greetings from orlando, florida.

what a mickey mouse town this is.

thank you, i’ll be here all week.

in addition to hosting disney world (”the happiest place on earth”), orlando also features some impressive thunderstorms, and the occasional hurricane. also a medical conference or two.

i’ve been traveling, so it turns out i missed some happy news the last couple days.

fer instance, john edwards endorsed barack obama. it bears mentioning that this is happy news for obama supporters–for hillary people, not so much. her valiant run for the democratic nomination is now being referred to as a “long-shot candidacy.” also, “denial-based, “hopeless,” and “reality averse.”

“Clearly it’s upsetting,” a source close to the Clinton campaign said.

i’m sorry, no gloating will be tolerated. stop it. immediately.

in other news, the california supreme court was taken over by radical homosexuals…

“The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples” said California Chief Justice Ronald George.

this news, feared and loathed by right, caused immediate, irreparable harm to heterosexual marriages everywhere. overnight the divorce rate for such marriages skyrocketed to 50%.

oh, wait, that was before the gays came along and ruined everything. never mind.

there’s more happy news, but that’s all i have time for today.

i’m off to do battle with people wearing suits, ties, and name badges…

Well, since they were initially raised, the criticisms have been fairly debunked upon a better understanding of the workings of the Illinois legislature, as well as in light of the fact that these 129 ‘present’ votes represent only 129 out of a rough total of 4,000 votes Obama cast during his eight-year tenure.

So, imagine my surprise when reading this yesterday:

…the $163 billion war funding bill was defeated by a vote of 141-149, with 132, mostly Republicans, voting “present” — a way of registering dissatisfaction with the bill without having to go on record as having opposed funding the troops.

So, do they really think that we’re not paying attention?

via TPM

‘Change 3, Status Quo 0′

Mississippi Democrat Travis Childers won a special election to Congress on Tuesday, helping his party to a third victory in recent months for seats long in Republican hands.

Marty Wiseman, a political scientist at Mississippi State University, said if Democrats can carry districts that traditionally have been safe bets for the GOP, “Republican strategists have to be terrified.”

The race has attracted national attention, with Vice President Dick Cheney campaigning for Republican Greg Davis on Monday, and Davis running ads trying to tie Childers to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

dick cheney campaigned, and his boy still lost? wow, that’s a shocker. i mean, if dick cheney is in your corner, that should pretty well guarantee…personal embarrassment and a big loss.

heck of a job, dick.

p.s. oh, and tying your opponent to barack obama…brilliant strategy. can’t believe that didn’t work out for you. who wants to be associated with the most interesting, inspirational, inclusive candidate in 40 years, after all?

3 students suspended for sitting out Pledge of Allegiance

Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge of Allegiance…

this is what happens when we stop teaching civics in our schools.

people forget about things like “the constitution,” and “the bill of rights.”

they get all up in a righteous dudgeon about “proper behavior” for americans, while simultaneously having no idea what that means.

it would be funny, irony-wise, if it weren’t so dangerously anti-american.

nah, it’s still funny, irony-wise.

yup.

Barr announces Libertarian White House bid

Barr said he was running because there was not “currently or anywhere on the horizon” any candidate who understood the principles of fiscal conservatism and basic principles on which he said America was founded.

His candidacy is a wild card in the White House race that many believe would hurt Republican Sen. John McCain.

“If Senator McCain … does not succeed in winning the presidency … it will be because Senator McCain did not present, and his party did not present, a vision, an agenda, a platform and a series of programs that actually resonated positively with the American people.”

Barr, 59, quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism.

the hannitys, limbaughs and o’reillys of the world are having an aneurism…

hillary clinton is busy building a coalition.

white supremacists and skinheads love her.

other folks, not so much.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” [clinton] said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

oh. not just the working americans, the hard-working americans. the white americans. the undereducated white americans.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” Clinton said.

there certainly is. a pattern of hilariously overt racism, division and fear-mongering from the clinton camp.

“We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.” — paul begala, clinton strategist

egg heads and african-americans. can you imagine the brain-storming that led to that particular phrase? can you picture all the little clintonians desperately pacing the room, frantically scribbling slogans on the big white board?

“she’s white like you!”

“egg heads and african-americans.”

that’s a winner, isn’t it? mnemonically karl rovian, eminently bumper stick-able. tying it to dukakis (willie horton!), as begala did, was a brilliant touch.

random point of order: if hillary’s support is so broad-based, why does she keep losing primaries and superdelegates? if she’s so electable, how come she can’t beat barack obama?

is it because hard-working, undereducated americans aren’t coming out in sufficient numbers to put her over the top?

or is it because her rhetoric, much like her campaign, is dysfunctional and defunct?

obama, increasingly presidential, seems disinclined to respond to this late nose-dive into the waste lagoon. as the presumptive democratic nominee, he’s right to focus his energies on john mccain…who is increasingly losing his bearings.

in the meantime, hillary can continue her coalition-building amongst gas-tax repealers, 3 a.m.-phoners and shotgun-toting shot-drinkers. she can call it “the coalition of the swilling.”

it ain’t much of a coalition, but a girl’s gotta start somewhere.

“Look, if we had the rules that the Republicans have, I’d already be the nominee.” — hillary clinton, may 7, 2008.

hillary clinton is a fighter.

unfortunately, she’s punch-drunk and doesn’t know enough to stay down. and the people in her corner keep running her back into the ring.

If Clinton presses on to the bitter end, as is her misguided right to do, she will carry the burden of ruining the Democrats’ best chance in years to change Washington, D.C., end the war in Iraq and move the country forward internationally and domestically.

In the longest nominating process on Planet Earth, it is hard to say one state’s results are more important than another’s. When looking for an end point, however, we know it when we see it. Clinton has tenaciously exhausted her options.

Clinton’s campaign is over. She is perhaps the last to know.

it’s odd (but consistent) that clinton bemoans the rules of the democratic nomination process. if only the rules were different. if only barack obama hadn’t come along when he did. if only her inevitability train hadn’t been derailed. she’d already be the nominee.

but she’s not. and she’s not going to be.

hillary’s a fighter, and she went 50 rounds, some of them ugly and bloody.

no one can say she’s a quitter. but the fight is over.

somebody throw in that towel.

some folks don’t like rev. wright. some don’t like hillary’s untruthiness.

but more people, by far, dislike george bush.

In the survey, 43 percent of registered voters say they have major concerns that McCain is too closely aligned with the current administration.

among mccain’s many (many) other issues, his “george bush problem” will be his undoing.

“we cannot wait until tomorrow…” (because we get better-looking every day).

h/t to joe willie namath…