So Long Hillary, John McCain Fantasyland, Bloggasm, Swiftboaters are Back, GOP Depression, Bush Will Veto Housing Bill & Rush Limbaugh Chaos Theory.

Even though she's needed a miracle for at least a month now, Hillary's hung in there hoping for it.

She didn't get it.

I would imagine that after West Virginia, which she's expected to win, she will finally admit defeat.

Analysis: Democrats quietly send word to Clinton it's over

Hopefully, the Democrats will figure out how to have a primary election over the next four years. I mean, this one has been a mess, even though it worked out well. Maybe they'll grow a set of balls while they're at it, too.

I think that we can thank Bush, the Republicans, the Democrats who voted with them and the whole conservative policy/ideology for the resurgent enthusiasm we've seen during the primaries. But then, everything that Bush has done, turned to crap.

Cut taxes on the rich, it will bring in more revenue and create more jobs. I don't know how stupid you had to be to believe that, but not as stupid as you are if you still believe it. Iraq is an imminent threat. Yeah, but only if you go there. And these are just the biggies. Someone has a big job to do to get the country back on track.

The effects of the Right's domination of national policy are going to be felt for a long time to come.

Just look at Bush's Supreme Court Justices. Fussy old school marms with a Bible in one hand and a strap in the other. How many years will it take to have a Supreme Court that's not a right wing rubberstamp?

Poor old John McCain's just jumped Barack for not voting to appoint Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Republican John McCain criticized Democratic rival
Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as U.S. chief justice, reaching out
to the Christian right on one of their chief concerns: the proper role of judges
in government.

That's right, John. And that's just one reason we'll be voting for him instead of you.

Hillary voted against Alito and Roberts, also. So if John McCain is cognizant of who he's going to be running against, then you know that the Right Wing Propaganda Machine is cranking up for a major smear job on Barack Obama. We'd best prepare.

A good place to start would be Simon Owens' Bloggasm. Simon is keeping a close eye on the online media. He's just written an article on how the right wing blogosphere is handling Barack Obama.

He's a better man than I am, 'cause right wing blogs tend to make me ill. But I think that I'll be using a lot of his stuff in the future. Bloggasm will be in my links right after I post this. Thanks for contacting me, Simon.

Just a couple of examples of what to expect from the Right. First, from Media Transparency:

Floyd Brown and David Bossie: Back in the Swift Boat captain's
chairs

Two longtime practitioners of negative campaigning are mainstreaming
attacks on Clinton and Obama

And from The American Prospect:

How Deep Is Your Love?

Republicans are up to their usual tricks -- questioning the patriotism
of their opponents. The media, as usual, is playing along because it lauds
political success, not virtue.

They're going to have to be especially nasty and dirty this election year, because apparently, that's all that they have.

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present
Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November,
and neither is the NRCC’s money.

The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member
worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by
Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House
Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.

I don't really know what else that they can expect, considering how they've screwed up the country. Their current president has shown and is still showing absolutely no concern for the working class folks in this country.

President Bush has threatened to veto the massive housing bill that should pass
the House on Wednesday, casting doubt on wide ranging legislation that had been
crafted with the help of a number of Republicans in Congress and in the
administration.

What the hell, hundreds of billions for a war for no reason, but zilch for working Americans? As much debt that he's gotten this country into, two or three billion to help out regular Americans is a no-brainer, just like Bush.

The Republican's wannabe president, John McCain, figures that pissing off Russia and China would be a really good idea.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8,
the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in
the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on
Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks
of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States
should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil-but pointedly excluded China
from the councils of power.

I'm telling ya'll, the Republicans couldn't run a snow cone stand. Even their great draft dodging, drug addicted philosopher is starting to crack under the strain.

Conservative radio host leads Tuesday broadcast with news reports, testimonials
he says he’s getting from the field of Republicans participating in crossover
voting to keep the Democratic race going.

Unfortunately, as is almost always the case with Rush, the facts are different.

The numbers are in and they confirm what has been obvious for, oh, 30 years now:
Rush Limbaugh is an egotistical buffoon who, in fact, has no influence on
anything but the opinions of his few gullible dittohead listeners.

And just so we won't be like the mainstream media, don't forget that we are still losing people in

Bush's war for no reason. Here's the latest developments.

Be sure to check out and sign up at the War on Greed.

Have a good Thursday.

Later

Mission Accomplished, Bush Bushed, McCain: Bush III, John Hagee, Religious Right Power, Hillary/Limbaugh 08 & Screw the troops, Love the Contractors.

Remember that? That was five years ago. We had just won the war in Iraq.

You remember. The troops would be home soon. We were rebuilding Iraq's infraructure. We were on the verge of uncovering those dreaded WMDs.

George Bush and the neocons were military geniuses. A good time was had by all.

Now five years later most people are starting to figure out that the whole Bush Presidency has been seven years of unadulterated BS. It's been a sham, propped up by right wing propaganda.

By Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, May 1—President Bush’s made-for-television address
tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a
six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with
his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military
realities that drove Mr. Bush’s advisors to create the moment.

By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

BAGHDAD, May 2—The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United
States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink
the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior
allied officials said today.

By David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, May 2—In his speech, Mr. Bush argued that the invasion and
liberation of Iraq were part of the American response to the attacks of Sept.
11. He called the tumultuous period since those attacks ‘‘19 months that changed
the world,’’ and said Mr. Hussein’s defeat was a defeat for al-Qaeda and other
terrorists as well.

I just didn't want to let the fifth year anniversary of the end of the Iraq War go by unmentioned.

Apparently, someone mentioned to Bush that the price of gas is getting a mite high and that maybe he ought to say something to ease their fears. He did.

Bush, reaching back to the earliest days of his administration, resurrected GOP demands for new drilling in the Alaska wilderness, fewer
restrictions on oil refineries and other measures aimed at lowering fuel prices
through higher production.

"If there was a magic wand to wave," Bush said, "I'd be waving it, of
course. . . . But there is no magic wand to wave right now. It took us a while
to get to this fix."

He's right about one thing, it took us a while to get in this mess. I estimate about seven and a half years.

Do you know who's fault it is? Congress. If the Congress would just do it's job, things would be great. And that's got to be the truth, because we all know that Bush wouldn't tell a fib.

But the president had something else up his sleeve. He used his appearance
before the White House press corps to perform one of the oldest tricks in the
book: blaming Congress. He faulted lawmakers 16 times in his opening statement
alone.

And he got petulent with Martha Raddatz at the press conference.

THE PRESIDENT: No, you can’t. This is the second follow-up. You usually get
one follow-up, and I was nice enough to give you one. I didn’t give anybody on
this side a follow-up, and now you are trying to take a second follow-up.

Q Can I just say —

THE PRESIDENT: They just cut off your mic. You can’t, no.

It looks like the most vacationed president in history needs a rest. I know his doing a little down time in a federal pen would do wonders for me.

How would his hoped for successor, John McCain, handle things? Well, he would pretty much follow the party line and crap on the American people to help out Big Business.

Today Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver what his handlers are hyping as
a major address on health care. McCain’s plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation.
In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers
over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing
millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead
buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated
and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward,
not downward.

And McCain is starting to have other problems. Instead of a maverick, he's starting to look like a dyed in the wool Republican.

Yet, racism for electoral gain obviously did not go away with Helms' retirement
from politics. And neither has Republican timidity in doing anything to control
the extreme elements in the party--or their base if you will. So once again,
just as other conservatives sat idly by and claimed Jesse was just being Jesse,
now John McCain throws his hands
up in the air as if there is nothing he can do when a racist ad is run by
the North Carolina GOP against Barack Obama:

Oh yeah, McCain's got a preacher too. You just don't hear much about him. But he sounds like a really nice guy. Crazy as hell, but a really nice guy.

America is also collectively cursed for specific reasons, such as legalized
abortion and a Supreme Court decision against sectarian Bible classes in public
schools but also, more generally, for rebelling against God. As a consequence of
America's disobedience and rebellion, according to McCain-endorser John Hagee,
God's has cursed America and that curse has caused American military defeats, in
Korea and Vietnam, plagues such as AIDS and social blights like violent crime.
God's curse on America has also led "hundreds of thousands" to secretly
sacrifice children to the devil.

Hundreds of thousands of children sacrificed to the devil? I didn't know you could do that. By the time you find out these things, you're already stuck with two teenagers. Damn.

Speaking of damn. The Religious Right is going all out to turn church services into Republican rallies. But I guess something has to be done to stop us evil liberals and our sick philosophy of peace and prosperity for everyone.

"I think that's the case," Cureton replied. "The pastors need to speak
clearly about it. I'll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on
a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their
people on the issues.

"We're gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family
and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell
research," he continued, "and then also about the gay agenda and then finally
about our Christian heritage and how it's being stripped from every corner of
society. And then finally we're gonna be doing a candidate comparison message
that is going to ask pastors to cross the line."

Just like Jesus said.

Quick primary update thing. It's just more of Rush urging Republicans to get out and vote for Hillary.

More from the Howey-Gauge
poll in Indiana: "The Democratic primary is going to be decided by
non-Democrats. To be determined is which group -- Republicans or independents --
are going to decide this race.

"The poll shows that self-identified Republicans favor Sen. Hillary
Clinton, 50% to 44%, while independents favor Sen. Barack Obama, 54% to
38%.

Among Republicans, there "appears to be two kinds of Republicans: the
'Obamacans' as the Illinois senator likes to call them -- earnest Republicans
deeply disappointed in their own party's performance on the budget, economy,
social issues and the Iraq War -- and the Rush Limbaugh Republicans who are
planning to crossover to vote for Sen. Clinton because they perceive her to be
the weakest rival to U.S. Sen. John McCain in the November election."

And finally the military. It's not enough that troops are told to pull four or five tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, but then they are treated like second class citizens. By the Military!

With all the money from this country's wealth that goes to the military budget, you'd think that they would at least have decent quarters when theydid get to come home for a few minutes.

Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout
the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last
weekend but he had not seen final results.

Part of the reason may be because the military has to subsidize defense contractors screw-ups.

Now get this, the Marines need amphibious tanks, obvously. So General Dynamics builds the tank. But the tank kinda don't work, at all. I mean it sucks at everything that it's supposed to be able to do.

So what does the military do?

- Due to the problems raised in the tests, the Pentagon
gave contractor General Dynamics another $143 million for
a redesign and estimated that another $700 million to $800 million was
needed to do another “system development and demonstration” test.

- Due to the budget increase, the Pentagon now says it will buy only
593 vehicles for $13.2 billion compared to the original estimate that it would
buy 1,025 EFVs for $8.4 billion.

The tanks don't work, so we give them even more money and then we buy a lot less tanks for a lot more money.

We're being taken by the defense contractors and the officers who want to go to work for them.

At least it's not Monday.

Later

Corporate Media, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, Cable News Sucks, Helen Thomas is Da Man and Falling Dollar.

A lazy Sunday and not really wanting to do anything, nothing good on television, so I watched a little of what is now euphemistically referred to as the news.

I got to see a lot Hillary and Bill, but I don't remember seeing McCain. That's not surprising, since McCain is corporate media's choice for president and you don't want to mess with a winning formula. McCain is spending most of his time opposing his own positions and generally just not looking real bright.

McCain employs the media to cement his “maverick/independent” image. The Tim
Russert/Chris Matthews “We are his base,” as Matthews said, school of corporate
punditry will extol his manifest virtues until November. He received a standing
ovation for a speech he recently gave at the Newspaper Publishers Convention.
The Democratic nominee will face a mainstream media that consistently interprets
or ignores events to favor McCain. His gaffes or temper tantrums will be glossed
over. The media doesn’t actively “dislike” Obama as much as it did Al Gore. It
dislikes Hillary but hopes to keep the Democratic race going as long as
possible. But there is little doubt the Democratic nominee will have to defeat
both McCain and the media in the fall.

I didn't really see much of Obama, but I saw a hell of a lot of his preacher.

The corporate media loved Barack, way back when it looked like Hillary was a sure thing. They needed a nomination race to talk about. And what would get more ratings than a historic contest between a black man and a white woman?

But things didn't quite go the way that was expected. Barack Obama started beating Hillary, big time. In fact, it would just about take a miracle for Hillary to beat Barack. But you wouldn't know that by listening to the corporate media. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is the exception. But the rest of the corporate media is doing their best to provide Hillary with that miracle. Simply because, running against Hillary, McCain has his best shot at winning.

In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama
campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that
Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies
have been promoting for the past six weeks.

The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from
Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York
Times.

For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to
keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.

Just an example of how stupid it is to get your political information from the corporate media, the plan is working.

After losing Pennsylvania and a difficult month of scandals, Barack Obama's
double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton has dropped to 7 points in the latest
NEWSWEEK Poll.

I'm not the only one who has noticed the abysmal performance of the corporate media vs the Internet. There's an excellent article in the NYT by Elizabeth Edwards, yeah that would be John's wife, about this very subject. She is one smart woman.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is
cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes
of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are
accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.

The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their
responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about
the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they
do not have access to the Internet.

News is different from other programming on television or other content in
print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is
essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering
is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information
about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we
had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

Hell's bells, Hillary's even teaming up with the Right to either try to further her nomination chances, which are practically nil, or else to damage Obama to the point that he can't win in November. I got burnt out on Hillary when she voted to let the idiot Bush invade Iraq and she's done nothing since to change my mind.

Last week was officially the moment that the race for the Democratic
nomination slipped through the looking glass into surrealism. Here is a brief
list of those people who are now actively supporting Hillary Clinton’s
candidacy: Pat Buchanan, a charming man slightly to the right of Genghis Khan;
Rush Limbaugh, the most voluble and incendiary of right-wing talk-show hosts;
Richard Mellon Scaife, the media mogul who financed the virulently antiClinton
crusades of the 1990s; and, if you read between the lines, even Karl Rove, the
“architect” of the past decade or so of Republican dominance in electoral
politics.

Am I hallucinating? I promise you I’m not. The merging of the forces
that once persecuted the Clintons with the Clinton campaign itself has been a
wonder to behold. Some on the once solidly anti-Clinton right have even been
directly urging people to register as Democrats to vote for her.

A person who so firmly believes that she would be the president that this country needs to lead it through it current crises, should be able to manage something much simpler, like her own campaign. Right?

WASHINGTON — Despite Hillary Clinton's big win in Pennsylvania last week,
the story of her campaign is often one of mismanagement and missed
opportunities, and it raises questions about how she'd organize and run the
White House.

"There's a certain style to the campaign, and it shows what we might
expect in a Clinton presidency: a lot of viewpoints and a messiness," said James
McCann, a political science professor at Purdue University in Indiana.

Whether that's a good or bad trait is in the eye of the analyst. McCann
called it "policymaking through trial and error," similar to how Bill Clinton
ran his administration, which to many was a big success.

But her campaign tumbled from riches to rags to rebounds — and now to
hanging on for dear life. It wasn't supposed to be that way.

And McCain, he went through Hell serving his country in Nam, now he's playing Hell with his country trying to become president.

The North Carolina Republican Party is running an ad showing Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon. McCain says he's doing everything in his power to put a stop to it. If you're silly enough to believe that, you just might be a Republican.

On the campaign trail yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he’ll “do
everything” in his power and bring “every
pressure to bear” in order to stop the North Carolina Republican party from
running an
attack ad featuring Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But
the chairwoman of the North Carolina GOP, Linda Daves, told NPR
yesterday that McCain has not done all he could. According to Daves, she
hasn’t even spoken to McCain:

While McCain want us to believe that he's a real tiger when it comes to terrorism, if it's right wing terrorism, he's more of a fluffy little kitten.

As John McCain continues using guilt-by-association tactics to falsely
portray his political opponent as a radical terrorist sympathizer, it's worth
remembering that McCain himself has a little terrorism problem of his own.

McCain's terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided
with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation
cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who
visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.

In both 1993 and 1994,

McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was
one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill Fortunately,
despite McCain's opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.

John McCain took a "poverty tour" in Alabama, telling the folks a lot of stuff that sounded real good to them. But the stuff he didn't tell them about is what John McCain is really about. From Down with Tyranny.

There's not only McCain's support for making Bush's tax cuts permanent. Most
outrageous is McCain's plan to cut the corporate income tax rate, from 35
percent to 25 percent. What you won't read in today's coverage of McCain's
proposal is that, according to a 2004 Government Accountability Office study,
61% of American corporations, including 39% of large companies, paid no
corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000. Last year, corporations shouldered
just 14.4% of the total US tax burden, compared with about 50% in 1940. And
McCain wants to give these corporations a break?

Really it was just pretty sickening watching the news today. These guys either think we're stupid or else they're clueless. The daytime cable news is even worse. It looks like they hire a bunch of ex-cheerleaders that have very little idea of what they're reading. Not all of them, but most of them.

I'll take Helen Thomas anytime. I'd love to sit around and drink a couple of beers with Helen and just shoot the breeze. I'd even buy.

...Q You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have
tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.

Helen then turned in her seat, looked at her colleagues, shook her head
in disgust, and asked sadly: "Where is everybody? For God's sakes!"

Well, if I can still afford to buy a couple of beers.







Have a good Monday,

Later