Dick in a Box

Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It's not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It's been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will --and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I'm a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It's a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.

Call them the Obamacans: They are against continuing the Iraq war and reject what they see as Mr. Bush's unconstitutional buildup of executive power. While the conservative Republican base rejected Senator McCain in the early primaries for his push for bipartisan campaign finance regulation and amnesty for illegal immigrants, the Arizona senator's hawkish support for the Iraq war has alienated what was once his national constituency, anti-Bush Republicans.

The Obamacans include a former senator of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee; a former senior Justice Department official under President Reagan and senior legal adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, Douglas Kmiec, and a granddaughter of President Eisenhower, Susan Eisenhower. The group one day may include Senator Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska, who has co-sponsored Iraq withdrawal legislation with leading Democrats. Asked yesterday on CNN whether he would endorse his party's presumptive nominee, Mr. Hagel said he would base his support on the candidates' positions on withdrawing from Iraq

In a spirited defense of his wife's vow to go on despite lagging in pledged-delegate counts, Clinton argued that continuing to campaign in the remaining states to cast ballots is "strengthening the Democratic Party."

"We are going to win this election if we just chill out and let everybody have their say," he said.

Clinton reminded the audience that by the time he wrapped up the nomination in June 1992, "I'd been so beat up, worked over and chewed out that I was running third" in national polls behind Ross Perot and President George H.W. Bush." But six weeks later, at the start of the Democratic convention, "Al Gore and I were in first place and we never lost it."

Over the weekend, Hillary said, "I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan, and if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention."

Sweet! I've always wanted to witness a brokered convention and for the first time in my life, we may have it. It's damn exciting. You never know what is going to happen. We have Superdelegates, a split Democratic party and two historic candidates. I said before, that the longer this takes the better it will be for the Democrats in November because it will keep people watching them and McCain will be out of the news.

I still believe that is true to an extent. If it gets too bloody, supporters of the losing candidate could defect to McCain, Nader or just sit out the election. That means that McCain could simply win by default and then we have four more years of partisan bitterness. Then, of course, all the hope of making the world a better place is out till the next election. I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. Realistically, no matter who wins, it isn't going to be a time of candy and flowers. Too many people are stuck on their candidate and none of them has a majority. The winner of the next election is going to have a tougher time than Bush and even Clinton had at uniting this country. I look forward to the effort and I'll be here whether it succeeds or fails.

I was very surprised by this article:"Clinton's women supporters fear her bid has unleashed a sexist backlash". Hillary is a woman so she will be attacked because she is a woman, as well as anything else anyone can think of. That is the nature of the political beast. If she wants to play with the boys then she will have to take it like the boys take it. Her womanhood is as much a target as her anything in her life, her past, her present and speculation on her future. She shouldn't get spared by playing the girl card anymore than anyone else should be spared by playing their "card". You can't be POTUS and have thin skin.

Valerie Benjamin, a human-resources manager for a consulting firm here, was driving to work recently in her red minivan with a Hillary bumper sticker when a man pulled up alongside and rolled down his window. "You can be for Hillary all you want," he shouted, "but there is no way that thing is going to become president." "I couldn't believe this guy was shouting at me in my car," says Ms. Benjamin. "I am continuously surprised by the level of venom."

[Valerie Benjamin]

According to historian and author of Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises, Joseph Cummings; smears, attacks, and misdirections have typified U.S. elections since George Washington’s win in 1789. After much research he concludes that campaigns are no dirtier now than they were in the past.

In terms of trends, a rough rule of thumb is that incumbent parties tend to play the most dirty tricks, perhaps because they have the ways and means to do so. It’s also true that parties with the strongest ideologies — be they Democratic or Republican — fight dirtier, possibly because they are not only pushing a candidate, but an entire way of life.

Both parties at different times in American history have been guilty of mind-boggling attempts to influence elections. In the 1880s, one of the worst decades in terms of dirty tricks, Republicans sent bagmen to Indiana — then a pivotal state — with hundreds of thousands of dollars in two dollar bills (dubbed “Soapy Sams” for their ability to grease palms) in order to purchase votes. The 1960s was the era of Democratic dirty tricks — in 1964, Lyndon Johnson oversaw one of the most corrupt elections ever, against Barry Goldwater.

In 1840, the American Whig politician Thomas Elder had a eureka moment when he wrote to a friend: “Passion and prejudice properly aroused and directed do about as well as principle and reason in any party contest.”

I think this has been the guiding dictum of presidential politics all throughout our history.

As I said, anyone surprised by the venom displayed in this campaign has a very short memory and no knowledge or real understanding of politics and history.

Really? He doesn't take money from any Special Interest groups, eh? As a matter of fact, Obama repeated asserts that he doesn't take any money from registered Washington lobbyists or PACs. And repeatedly calls Hillary and McCain for being beholden to them. I'd be impressed if it weren't just more political flim-flam

Clinton and McCain take less than 1% of their campaign contributions from PACs and registered Washington lobbyists. 1% is peanuts. Plus, it is really misleading to say you won't take money from registered Washington lobbyists. It's a good political sound bite but it's meaningless really. According to Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics:

“But in fact neither PACs nor lobbyists give a lot to presidential campaigns. He’s not leaving a whole lot of money on the table by eschewing PACs and lobbyists.” PAC money represents only about one percent of all the money in a presidential race because so many people donate that their contributions dwarf PAC money.

Exactly, so saying that they are beholden and you aren't isn't really the truth. It sounds good but the reality is a bit more blurry.

Contributions made by the various industry sectors tell the real story in a presidential race. And Opensecrets.org shows that Obama is picking up gobs of money put on the table by these special interests—including those involved in health care, which will surely have a lot riding on the outcome of the election and will expect to be heard after the election is over.

Consider the sector called lawyers and law firms. Clearly, lawyers and law firms lobby on behalf of their own interests—like fighting malpractice reform, which could again surface as a thorny issue for the new administration. Clinton and Obama have raised similar amounts from lawyers and law firms—$11.8 and $9.5 million. McCain and Huckabee have taken far less. The health sector has also given to Obama, Clinton, and McCain. In the pharmaceutical and health product industries, contributions to Clinton total $349,000 and $338,000 to Obama. Again, McCain trails in donations at about $98,000, an indication that the sector sees the real action on the Democratic side of the ballot. Health professionals, which include doctors, nurses, and dentists, have given Clinton some $2.3 million and Obama $1.7 million.

So, Obama has taken more money from lawyers, pharmaceuticals and the health sector than McCain and only a little less than Clinton. YET, he claims to be beholden to nobody. Did I ever tell you that, despite the two pregnancies and live births, I'm a virgin. Really! I am. I swear it! I'm as virginal as Obama is clean of special interests.

Last August The Boston Globe, in a piece by Scott Helman, took a hard look at Obama’s contributions, noting that “behind Obama’s campaign rhetoric about taking on special interests lies a more complicated truth.” That truth revealed that as a state legislator in Illinois, a U.S. senator, and as a presidential aspirant, Obama had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and PACs. Helman quoted an Obama campaign spokeswoman saying that after he experienced firsthand the influence of Washington lobbyists, he was taking a different approach to fundraising than he had in the past, and that “his leadership position on this issue is an evolving process.” If Obama’s leadership on campaign financing is indeed evolving, more news outlets should be following the evolution.

They don't care about evolution unless someone mentions Adam and Eve. They have anointed Obama and they will not question him. Nope, they just replay the sound bites and moon over him like he was the risen Christ. Sheeple...

But I don't need an explanation when the child kindly leaves all the evidence out in the open. I clean before I go to sleep, so we can wake up to a nice clean house. I'm almost always the last to bed. This morning I notice a pile of chocolate crumbs, that were not there last night. An empty milk glass in the sink, that definitely wasn't there because I washed every single dish last night. This was not a big mystery. Granny can't eat too much sugar and a half box of Oreo's would be a trip to the ER, Draco hates sweets and I would retch after 2 cookies. Jacob...poor Jacob. He walks right into the kitchen and smiles. He sees what I'm looking at and just confesses all.

Yes, it was me. You know it was me, I know it was me...am I punished? Nah, just clean up the mess. Who are we saving this massive crumb pile for anyway? Just as he opens his mouth to respond, I tell him that was a rhetorical question. He shuts his mouth. I asked him if he knows what rhetorical means and he said, "I know that it means I better not answer your question". Why? "Your tone suggested that I better not". Yeah, well, go look it up. My son WILL know what rhetorical means. Jeez...

Kids...you gotta love 'em. Mine are pistols!

The authors of this piece conducted a study. They found that only a small percentage of students shifted their position farther left due to the influence of their professors. May reasons for why this is and I have my favorite one...the professors are just really shitty at indoctrination. I guess there were no academic Svengalis in the test zone. Where in the heck is fake American Indian "professor" Ward Churchill when you need him?

In any case, this is both good news and bad. Good if the teachers are not trying to brainwash their students into becoming Marxists Code Pinkers and even better if the students are too smart to fall for it. The only downside is this, if the teachers are too shitty to make Lefty converts, how good can they be at teaching?

Makes one wonder...

I did, just last night, see a guy with a Master's from UCLA and some other California University, not know the answer to a 2nd grade Grammar question on "Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?" For the record, I'm pretty sure the ghost of Buttons got it right, yeah he's been dead for a few years but it was really easy, MULTIPLE CHOICE and he was a really smart fucking dog...

Here is the question, in the following sentence: "Sierra baked a cake for Wendy" is the subject of the sentence a :

• A. common noun
• B. Proper noun
• C. pronoun

"You have all heard the racist and anti-American outbursts of my pastor Rev. Wright. They are all inexcusable. His speeches have forced me to re-examine my long association with Trinity United Church of Christ. And so it is with regret that I must now leave that church.

"I had heard similar extremist language of Rev. Wright in the past, and now apologize that I did not earlier end my attendance and contributions. Had I long ago expressed my strong objections to Rev. Wright's views, such opposition might have suggested to him a more moderate path.

"But any good that now might come by remaining steadfast to Rev. Wright in consideration of our long past friendship is outweighed by the damage that would accrue from the sanction of his extremism that my continued attendance at his church might convey.

"I have loyalty aplenty, but it is to the truth, my country and universal tolerance, not to any one friend, however long and close our association.

"Allegations that America helped to cause — and thus deserved — 9/11 and that the U.S. government engineered the AIDS epidemic, as well as the pastor's slurs against 'white people' and Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice, are not reflective of the views of mainstream black America and they have no place in any house of Christian worship.

"It would be easy to claim that Rev. Wright's biases are no different from those voiced on occasion by our own family members, our pastors or political leaders in the public eye and therefore not so injurious to America. That defense of false equivalence, that 'others do it all the time,' is a common one offered by those who offend the public sensibility.

"It would also be easy to excuse my pastor's outbursts by citing the long tragic history of the African-American experience. After all, every extremist outburst always has a particular and perhaps mitigating context.

"And finally it would be easy to suggest that the special landscape of the black church allows a sort of venting and role-playing unlike other common venues in America. It has often been a refuge from white oppression and a place to make sense of the tragic history of race relations that plague us still. That and the good that Rev. Wright has done could also be an extenuating circumstance.

"But neither Pastor Wright nor I — a candidate for the presidency of the United States — can afford to find refuge in any of these relativist explanations. To do so would not merely exempt the statements of Rev. Wright from proper censure, but also would have the effect of offering endorsement to them. Here is why we must not and will not do that:

"First, today's America has evolved into a multiracial society unlike anytime in our long history. Each of America's groups has unique grievances, based on their own past ordeals.

"So now more than ever in American history, there is need to establish a universal, absolute standard of public discourse in which no individual or group claims extenuating circumstances to demonize other Americans. Otherwise, the bar will have been lowered — and Rev. Wright will be followed by merchants of hate of every sort, each citing his allowance as a pass for his own hate speech.

"Second, we are in our fifth decade since the landmark civil-rights legislation of the 1960s. And while the African-American community has made enormous strides, it still has not achieved parity with either the white majority or some other minorities. The reasons are complex, but they cannot be simply reduced to white racism or the purported pathologies of the United States as Rev. Wright supposed. We African-Americans must be as vigilant in demanding an equality of opportunity for all Americans as in ensuring that crime, illegitimacy, drug use and the failure to finish high school are no higher in the African-American community than in others.

"Third, Americans were appalled, as was I, at my minister cursing the United States. But we must always appreciate the unique nature of America, an experiment that unites a multiplicity of religions, races and ethnicities, and endures only to the degree we all adhere to a common set of values. We must never think that because the United States has sometimes not been perfect, it is not good.

"The hard work of creating and improving the United States required centuries; the easier task of tearing apart America can be done in a generation. But neither you nor I can or will allow that to happen. Thank you, and God bless the United States."

When it comes to food, this habit only applies to restaurants. I'm not a picky eater at home or parties. When I go to a restaurant, I will read the menu very carefully and then proceed to order the exact same thing I always order, at that particular restaurant. It's not something I do on purpose. I always think, today I will try something new; but when the waitress comes I succumb to the pressure of being undecided. It's so bad that when I used to live in Dearborn, I'd call my local Thai restaurant for a carryout and all I had to say is "I'd like to place a carryout". Whomever answered the phone would respond with "Rose?" and I'd say yes, then they would say 15 minutes. Notice that they didn't say what do you want? Yeah, they didn't have to say it! They knew. LOL.

My worst moment always happens at a Chinese restaurant. I can never decide between Kung Pao and General Tso's. I love them both and what I usually do is order opposite Jake and then we share. Jake won't touch his food if anyone else has nibbled off his plate or taken a bite. He's 10 and he doesn't like the idea of anyone's mouth germs coming near him. Lucky for me, according to the Elder Prince, mommy is germ free. Doesn't hurt that I brush and floss 10 times a day, either. But that's another "annoying" trait and we aren't talking about the mild OCD.

So, is it really weird that I do that? I know I'm a freak that hates cashews but...is this really that big of a deal?

This Easter, your humble narrator went to Frankenmuth with his mother and father to enjoy another holiday repast. All was going well – the food was good, the conversation light and friendly – until I needed to use the restroom. That’s when it happened. Downstairs near the men’s room is a shopping and seating area; and in that seating area was a large plywood board with three circles cut into the middle of it. It’s the type of silly boards people use to stick their faces through the holes and have their picture taken. On the board were painted three gnomes, done in a rustic, Olde World style, and above was one of the most offending captions that could be placed on such a contraption.

Above the cute gnomes sized just for children read the words, “Chillin’ with my gnomies.” (For our terminally suburban readers, this is an obvious play on the phrase, “Chillin’ with my homies.”)

Utilizing urban dialect for reasons of commercialism and/or mass appeal such as this is an example of stupidity at its most glaring. It’s yet another example of a society where ignorance is rewarded, which only serves to discourage intelligence and culture in lieu of the much easier-obtained lowest common denominator. Urban slang, after all, is merely mispronounced, misunderstood and bastardized English language; while it might be perfect for the latest hip-hop album, it has no place in an upscale restaurant such as Frankenmuth.

This, humble readers, is the proverbial “beginning of the end” for the once-fair Frankenmuth. “Chillin’ with my gnomies” is just the start. Next thing you know, the Bavarian Inn will change its name to “B-Diddy’s Chicken and Rib Crib,” and its sister restaurant, Zehnder’s, will become “Z-Dawg’s – where da food is all dat!” And gone are the lederhosen and other traditional German garb once worn by the waiters and waitresses. Now, dinner will be served by staff members wearing sagging Phat Farm jeans, FuBu T-shirts and baseball hat tipped sideways. (The more experience members of the waitstaff will also have a few gold chains … err, some “bling bling” … hanging around their necks.) And the glockenspiel atop the restaurant – once famous for its hourly telling of the Pied Piper of Hamlin – will be replaced by nightly showings of Curtis “Fitty Cent” Jackson’s hit movie, “Get Rich or Die Tryin,” and Samuel L. Jackson’s hit movie “Snakes on a Plane.”

The adaptation of urban slang into all facets of American life is neither cute nor harmless – it’s the floodgate that, once opened, becomes the point of no return. All it needs to start this self-destructive process is the smallest thing (such as “Chillin’ with my gnomies). That’s all it takes to set the downward spiral into motion, because once you start appealing to the lowest common denominator, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.

It’s like my Uncle Glenn always used to say, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

It's been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it's at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. "If Barack gets past the primary," said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, "he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen." Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he'd one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago "base" in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

What!?!? He knew his preacher was a scumbag racist and used him anyway? I'm absofuckinglutely shocked!!!! Are you shocked? I'm stunned...

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

OUCH!

To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.

If you aren't a Democrat when you're in your 20's, you have no heart. If you aren't a Republican when you reach your 30's, then you have no brain...

I'd prefer a brain to a "soul" because according to some people; I'm burning either way. I've accepted it. Personally, I'd prefer to go to the fires of Hell as the smart little spitfire I am; rather than an idiot. You little lambs can go as you are...

The clerk looked at me like I was completely insane and then said quietly, "you...you hate the troops?"

No! I don't hate the troops. Of course, I don't hate the troops. I hate cashews. I think they are horrid, I don't want any and...what? Oh, you send them to the troops? Ick, really? Apparently, the troops love cashews.

Then these three people one by one look at me like I just shot their dog. All of them, "how can you hate cashews?"; "you really hate cashews?"; "are you a mental?"

First, it's not are you A mental? It's are you mental? Second, are you people seriously suggesting that hating cashews is worse than hating the troops? "But, cashews are delicious and how can any normal person not like them?"

Are you buying the cashews? "No, we are against Bush's war and we think that this war is wrong on so many levels and"... Excuse me, young lady? but on the advice of my attorney, I'm no longer allowed to remain in the presence of morons. I'm still on probation...

So I left. Fucking cashews, man. I really do despise them...

If every person in this country was raised to believe in themselves and their family, they would have a better chance at success. If you grow up being told the world owes you for something that happened long ago, you will have a hard time succeeding and an easy time blaming your failures on others.

If this thinking makes me a racist then someone better tell Webster to update the dictionary. It is the belief that you are entitled to special treatment that perpetuates racism, that is a discussion that should be had. But it won't be because the "victim culture" hates accepting any responsibility for their choices. Liberals and democrats don't want this discussion because if people start taking responsibility for their own lives; they'll lose half their base.

I'm not a racist, those who perpetuate the victim culture are the true racists.

But Veeramuthu Kalimuthu had the guts to jump onto that New York subway trackage. And despite that the soon-to-be victim outweighed his savior by about 50 lbs, "Kali" with the help of some people on the platform was able to get him off the tracks and onto the safety of the platform, and to get his own self back to the platform on the other side of the tracks, just before the next train rolled over the spot where the action had taken place. After which, he boarded his own train, and got home to his wife and kids.

Kali — if you ever get a chance to read this — I don't know from your name where you or your family came from, and I couldn't care less; you and people like you are more the real Americans than most of us ever will be. The whole country is proud of you.

Inat helps explain the ferocity with which, near the end of their war of independence from former Jugoslavia, they ran the Serbs out of the big enclaves the latter folk had established in Croatia some centuries ago. That was their payback for the serb destruction of the croatian city of Vukovar in late 1991.

So I know exactly why so many respondents to a national survey now indicates that about one in five Obama or Clinton supporters tell pollsters they will support Senator John McCain, the all-but certain presidential nominee of the Republican Party, rather than the man or woman they hate, one of whom is all but certain to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party this year.

The danger for the Democrats is further compounded by the fact that Senator McCain, the most noted of mavericks among Republicans, always has attracted a large number of independent or otherwise politically unaffiliated voters, more or less cross-sectionally around the USA.

An additional factor McCain will draw advantage from are the heavy negatives of both democratic candidates, according to University of Illinois poltical scientist Doris Graber:

"Obama is very liberal, more liberal than we've seen on the campaign trail. Also, there is still racism out there," Graber told Cybercast News Service. "Hillary, we've known all along, has strong supporters. But there are also a lot of people who would never vote for her. There is some antipathy from the Clinton years. Some wouldn't vote for her because she's a woman."

This hefty sum must be because Heather helped Paul earn his fortunes, right? Wrong! Sir Paul became a legend in rock n’ roll before Heather Mills was even born, and he continued to work in the pop music genre with his wife, Linda, churning out many “silly love songs” over the years. So in this case, the “alimony” or “spousal support” argument doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Does Heather deserve the money for the “abuse” she allegedly suffered at the hands of Sir Paul? Lord knows she’s made several outrageous claims to that effect, including accusing him of stabbing/cutting her with a broken wine glass. As if! What we have here is another case of false victimization, and I hate it when people use that as a crutch.

The sad truth is that Heather’s reason for wanting (and getting) the money was because she feels she’s entitled to it. And it took a bedpan, of all things, to illustrate this avaricious mentality. Apparently, Heather demanded Sir Paul purchase her a bedpan, and not just any ordinary bedpan, either; but a very expensive antique one. He wisely refused, of course, and all hell broke loose. She could’ve bought an affordable bedpan at the nearest medical supply store, but it’s not like she really needed the damn thing. Anyone that can compete on “Dancing With The Stars,” can just as easily get up in the middle of the night and hop their happy ass to the bathroom!

Many have said –Sir Paul should’ve signed a pre-nup, especially given the vast age difference between them. But I don’t think he should be faulted for that oversight. Signing a pre-nuptial agreement is basically saying you know the marriage is going to fail before it even starts, and I doubt he went into it with that mindset. He married Heather because he loved her, and she repaid his kindness by fleecing him of over $50 million dollars. And apparently, all she had to do for that money was have sex with him for four years! And the worst part about it is that she truly believes she’s entitled to it. Now that’s just lame!

To Heather Mills, I wish to share the wise words of my late Uncle Glenn when he said, “First deserve, then desire.”

"... .. The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know there's a reaction that's been been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. ... .." - Senator Barack Obama

Democrat Radio host Taylor Marsh, a typical white person, was really offended at Barry's "Rev. Wright" style comment. It appears he learned quite a lot from the good Rev, despite being absent everytime Rev. Wright uttered a racist statement. ... Ms. Marsh makes a good point:

How in the world the Democratic party, represented by Barack Obama as our nominee, thinks he's going to get blue collar votes by basically calling white people racist is beyond me. There's prejudice going round but it isn't coming from people challenging Senator Obama, who are being pounced on for calling him out. I know a racist dog whistle when I hear one and this beauty from Obama is it. Racism works both ways.

So, I guess the message of "hope and change" is really more a message of I hope you dumb ass, guilt stricken liberals vote for me, it still won't change the fact that I think you are all racists.

The best part of this whole thing - Hillary won't have to make him VP. Nope, he just fucked himself, she can't have a racist on the ticket!

I told you he was a bowl of shit. I told you he was an empty suit. Now, he himself told you that he thinks you, the typical white people, are all racists!

So why would he waste so much time trying to convince me of Barack “Barry” Obama’s greatness? Party loyalty is partly to blame, but there’s more to it than that. This was a good example of Barry’s successful cult of personality that he’s built up around himself that seems to have EVERYONE willing to take up the charge to defend him. I will not subject you, fair reader, to the entirety of Dick’s slurred and drunken ramblings. To encapsulate our discussion, he had the same rote answers to all legitimate criticism that’s been leveled at Barry since he started his bid to win the Democratic primary. To wit:

1. Channeling Chris Matthews, I first asked “Dick” to list for me a few of Barry’s legislative accomplishments. And, much like Sen. Kirk Watson, Dick was unable to name any. He justified his ignorance by stating, “No one in American politics has had any legislative accomplishments since Abraham Lincoln, so it doesn’t matter.”

What?

2. Sensing that was a dead end, I moved on to the next topic – Barry’s questionable ties to Mr. Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Dick’s response was to be expected – “Obama doesn’t know Rezko. It’s FOX media that’s making a big deal out of it.”

Ninja, please! The story has been well covered by the Chicago Sun-Times and various respectable Internet news sources.

3. Lastly, I asked Dick why he would defend someone with a past so steeped in radical leftist thought. He immediately stated that the school Barry attended in Indonesia was not a “madrassa,” it was an “international school of higher learning that just happened to be owned by Muslims.” I told him that I was referring to Barry’s connection with Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Dick quickly changed gears and said that Wright is, “A product of the civil rights movement of the 60s, so I understand where he’s coming from.”

Having already started out at rock bottom, here’s where Dick really broke out the shovel and started to dig. Since much has already been made about the good Reverend, I’ll simply say that America is a much different place than it was in the 1960s, and I find it disturbing that someone is unable to let go of the anger he’s been carrying for the past 40 years or so.

By now, my buddy Barry has already called a press conference in which he’s “denounced” the views of his former pastor while, oddly, airing his (white) grandmother’s dirty laundry to the entire nation. The end result, of course, is that the Obamatrons have more ideological slop to lap up and, in turn, try to serve to me. But all the excuses, faulty rationale, and liberal mumbo jumbo won’t ever make Barry worthy of the honor of being the President of the United States.

It’s like my Uncle Glenn always used to say, “You can’t polish a turd.”

Easter is a huge deal for my family. Actually, every holiday is a huge deal when you like to eat and Polish people like to eat. A lot. You know what's funny? We always have the hardest time coming up with vegetables for our holiday table. We are meat people. There is always, at least, 5 different meats/protein dishes. If the pig went extinct... I can't even think about such a tragedy. I answer the "don't we need more veggies" question the same every single holiday. Pickles are a vegetable and so is kapusta (Polish style sauerkraut). Nobody makes better kapusta than my mother. Nobody. If we are really desperate we throw a nice big salad on the table that almost never gets eaten.

Don't get me wrong, I love vegetables; but when your table is loaded with ham, two types of kielbasa, kapusta, marinated pork loin, beef zrazi (sirloin cutlets stuffed and rolled with bacon and onions floating in a beefy mushroom gravy), boiled eggs, a couple quiche Lorraine's and lot's of rye bread - veggies just get in the damn way. Especially for me, I can't eat much so I'm not wasting my digestive juices on some damn salad or the bread. I can eat salad tomorrow and after the Easter feast; I suspect I'll be eating salad for an entire week.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey says he and his wife Dina Matos McGreevey used to engage in three-way sex with his ex-aide and driver.

Dina Matos McGreevey has denied the allegation.

The former aide, Teddy Pedersen, told the New York Post and New Jersey's Star-Ledger he began having threesomes with the McGreeveys — a routine "hard-core consensual sex orgy" they called the "Friday Night Special" — in the late 1990s during Dina and Jim's courtship, and that the trysts continued after the couple's marriage in 2000, the papers reported online Sunday.

Pedersen described regularly sharing a hotel room with the McGreeveys during out-of-town business trips.

It gets better. After McGreevey confirmed the the orgy story, he issued this statement:

"This happened, this happened in the past, and now, we need to move on with our lives," the former governor said in a written statement. "For all our sakes, particularly our daughter, we need to close this chapter and look toward the future." "I still hope Dina and I can resolve our issues privately," it concluded.

Ahem. Yeah, keep it private for your daughter's sake, after you told the press. You piece of [censored due to extreme profanity]. Let me try this again. It is time for some Shakespeare. I know no insult that is more fitting and printable, than this from Henry IV.

Wherein art thou good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty but in villainy? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy but in nothing?

An "anniversary" of a "war" is in many ways the least useful occasion on which to take stock of something like the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq, if only because any such formal observance involves the assumption that a) this is, in fact, a war and b) it is by that definition an exception from the rest of our engagement with that country and that region. I am one of those who, for example, believes that the global conflict that began in August 1914 did not conclusively end, despite a series of "fragile truces," until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is not at all to redefine warfare and still less to contextualize it out of existence. But when I wrote the essays that go to make up A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, I was expressing an impatience with those who thought that hostilities had not really "begun" until George W. Bush gave a certain order in the spring of 2003.

Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Iraq would have to know that a heavy U.S. involvement in the affairs of that country began no later than 1968, with the role played by the CIA in the coup that ultimately brought Saddam Hussein's wing of the Baath Party to power. Not much more than a decade later, we come across persuasive evidence that the United States at the very least acquiesced in the Iraqi invasion of Iran, a decision that helped inflict moral and material damage of an order to dwarf anything that has occurred in either country recently. In between, we might note minor episodes such as Henry Kissinger's faux support to Kurdish revolutionaries, encouraging them to believe in American support and then abandoning and betraying them in the most brutal and cynical fashion.

If you can bear to keep watching this flickering newsreel, it will take you all the way up to the moment when Saddam Hussein, too, switches sides and courts Washington, being most in favor in our nation's capital at the precise moment when he is engaged in a campaign of extermination in the northern provinces and retaining this same favor until the very moment when he decides to "engulf" his small Kuwaiti neighbor. In every decision taken subsequent to that, from the decision to recover Kuwait and the decision to leave Saddam in power to the decisions to impose international sanctions on Iraq and the decision to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, stating that long-term coexistence with Saddam's regime was neither possible nor desirable, there was a really quite high level of public participation in our foreign policy. We were never, if we are honest with ourselves, "lied into war." We became steadily more aware that the option was continued collusion with Saddam Hussein or a decision to have done with him. The president's speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, laying out the considered case that it was time to face the Iraqi tyrant, too, with this choice, was easily the best speech of his two-term tenure and by far the most misunderstood.

That speech is widely and wrongly believed to have focused on only two aspects of the problem, namely the refusal of Saddam's regime to come into compliance on the resolutions concerning weapons of mass destruction and the involvement of the Baathists with a whole nexus of nihilist and Islamist terror groups. Baghdad's outrageous flouting of the resolutions on compliance (if not necessarily the maintenance of blatant, as opposed to latent, WMD capacity) remains a huge and easily demonstrable breach of international law. The role of Baathist Iraq in forwarding and aiding the merchants of suicide terror actually proves to be deeper and worse, on the latest professional estimate, than most people had ever believed or than the Bush administration had ever suggested.

This is all overshadowed by the unarguable hash that was made of the intervention itself. But I would nonetheless maintain that this incompetence doesn't condemn the enterprise wholesale. A much-wanted war criminal was put on public trial. The Kurdish and Shiite majority was rescued from the ever-present threat of a renewed genocide. A huge, hideous military and party apparatus, directed at internal repression and external aggression was (perhaps overhastily) dismantled. The largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated. Huge fresh oilfields have been found, including in formerly oil free Sunni provinces, and some important initial investment in them made. Elections have been held, and the outline of a federal system has been proposed as the only alternative to a) a sectarian despotism and b) a sectarian partition and fragmentation. Not unimportantly, a battlefield defeat has been inflicted on al-Qaida and its surrogates, who (not without some Baathist collaboration) had hoped to constitute the successor regime in a failed state and an imploded society. Further afield, a perfectly defensible case can be made that the Syrian Baathists would not have evacuated Lebanon, nor would the Qaddafi gang have turned over Libya's (much higher than anticipated) stock of WMD if not for the ripple effect of the removal of the region's keystone dictatorship.

None of these positive developments took place without a good deal of bungling and cruelty and unintended consequences of their own. I don't know of a satisfactory way of evaluating one against the other any more than I quite know how to balance the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, say, against the digging up of Saddam's immense network of mass graves. There is, however, one position that nobody can honestly hold but that many people try their best to hold. And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it's not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn't count, and we are not involved. Nonetheless, the very thing that most repels people when they contemplate Iraq, which is the chaos and misery and fragmentation (and the deliberate intensification and augmentation of all this by the jihadists), invites the inescapable question: What would post-Saddam Iraq have looked like without a coalition presence?

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say "attempt" rather than "do," which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on "a war of choice." But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

Laws against prostitution are stupid in a country with a booming porn industry. What is pornography, if not people getting paid for sex? They get paid for sex and then many other people shell out cash to watch it. Perfectly legal.

What pray tell is the difference?

Please don't give me that lame canard about the law protecting women from "exploitation"? You know what's exploitive? The donkey show in ... nevermind. Illegal prostitution with street pimps that don't have to answer to anyone. If it were legal, like it is in Nevada, then it could be regulated. Regulation would, in theory, reduce the risks of prostitution to both buyer and seller.

Prostitution isn't going away, they don't call it the "world's oldest profession" for giggles. What should go away is the criminalization of paying for/or choosing to sell sex.