Robot Monkeys

Obama supports immunity for the telcoms that broke the law in GWB’s illegal wiretapping. Why? Because when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.

Hope for change indeed.

So Obama now has crossed the threshold in the delegates, the most states, and the most popular votes (regardless of what Hillary says). I’ve said it for months now. Obama is the underdog until he is announced as the nominee.

So Hillary tonight refused to concede. She took the pulpit and talked about how she “wants respect.” Of course it’s not about her, but rather her supporters.

Yeah right.

She wants the nomination. It’s HERS! It’s always been about her, and tonight is no different.

Fuck her.

Okay, there was one surprise tonight. Right now, on Dan Abrams’s “After Hours,” Tucker Carlson is wearing a real tie. Could he have given up his dipshit gimick? I can’t imagine.

So GWB calls the Democrats, and in an obvious implication, Obama as “appeasers.” Nothing is new here. GWB and the Republicans have been doing that for seven years now. It’s absurd rhetoric, but again, none of that is new. What is new is that he did it from Israel.

That’s crossing the line. He can has the right to make sure everyone knows just how stupid he by making outrageous attacks all he wants while here. But you don’t criticize the government abroad. You don’t engage in political games while abroad. As the saying goes: “politics stops at the water’s edge.”

No matter what King George and the Republicans say, our economy sucks. It sucks hard. It’s been mediocre at best, no matter what Ed Gillespie or anyone else says. Iraq is wasting 15 billion a month, meanwhile our infrastructure is falling apart and our economy is teetering on collapse. Weak dollars is supposed to boost our exports, but that’s not happening. Why? The answer is obvious isn’t it. We’ve spent decades deindustrializing. There’s nothing to export.

Our economy has very real structural problems, and there’s no reason to believe that they’re going to be fixed soon, let alone in time to avoid a depression. Hell, given the flack that Obama has caught for stating the obvious truth that people are “bitter” about the loss of jobs and the state economy, there’s no reason to believe that anyone democrat or republican has the wherewithal to fix the economy. They don’t even want to admit that something is very very wrong here.

Our boat is sinking, and no one in charge even wants to take the time to rearrange the deck chairs.

CNN’s Rick Sanchez is still playing the Jeremiah Wright soundbite on a continuous loop. My god. This has been going on for weeks now. Can we please move past this? No, of course not. This is the easy story. The story that even most simpleton can write – and by “write” I mean “repeatedly play the same pixelated clip from YouTube.”

Of course CNN Newsroom is the crappiest of all the CNN programs. The stories right now on the web page are “Is Your Computer Slower Than When You Bought It?” and a featured article on tattoos.

I’m not surprised. It’s an easy narrative. I guess what makes the whole thing that much sadder is that when Obama said:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

part of me wishes that just for once, the media wouldn’t have interpreted that as a call to arms as Stephen Colbert mocked on his show.

Senate dems to protect telco crimes. Reid says, “No warrant? No problem!”

Fuck you Reid, you worthless coward piece of shit.

If domestic spying was so vitally important, then Bush wouldn’t be threatening to veto it if it didn’t have immunity. You had the bludgeon, Reid! If Bush did carry through with his threat, you just had to say, “Well apparently the President thinks protecting his friends from prosecution of their crimes, is more important than protecting Americans from attack.” But no! You had to cave.

But then again, you always do.

Why the hell are you the leader in the Senate, if you won’t lead, and won’t stand up for the people. You’re a goddamn rubber stamp.

Update: Tue Feb 12 14:15:16 PST 2008
Color me surprised.
WaPo reports that Obama voted against telcom immunity, while Hillary abstained.

“The strength and experience to make change happen,” indeed.

Hillary won Nevada. She’s leading in all the Super Duper Tuesday states. She’s the nominee.

Goddamn it.

I put it it 50-50 that Obama is the veep nom. I don’t know who it would be if it wasn’t him, but I could easily see her not picking him. As I said, Obama will be wasted as a warm bucket of spit, but he’ll take should take the offer if it’s given. Better to be “Vice President Barack Obama” than “The Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.”

Obama’s only hope is that Edwards would somehow remain viable enough to grab delegates and then pledge them to him, but that won’t happen. Edwards wouldn’t pull such a trick; and more importantly, he’s no longer viable.

Hillary won’t bring the troops home. That bitch voted to kill 4,000 and wound – many severely – 28,000 more because she thought it was politically expedient. She didn’t want to look “weak.” Instead, she wanted to look just as stupid and warmongering as the Republicans.

Goddamn her.

She knew the vote was for war. It was obvious. Now she’s trying to say, “But I didn’t think they’d actually go to war! I was trying to threaten war!” If that was truth, she’s a goddamn fool that shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the government. She doesn’t have the judgement to be trusted with even picking up the damn trash.

The whole war from the beginning didn’t make any sense. All of a sudden Iraq was now supposably “a clear and present danger.” Why? Nothing changed in 10 years. And for the antimultilateralists and antiinternationalists to all of a sudden talk about having to “save the UN from irrelevancy” was laughable. And she either bought into it, or was so fearful for her own political aspirations, jumped on the bandwagon and hit the war drum.

Fuck you Hillary.

She won’t bring the troops home. There’s no doubt in my mind about it. Oh she might bring some home, but at the end of four years, there will still be thousands there. I’ll say 10,000 to 20,000 still there. She won’t pull them home because, just like that tragic son of a bitch, LBJ, she doesn’t want to look weak. Democrats have to show they’re just as willing to throw lives away on fool’s errands as the Republicans. Women have to not only show that they’re willing to kill young boys just like men, but in fact, they have to show that they’re more willing to kill in order to prove they’re not weak.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it will all be in a quest to win over those that believe that she killed Vince Foster in a crack cocaine fueled satanic lesbian orgy.

Fuck you Hillary. And fuck you America for making have to vote for this damn foolish bitch in November.

My initial reaction is, “Shit. It’s going to be Clinton-Obama ticket.” Obama’s power is completely lost as a warm bucket of spit.

Never doubt the laziness of the electorate and the fact that young people don’t vote and “movement candidates” always fail.

At first I was thinking that Edwards was going to drop out after a loss in South Carolina, but now I’m thinking that he won’t. I think he might just stay to the end, or at least until after Super Duper Tuesday. My fear right now: Edwards finishes second, behind Hillary.

If Edwards was was to drop out after South Carolina, I don’t think enough of his supporters are going to break for Obama. Yes, they’re sympathetic but I don’t think that will translate to a 17% advantage for Obama. Instead they’ll fall inline behind the establishment.

People always fall in line.

I want Huckabee to win the Republican nomination.

I want him to win, not because I think he’s the most beatable, or for any nefarious purpose, but because I think he’s genuine. I like him. I wouldn’t vote for him, because my views mesh better with any of the Democratic candidates, but because I want his views heard. I want Huckabee to have a seat at the table when policy is discussed.

I know this post is just a rehash of what I said twice before, but then my thought was, “What am I missing?” Now the ideas are settled. I want Huckabee on the national stage. I want his ideas heard, and him to be part of solutions for this country. I want him help make policy.

Huckabee is a man you can work with, and has people’s best interests at heart, even if on some policies he has naïve views. (Regressive 28% National Sales Tax, I’m looking at you.)

If there was some sort of Obama kumbiya unity government, I’d want Huckabee in it. I don’t know how or where, but I want his opinions heard and taken into account.

Everyone except Edwards, Hillary, and Obama are done. They were all DOA, and yet we’ll still have to waste time with them in the Nevada “debate.”

Hillary lost Iowa. Hillary is trying to spin it as “I was always behind in Iowa.” Yeah right. She was the front runner, until Obama beat her. Obama won, and Hillary lost. The takeaway coverage is, “She lost. She lost big. She had the money, and the organization, and the voters rejected her. They want change, and she’s not it.” There’s no silver lining in the Clinton coverage.

Hillary is not done though. You can’t count her out. She still has the money and she still has the organization.

Clinton tried to go negative against Obama earlier in the campaign, possibly about the Rezko land buy, and it didn’t go anywhere. Obama held a press conference, said he wouldn’t be swift boated, and the press walked way saying “Wow. Nice guy professor Obama can take a punch and throw a punch,” and it ended. If Clinton goes negative now, the coverage won’t be “Ooo! Didn’t know that about Obama!” it’s going be “Hillary is getting desperate and mean. She’s looking like a loser. Like a drowning person desperately thrashing about trying to grab at anything.” If Hillary goes negative, she’s sunk. Hillary’s only chance is to go positive.

However, Hillary has a big problem with going positive though. She doesn’t provide a reason to vote for her. Her arguments have been “I have experience the of being First Lady and a one term US senator, and a number of years of unspecified experience that magically inflates to whatever the situation requires” (35(!) years of experience I think she said today.), “I have a vagina,” and “I’m electable because the Republicans know all my flaws and so does the rest of America.” In the last days of the Iowa campaign she tried to embrace the “change” mantra and failed. Clinton doesn’t represent change, she’s the status quo. For Hillary Clinton saying she represents change is just as absurd as Romney saying today, “[P]eople want change in Washington, not in the White House, in Washington.”

Hillary’s main hope is for Obama to have some lackluster debates, then for her to throw in some zinger, but not too much of a zinger, and basically coast by on name recognition and some “Maybe Obama isn’t quite ready” talk. The key to a Clinton victory isn’t her attacks, or even her surrogates attacking, either one of which would be a death knell for her campaign. It’s going to be outshining Obama at a debate, which frankly can be done.

Edwards is playing the post Iowa coverage right. He’s making sure that everyone knows he was outspent, and finished second. What can Edwards do to win? I’m not sure. Perhaps he can capitalize on an Obama fumble and people realizing that Clinton is the status quo, and not the change they’re looking for. Bottom line, Edwards can’t win on his own, but he’s not dead yet.

Obama hast to just keep what he’s doing, avoid looking bored at the debates, and the nomination – and the presidency – are his.