LIVE IN PORTLAND! The Decembrists! (some Obama guy might show up)

Obama's Decemberists
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Turns out that Obama's opening act at the megarally was The Decemberists, a hugely popular indie rock band, which typically opens their concerts with the Soviet National Anthem.

How odd that the MSM didn't tell us that a few of the 75K in attendance may have come for the tunes.

And did the Obama rally begin with the Soviet National Anthem? The concert went for 45 minutes and was widely pitched on Facebook etc. But did the band trim their act to make it Obama-appropriate?

Yeah, you tool, like The Decembrists are U-freaking-2. The opening band had nothing to do with who and how many attended that rally. I appreciate the fact that Obama is providing some entertainment for the crowd who often has to wait hours for the candidate to appear. If Hewitt and the others on the right think there are tens of thousands of devoted Decembrists fans that could care less about Obama or politics, yet decided to line-up for hours ahead of time, go through security, sit in the sweltering sun and through a speech they care nothing about all for 30 minutes of free music you are, to put it kindly, brain-damaged.

As "proof" Hewitt cites an "evite" from the Obama campaign. That evite actually neglects to even mention the band by name—instead listing band members as special guests.

Trying to claim that Obama's big draw was his merely piggybacking on a Woodstock concert crowd is beyond mendacious, it's freaking hilarious.

[Hewitt sources this even more hilarious "article" from Newsbusters—check the comments, hysterical. I got to Hewitt from Sullivan.]

Dick(s) of the Week: "Two Male Offenders"

Vandals Damage Stonehenge

LONDON (AFP) - Vandals used a hammer and screwdriver to vandalize England's world-famous Stonehenge ancient monument, the first such incident for decades, officials said Thursday.

The night-time attack by two men last week involved the central megalith in the 5,000-year-old ring of standing stones, said the conservation body English Heritage, adding that they could have been looking for a souvenir.

Yesterday we got our copy of National Geographic and Stonehenge is the cover feature. I was looking at it with Kid F, and marveling at the sheer engineering feat of moving stones that weigh up to 50 tons from between 20 and 240 miles away. Five thousand fucking years ago...

[link] The giant sarsen stones (which form the outer circle), weigh as much as 50 tons each. To transport them from the Marlborough Downs, roughly 20 miles to the north, is a problem of even greater magnitude than that of moving the bluestones. Most of the way, the going is relatively easy, but at the steepest part of the route, at Redhorn Hill, modern work studies estimate that at least 600 men would have been needed just to get each stone past this obstacle.

Yeah but assholes with handtools felt like they were entitled to take a piece home with them. Perhaps these two dicks need to be used as part of a demonstration that henge means gallows.

Manny Being Manny

How do you not love this guy? Even you Yanks fans...



Missing from that clip is this play where Manny robs an Oriole of extra bases, climbs the wall, high-fives a fan in the bleachers and then doubles up the runner at first all in stride...Ridiculous.

[h/t Crank]

Meltdown

By now you've probably seen the Bill O'Reilly tantrum video, but you haven't been able to fully enjoy it without the proper context...



UPDATE: The "never-before-seen" footage shows he other side of the argument...

Special Comment Asskicking

I was going to write a post about Bush's interview, particularly about the "golf sacrifice," but anything I'd come up with would seem penned by Mr Sunny Patch compared with this. I'll just hand it over to the master...

Barack Sends His Regards

When I heard this morning that Obama was here in Michigan I was sure it was part of some massive 40th Birthday Surprise...alas, is seems he is double-booked—he is bypassing Ann Arbor and heading straight to Grand Rapids—to accept the endorsement of John Edwards!

I wonder what happened between this week and last week to cement the endorsement? I mean, besides John Edwards reading my blog...

UPDATE: Video.

Quote of the Day

John Scalzi:

Poor, rural, working-class white folks in Appalachia didn’t vote for the rich urban former law professor senator from Chicago. They went for the rich urban former law professor senator born in Chicago instead. But since the vote went so overwhelmingly in one direction rather than the other, and rich urban former law professor senators with Chicago ties are otherwise largely interchangeable, there has to be another controlling factor here. I can’t think what it might be, though. Maybe it will come to me if I think about it.

[h/t Sullivan]

Old...

...but still not nearly as old as John McCain

All or Nothing

"I respect Hillary supporters because they haven't had the chance to get to know her like I have. She does not have the political skills of her husband. Or Barack. You need somebody who can bring people together. She criticized my health care bill because it wouldn't achieve universal coverage until 1998. Well, today we'd be celebrating the 10th anniversary of having every American with insurance." - Congressman Jim Cooper, of Tennessee

Everybody knows Hillary Clinton tried and failed to get universal health care implemented in the 90s. What not everybody knows is that she took a Dubya-esque "My way or the highway" approach and derided the plans of everyone—Democrats included—who failed to reach her unattainable goals at the time. She stacked her Commission with insiders and yes-men and refused input from anyone who wouldn't meet her on her terms. The fact that this is still a campaign issue fourteen years later is on her as much as anyone who opposed her—her approach probably set the movement back years.

That she continues to do the same thing to Obama's more measured, but probably more attainable, plan doesn't indicate, to me, she's changed or that she'd have any more luck getting things done now.

[h/t Sullivan]

A Cup for Paul Krugman

Professor, I really didn't want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice... I understand that you support Hillary Clinton. That's fine. But you are still pretending you are neutral, and that you offer sober analysis, yet you have been little more than a campaign mouthpiece and now seem to be completely through the looking glass and even exceeding the rhetoric of the campaign itself.

The day after Hillary Clinton shoves her foot all the way down her throat regarding the work habits of white people*—with no clear extrication procedure available—you decide to take pen in hand and write a column about a candidate, and a campaign, that has a "problem" with race, and you write it about Barack Obama?!? Are you fucking serious?

Fellow academician Mark Kleiman said it perfectly:

If you actually wanted to help Barack Obama (who is, as you note the presumptive Democratic nominee) you would give him advice in private and praise him in public. Telling him that he shouldn't disrespect white people is neither necessary nor helpful. You might at least pretend to believe that some of the people who voted for your preferred candidate were voting for her, rather than against him.

Take a fucking sabbatical until this race is over, Professor, and join us on the other side. You are embarrassing yourself.

* In defense of HRC, I think she made a horrible mistake when she spoke, and NOT a dogwhistle remark. I could be wrong of course, but I'm hoping not.

Hitlery*

* I know, I know, but what else am I gonna come up with? Are you more comfortable with "Hitlarity?"

Bad Idea

I don't like this, and I hope it's not true, or at most a trial balloon...

Obama plans to declare victory May 20

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton's campaign plans to dispute it...

[...] The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates--a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination--a tally that includes Florida and Michigan...

[...] Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold--1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included.

"On May 20 we're going to declare victory," said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be "the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes."

Don't do it. In fact, I am astonished to even read this.

Behind the Music

This is pretty damn funny.



I know there are a lot of Haters out there, but I actually have no problem with John Mayer. I think his radio stuff is pretty banal, but his live John Mayer Trio blues album TRY! is "the shit" and "fucking awesome."

Worst. Strategist. Ever.

From TIME's "The Five Mistakes Clinton Made":

2. She didn't master the rules
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.

Karen Tumulty must have stayed up all night thinking of four other mistakes not directly attributable to Penn. That guy is a $10 million moron. The only person more incompetent than Mark Penn is the person who hired him...and then continued to stick with him...

Get Out of Our Way

It's long. Twenty minutes long. But if you haven't watched an Obama speech yet, do yourself a favor. If you don't have twenty minutes, watch half now, and half later. But make sure you watch it. Especially the second half.

It is happening.

"I submit that you are illogical"

Alas, Evil Spock Krugman still lives...

Today on his NY Times blog, the once-good Professor weighs in on the issue of the gas tax. He's an economist...he's a Clinton supporter...could this be interesting? Will he be the first economist with a pulse to support it? Or will he go off the reservation and hammer Clinton for this idiocy?

Gas Tax Hysterics

OK, this has gone overboard.

Hillary Clinton’s proposed gas tax holiday is not, in my view, a good idea. [...]

Whoa! Krugman's gonna join the reality-based chorus? He's gonna call this out as the politics, rather than policy, that it is?...

Not exactly.

Krugman instead uses this column to hammer other economists for making a big deal out of what he deems a really unimportant little issue.

But the furor over what is, when all is said and done, a small and temporary policy proposal is entirely disproportionate... [economists] place excessive weight on issues where professional judgment differs from lay opinion...So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

Um, Professor? I don't really think it's the economists that are making this the biggest fucking issue facing the planet—it's your candidate! Have you been in a cave the last two weeks? Hillary is putting on a demagoguery clinic! The reason responsible economists are weighing in is that for once the media is doing it's job (slightly) and asking them.

What's that? You can explain that too?

Part of it, clearly, is the fact that many people in the media really, really want Obama to win and Clinton to lose...and have seized on the gas tax as their latest proof that she is ee-ee-vil.

Ho-lee fuck. Now it's the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy...

Of course, the Gas Tax Holiday IS a stupid little issue. Not only stupid, but actually irrelevant to this race as it won't actually happen this summer no matter what HRC promises to the contrary. But the reason this has become such a BIG deal is because Hillary Clinton has made it the centerpiece of her revamped populist approach, AND as her main weapon against Obama—declaring him "elite" and uncaring" for disagreeing with her (and McCain). She has made it a big deal, and the fact that she is presenting the whole thing dishonestly and disingenuously requires responsible economists speak out.

Perhaps one day, you will once again join them Mr. Krugman.

UPDATE: That column is from May 6, before results from that days primaries. Here is Krugman today:

Talleyrand and the gas tax holiday

I’m on record as saying that Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a gas-tax holiday, while it wasn’t good policy, didn’t rise to the level of a crime.

Judging from last night’s results, however, it was worse than a crime: it was a mistake.

Wrong. It was a crime against decency and integrity—it was fraud and it was perjury. The public showed her (and you apparently) that we've had enough of that shit.

Prediction

Why not? Everybody else is doing it...

INDIANA: Clinton wins by 5 or less.

NORTH CAROLINA: Obama by at least 10.

That will increase his delegate lead by another half dozen or more while taking half the remaining delegates off the table. Hillary's math only gets worse.

UPDATE: I'm happy to be wrong if this is the result: Obama by a wider than predicted 15 in N.C. and a narrower than expected 2-point loss in Indiana. He gains 15 delegates and 200,000 in the popular vote at the end of the day.

Not Just a Maverick...

John McCain's also an action hero...


McCain Declines Secret Service, Dares Assassins To Try Something

Hilarious. "The Onion" and "The Daily Show" continue to lead the world in journalism.

Speaking of dropped in a jungle, check out Fridge's fisking of Bear Grylls.

Profiles in Courage. Or Not.

[TPM link] John and Elizabeth Edwards have finally made their endorsement plans -- or lack of them -- official.

On the eve of potentially decisive voting in Indiana and North Carolina, with political tensions at white-hot levels, John and Elizabeth revealed all in an interview with People magazine, of all outlets.

The news in the interview is that they confirmed they will not endorse either candidate in the presidential race, because they are "saving their political capital for their own causes -- his, fighting poverty; hers, fighting for universal health care," reports, um, People mag.

Thanks guys! There is no moment I can imagine when your "political capital" will be worth a fraction of what it is worth at this moment. Good luck with that. Keep that powder dry.

Seriously. I never had the Edwards love that many on the Left had. Not this time, and not in 2004. I always had the impression he was a bit of a charlatan. He reinvented himself as a populist this last time around, and certainly had moments when he was making a valuable contribution to the race, but once his window closed he took his ball and went home.

Now faced with a decision that requires risk and has unclear implications, Edwards punts. Maybe he didn't get what he wanted from either candidate? Maybe he's afraid to pick the wrong horse? Maybe he wants to endorse Clinton but is afraid of the Obama blowback?

I don't know, but this does NOT impress me a bit. There are thousands of his supporters looking for a little leadership here and he offers none. This isn't MArch when one could say with a straight face that the choices were pretty close. After the last two months, if John Edwards is unable to discern a difference between Obama and Clinton, then he is a fucking moron. One of these candidates embodies everything he was running against, and the other—while not perfectly aligned—is fighting for the same things he supposedly was. Has he not been paying attention to Hillary's non-stop pander-fest in his home state over the last week? Literally saying anything to peel off votes?

I was disappointed in Edwards the day he rolled over for Dick Cheney in the 2004 VP debate, this is far worse.

UPDATE: The TPM link above seems to be hinky, here is the PEOPLE teaser interview.

Whose Votes Matter

Cutting Through the Bullshit

While in North Carolina, I had the pleasure of seeing Hillary Clinton's preposterous Gas Tax Holiday pander-thon all over the tv... Here's Obama calling that shit what it is...

Is This a Real Question?

From NPR:

Politics & Society
If Your Neighbor Poses as Your Husband, Is it Rape?

Day to Day, May 5, 2008 · Massachusetts is the latest state to consider putting a new crime on the books: rape by fraud. Currently, a sex act only qualifies as rape if physical force is used. We talk to a woman who was tricked into having sex with her boyfriend's brother, who pretended to be her boyfriend — and unable to convict him of rape because of this limited definition.

Yes, that's fucking rape. It's not about physical force, it's about consent. What the fuck is wrong with Massachusetts? A woman who consents to have sex with her husband, and then when the lights come on finds out it's an impostor, was just raped by any common sense interpretation of the term I can fathom. I cannot even believe this is a law.

--

Oh, and do you know what else is rape? THIS. And the fucking assholes in Oklahoma just wrote this into law...

Births and Resurrections

TWINS!
First of all, congratulations are in order to the Smittys who welcomed two more to the clan late last week. Mrs F gave me the news while I was out of town and unable to go online. I'm out-femaled 3-1 around here, but with new twins boys, Smitty Jr, and a giant boy-at-heart and in-deed (Smitty himself), Mrs Smitty is in a whole other world...

Get your ass off the computer, Smitty, and change a diaper or two! Or ten.

NACHOS!
Earlier today I got a comment from beyond the grave from Otto Man. Actually, I knew OM was still alive from his participation in the comments at KSK, but I was laid low when I saw that Thrillhous and all the boys at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Nachos are back in action. I went over there expecting the same dead site that expired near two years ago just to poach a link, and just about shit my pants when I saw they're back posting and have been for at least a week or so.

Promptly reinstalled in the blogroll where you belong my friends. Welcome back.

What he said...

Yesterday, while stuck in an airport I watched the most inane conversation and "analysis" between Wolf Blitzer and his panel of expert morons, and just shook my head at the garbage they treat as important and the shallowness of the treatment of issues.

It's fucking awful, and if (when?) Obama loses at either stage of this election it will be due less to his abuse at the hands of Hillary Clinton than to the disservice of what poses for the press.

In six minutes, Bill Moyers speaks more truth and explains more fully the complexity of Rev Wright and the whole tempest surrounding him and Obama than the entire 24-hour cable and internet news media could manage in six weeks.

If only we could have more coverage and analysis like this:

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the unannounced departure...I was out of town and had so many loose ends to tie up before I left, I neglected to mention I'd be gone from blogging...

Not that anyone missed me.

Anyway, my unscientific survey based entirely on yard signs indicates an absolute thumping of Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama in North Carolina. Western North Carolina. As in Asheville and surrounding towns. Which is to say, these results in no way reflect the potential statewide outcome, yet this analysis is every bit as valuable as the bullshit I saw on Sunday morning.