A Team Clinton Easter

Here's how Hillary's volunteers celebrated Good Friday in Allentown, Pa.:

There was lots of excitement in the Allentown office this Friday at our voter registration drive as we decorated Easter eggs, ate lots of chocolate, and had a visit with the Easter Bunny. Moms showed their support for Hillary and they brought friends who needed to register as Democrats to cast a ballot for her on April 22nd. The kids, happy to have a day off from school, colored eggs and made Hillary signs which are now proudly displayed in our office. The fun was contagious and spilled right over into our canvass kick-off on Saturday morning! Don’t forget—you’ve got just two more days to change your registration and vote for Hillary in the primary!

Nothing Pennsylvanians enjoy better than a traditional holiday voter registration drive . . .

Here's a story about Monday's opening of the Allentown office of Hillary's campaign (follow the link to see a hysterically funny video):

"It's not just because she's a woman," Joanne Messenlehner insisted above the din late this afternoon at the open-house inauguration of the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in Allentown, where the faithful had come to cheer and volunteer.
"She's the best candidate."
And yet Messenlehner of Nazareth, one of dozens of volunteers and staffers crowding the little office near Fifth and Hamilton streets -- squeezed between a dry cleaner and a tattoo parlor -- couldn't resist a quick, merry foray into gender politics.
"It's long overdue," she said. "The men have messed things up for so long, I think we're finally going to get it right."

Joanne Messenlehner: Another thorn in the crown of the crucified Obama -- and she's from Nazareth, Pa. How appropriate is that?

Wanna bet the tattoo parlor gets more business from Clinton staffers than the dry cleaner does?

Ace goes thermonuclear on Sully

I don't know what set him off:

In case anyone missed it, I left Andrew Sullivan a smoking crater the other day. Probably my cruelest slam of him ever, partly because I just kept linking all the previous crap I'd written about him.

Maybe what triggered this Armegeddon of scorn was the self-righteous "don't you dare accuse me of being as emotional as a middle-school girl!" attitude that Sullivan sometimes exhibits.

'Kristen' shows fakies

Egotastic has what it claims are the first (but surely not the last) nude photos of Eliot Spitzer's hooker, "Kristen" (a/k/a Ashley Youmans, a/k/a Ashley Alexandra Dupre).

This may settle one question, because if those photos are really "Kristen," then her boobs are definitely fake. Either that, or the photos were taken in a zero-gravity environment.

I told you they were fakies.

UPDATE 3/25: Welcome AOSHQ Morons! And, yeah, Ace is right. This post won't win me a Pulitzer, but it gets me lots of moron traffic and, really, that's much better.

Post-feminist follies

L.A. Times columnist Meghan Daum expends 800 words pondering the meaning of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal:

At its core, it reveals how much uncertainty exists within even the strongest and most enduring relationships. Deeper still, it hints at how hard we'll work -- and how exhausted we'll become in the process -- in the effort to eliminate that uncertainty. In much the same way the Bush administration was convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, humans desperately want to think that long-term sexual monogamy works. We want to believe that, through some combination of willpower, luck and, as Cosmo might say, "smart love moves," we will neither cheat nor be cheated upon.

What is it with columnists and the first-person plural? Yesterday it was Frank Schaeffer, today it's Meghan Daum. Her use of "we" is an attempt to project onto her readers the "uncertainty" she describes. And, as with Schaeffer, this trick is profoundly dishonest.

Daum uses the bogus "we" to suggest a "we're all in this together" sisterhood solidarity. Clearly, however, she does not share the "desperate" belief in monogamy that she attributes to this "we." Her message could be translated:

I pity you stupid chumps, with your childish beliefs in "happily ever after." I am a sophisticated realist, while you are a deluded simpleton.

It is easily possible to distinguish Daum's own beliefs from the beliefs she insultingly attributes to others via her bogus "we." And with a bit of assistance from her biography, it is just as easy to find the basis of Daum's insulting cynicism. She does not believe in "long-term sexual monogamy" for the simple reason that she's never experienced it. And her sneering at other people's monogamous relationships (or even their belief in the possibility of such relationships) amounts to a sour-grapes defense mechanism.

Daum's column reveals more about Daum than it does about the Spitzer scandal. It's just another self-indulgent excercise in media narcissism.

Denver 2008 = Chicago 1968?

Mike Tippitt suggests that this year's Democratic convention in Denver might be a replay of the infamous Chicago 1968 convention, when anti-war protesters clashed with police.

I don't think so, mainly because the parallels don't work. In 1968, you had a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who was chiefly responsible for "escalating" the war in Vietnam. LBJ's vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, had become the Democratic presidential nominee almost by accident. The early anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, had faded after Robert F. Kennedy jumped into the race. Then RFK had been assassinated, leaving the pro-war candidate Humphrey to claim the nomination despite a strong anti-war presence among the delegates.

None of those political conditions is duplicated for the Democrats who will gather at Denver this year. Most importantly, there is no military draft, which was the basic factor that made the anti-war movement of the 1960s as strong as it was.

Finally, the protests at Chicago turned violent because of a hard core of SDS/Yippie radicals who actively provoked confrontations with police. Today's protesters don't have the numbers, don't have the leadership, and don't have the discipline necessary to pull off anything remotely like what happened in 1968.

I've seen these latter-day protesters in DC at anti-globalization rallies in 1999-2000 and at anti-war demonstrations held regularly since 2001. The protesters come in two varieties: Over-the-hill hippies out for a little nostalgia, and spineless young punks.

These young protest punks do a lot of radical yapping, but they really don't mean anything. They're not about to actually get into a face-to-face showdown with the cops. They might turn over some mailboxes or break a few windows, but as soon as the cops show up, the punks run like scared little girls.

So even if a bunch of protesters show up in Denver, there's no chance of a really serious clash between the protesters and the cops, and thus no chance of Chicago-style mayhem.

'Crucify' Obama?

Frank Schaeffer's column at the Huffington Post is headlined:

This Good Friday Let Us Not Crucify Barack Obama

Excuse me? Nobody is talking about crucifying anybody. It's just politics, Frank. The three remaining presidential candidates -- Obama, Hillary and McCain -- are all U.S. senators, and should they lose, they'll still be U.S. senators. So to suggest that criticizing them is akin to crucifixion is ... well, maybe it's not blasphemy, but it's pretty ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, here's the first paragraph of Schaeffer's column:

Senator Obama has a problem: the hardening of the American heart, the closing of the American mind, the shriveling of our souls, the shrinking capacity of our imaginations, our jaded senses, the seen-it-all attitude that makes us into sneering voyeurs too mean spirited to save ourselves.

Notice Schaeffer's dishonest use of first-person plural pronouns -- "our" and "us" and "ourselves" -- dishonest because, of course, he doesn't really mean to include himself in this indictment. Schaeffer is not saying that he has a hardened heart, a shriveled soul, a shrunken imagination, etc. No, he aims these pejoratives at you.

Among the hard hearts and shriveled souls that Schaeffer attacks by name is Ronald Kessler of Newsmax, who has been reporting on Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church for months. Kessler and Schaeffer were both guests on a radio talk show to discuss Obama's big "race in America" speech, and Kessler was apparently unimpressed. Schaeffer writes:

He said it left him unmoved. He was in a sneering mood bristling with ever-so-reasonable middle class certitude of his conservative righteousness. To Kessler the speech was just politics, nothing more. The idea of it's truth was of no consequence. To him it was all about tactics.

Is it really so hard-hearted to say that a speech by a candidate for office is "just politics, nothing more"? Was Obama's speech so chock-full of undeniable truth that no reasonable person could interpret it in terms of political tactics?

Schaeffer continues:

Obama offers civility in the midst of a drunken national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds. . . .
Obama is offering America a fresh start. There is more decent intelligent authenticity in his little finger than the Clintons will ever know. There is more kind wisdom in Obama than in all our sneering bloodsucking moronic media combined. But we have imbibed detritus for so long that when clean food is offered we can't taste it.

We are unworthy! We are unworthy!

Frank Schaeffer drank the Kool-Aid, and there is no hope for him. No wonder he resorted to the Good Friday crucifixion theme -- he's an Obama apostle, a True Believer.

And Frank: Knock off this "we/us/our" crap. It's insulting.

UPDATE: Is the bogus "we" some kind of trend? Megan Daum pulls the same trick in the L.A. Times.

UPDATE II: Ace links (I could have sworn he'd link the "Kristen's fake boobs" post instead, but he decided to play against type) and also links Hot Air with more Easter messages from Democrats: James Carville says Bill Richardson is Judas Iscariot for endorsing Obama.

Don't blame me -- in this battle of Democratic analogies, I suppose I'm Pontius Pilate.

UPDATE III: Also linked by Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, who calls attention to this quote from Ace:

Are you quite sure Obama is Jesus?
I’m not a big believer in End-of-Days claptrap, but I’m beginning to think a better case could be made for someone else mentioned near the very end of the Bible.

Heh. Actually, I thought Hillary was The Beast.

UPDATE IV: Speaking of Hillary, her Pennsylvania campaign spent Good Friday running a crucifixion registration drive.

Obamathon at Hot Air

Allah and Ed will have nothing to blog about now that they've sworn off Obama-bashing -- for the week, anyway. Which is kind of convenient for a 5 p.m. post on Good Friday, since Easter weekend isn't exactly primetime for news.

But I'm still here to point out that, among other things, Obama's sure got funny-looking ears, doesn't he?

Campaign update

The most important news of the day? Jim Antle linked me. I still think the expression "haunted Republicans for a generation" is overdramatic, and I still dislike it when journalists do the armchair-strategist routine with campaigns. But since Antle says he is neither (a) endorsing Soren Dayton's suspension nor (b) cheerleading for Crazy Cousin John, then all that's left to say is, thanks for the link!

Meanwhile, Vandehei and Harris say that the Democratic primary race is all over but the shouting: Obama wins and Hillary loses. Which may be true, but I'd hate to be the campaign staffer assigned to break that news to Hillary. And since Vandehei and Harris admit the possibility that Hillary could yet conceivably steal the nomination by bribing or blackmailing superdelegates . . . hey, why not? If Team Clinton can steal the nomination, they will steal the nomination.

The Clinton campaign sneers at Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama. Yeah, he's just jockeying for the running-mate gig. Tough luck for Richardson, once Hillary buys off all those superdelegates and steals the nomination.

Karl Rove says left-wing bloggers don't have real lives. As if right-wing bloggers do.

Speaking of Ace of Spades, he's real upset at the way CNN's spinning Jeremiah Wright's "chickens coming home to roost" rhetoric.

The Democratic Party tells Florida and Michigan to go to hell. I can understand the DNC flipping the bird at Michigan -- a declining Rust Belt state with politics dominated by labor-union goons -- but what's their beef against sunny Florida?

Fox bashing Fox?

Chris Wallace criticizes his own network for belaboring Obama's "typical white person" remark:



Hot Air's Ed Morrisey agrees:

Obama’s comment was newsworthy, and deserves significant airplay. Making it the focus of a two-hour block of time? I’d say few news stories outside of terrorist attacks deserve that kind of wall-to-wall coverage.

In general, I'd say Fox News themes its coverage to the New York Post in much the way the other networks take their cues from the New York Times. So if the Post gives a national story front-page coverage and an inside two-page spread, you can bet that Fox News will also give it big treatment.

On the other hand, maybe the producer of "Fox & Friends" just figured the viewers wanted lots of Obama-related news.

'Haunted' by Willie Horton?

In relation to Soren Dayton's suspension from the McCain campaign, W. James Antle III writes:

In a political culture where Willie Horton has haunted Republicans for a generation, the McCain campaign moved quickly to distance itself from the video and the aide who was distributing it.

Eh? To start with, the Willie Horton ad aired in 1988, and 20 years is not a generation. More important, it was a perfectly legitimate ad about a perfectly legitimate issue -- and the issue was not race, but crime.

Willie Horton was a convicted murderer sentenced to serve life in prison in Massachusetts for a 1974 robbery-murder. Under a state furlough program supported by Gov. Mike Dukakis, Horton received a weekend furlough in 1986 and skipped out. While on the lam, Horton kidnapped and tortured a Maryland couple, raping the woman.

The Horton case received national publicity -- including an account in Reader's Digest -- and was used against Dukakis by Al Gore in the Democratic primary campaign. But it was not until the issue was cited by President (George H.W.) Bush in summer 1988 that the media began to suggest that it was "racist" to mention the case.

The whole point of discussing the Horton case in 1988 was to highlight Dukakis' record of being "soft on crime," since Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts had supported and defended the furlough program that let Horton out of prison. Since Dukakis himself boasted of being a "card-carrying member" of the ACLU, and since the U.S. at that time was in the midst of an upsurge in violent crime sparked by the crack cocaine epidemic, a lot of voters were worried about crime in 1988.

While it is always possible (especially with 20 years of hindsight) to second-guess campaign tactics, the fact is that Bush got 53% of the popular vote and carried 40 states in 1988 -- which is more than any GOP presidential candidate has done since then. If anyone is curious about the reality of the Horton case, and how it was used in the 1988 election, there is a very informative chapter about the case in Ann Coulter's book Godless.

To cite the Horton case as an excuse to justify the suspension of Soren Dayton over the Obama mash-up video strikes me as bizarre in the extreme. Soren didn't produce the video, and by the time he Twittered it, the video was already all over the blogosphere, so it wasn't like Soren was the exclusive or primary distributor. (Perhaps the rule should be, once it makes Memeorandum, it's fair game.)

Antle seems less interested in the basic facts of the issue and more interested in acting as an unpaid advisor to the McCain campaign:

If noted liberals like Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro are unable to handle these issues with care, insensitivity will definitely blow up in a Republican's face.

How can McCain take advantage of the concerns that Obama is not who he appears to be -- a real uniter, not a demagogic divider -- while maintaining the moral high ground? How can he McGovernize Obama in the eyes of Middle America without turning himself into Archie Bunker in the eyes of the fourth estate?

Who cares? Certainly not me. As a journalist, I'm enjoying the spectacle of the campaign, and have no personal concern for the strategic problems facing the candidates. If the Republican Party wants to pay me for advice, I'll be glad to provide it. But since the GOP hasn't paid me a dime -- and is unlikely to do so -- I can afford to laugh at them. And do.

'Imprudent curiosity'

Hired hands at Foggy Bottom decided to go snooping around in the data:

Two State Department employees were fired recently and a third disciplined for improperly accessing electronic personal data on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Bush administration officials said today.
The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department's consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama's passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. . . .
Mr. McCormack said the officials did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.
"As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity," Mr. McCormack told The Washington Times.

Kind of an odd choice for "imprudent curiosity." Why a politician? Why not browse the passport files for Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie?

Don Surber notes the hyped-up reaction from the Obama camp:

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy. . . . This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."

Like Don says, they investigated, found the culprits and fired them. What more does the Obama camp want, other than an opportunity to grandstand?

Video: Imported perverts

Hundreds of immigrant sex offenders, deported to Mexico, have been apprehended trying to sneak back into the United States:

"Within just the last week, we caught three major sex offenders and it was anything from lewd acts with a minor to child molestation."

Guess they're raping the kids American perverts won't rape.

(Video via BreitbartTV.)

Ace of Spades' favorite preacher

Will Ace "distance himself" from Rev. Manning?



I'm afraid this scandal could hurt Ace with the key "long-legged mack daddy" demographic.

Please, stereotype me!

Perhaps trying to get in on Obama's "typical white person" action, now the Houston Chronicle goes trendoid:

Asian women, fancy coffee, farmers markets, dinner parties and gay friends — these are just a sampling of life's pleasures — if you're white. . . .
That's according to Christian Lander, the (white) wit behind the Web sensation Stuff White People Like blog, an irreverent daily missive on the passions of posh urbanites of the Caucasian persuasion.

Being fluent in honky, I'm pretty sure "posh urbanites" is code for "Yuppies," a category I've always striven to avoid. Speaking only for my own tribe, we buy our groceries (including coffee beans, "fancy" and otherwise) at Food Lion or Super Wal-Mart, and if "dinner parties" include church potlucks . . . .

While I'm certainly capable of enjoying self-deprecating humor, I profoundly dislike the contemporary trend toward stereotyping all white people as affluent and effete, as if we're all upper-middle-class snobs living in urban lofts or lounging around our McMansions on suburban cul-de-sacs. Most white people don't fit that description. A majority of white people don't have college diplomas, and this affluent/effete stereotype ignores whites from blue-collar, small-town or rural backgrounds.

What shocked me most in the Houston Chronicle's article about the SWPL site was this:

"Asian Girls: 95% of white males have at one point in their lives experienced yellow fever. ... White men love Asian women so much that they will go to extremes such as stating that Sandra Oh is sexy, teaching English in Asia, playing in a co-ed volleyball league ... "

"Yellow fever"? Isn't it patently offensive to objectify Asians as a sexual fetish? Isn't SWPL suggesting that every romantic relationship between Asians and Caucasians is the result, not of mutual interests and mutual respect, but rather of some pseudo-colonial obsession? If white males who date Asian girls are suffering from "yellow fever," then what name should be given to whatever disorder must afflict their Asian girlfriends? And what about Asian men? Who are the Asian guys dating, since all the Asian girls are busy going out with the "95% of white males" with "yellow fever"?

But hey, SWPL is "irreverent," so it's OK. Maybe Obama should tell Jeremiah Wright to be more "irreverent."

Is Obama trying to lose?

What else to conclude from this radio interview?

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know -- there's a reaction in her that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society."

Well, maybe some people's grandmothers are a little more "typical" than others. But considering that Obama's grandmother raised a daughter -- her only child -- whom high-school acquaintances describe as a youthful "iconoclast" and an "atheist," I'm wondering if she's much less "typical" than Obama describes her. In fact, I've got a pretty strong feeling that Obama's just citing the grandmother this way as a sort of convenient family anecdote. She's not going to diss her own grandson, so he can say anything he wants about her.

On the other hand, maybe the purpose of dissing old white women is (a) to assure young white "progressives" how much more enlightened they are than their elders, and/or (b) to take an indirect shot at Hillary.

Where's Waldo?

Osama bin Laden releases a new tape, just to remind us infidels that . . . well, that he can still release tapes, anyway:

Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera TV on Thursday broadcast what it described as excerpts from a new audio tape by Usama bin Laden in which the Al Qaeda leader slammed Palestinian negotiations with Israel and urged holy war for the liberation of Palestine.
In the audio excerpts broadcast by the Doha, Qatar-based television, bin Laden said that "Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron."
Bin Laden also called on Palestinians who are unable to fight in the "land of Al-Quds" — a Muslim reference to Jerusalem — to join the Al Qaeda fight and the holy war, or jihad, in Iraq.

Yawn. The U.S. surge in Iraq has pretty much crushed al-Qaeda's operations there, and bin Laden's crew hasn't hit a major target in the West in years. So now bin Laden tries to stir up the Palestinians -- as if they needed more stirring up.

Allahpundit calls the tape Osama's "A 'desperate bid for relevance' . . . made more desperate [by] some as yet unknown contingency."

Has Dingell been huffing gas?

The man has gone insane:

A Michigan congressman wants to put a 50-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline to try to cut back on Americans' consumption. . . .
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., wants to help cut consumption with a gas tax but some don't agree with the idea, according to a new poll by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
The poll, scheduled to be released on Thursday, shows 48 percent don't support paying even a penny more, 28 percent would pay up to 50 cents more, 10 percent would pay more than 50 cents and 8 percent would pay more than a dollar.

(Via Memeorandum.) Hey, why didn't the poll ask about reducing the tax on gas? Is there nobody in favor of lower taxes?

Right now, the spiraling price of gas means that the free market is doing just fine in terms of providing incentives for reduced consumption. What's the point of tax hikes now? Well, Dingell's a Democrat and Democrats are always pro-tax and anti-market.

Increasing taxes is reflexive with those people. As Jammie Wearing Fool observes, this is "an idea so stupid, only a Democrat could come up with it."

Facebook ethics

James Joyner has an interesting post about the question of whether college professors should be Facebook "friends" with their students, and comes down harshly against the idea. This in response to a New York Times piece on the subject.

Maintaining a proper student-teacher relationship is obviously important, and I'm not a professor, so I've never considered this issue. Facebook is a very powerful tool for networking and communication, which is how I use it: A sort of combination of dayplanner, e-mail and Rolodex. I check Facebook at least as often as I check my e-mail account, and get an e-mail alert each time I get a new Facebook message, so sending me a Facebook message is even more effective than e-mail, if someone really needs to reach me.

Using Facebook that way, I don't consider "friending" someone as purely a social thing. As a journalist, I "friend" PR people, bloggers, other journalists, sources of various kind, et cetera. And I've set up a feed so that all my blog posts are posted at my Facebook page, where my Facebook friends can see them and, hopefully, will click over and read. Facebook can thus be a way to boost readership, so the more friends the better, as far as I'm concerned.

On the other hand, I understand that many people -- and college professors would be one such category -- have special reasons to restrict their Facebook activity.

Now it's getting good

Never dreamed I'd see the day when prominent liberal Democrats would be calling each other racist hatemongers, but it's so delightfully true:

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday. . . .
"To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable," Ferraro said today. "He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred."

At Hot Air, Ed Morrisey says:

Obama may wish that he hadn’t chased Ferraro out of the Hillary Clinton campaign for another reason other than the obvious hypocrisy. She no longer has to worry about how her speech reflects on Hillary, and so Ferraro is much freer to speak her mind on this issue. Calling Wright a racist bigot may just be the opening stanza for Ferraro, who clearly is not in the mood for reconciliation.

As they say down home, "Let's you and him fight." Or as we say in the blogosphere, "I'll pop some popcorn ..."

MSM tells you how to blog

Funny, but the New York Times doesn't say anything about posting "Girls Gone Wild" video of Eliot Spitzer's call girl, "Kristen," when she was 17.

But maybe they just take that for granted . . .

Maybe the New York Times would prefer we just blogged about how Hillary Clinton has opened a 16-point lead over Barack Obama.

Wait! How are these two topic related? Because I got both of these ideas from Memeorandum, the blog aggregator site preferred by all really cool bloggers. So if you're a news/politics blogger and you need ideas, just go to Memeorandum and find something that interests you. If you're more into celebrity news, try WeSmirch, which links gossipy Hollywood items like the latest Lindsay Lohan sex scandal.