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Archive for May, 2008

Blue Virginia

Today Jim Gilmore barely got the Republican nomination for the open senate seat. 65 votes! Steadily I think Virginia is going to become more like us over here in Maryland. And Mark Warner has his first campaign ad up:

Obama will win Virginia on Warner’s coattails.

Taylor Marsh Commenter Fantasizes About Shooting Obama

That’s sort of beyond bitter.

I am bitter and I am clinging to my gun!
Average Jane | 05.31.2008 - 8:03 pm


I just went out back and popped off a few rounds into the scarecrow..LOL
Average Jane | 05.31.2008 - 8:04 pm


Average Jane | 05.31.2008 - 8:04 pm | #

Did that scarecrow have big ears and an evil arrogant grin with his nose stuck up in the air ?
Hubris | Homepage | 05.31.2008 - 8:08 pm


Average Jane

LUCKY!!
ginaswo | 05.31.2008 - 8:10 pm


Hubris | Homepage | 05.31.2008 - 8:08 pm

I went and cocked his head back just so he would have the SNOB look before I pumped one into him….it is so good I live out in the middle of nowhere because right now there is a string of obscenities coming from my mouth.
Average Jane | 05.31.2008 - 8:12 pm

We Move On

* I’m glad to see the party finally standing up to the Clintons. Florida and Michigan both get their delegates in with penalty, supported by Obama and opposed by the Clintons. The Clintons no longer control the party.

* Harold Ickes is clearly among the more odious of the Clinton goons. The way he threatened the entire party is just like the big money Clinton donors trying to tell the Speaker of the House what she can and cannot say.

* Clinton’s imported Jerry Springer crowd was truly odious. They are quite pathetic.

* Please, superdelegates, get off your asses. Sen. Obama is only about 65 delegates away from the new 2,118 number needed for the nomination.

* The main thing we learned from the Clinton arguments here is that they really care more about Sen. Clinton and her world rather than the Democratic party.

* The Clinton supporters:

Howard Dean may hope that the “healing will begin today,” but two blocks away from the northwest Washington Marriott where the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting right now to try to figure out Florida and Michigan, the Hillary protesters are occupying an utterly alternate (and healing-free) universe: a universe in which one of the big lawn rally’s speakers yells that the Democratic Party no longer is in the business of “promoting equality and fairness for all”; in which a Hillary supporter with two poodles shouts, “Howard Dean is a leftist freak!”; in which a man exhibits a sign that reads “At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen” and shows Dean whipping handcuffed people; and in which Larry Sinclair, the Minnesota man who took to YouTube to allege that Barack Obama had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999, is one of the belles of the ball.

* As one of my commenters points out, DNC member Don Fowler, who is a Clinton supporter, put party over candidate today and conducted himself with class. Harold Ickes could learn a thing or two thousand from him.

Puerto Rico Isn’t A State

To most of us this is accepted knowledge, but not the Clinton campaign. Furthermore, delegates are what determines the party’s nominee. Always has been.

Obama Leaving Trinity United Church

It’s probably for the best. That report is coming in from ABC News…

MORE here from CNN

The OliverWillis.com Rules & Bylaws Committee Unanimously Rules CK As Cutest Dog In The Galaxy

Without objection.

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DSC_0174

Harold Ickes Is Ridiculous

I haven’t been watching this thing in full - even I am not that boring - but I’ve now seen Harold Ickes have his butt handed to him twice. First was up against Rep. Robert Wexler, and later against Sen. Carl Levin (who seriously has issues with the Iowa-New Hampshire monopoly - and I agree with him). Ickes is the chief representative of Clinton logic in this fight, claiming that Sen. Clinton should be awarded all these delegates even though both contests were FUBAR from the get go.

It’s kind of like a track athelete demanding the gold medal after someone whacked everyone else’s knee with a baseball bat right after the starter’s pistol has been blown.

Nice touch by the Clinton campaign bussing in partisans to make noise in the room, but my gut feeling is that it won’t really work.

Like everything else that campaign has tried for the last year.

They Really Don’t Get It, Do They?

One of the more revealing elements in this primary fight has been the utter cluelessness of the Clinton campaign in a modern media environment. It’s pretty wild considering these were the same folks who brought the Democrats out of their 1970s and 80s mindset with the exact Football Coachset of skills needed to deal with the press in the 90s. What a difference a decade makes. Today you’ve got Lanny Davis making yet another ridiculous pro-Clinton argument in the pages of the Wall Street Journal editorial section. To the modern progressive, he may as well be making his case in The Hitler Times.

In the modern communications sphere we operate in, there is a constant flow of information between the blogs, the print press, and cable news. It is from that flow that the increasingly ineffective broadcast news gets a clue as to what their stories will be. Right now, oddly enough, the left is better at it. Without existing communications infrastructure we completely by accident created our own. Like the right’s existing network of using talk radio to make issues rise up into the mainstream press, the left has the web to push our ideas.

The Clinton campaign - even with knowledgeable people on board - has kicked the ball down the field on this. They have been satisfied to use the existing conservative leaning network to get their message out. But it taints the message. Democrats do not respond well to op-eds from the freaking Wall Street Journal, or sales jobs during The O’Reilly Factor. Granted, the major factor at play here is that the Clinton message just isn’t selling, but their choice of a storefront for that message is killing them as well.

It’s not even so much that the Obama campaign is doing something innovative. Much like a football coach suddenly thrust into action with a new team, he’s using the players he has to the best of their ability, rather than rely on the playbook he used at his last job. That old playbook may have won the big game at some point, but that old team is long gone.

Hot & Sexy DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee Webcast

Watch one of America’s two major parties get all up in detailed political procedure.

Churches Are Awesome

Edicts like this remind me why even though I have some form of religious leaning, I’m not a member of an actual church.

The Vatican issued its most explicit decree so far against the ordination of women priests on Thursday, punishing them and the bishops who try to ordain them with automatic excommunication.

The decree was written by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, giving it immediate effect.

A Vatican spokesman said the decree made the Church’s existing ban on women priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations.

Dan Abrams FTW

Dan Abrams treats Bill O’Reilly’s insane rant from last night perfectly on tonight’s edition of Verdict.

A Time For Change

More Obamacans revealed

A McClatchy computer analysis, incomplete due to the difficulty matching data from various campaign finance reports, found that hundreds of people who gave at least $200 to Bush’s 2004 campaign have donated to Obama.

Among them are Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the granddaughter of the late GOP president Dwight Eisenhower; Connie Ballmer, the wife of Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer; Ritchie Scaife, the estranged wife of conservative tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife and boxing promoter Don King.

Many of the donors are likely “moderate Republicans or independents who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country now and are looking for change,” said Anthony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College in Maine who specializes in campaign finance.

“There is a large block of Republicans, particularly economic conservatives, who just feel that the Republican Party in Washington completely let them down” by failing to control spending and address other problems, Corrado said. “The Republicans have really given these donors no reason to give.”

McCain Backs Down To Obama Campaign On Using Petraeus To Raise Money

Slapped down.

Sen. John McCain said he’ll no longer use pictures of himself and the top U.S. commander in Iraq in fundraising materials after being criticized by Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and others.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee was criticized by Sen. John Kerry and Doyle for e-mailing supporters a picture showing him shaking hands with Gen. David Petraeus that included the phrase “Leadership Demonstrated” above a link to “Show Your Support.”

Our World With Tom Friedman

Happy “Suck On This” day.

Deep Thoughts, By Oliver Willis

There is a Wifi network in my neighborhood that pops up on my computer called “Escobar Network”. Every single time I see it I think “the family of deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar lives in my neighborhood, and they have Wifi”.

Every time.

Purple Line: Please, God, Make It Happen

Our subway system here is pretty good, but one of the problems is that if I want to go from my part of Maryland - Takoma Park/Silver Spring to somewhere like Bethesda, I have to go through Washington D.C. to do it. This makes no sense. By auto that’s about 15 minutes drive, but because the Red Line doesn’t go in a circle, it works out that way. The proposed purple line would solve that, and make a pretty good mass transit system better. This is one of those government things where I’m like do it already.

We’re Going To Denver!

Denver Broncos Cheerleader
Denver Broncos Cheerleaders are in Denver. Hmmm.

And by we, I mean me. OliverWillis.com is one of the blogs officially credentialed to cover the Democratic convention in Denver. I’ve never been to a convention (a political convention, that is, I’ve *ahem* been to a comic book convention or 10) so this should be pretty cool.

I’m thinking one of my main goals/projects should be to finally see Al Gore in person.

Democratic Convention 2008 @ OliverWillis.com: The Quest For Gore.

Thoughts?

The Pushback Vs. Olbermann

Keith Olbermann is continuing to make waves, and the conservative movement and the media establishment doesn’t like that. In 2008 the media landscape is not the Fox News-dominated echo chamber of 2004 - and I say this as someone who sees this coverage as part of my day job and am well aware of how things have changed. Smears versus Democrats - specifically Sen. Obama are not greeted with the same reverence they once were. Those of us on the left have some place in the mainstream press to go to at least see a contrary position expressed. That bugs a lot of people. Aaron Barnhart discusses the issue further here.

Al Jazeera Report On Kentucky Voters

Sigh.

It’s Not Just The Brand

Voters are strongly rejecting conservative ideology, not just the GOP brand. Of course disasters brought about by conservative principles on both the international (Iraq) and domestic (Katrina, the economy) fronts will do that for you.

Clearly this is good news for John McCain.

(Also, conservatives still have convinced themselves that “earmarks” are the reason they lost in ‘06. Brilliant.)





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