TW3 Plus

I just heard Mary Matalin [Uncle Dick's protégé and James Carville's sig-other] talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN about McCain’s support of global warming legislation. She says its a joke he won’t pursue now, since it’s really fraudulent science and a scam — “…the country isn’t there,” intones Mary, dismissively. And its not the first time — she uses that phrase every time I hear her.

If the woman says that ONE MORE TIME … tells me where the country is, while squeezing her boney frame into a lamoid psycho-political box the size of a Gideon Bible and insisting the majority of us are all in there with her, I’ll do something rash … like e-mail her this link with today’s reality check that George Walker Bush has now slipped farther in approval rating than ANY LIVING [OR DEAD] PRESIDENT. He weighs in at a stunning 19% approval from all Americans, 18% of registered voters — even “I’m not a crook” Nixon never got below the mid-20’s. Dubby and his minions no longer get to tell us “where the country is.” They haven’t got a clue, and we’ve all gone tone deaf.

Meanwhile, MadDog is shouting into his megaphone about how Obama [winner of Wisconsin and Hawaii yesterday, so I guess Mac considers him the presumptive] is unseasoned and internationally rash — but I don’t think the country is listening to him either. Today, the mega-weight Teamsters Union took their Hil support out of her hands and presented it to Barack, which will help him in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Note: this will be my last post for awhile, my computer has given me a wheezing warning that it no longer loves me. Serious negotiations must occur now, although I’ll wait until the eclipse is over to coax my files out of it and then … well … it won’t be pretty. I’ll be back when the worst is over [she said, optimistically. Pray for me.]

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
February 19, 2008

Senator Barack Obama beat Senator Hillary Clinton by huge
margins in primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the
District of Columbia, and Senator John McCain beat former
Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. The close Democratic race
worried party superdelegates, who will play a decisive
role in choosing a candidate. Nancy Larson, a lobbyist and
superdelegate from Minnesota, characterized superdelegates
in general as “big schmucks.” Alaskan superdelegate Cindi
Spanyers received a call from former president Bill
Clinton, who recalled his wife’s work on a fish cannery
slime line there, and Obama was endorsed by the fishing
village of Obama, Japan. McCain was endorsed by former
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and ex-president George
H. W. Bush. Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), a
Holocaust survivor and superdelegate who was expected to
back Clinton, died. At a memorial service, Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni compared Lantos to “a shining blue
Star of David emblazoned on an American Air Force jet.”
Bono led mourners in an a cappella version of John
Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love,” and Representative
Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Florida) interrupted the closing
speech by Elie Wiesel with a call for a vote to
adjourn. An album of hair collected from the first twelve
presidents was displayed at the Academy of Natural
Sciences in Philadelphia. “It is an awesome sort of
sight,” said curator Robert Peck. “Pieces of presidents.”

President George W. Bush visited Africa to tout the
success of his policies there, including his decision not
to try to stop genocide in Darfur. “I’m not one of these
guys that really gives a darn about elite opinion,” he
explained. “What I really care about is–are we saving
lives?” Sudanese aircraft and Janjaweed militiamen
attacked three villages in West Darfur, killing as many as
114 civilians and driving 12,000 more refugees into
neighboring Chad, where they joined hundreds of thousands
of refugees already there. Chadian President Idriss Deby
declared a state of emergency. Hezbollah commander Imad
Mughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Syria, and Jose
Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, was shot and
seriously injured. A graduate student in social work,
specializing in mental health, shot up a classroom at
Northern Illinois University, killing five people and then
himself. Patty Hearst attended the Westminster Kennel Club
dog show with Diva, her French bulldog. “When people find
out it’s me,” said Hearst, a veteran of the Symbionese
Liberation Army, “it’s like it doesn’t make sense.” A
suicide bomber killed at least 100 spectators at a
dogfight near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

It was revealed that the U.S. Treasury Department met with
Iran last month to discuss terrorist financing, and that
the CIA wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a failed
counterterrorism plan involving fake companies overseas. A
suppressed RAND report from late 2005, critical of every
aspect of the Iraq war planning, was leaked, and French
writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, author of such novels as “The
Erasers,” died. The Bush Administration announced that it
would seek the death penalty for six men allegedly linked
to the 9/11 attacks. It will build its case in part on
confessions elicited with Starbucks coffee rather than on
earlier confessions obtained through waterboarding.
Starbucks announced that 7,100 stores will close for three
hours so that 135,000 employees can learn again how to
make coffee. A bill that would have made permanent the
government’s expanded surveillance powers and granted
immunity to companies that helped the government spy on
American citizens passed the Senate but failed in the
House. The Centers for Disease Control reported that fewer
children died while playing the “choking game” last year
than in the two years prior. In a thousand-square-mile,
low-oxygen zone growing along the coast of Oregon and
Washington, every fish, crab, and sea worm was dead, and
the floppy ribbon worms of Antarctica were expected to
meet their first predators in millions of years due to
warming water. A moose fell from a 150-foot cliff in
Alaska, just missing state trooper Howard Peterson.
Peterson thought the moose might have been lonely, as the
area is populated mostly by sheep, but state wildlife
biologist Rick Sinnott disagreed. “They occasionally have
bad days,” he said of moose, “like the rest of us.”

– Sam Stark
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/WeeklyReview2008-02-19

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Add comment February 20th, 2008