Blue Virginia

7:38 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | Democrats | 2 Comments

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.

Topic: Virginia

Taylor Marsh Commenter Fantasizes About Shooting Obama

7:26 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | News | 18 Comments

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

6:18 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | Democrats | 37 Comments

* 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.

Topic: 2008 Election, Newsweek

Puerto Rico Isn’t A State

5:28 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | Uncategorized | 14 Comments

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.

Topic: Hillary Clinton

Obama Leaving Trinity United Church

5:24 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | News | 14 Comments

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

MORE here from CNN

Topic: President Obama

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

1:09 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Without objection.

Topic: CK

Harold Ickes Is Ridiculous

12:45 pm EST May 31st, 2008 | Democrats | 7 Comments

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.

Topic: Hillary Clinton, Newsweek

They Really Don’t Get It, Do They?

9:07 am EST May 31st, 2008 | Media | 6 Comments

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 set 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.

Topic: Hillary Clinton, Newsweek, President Obama

Hot & Sexy DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee Webcast

8:40 am EST May 31st, 2008 | Democrats | 4 Comments

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

Topic: 2008 Election

Churches Are Awesome

11:43 pm EST May 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 7 Comments

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.

Topic: Religion