March 30, 2008 - April 5, 2008

McCain shrugs off Secret Service: Bravery or campaign stunt?

Filed under: John McCain

The top political story today is that McCain doesn't have Secret Service protection.

Word comes from Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, who told a Congressional committee that the Arizona senator never asked for protection.

"Statutorily, he is not required to take protection," Sullivan said when asked about McCain's security during a hearing on the agency's budget. "As far as an actual request, we have not gotten one. We have no involvement at this point."

A request from McCain seems unlikely anytime soon, however.

The two-time presidential candidate has said he does not want Secret Service protection, fearing it would interfere with his brand of intimate campaigning among voters. McCain also has said he'll try to last as long as he can without it.

"I've never done it. After we won New Hampshire in 2000, they really tried to get us, but we said no," McCain said last November while campaigning in Concord, N.H. "It's an invasion of your ability to have contact with voters."

Now, I'm pretty sure this is meant to evoke toughness. You know, McCain don't need no stinkin' Secret Service. Mofo survived a tiger cage.

But here's what it evokes in me: John McCain is really, really old. So old that he doesn't bother with Secret Service protection cause an agent can't jump in the way of a heart attack. So old that death within the next four years is practically inevitable, assassin or no. So old that the scare of an assassination attempt is as likely to kill him as the bullet.

Do we really want a president that is almost guaranteed to die in office? A president who recklessly disregards his personal safety (and by extension, the country's) by daring an assassin to take a shot at him?

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 4, 2008 10:11 AM | Comments (3)

Still 3 a.m.? Somebody pick up the damn phone!

Filed under: Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is out with a new 3 a.m. phone ad ... AND THIS TIME THE CRISIS IS ECONOMIC!

Jeez, you'd think she would have retired this schtick once it was revealed that the young girl in the bed is actually an Obama supporter.

Here's the new 3 a.m. ad:

And here's the original counter-3 a.m. ad by the little girl whose welfare Hillary is supposedly there to protect:

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 2, 2008 5:20 PM | Comments (1)

Think Hillary opposed NAFTA? Watch this video and think again.

Filed under: Hillary Clinton

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 1, 2008 8:56 PM | Comments (2)

Irony, thy name is Lou Dobbs

Filed under: Race Relations

This is absolutely hilarious. Lou Dobbs works himself into a lather over Condoleeza Rice's recent statement that slavery is America's "birth defect." He begins to rant about how it's ridiculous that any politician would say that we have a problem talking about race. And it is at precisely this moment that Dobbs catches himself in the middle of saying, "cotton-picking."

So is "cotton-picking" racist in its origin? Although the phrase was originally coined by Bugs Bunny, it does seem to derive from a racial epithet:

Believe it or not the adjective cotton-picking comes from Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes cartoons and is used as a general adjective of disapproval, similar to damned. From a 1952 cartoon:

Get your cotton-pickin’ hooks offa me!

Bugs may not have been the first to use it, but he gets credit for first recorded use.

But the noun cottonpicker is older. It dates to around 1919 and refers to a contemptible person. From Joel Chandler Harris’s Dizzed:

What are these boys from the South? Are they cotton-pickers, corn-crackers, stump jumpers, ridge-runners or bog-leapers?

It has also served as a derogatory term for a black person since at least 1930. While cottonpicker has distinct racist overtones, the adjective cotton-picking does not carry them, instead being a reference to the unpleasant nature of the work.

(Source: Historical Dictionary of American Slang)

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 31, 2008 4:44 PM | Comments (6)

Elephant Droppings

Filed under: Elephant Droppings

Forget global warming. The most palpable climate change that’s occurred in the past two years has been a shift in the political climate. As the 2006 midterms demonstrated in no uncertain terms, the ability of GOP strategists to rally the masses behind fear of homos, Mexican day laborers, and science has been severely compromised. Things are so dismal for the right that more Americans now believe 9/11 was an inside job than approve of Bush’s job performance— an unfolding utterly unthinkable on September 12, 2001.

Like cornered komodo dragons reeking of carrion and desperation, conservative stalwarts have resorted to unleashing some of the most brazenly idiotic and transparently insincere utterances in the history of asinine horseshit. Consequently, political discourse has devolved into a parody of itself. It’s reached the point where there’s no need to debunk these ramblings; their mere existence discredits their sources more thoroughly than any rebuttal ever could.

With that in mind, we’re proud to bring you the first installment of Elephant Droppings, a weekly (or perhaps bi-weekly) roundup of inane/insane/inflammatory remarks produced by straw-grabbing half-wits, professional bullshit-peddlers, and other such bipedal livestock.

(Disclaimer: You’ll probably at some point run across a quote and think to yourself, “Well, what’s so wrong with that?” You might even feel compelled to post a long-winded comment explaining why Ann Coulter is, like, sooooo right for calling John Edwards a faggot and, pffft, why can’t you P.C. thought police just, y’know, move to Russia or something? If you find yourself doing so, you are likely stupid, delusional, Sean Hannity, or some combination thereof.)

On with it:

“Media Matters, Huffington Post, DailyKos— these are fascists.”
—Bill O’Reilly during a Tuesday interview with sentient scarecrow Laura Ingraham

“All these years, and I didn't know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL… [Brett Favre] gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen… That's a great message for young boys: ‘Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby.’ ”
—the aforementioned scarecrow just two weeks earlier

“When Nancy Pelosi took office, oil was being sold at $52 barrel. You know what it was this week? $98 per barrel. That's what happened with these phenomenal spike ups in spending.”—Rep. Michele Bachmann a.k.a. The Gift That Keeps on Giving, who is sure to be a regular contributor to this segment

“America is in bad shape if the financial success of [Juno] reflects today's high school culture: sexual activity without marriage, crude pictures on the walls, vulgar language, a girl smoking a pipe, unattractive clothes, uncombed hair, enjoyment of slasher movies and weird music, and marriage breakup.”
—alleged author Phyllis Schlafly in her March 19 review of Juno

“My Democrat opponents who want to pull out of Iraq refuse to understand what’s being said and what’s happening, and that is, the central battleground is Iraq in this struggle against radical Islamic extremism.”
—John McCain mongering fear on the stump in California

We know we missed something; this list is much too short. Add your own in the spaces below.

Posted by Matt Snyders at March 31, 2008 2:35 PM | Comments (3)

Surveilance, mass arrests, endless lawsuits: The legacy of the 2004 RNC

Filed under: Republican National Convention

All you protester-types gearing up for the RNC in St. Paul would do well to study up on all that has been written about the surveillance, mass arrests and lawsuits of the last convention, held in New York City in 2004. Four years later, there is still court activity. Most recently, it was a subpoena issued by the New York City Law Department and served to Tad Hirsch, a doctoral student at M.I.T. who invented the service called TXTmob that allowed activists at the 2004 RNC to communicate in real time, via text messages, about actions going on throughout the city.

According to the New York Times:

Lawyers representing the city in lawsuits filed by hundreds of people arrested during the convention asked Mr. Hirsch to hand over voluminous records revealing the content of messages exchanged on his service and identifying people who sent and received messages. Mr. Hirsch says that some of the subpoenaed material no longer exists and that he believes he has the right to keep other information secret.

“There’s a principle at stake here,” he said recently by telephone. “I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy.”

The subpoena, which was issued Feb. 4, instructed Mr. Hirsch, who is completing his dissertation at M.I.T., to produce a wide range of material, including all text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and time of the messages, information about people who sent and received messages, and lists of people who used the service.

In a letter to the Law Department, David B. Rankin, a lawyer for Mr. Hirsch, called the subpoena “vague” and “overbroad,” and wrote that seeking information about TXTmob users who have nothing to do with lawsuits against the city would violate their First Amendment and privacy rights.

The article also revisits some rather staggering numbers:

The subpoena is connected to a group of 62 lawsuits against the city that stem from arrests during the convention and have been consolidated in Federal District Court in Manhattan. About 1,800 people were arrested and charged, but 90 percent of them ultimately walked away from court without pleading guilty or being convicted.

Many people complained that they were arrested unjustly, and a State Supreme Court justice chastised the city after hundreds of people were held by the police for more than 24 hours without a hearing.

Another New York Times story, published one year ago, examined law enforcement action before the convention--a rather comprehensive and nationwide effort:

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

I'll leave all the civil liberties talk to the experts. Me, I've got a date with Rockwell:

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at March 31, 2008 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

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