'She knows the reality'

Once inevitable, now impossible:



Via Hot Air, as Ed Morrissey summarizes:

Bad news, Chaosters — it looks like Hillary Clinton will throw in the towel before the convention. According to Andrea Mitchell at MS-NBC, the big loss in North Carolina and the narrow win in Indiana has convinced even the Clintons that they just can't get to the nomination. Mitchell says that Team Hillary is just "going through the motions."

Michelle Malkin offers mournful music.

UPDATE: I've gone on the road three times to cover the Hillary campaign for The American Spectator. It began as more or less a whim in late March, when I saw that all the experts were lining up to declare the Clinton candidacy dead. "What the heck, let's go see the gotterdammerung," I said to myself, and off I went to Pennsylvania.

What I saw in Greensburg, Pa., however, was not a campaign feebly playing out the string, but rather enthusiastic crowds and a candidate who refused to quit:

Trailing badly in the fourth quarter of her campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary may yet lose, but she seems determined not to quit until the final whistle.
Asked Tuesday if she was feeling pressure to get out of the race, Mrs. Clinton answered, "The most common thing the people say -- it happened here, it happened last night, it happens everywhere I go -- is, 'Don't give up,' 'Keep going,' 'We're with you.' And I feel very good about that, because that's what I intend to do."

I next caught up with Hillary in Harrisburg on the eve of her April 22 Pennsylvania victory:

Almost all observers expect Hillary to win today's primary in a state where every credible poll has shown her leading since last year. But if she can win by the double-digit margin suggested by the internal poll the Clinton campaign leaked to Drudge yesterday, Hillary's people are ready to declare a momentum shift based on Obama's apparent inability to win in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
"Senator Obama has been outspending us three-to-one here in Pennsylvania,"
[Clinton spokesman Mo] Elleithee said. "I think a lot of people are going to have to ask the question, if he fails to win here, despite outspending us three-to-one -- which would be the same pattern as we saw in Texas and Ohio -- he's going to have to start answering a lot of questions as to why.
"Why can't he close the sale? Why can't he win in these big states, and these swing states in the general election?"

That win kept her in the game another two weeks, but the May 6 results blunted her momentum. By the time she reached West Virginia the next day, the press was again hounding her to quit:

Hillary's supporters cheered and chanted her name at the West Virginia event, but reporters pounced at a post-rally press conference, suggesting it might be time for her to strike the tent. Does her vow to keep fighting, asked one network TV reporter, mean that Clinton will continue her campaign all the way until the vote on the convention floor in Denver?
"I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee, and I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee," she answered. "So we will continue to contest these elections and move forward." . . .
A few minutes before Hillary's Shepherdstown speech, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee dismissed doomsayers in the media."The pundits have counted us out since Iowa," he said. "The funny thing about elections is, the voters get to make up their own minds."Barring a decisive tsunami of superdelegate support to Obama, the campaign will continue.

Now, it seems, even her own campaign staff have accepted defeat, which is not the same as saying that they're quitting the fight. I chronicle and summarize Hillary's "Chaos" comeback in the June print edition of The American Spectator, soon available on newsstands everywhere. To subscribe to the Spectator (12 issues for a low, low $19.95), click here.

McCain losing Republicans?

A couple of days ago, I chided See-Dubya for his dismissive attitude toward Bob Barr ("Ron Paul grew a mustache?") but it seems that the potential for conservative alienation increases with the possibility that Lindsey Graham might be McCain's running mate. Now See-Dubya says:

McShamnesty relied on him as his go-to guy and amanuensis on the campaign trail, and they really seem to be two of a kind.
I used to think McCain would be too smart and too considerate of conservative opinion to pick Graham. Recent events have disabused me of such illusions.
I’m sure there’s some payoff for Graham down the line. If that payoff is the VP slot, so help me, I’m writing a check for $20 to Bob Barr on the spot. I’ve promised myself I’d never vote for a candidate who advocated the legalization of narcotics, but I don’t recall any promises about sending him money. And if you think that the GOP is bummed now, there will be open revolt if Graham gets too prominent a post.

Frankly, I think Graham's angling for attorney general, rather than VP, but the longer conservatives look at McCain, the less they like him. See-Dubya sees others thinking that way:

I was listening to Glenn Beck a little while ago and he was venting about the Feinstein/Craig shamnesty sneak, and he paused and told his producer: "You know what? Book Bob Barr for another hour for TV next week, and an hour for radio."

BTW, if anyone in the DC area wants to meet Bob Barr, he'll be at a Reason magazine event next Tuesday, along with three other candidates for the Libertarian Party nomination.

UPDATE: Newsweek magazine has a Q&A with Barr.

Malkin on McCain

Crazy Cousin John's "vision" speech is "pure fantasy," Michelle says:

McCain’s problem is that he has allied himself, for the unprincipled, empty cause of mindless "bipartisanship," with people and causes that move our country in the wrong direction.
I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who makes common cause with La Raza/The Race.
I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who sneers about profits like Ralph Nader.
I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who talks and walks like Al Gore.
And as I’ve said before in response to the annoying McCain platitudes about "reaching across the aisle" and 'getting things done':
When did it become the Republican Party’s top priority to “get things done?"

All the MSM pundits keep wondering when McCain is going to try to patch things up with disaffected conservatives. Obviously, the answer is, he's not. So far as the Republican nominee is concerned, conservatives can stay home on Election Day.

Good luck with that strategy, cuz.

UPDATE: Jeff in Tennessee dislikes my earlier criticism of the "rally 'round the GOP nominee" argument, then goes into a sort of lesser-of-two-evils plea on McCain's behalf.

I will reiterate that it is not my job to elect Republicans. A job implies pay, and while the Republican Party routinely shells out millions to strategists, consultants, etc., none of that money has found its way into my pocket. We see what kind of advice the GOP is getting, and what kind of results their overpaid advisers produce.

It is my independent assessment that the Republican Party is screwed up, that the nomination of John McCain is proof positive of how screwed up the party is, and that the election of John McCain would not remedy the fundamental problem, but rather aggravate it.

You can keep taking your cues from the GOP's paid agents, or you can think for yourself. At some point, conservatives must identify and pay heed to the line between "Republican" and "conservative." Otherwise we'll all end up as lackeys for the Republican Establishment.

Mr. Olbermann, the war isn't about you

Keith Olbermann's shtick amounts to this: Use a lot of overblown adjectives and hyperbole to make simplistic statements sound "smart." The Olbermann viewer comes to the broadcast with pre-conceived hatreds, to which Olbermann gives voice in a way that makes the viewer feel their hatreds are sophisticated, intelligent and mature.

Witness Wednesday's rant. The first sentence is barely coherent:

President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration and public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.

Why "anew"? Why not "again"? The word "anew" is poetic, the sort of thing you'd hear in a valedictory address. What's the point of sticking it into this rant?

Look at how Olberman phrases the central accusation here: "the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation." Is it only the fear-mongering that is sleazy, or is the mass manipulation also sleazy? But if this is truly the "sleaziest" episode of the Bush years, how can Bush be said to have "resorted" to it "anew"? In other words, "anew" suggests that Bush has merely equaled some previous nadir of sleaze, a nadir that Olbemann doesn't specify.

The structure of this sentence is needlessly complex. Bush is the subject, and "resorted" is the predicate.

"Bush resorted to ..." what? "[T]he sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation." In other words, the object of the verb "resorted" is compound. Bush hasn't resorted to one thing, but two, thereby requiring the conjunction "and."

The sentence might have held up if Olberman had been content to accuse Bush of resorting to "sleazy fear-mongering and mass manipulation." But no, he felt the need for the superlative "sleaziest," thus requiring a frame of reference. "Sleaziest" in what context? Compared to what?

The sleaziest, Olbermann tells us, "of an administration and public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations." Great. Now he's modifying the compound object of the sentence with a compound prepositional phrase.

What we see here is a piling-on of accusations, an impatience, a sense that Olbermann can't wait another sentence, that everything he wants to say must be said now. It's a furious sputter that conveys only one idea: Olbermann hates Bush. But you knew that before you tuned into MSNBC.

After quoting Bush's recent response to a reporter's question about what might happen if the U.S. were to precipitously withdraw from Iraq, Olberman says:

Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives?

This is a question? Would Bush accept the accusation that the Allied invasion "has laid waste to Iraq"? Or would Bush talk about the toppling of Saddam and the "nation-building" aspect of the mission?

You don't have to endorse Bush's "political objectives" to balk at this flat assertion that the U.S. has "laid waste to Iraq." And the characterization of Bush as operating inside a "haze of self-congratulation and self-pity" is another of those flat assertions for which Olbermann doesn't even bother to offer evidence.

Then Olberman quotes Bush saying he was "disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was" in reference to Iraq's weapons programs, even though "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."

Right. As of late 2002, no one doubted that Saddam had extensive stockpiles of chemical weapons and that Iraq had bioweapons capacity. The extent of Saddam's nuclear program was more speculative. With his SCUD missiles, however, Saddam certainly had the means of delivering a warhead if he ever obtained or manufactured one. SCUDs aren't highly accurate, and their range is limited, but they were still a regional threat.

But look how Olbermann reacts:

You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."
You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.
And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense.
The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.

Certainly, the president is responsible for his decisions, and if the invasion of Iraq was undertaken in the absence of accurate information, then Bush is responsible. Yet Bush didn't become president until January 2001, and necessarily relied on intelligence about Saddam's weapons that had been accumulated during eight years of the Clinton administration.

Perhaps Bush and his "sycophants" failed to properly evaluate the Clinton-era intelligence they were working with, but I fail to see how they could be held responsible for estimates independently generated by British or other foreign intelligence agencies. Olbermann offers no evidence at all for his assertion that Bush "propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat" of foreign agencies.

There is no argument in Olbermann's rant. Argument requires evidence and logic. All Olbermann offers is assertion and venomous language. Ranting incoherently like a cokehead on a three-day binge isn't going to persuade anyone of anything, but Olbermann's audience doesn't need to be persuaded to hate Bush, so he doesn't even bother to argue.

Olberman expends 2,034 words on this rant, a stem-winding lecture in the world of television news, where the story that gets more than one minute in the evening news is a rarity. Two thousand words is nearly three times as long as the typical op-ed column, and yet Olbermann's rant lacks the informative quality of such a column. Instead, it's a Dagwood sandwich of piled-up assertions:

The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

As emotionally satisfying as it may be for Olbermann to deploy SAT words like "derangement" and "lascivious" against the objects of his hatred, this is neither news nor argument. And the fact that he's allowed to rant on for 2,034 words in this self-indulgent fashion might help explain why MSNBC has such a tiny audience.

Good Charlotte kills

The latest fatal fad for kids:

Hannah was a happy 13-year-old until she became an 'emo' - part of a sinister teenage craze that romanticises death. Three months later she hanged herself. Here, her devastated mother tells other parents: No child is safe.
On the night before she died, she came into their room, kissed her father Raymond on the cheek and cheerfully told him: "I love you, Dad."
The following day Hannah's mother Heather went to check on her daughter and found her hanging by a tie from the top rail of her bunk bed. . . .
Why on earth did their daughter — a popular, intelligent and attractive girl — do such a thing?
They could find only one clue: Hannah was what is known as an "emo".
Some describe it as a cult or a sect, but in reality the term — derived from the word "emotional" — encapsulates a trend that is becoming hugely popular among Britain's schoolchildren. . . .
Hair is all-important: often dyed black and straightened, it is worn in a long fringe brushed to one side of the face.
Music also plays a critical role.
Emos like guitar-based rock with emotional lyrics.
American bands such as My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte and Blink 182 are particular favourites.

Let's face it, suicide sometimes reflects a rational assessment: "OMG! I'm the kind of pathetic wuss who listens to Blink 182!" The amazing thing is that all Blink 182 fans haven't killed themselves. Yet.

Parents, if you've got a teenager, just don't let them listen to any of that "emo" crap, which is for losers, nerds and wienies. Make sure your kids listen to the Stones, Zep, ZZ Top, Van Halen -- good old red-blooded rock 'n' roll, man.

Jodie Foster's gay divorce

Celebrity news update:

Hollywood star Jodie Foster has ended her 14-year lesbian relationship with film producer Cydney Bernard.
The split comes just four months after Miss Foster broke her silence about the relationship, which was long an open secret in movie circles.
Ms Foster revealed her domestic situation for the first time a speech to a gathering of fellow Hollywood stars in Decemeber.
The 45-year-old star of Panic Room, The Accused and Silence Of The Lambs, who was collecting an award, pointedly thanked: "My beautiful Cydney, who sticks by me through all the rotten and the bliss."

So, they'd been going strong as a secret for 14 years, but five months after Jodie tells the world -- kaput.

See? This "coming out" stuff is highly overrated. It's much better for gays to hide in the closet. The shame and secrecy keeps you close.

I wonder if the voices in John Hinckley's head will tell him to go kill Jodie's ex-girlfriend?

Brand damage

Republicans are starting to realize that the policy blunders of Team Bush and the GOP Establishment have badly hurt the party's image:

They said the first was an outlier. The second, a fluke. But after losing their third seat this year in a special election, House Republicans faced the possibility on Wednesday that if they don't repair their image with voters, they could be in for another rough November.

Understatement of the year!

A Democratic pick-up streak that started with Rep. Bill Foster's upset victory in the March election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) crested Tuesday night, when Democrat Travis Childers won a solidly Republican open seat in Mississippi.
The GOP spent one-fifth of its available national party cash for House races on the Mississippi seat. Vice President Dick Cheney campaigned there. President George W. Bush and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain pitched in with automated phone calls. Their candidate lost anyway. Meanwhile, reeling House Republicans unveiled a new slogan this week --"Change you deserve" -- only to watch Democrats gleefully note that it is already used to market an antidepressant.
Several House Republicans say the losses reveal a voter disconnect with their party, rooted in dissatisfaction with Bush, which GOP candidates will have to repair district-by-district this fall. Some, including McCain and several members of the Illinois congressional delegation, appear to believe that to "re-brand" the Republican Party, they must first distance themselves from it.

In six months time, there will be a smoldering crater where the Republican Party used to be. The GOP is heading for one of its worst years since 1974. And the blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of Team Bush. This administration has been a political failure, and it's time this failure was acknowledged.

Silky has Hope

Will the endorsement of a smarmy trial lawyer make a difference?

At a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Wednesday evening, John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama, who was on the stage with him, to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Sounding a theme of a nation divided into parts by walls, Mr. Edwards said, "The reason I am here tonight is that Democratic voters in America have made their choice and so have I."
Mr. Edwards then went on to say, "There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to tear down that wall and make one America, Barack Obama."

What a phenomenally stupid thing to say. In a nation of 300 million people, there is only one man who has this great truth "in his heart"?

Eh, who cares? Edwards' value to Obama is that Edwards had been Kerry's running mate in 2004 and was the third leading candidate in the primaries this year. Edwards has made a career pushing logical fallacies with emotional resonance, and his latest expedition into incoherence won't bother Obama.

However, Edwards has 16 pledged delegates who could help move Obama that much closer to the nomination.

Sean Penn, brain-dead

Interviewed at Cannes:

”I don't have a candidate I'm supporting and I'm certainly interested and excited by the hope that Barack Obama is inspiring,” he said, but went on to accuse him of a “phenomenally inhuman and unconstitutional” voting record.
”I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee, the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn't become a greater man than he will ever be,” Penn said. “This is the most important election, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe ever.”

BTW, guess who joined Penn on the red carpet at Cannes? Natalie Portman:

Portman, 26, said she would not be endorsing Obama or his rival, Hillary Clinton, but added: “I think it's a very exciting year for our politics, that for the first time in a while we have a choice of who we like better instead of who we hate least.”

Just what I needed. Another flimsy excuse to blog about Natalie Portman.

Rangoon or bust!

A "humanitarian invasion" of Burma? Surely, you jest. I know I do. How do you say "sarcasm" in Burmese?

Megadittos

Over at the American Spectator blog, I linked Rush Limbaugh's discussion of Tuesday's Mississippi congressional defeat, which El Rushbo blames on "the Republican establishment . . . the country club types who are in the process of destroying the Republican Party . . . the pseudoconservatives of the New York Times and the DC-New York media establishment who think that Rockefeller Republicanism and country club Republicanism is the future of the party."

There can be no doubt, I believe, that Limbaugh is talking about David Brooks, Bill Kristol, Michael Gerson and other such Republican critics of limited-government conservatism. By the way, as James Antle notes, Gerson's column today -- as usual, hyping Bush's "compassionate" agenda -- got a quick smackdown from Dr. Coburn:

Unfortunately, all Gerson has shown is that demagoguery is the last refuge of a former administration official looking for a legacy.

Ouch. The gormless Gerson deserved that.

Fairly unbalanced

This Fox News anchor rolls his eyes and his voice drips with sarcasm as he keeps throwing GOP talking points at Bob Barr:



The anchor begins the interview this way:

"So, could he be a spoiler for John McCain? . . . Libertarian nominees have never managed to get more than 1 percent of the vote in presidential elections . . . . Do you really think you have a realistic chance of getting elected, and if not, then why are you doing this?"

Barr gives a 45-second answer, then the anchor says:

"Let me stop you there. In a close race, you could turn out to be the kind of spoiler for John McCain that Ralph Nader was Al Gore eight years ago. . . ."

The anchor then reads back to Barr a quote from Newt Gingrich. So the Barr candidacy is only of interest to Fox News insofar as Barr threatens to be a "spoiler for John McCain." (In point of fact, it was not Nader, but Pat Buchanan who delivered the fatal blow to Gore in Florida, due to the Palm Beach County "butterfly ballot.")

Is Fox News in the business of reporting the news, or is it in the business of electing John McCain? I can understand an unabashed GOP publicist like Stephen Spruiell parroting the Gingrich spin, but nobody ever expects anything except Republican talking points from National Review anymore. I thought Fox, at least, wanted to maintain some semblance of independence.

UPDATE: It's not that I've got anything against Republican talking points per se. I like this RNC ad, for example:



(Via Hot Air.) That's a campaign ad that doesn't pretend to be anything but a campaign ad, whereas the Fox anchor was delivering Republican talking points as if they were actually news.

'Thank you, West Virginia!'

Hillary Clinton vows to continue her divisive race-baiting campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, no matter what her critics say:



I didn't hear Rush Limbaugh's show today, so I don't know what to think about this yet.

Pre-teen pole dancers?

Michelle Malkin rightly denounces as "pedophilia chic," Beyonce's new line of slutwear for toddlers. In the process, she links back to her own post from October (a post I must have missed at the time) about a scene from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," in which a Hollywood producer records video of Bruce Jenner's pre-teen daughters (Kim Kardashian's half-sisters) dancing on a stripper pole:

Where are the feminists who should be denouncing this exploitative crap? Teaching 9- and 11-year girls to imitate strippers? Might as well sign them up now as Future Dates of Elliott Spitzer.

It's not just celebrity sleazoids who are pushing to sexualize kids. I reported about the academic pro-pedophile movement in 2002.

Hillary foe declares victory

But he's not going home:

It isn’t just Barack Obama’s camp that’s starting to claim victory over Hillary Clinton. Some conservatives are, too. Richard Collins, the Texas GOP activist and fundraiser behind the anti-Clinton site StopHerNow.com, has declared her, well, stopped.“Sen. Clinton has been whupped and its over,” Collins told us. . . .
Not that Collins’ work is done. Late last week, he announced the debut of Stop-Him-Now.com to help take down Obama.

This morning I drank my coffee from a promotional StopHerNow.com mug I picked up at CPAC in 2006.

Hillary's Hillbilly Heaven

Oh, what a beautiful sight at TPM from John Marshall, who provides this map of Appalachia:



And then this map of counties where Hillary's won Democratic primaries by 65% or more:



Marshall then asks, "So what is it about this region?" Hey, man, ask Obama. We're just bitter, and that's all there is to it.

Sing it, Tex:

Blues in the blood?

Blogging over at The American Spectator about a Dutch blog that erroneously stated that I'm not related to Crazy Cousin John:

I am a distant cousin of John McCain, a kinship that can be traced back to two brothers, Hugh and Alexander McCain, who migrated westward from South Carolina circa 1800. One branch of the family ended up as plantation owners in the Mississippi Delta, the other branch ended up as East Alabama dirt farmers. I'm a proud descendant of the Alabama dirt-farming McCains.

Following that link to the 2000 Salon article, I noticed this paragraph:

Tracing the genealogies of slaves is often easy, because slaves frequently adopted the surnames of their owners. In 1876, for example, a Mary J. McCain married Isham Hurt. The two had a son, blues guitarist "Mississippi" John Hurt, in 1892 on Teoc, the plantation community where the McCains owned 2,000 acres.

The mighty McCain mojo might be hereditary.

Who's to blame?

The Republican brand is badly damaged:

The sky is falling on House Republicans and there is no sign of it letting up.
The GOP loss in Mississippi’s special election Tuesday is the strongest sign yet that the Republican Party is in shambles. And while some Republicans see a light at the end of the tunnel, that light more likely represents the Democratic train that is primed to mow down more Republicans in November.
The third straight House special election loss in three conservative districts this year is a clear indication that the GOP brand is turning off voters and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is in disarray.

Let the hunt for scapegoats commence! The Republican Party's professional apologists will scour around for excuses, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush presidency has been a political failure.

Republicans lost 31 House seats and six Senate seats in the 2006 mid-term elections, and the GOP's grand poobahs tried to ignore the significance of their defeat.

One of the big reasons for the 2006 disaster was that John McCain's amnesty bill alienated many blue-collar voters who had been voting Republican in recent elections. Yet not only did McCain try to pass amnesty again in 2007, but then the Republican Party nominated the La Raza-loving author of this anti-American legislation as its 2008 presidential candidate.

It was President Bush himself who, in January 2004, proposed guest-worker status and amnesty for "undocument workers." In his second term, Bush pressured Republicans in Congress to support such legislation. No doubt other factors are involved in the collapse of the GOP coalition, but it's imp0ssible to ignore the role of Bush, McCain and amnesty in this disaster.

Some of my conservative friends are engaged in a "rally 'round the GOP nominee" effort, and their motives I won't impugn. It seems to me, however, given the mounting evidence that Republicans are doomed to defeat in November, that the smart thing for conservatives to do would be to get as far away as possible from this impending disaster.

On Nov. 5, when there's nothing left of the Republican Party but a smoldering crater, you want to be in a position to say, "I told you so."

UPDATE: Dad29 likes my line from yesterday:

Conservatives are like a battered wife in an abusive relationship with the GOP, except that we can't even get a restraining order.

I think my obstreperous attitude toward the Republican elite my be rooted in my experiences as an ex-Democrat. I was born and raised a yellow-dog Democrat and remained fiercely loyal to the party long after many of my friends and neighbors had become "Reagan Democrats." (To give you an idea of what a hard-core partisan I was, I voted for Mondale in '84 -- in Georgia, a state where Reagan got 60% of the vote.)

For years, I gritted my teeth and put up with the idiotic liberals who kept bringing disaster on the Democrats. I didn't even bother to vote in 1988. And then in 1992, along came Bill Clinton, a Southern governor who at least made an effort to distance himself from the Dukakis/Cranston wing of the party. Clinton fooled me so completely that I became an enthusiastic supporter --bumper stickers on the back of my car, the whole deal.

Fool me once, as they say. The three most significant initiatives of the Clinton administration were: (a) gays in the military, (b) socialized medicine, and (c) the bogus "assault weapons" ban. You may say I'm ignoring other major Clinton initiatives, but these were the most significant to me, in that I was 100% against them.

I had voted for a "Sam Nunn Democrat," and had gotten a San Francisco Democrat instead. The "assault weapons" ban was the real deal-breaker. My reaction could be summed up in four words: F--- you, Democratic Party.

By 1996, I'd swung so far to the right that I couldn't bring myself to vote for that mushy middle-of-the-road sellout Bob Dole, the "Senator From Archer Daniels Midland" whom Newt Gingrich once dubbed "the tax collector for the welfare state." In 1996, I voted for Harry Browne.

Having been screwed, blued and tattooed by the Democrats, I'm now intensely skeptical of those conservatives who urge me to act on motives of Republican partisan loyalty, despite every evidence that the GOP has nothing but contempt for its conservative supporters.

UPDATE II: Philip Klein of The American Spectator dubs John McCain "the only electable candidate in [the GOP] once Rudy Giuliani's post-9/11 popularity vanished," causing me to register my astonishment. That GOP Kool-Aid must be powerful stuff.

P.S.: So far as I know, the term "pre-mortem" was coined in October 2006. With all the gloomy GOP omens this year I say, why wait until October?

'Please come to Denver'

Thousands of left-wing freaks are coming to Denver, and the city's freaking out:

Planning for the worst during the Democratic National Convention requires one of the best, and that expertise doesn’t come cheap.
Denver is paying $225 an hour - or $9,000 a week - to Ellis M. Stanley Sr., an emergency management veteran who has been tapped to serve as director of DNC planning for the city’s Office of Emergency Management.
Stanley, who has overseen planning for major events including the 1988 Democratic convention and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, stands to make up to $280,000 while under contract with the city through August.

The 1996 Olympics -- yeah, that turned out swell.

Michelle Malkin has dubbed Stanley an "expert on moonbat management," but I wonder if Denver put this job up for bids? I probably could have come up with a lot cheaper security plan for the Democratic convention. Hire a bunch of bitter Bible-clinging gun-toters, give 'em plenty of .12-gauge shotgun ammunition, and if anybody wants to start any trouble, Go ahead, punk, make my day.

P.S.: The post title is from the second verse of Dave Loggins' 1974 hit, "Please Come to Boston":

GOP VP DOA

Immediately after finishing a gloomy assessment of Republican prospects in November, I saw Michelle Malkin's reaction to the news that open-borders Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is now considered the top contender for GOP running-mate:

Can someone please fast-forward to 2012? Please.

Agreed. But if things keep going in the current direction at the current rate, there won't even be a Republican Party by 2012. I couldn't help but think of Dante's inscription at the portal to Hell:

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I'm tired of hoping that the Republican Party will ever recover its senses. Conservatives are like a battered wife in an abusive relationship with the GOP, except that we can't even get a restraining order.

Or maybe I'm just depressed.

Polls and possibilities

As of today, the Real Clear Politics poll average shows Barack Obama at 47.8%, John McCain at 43.3%.

Obama has just weathered two months of unceasing bad press, beginning with the first ABC News story about Jeremiah Wright on March 13. Then there was Bittergate (April 11), his poor performance in the Philadelphia debate (April 16), his defeat in Pennsylvania (April 22), Wright's media tour (April 25-28) and flag-stomping Bill Ayers (May 5).

After all this, then, Obama holds an average lead of more than 4 points in eight polls done since April 30. Moreover, in two of those polls (CBS and ABC) Obama hit 51%. McCain has not hit 50% in a head-to-head matchup with Obama since an early January USA Today poll.

With even James Carville now ready to stick a fork in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and an Obama-McCain general-election contest now all but certain, those polls should give pause to pundits who are busy plotting scenarios in which John McCain wins in November.

Is a McCain victory even possible?

Well, anything is possible, I suppose, but it's hard to see it as a likely scenario. Bush's approval numbers continue to reach new nadirs, the wrong-track numbers are near the 80% level, and Democrats have a double-digit edge in generic congressional numbers.

So far as polls can forecast, then, Republicans are sailing for a November electoral disaster on the scale of 1964 or '74. Meanwhile, we see the GOP standard-bearer distancing himself still further from the party's conservative base, e.g., endorsing the global warming hoax.

What we don't see, however, is conservative pundits bluntly acknowledging this pessimistic picture, or naming names in terms of who is responsible for the startling decline of GOP fortunes since 2004.

On Jan. 20, 2005, the political forecast was for continued Republican dominance. Within 22 months, however, the GOP lost its congressional majority. The party establishment apparently learned nothing from that mid-term defeat, and so the downward spiral of Republican fortunes appears likely to continue this fall. By Jan. 20, 2009, Democrats will control the White House and both houses of Congress, and the GOP will be right back where it was in 1993.

If conservative pundits do not begin assessing blame for this looming debacle, other pundits will. And those other pundits will blame . . . conservatives.

'Indistinguishable'?

Thanks for the traffic, Michelle Malkin, but I was stunned at your statement that Bob Barr is "virtually indistinguishable from all the other remaining presidential candidates" on illegal immigration. As I report at the American Spectator blog:

"If a person is illegally in this country, the taxpayers of this country and the government of this country owe them nothing," Barr said.
"This notion that government owes something to people, simply because they're here, does not resonate with me as somebody who believes in responsible government. If one were running a charity called the United States of America, that would be one thing. This is not a charity, this is the people's business. . . . I disagree with the [1982 Plyer v. Doe] court decision . . . that decided that children of illegal aliens, people who are in this country unlawfully, have a right to a public education paid for by the taxpayers of this country. That is an improper, irresponsible decision."

For some reason, none of the MSM reporters at the event thought that quote newsworthy. But it's certainly distinguishable from anything John McCain has ever said.

UPDATE 5/13: A source in the Barr campaign tells me they were bombarded Monday with hostile, vitriolic e-mails from John McCain's supporters. I myself was unaware that See-Dubya is a McCainiac, as indicated by his comment on my Monday morning post:

Ron Paul grew a moustache?

By which See-Dubya apparently means to dismiss Barr as an anti-war crackpot. Well, Barr's never trucked with Truthers, at least. And the Spectator's Philip Klein sees a difference:

On international affairs in general, his tone was a lot more measured than what we've seen from Ron Paul -- there were no stinging critiques of U.S. as an imperialist nation.

Barr voted for the Iraq War, but now believes it was a mistake and wants to "set in place a plan" to "dramatically decrease the military, the economic, and the political footprint we maintain in Iraq."

But his language remained cautious. He opposes precipitous withdrawal, and described it as "foolhardy" to announce a timetable for pulling out of Iraq.

"Only a fool would signal to whoever their adversaries are when we would be drawing down our troops," he said.In response to another question, he added that "the doctrine of preemptive war has no basis in traditional and historical notions of America's security."

Barr's a big boy who can defend himself, but I have a hard time reconciling the way some of my friends are now calling for conservatives to rally 'round the GOP banner with the way they were talking in January and February.

I turned on the radio Monday morning and actually heard Laura Ingraham making apologies for John McCain, the same day he moved to Bush's left on "climate change." Now he's not just a RINO, he's a green RINO -- and he approves this message:

Gag me with a renewable energy source. Drew M at AOSHQ:

Boy, I am glad I live in NY and don't have to feel bad about not voting for the guy . . .

Yeah, Maryland is also deep Blue, so I get a free vote, too.

It's Barr Day!

Raining cats and dogs in DC -- we had flood warnings last night -- as I get ready to head down to the National Press Club for Bob Barr's 11 a.m. press conference. As I explain at the American Spectator blog:

Hate to spoil any surprises, but as a general rule, politicians don't book an NPC press conference to announce they're not running for president.

The L.A. Times today mentions Barr in talking about Ron Paul's forces opposing Sen. John McCain inside the GOP:

Paul's candidacy [is] a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party's most conservative conservatives. . . . [T]hat situation could be exacerbated by today's expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party's presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

Ralph Z. Hallow of The Washington Times has a story about Republicans who fear the potential impact of a Barr LP candidacy:

Republicans, both publicly and behind the scenes, are saying that a Barr run could hurt him financially and sink Mr. McCain's Republican candidacy in the general election, likely against Sen. Barack Obama.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Times today that "Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion."

Electing the co-author of McCain-Feingold would threaten no libertarian values?

BTW, back in February, I was the first journalist to report on the "Draft Barr" movement that led to this campaign. That movement was hatched during CPAC. I first heard about it Feb. 8, a few hours after Barr introduced Ron Paul:

What did she get for $20 million?

Hillary should demand a refund:

Clinton aides continued to insist that she will remain in the race even while confirming that she is $20 million in debt. "The voters are going to decide this," senior adviser Howard Wolfson said on "Fox News Sunday," acknowledging the $20 million figure. . . .

As of a month ago, most of that debt was reportedly owed to the firm of former Clinton top strategist Mark Penn:

A source who has had close connections with Penn got word to me that he believes the Clinton campaign is $10 million in debt to Penn, Schoen & Berland, which is owned by Burson-Marsteller. The campaign's March report to the Federal Election Commission recorded indebtedness to the company of nearly $2.5 million (with its expenses for the month listed at $3.1 million).
My sources suggest that Clinton's full indebtedness may be revealed only gradually. This money link helps explain why Penn is still around even though organized labor demanded his scalp last summer and he is blamed inside the campaign for failing to perceive the public's demand for "change."
Just how much money Clinton owes Penn could cause major difficulties. If not repaid
promptly, would it constitute an illegal financial contribution? Because the British WPP owns Burson-Marsteller, would that debt constitute an illegal foreign contribution?

This is one of my pet peeves about political professionals in both parties. The top operatives get rich running campaigns, and they get paid whether the candidates win or lose. There is a built-in bias for operatives to respond to every problem in the campaign by saying, "The solution is to give me more money." The pollsters always want more money for polling, the media strategists want more money for ads, etc.

What results is a high "burn rate" -- spending campaign funds as fast, or faster, than they come in. These contributions often come from true-believer types, in response to "urgent" appeals to the effect of, "Help us save America!"

Those donors are getting ripped off, if that money goes mainly to line the pockets of some bigshot operative. And how can a candidates, in good conscience, ask students and housewives to work as unpaid volunteers while, at the same time, the campaign is pouring out millions in fat fees to expensive consultants? The consultants, strategists, and pollsters get paid, win or lose.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There are McMansions in Virginia horse country -- and yachts on the Chesapeake Bay -- that were paid for with consulting contracts on losing campaigns.

Liberal love

Got this e-mail today:

wow
you are really a piece of pure, rancid filth.
but, then so are most fascists and cheney regime apologists/supporters/ass lickers.
what an utter waste of flesh you creeps are.
have a nice day!!

My correspondent didn't say what I'd done to upset him, but I suppose it was my argument that Halliburton/KBR cannot automatically be assumed responsible for the rape of one of its contract employees in Iraq.

That argument was linked at a left-wing blog, where it was suggested that I was endorsing rape. In fact, I was arguing against the "sue somebody" mentality of tort lawyers who will seize on any opportunity to stage courtroom raids on the profits of major corporations:

Americans routinely sue their employers for millions, then have the effrontery to complain about the lack of "good jobs."

Because KBR is (or was) a subsidiary of Halliburton, and because Cheney was once CEO of Halliburton, some people are willing to believe anything bad they're told about the company. As I said, "the facts of the legal case remain to be examined," but it seems to me a stretch to assume that KBR bears civil liability for a criminal act like rape, an act that the company itself surely condemns.

Why do our ACLU-loving liberal friends never extend the "presumption of innocence" to corporations? Do the stockholders of KBR have no rights?

Media bias in 1,311 words

Newsweek's 3,400-word preview of an Obama-McCain general election campaign draws a 1,311-word response from John McCain campaign aide Mark Salter:

The Obama senior staffers were described as idealists and decent sorts, and [ju-jitsu] experts who could use Republican Party smears and deceitful tactics against their authors. I’m sure both David Plouffle and David Axelrod are fine, upstanding citizens. But the former ran a campaign for Senator Torricelli and the latter worked on the campaigns of Mayor Daley. I don’t remember those campaigns being notable for their delicate courtesy and softball tactics toward their opponents.
Without a trace of skepticism, your reporters embraced the primary communications strategy the Obama campaign intends to follow: any criticism of their candidate is a below the belt, Republican attack machine distortion that should discredit the authors. And any attempt by our campaign to counter that suggestion will be dismissed as a rant.

(Via Hot Air Headlines.) What any media critic should notice about the Newsweek article is that it starts with a leisurely 320 words humanizing Obama -- feet up on the table, adjusting his socks, etc. -- before introducing the Republican opposition thus:

The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities.

Then a Clinton adviser is quoted saying their campaign has been holding back on negative attacks on Obama, but:

The Republicans "won't suffer from such scruples," this adviser says. Sen. John McCain himself has explicitly disavowed playing the race card or taking the low road generally. But he may not be able to resist casting doubt on Obama's patriotism. And the real question is whether he can -- or really wants to -- rein in the merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet and fund the "independent expenditure" groups who exercise their freedom in ways that give a bad name to free speech.

The "merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet"? Right. And they're all Republicans.

What I gather from this Newsweek article is that there isn't a single conservative with any influence in their newsroom. Otherwise, at some point in the editorial process, somebody would have called Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe into a conference room and said, "Uh, guys, let's go over this story. What's the concept here?"

This isn't an opinion column. It's the cover story. You cannot flatly assert, without evidence or argument, that the GOP's electoral success is entirely dependent on "merchants of slime."

The article describes David Bossie of Citizens United as being "already deep into a mudslinging campaign against Obama." What has Bossie done? He's commissioned a documentary film about Obama. Bossie's a conservative, and I presume that the film will be as effective as "Hillary: The Movie," which Citizens United released in January. In fact, I interviewed Boss at the movie's DC premiere:

"We already have our research staff working on Obama and, if he is the nominee, we will have a film out this summer, just like this one," said David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United and executive producer of "Hillary: The Movie," which premiered last night in Georgetown.

That movie wasn't just right-wing "mudslinging," and I don't expect the next one to be. To characterize a critical documentary as "mudslinging" is to dismiss and malign it -- and the Obama movie is still months away from completion.

A very bad idea

Nude vacation resorts. Notice that none of the nude vacationers pictured in this New York Times travel feature are young and attractive.

A bunch of ugly old naked people? That's not a vacation. That's day shift in a nursing home: "Are you ready for you bath, Mr. Ferguson?"

People have been pushing this nudism thing for years, and yet the people involved with it continue to be the same old freaks. Nudism sounded interesting back in the '60s, when groovy hippie chicks were getting naked at Woodstock or letting it all hang out at a commune in the woods with a Zen guru. Far out! Peace! Love!

That all ended when the hippie chicks discovered capitalism, which eventually led to nudie bars. None of those women in the New York Times article about nudist resorts was good-looking enough to work in a nudie bar. Heck, a couple of those dames looked like they could be bouncers in a nudie bar.

So, basically, this $300-a-night nudie resort in Mexico is about a bunch of sick old freaks and their fat ugly girlfriends walking around naked.

Paying $300 a night to hang out naked in Mexico with a retired insurance executive named Bernie? No thanks, I'll stay home.

Say it ain't so, Rush!

Rush Limbaugh:

"One of my next objectives is to try and convince Republicans to cross over and vote for McCain down the road," he quipped.

(Via Hot Air.) Not me. McCain threw away that chance when he tried -- not one, but twice -- to push amnesty through the Senate. No votes for amnesty and no votes for those who voted for amnesty. Ever. Period.

Confused women in W. Va.

A mass mailing leads to mass confusion:

The Secretary of State's office is reminding first-time voters that the deadline to register to vote in Tuesday's primary already has passed.
Betty Ireland said she's worried that a mass mailing aimed at getting young women in West Virginia to register to vote might cause confusion.
A group called "Women's Voices. Women Vote" sent out more than 16,000 mailers to unmarried women in the state after April 22, the last day to register in time to vote Tuesday.
People who've never voted can still register, but they won't be eligible to cast a ballot in the primary.

Confused women, running late. No surprise there.

You may remember "Women's Voices. Women Vote" (WVWV) as the group responsible for the suspicious North Carolina robo-calls. WVWV has received grants from the left-wing Tides Foundation. In March, WVWV was one of several groups (including La Raza, ACORN, Move.org and the AFL-CIO) that announced a coalition to make "the most expensive mobilization in history" for voter turnout this year.

Can't wait to see Don Surber's reaction to this news. What? West Virginia women weren't confused enough already, without these "outside agitators" coming in to confuse them further?

One question

Why hasn't he resigned already?

Vito Fossella's admission that he fathered a love child exposed another of his lies: He had told his girlfriend he was separated from his wife, the Daily News learned
Friday.
Retired Air Force Col. Laura Fay told those around her recently that the Staten Island congressman had split with his wife, Mary Pat, one source said.
"Fay thought - up until the release of the statement - that Fossella was separated," said the source, who is familiar with the relationship.
The source said Fay learned of the lie when a friend who saw a draft of Fossella's statement realized it didn't say he was separated.
Fossella, who has always stressed "family values," admitted Thursday in the statement that he fathered Fay's 3-year-old daughter during an illicit affair.
The revelation came a week after he was charged with drunken driving in Alexandria, Va., and seemed to tear apart the family.

Let's face it: When the phrases "love child," "illicit affair" and "drunken driving" occur in the space of six paragraphs about one congressman, that story is eventually going to end with "resigned in disgrace." Some scandals are survivable; this isn't one of them. Why is Fosella delaying the inevitable?

UPDATE: Just got an answer:

GOP strategists are debating whether he should resign or announce that he will not seek reelection in November.

"GOP strategists"! Your married Catholic congressman fathers a love child and gets busted for drunk driving, and you need "GOP strategists" to tell you what he should do? This reminds of the "GOP strategists" who thought Bob Ney could try to hang on in Ohio. Instead, he waited until August 2006 to announce he wouldn't seek re-election, and helped drag down the entire Ohio Republican Party with him.

OK, if only "GOP strategists" are allowed to participate in this discussion, I hereby declare myself a "GOP strategist": Vito Fossella should have resigned long ago, but at this point, first thing tomorrow morning will suffice.

The right history of the Left

Kathy Shaidle reviews Daniel Flynn's new book:

[T]he Left has always attracted very peculiar people who’ve preached very peculiar "solutions" to life's "problems." In fact, the sameness of the Left as chronicled by Flynn actually illustrates the conservative view of life: that human nature is fallen, universal, and cannot be permanently altered for the better through education or engineering.
Certain leftist types turn up again and again through the centuries, brought back to colorful life in Flynn's book: fanatics, altruists, adventurers, splitters, spiritualists, free spirits, and one particular type Flynn dubs the "puritanical perverts": Alfred Kinsey, Timothy Leary, and other "overbearing personalities whose zeal for sex, drugs, or whatever other pleasure made them paternalistic libertines."
What they all have in common, Flynn writes in Conservative History, isn't a "laundry list of complaints and wishes" so much as "an attitude": "It is, in its simplest form,
scorn for what is and hopes for what could be. The ideology's appeal exists in neither the experienced past nor the concrete present, but in the imagined future."

By all means, read the whole thing. I first encountered Flynn through his excellent 1999 pamphlet, Cop Killer: How Mumia Abu-Jamal Conned Millions Into Believing He Was Framed. That pamphlet demonstrated Flynn's deep understanding of how liberal media engage in what can only be called propaganda -- dishonest communication intended to propagate false belief. In Cop Killer, Flynn explains the facts of the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner, facts that Mumia's media enablers routinely ignore. No honest person can read Cop Killer and still buy into the "political prisoner" nonsense promulgated by the "Free Mumia" idiots.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the author of Cop Killer should win praise for his latest work.

Did KBR rape Jamie Leigh Jones?

UPDATE: Greetings TBogg/Firedoglake readers. In fact, contrary to what you read there, I am a former employee of The Washington Times (resigned in January) and this post is not about "the bitch obviously had it coming," it's about whether KBR should be held corporately responsible for criminal actions it neither authorized nor condoned. -- RSM

She'll get her day in court:

A Houston woman who says she was gang raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle late Friday when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring her case to court instead of forcing her into secretive arbitration proceedings with Halliburton and KBR. . . .
Jones says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

I don't think she's doing the lawsuit to get rich. Her lawyer, yes; herself, no. She'll get hers from the book deal and the movie rights. Excuse my extreme cyncism, but Jamie Leigh Jones' story has got "NYT bestseller/Oscar-winning movie" written all over it.

Gang rape is a crime, and the perpetrators should be punished, but Halliburton didn't rape Jamie Leigh Jones.

Halliburton hired Jones, and also apparently hired her rapists, but gang-rape was not any part of Halliburton's policy. They're in the engineering services business, not the rape business. They don't make a profit from rape, and yet somehow are being held financially liable for the criminal conduct of the persons unknown accused of raping Jones.

There was also an alleged cover-up:

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

If, as she alleges, security officers destroyed evidence of the rape, then by all means those security officers should be held accountable, just as the rapists should be held accountable, and whoever imprisoned her in a shipping container should also be held accountable. However, this kind of accountability -- punishing actual wrongdoers -- is not what the Jones lawsuit is about. What this lawsuit is about is a tort lawyer financially raping the stockholders of a major corporation.

The cost of this lawsuit will be borne by stockholders in Halliburton/KBR, stockholders who were not party to the crime, who would never condone such crimes, and who yet are being held accountable for these crimes. How so?

In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.
"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

In other words, it's like the "hostile environment" aspect of sexual harassment case law, the Catch-22 of equal rights. On the one hand, if KBR had refused to hire a woman for Iraq contractor employment, they'd have been guilty of illegal discrimination. On the other hand, they send a 20-year-old blonde into a male-dominated work environment in the middle of a war zone and she gets raped, and the corporation is held liable for the crime.

Did the board of directors approve a "boys will be boys" directive for KBR's Iraq barracks? Which vice-president of KBR signed off on the memeorandum that "created" that "atmosphere"? But the lawyers for Jones know that the jury that hears the case won't think logically. Instead, the jurors will decide that KBR is rich, and the plaintiff is poor, and something bad happened, therefore the company should shell out millions of dollars -- and the tort lawyer will buy himself a new houseboat.

In its own way, this is a legal abuse as bad as the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. I have all the sympathy in the world for a rape victim, but sympathy is not law.

The employees who go to Iraq to work for KBR are all adults. One wonders what policy KBR might have instituted to prevent male-female fraternization in its Iraq barracks without being accused of illegal discrimination.

Given that such fraternization was permitted, the law of large numbers would suggest that among the thousands of men working for KBR in Iraq, some few would be willing to participate in a gang-rape. (She says she was drugged; claims of being dosed with "date-rape drugs" mysteriously proliferate in the era of Jello shots. Note that Jones was below the legal U.S. drinking age at the time of this incident. Don't 20-year-olds ever get just plain-old drunk anymore? What did gang-rapists do before the discovery of Rohypnol?)

While the facts of the legal case remain to be examined, I have a hard time figuring exactly how the rape of Jones results in corporate culpability on the part of KBR. Americans routinely sue their employers for millions, then have the effrontery to complain about the lack of "good jobs."

Mr. Reform's glass house

Kind of a problem to be the candidate who crusaded to "get big money out of politics," then you pick a lobbyist to run the Republican Convention:

The public relations executive whom Senator John McCain’s campaign had chosen to run the Republican National Convention this summer resigned his post on Saturday after a magazine reported that his firm had lobbied for the military junta that runs Myanmar.
The executive, Doug Goodyear, said in a statement that he was stepping down as the coordinator of the convention, which will be held Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”
“I continue to strongly support John McCain for president and wish him the best of luck in this campaign,” the two-sentence statement concluded.
Mr. Goodyear is the chief executive and a founding partner of the DCI Group. . . . He offered his resignation after Newsweek reported that his firm had been paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the junta.

See, that's why I'm "The Other McCain," to make clear the distinction between myself and McCain-Feingold, Kennedy-McCain and now Myanmar McCain.

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Michelle Malkin, who notes this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review column about Myanmar McCain's "outreach":

McCain had made significant progress in reaching out to conservatives over the last month or so. But his La Raza embrace is a serious lapse of judgment, one of a number of lapses that, if the primaries are a valid indicator, could lead to a full quarter of the Republican electorate staying home on Nov. 4.

Reaching out? I certainly didn't notice any "reaching out" to conservatives, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. Did he call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold? Did he repudiate No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug bill? Did he at least do the Obama "mistake" move and "distance himself" from Ted Kennedy?

No, he did none of these things. He's an unrepentant RINO -- a La Raza RINO! Good luck with that in November.

UPDATE II: A second McCain campaign aide has resigned over ties to DCI.

UPDATE III: Linked at Free Republic, where someone posted this clever Photoshop job:

Hillary's volunteers

Georgetown University law professor Heidi Li Feldman hits the road for Hillary, cross-posting at Taylor Marsh's site:

I am passing through Boonsboro, on the cusp of West Virginia. Not 100 miles from DC and we are in the Shenandoah mountains. Farms, cows. More cows. Getting out this way sparks many thoughts. ...

Actually, Dr. Feldman (since Boonsboro is just a few miles down MD-66 from my house) you're in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Shenandoah Valley (like the river for which it is named) is south of the Potomac River, on the Virginia/West Virginia side.

But yeah, "farms, cows" -- although most people in rural areas nowadays aren't farmers and don't live on farms. They live in the small towns or in the new developments. Many are retirees, but others commute to jobs in bigger places like Frederick, Hagerstown, Martinsburg or the Dulles region. I commuted all the way from Hagerstown to DC (about 150 miles round-trip) five days a week for nearly five years. Dr. Feldman continues:

Literally just crossed into West Va. Crossed the Potomac after Antietam Battleground. Not far from Harper's Ferry where John Brown made abolitionism famous. Not a bad jumping off spot to fight for the cause. ...

Antietam National Battlefield Park, to be exact. I'd be happy to give you a guided tour sometime (my Facebook profile picture was taken at Burnside's Bridge). And abolitionism hadn't been exactly obscure before the perpetrator of the Pottawatomie massacre showed up in the Old Dominion. But I digress. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Headed straight to the Clinton campaign office. Just saw the first Clinton yard sign just outside of Shepardstown.

Shepherdstown, where I covered Hillary and Chelsea on Wednesday. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Campaign staff in Charlestown: Clinton roaring in other parts of West Va., but in this pocket, eastern area, things are tighter. So they were delighted to have us turn up. We headed out with signs and spirit. ...
Hit the campaign office in Charlestown, West Virginia at 3:30 or so. Focus for the day: visibility. Paint the town with a presence for Senator Clinton.

This is what's called a "honk-and-wave." Perhaps not the ideal way for a campaign to utilize the skills of a Georgetown law professor. The Eastern Panhandle is the most affluent part of West Virginia (lots of prosperous retirees), it's home to Shepherd University, and also has a larger black population than the rest of the state, so it is one of the better Obama regions. Other Obama bastions in the state are Morgantown (where the state university is located) and the state capital, Charleston (not to be confused with Charles Town). Dr. Feldman continues:

Erin and I, another out-of-stater who had arrived to help, gear up. I put stickers all over myself, grab a placard. Erin, grabs a big triple sign. The campaign asks us to go to Martinsburg, a town about 20 miles away. Nisha, the campaign rep, explains that there is a major mall there and they need us to get people's attention. . . . I slap a sticker on my forehead. But Erin makes me take it off, which I do only because she sticks some extras on my back.

At this point in the narrative, I was wondering: "Who's Erin?" Is she the "loyal spouse" referred to as providing "crucial help" in Dr. Feldman's personal blog? One of those "Massachusetts marriages"? Couldn't find enough biographical material online to confirm or deny such a suspicion, although Dr. Feldman does refer to her "calico catties," which means she's definitely . . a cat blogger. (Lesbians I can cope with. Cat-blogging law professors? Shudder.) Dr. Feldman continues:

Erin is a champion hand-waver. She just connects with the drivers who see her waving. Meanwhile, in my demure and shy way, I'm jumping up and down with my placard. Right away we get positive feedback: many folks -- of all ages and races (many blacks, many whites, some browns) -- give us a thumbs up. If they honk for Hillary, I do a little jig for them and that seems to make the next car inclined to honk too. Meanwhile, the brave Erin kindly continues to act like she knows me and is not afraid.
Of course, not everybody who sees us is so thrilled we are there. Most are courteous, a very few quite rude. The occasional person shouts to us, in a not unfriendly way, "I like Obama." To anybody who shouts out this difference of opinion in a civilized manner, I shout back: "Free speech -- I love that!" And I do. Often, the other person gives me a smile and a wave.

I like how Dr. Feldman makes mention of the diversity (blacks, whites, browns) of the passersby in West Virginia, as if to point out it's not all toothless hillbillies. I wonder if the "few very rude" reactions are (a) Obama supporters, or (b) Republicans who haven't gotten the "Operation Chaos" message yet. Dr. Feldman continues:

Martinsburg is a like a lot of towns in this country. There are literally two sides of the tracks. We are at the mall on the less wealthy side. The area is not poverty-stricken, but it is just the sort of place that needs somebody with Senator Clinton's economic plans and commitment to universal healthcare. And it is easy to see why Senator Clinton can win West Virginia in a match up against John McCain. These people seem down to earth, they know about needing energy and commonsense to solve problems. Senator Clinton's style and ideas definitely seem to resonate with them.

Among the reasons Martinsburg is not "poverty-stricken" is that, for starters, it sits alongside I-81, about 20 miles south of I-70 and about 40 miles north of I-66.

That is to say: Taxpayer investments in transportation infrastructure have helped spur economic development in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Down in Georgia, where I come from, every small-town Chamber of Commerce is all about roads, roads, roads, because they know that means jobs, jobs, jobs, which in turn means growth, growth, growth. Build good roads, keep the taxes low, educate your workforce, and the jobs will come. (Right-to-work laws are also a big help.)

Martinsburg has benefitted economically from its proximity to Virginia, which has followed the same "Sun Belt" growth strategy as Georgia, while politicians in West Virginia have been slow to figure it out. For so long, West Virginia was all about resource extraction, and seems to have developed a class-warfare politics with the mine operators and the UMW as the dominant competing interests.

But once coal-mining was mechanized (resulting in greater efficiency and fewer of those pick-and-shovel jobs) West Virginia seems to have had a hard time letting go of the industrial-era politics of the past. Thank God that Georgia had forward-looking political and business leaders, or Georgians would still be sitting around, poor as dirt, complaining about low cotton prices and the closing of the textile mills.

OK, so much for the lecture on political economy and post-industrial development. Back to Dr. Feldman:

I drove a a 30 or 40 mile circuit around the area today. Lawn signs everywhere: in front of homes, at intersections, alongside farmers' fields. Signs for mayoral candidates. Signs for people running for sheriff. Signs for people running for county clerk. And in one patch, big signs saying "No Zoning" - obviously in that area there's a ballot question on the issue! . . .

God bless the anti-zoning people. Zoning is fascism, a violation of property rights. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Saw some [signs] for Senator Clinton, some for Senator Obama. No clear majority either way, based on my entirely unscientific viewing. What stood out loud and clear was an absence of McCain signs - although there were a fair number of ones for Ron Paul. Guess what this means? Based on what I can see of their signs, the people of West Virginia are not jumping to vote for John McCain. But the Democratic Party has to give them a candidate they can get behind, who will bring them to the polls to vote Democrat in November.

We'll see. Counting yard signs in May isn't likely to tell us much about election returns in November. Paying too much attention to broad trends in partisan alignment can lead to overlooking the fact that elections come down to the candidates. A good Democratic candidate can win in a Republican state (e.g., Webb in Virginia) and a good Republican candidate can win in a Democratic state (e.g., Schwarzenegger in California).

Dr. Feldman's comment about the number of Ron Paul signs echoes the remarks of an Obama operative in West Virginia I spoke to last week. This operative, a young Harvard grad, was impressed with the level of support for Ron Paul he'd encountered in the state.

A big part of the Ron Paul boom is anti-war conservatives, and another part is hard-core First/Second Amendment types who don't appreciate being muzzled by McCain-Feingold. A big part is undoubtedly the libertarian "Potheads for Paul" factor: People who (a) like low taxes and (b) don't want The Man kicking down their doors to seize their weed. West Virginia is apparently home to a goodly number of these free-market aficionados of the illegal smile.

Ultimately, the 2008 presidential race may boil down to whether Ron Paul's "Weed, Not War" vote can be corralled by the former CIA man, former federal prosecutor, former Republican congressman, and National Rifle Association board member who authored the first congressional resolution to call for the impeachment of Mrs. Clinton's husband (before the Monica Lewinsky scandal). And Bob Barr is holding a press conference Monday.

Don't mean a thing . . .

. . . if you ain't got those swing states:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's top aides [Friday] accused Sen. Barack Obama of ignoring West Virginia, saying Democrats must win the state in the fall and using her 43-point poll lead there as evidence that her longshot bid deserves to run its course.
"What is the basis for the so-called 'presumptive nominee' not competing in a state that would be a key swing state?" Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson asked reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, adding that a Tuesday victory could be a turning point for his boss.
A 15-point win for Mrs. Clinton, "in an atmosphere in which she is being written off and told to leave the campaign, if voters hearing that in West Virginia decided to choose to affirm her candidacy despite that, I think that would say something significant about her ability to compete and win votes in a very tough environment," he said. Since winning North Carolina and coming within two points in Indiana, Mr. Obama has done everything to indicate he views himself as the Democratic presidential nominee -- avoiding engaging with Mrs. Clinton, and disregarding his rival's calls for a debate and pivoting toward the general election. . . .
Mr. Obama predicted a defeat in West Virginia on Tuesday, telling reporters Mrs. Clinton was likely to beat him by "significant margins," in both West Virginia and in Kentucky on May 20. In Kentucky she is favored in polls by 34 points.

Obama's dissing of Kentucky and West Virginia, on top of his losses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana -- to say nothing of the DNC's stiff-arming of Michigan and Florida voters -- should be very troubling to Democrats. Do a little Electoral College math, and it becomes clear that Obama's painting Democrats into a corner.

Come November, if this all blows up in Democrats' faces, no one can say the warning signs weren't clear.