Would you permanently forfeit your right to vote for $1 million?

2 comments May 17th, 2008

 

I borrowed the question from an online poll on DailyKos, but I’m not much interested in a tally of votes on one side or the other.

Of greater interest to me is your explanation of why you would or wouldn’t take the cash offer.

So, what say you?

Well, I guess this means Mike Huckabee won’t be John McCain’s running mate

1 comment May 16th, 2008

 

Any notions Mike Huckabee might have had about running for vice president on the Republican ticket probably died with the stupid joke he told today about somebody pointing a gun at Barack Obama.

As I said here the other day, I don’t figure John McCain would have picked Huckabee for the second slot anyway.  This should pretty much cinch it.

HERE’s the story about the joke.

UPDATE: Here’s a video of Huckabee delivering his thigh-slapper:

How the foreign-policy flap helps Obama

7 comments May 16th, 2008

 

Republicans who think the current dust-up over foreign policy somehow damages Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy are whistling past the graveyard. Just the opposite is the case.

Charges that Obama is some kind of Neville Chamberlain soon will go the way of the fiction that he’s a Muslim, too, or that he took his oath of office on the Koran. The same will happen to notions that he’s the Hamas candidate in this election. Most Americans know nothing of Hamas — and the Jewish folks to whom Hamas is more familiar will mostly end up voting for Obama in November anyway.

The real political resonance of this controversy redounds to Obama’s benefit by giving him a huge spotlight in which he can more closely tie John McCain with George W. Bush. That’s EXACTLY WHAT HE DID to a fare-thee-well today in South Dakota. Pray tell, how does that help McCain?

When will Obama’s critics learn that it’s not as easy as it might seem to make him a pariah? The guy has survived the political equivalent of the Perils of Pauline in the past two months, and he’s still favored to be our next president.

What went wrong?

3 comments May 16th, 2008

You political junkies likely will take interest in THIS PEEK inside the hapless Hillary Clinton campaign organization.

It was John McCain, not Barack Obama, who wanted to play patty-cake with Hamas

3 comments May 16th, 2008

Mr. Straight Talk should change his nickname to Mr. Zig-Zag Talk.

John McCain’s been peddling baloney of late about how Barack Obama is somehow inclined to be too chummy with Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Palestinian government.

Actually, Obama’s been saying that Hamas should renounce its violent ways before diplomatic relations with the United States are established.

But McCain said this of Hamas when it emerged victorious in Palestinian elections:

“They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East.”

Former Assistant Secretary of State James P. Rubin puts the matter in perspective HERE.

This is almost painful to watch

16 comments May 15th, 2008

I’m no fan of Chris Matthews, but the job he did tonight on a raving right-wing radio blabber was one for the books.

Matthews was almost too cruel and too relentless in humiliating Kevin James, who likes to spout off about historical analogies — specifically in attempts to denigrate Barack Obama — without knowing anything about the history to which he alludes.

And James did himself no favors by constantly shouting.

Watch it:

Joe lets loose ’bout George Dubya Bu**sh**

14 comments May 15th, 2008

 

Get the young ‘uns inside, Ma.  That Biden feller’s CUSSIN’  out the prezdent agin.

‘Course, this time he’s got a dang good reason.

The man’s personal sacrifice to show solidarity with the troops truly is soul-stirring

20 comments May 15th, 2008

 

I’m sorry.  It’s impossible for me to write about this matter without losing my composure. You can’t help but get misty-eyed about this.

I’d better leave it to Dan Froomkin to EXPLAIN.

Top 10 reasons Obama won the nomination

Add comment May 15th, 2008

THIS LIST from Robert Creamer is no silly Letterman-like exercise. It’s a concise and insightful look at a remarkable campaign.

POSTSCRIPT: The conventional wisdom is that Obama has experienced a lot of ups and downs over the past few months, but that’s not true in perhaps the most important sense.

As this chart from the Jed Report shows, in national polls, Obama closed a 21-percentage-point gap with Clinton during the winter, overtook her in February, and has remained ahead of her ever since.

He’s never had a month-to-month decline.

Coup de grace?

8 comments May 14th, 2008

 

Former Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards ENDORSED Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., late this afternoon in a news event that was beautifully orchestrated from a standpoint of tactical politics.

The endorsement speech by Edwards came just as the Eastern and Central feeds of the network newscasts took to the air and had the effect of crowding and deflating the story of Hillary Clinton’s big victory in yesterday’s West Virginia primary.

Clinton did interviews, live and taped, with all the network anchors this afternoon, and her camp expected to get a lot of TV time for their rhetoric about her perserverance. But the Edwards endorsement stole much of the spotlight from Hillary and shifted the aura of momentum to Obama.

If a big bunch of super delegates follow Edwards’ lead and come out for Obama over the next few days, which seems possible, Clinton will be out the door for all practical purposes.