The Hildebeast lost to THIS???

And they worry about McCain’s Age???

OK: campaigning is tiring work. But letting your brain either die completely like this either in math or basic civics does not speak well for his endurance as POTUS:

I’m not sure that this guy is right that this just reflects how Chicago politicians routinely count votes.

Just assume it’s brain flatulence from exhaustion, the most optimistic view. We elect this guy President, he wakes up from a night of too little sleep and figures someone has nuked a few states out of existence?? And McCain’s durability is supposedly an issue?

Maybe we should consult someone who knows something about durability:

The Hildebeast Is Done For.

With Barack’s crushing win in North Carolina and Hillary’s narrow escape in Indiana, the nomination is decided.  The super delegates will start publicly flocking to Barack to gain favor, no longer fearing (overmuch) her political power.  I won’t be suprised if enough do it to put him over the top before he is embarrasingly beaten like a drum in West Virgina and Kentucky (which will happen anyway, but will not be well covered).  I’m sure the city of Denver will breathe a sigh of relief if he’s got it sewn up before he gets there.  It is probably for the best in terms of the political process; whether it’s best for the nation will take quite awhile to determine.  

Still, Operation Chaos and Hillary’s tenacity had the benefit of finally beginning to treat Barack like any other candidate; treating him any other way would truly be racist.  The guy is an inexperienced Chicago machine politician with a very liberal voting record (such as it is). That should be issues of more import that the genetics involved.

I doubt the GOP could have possibly pulled that off without the MSM and the Dems painting McCain as something new generation klansman.  Indeed, I expect the age question to slowly evolve to implied painting of McCain with some of his generation’s racial intolerance and a need for payback (which is ridiculous, but does anybody expect the MSM to permit real issues in November?)

As for Hillary, she probably will not formally fold, just go into maintenance mode.  She has a chance to become a Senate leader (Ted Kennedy’s successor, hopefully) if she cranks it way down now.  And if Barack fails (possibly with the help of her backalley knife fighters), she’s got 4 years with a one term McCain to make people forget her nastiness and hope to try again. 

Those of us whose contempt for the Clintons political antics long preceded this campaign can take some satisfaction in the justice of her aborted coronation and Bill reduced in the last days to running around out in tiny rural towns like a country constable drumming up support.  And the fact we made use of them in the process.

Many thanks for your service, Hillary and Bill; you may go now.

 

A Source of High Oil Prices

My undercover investigation found this to be a key source of the conspiracy that has led to $115/barrel oil prices:

What is this?  It is a picture of some of the typical vehicles parked outside my local fitness center on a beautiful Spring day.  A Yukon, a giant Ram truck and the smaller SUV is a 4Runner.  When we drive on a beautiful day to go get exercise , there is no one to blame for oil prices other than us.  Folks; try running, jogging, power walking or even just strolling there!  I know it’s radical.

Trust me, I see hundreds of these 12 MPG monsters every workday, being used to crawl through long commutes with just the driver.  The pickup’s bed showed absolutely no sign of usage for real work and it’s rare I ever see one of these SUVs with more than 4 people in them, even on weekends.  Couple that with our energy-devouring McMansions (the new home average size has grown 250% in two generations) and our personal energy consumption has gotten absurd.

Of course, instead of burning our grand-children’s chemical feedstock, we can burn today’s food (via biofuel), so we can keep driving to the fitness center. To heck with starving a few million people (including the orphans at the orphanages I support, who lost World Food Program support because of the rising food prices.)  

GET.THIS.BOOK!!

Michael Yon’s “Moment of Truth in Iraq“

A great piece of work by the Ernie Pyle of our time (Michael strongly contested that comparison, but it’s true). This is a different kind of war and Michael brings to life the issues, the problems, the missteps and the triumphs to be found there. And through it all, he honors the service and sacrifice of the American (and British) military in the field. Through him, you will understand the ‘Devil in the details’; the frustrations and the hopes of Americans and Iraqis alike. And you will have pride in the humanity shown by the vast majority of both. No one portrays it better and there is not a dull moment to be had in this book.

The contents within the book match the photgraphic excellence on the cover. If you see that picture and want to know the whys and wherefores, GET THIS BOOK!

The ‘Only the Good Die Young’ Gene

My 91-year-old mother, who smokes over a pack a day, has been repeatedly told by her doctor that she’s living proof only the good die young.  Also, that’s she’s too mean to die.  It turns out there might be a genetic component for that:

“…smokers who possessed one copy of either variant were 28% more likely to develop lung cancer, while those with two copies were at a stunning 81% increased risk for the disease.”

It they keep digging, they might find an ornery gene that explains how she refused chemotherapy after nearly bleeding to death from colon cancer 25 years ago and is still around.  My own scientific thought is that she smoked the rest of the cancer to death; after all, as she says ’smoked meat last longer than fresh’.

Her remaining living brother (merely a kid at 81) has a more religious explanation; their 7 departed siblings have decide not to let in the family troublemakers to wherever they went.

Super-Delegates; Bribery, Blackmail, Extortion, Oh My!

It’s time to address the very ugly back-room antics that are going on that the Democrat Party is desperate not to have discussed.

The several hundred gorillas in the Democrat room are the super-delegates; and only a fool will think that these gorillas will not demand to be fed.  But, they’re not like that, are they?  Only if you still believe in the tooth fairy. And, because these are super-delegates, all of this feeding will occur out of the public eye.

So what do you feed a super-delegate gorilla?   Political favors, positions, contributions, even outright cash.  All of which requires money or political power. In other words, subtle or outright bribes 

Or you can not feed the gorilla and choose threaten him with bigger gorillas, if you have them in your corner.  Exposure of bad (even illegal) habits, loss of current positions, major support for the gorilla’s opponents.  In other words, subtle or outright extortion and blackmail.

Now, who has the most capability of feeding or intimidating these gorillas in this way?  Barack Obama, the political newbie with minimal personal resources, or the Clintons, with all their years of power and massive amounts of ‘mystery money’ associated with the Clinton Library and the Clinton Foundation?  In this back alley fight, Barack is going into a gunfight with a pocketknife.

Barack  can only counter this by keeping things in the light of day; out of the back alley, as it were.  That’s why the cry continues to be to ‘honor the pledged delegate vote’ for him, even though he has won almost no key state and has heavily dependent on the caucus system, which correlates poorly to general election success.  Obama isn’t doing this out of a sense of fairness; the guy is a product of the Chicago political machinery, where fairness is a pretty foreign concept. 

But the Clinton minions have come up with a perfect counter that would provide a great cover for the back alley massacre, ironically in the name of ‘democracy’.  A superdelegate primary, complete with a secret ballot! Oh, the bloodbath that will occur in the background of that spectacle.  But it would given the super-delegate the group cover that would actually allow them to overturn the pledged delegate count and avoid personal responsibility for the race riots such an outcome would bring in Denver.  It’s the only way to overturn the pledged votes and it’s a sharp political ploy.

Supposedly, it would also protect the gorillas from individual retribution and reward, but the Clintons would merely make it an all-or-none offer;  bananas to all if they win, carpet-bombing if they lose.  And who in the Democrat party want the Clintons on a suicide mission, with all they know and all of their resources? 

The super-delegates would prefer that arsenal being used on McCain and they know Obama is now seriously damaged for the general.  Their desperation is so bad, there is the ludicrous talk of taking the white male elitist Al Gore, who has not faced a single vote this primary, to replace the first serious woman and the first serious black candidate.  That shows the Democratic leadership has reached full psychosis.

Ain’t it grand?

The Dems run Conventions like Keystone Kops

And these bozos want to run the country??  They can’t even run district-level conventions here in Texas without almost matching Mugabe in Zimbwabwe for class and fairness. 

 The 23rd district got together at 8:30am; the convention managed to start at 6pm.  There was challenges and shouting galore.

Sheila Jackson, the Democrat Congresswoman, was booed in Houston.

They had this stuff going on 3 weeks ago, which I witnessed myself at precinct (a single night of hypocracy was all I could manage).  They couldn’t take notes and prepare any better than this after that??

Manners, competancy and democracy, Democrat style.  Just what the nation needs more of.

UPDATE:  The tedious process included numerous precincts redoing the caucuses held March 4, an act repeated across the state. Re-doing the March 4th caucuses???  No legal issues there; yeah, right!  Sorry, you either seat a delegate or you accept a challenge to one; no ‘redos’ are possible, since most of the precinct caucus goers aren’t there.  I speak as someone who has run district conventions myself and I would have rightfully been burned at the political stake had I run a mess like that, no matter how much lipstick the local paper tries to smear on this pig. 

Truly Dedicated Democratic Buffoonery

Well, Daily Kos is in the middle of political cannibalism, using their traditional excessive venom on each other, shocking some of their moonbat brigade.  The Clinton campaign has its back-alley knife fighters going full-tilt with the nastiest forms of identity politics, continuing their decades-long tradition of political eye-gouging.  The Obama campaign is struggling to explain that- while the people closest to the candidate (his wife and pastor of 20 years) are clearly believers in race-obsessive, ‘us-vs-them’ politics, the candidate himself does not.  And that his association with Rezco was innocent and does not taint Barack.  They haven’t addressed the issue yet about the million dollar earmark for his wife’s employer, which gave her a 261% annual raise right after his election to the Senate.  But, however this and the other issues pan out, Obama looks a lot less like a political Messiah, than another over-promising, under-achieving political product of the Chicago Machine.

The GOP couldn’t ask for a bigger mess if they custom ordered it.  They certainly did not, though some of us ‘right-wingers’ might have helped by extending Hillary’s ‘Black Knight’ campaign with our votes.  The election that has always been the Democrats to lose (and only through truly dedicated buffoonery) is looking a lot less a sure thing.

But it also raises a historical question: Karl Rove has always been credited- and damned- for the political success of the current administration.  Does the current Democratic debacle suggest that maybe Karl wasn’t so smart as the supposed ‘smarter’ Democrats were just plain stupid?

My Advice to Hillary…

(Mild content warning on the videos) 

Hillary:  Well… (sniffle) sometimes it’s just so… hard!

Hillary:  But how can I deal with the Messiah?

Me:  Well, he’s a product of the Chicago Machine.  You can deal with him (Metaphorically only, please!) like many others have been dealt with before:

 

Hillary:  But what do I tell my campaign staff?

She is Aliiiiive!

 The Hildebeast lives on- ironically, probably thanks to the ‘Rush Limbaugh’ contingent in Texas Republican and independent conservatives.  (I was on board with that strategy for Republican voters switching weeks before Rush mentioned it; I helped run the caucus in my precinct).  The victory was worth far more headlines than delegates, however; thank the Democrat primary and caucus ‘undemocratic’ features for that.

All is good, and not simply because of crass desire to see the GOP retain the White House.  That does enter in, though; EITHER party having control of both houses and the presidency is always a disaster, as shown by the GOP recently and the Dems on several occasions before. 

Let’s get to the primary election impact first.  Hillary’s impressive popular vote win in Ohio and her pseudo-win in Texas (she’ll end up with less delegates due to the caucuses) makes her a political poker player with a weak hand but lots of outs, instead of no outs at all. 

She will be selling the valid point the Barack has not been able to win in the big states needed to win the General.  She also may be able to show at the end of this that she has more popular votes than Barack (she is essentially tied now).  She can try to bring Florida and/or Michigan back into play for ‘fairness’, even if it involves ‘do-over’ primaries.  If Florida and Michigan remain left out, she can also go to the super-delegates to argue that they need to help her make ‘adjustments’ to the ‘pledged’ delegate counts to compensate for the ‘disenfranchisement’ of those two states.  It could give some of the super-delegates the public talking points to go along, when what they’ll really be thinking about is the very private political blackmail/extorsion/bribery the Clintons are capable. She can cut a deal with John Edwards for his 26 delegates, outbidding Obama based on her superior deal-cutting experience (and under the table resources).  All of these will likely be employed, in some form or fashion, to give her a shot at an outright win, no matter how ugly.

Any and all of these outs depend on her to be within striking distance in ‘pledged’ delegates; certainly less than 100 short.  To accomplish that, she needs to keep chipping away at him, smiling motherly-fashion all the way.

With Hillary within striking distance and the decision not to be rendered for at least  seven more weeks, certain lines of political investigation will go on that could not have gone on in a straight Obama-McCain fight.  Those investigations involve internal Democrat aspects of the Chicago politics from which Barack sprang, currently centering around the corruption trial of his supporter and neighbor, Tony Rezko ().  And possibly, a little more scrutiny will be accorded interesting tidbits like this one:

Just after Barack was elected to the United States Senate, Michelle received a large pay increase—from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005. “Mrs. Obama is extremely overpaid,” one citizen wrote in a letter to the editor of the Tribune, after the paper published a story questioning the timing of the award.

The only way to get to the bottom of such is from inside the Democrat machinery; Hillery can do that, John McCain cannot.  And Hillary will have to for enough leverage to carry the day.  The back-alley knife fighters that work in her shadow campaign will be very busy.