Helpful McCain-English Translat-o-matic

Oh, good. John McCain went on Meet the Press this morning and clarified the little kerfuffle involving his wife, a video camera, and a jaw-dropping twelve hours during which we thought there was a voice of reason in that marriage. In case it isn't clear, we're giving the senator a hand with what he's actually saying.

McCain: "I respect the First Amendment rights of every member of my family."

Actually means: But fuck if they get to exercise them. This isn't a fucking democracy here. So forget what the trollop thinks she thinks. There is one opinion here, and it is mine.

In the same vein, you may recall that Walnuts said he'd accept a DADT repeal if the military leadership wanted that, and then, after the military leadership said they wanted it, McCain said no, what he really wanted was a Pentagon study. Now that the Pentagon study has been leaked, well--quelle surprise--he doesn't want that either.

"A thorough and complete study of the effects, not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness, that's what I want," he added. "And once we get this study we need to have hearings, and we need to examine it, and we need to look at whether it is the kind of study that we wanted."

Actually means: We need to look at whether the study shows that the fags will destroy the United States military, because that is exactly the kind of study we wanted, where "we," of course, means John McCain.

And, apparently, if he gets the kind of study he wanted but the results aren't quite what he was banking on, he will call for hearings in his new now-with-38%-more-Republicans Senate. Because if there's one thing the GOP can do like pros, it's move the goalposts and spin and massage until the original facts become the truth they want.

McCain: I'm John McCain.

Actually means: I am the shameless asshole in charge here, and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

In Other Words

John McCain, referencing the Defense Department's OMG what if the Marine in the next bunk haz Teh Ghey survey, says we absolutely need to hear from people in uniform before we decide to stop axing Arabic translators for the sole reason that they are cunning linguists in more than one way.

The Air Force, in blessedly futile arguments that Major Margaret Witt should not be reinstated to her job as a flight nurse for a medevac team, says the opinions of people in uniform don't matter a rat's ass.

Her attorneys, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, insisted that Witt was well respected and liked by her colleagues, that her sexuality never caused problems in the unit, and that her firing actually hurt military goals such as morale, unit cohesion and troop readiness. Several members of the squadron testified to that effect and said they would welcome Witt back to the unit.

Lawyers for the Air Force said such evidence was irrelevant.

Military personnel decisions can't be run by unit referendum, they said.

They need to get on the same page here, because it at this point it looks like The Ghey is subject to referendum, but only when the overwhelming response comes back the way they were hoping. And given the wording of many of the DOD survey questions, the response they're fishing for is pretty clear. I am very curious about what the official reaction might be if even that survey ends up showing that most military people really don't care about team members' orientations as long as they do their jobs.

Rolling Stone on McCain

Take half an hour and read Tim Dickinson's piece on McCain in Rolling Stone. We should be terrified that the man's gotten this close to the presidency; if he actually makes it into that office we should be whatever level fear ramps up to when "terrified" doesn't even come close any more. Country first? McCain first. Always and everywhere it has been McCain first, with utter contempt for rules or standards or people who get in the way of his massive ego and ambition.

It is difficult to pull three representative paragraphs from a ten-page story crammed with details. So I'm breaking fair-use rules and quoting four in an excerpt that probably illustrates the man better than anything else in the story. In July of '67, McCain was flying bombing missions off the carrier USS Forrestal. One morning, while waiting on the flight deck, a missile inadvertently launched from another plane hit McCain's fuel tank, causing a fire. McCain jumped out of his cockpit and was able to run to safety before one of his bombs fell off his plane and detonated, which in turn caused a chain reaction of explosions from the surrounding planes and a huge fire that blew open the ship, threatening to sink it, and killed 134 men.

These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.

McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.

As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."

The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."

McCain First. Remember that.

Is It the Truth McCain Has Utter Contempt for? Or Simply Our Ability to Pay Attention?

Grandpa Absolute 100 Percent Truth McCrankypants was on fire this morning, flinging out four or five not exactly true statements about his mavericky leadership and Barack Obama's total suckage on the economic crisis in the span of under thirty seconds on Fox News and then CNN This Morning.

"I suspended my campaign, took our ads down, came back to Washington, met with the House folks and got on the phone, and also had face-to-face meetings."

No, you didn't. You said you were suspending your campaign on Thursday night, but you went ahead and gave what amounted to a stump speech to the Clinton Global Initiative on Friday morning, and your ads countinued to run everywhere. You did come back to Washington... 22 hours after you said you would depart immediately. From New York.

"I came back and suspended my campaign and got the House into the negotiations at the table, which they had not been before. We were able to get a large increase in the number of Republicans who voted for it.

Except that it's a Senate bill, and Senate Republicans were not the sticking point in the original bill's failure. That would be the House Republicans, who have yet to take up the new Senate measure. Your coming back to Washington did little but turn what had been a weeklong process, culminating in a done deal, into a political circus blown up by grandstanding House Republicans.

McCain said Obama's approach was to "phone it in" -- in regards to working with congressional leaders.

Sort of like... you did, when you spent most of your time on the phone from your Arlington condo--when not dining with Joe Lieberman, of course--rather than stalking the halls of Congress showing the kind of in-your-face leadership that has led most of the people in your own party to loathe you?

So "I suspended my campaign" means whatever John McCain wants it to mean, even when the reality that translates to is more along the lines of "I said I suspended my campaign, the Couric interview and CGI speech and numerous statements that I was putting Country First^TM by myself and my surrogates notwithstanding." Just like everything else, repeat it enough times and the American voter will start to repeat it in his sleep. John McCain suspended his campaign! Barack Obama will raise taxes on everyone making $42,000! Sarah Palin said thanks but no thanks!

Always completely 100 percent double-dog truthful, that John McCain. How do I know? Because he says so, that's how.

In Which We Come to a Sad Realization

Oh, "in which we are dragged kicking and screaming out of denial" might be a more apt title, but the sad sad fact I can no longer ignore is that the Democratic Party exists solely to piss me off. Sure, McCain has ramped up the McNasty in the past few weeks, but he's been spouting distortions and misdirection and, and, what's the word that means the deliberate opposite of the truth? Oh, yes, lies, pretty much from day one of his candidacy. And the best Obama and the Dems can do as the electorate laps it up and runs around the house on a sugar high, crashing into the side tables and wrecking our best knickknacks from that trip to the National Archives, is say nyah nyah, old fart can't send an e-mail, but we sure do appreciate his heroic service to our country. They refuse to hit back hard because they said they'd stay on the high road--as did some other guy, if we recall correctly, some guy named Hero McHonor or something--and by god, they're going to stay out of the mud no matter how much the other guy flings into their faces as he merrily trip-traps into the White House and the country goes around the last bend into the deepest depths of the shitter.

Then we have the brave and mighty House Democrats getting so spooked by the spectre of thousands of Republicans chanting "drill, baby, drill" at the convention and tens of Republicans chanting "drill, baby, drill" at McCain's last campaign appearance that they abandon scientific evidence, economic evidence, and their own good sense and vote to allow offshore drilling that will do exactly nothing to solve either the current energy crisis or the future crises we keep putting off solving by adopting this kind of idiotic no-effect stopgap measure.

Maddow always says it better than I do:

A three-word chant is all it takes to make the Democratic majority knuckle under to a knucklehead position? I'm sure glad we all worked so hard two years ago to put more blue butts in those seats. I'm sure glad Nancy Pelosi has morphed into such a firebrand leader who works tirelessly to right the wrongs perpetrated by years of Republican control.

I'm mostly glad I'm too old to drink much any more, because these motherfuckers would have me under the table every damn night.

Oh HELL THE FUCK NO.

What the fucking fuck? Watch this and see if you can not fling something through the screen.

Seriously, how... what... *sputter* what the fucking hell is wrong with these people?

Go back and watch it again. Specifically, watch what they do with the image of Obama's face beginning at the :22 mark. As the words "Learning About Sex" flash on and fade from the screen, his face is subtly altered by shortening his chin and amplifying the width of his lips--in short, transforming a photo of what appeared to be a quietly reflective smile into a creepy leer.

I've watched it ten times in a row. I'm not making this up. It's blatant and completely disgusting. It's completely shameless. Watch it and please tell me I'm wrong.

Oh, and the "sex ed for kindergarteners?" It was designed to teach five-years-olds to discern inappropriate touching. To protect them from sexual abuse. And while Obama voted for the legislation, he didn't sponsor it, so pinning its existence on him in the first place is a lie. In the face of the absolutely reprehensible content of the rest of the add, that's a pretty fucking small quibble, but there's McCain for you. Start with a false premise and never look back.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton was the first to strike back at McCain, but he sure better not be the last. Obama himself needs to stand up and say ENOUGH. He needs to echo Burton and amplify him a hundredfold:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Burton noted that in a recent interview with Time magazine, McCain refused to define 'honor.' "Now we know why," Burton said.

You can't make a big enough deal about this. McCain misrepresented Obama's role in the legislation, twisted the purpose of the legislation, and digitally altered an image of Obama to make him look like a creep who gets off thinking about five-year-olds talking about sex. McCain has no shame. McCain has no honor. He is a lying bastard who has not a shred of decency and deserves nothing but public vilification. It's beyond the pale. There is no lie too blatant, no disgusting conduct too brazen for this guy. I do not have enough words to express it.

Can I Please Get a Day Off from Sarah Palin?

No. No, I apparently cannot.

The girlfriend looked up from the paper and asked if I'd read the news roundup on the bottom of the page she was looking at. Nope, I hadn't. So do you want to get pissed off and have your brain explode, or just have a nice enjoyable morning? Ah, no point in messing with the mojo, so I'll take pissed off for the win. She read it out loud:

Gov. Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer.

"You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality," according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.

Palin's conservative Christian views have energized that part of the GOP electorate, which was lukewarm to John McCain's candidacy before he named her as his vice presidential choice.

Neat! I cannot wait to see what else will be required of McCain as he does the bidding of his religious right overlords. I also cannot wait to hear her explanation for why we should not be concerned about that or about her insistence that government is useless if the people's hearts aren't right with God, although since she's ducking the Sunday morning talk shows and every other unscripted appearance, I may be quivering in anticipation for some time waiting on that one.

In other news, not everyone is being fooled by her presence on the ticket.

So why on earth would [McCain] overlook dozens of far more qualified candidates (Tim Pawlenty and Lieberman, for example) only to choose Palin, whose national experience could be described (kindly) as negligible?

Because Palin's a woman. And because Rove, currently serving as an "informal adviser" to McCain's campaign, once read a book about women that convinced him the only thing women love more than a good white sale is casting a vote for another woman. (OK, I just made that up. I have no idea whether Karl Rove has ever read a book).

Here's something McCain might have considered during the 45 minutes his aides apparently spent vetting Palin, whose slowly expanding biography keeps yielding unpleasant surprises: Women aren't interested in voting for just any woman. They want to vote for an experienced, competent woman whose accomplishments can stand up to any man's, not someone they have to make excuses for.

Add Another One to the List

Of B-things Sarah Palin doesn't like. So far we have bears and 'bortions for rape victims, and now, via Crooks & Liars, we have books!

[Former Wasilla, Alaska mayor John] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Awesome! I was going to thank John McCain for this amazing gift of a VP pick, but the credit apparently really needs to go to the Council for National Policy, a super!secret, super!right-wing, super!Christian cabal of super!conservatives who totally jerked McCain's marionette strings on this one. I can't wait to see what other demands they might make should McCain gain the White House, on issues like, say, hypothetically, three Supreme Court justice nominations. Stay classy, maverick man!

In Which We Are a Tad Perplexed

I haven't exactly flogged the Edwards thing to death, although I did give it a good hard shake when it officially broke on Friday, but the lack of repeated posting on it should not be confused for forgetting about it and moving on. Everything about it continues to piss me off something mighty, and I'm perplexed by many left/lib/progressive pundits and bloggers and their commenting communities shrugging it off with some version of it's a private matter for someone who is no longer serving in or seeking public office, so it's not relevant to public discourse. Aroo?


Boltgirl is confused.

Let me check the wayback machine for a second to see if Clinton pissed me off this much. *zip* Nope, not this much. Maybe it didn't seem so desperate then, so much a sense of narrowly averting disaster. Maybe it's because I stood there in the voting booth on primary day and contemplated writing in Edwards. Maybe it's the shattering of that fragile sense of superiority I got from watching the weekly parade of right-wing pontificators or their surrogates get caught in sexually compromising situations. Maybe it's anger at knowing I gave Edwards the benefit of the doubt when he said he's against gay marriage but was struggling to cross that bridge, when he had been merrily defiling the sanctity of his own marriage with a Dina Lohan clone.

A private matter? Sure, when you're a private citizen. Knowingly being a lying douchebag when I've pinned some hopes on you? I can't shrug that off so easily.

Mmmmmmaddow.

Still catching up on several years of journal reprints and data tables I'm sure are important for something, because otherwise I never would have stacked them in teetering piles all over my office. And whilst doing the re-stacking today I am also catching up on a week's worth of Rachel Maddow guest hosting Countdown, so in lieu of anything resembling a thoughtful post, I give you Maddow's presentation of John McCain on reproductive freedom:

Bomb Bomb's Greatest Hits, March Edition

Just in case anyone's forgotten that John "Better on the War than Anyone" McCain is actually either functionally clueless or too distracted to care that he's coming off that way, a few reminders.

Mid-March, to CNN:

His [Sadr’s] influence has been on the wane for a long time.

March 18, Jordan:

Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.

March 31, to the New York Times:

Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the cease-fire, declared a cease-fire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a cease-fire.

From the hearings with General Petraeus, April 8:

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain did not appear to make any major mistakes in the hearing, although Mr. McCain did seem to get momentarily tangled over Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

It happened just after Mr. McCain asked General Petraeus if he still viewed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, as a major threat, and elicited the response, “It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.”

Mr. McCain responded, “Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites over all ... .”

To which General Petraeus replied, “No.”

Mr. McCain continued, “Or the Sunnis or anybody else.”

Reality check? Al Qaeda wants to keep coming after us. And, should we bomb bomb Iran and somehow cede supremacy in the region in the aftermath, AQ will go after Iran.

John McCain. Because war not only means never having to say you're sorry, but also never having to really understand who you're at war with in the first place.

Apropos of Nothing Friday

Maybe the fifteenth time the dogs went berserk yesterday I trudged out the front door to see if it was an actual threat, or one of the goddamn cats next door, or just the mailman (who has the temerity to put mail in the box within eyeshot of the guardian hellhounds--seriously, man, what are you thinking?), but found just a little flyer rolled up and tucked under the hose bib. Usually these are handyman ads or menus for restaurants that invariably close within two weeks of their menus showing up at my front door, but this day it was someone's anonymous statement of gratitude. I just skimmed the front material--the upshot was that someone had challenged this person to list 25 things he was grateful for, and he wound up with something like 340 before running out of space. The first one listed was an early memory from the age of 4, of initially being grateful that a neighbor had bought him a double-scoop ice cream cone, and then immediately after that being grateful to his cousin for sharing one of her scoops when he accidentally dumped his own cone on the sidewalk. And so on for most of a double-sided xerox.

I'm not sure how to pick the items that would go on my own list, since obviously any middle-class American's list should be completely filled with stuff like housing, employment, access to medical care, and that whole Constitution thing before even getting around to the juicy bits that make better flyer copy than "7.25% fixed mortgage rate." Fail to list the basic stuff you should be weepingly grateful for and karma snatches it away! Did I mention my family and my dogs? Very grateful for them, capricious universe! Very much so! No takey! Hands off!!!

That said, after this shit week I am grateful for the database guy fixing some major problems that were giving me fits. I am grateful that my company's proposal for a major excavation from an early time period that interests me greatly won the county contract. I am grateful for prehistoric people using rocks for tools in consistent ways that left identifiable signatures in the archaeological record, ensuring my continued employment.

I am grateful for the best teacher I ever had, and was remiss in not making the big TomDay birthday post I'd planned for March 1. I'm grateful that he touched so many students' lives that we sought each other out after his passing, and that as a result a couple of people I hadn't talked to in 20 years are back in my life as e-mail buddies.

Also grateful for Big Head Todd, the Santa Catalina mountains, snow in the desert, Merrell footwear, Frankie's Philadelphia Cheesesteaks and Hoagies, cool shade, streaming internet radio, cushy soccer balls, sunflowers, and geckos. Not grateful for static electricity, constant desert springtime dry winds, feral cats, olives, being pinched--fucking pinch me on St. Pat's day and you'll be picking yourself up off the floor--Will Ferrell except in Elf, cartilage tears, or John McCain, who is a douchebag.

I could go on and on.

Hmmm.

Clinton on the comeback trail last night, sorta, although Obama's lead in the delegate count didn't suffer significantly. Hmmm. Rumblings about a Clinton-Obama ticket in the fall. Would I be okay with that? I think I might, should Clinton pull it out via superdelegates. I think I would be far more optimistic about that scenario had Douchebag McCain not locked up the GOP side.

The first person I talked to this morning about the returns sighed and said at least McCain is the least of the Republican evils. As the words fought with each other to jump out of my mouth first, clogging up between my teeth like the Three Stooges trying to exit an elevator simultaneously, the person continued, "well, at least he's pro-choice." The subsequent choking noise I made was enough to dislodge the three key words needed to respond to just about any media-fueled characterization of John McCain, those being No! He's! Not!

He's not? No. No matter what you think you heard he is, he's not.

No, he's absolutely not pro-choice; in fact, he's in favor of a constitutional abortion ban. He's not a straight talker when it comes to the lunatics who have come out in support of him, including not only the race-baiting talk radio host in Ohio but, now, insane apocalyptic bomb-Iran-to-bring-Jesus-back preacher John Hagee. John McCain doesn't pander to the religious right? Think again. He's in favor of teaching Intelligent Design in the schools. He's opposed to full civil rights for gay people. And he's in favor of war, war, and more war as the only diplomatic option the US will ever need for anything. Period.

But Straight-Talking Maverick has been pounded into people's heads for so long that their automatic association with McCain is agrees with my position on this, actually, until they take a moment to think about it and then, belatedly, realize that he's fully and diametrically opposed to my position, actually. Is there any issue on which he's not in lockstep with the right wing? Used to be two, but then came that grinding make the Bush-tax-cuts-permanent moment. Now the only thing left is his eminently reasonable support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently living and working in the US. Hey, I'm totally there with him--that's the one thing he has managed not to be a total conservative douchebag tool about. But if I'm a one-issue voter, regrettably for Mr. McCain and probably for me, that ain't it.

So McCain has to be defeated at all costs. McCain, who just now finished up a tasty lunch and ceremonial endorsement befitting a visiting head of state with George Bush at the White House, must be defeated. I haven't seen a poll since Monday, if I recall correctly, but at that point Obama putatively defeated McCain something like 55%-45%, with Clinton and McCain polling in a dead heat. Does adding Obama to a Clinton ticket pull her numbers up closer to his, or does the presence of Clinton anywhere on the ticket sink it?

That's not a rhetorical question for me. I absolutely do not share the visceral loathing many people seem to exhibit when Clinton's name is mentioned. Policywise there hasn't been a hell of a lot of difference between Clinton's and Obama's Senate voting records, although her yes vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Iran resolution is pretty much a deal-breaker for me on its own, and more than pretty much when taken together with her original AUMF vote. Then again, Obama didn't vote on that one, so, well, what the fuck's the deal on that? Obama offers a personal magnetism she does not, and no one disputes that the man could orate the hide off a yak and come away without the slightest whiff of lanolin about him. I confess to continuing to worry that even continuing to address the notion of electability advances the meme that she doesn't have it. But I gotta address it and wonder about it. It seemed impossible four years ago that the stakes could be any higher. But they are. John McCain would be an unprecedented disaster for this country. There can be no doubt surrounding the ticket the Democrats send out to combat him. I would really prefer an utter lack of personal doubt to go along with it.

In Which Senate Democrats Forfeit Their Place within Phylum Chordata Yet Again

Proving that breaking the law under this adminstration means never having to say you're sorry, since all you need to do is change the law to say that breaking the law back then doesn't really count any more, the Senate rather resoundingly agreed with President Bush that telecom companies complicit in illegal surveillance of American citizens should be immune from lawsuits brought by any of those citizens who feel their privacy was intolerably invaded.

Follow the link and check out the Democrats who crossed over to vote against the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which sought to remove immunity from the new surveillance bill. Obama voted for the amendment, adding another check mark in my column of very good reasons to support him for the nomination; Clinton was absent. Evan Bayh? Dianne Feinstein? Claire McCaskill? Hello? Why even bother showing up for work if you're simply going to knuckle under to the president as he continues to bully his way free of the constraints of law and constitutional authority?

Oh, and do you need to ask which way McCain voted? At least he was there, for a change; amazingly, Mr. Maverick voted in lockstep with the Bushites. All together now: John McCain is a douchebag.

Two More Down

Even the pathologically focused St. Rudy of 9/11 couldn't ignore the tapping of reality against his noggin any more, so he's out of the race. This is very disappointing, as it saddles Mittens Romney with the sole responsibility of providing moments of high comedy from the GOP side.

After yesterday's Florida primary, John "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain is looking like a front-runner. This is troubling because too many people fall back on the "maverick" meme rather than examining the man's actual voting record or even every other word that falls out of his mouth, which might make this election way the hell closer than it needs to be, even with Obama as the Dem nominee. The best tactic against McCain may be casting him as the Hundred Years' War candidate. He's certainly not doing much to dispel those perceptions so far.

On the Democratic side, John Edwards dropped as well. I was surprised that he didn't hang on through Super Tuesday to see if he might pick up enough delegates to have some sway in deciding the eventual nominee. Will he end up on the ticket? Probably not. Some major policy role in the new administration would be nice.

Huckabee Digging New Holes As Fast As Somebody Can Hand Him New Shovels

In a bid to sew up the Bible-waving, homo-hating, *cough*race-baiting*cough* vote, Mike Huckabee set himself apart from the rest of the GOP field yesterday by going all yee-haw over the Confederate battle flag in first-shots-of-the-Confederacy South Carolina.

"You don't like people from outside the state telling you what to do with your flag," he told an audience in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them where to put the pole."

Some southerners are eating this right up, and put together a couple of radio spots touting Huck's charms:

Notice that the ads are paid for by Americans for the Preservation of American Culture, who are working tirelessly to restore public perception of the virtues of our Confederate Forefathers and Southern Heritage as one of the foundations of American Liberty. At least they recognize that the current public perception of their Confederate forefathers and southern heritage--you know, that whole treason, insurrection, and slavery thing--needs a little work. This whole perception concept seems to be news to Huckabee, who's been winking and nodding his way through the backwoods wet dream wish list all week.

Hey, it's just because the dipshit with the Stars 'n' Bars on his pickup is only proud of being from the south, right? He's not really racist. And the people equating gay marriage with bestiality aren't really dehumanizing and demonizing gays, they're just blissfully in love with their own opposite-sex spouses, right? And the guys who want Biblical law enshrined in the Constitution, well, they don't really want Biblical law, just a little bit, just enough to, uh, dehumanize gays and demonize non-Christians and remind Billy Bob Stars 'n' Bars that he's just as equal as anybody else in America, and, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe just a little more so.

Mike Huckabee is a douchebag. People are starting to notice. Hope they'll notice in a big way if he carries South Carolina.

In Which Mike Huckabee Joins Rick Santorum's Man-On-Dog Fantasy Camp

Gotta hand it to Mike Huckabee--with him, what you see and hear is the unvarnished real deal. As alluded to before, the most troubling thing about him is up for grabs. Is it the content of what he says, or the fact that he blithely says it with no apparent concern for the religious extremism it reveals? A couple of days ago he called for amending the Constitution to bring it in line with what he perceives as God's standards. Yesterday he was asked by Beliefnet.com to clarify that position (via TPM Election Central).

Beliefnet: Do you think that on issues other than marriage and the life of the unborn that the Constitution should be brought into conformity with the Bible, which is what that quote seemed to suggest?

Huckabee: No, I was specifically talking about those two issues. Those were the only two issues I spoke about in the speech, and that was the point. I’m not suggesting that we say, “Okay, the Bible says you should tithe, so now in the Constitution we’re going to amend it to say everyone tithes.”

Got that? He's not an all-in kind of theocrat after all. Whew! He's only calling for codifying the parts of the Bible that would not unduly personally impact him or the rest of his evangelical brethren. Tithing, shellfish, and polyester blends are back on the table, people! And as for the rest of the sticky wickets tossed up by strict Biblical law--stoning unruly children comes to mind--well, that's just crazy talk. So this is proof positive that Mike Huckabee isn't a crazy Dominionist, just a reasonable buffet theocrat.

And how do reasonable pick 'n' choose theocrats conceptualize the people they would like to address in their Constitutional amendments? Why, they do it like this:

Marriage has historically, as long as there’s been human history, meant a man and a woman in a relationship for life. Once we change that definition, then where does it go from there? ...

Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal.

There you go. Two men or two women in a committed relationship is the exact equivalent of pedophilia. The exact equivalent of bestiality. Huck's proven himself quite adept in encapsulating staggering ranges of ignorance in very short statements. He would be president, but has so little grasp of American law as to be ignorant of the concept of consent. He would be president, but has so little grasp of non-Western culture as to be ignorant of the existence of one man-three women marriages in other countries as we speak. He is a minister, but is so willfully dismissive of the very holy book he wants to thwack the Constitution upside the head with that he forgets its stories of polygamy--even by some of its heroes.

He wants to be president and plans to get there by playing to the very lowest common denominator among people who call themselves Christian, gleefully bearing false witness to suck in every last vote he can. Why stop at man on dog, Huck? Why not make it man on multiple puppies to complete the bestiality-pedophilia-polygamy trifecta?

YHGTBSM Counter Explodes; Please Hold for Recalibration

That would be the You Have Got To Be Shitting Me counter, and two and a half states into the primary/caucus season mine is starting to sputter whilst emitting troubling wisps of smoke.

Or maybe that's my head. Hard to tell them apart these days.

Why? Oh, no reason, really, just that affable good ol' bass-pluckin' boy Mike Huckabee showing his Reconstructionist leanings more blatantly than any serious candidate in recent memory.

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

Set aside, for the moment, the instant failing grades this statement gives him in both US Civics and History of Religion, although that's troubling considering that he claims the dual job titles of governor and ordained minister. Let's just talk about judgment. Did he not realize his microphone was on and that cameras were rolling and that this little thing called Teh Intertubez would grab onto this asinine statement to fling it across Kingdom Come? Worse yet, did he not care?

There's coded language and there's blatant preaching to the choir. Right wingers have become ever bolder in open use of language that's not so coded any more--states' rights and Macaca, anyone?--but when Mike Huckabee stands up and openly calls for a complete rewriting of the country's fundamental document so as to be in line with conservative Christian dogma, apparently without fear of being labeled anything more frightening than "honest," those of us who prefer that our laws be based on secular legal precepts rather than firebrand Bible banging should take notice.

Watch the video and see if you can get through it without reaching through your monitor to strangle both Joe "What can I say? I like him" Scarborough and Mika "wifely submission is the basis of marriage" Brzezinski.

I Do Not Heart Huckabee

I am of two minds this morning. One thinks that Mike Huckabee suddenly being the Republican front-runner is the best news EVER, since once the campaign starts in earnest, the crap swirling around him on the blogs (his applauding the Southern Baptist convention for telling women to submit to their husbands, his major fundraiser who's in favor of doctors being barred from working on the sabbath and compelled to preach to their patients under a Christian theocracy, his psychotic dog-hanging son) will have to hit the mainstream media and will have to scare even the most brain-dead American voters away from him. Right? Right? Then the other mind chimes in and says, yeah, and all that shit makes him the absolute wet dream of the average brain-dead American voter who has a vague sense of being a persecuted Christian because Bill O'Reilly and innumerable forwarded e-mails from people like my brother tell him he is.

Come one, mind one. I'm pulling for you.

John McCain Irrelevant to Presidential Campaign; Still Utter Douchebag

Well, this is refreshing. John McCain (R-Douchebaggery) asserted in an internet interview on Saturday that the Constitution says America is a Christian nation.

Mr. McCain said in the interview that he agreed with the results of a poll that showed that a majority of Americans believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

“I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation,” he said.

No word on whether he also agrees with the majority of Americans--quite possibly the same respondents--who believe God created the earth in seven days and had Noah march T. rexes into the ark two by two.

Goddammit. Anyone declaring their candidacy for president should be required to pass a high school civics exam before their name goes on the ballot. And any of them spouting this Christian Nation bullshit should go back to remedial Bible class and circle the passages relating Christ's governmental analogies for the kingdom of God--plenty of references there to kings, none to constitutional republics that I recall.