, that last one is right). We've got to counter the smear machine that is currently being re-tooled and revved up.

Let's get to work.

Excited

I learned that the Obama campaign finally shipped me the sweatshirt and yard sign I ordered.

I know, I know. Silly. But I can't wait. There's a guy down my block who STILL has a Bush/Cheney O4 poster in his window and I want to put up my Obama yard sign just to frost his ass.

He's a nice enough guy, I suppose (my neighbor, I mean) but...after the developments over the past four years? Dude, take down the sign. You're embarassing yourself.

Iowa

I would like to start off by saying that I realize, as I think I should, how blessed my life is. I have a wonderful wife, two astonishing daughters, a robust career and a pretty cool little house. That is why these pictures from Iowa are so devastating.

I cannot imagine, in my wildest nightmares, what these people must be going through. Hell, if I lost my friggin' iPod I'd be over the moon with anger. But my whole house? Puts things in a little perspective.

No political commentary here. Bush didn't cause the floods nor did FEMA pull a Katrina in Iowa. This is just nature, at its worst, making a lot of people miserable and ruining thousands of lives.

Horrible.

God look after these fine people.

The Veepstakes, III

Oh, forgot to mention: I'd take Al Gore in a minute, too.

Webb is probably better, politically (Al has his baggage, too), but I just love Gore.

LOVE him.

Full Metal McCain

A long time ago, I ranked my favorite columnists. They were, in no particular order, Frank Rich (NYTimes), Hendrik Hertzberg (New Yorker), Garrison Keillor (syndicated in my Chicago Tribune), Paul Krugman (NYT) (mostly, but his Obama bashing during the primaries really got on my nerves), Hunter (Daily Kos, always a hoot) and a few others.

But for bare-knuckled, balls-to-the-wall, kick-ass reportage, you gotta go with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. Here's his latest.

The Veep II

And we have a winner!

Yes, I want Jim Webb. What's not to like? He's tough, smart, has a kid in Iraq, takes zero crap from the Bushies, comes from the lovely state of Virginia and he'll rip McCain's #2 a new one.

Hillary? Nope. Too much baggage there.

Biden? Too Northern and too liberal (not for me, for the electorate).

Hagel? Too....right-wing.

Richardson? I'm sorry, we can't have an all-brown ticket. We just can't. If that sounds mean, I apologize, but...there you go.

Sibelius? Gee, that rolls right off your tongue, doens't it? "Obama-Sibelius." Yeesh. Not since "Gore-Lieberman" has there been a more inspiring name pairing. (I know, the names shouldn't matter. But they do.)

Edwards? Not in a million years. Been there, lost that.

I'm for Webb. Caught him on the Daily Show last week. He's a keeper.

The Veep

Okay, it is time to address the running mate question. And one thing must be said from the outset:

Nobody knows nothing.

I remember when Al Gore announced that he was picking Joe Lieberman as his veep-to-be and I thought, "You've got to be out of your mind." I didn't know much about Joe, though, so I reserved my judgement until I found out more about the guy. After I find out who he was and what he could bring to the ticket, I thought, "You've got to be out of your mind."

Of course, Lieberman is not the reason Gore didn't become President. For that, you can thank guys like Jim Baker, Roger Stone and Antonin Scalia, among many others. But it does point up how important it is to choose a solid running mate.

Let's take John Kerry's choice, for example. Edwards was a great pick, it seemed, because he was smart, good looking, Southern, eloquent and hopeful. The trouble with Edwards, though, was that he wasn't the attack dog that Kerry needed. Which brings me to what I will call "Kevin's Theory of Vice Presidents." It goes a little something like this:

When you're running for President, you've got to be inspirational. You carry the banner of the party and it is key, when doing so, to keep a big ol' smile plastered on your face. The future is bright. America is great. I've got great plans for all of us. I want to bring us all together. "Morning in America," if you will. Being mean, nasty and too-tough is not your job, Mr. Nominee. That's someone else's job.

Enter the V.P. nominee. Here, you need someone who will bring the nasty. Someone who will shake things up without muddying your sunny message. When the V.P. debates arrive, you want a guy/gal who will go toe-to-toe with the GOP nominee and rip him a new one. The standard bearer, in this case, is Lloyd "You're no John Kennedy" Bentson, but Al Gore did a hell of a job, too.

Lieberman? Nope. He played nice-nice with Dick Cheney, for God's sake. Edwards? Even nicer. I mean, here you have a villain right out of the Batman comics sitting across the table from you and you don't pull out the big rhetorical guns and let him have it? A wasted opportunity both times.

So who's going to be Mr. or Ms. Tough this time around? Who's the candidate who can stare down McCain's running mate and hand him his own ass on a platter after the V.P. debates?

Who you gonna call?

For me, there's only one answer at this juncture. See if you can guess who it is...

More later. Let the games begin!

More On the FOH's

Kelli, a regular commenter here in our little hood, is exactly the kind of person I was hoping would bring some insight regarding the Clinton Community and how to win them over.

It appears that Barack (and his supporters) have quite a bit of work to do. The first, I can see, is to heal some wounds. Apparently, the polly-tickin' got awful personal for the HRC fans and there are more than a few that are not willing to let bygones be bygones.

But here's the thing: as far as the candidates themselves go, I think Hillary ran a much, much dirtier campaign than Barack. Examples include her "Shame on you" rant with a handful of brochures; Bill's suggestion that, hey, Jesse Jackson won South Carolina, so big deal, another black guy won; her mocking "the sky will open up" taunt; when asked if he was a Muslim, her denial had to include "as far as I know,"; her claims that the only two candidates with enough experience to be president were her and....John McCain; her attempt to change the DNC rules in Florida and Michigan purely for political gain; her comments that only she could win over "hard working voters, white voters,"....the list goes on and on.

Hillary turned this campaign ugly, in my opinion. If you disagree, I'd appreciate some examples of where Barack was out of line. Not his supporters- the candidate.

He was cool, gracious and focused. And that's why he won.

Now, for my part, I got pretty pissed at Hillary and (because I have blog and all that), I let loose some of my vitriole on-line. And, yes-indeedily-doodily, I even linked to a video that cast Hillary Clinton in the role of Adoph Hitler. Yowza! Was that nice?

No, it wasn't. Was it funny? Well, yes. But nice it wasn't. And I even said so when I linked to it.

But the fact that someone had seen Hillary's apparent bunker mentality and applied it to the most famous bunker-dweller in history....well, that was pretty clever, I thought. (Not thinking how it would appear to the other side, of course.)

At any rate, there are some bridges to repair, right? And some voters to win over.

So...what next? Well, in my opinion, now that Hillary is out of the race, the question is no longer one of "experience vs. not-enough-experience." It just isn't. Because if that's your only yardstick...John McCain is the next President of the United States.

No, the question has to be: Which of these candidates best reflects your hope for the future? Whose policies are most closely aligned with your political philosophy? Who do you want appointing the next three Supreme Court Justices? Who do you trust to be the most trustworthy steward of our environment, the global warming crisis, our foreign relations, our economy, our plans to reduce unemployment, police the corporations and repair our damaged relationship with the rest of the world?

If the answer to the above question is John McCain, then let me be the first to say: vote for him. If the answer is Hillary Clinton, too bad. Because if the answer is Hillary Clinton, you MUST vote for Barack Obama. Their policies are virtually identical.

It will be difficult for some of the angry FOH's to jump on the Barack bandwagon. I get it.

But here's your invitation:

Get on board. Make some history. Win back the White House. Kick some GOP ass.

C'mon. It'll be fun.

Winning Over the FOH's

The Friends of Hillary, about 18 million strong, are none too happy.

Hillary did more than they could possibly have asked to claim the Democratic nomination, including fighting what she knew was a losing battle in the final few weeks of the primaries, blowing untold millions of her own dollars on said losing battle and vowing to fight, fight, fight!

And fight she did. It was an astonishing display of toughness, hubris and gumption. But now it's over. The dust settled, Obama was the victor and Hillary, as she should, asked her supporters to unite behind Barack.

And they turned around and told Hillary to go stuff it.

I've taken a little trip down blogosphere lane to see how the Hillary supporters are taking her withdrawal and, boys and girls, it is ugly out there. One after another, these people- once proud Hillary backers and supporters of virtually the same policies that Barack Obama believes in- are almost unanimously coming out in support of John McCain.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Part of it, I'm sure, is anger. Hillary was going to be the first woman nominee and....now she's not. That's gotta hurt. Some of it may be the "experience" issue. She was ready, they felt, and he is not. Okay.

But to turn around and vote for John McCain? That's just bitterness. Spitefulness. It is beneath contempt. And, what is more, it is against their own self-interest.

If these men and women, who supported Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency, really believe in the policies she espoused, they should never EVER think of voting for John McCain, whose policies, with very few exceptions, are accurately described by Barack Obama as George W. Bush's third term.

It's early. We have five months to win these people over to our side. But they had better cool it on the anti-Barack vitriole. It's very, very disturbing.

Republicanism Explained

In case you missed it, there was a wonderful article in the New Yorker last month (don't you love paragraphs that start like that?) about the fall of the conservative movement. You can find it here and it will (mostly) cheer your heart. (What makes it even more enjoyable is that the author, George Packer, gets conservative columnist and all-around nimrod David Brooks use the f-word. Cracks me up.)

For me, though, the key section in the article is where Packer points out the fact that, now that the GOP has successfully cut taxes to the bone and attempted (but failed) to make government smaller, they have a big problem: they don't know what to be for. The problem, really, with Republicans is that they're real, real good at being against stuff, but supporting things-programs, initiatives, new ideas, etc.- is just not in their DNA.

It is a political philosophy grounded in anger. They look at "big government" and they get mad. They see tax rates that they perceive to be too high and they get pissed. They hear tell of an abortion doctor and they get armed. Mention that a gay couple might want to have the same right to marry as every other American and they get very freakin' upset.

But ask them what they actually like about governance? No sound but the lonely crickets.

Along this same line, I heard an NPR program the other night when I was driving home from rehearsal and it was very telling. Neal Conan was taking phone calls after Obama claimed the nomination and this really nice guy, a Republican, came on the line to say why he was planning to vote for Obama in the Fall. He said (much like Barack's wife Michelle) that Obama made him proud to be an American for the first time in a long time. That Obama was inspirational. That he really felt a kinship with Barack.

Then he went on to explain his own philosophy and here is what stuck out. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is the gist: "You know, I'm a lifelong Republican. A lifelong conservative. I believe in....well, I'm against abortion. And I'm against gay marriage. But despite my disagreements with Senator Obama, I'm going to vote for him in November."

Catch that? Not what he's for. That doesn't explain his political leanings. His party is defined solely on what they are against.

Kinda sad, innit?

It Begins

With Hillary's too-long-delayed concession this coming Saturday, we can finally put the primary season behind us and focus on the real job at hand: the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Think that's gonna be easy, do you? Think again.

Yes, we made history by nominating the first black man to become the nominee on a major party ticket and you can bet that we chose the right person for the job. But the next step is to convince the non-believers and, as John McCain might say, my friends, this is where the real work begins.

You might think "Hey, after eight years of Bush, there's no way we can lose this thing." Well, sure we can. We're Democrats, after all. Losing major elections is a skill that we have honed to a fine point. So how do we get him elected?

First, let's be realistic. By nominating a black man (and yeah, I said "black" instead of "African-American"- you got a problem with that?), we have completely changed the electoral map. Some states that normally trend blue-ish (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and even Ohio) are now seriously in play thanks to the white, working class voters who think Barack is scary. Barack will do everything in his power to win over these fine people but it will be an uphill battle.

On the flipside, some states that have been reliably red (North and South Carolina and even Texas) could potentially flip to blue thanks to black voters and the "Obamacans" (Rebuplicans who are sick of the current administration and are willing to vote for change).

Put it all together, and you're talking about one hell of a general election campaign. Can't wait.

A final note: if you've been waiting, like I have, to open up your checkbook and send Barack Obama all the money you possibly can, now is the time to start. My recommendation is that you sign up to become a monthly contributor. After you give them the okay, the campaign will take a small amount (whatever you wish) and pop it on your charge card every month. I did this for Kerry and, despite the eventual outcome, I was happy to do so.

Barack's gonna need every dime we can send him. Start now.

Not-So-Great Expectations

It's really hard to come up with a motivation as to why Hillary Clinton still refuses to give up this race and move on. Many have tried to formulate theories and they include:

1) She is angling for the VP spot
2) She really does think that she can take this thing all the way to the convention and prevail.
3) She is trying to tank Obama's candidacy so that she can move in after McCain's first term in 2012.
4) She's mad as a hatter.

I'm going with #4.

My friend Jan, in a wonderful piece of literary allusion, likened Mrs. Clinton to Dickens' Miss Havisham. The corrollary is frightening. Picture it:

It is twenty years from now. Hillary is sitting around the empty mansion in Chappaqua. Streamers and tickertape, decades old, hangs from the ceiling, intertwined with long strands of ancient cobwebs. Confetti cannons, loaded and ready for the inaugural, sit mouldering in the corner. The celebratory cake on the conference room table has become a home for rats. Hillary sits in an aged pantsuit, her long, grey hair swooped back in a ragged bun. She murmurs to herself, in a low, almost inaudible voice, "Not over yet....not over yet...still the strongest candidate....not over yet....".

Her daughter Chelsea, who Hillary now calls Estella, has the job of luring young, good looking black men to the house and bewitching them. They fall madly in love with Chelsea under Hillary's watchful eye. Then, when cued, Chelsea breaks their hearts by unmercifully rejecting them and Hillary cackles as the young men break into tears and run away chastened.

As she watches them go, Hillary murmurs: "Putin woulda wiped the floor with you, you spineless little sap. Heh, heh, heh....".

Chelsea leaves, in hot pursuit of another prospect. Hillary starts rocking slowly back and forth in her chair.

Just audible are the words:

"Not over yet....not over yet. Not. Over. YET."

IT'S OVER!

At long last, after what seems like TWO primary seasons, the Democratic Party finally made history today by nominating an African-American man to become the next President of the United States.

Good for us.

Now let's see if we can't get that beautiful bastard elected, huh?

The End

All signs are pointing to Hillary throwing in the towel tonight. I'd call it a "merciful" ending, but there was nothing merciful about it. The last few weeks have been simply awful and you can lay all the blame for said awfulness at Hillary's door.

Once it became clear that the nomination was not going to go to her, she should have bowed out gracefully and thrown her support, and her supporters, behind Barack. Instead, she stubbornly soldiered on, wasting her own money, Obama's time and helping out John McCain in the bargain.

Worst of all, she has done untold damage to her own reputation. And that's saying something. Hillary Clinton was never fantastically well liked to begin with, even in her own party. We all knew that she was a lightning rod for the right and that her mere presence in the campaign energized them in a way that almost nothing else could do. (I mean, they've got nothing to run on, so...why not just run an "anti-Hillary" campaign?).

But now, with this mindless slog through the primaries, she has made it all the more difficult for Obama to rebound and take McCain down. By helping herself, she hurt our party's nominee.

For that, I will not forgive her. For that, she can kiss any future vote from me good-bye.

For that, friends, my association with the Clintons ends right here and now.

And that's just an awful development, no matter how you slice it.

The Florida and Michigan Solution

So...the DNC folks met over the weekend to hash out the Florida and Michigan problem and they came up with what I consider to be a novel solution: seat the delegates, but only give them half a vote each.

This, to me, seems fair. After all, it doesn't "disenfranchise" anyone, even if their votes only count for half, and it still punishes the party in each state for bucking the rules.

As a result, everyone is happy.

Weeeeellll, not everyone. The Clintons are, predictably, squawking. They wanted the whole enchilada. Too bad. No spicy delegate soup for you!

And that brings us back to...the beginning.

There are whispers that Hillary will, finally, at last and for the love of God PLEASE end this thing tomorrow night.

Say a prayer tonight that this will happen. I just can't take it anymore.