Thursday, February 07, 2008

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Well, I can't be the fly on the wall I mentioned below, but this is almost as nice.

Tearful Conservatives In Shock - Politics on The Huffington Post: "The Romney faithful were equally apoplectic. McCain's name was booed loudly when it was mentioned, even though CPAC officials had pleaded for cordiality.

'It is like now I have to choose between the left and the radical left,' said Jeffrey Goldberg, a Michigan Republican and Romney supporter. 'John McCain's appearance here will be like David Duke going before the NAACP.'"

That's right, folks. To the wingnut Right, John McCain is a leftist. Or David Duke.

These people are truly, completely, and utterly not right in the head.

Romney Quits

Romney suspends presidential campaign - CNN.com: "(CNN) -- Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would 'forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win.'"

In other news, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have been placed on suicide watch.

What is there to say after I say HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!

Romney apparently announced he was cutting and running in a speech at the convention of mouth-breathing yay-hoos, Keyboard Kommandos, and wannabe Brownshirts known as the Conservative Political Action Committee or CPAC. You know, the place where Ann Coulter threw her support behind Romney and called John Edwards a "faggot."

God, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall there to listen to the shrieks of anguish.

UPDATE: I love this gem from the wingnut site redstate.com:

"The big question is how far McCain will go today to patch up ties with conservatives today."

Why the hell should he do anything? You lunatics shat all over him for years, and he's proven that he can win without you. You think appealing to faux-conservatives now will win him any voters in the general, when faux-conservative George Dubbya Bush is polling in the 30's? News flash, Sparky: America is sick of you.

Oh, please, please, Mr. McCain, please start sucking up to these idiots. You're already poised for a defeat in the national election, let's make it a thorough ass-kicking by linking yourself to the failed policies of the last seven years. Please. Be my guest.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

I Can't Fight This Feelin' Any More

I confess, I've resisted throwing my support wholeheartedly behind Barack Obama. I rationalized it in a number of ways: I was worried he didn't have enough experience, he seemed a little light on the issues, etc. Really, though, I think the problem was, I just didn't want to get my hopes up and have my heart broken again.

But damn it, when you see something like this:



It's hard not to be moved.

Put the celebrity cameos aside and listen to the words:

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.


What this country needs right now, more than anything else, is hope. It needs inspiration. It needs a leader who can bring us all forward into the future rather than excuse his failures by demonizing half of this country and turning them into some mythical bogeyman that's to blame for the past.

Look, I want payback for the last few years of being called "traitor" and "terrorist sympathizer" as much as the next guy. But we don't have time for that now.

The real "central front" in the War on Terror is not Iraq or even Afghanistan. It's the human mind. For the terrorists, blowing up train stations or destroying tall buildings is a means to an end. Destruction and murder are tools, they are not the goal. Their goal is to change the way we think. They want us to be afraid of freedom. They want us afraid, not just of them, but of each other. They want us to think, "we have to sacrifice American ideals to save our lives." And the last few years have been one long capitulation in that war. Idealism is not our enemy; it's our secret weapon.

Okay, Senator Obama. You got me...

Sunday, February 03, 2008

The Dangers of Illiteracy

Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

In "Lolita," a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter -- but Woolworths staff had not heard of the classic novel or two subsequent films based on it.

Hence they saw nothing wrong with advertising the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about six until a concerned mother raised the alarm on a parenting website.

"What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a spokesman told British newspapers.

"We had to look it up on (online encyclopedia) Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."