Why We'll Never Have A President Named Jack, Bill, Dick, Jerry, Jimmy or Abe

The rest home for aging male Beltway dead-enders known as "The Politico" is taking the G.O.P.'s anti-Obama talking points out for a test drive, and putting them in the mouths of nameless "Democratic" blowhards:

Even his name offers fodder for the critics. When he was growing up, his family, friends and teachers called him "Barry." Then as a young man, he started insisting on "Barack," explaining in a memoir published in 1995 that his grandfather was a Muslim and that it means "blessed" in Arabic. His dad, who was Kenyan, had gone by "Barry" -- probably trying to fit in when he came to the States, his son figured.

What's in a name? A way for Mike Allen to pad a particularly pathetic -- and phony -- tale of Democratic infighting and dirty tricks. Somehow Abe Lincoln and Dick Nixon managed to overcome the earth-shattering relevation that their family and friends had nicknames for them, but they nevertheless chose to use their given name in professional matters.

Apart from such stupidity, the entire piece is a fraud. The title promises to take the reader "Inside the Coming Effort to Dismantle A Candidate," but the article doesn't even try to do that. The piece quotes nameless "top Democrat[s]," "Democratic strategists" and jes' plain ol' "Democrats"1 who aren't sure Obama can go the distance, and it maps out Obama's perceived weaknesses (with no new revelations). Yet the piece contains not one word about an actual effort or plan by an actual Dem rival to attack Obama on the grounds outlined in the piece. In other words, not one inside detail. Perhaps any or all of the Democratic candidates have $12 million budgeted for a series of Barry-centric attack ads2, but, if they do, you won't learn about that -- or any other actual Dem's strategy in Allen's piece.

More significantly, the piece contains not one word about the real and ongoing campaign by the G.O.P. media to portray Obama as an anti-American, radical Muslim indoctrinated at a madrassa and a phony Christian. The effort isn't coming; it has already started. Only Allen pretends not to notice.

1 Genuine Democrats who bear no resemblance whatsoever to Joe Lieberman toady Marshall Wittman, Pat Caddell and Mickey Kaus, respectively. Really.

2 My suggestion: Still shots of Obama, Dave Barry, Barry Sadler, Barry Manilow and .... dissolve to ... Barry Goldwater. Ominous VO: "Can America trust its future to a President to named ... Barry?" If you're a Republican, replace Goldwater with Barry Bonds and Marion Barry, and film in black and white.

Update: Feck! Via Atrios, I see someone has stolen my patented and wholly original idea of making fun of hacks. And backing up their ridicule with linguistic research, just to make me look lazy. These Berkeley profs. will make my life miserable until the day I die.

Howie Kurtz, G.O.P. Bitch

Writing about the fraudulent Pelosi air travel story, fraudulent journalist Howard Kurtz spins for his masters:

Here's some typical blog reaction. Radiant Times:

"With all the fuss about global warming nowadays, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is complaining that she cannot have a huge jet to traipse across the country with her immediate family and political supporters. Does she realize what a huge government jet would cost the taxpayers? Maybe not, and maybe she does not care - who knows?"

Political Retch:

"What has happened to the democrats, now they want Pelosi to be treated like a queen? She and her band of freaks are starting to sound less and less like the peoples' choice to lead the country. If the plane isn't big enough then don't go to California, or better yet pay your own damn fare on a commercial jet. Silly [rhymes with witch]!"

How typical is this "blog reaction?"

Well, Political Retch is a blog with one -- that's one -- post. The one Kurtz quotes. The blog apparently didn't exist until yesterday morning at 8:38 a.m. If you do a Google search with "Politcal Retch" in quotes, it doesn't even show up. Yet Howie the Putz somehow managed to find the blog and promote it with no trouble whatsoever. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

And Howie manages to sanitize "Bobby G.'s" quote to make it more palatable for his G.O.P base. The Putz removes the word "bitch" from the post so the author looks like less of a bigoted cretin, and also removes the even more moronic middle of the post without using ellipses.

The other blogger, Radiant Times, is "a choral director specializing in working with singers with changing voices" who began blogging on February 1, 2007 and currently has a total of 93 pages visits, 30 of which are from today.

So, according to the Putz, "typical blogger reaction" to the Pelosi slander is uniformly negative, and comes from bloggers who have blogged a total of 9 days. For Kurtz, the typical bloggers -- and the only bloggers worth quoting -- are ones who spout uninformed right-wing opinion, not ones that actually searched for the facts and challenged the fabrications of the Moonie Times.

That's why you can't spell Howie without [colloquial abbreviation for a prostitute].

Spread Too Thin

I worry that our cable networks lack sufficient resources to cover both the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the diaper-wearing astronaut story at the same time.

Jean Jeane

James Wolcott catches the Depends crew mangling Ambassador Kirkpatrick's name in an ostensible tribute to the stone cold warrior.

It's not the first time and, barring the end of wingnut welfare as we know it, it won't be the last.

The value of torture.

The spiritual forbears of Abu Gonzales and John Yoo show us how it's done.

Tri-Corner Hacks

I've got to admit that the almost-never right Sully Joe got this one right:

Mickey Kaus accuses Joe Klein of having it both ways on the Iraq war. I'd say that's better than having no coherent position on the war at all, except fathomless bitchiness toward anyone who ever had the balls to take a stand. But that's Mickey - circling the drain of his own irrelevance. And bitchily attacking anyone who's trying honestly to do better.

The latest ploy from the hairless hack (Kaus, not Sullivan, or Klein) was to wonder who would suffer politically if the surge succeeded. Kaus's fantasy was that Dems (and Chuck Hagel, who took Kaus's spot in Vietnam) would suffer. Of course, no concern was expressed for those who have suffered pre-surge or those who would suffer because of the surge.

Part I -- Grand Old Police Blotter: The Year In Republicrime

a. Bob Ney -- 6. Conspiracy, making false statements

b. Chad Castagana -- 2. Terrorist threats

c. Jeff Skilling -- 4. Fraud, conspiracy, false statements and insider trading

d. Ted Haggard -- 7. Solicitation, methamphetamine use

e. Jack Abramoff -- 8. Bribery

f. Bruce Tinsley -- 5. Drunk driving, public intoxication

g. Bernard Kerik -- 10. Ethics violations (accepting/failing to disclose gifts)

h. Tom Noe -- 1. Embezzlement

i. Ann Coulter -- 3. Voting illegally

j. Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- 9. Fraud

1. "Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!" Steven Colbert

2. "And he [Jack Abramoff] had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties." Deborah Howell

3. "i always use lotion and the hand" Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL)

4. "Voters know it's hard to do a risky thing like define marriage as a legal entity that can take place only between an adult human male and an adult human female." Peggy Noonan

5. "You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to the math." Karl Rove

6. "Considering that all of this happened almost eight years ago, and that there are no files or notes that I've kept from that brief stint, it is simply my word against the liberal blogosphere on these examples. It becomes a matter of who you believe." Ben Domenech

7. "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else." Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

8. "And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)

9. "I'm not Lee Siegel, you imbecile. If you knew who I was you and your n + 1 buddies would crap in your pants." Lee Siegel

10. "I didn't kiss him back." Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)

1. Which one of the following moronic statements by a blogger is fake:

c. "All women with large breasts are sluts." -- Ann Althouse

2. Which of the following Senators voted for the cloture motion which allowed the nomination of Samuel Alito to go to a vote of the full Senate?

a. Robert Byrd (D-VW)
b. Joe Lieberman (D-CT)
c. Maria Cantwell (D-OR) (D-WA)
d. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
e. All of the above

3. On his low-rated radio show, Matt Drudge offered the following defense of Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL):

b. "The kids are egging the Congressman on."

4. Which of the following drunks sought treatment before his high-profile scandal in 2006?

a. Charles Kennedy (Lib Dem -- Ross, Skye and Lochaber)

5. Which of the following Presidential hopefuls supported Bush's invasion of Iraq? (Choose all applicable names):

a. Sen. Joseph Biden
b. Sen. Hillary Clinton
c. Sen. Chris Dodd
d. Sen. John Edwards

6. The biggest loser, percentage-wise, in the November 2006 elections was:

b. Sen. Rick Santorum

7. The following author/s and book were featured on Meet the Press with Tim Russert:

a. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, co-author, Crashing the Gates

8. Which 2008 G.O.P. presidential hopeful once said "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

d. Sen. John McCain

9. In the November 2006 election, the Democrats gained how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives?

d. 31

10. As of December 2006, the cost of Bush's invasion of Iraq is:

a. At least 354 billion dollars in U.S. expenditures
b. At least 3,000 U.S. soldiers' lives
c. At least 52,000 Iraqi civilian lives
d. Not one second of George Bush's sleep
e. All of the above

1. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

2. Willard Mitt Romney.

3. Backdating options (2006-2007 business scandal)

4. "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is."

5. "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp."

6. Saparmurat Niyazov, also known as Turkmanbashi

7. Loans for Peerages scandal

8. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

9. "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

10. "John McCain, what a maverick! Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you it wasn't a salad fork."

1. Dubai Ports World

2. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

3. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

4. Open Source Media (Open Sores Media or Herpes L. Simonplex II will also be accepted)

5. International Atomic Energy Agency

6. Voice-over internet protocol

7. Six Party Talks

8. Iraq Study Group

9. Whiny-ass titty baby

10. American Israel Public Affairs Committee

Programming Notes

Having spent the last twenty minutes trying to sign into Blogger (a common occurrence with the "new" Blogger), please note:

1. The answers to the Year-In-Review Quiz will be posted tomorrow; and

2. Yes, Tom DeLay was House Majority Leader. I'm a moron.

Oh, and: Blogger sucks.

Labels: Blogger sucks

Roger's Super Bowl Prediction

I confidently predict that I won't be watching the Super Bowl this year. I haven't seen an entire Super Bowl since XX, when Mike Singletary and Sweetness led the Chicago Bears in 46-10 rout of the New England Pats. My interest that year was primarily in someone else who was attending the same viewing party, and only Tony Eason's 0 for 6 completions kept me from being the biggest loser of January 26, 1986.

I don't even know which network it's on this year. So I'll probably spend the time writing scathing letters to my HMO or (finally) posting the results of the 2006 Year-in-Review Quiz.

Not In This Dick's Armey

How low has Tom DeLay, the tiny toxic Texan, sunk? Well, now even Dick Armey thinks he's a scumbag:

I have my own understandings and feelings about Tom DeLay. ... I don't believe he's a good person, and I don't believe he ... should have been in public office.

Thanks a wad, Dick, for letting us know before DeLay became Speaker of the House.

(Link via Talking Points Memo.)