STAB-IN-THE-BACK THEORY, DOMESTIC EDITION

By now, we thought the Republicans were going to be declaring that America had been stabbed in the back by liberals on Iraq, but Republicans aren't saying that (because they think the war is going swimmingly). But this New York Times editorial about offshore drilling reminds us that stab-in-the-back language is transferrable to domestic politics:

...A ... fiction, perpetrated by the oil companies and, to some extent, by misleading government figures, is that huge deposits of oil and gas on federal land have been closed off and industry has had one hand tied behind its back by environmentalists, Democrats and the offshore protections in place for 25 years.

The numbers suggest otherwise. Of the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to lie on federal land, mainly in the Rocky Mountain West and Alaska, almost two-thirds are accessible or will be after various land-use and environmental reviews. And of the 89 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to lie offshore, the federal Mineral Management Service says fourth-fifths is open to industry, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters.

Clearly, the oil companies are not starved for resources. Further, they do not seem to be doing nearly as much as they could with the land to which they’ve already laid claim. Separate studies by the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, show that roughly three-quarters of the 90 million-plus acres of federal land being leased by the oil companies onshore and off are not being used to produce energy. That is 68 million acres altogether, among them potentially highly productive leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska....

I appreciate the use of the phrase "one hand tied behind its back," given how frequently it's used by proponents of the stab-in-the-back theory of Vietnam.

But a right-wing idea doesn't have to be correct to be potent, especially in an election year. People such as Gail Collins may think that the public will see right through Republicans' calls for lifting restrictions on offshore drilling, but I can't help thinking about the people who said in 1988, "Oh, Bush won't get away with that Pledge of Allegiance stuff against Dukakis -- what the Duke is saying comes right from the state constitution!" If Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are going to stand firm in favor of current restrictions, I think they're going to have to do some careful pushback, explaining why in terms Joe Lunchpail can understand. Gas prices, especially if they hit $5 a gallon, really might be a bigger election-year issue than Iraq, and Democrats shouldn't underestimate the power of a pander.

McCAIN IS NO MAVERICK, ACCORDING TO RANKINGS YOU NEVER HEAR ABOUT

Do a Google search for obama most liberal senator and you'll get nearly a quarter of a million hits. That's because he's #1 according to one ranking -- that of National Journal (which just so happened to declare John Kerry the most liberal senator in 2004).

But (via Taegan Goddard), here are some rankings you never hear about:

...Voteview.com, a site created by political scientists that plots lawmakers on a liberal-conservative scale based on their voting patterns, calculated there were nine senators more liberal than Obama in the current Congress.

"Obama is a liberal, but he's not the most liberal," said Keith Poole, a University of California-San Diego professor who runs the site. By comparison, McCain is the eighth-most conservative.

(Yup -- according to VoteView, McCain's rank among conservatives is slightly closer to the far end than Obama's rank among liberals.)

More:

Ratings from Congressional Quarterly also provide a mixed picture.

In CQ's calculation of party unity, which measures how often members vote with their party on bills where the parties split, Obama got a 97 percent rating last year. Ten Democrats had higher scores....

McCain had the Senate's highest presidential support score last year, 95 percent, but he missed more than half of the votes because he was campaigning. And McCain hasn’t always been such a strong backer of President Bush. He supported Bush 77 percent in 2005 and has averaged 89 percent since 2001.

Did you catch that? I'll repeat it:

McCain had the Senate's highest presidential support score last year, 95 percent

Why don't we ever hear this?

Is it because McCain's many campaign absences make it an unreliable statistic? The same is true for Obama's "most liberal" ranking from National Journal. Is it because McCain hasn't been quite as loyal to Bush in other years? Well, Obama hasn't been National Journal's most liberal senator in other years, either.

Last month, Progressive Media USA did pick up on the 95% presidential support score for 2007 -- and McCain's 100% presidential support score for 2008. A lot of bloggers picked up on that 100% statistic, but now it's gone from the collective memory, as is the notion that McCain was the most pro-Bush senator in 2007.

Let me repeat that one more time:

McCain had the Senate's highest presidential support score last year, 95 percent

Sounds like a meme, doesn't it?

TEARS FOR LARRY SINCLAIR

Larry Sinclair claims he did drugs and had gay sex with Barack Obama, and has accused Obama of being involved in a murder. A lie detector test has confirmed the obvious: he's lying. So, how should we feel after reading about Sinclair's incredibly long rap sheet and learning that he was arrested at his D.C. press conference yesterday?

Well, according to one right-wing blogger, we should feel terrible:

... There are several problems with [Sinclair's] story, and, while I consider it certainly possible to have happened, I don't think it's likely at all.

Earlier today, Sinclair appeared at the National Press Club to tell his tale and was arrested afterwards by officers from Washington, D.C. police, apparently as a result of U.S. Marshals showing up with a warrant.

The question then becomes, why wasn't he arrested before? Has he been in hiding, or were they just trying to send a message? And, what sort of people would celebrate the arrest of someone who makes inflammatory and almost certainly false charges against a political candidate? Barack Obama supporters, that's who. See the comments here or at firedoglake.com/2008/06/18/larry-sinclair-arrested-at-press-club.

Larry Sinclair is hardly a political prisoner, but the arrest at the press conference has quite a political flavor to it....

I see that the right has an interesting new attitude toward the coddling of career criminals. Let's run down that rap sheet:

...He was first arrested on a larceny charge in 1981 in Denver, according to his Colorado arrest record, as filed in federal court. In 1985, he was convicted of theft and of forging a check in Florida, and sentenced to a year in jail, according to Florida records filed in federal court.

After the Florida episode, according to the records, he returned to Colorado, where he faced check fraud and credit card charges in 1986. Then, in 1987, he was convicted in Colorado on more serious forgery charges, and sentenced to 16 years in jail.

In prison, according to state records filed in federal court, Sinclair was disciplined 97 times for infractions including assault, threats, drug possession, intimidation, and verbal abuse, most recently in 1996.

...The Pueblo County Sheriff's website, which pictures Sinclair under the word "Wanted," cites felony theft and forgery charges.

Sinclair was also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in South Carolina last September, according to state records filed in federal court....

And, in fact, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant from Delaware.

But ignore all that. He's a victim of The Man! Call Amnesty International! Call Human Rights Watch!

Why are some of us happy that Sinclair has been arrested? Gosh, I can't imagine. Maybe because we wander over to the right blogosphere and read that Sinclair's preposterous story seems "certainly possible to have happened"? Because we live in a country where the percentage of people who think Barack Obama is a Muslim is in the double digits, as is the percentage of people who think Saddam was behind 9/11, and a disturbing number of people actually believe that Michelle Obama used the term "whitey," a word no black person ever uses?

Yeah, I'm happy. I'm ecstatic.

IF THERE REALLY ARE 2.5 MILLION "HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTERS FOR JOHN McCAIN"...

... and they're planning to run a full-page ad in a Sunday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, er, wouldn't you think they could find at least one member who knows the first thing about grammar, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation (e.g., you don't use an apostrophe before the s to form a plural)?

From the ad:

...We are here to tell you now that there are over 2.5 million of us and we will vote for "John McCain and the Democrat's on the ticket that supported Hillary Clinton ONLY" in November, unless she suddenly become's the nominee.

... We are not just women, we are men and women from all race's and nationality's. We are also made up of Independent's and Republican's that voted for Hillary in the Primary's and that would of voted for her in the General Election.

This is not because we are "sore loser's" or any other stupid reason you come up with....

This Ad Is Paid For By Members Of The Hillary Clinton Supporter's For John McCain
Ed Hale, PO Box 147, Wellington, TX 79095

Yeah, right -- that reads like the work of a large organization, rather than one semiliterate crank, doesn't it?

A number of people have noted that Ed Hale has never actually donated money to Clinton or any other Democrat (and his ad refers to the "DEMOCRAT NATIONAL PARTY"), but he did give money to the Green Party's VP candidate in '04. Great Grey at the Ptarmingan Nest offers evidence that Hale is using a manipulable Web counter to create the illusion that he gets more hits than he actually does -- which, if true, is amusing because Fox News reported that he's had 400,000 hits.

****

Never mind. I take it all back. Ed's heard the whitey tape! It's real!



What a maroon. And yet I bet he continues to get press as if he's legit.

SURPRISE -- LOOK WHO THE ELITIST CANDIDATE IS

A new Reuters/Zogby poll shows Obama leading McCain overall by 5 (47%-42%). It also includes some master-narrative-busting stats:

Obama leads among all household income groups except those living in households with incomes above $100,000 per year. Interestingly, he also leads among those who said they shop at Wal-Mart at least once a week. This is a demographic group that typically skews politically conservative.

But ... but ... the Obamas were Ivy Leaguers! And they have some money now! People who shop at Wal-Mart will only vote for a presidential candidate who's a poor high school dropout -- right?

****

Oh, and Quinnipiac says Obama's winning two big beer-and-a-shot states -- Pennsylvania by 12 (52%-40%) and Ohio by 6 (48%-42%). Hey, I thought that was impossible unless he learned how to bowl!

Oh, and Florida, too (47%-43%).

A curious bit of information from the Quinnipiac poll: In each of the three states, Obama's getting a double-digit percentage of 2004 Bush voters (13% in Florida and Ohio, 19% in Pennsylvania). That's good, right? But McCain gets an even larger percentage of Clinton primary voters. Wait, that's bad! Obama's losing his base!

But he can't be losing his base -- he's doing better in each state than Kerry did in 2004. (Kerry lost Florida and Ohio, and won Pennsylvania by only 2.) That means -- assuming the poll respondents are telling the truth -- that a fair number of those Hillary voters voted for Bush in 2004, or didn't vote at all. The math simply doesn't work otherwise. If they were Bush voters or non-voters in 2004, McCain might well have won a good chunk of their votes this year against Clinton, even though they gave her their primary votes.

So, in three big swing states, a significant number of people who didn't vote Democratic in '04 voted for Clinton and now like McCain -- and a significant number of people who didn't vote Democratic in '04 now like Obama. And Obama's winning those states, which the Hillary-or-death crowd said he couldn't possibly win. Got it?

RIGHT-WING LOGIC: YOU'RE WRONG, AS DEMONSTRATED BY THE FACT THAT YOU'RE RIGHT

A post by James Antle at The American Spectator's blog:

Over at The Corner, there's some discussion of this pretentious passage in a -- believe it or not -- Andrew Greeley column: "How many of the male readers of this column who are habitues of bars, locker rooms, commuter train bull sessions, pool rooms and men's clubs have not heard the indigenous racial slurs of such environments applied to Obama?"

I don't spend much time in locker rooms or "commuter train bull sessions," but I have on occasion been seen in bars. I confess that yes, I have heard racial slurs used against Obama in a few such venues. I'm not sure, however, that this confirms much besides my rule that politics shouldn't be discussed in bars.

Follow that? Greeley says racism manifests itself in certain places, which proves it still exists, and Antle says, yes, it does manifest itself in those places, which proves that you should stick your fingers in your ears and say LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING when you're in those places.

Right. Got it.

OBAMA: HE'S NOT WALKING ANYTHING BACK

In follow-up interviews, Barack Obama has elaborated on his earlier remarks about the treatment of detainees -- and some people don't get what he's saying. They think he's waffling or "walking back" what he said earlier. He isn't:

"... without giving full blown rights to those who are being held, we can set up a system of due process, and when I said that the administration didn't even try to do that, what I have consistently said is that rather than figure out how do we effectively hold these folks, detain them, provide them with some due process, try them, lock them up, the administration decided to take a bunch of short cuts." ...

"We don't have to treat them in the same way that we would treat a criminal suspect in the U.S., but we should abide by the Geneva conventions...."

Asked by Richard Wolffe of Newsweek what he would suggest be done with detainees, Obama said "we can lock them up in military facilities on U.S. soil in the same way that we locked them up in Gitmo....

"It does not have to be before a U.S. district court," Obama said, "but if we provided some modicum of due process, we can have confidence that we've got the right people, that we're not wasting time on the wrong people. We can send a message to the world that we continue to abide by the standards of rule of law, and we can actually be more effective in our pursuit of terrorism."

Allahpundit of Hot Air, who despite his ridiculous name is usually one of the most sensible right-wing bloggers, can't quite get himself to believe that this is sincere, even as he acknowledges that it's no flip-flop:

In fairness, this isn't the general election pander it looks like. He alluded to trying jihadis under the UCMJ, as opposed to normal criminal statutes, near the end of his big foreign policy speech last August (the same one in which he talked about invading Pakistan) and his floor statement on granting habeas rights two years ago proposed limiting claims to the question of whether the petitioner was being wrongfully held, not whether his cell at Gitmo is too small, etc. Even so, I'm curious as to what's motivating this compromise. Is there any logic behind it or is it a simple something-for-both-sides political solution?

But that's just it -- it's not a compromise. Or at least I assume it isn't, because what Obama is saying is essentially what I've believed all along, and I bet it makes sense to a lot of you, too.

It's never been important to me whether these guys are tried in civil courts -- it's only been important that there's due process as it's understood by the civilized world. They can go through the civil justice system, or be subject to military justice,with different procedures and rules of evidence -- I don't care; I've never cared. Hell, they can be subject to a process expressly concocted for them by the executive branch -- that's fine in theory -- but the process has to have been created in good faith, not like the Bush administration's kangaroo-court system.

Right-wingers are falling for their own rhetoric here. They're so wedded to the idea that we want full civil trials for terrorism suspects, with all possible bells and whistles, that they've never even bothered to learn that a lot of us wouldn't object to another reasonable procedure. So they just don't get it.

VOTES DON'T REALLY COUNT IF THEY COME FROM NON-WHITES WOMEN YOUNG PEOPLE

I don't know why Republicans don't just openly call for the disenfranchisement of Democrats. Even when Republicans are winning elections -- and especially when they aren't -- they love to suggest that votes from groups that prefer the Democratic Party are somehow illegitimate.

Ann Coulter says it would be a good thing (i.e., good for Republicans) if we took away women's right to vote. Republicans regularly talk of blacks and Hispanics as plantation-dwellers, as if non-whites' votes for Democrats aren't freely cast. (Robert Novak: "Where would the Democrats be if they're not picking up around 90 percent of the black vote? What if black voters started moving off the Democratic plantation?")

And in the past couple of days we've had two right-wing pundits arguing that it will be a perversion of democracy if Barack Obama wins in November because, after all, a lot of his votes are going to come from young people, who don't really deserve them.

Here's Dennis Prager at TownHall:

We regularly hear about Barack Obama's appeal to youth, about how he has been able to excite and mobilize a generation of young people to become politically involved, his rare ability to excite young people, and about how many new voters will register (and vote Democrat) as a result.

All this seems to be true. The question, however, is whether it is a good thing for the country and not just for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

The answer is that it probably is not. With a few exceptions ... when youth get involved in politics in large numbers, it is not a good thing.

... For those of us who view the late '60s and '70s as the beginning of a downward spiral for American society, ... the mobilization of many young people on behalf of Barack Obama is not encouraging. It is only the latest example of young people getting excited as a result of their unique combination of naivete, lack of wisdom, romantic idealism and narcissism.

Most adults throughout history have recognized that young people are likely to be unwise given their minuscule amount of life experience. After all, most adults, even among baby boomers, believe that they themselves are wiser today than 10 years ago, let alone than when they were 20 years old....

Young people also did horrible things in France in 1968, Prager says, and the '68 generation still controls the hated France. (Er, I thought age conferred maturity, Dennis.) And yes, young people do good things once in a while (e.g., in "those rare cases when young people confront dictatorships"), but these are exceptions to the rule.

The civil rights era? Not relevant, says Prager:

Yes, young people were also involved in the civil rights movement. And that was a wonderful thing. But unlike the anti-war movement, which was largely spearheaded by, and relied for its effectiveness on, young people, the civil rights movement did not need massive numbers of young people in order to prevail.

(I think that would be news to the students who participated in lunch-counter sit-ins, or to SNCC members such as John Lewis, who was 21 when he first participated in a Freedom Ride, or to the many young people who did voter-registration work in the Deep South, such as James Chaney, dead at 21, Andrew Goodman, dead at 20, and Michael Schwerner, dead at 24.)

Over at Pajamas Media, Burt Prelutsky expresses similar sentiments:

...Frankly, I hate the idea that some kid who may still be in high school canceled out my vote for no better reason than that he’s a fan of Sean Penn or went to a Dixie Chicks concert.

Whenever I suggest that teenagers shouldn’t be allowed to vote for anything but student body president or prom queen, I know that someone is bound to say, “If they’re old enough to fight and die in Afghanistan and Iraq, they’re old enough to vote.”

To which I invariably respond, “You’re absolutely right. If they’re serving in the military, I agree they should be able to vote. But if they’re still in school, still getting an allowance and using their mom or dad’s credit card to buy gas, I say they have no more business electing the president than my dog Duke does.”

Let’s face it, ladies and gentlemen, if we raised the voting age to, say, 25, the Democratic party would go the way of the dodo and the Whigs....

Er, Burt? The 26th Amendment was certified in 1971, when Richard Nixon was president, and he had kind words for it. In six of the nine presidential elections we've had since then, Republicans have won the White House.

There might be a lefty pundit somewhere who's suggested that it's time we took suffrage away from white males, but I don't know who that pundit is. For some members of the GOP, on the other hand, virtually every other demographic group's vote is suspect.

REPUBLICANS: A MAY 1 MINDSET

There's a lot of howling and feces-throwing on the right in response to remarks Barack Obama made in an ABC interview. Some of the howling is coming from the McCain camp's own blog:

Barack Obama, Esquire: The 9/10 Candidate

In an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper yesterday, Barack Obama offered a glimpse into how he views the threat posed by radical Islamic extremism:

What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.

And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, "Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims."

It's hardly surprising that a lawyer would think that the war on terror would be fought more effectively by lawyers than by the United States Marine Corps. But in Obama's rush to praise the prosecution of the terrorists behind the first World Trade Center bombing, he seems to forget that those methods failed to prevent a second successful attack on September 11, 2001....

And on and on.

I'm actually delighted that these guys have blown the dust and cobwebs off that old chestnut, "September 10 mindset." And look who they've got criticizing Obama:

The campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday accused Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) of being "naive" and "representing the perfect manifestation of a Sept. 10 mindset" in his approach on how to treat suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay....

On a conference call with reporters, former CIA chief James Woolsey and others said Obama’s policy regarding the handling of terrorism suspects would create an opening for more attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001....

James Woolsey? You mean the guy who praised the work of Laurie "Nutjob" Mylroie, who insisted throughout much of the 1990s and for some time after 9/11 that Iraq was behind both World Trade Center attacks? Woolsey, who called her work "brilliant and brave"? Any chance that this crowd might share some of the blame for the fact that we didn't deal adequately with al Qaeda?

Oh, and that McCain blog post quoted above cites Stephen Hayes -- a writer who peddled the Saddam = 9/11 line for years.

But all that aside, I love hearing Republicans talk about a "September 10 mindset." We watched them talk tough like this for years, and what did they do after much of America agreed that, yes, they were the macho men who would keep us safe? They let bin Laden get away. They let Afghanistan fester. They went after Saddam, found no WMDs, and killed 4,000+ Americans for nothing. And they have the gall to talk tough? They have the gall to point out (see the McCain blog post) that the prosecutions after the '93 WTC bombing didn't roll up 100% of the culprits? Hey, tough guys, where the hell's Osama?

I'm deeply amused that Republicans still think it's May 1, 2003 -- the Mission has been Accomplished, torture has happened at Bagram, Gitmo is in place, extraordinary renditions are under way, the WMDs are going to show up any second now, and when members of the GOP beat their chests we just automatically declare them Alpha Males. America knows it's not 5/1/03 anymore.

****

My favorite Obama line from the ABC interview (emphasis added):

[JAKE] TAPPER: Speaking of the Supreme Court, you applauded the decision that the Supreme Court made last week. The Bush administration says, no matter what people think about other programs, other policies they've initiated, there has not been a terrorist attack within the U.S. since 9/11. And they say the reason that is, is because of the domestic programs, many of which you opposed, the NSA surveillance program, Guantanamo Bay, and other programs. How do you know that they're wrong? It's not possible that they're right?

OBAMA: Well, keep in mind I haven't opposed, for example, the national security surveillance program, the NSA program. What I've said that we can do it within the constraints of our civil liberties and our Constitution.

TAPPER: They disagree, though.

OBAMA: Well, but the fact that they disagree does not mean that they're right on this.....

That's what I want to hear from a Democratic presidential candidate. In other words: "You think you can say 'The Republicans say so' and I'll just back down? You think I'm just supposed to acknowledge that they're right on foreign policy, because they're Republicans? After the last eight years? Are you nuts? Sorry, Jake -- it's a new day."

PLEASE, DEMOCRATS, NO MORE DRAMAS

I'm supposed to be worked up about Obama's hiring of Patti Solis Doyle, and I understand the basic point -- that putting the now-estranged Clintonite on the payroll is a huge rebuke to Clinton and her team ("rebuke" is a mild form of the key word in the most-read story on this), and thus Obama is saying, rudely, there isn't going to be a "dream ticket."

Sigh. All I care about is the fact that it's still so easy to report on what's going on among Democrats as gossip.

We were left after the primaries with an unexploded bomb: either Obama would hurt Clinton's feelings or he'd have to take great pains not to. The big story among Democrats was still going to be emotional drama. It's a big problem that we're still talking about Democrats that way, in a country that almost always wants to think of its president as Emotionally Steady Suburban-Dad-Slash-Hero.

After the primaries, ideally, the sense that there were still bruised feelings needed to be banished. Everyone needed to make a great show of sucking it up and agreeing to pull together, for the good of the team. Hillary's final speech was an excellent move in that direction, but more needed to be done -- the question of the second spot on the ticket simply had to stop seeming like an emotional issue, at least as far as the public knew.

Maybe the Clinton camp gets that and Obama just decided on a gratuitous slap in the face. More likely, the two camps are still at odds, still thrusting and parrying. Well, enough. Get your acts together, paste smiles on your faces, deal with the running-mate issue calmly and rationally, and tell your subordinates to shut the hell up when reporters ask about any intrigues. That's how it's expected to be done. That's how you make your party and your nominee look strong and stable.

A REMINDER

Barack Obama has a 6-point lead over John McCain among all adults in a new Washington Post poll, and a 4-point lead among registered voters.

And there's this:

Obama has the support of nearly seven in 10 white women who describe themselves as feminists.

That's right -- not even 70% of this group.

A little reminder for the other 30+%:



More from Elisabeth Bumiller in today's New York Times:

On abortion, Mr. McCain has long been opposed, and is in fact more explicit than the president in his opposition to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. Although Mr. Bush has spoken about changing American "hearts and minds" to build a "culture of life," Mr. McCain has said directly, in South Carolina in 2007, that Roe v. Wade "should be overturned."

BLOGROLL

Not that John Cole et al. need my help, but I'm adding Balloon Juice to the blogroll. Also: the estimable Ta-Nehisi Coates; Online Blogintegrity; and Rumproast.

ARUGULA, ESSENCE-SAPPING SALAD GREEN OF THE ANTICHRIST

Just because I know right-wingers can't resist talking about Barack Obama's arugula reference on the campaign trail a couple of months ago (here's a recent example, "It's Not Race, It's Arugula" by Noemie Emery, in the Weekly Standard, which, admittedly, is only glancingly about the salad green), I just want to point out that the virile, boot-wearing, purity-of-essence-preserving cowboy in the White House has actually eaten arugula ... and lived.

On November 9, 2007, the White House menu for a dinner honoring Angela Merkel included Citrus and Arugula Salad. On May 7, 2007, the menu for a dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth included Arugula, Savannah Mustard and Mint Romaine. On February 25, 2007, at a White House dinner in honor of state and territorial governors, a Salad of Cherry, Sylvetta Arugula and Frisee was served. (Yes! Frisee, too!) And on April 11, 2005, Scott McClellan recounted the menu for a lunch at Bush's ranch attended by the president and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon:

And if you want the menu -- here, I'll just give you the menu for the lunch. They had arugula and blood orange salad, pecan-smoked beef tenderloin -- which was very good -- grilled asparagus and roasted seasonal vegetables, some homemade peach sorbet, and then topped it off with some brownies.

Yes, it's true: George W. Bush had arugula in his own house.

It is my understanding that he is still a biological male, Republican, and heterosexual.

BARACK OBAMA: THE NEW BILL CLINTON

Were you a bit baffled by the references to murder by the Clinton-or-death crazies during their D.C. demo last month?

..."Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?" Jeannie, the Greensboro Democrat, asks a fellow in a floppy Tilley hat and Hillary buttons. "That's a good point," he replies....

You may have gathered that this has to do with Larry Sinclair -- you know, the guy who claimed in a YouTube "confession" that he had gay sex and used cocaine with Barack Obama in 1999, and who has since been championed by wingnuts and, more recently, the Clinton crazies. (Oh, did I mention the failed polygraph and the criminal record?)

Well, apparently this is going to be a big part of his National Press Club dog-and-pony show on Wednesday, the one Firedoglake has urged the club to cancel (although it's been argued that the club is just renting out space, not endorsing content):

...At the press conference, Larry will (i) reveal the corroborating evidence for his allegations regarding Obama, (ii) address the time-line of the response of the Obama campaign to his allegations and the murder of Donald Young, the openly gay choir director of Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama's now-former church....

So what's the bit about the choir? Here it is, from a hate-Obama blog:

Donald Young was a forty seven year old choir director and deacon at Trinity United Church of Christ, on 400 W. 95th St, the very church made famous by the candidacy of Barrack Obama. Donald Young was also openly gay. He was also a personal friend of Barrack Obama’s. A roommate found Donald Young unresponsive in his home at 7:30 AM on December 23, 2007. He had been shot multiple times. Christmas presents and jewelry were missing from his home....

Why isn’t the murder of Mr. Young, the late choir director of Trinity Church, making news? ...

Why? Well, it seems reasonable to believe that this was a sadly ordinary robbery-murder. It's possible that it was a hate crime. (According to a local news report -- in Chicago, it is making news -- it was the second murder of a gay black man on the South Side in a little more than a month.)

But that's not sufficient for the crazies. The crazies think Obama is involved. By astonishing coincidence, Larry Sinclair claimed in an affidavit sometime after the murder (PDF) that a person named Young contacted him just before the murder to talk about Barack Obama, sex, and drugs.

... Yup, folks, it's the Clinton Body Count all over again, albeit with only one name on it. (So far.)

I'm late to this new bit of nonsense -- it's been all over the loony-right absurdosphere. But it's what Obama has to look forward to -- along with the rest of us -- throughout this campaign and throughout an Obama presidency if there is one, because this is what we do to Democrats in America.

JINDAL: IT'S "WRONG" TO TEACH JUST EVOLUTION

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars reports on yesterday's Face the Nation appearance by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a possible John McCain runing mate. Nicole's headline is "Jindal Thinks Intelligent Design Should Be Taught With Evolution" -- but it's a bit worse than that. Jindal doesn't just think adding intelligent design makes the curriculum better; Jindal thinks it's "wrong" not to teach intelligent design:

I think local school boards should be in a position of deciding the curricula and also deciding what students should be learning. Secondly, I don't think students learn by us withholding information from them. Some want only to teach intelligent design, some only want to teach evolution. I think both views are wrong, as a parent.

This jibes with the contempt he expressed for evolution when he was running for governor in 2007:

...Mr. Jindal supports teaching creationism. In September 2003, the Associated Press reported his answering "yes" on the Louisiana Family Forum's voter guide as to whether he favored teaching the "scientific weaknesses of evolution" (creationist codetalk) in public schools.... When a reporter asked his position on teaching creationism, Mr. Jindal's response clearly favored undermining the teaching of evolution: "With evolution there are flaws and gaps. I think it's appropriate to tell our students that no scientific theory can prove evolution." ("Sharp questions put candidates at governor’s forum on spot," Associated Press, September 25, 2003) ...

And it's odd because, as Kyle Moore points out at Comments from Left Field, Jindal is a Catholic, and the Catholic Church doesn't support the teaching of intelligent design.

****

I don't know what's going on with McCain and Jindal. However, even though I know a lot of people think McCain's campaign is bumbling and incompetent, my guess is that even these guys wouldn't put a guy on the ticket who's known to have (by his own admission) participated in an exorcism. Also, Jindal's age (he just turned 37) undermines the GOP's argument that Obama is too inexperienced to be president (especially if McCain's #2 seems more likely than most to be called on to assume the presidency), and if you're going to run a dog-whistle racist campaign against Obama, well, doesn't an all-Euro-American ticket make that a lot easier?

I think Jindal is out there to be noticed by some of the people who are paying a lot of attention to the race right now -- particularly movement conservatives, a group McCain is afraid isn't fully in his camp. He wants them to see he's linked to Jindal. He may also think people for whom Obama's youth and and racial background are a plus will become vaguely aware of Jindal and be impressed, and maybe he thinks some Catholics will be impressed, too (though I've got to tell you, it's hard to imagine that Vinny and Sully drinking Bud back at the local bar are going to feel Jindal's one of them) -- but I suspect McCain will just keep using Jindal, but not run with him. He'll definitely get a prime-time speech at the convention. But I think the exorcism is a bridge too far. (And given the fact that McCain harbors dreams of winning suburbanites in big eastern states, he probably knows the creationism is, too.)

Thanks, Tom and Bulworth ... I'll be back tomorrow.

Obama on the Guantanamo Ruling

Obama Statement on Today's Supreme Court Decision

Chicago, IL June 12, 2008

Chicago, IL - "Today's Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court's decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy. We cannot afford to lose any more valuable time in the fight against terrorism to a dangerously flawed legal approach. I voted against the Military Commissions Act because its sloppiness would inevitably lead to the Court, once again, rejecting the Administration's extreme legal position. The fact is, this Administration's position is not tough on terrorism, and it undermines the very values that we are fighting to defend. Bringing these detainees to justice is too important for us to rely on a flawed system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9-11 attacks, and compromised our core values," said Barack Obama.

And then there's this graph from the Times Linda Greenhouse:

Thanks in no small part to Justice Antonin Scalia’s dire warning that granting Guantánamo detainees access to habeas corpus “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” the Supreme Court finds itself on the verge of becoming something that it has not been for many election cycles — a campaign issue.

Wouldn't that be appropriate.

We've had a couple of encouraging signs in the last few days.

On Friday it was Jim Geraghty's dismay at Obama's supposed contempt for New Rochelle commuters. (If the lifestyle of Rob and Laura Petrie isn't sacred, what is?)

Yesterday it was faux outrage at Obama quoting The Untouchables, showing that the Republican War on Metaphors continues unabated. See, for example, Flopping Aces:

Does it strike readers as somewhat odd that the Dems who screech at the very mention of the word gun would be backing a candidate who threatens to use one in a fight?

And then there's Mac Ranger, as sensitive as he is literate (and as literate as he is sensitive), with a post called Obama's Inner Gangsta Comes Out featuring this image:

And the single most obtuse comment of them all comes from Andrew Malcolm:

Or how about the fact that he stole that line from Sean Connery in "The Untouchables," which is from Chicago too, come to think of it.

And if quoting movies is plagiarism, somebody should sue the corpse of Ronald Reagan.

So what's encouraging about these? Simple: they're flailing. They're more strained than the usual attacks, and they aren't just reaching--they look like they're reaching. More importantly, they don't form a coherent narrative. Is Obama a wimpy street thug, or a violent elitist? Is he scary or not scary, and which is worse? What's the storyline here? Besides, of course, sheer desperation?

To be sure, some of it will stick--but they haven't succeeded in defining Obama. Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry were all summed up in a few words; Clinton was harder for them to get a handle on. In that respect, I think Obama is a lot more like Clinton.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]

AND ON THAT NOTE...

I'm gone for the weekend. Guest posts are (I think) expected.

IS BUSH PRETENDING HE MIGHT CONVERT TO CATHOLICISM JUST TO HELP McCAIN?

From Britain's Telegraph:

George W Bush and Pope Benedict XVI have held an intimate meeting in Rome as rumours mounted in Italy that the president may follow in Tony Blair's footsteps and convert to Catholicism....

Several Italian newspapers cited Vatican sources suggesting that Mr Bush may be prepared to convert. One source told Il Foglio, an authoritative newspaper, that "Anything is possible, especially for a born-again Christian such as Bush."...

A source close to the Vatican said that Mr Bush was the most "Catholic-minded" president since John F Kennedy, who famously played down his Catholicism....

You'll recall a Washington Post op-ed from April in which it was argued that Bush "could well be the nation's first Catholic president" ("where Kennedy sought to divorce his religion from his office, Bush has welcomed Roman Catholic doctrine and teachings into the White House and based many important domestic policy decisions on them"). Prior to that, Rick Santorum called Bush "the first Catholic president" back in 2006.

Karl Rove, who's clearly helping John McCain, has long believed that Republicans can peel off Catholic voters from the Democrats, and some poll-readers have argued that the Catholic vote won it for Bush in '04. And McCain is certainly doing outreach to Catholic conservatives; I'll link you again to this story from Right Wing Watch:

Deal Hudson reports that John McCain "met privately" with Rev. Frank Pavone, the Priests for Life head most famous for calling Michael Schiavo a murderer, before a Catholic-outreach meeting in Philadelphia. McCain has been holding events with supporter Sen. Sam Brownback, whose brief presidential run attracted a lot of attention from social conservatives, and who promised to court the Religious Right activists such as Pavone on McCain's behalf....

Deal Hudson is Catholic. Sam Brownback is also Catholic and is McCain's Catholic liaison. Needless to say, Father Frank Pavone is Catholic. (And as I noted earlier today, Pavone also associates with anti-abortion extremists who publicly burn Korans.)

Have these guys concluded that, in some bizarre way, rumors of a Bush conversion, wafting in from across the Atlantic, might improve Catholics' opinion of Bush and the man who's yoked to him, John McCain? I can't rule that out.