born live love die

I heard this on a McD advert.

Is nothing sacred?

Scott McClellan is getting roasted by the left and right for the book he just published.  The White House has established the talking points to be used against him, so they are all singing in unison.  On the other hand, the voices on the left are not trying for unison or even harmony.  Cacophany seems to be the order of the day.   And they, The Rude Pundit waxes whatever it is that he waxes.

But I have been thinking about Scott McClellan.  I think he should be given the benefit of the doubt.  The thing that people are not talking about is the fact that he fancies himself to be a Christian.  Let’s assume that this belief carries with it some amount of conscience.    No, really.  Stop laughing!  What if his conscience was bothering him and he thought that he really needed to speak out?  Last night, he asked Richard Clarke for forgiveness for having savaged him from the podium in the White House.

There are some members of the Administration who are Bible believing Christians.  For example, John Ashcroft used to hold Bible study in his office at the beginning of the day.  While Ashcroft has displayed no level of conscience similar to that of Scott McClellan, there is reason to believe that there are other members of the Administration who may also have the crisis of conscience that Scott McClellan seems to have experienced.  We can only hope for it.

Time will tell.

At CountryAboveSelf.com, you can vote for heroes and traitors. This is a Right leaning site, so Glenn Beck is a hero and John Kerry is a traitor.

Yeah, that’s what I said.

People have tried to game the system and have been blackballed. Click on the “WHY CAN’T I VOTE” link and read some of the suggested heroes.

John Hinkley Jr. as a hero. George Washington as a traitor.

I haven’t included a link because the site is scanning for referring sites. Cut and paste: www.countryaboveself.com

Stephen Colbert got through and is listed as a hero.  Pad his count, please.

I loves me some 236.com. Here’s the headline:

McCain selecting who runs America after he falls, breaks hip

Read the whole thing.

Bill Clinton is the political wife from hell.

It also raises the question, What will Clinton’s terms of surrender turn out to be? Her husband, for one, seems to have a pretty clear idea what he thinks she should get as a consolation prize. In Bill Clinton’s view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama’s running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill “is pushing real hard for this to happen,” says a friend.

Think about that for a minute.  Consider John McCain getting a call from Mrs. Huckabee, demanding that Gov. Huckabee be put on the ticket.

That is the functional equivalent.

There is no way that Obama is going to have not one, but two, co-presidents.  People who are pushing Hillary Clinton for the VP slot should get a grip on reality and understand just how much of a liability having one co-president can be, let alone two.  In the current administration, Bush is weak and Cheney runs things.  The part of the government that sets agendas and policy has been barely functioning for most fo Bush’s two terms.  Part of his administration tried to make the federal government an adjunct part of the Republican party.  The other part had policy initiatives that they wanted to push and there was no one person who would pull in the reins when they ran too far afield.  Bush is incapable of understanding and Cheney has no legal right to run the Administration.  So we have what we have: an administration that bumbles from one crisis to another with no clear plan of how to actually do things, because competence isn’t prized, ideological purity is.

Some of Clinton’s own strategists are doubtful that Obama will offer to make her his running mate — in no small part because that would mean bringing Bill aboard.

Well, duh.

According to Politico, some GOP strategists think that McCain can win in a ‘blowout’.

It sounds crazy at first. Amid dire reports about the toxic political environment for Republican candidates and the challenges facing John McCain, many top GOP strategists believe he can defeat Barack Obama — and by a margin exceeding President Bush’s Electoral College victory in 2004.

At first blush, McCain’s recent rough patch and the considerable financial disadvantage confronting him make such predictions seem absurd. Indeed, as Republicans experience their worst days since Watergate, those same GOP strategists are reticent to publicly tout the prospect of a sizable McCain victory for fear of looking foolish.

But the contours of the electoral map, combined with McCain’s unique strengths and the nature of Obama’s possible vulnerabilities, [emphasis mine] have led to a cautious and muted optimism that McCain could actually surpass Bush’s 35-electoral-vote victory in 2004. Though they expect he would finish far closer to Obama in the popular vote, the thinking is that he could win by as many 50 electoral votes.

“Nature of his vulnerabilities”.  That’s code for black.  McCain just canceled a fundraiser in Arizona with Bush because there weren’t enough tickets sold.

But McCain can still win this because Obama is black.

I have a rather amorous cat in my lap.  Sylvia is in heat.  This makes blogging somewhat of a challenge.  But I will persevere.

Jonathan Chait puts paid on it.

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

Amen.

I spotted a comment on Kos and I think they have it exactly right.  Hillary wants to turn the nominating process into Hillaryball.

I don’t think of myself as a good writer because I can’t set things up properly.  I just come right out and say what I’m thinking.

I think the Clintons are a couple of cynical bastards.  In the month of April, Hillary raised $21 million and spent $28 million, raising her debt on hand to $31 million or so.  This is for a campaign that can not win.

They are cynical bastards because she mentioned 11 year old Dalton Hatfield in her victory speech last night.  Dalton Hatfield is the boy who sold his bike, his toys and whatever else he could lay claim to and gave the money, $440, to the Clinton campaign.

And they took it.

Reportedly, it moved Bill to tears.

It moved me to nausea.  Bill Clinton probably has ties that cost $440, and he took the boy’s money.

And this is for a campaign that can’t win.

People thought she was staying in the race to reduce her campaign debt and she was taking the opportunity to pad it a little bit.

This campaign isn’t about winning anymore, it’s about vanity.