Rage against the Machine(ry Hill)

MPR and the HHH Institute did a poll.

Forty-eight percent said they support Democrat Barack Obama for president, compared to 38 percent for Republican John McCain. Three percent favored independent Ralph Nader and 1 percent supported Libertarian Bob Barr.

 

Larry Jacobs, director of the Humphrey Institute’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said despite the double-digit margin, the race in Minnesota remains fluid. Jacobs said 10 percent of those polled were undecided, and supporters of each candidate said they might change their minds.

I doubt it would be this close if everyone read this week’s Blog House about McCain’s Christmas visitor. Fully fleshed out this story is a huge problem for McCain because, unlike what the rightards are saying, the speculation started at Free Republic years ago.

(click to enlarge)

And, there’s a new detail I was unaware of:

It’s been noted that McCain made no mention of this incident in a detailed account of his POW years that U.S. News published in 1973, and no one, so far, has found evidence of McCain telling the story before 1999 — when his most formidable opponent for the GOP presidential nomination was a man who was making a concerted effort to court religious voters. I just want to point out that there’s a chapter specifically devoted to three Christmases of McCain’s captivity in The Nightingale’s Song, Robert Timberg’s critically acclaimed 1995 book, which helped put McCain on the map as a political celebrity — and the cross story does not appear. … isn’t it odd that the cross in the dirt — which McCain has since described as a life-altering incident — never came up?

Any candidate but Obama might have difficulty cashing in on this, but thanks to Saddleback, evangelicals now know that Obama doesn’t breathe fire, isn’t Muslim, and has a thoughtful and well articulated relationship with God.

Or maybe the entire right is populated by America-hating ideologues who could care less about stuff like this.

We’ll find out in November.

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As Bush’s reign of infamy draws to a close, the only question is: how many Bushies should be indicted and tried? Punishment is, of course, a lame form of retribution that doesn’t undo the great harm these asswipes have done to our once great nation, but I do take solace in knowing that they’ll be serving time in the Hellhole Archipelago they helped create, one violation of the Constitution at a time.

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A WaPost investigation finds that most oil trading is done by just a few spectacularly greedy individuals and firms. In fact, just last month there was one day when a Swiss energy conglomerate held 11% of all oil contracts.

The number playing is irrelevant. The sum total of greed involved is always maxxed out. These markets exist for the convenience of speculators. We would all be better served if oil companies bid on oil at the actual well site, and then took immediate possession.

Once you put an item in trade, its value plummets as more and more hands pluck value from that item.

Tighten up the markets, eliminate margins, and make the stock and commodities markets back into cash on the barrelhead operations with the commodities only traded in real time with purchasers taking possession of the oil, grain, whatever on the spot.

Enough of this paper trading that does nothing but skim wealth from workers and the owners of natural resources.

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Gene Upshaw is dead at age 63, R.I.P.

The NFL refuses to let anyone see their data on player longevity, but back some forty years ago that data was made available once, and caused a firestorm when the players confirmed that their profession was killing them.

Congress needs to investigate, but that will never happen as most members of Congress are absolute slaves to the game. If not in their hearts, at least in their GOTV efforts.

Pro football is a chancre on our nation, a blood sport that kills its own gratuitously. Just a few rules changes would change everything. These players are dying because of owners’ greed,  and because the average Sunday afternoon pro football crowd is a drunken mob screaming for blood, the more the better.

Football is the only sport I ever played in high school, and I miss the games. I don’t, however, miss feeling guilty when I see former players dead from NFL-related causes.

Sure, some people die at age 63 from natural causes. Gene Upshaw was a professional athlete but his work put him in a wheelchair and eventually killed him.

Enough of this shit. Fix the game or abolish it.

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Phoenix Woman delivers a big STFU to the Joe Conason bashers. I had missed this entirely, and am dumbfounded. Joe Conason has always been a rabid Clintonite, and if he of all people is being trash talked, well, some certain somebodies are really out of control.

I’m skipping most of these stories now because too many local folks choose to believe that I’m obsessed with bashing Hillary Clinton. No, I just think enough is enough is enough, and if you’re still that invested in Hillary Clinton, you maybe need to step back and examine your own life to see why you’re devaluing your own accomplishments and putting all your emotional eggs in the HRC basket. 

We now know that hers was an overtly racist campaign, and that their racism was part of a conscious decision to bloody Obama. We’re also seeing a movement riddled with Republican trolls, and happily so. I’ve been lectured that there is no such thing as PUMA, but until Clinton’s supporters denounce the PUMA movement it will continue to tarnish her legacy. 

Again, I’m looking forward to her speech next week at the DNC. If she can’t win me over, it will only be because she didn’t try. Because it’s not about me, it’s about my need to see that she understands it’s not about her.

I’ve done this before. In 1980 it would have been hard to have detested a politician more than I hated Jimmy fucking Carter. But I held my nose and voted for Carter, and told others to do likewise. I ripped on John Anderson supporters as Reagan enablers. For me, the party was more important than the nominee.

The time has come for the bitter enders to re-acknowledge their fealty to the party. With the exception of a few late primary states like Minnesota, everything now shifts to November. And shame on me if this sounds like a lecture because ALL I AM SAYING IS THAT I’VE BEEN THERE DONE THAT, AND NOW IT’S TIME TO SUCK IT UP AND MOVE ON.

Just like I’ll do on September 9th after Al Franken beats Rob Fitzgerald and formally wins the DFL nomination. 

Every campaign ends eventually, and the saddest people are the ones who soldier on long after their candidate has raised the white flag. Seriously, think about why you would want to further enable this guy.

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I think Kathie Jenkins must have had a minor stroke. I really don’t know how else to explain this bizarre post.

Complaining about families saying their prayers before they eat in a restaurant? C’mon. At worst it’s vaguely amusing, and at best it’s a family that shares common values and beliefs.

If there was a movement by my fellow atheists to put scarlet A tattoos on our foreheads, I might go for that, but I still wouldn’t begrudge anyone their right to a brief and respectful prayer before eating.

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OK, that’s fucking it. That was one fucking truck too many hustling through the intersection with their foot to the floor shifting gears and making hellacious noises. Delivery trucks should not be louder than the fucking cement trucks I’m used to. The Minnesota State Fair started this morning, and there is a frantic omigod urgency to traffic as the Fairheads rush to be the first in line when they start selling the chocolate-dipped bacon.

And yes, the RNC starts on the last day of our State Fair. Don’t expect my mood to improve until mid-September at the earliest.

[looking out the window] The fucking idiots have already gridlocked the intersection. How fucking retarded do you have to be to enter an intersection when the cars on the other side have stopped. And yes, I really needed to hear that trucker’s air horn just now.

[Note: I was going to link to the Fair schedule as a gesture of MN nice, but the douchebags are using .pdfs this year, and I all know how much we all love clicking on .pdf links. Worse, I did open the daily schedule, and the only way you could read this page on your monitor is if you have at least 24 inches of pixels to play with. Douche bags. Utter douche bags.]

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KFAI is powering up. Thank god. I haven’t been able to tune them in since I moved to Midway in the mid-90s.

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Kerri Miller must be a M.A.D.D. member. If not, she’s certainly acting like one. Her lead in to the proposal to lower the drinking age is absolutely verklempt. One more notch higher on the outrage meter and she would be alternating between tears and shrieks right now.

And yes, I just turned off the radio.

Americans are absolute pussies when it comes to teen drinking, and yes, I most certainly meant for that to be a gender-specific body part insult. Until someone starts up a serious D.A.D.D. movement, I will continue to view MADD’s prohibitionist movement as churchy women getting even with all the Andy Capps in their lives.

American teens drive drunk because they don’t get any education on drinking from their parents. For god’s sake, let the kid have some wine if you’re having some. 

Boomers: the most anally obsessed generation of control freaks ever. Mormon polygamists give their kids more free time than the hyper-scheduled MADD crowd. And at least Mormons let their kids do what they did at that age. It’s MADD’s hypocrisy that really stinks, because no generation partied harder than we did, and your kids know that.

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Yglesias says what I’ve been saying forever.

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Digby:

I’m hearing that tensions were high recently when veteran actor Robert Duvall was taping a voice-over for a video to be played during the Republican National Convention. Apparently, the veteran actor objected to the direction he was receiving from Republican media guru Fred Davis. According to my sources, Duvall said something along the lines of: “Fuck you Fred! If Scorsese couldn’t give me direction, what the hell makes you think you can?”

In unrelated but welcome news, Reid has finally had his fill of Joe Fucking Lieberman.

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I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed by George McGovern.

Yes, LOTS of false information going around on the union-proposed card check being the end of the secret ballot in the workplace. Well the phony fucks pushing this issue never tell you this key bit of information:

As Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Budget Priorities, explained to me in an email, “If anyone is really that hung up on the ’secret ballot’ crap then they should be asked why they aren’t upset by the fact that current law allows unions to be decertified by card check. The only change with the Employee Free Choice Act is whether card check recognition is at the discretion of the employer or the worker. In other words, it changes absolutely ZERO about whether the right of workers to organize is determined by secret ballot or not. The only thing it changes is who gets to decide the manner of certification, workers or employers.”

Admittedly, most of the dim bulbs pushing the “secret ballot” nonsense have never in their lives worked with their hands, and have no clue what any of this is about. It’s not about secret ballots, it’s about mau mauing workers and keeping unions out of the workplace.

We need a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. Employers are organized — right up to and in some cases beyond the point where they fix prices. (They’ve always fixed wages.)

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Somehow I have to get to the Kinko’s in Roseville. Between me and there lays the Fair.

I am so fucked.

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