I’m not certain quite the purpose for showing the inner workings of the Democrats’ Rules Committee as they wrestle with the issue of delegates and super delegates in contested states Florida and Michigan.

On the one hand, I think it’s valuable to some to understand how all this gets worked out re: who will be the Democratic Party nominee. On the other, however, bringing out (so called, cough, cough) big guns like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to discuss things like the Austin petition and half votes and whether Howard Dean will say, “yeeehaaaaaw” again (he won’t, but CNN likes to make Dems seem dumb) makes the whole thing seem a little ditzy.

Me? I suspect it’s a ratings black hole.

“John McCain’s in the news. Earlier today, John McCain released 1,200 pages of his medical records. Or, as his doctor calls it, Chapter One.” –Conan O’Brien

“I guess McCain is scheduled to meet with three possible vice presidential nominees this weekend at his home. The candidates are very excited to go. They say the only downside — they hate it when he keeps pushing that bowl of ribbon candy on them. ‘Try the butterscotch.’” –Jay Leno

“Well, actually, on the news, they stress that these vice presidential meetings were only preliminary. And before any final decision is made, they say that McCain will sit down with his senior advisers. His senior advisers? The guy is 71. What, are they from the Millard Fillmore administration?” –Jay Leno

“And McCain released 1,200 pages of medical documents this week, to prove that he is healthy. 1,200 pages to prove he’s healthy? Man. Man, how many does Dick Cheney have? My God!” –Jay Leno
(more…)

I have such confidence in you that I’ll bet my best cup of coffee that you’ll score higher than a Dana Milbank or a David Sirota on this trivia challenge at The Week Behind.

I won’t say you’ll score better than a George Bush, because he’d have to be able to read to take the test and… well…. he’s cognitively challenged (to say the least).

The more moral the Republican, the deeper the kink and the more likely (ick) there is video evidence. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother whom Crist replaced as the GOP governor of the state, was fortunately too fat to allow video taping. Cough.

No word on whether Paris Hilton is in Crist’s sex tape. Rumors that Michael Jackson’s chimp, Bubbles, participated is also uncomfirmed. Snort.

McClatchy Newspapers reports that Barack Obama is expected following Tuesday’s last primary voting to declare himself the winner of the Democratic race to be named the party’s presidential nominee for November’s big vote, against presumed (and man, does he ever presume) Republican challenger, John McCain. This is also in keeping with what Obama said earlier in May, when he suggested that there was adequate time through to early June to let the primary vote count help decide.

Barack Obama is preparing to claim victory in the Democratic presidential nominating contest after next Tuesday’s final primaries in Montana and South Dakota.

In a question and answer session Wednesday night with reporters on his campaign plane between Denver and Chicago, the Illinois senator dismissed the idea that rival Hillary Clinton’s stated willingness to take her fight for the nomination to the party convention in late August would matter.

“When Dukakis won the nomination, you know, Jesse (Jackson) was still running until the convention,” Obama said. “When Bill Clinton was running, Jerry Brown was still technically in it. As far as I can tell, this is fairly standard fare.”

Obama said the nominee would be clear “after Tuesday.” “I am sure we will have discussions with Senator Clinton and her team,” he said. (more…)

Well, this is the weekend the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Convention meets to hammer out what’s happening with delegates and super delegates, Florida and Michigan primary votes and what to do with them, et al.

Both DNC chair Howard Dean and many other ranking Dems have said they expect the race to be over soon after June 3rd, the date of the last scheduled donkey primary; that a commitment from superDs on who they’ll cast ballots for is wanted soon thereafter.

Yet others are beginning to suggest this is a race that may continue all summer through to the Dem National Convention in Colorado, the first time the convention’s been a real political potboiler since at least 1972. And I’m not sure Dems would be hurt badly by a later decision either: as long as the DNC continues its smart ads that target John McCain rather than a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama, I doubt there’s a danger. We’ve seen an exodus AWAY from the Republican and even the uncommitted voters coming into this presidential election cycle; I strongly resist the notion that something will magically drive these candidates back to Mad Dog McCain. You?

You know, I wasn’t inclined to pay much attention to fomer White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s new book about his tenure beginning soon after our dance of death began in Iraq. As McClellan took the job, we heard a lot about how decent a guy Scotty was and that the only explanation for him taking a job like that was loyalty to Bush. Strange how loyalty with a Bush lasts only so long, eh?

But I tell you, the more the right jumps up - from current and former WH bigwigs to semi-dead former righties (like Bob Dole) to Republcans-dressed-as-objective-news-consultants (like William Bennett, Karl Rove, et al) - to denounce the book and McClellan, the more they’re convincing me to buy it.

I mean, why else would the right mount such a campaign over a relatively small disagreement in perspective? It’s not like the American people like Bush anymore. They’re trying to protect their own, which includes a lot of people who want to ride back into another term under the third Bush term known as the first McCain term.

Maybe you should read McClellan’s book, too. Then you can learn more for yourself how Bush was intimately involved in the “outing” of Valerie Plame, then one of the CIA’s major agents on WMD, at a time when Plame was invaluable to our “ending terrorism”. But Bush had to have her “put down” because it was more important to smarm anything attached to Plame’s critical hubby, former Iraq ambassador Joe Wilson, than to stop real WMD in the world.

No, don’t get me wrong: McClellan is no hero for telling us now. If he’d outed Bush at the time, however…. But the book might be worth a read if only to see what other scum surfaces in it.

Please take a moment to help out our Democratic friend T.J. Templeton, Editor of Project For The Old American Century (an excellent lefty resource, btw). From TJ:

I’m currently running for Iowa State Rep. and my Senator is having an online vote to award money for candidates campaigns. I’ve already cleared the first round. I’m now in the top 20 and am competing with 19 others to win $2,000 for my campaign fund. If I win, I go on to compete with the top 5 for another $5,000. It’s very important that I win this. My opponent is a global warming denier who is heavily funded by out-of-state energy interests. I’m just the editor of a news aggregator website.

If you would please, go here and cast a vote for T.J. Templeton for House. You will also have to pick a Senator. I recommend Gronstal, but you can pick anyone, as long as you vote for me, for House.
http://www.tomharkin.com/action/building-blue

Thanks for your time reading this and thanks for casting a vote for me.

This is what John McCain cited as proof that Iran was developing and pursuing nuclear weapons.

Will Bush push another war before he leaves the post to his successor?

Now, to be fair, it’s never taken all that damned much to get Connecticut Senator (formerly Dem, now independently installed up the butt of the Bush/McCainies) Joe Lieberman to wander off the reservation. And whenever he wanders, it reminds you that the mind is one hell of a thing to waste but that his is more like loooonnnnng overpoached goose.

Yesterday was no exception for Joltin’ Joe-mentum. He rushed to the defense of nutcase tighty righty McCain religious nut, Rev. Hagee, who had JUST announced that Jews were at least partly responsible for their own genecide in the Holocaust. Lieberman defended this man (and I use the term man oh so loosely), but declined to answer questions re: whether he would allow Hagee to annihilate him because Lieberman is clinically depressing.

I’d call Joe an ass, but the anal sphincter is useful at least once a day whereas I can’t recall the last time my former senator (Lieberman) was ever useful (unless trying to inflict a sick migraine headache upon yourself).

I don’t know whether you caught it here or elsewhere last week, but we’ve lowered the jackpot someone gets who snitches and leads to the death (wanna bet?) or capture (right, uh huh) of Osama bin Laden. But here in so called “liberal loony” Vermont, we’re fighting a single opposing voice: whether to permit the broadcast of al Jazeera on a cable network here (and al Jazeera does NOT always take the side of Islam, if you have any regular reading experience there) like it’s more heinous than September 11th and what we did to Iraq rolled together.

Now, the Burlington area is considered to be the most liberal part of the state; it’s got a tiny Seattle kind of feel to it, and that it’s a multiple college town doesn’t necessarily make it more conservative.

Really? We can’t listen to the other side occasionally? Sometimes, only by looking at both sides of the supposed truth can you discern the spin, the message, the actual agendae at work.

Today, Presidential candidate John McCain stated:

And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.

And by doing so, marginalized about 98% of Americans - including myself - who have an opinion about Iraq and feel we can better our country and world in a way other than joining the military.

(Here is where I try to distill my frustration into a well-crafted, eloquent paragraph about how this man is wrong in his assumptions and how the People will rise up to say such and pull down the absurdity of the statement, but end up going with…)

What a dick.

Has John McCain ever, EVER just admitted he was wrong? I mean, less than twenty plus years after the error, like in fighting Arizona making Martin Luther King Day a holiday.

To choose the Memorial Day weekend to defend his insistence that he’s right in his failure to support the GI Bill truly is unconscionable. But my, oh my, is he ever showing “the Bush support” of our soldiers: giving them the shaft even faster than they shaft the enemy, whoever that is (and I tend to think our biggest fears should lie in the Bushies/McCainies).

We’re looking for a few good contributors among Democrats who have news and views to share about November’s election and other important issues facing not just the Democratic Party but America as a whole, red, blue, and purple.

Now, like most blogging, there is no pay. But we’d love to have more voices contributing here be you for Hillary, for Barack, or (like me) still white knuckling the decision. While we have some editorial standards we have to meet (I’d be happy to send you a copy), once you submit a few samples and get approved, you can post as little as once a week or just about as often as you like; more freedom than you’d have with your own blog while still contributing to the community consciousness and news dispersal.

Use the Contributors link above or email me at Kate (and you need to parse this to have it work) at allthingsdemocrat.com. Depending on the volume of email, please understand if it may take a day or two to get back to you; I don’t do form letters.

Thanks!

Though I was nursing a miserable stomach flu that had me using my DVR to catch spots I missed in rushing to worship the porcelain goddess, I saw rapt through HBO’s “Recount”.

As honest as it was (and I thought it avoided some of the most fiery yet since proven true material), I realized there was probably no production that could completely tap my sick outrage at what happened in the Gore/Bush 2000 election.

Ironically, I was very ill on Election Day 2000 but I’d dragged myself out of bed, completely dazed, because I never felt like my vote was more important. And yet, at the same time, it never, ever permeated my consciousness that Bush could be named president. My partner voted Nader - and I let him have it for his decision - at least in part for how nasty the so-called left got toward Ralph for running, but though I never thought Bush could steal it, I felt the election was just too important to “waste” a vote.

Late in the day, I was very surprised at how well I heard Bush was doing. But it still did not dawn on me that what was about to happen ever could (and yet his stolen re-election in 2004 also surprised me because I could not fathom that we’d let him get away with it twice). After that, we made a concerted decision to turn off the media until 10 or 11 PM ET when at least some real count was in.

It was around 2 AM when Florida was turned from a Gore win, to a too-close-to-call one, and then around to a Bush victory. We were already hearing some stories about the Palm Beach and poorer Floridians having big problems either with nonsense design or broken voting equipment or being challenged as being on a felon list (and some 500-1,000 or more people were kept from voting for every “felon’s name” listed on the stuff that came from ChoicePoint, who has since been awarded much of the control for our terrorist watch lists, etc).

This is how feverish sick I was, both physically and from the news: around 2:30 am, I started telling God that he’d be welcome to “take me” if only he wouldn’t let Bush win (and I’ve been a little pissed at Him/Her ever since).

As outrageous as that night was, what followed was worse. The media kept telling us we were all tired of the fight to get the recount (I only recall the Bushies being tired) because we were eager to focus on the holidays (sheesh!). But the people I spoke with, while they wanted it over, certainly didn’t feel Gore or anyone else should just capitulate to suit the MSM. And some of these folks were Bush voters. Thus, long before 9/11, we’ve been letting the media, probably at the direction of the politicos it supports, tell us what should happen because of what appears to be an INACCURATE read of where the American public is.

So “Recount” could not quite recapture the terrible dawning horror of that first Tuesday in November of 2000. But could anything, especially knowing the great ruination of our country ever since?

And what was your reaction to “Recount”?

I know the issue of Puerto Rico’s status - whether its “just” a possession or whether it should ever be granted statehood like Hawaii was after enjoying a similar status - is always a thorny one, but with the news of how the Democratic candidates are putting the pedal to the metal in preparation for PR’s Dem primary, I just have to shake my head.

You see, Puerto Ricans can vote in a primary ahead of a general election, but they have no right to vote in the election itself. Does this strike anyone else as… well… convoluted?

I can understand the argument of not letting them vote at all (not one I necessarily like but the issue does have some weight as does the opposing side), or giving them full state status and letting them have the same voting rights as anyone else (just like DC should have).

I find myself wondering if there’s an agenda being served by allowing the first part but not the second. An agenda serving perhaps the opposing party that doesn’t like any Hispanic vote outside of the GOP’s declining Cuban-American support (has dropped very sharply in recent years).

You want to see this (Sunday, 9 PM EDT, HBO).

Hopefully, most of us realize that the Memorial Day many will celebrate this long weekend indeed stands in memory of something: soldiers dying for a noble cause as designated by our government.

Sadly, what does this Memorial Day tell us when:

* we see how the veterans’ folks in the Bush Administration would rather spin the number of soldier suicides each month than try to address the real problem
* when cemeteries are booked solid for services for soldiers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan or by their own hand
* that to fulfill quotas, the Pentagon is accepting those convicted of everything from wife- and parent-beating to felony murder
* that many of our soldiers who DO manage to get the military to declare them as disabled must often wait 6, 8, 12 or MORE months to see their first check, with nothing to live on in the interim
* more and more, soldiers on the battlefields are having to call back home to their banks to try to keep their families from being foreclosed upon - there are supposed to be checkmarks in place to be sure this can’t happen, but few soldiers seem protected

For those of you who have served us, thank you. And my sincere apologies that the Republicans who want so to use you for photo ops for e-election are the same ones who keep trying to block you from getting any of the thanks you are due.

Since it’s the Sunday of a long holiday weekend (though fewer and fewer Americans have jobs that a) pay anything as “fluffy” as holiday pay, b) where just one paycheck gets them by, so even if their other three jobs recognize Monday as a holiday, their fourth likely does not, and c) sadly, fewer know what Memorial Day is to remember), I figure I can get a few literary refs by.

First, Deborah Howell in The Washington Post reminds us of a truth that is sadly too self evident: almost all the voices on OpEd pages are white and male in a society one would expect would be less patriarchal by now.

Second, this piece in Slate discusses why Frank Rich is being “penned in” on what his Times column can cover now that he’s inked a deal as a creative consultant to HBO. I have to say my sentiment runs much toward Jack Schafer’s on this score.

Rich has been a national treasure, as much because he’s willing to tell us truths we don’t care to hear as for anything else. It reminds me of the old saying, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is crucified.” As much as I think Rich could make a hell of an addition to HBO, I don’t particularly desire to see him limited.

Just in time to make us (appropriately) very worried about November’s presidential vote comes the star-studded HBO docu-comedy-drama “Recount” about the Bush v. Gore 2000 Florida contest. HBO airs it tomorrow (Sunday) at 9 PM EDT.

Just the Laura Dern-as-Katherine-Harris bit looks deliciously worth the watch, IMHO. Might bring a few laughs along with a reminder of the great injustice and tragedy done when Bush was allowed to steal the White House.

Is it just me or is this issue being blown out of all possible proportion?

As Time and some other media outlets note, Hillary has referenced the June candidate selection before using her husband’s ‘92 selection as candidate and the Bobby Kennedy candidacy that went on until he was shot in June 1968 as markers. This seems to be the same thing she was doing in answering this question.

But, my God, last night people were calling her race effectively over, with no hopes of the VP slot, for making the same reference… one even Bobby Kennedy’s son insisted should not be construed as offensive.