Sadly, No!

Perhaps it’s the titanic hubris to which we are daily exposed, but I find myself not one of those people who are comfortable going around all like, ‘Candidate X is going to win,’ and speculating as to events ‘after he wins,’ and all of that. I watch the polls carefully, and what they show is not displeasing, but let me just say that I’m not going to relax until an inaugurated president of a particular hue and disposition lets himself into the Oval Office, takes off his shoes, and lights a freaking Marlboro.

I’ll relax when he’s leaning way back in his sturdy leather chair with his sock feet up on the desk and “Betcha By Golly, Wow” playing softly on the Bose Wave system, thumbing aimlessly through the February, 2009 issue of Cooking Light.

In the meantime, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has a good pre-game piece at Newsweek.

D. Aristophanes adds: Nate Silver, much as I love his work, gets a couple things wrong in that Newsweek article, one small, one big.

First, Washoe County is in Nevada (Reno, Sparks), not Montana. He is right that Obama campaigning has been great up there — I was canvassing in Reno a couple weekends ago with my kids, mom, sister, cousins and assorted family pals — and Washoe now has more registered Democrats than Republicans for the first time in decades, according to the Obama people.

Second, a vote AGAINST California Proposition 8 protects the legal status of same-sex marriage, not the other way around, as Nate has it. Please vote NO on Prop 8.

Gavin adds: On the other hand, via Instapundit comes a less liberal-biased analysis by Roger Kimball.

Above: A Bert in a world of Ernies

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Thoughts on the instinct of self-preservation or, Why I still, even now, believe John McCain will be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20
November 3rd, 2008 7:21 am

[UPDATE: Alas, the story about Michelle Obama’s taste in champagne and caviar turns out not to be true: see here. I regret the mistake. I also take this occasion to correct a couple of typos readers have graciously called my attention to.]

I know, I know: Michelle Obama has placed a large order for Bolly, Iranian caviar, and lobster to be delivered to the servants’ entrance on January 20, but she’ll have plenty of time to redirect the order. Will she need to? Not if…

We lost interest after that, but he goes on for a few more paragraphs before reaching what seems like the end of the page.
 
 
 

Shorter Jonah Goldberg:

It’s The Bitter What-Might-Have-Beens That Keep You Warm

• The blame for our current difficulties rests upon the centrist reformism of George W. Bush, a figure of accomodation once championed by certain fair-weather conservatives who have recently become unpopular, such as David Brooks and David Frum.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions™.

Shorter Victor Davis Scipio Belisarius Rommel Themistocles Hanson:

The End of Journalism

• The liberal media is liberal.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions™.

An I-81 Story

• Whistling in the dark,
  Whistling in the dark,
  There’s only one thing that I like and that is
  Whistling in the dark

  Whistling! (Whistling!)
  Whistling! (Whistling!)
  Dark! (Dark!)
  Dark! (Dark!)

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions™. Thanks to They Might Be Giants for the lyrical inspiration.

This is how I’m voting in the national, California and San Francisco elections. Recs are me only. Feel free to convince me I’m wrong on any of my choices.

CANDIDATES

US President: Barack Obama
Note: Duh.

US Congress: Nancy Pelosi
Note: Sorry, Cindy. I like having Madame Speaker as my rep.

State Senate, 3rd District: Mark Leno
Note: Incumbent, has done pretty good so far.
UPDATE: Leno’s not the incumbent, he’s a State Assemblyman who beat Migden in the primary for this Senate race. H/t: Benjamin in comments.

State Assembly, 13th District: Tom Ammiano
Note: So-so termed-out supe with no real rivals here, as far as I can see.

STATE PROPOSITIONS

Read the rest of this entry »

Shorter Mark Noonan:

IBD-TIPP Still Has it a 2 Point Race

• This poll has the least liberal bias.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Dan Riehl:

Obama Opts For The Prevent D

• The Obama campaign is unraveling.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Gateway Pundit:

Final Polling– OBAMA’S LEAD SHRINKS IN KEY RED STATES!!

• WOW!!! According to this one poll, if every single undecided voter is a white racist who won’t vote for a black person, we can almost achieve a stalemate!!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Ace of Spades HQ:

You Want Something to Believe In?
—Jack M.

• This poll has the least liberal bias.

Final Polls in Key States; It’s Too Close to Call
—Gabriel Malor

• Um, undecided voters, white people, uh, hey, looking good here.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Glenn Reynolds:

IT WOULD BE SUITABLY IRONIC IF IT HAPPENED:

• Are polls, statistics, and analytics a leftist conspiracy that will soon be exploded?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Years ago, when Tim Leary and G. Gordon Liddy were doing their tandem “debate tour” of the nation, I asked Liddy if he had ever killed anyone. “No,” he said, adding, “But, if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Believing what you’re told by intelligence agents is foolish business.
Posted by: Meteor Blades at December 4, 2003 08:28 PM | PERMALINK

Liddy wasn’t joking:

I was so confident of the ability of the [dirty tricks] group recruited that when I happened to meet Bud Krogh on the steps of the Old Executive Office Building, I thought of a proposal I’d made months before. I’d asserted that key foreign drug-smuggling operatives, who were well known should be recognized as killers of American children and subject to being killed themselves. By us. State had been horrified at the idea of such direct action as assassination and the suggestion had gone nowhere, but Bud had not seemed to object in principle. He had been traveling abroad quite a bit and had an appreciation of the difficulties involved in combating the drug barons with mere diplomacy. I was also very grateful to him for all he had done to advance me in the administration. I patted him on the back and said, “Bud, if you want anyone killed, just let me know.” He smiled and said, “I will.” I reacted to his smile by saying, “I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” said Krogh, his smile gone. “I’ll let you know.”

Long before Ann Coulter expressed the wish that al-Qaeda had flown jet airplanes into The New York Times building, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt actually planned, themselves, on murdering an American journalist, Jack Anderson. Small wonder that John McCain, and the wingnutosphere which seeks to elect him, has little problem with Gordon Liddy, one of the first of the Army of Davids to think (albeit in Liddy’s case literally) about slaying the great monsters of the wingnut imagination, the much-hated Goliaths of the “MSM.” Showing how little things have changed over the years, Liddy always maintained that his scheme to murder Jack Anderson was “not retributive” but preventative, that it was a matter of principle — similar to how, nowadays, wingnuts insist their crusade against the press is not because of venal or vindictive reasons, but because of a disinterested desire to correct “bias.” In point of fact, both Liddy and his admirers (WFB found the assassination story “riveting“) are full of shit.

First for Liddy’s own account of how he planned to murder Jack Anderson. Here’s the version he told to Playboy magazine:

LIDDY: We worked out a plan, but it was ultimately never approved by our principals. Hunt and I started the ball rolling by meeting a physician from the CIA, who was introduced euphemistically as a specialist in “the unorthodox application of chemical and medical knowledge.”

PLAYBOY: Meaning an expert in killing people.

LIDDY: Crude but not inexact. Anyway, we had lunch over at the Hay-Adams across from the White House and discussed various methods of killing Anderson, including coating the steering wheel of his car with an LSD solution sufficiently potent to cause a crash, which we rejected as too chancy, and “aspirin roulette”, which we also turned down.

PLAYBOY: Dare we ask?

LIDDY: Aspirin roulette is intelligence jargon for a rather common assassination technique, which entails the substitution of an ordinary aspirin or other headache-remedy tablet in the target’s medicine cabinet with a look-alike that is actually a deadly poison.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ayers! Wright! Blarg! God, how the wingnuts have yammered on and on about Obama’s friendships with radicals and “terrorists,” and what a lot of good it’s done them. But not enough, on the other hand, has been said about John McCain’s friendships with radicals and terrorists. Wingnuts by definition are radicals, so we can pass by such relationships as outside the scope of this post; but what about terrorists?

Above: Stacked and packed?

Well, as it happens, John McCain is best friends forever with an actual state terrorist, convicted felon, would-be assassin of journalists, planner of firebombings, and all-around Nazi-lover, G. Gordon Liddy. So far few have called McCain on his relationship with Liddy: Carl Bernstein, Chicago Tribune reporter Steve Chapman and David Letterman:

[Video link here until another Sadlynaut with the keys can embed it.]

Now The Wall Street Journal, in its typical, roundmouth-the-GOP sort of way, focused its account of the Letterman-McCain chat on the alleged bad blood between them, heavily hinting that McCain’s agreement to do the show demonstrated his magnanimity or something. Thankfully, John K. Wilson at The Huffington Post seized on the truly newsworthy item in the Letterman interview:

Last night on Letterman, here’s what McCain said.

DL: But did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy? JM: I met him, you know, I mean… DL: Didn’t you attend a fundraiser at his house? JM: Gordon Liddy’s?

“I met him”? “I met him”? And when you’re asked about attending a fundraiser at his house, you don’t answer? You don’t admit that Liddy hosted a fundraiser for you in 1998? You just say, “Gordon Liddy’s?” as if you don’t know what Letterman’s talking about?

After the commercial break, McCain quickly tried to explain himself:

JM: I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison, he paid his debt, as people do. I’m not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy. And his son, who is also a good friend and supporter of mine. DL: But you understand that the same case could be made of your relationship with him as is being made with William Ayers. JM: Everything about any relationship that I’ve had I will make completely open and give a complete accounting of. Senator Obama said that he was a guy who lived in the neighborhood. OK, it was more than that.

Note this: McCain said that Liddy’s son is “also a good friend and supporter of mine.” That means McCain is saying that Liddy himself is friend of his. Contrast that with Obama, who has never called Ayers his friend (David Axelrod described them as “friendly,” which is much different).

And the affection is mutual; Liddy says as much in an interview with brown-nosing John Hawkins:
Read the rest of this entry »

Shorter Robert Stacy “88” McCain:

Above: Karaoke Night at the League of the South

Greenwald: Constitution ‘Orwellian’

• Self-preening repetition of received epithet, unconcealed twisting of words, baseless accusation of disdain for armed forces. Update: Gay!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Michelle Malkin:

Conyers calls for investigation into Aunti Zeituni info leak; Joe the Plumber still on his own

• Newspapers including the Columbus Dispatch and the New York Times are reporting on the appalling outrage of Ohio bureaucrats improperly accessing the records of Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, a bone-chilling incident of partisan harassment that has spurred official investigations and has led to the filing of gross misconduct charges against Toledo police employee Julie BOING! Joe the Plumber has been utterly and shockingly ignored, while unhinged leftist so-called “privacy” thugs and their liberal media lackeys are screaming demented anti-government conspiracy theories about so-called “misuse of private [sic] information” in an attempt to to protect a lawbreaking bad person who must be destroyed. Laughably, John Conyers (D-Moonbat) has written an insane letter calling for an investigation, while…

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

As Digby wrote on Friday, even before the Aunti Zeituni story reached the barricades:

Now, as it happens, I think that public employees searching through Joe the plumber’s governmental records is absolutely wrong and that people should lose their jobs if they did it. It creeped me out too. And I thought the press treatment was overkill as well — right up until the moment that Joe started grandstanding for the cameras, got an agent and started talking to people about a recording contract.

But, again, Malkin is hardly the right person to complain considering the absolutely horrific invasion of privacy she perpetrated against the Frost family. It’s mind-boggling that, of all people in the right wing blogosphere, she has appointed herself to be the one to lead this story. The sheer brass of it, the unreflective audacity, is simply breathtaking.

This is why I say that they have retired the concept of hypocrisy. It goes far beyond double standards or duplicity or bad faith. There’s an aggression to it, a boldness, that dares people to bring up the bald and obvious fact that the person making the charge is herself a far worse perpetrator of the thing she is decrying. There’s an intellectual violence in it.