JABbering Stooge

When I interned for Mark Strama’s campaign for state representative back in 2004, the quote in the title was the one thing that was consistently drilled into our heads. If your candidate doesn’t excite people, or doesn’t hit back when attacked — especially when smeared — it tends to damage the morale of the candidate’s voting base. And that can cost you elections.

Sen. Obama quite obviously has no problem with the former. It’s the latter that his campaign seems to have trouble grasping. I know he’s painted himself into a bit of a corner with his talk of a new kind of politics, but if the last eight years of Republican electioneering has taught us anything, the candidate himself doesn’t have to do the heavy hitting. His surrogates and the network of progressive bloggers can take that load and the responsibility that goes with it quite well, thank you very much. And yet, Obama remains hesitant to unleash his greatest weapon — his supporters.

If I could dispense some advice, Senator, it would be this: take the gloves off your surrogates. Let them get their hands dirty defending you and attacking McRove. Even Evan Bayh knows that to defeat McRove you’re going to need to play serious hardball. Maybe you can afford to keep up the high-minded, issues-focused campaign, but the rest of us cannot. If you want to win this thing, show us you can deliver a knockout blow. Because that is what it is going to take to retake 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. from the forces occupying it.

Via ThinkProgress:

A new Government Accountability Office opinion released yesterday finds that the Bush administration “violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable.” Twenty-two states already provide such coverage or want to do so, and several states have filed lawsuits challenging the Bush administration’s rules.

So tell me, co-dependent Dems; why is impeachment STILL off the table?

* With apologies to Kanye West.

Why are the co-dependent Democrats still afraid of Mr. 19% Approval?

Does anyone know whether or not the telecoms threatened to lay off their grunt-level employees if they didn’t get immunity for helping The Most Holy George W. Christ The Infallible illegally spy on, well, pretty much everybody?

And while we’re on the subject, would it kill the co-dependent Democrats to stop giving Resident Bush everything he wants without a fight?

We can now confirm that Attorney General Michael “The Lemming” Mukasey sacrificed his integrity for the position. Since the co-dependent Dems handed him the AG position, he has come out as objectively anti-accountability for illegal interrogation tactics and objectively pro-harrassing whistleblowers.

Harry Reid.

Keith speaks, you listen!

Or not.

*Sigh*

How did I get in a party of spineless wimps, anyway?

Hell, two of ‘em didn’t even wait for the override vote to fail. The wingnuts are in full cackling and towel-snapping mode - Scientology’s scare tactics work, after all.

And, of course, now they’re trying to sound like leaders without, you know, actually leading:

As I noted last night, they’ll unveil their SCHIP alternative at 3pm Eastern today.

Yes, they’ve got an “alternative” to S-CHIP in the works. And apparently, it’s been written for the Rethuglicans by the right-wing “think” tank, The Heritage Foundation.

I believe the bill is entitled the “Are There No Poorhouses?” Act. I’m guessing that it’s because the “If They Would Rather Die, They Had Better Do It And Decrease The Surplus Population” Act doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

I was listening to Bill Press’ interview with Harold Ford, Jr. - the current head of the DINO “Leadership” Council - on the subject of Bush’s veto of S-CHIP expansion. I seriously had not heard a greater crock of feces than Ford’s lame excuses for wanting to give Bush whatever he wanted.

I mean, seriously. Ford suggested that we “compromise” by giving Bush the bill he says he wants and dare him to veto it. Two problems with this: one - the whole country, not to mention a near veto-proof majority of Congress, wants the bill that Bush vetoed to pass, and two - that Ford’s prattle reminds one of the battered wife who thinks that her husband beating the shit out of her every night is really her fault, and that because he’s promised that he has changed, she should give him one more chance. Well, Congressman Ford, we’ve given Bush “one more chance” several times in the last few years - on Iraq, on torture, on spying on political opponents American citizens, you name it. Bush, like the battering husband, refuses to change - using every possible issue as a club with which to wield against the Democrats in Congress.

Enough is enough. It is far past time for Bush to be held accountable for his blatant, rampant criminality. Impeach now, for America’s sake.

Sidebar: The San Jose Mercury News has an excellent editorial on the whole torture thing. Go read it!

As Comedy Central’s “fake” news show sends its correspondants to do the reporting the “real” news won’t do in an effort labelled “Operation Silent Thunder,” the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, especially as it gears up to ghostwrite Gen. Petraeus’ September report on the progress (or lack thereof) of the clusterfuck in Iraq, more closely resembles “Operation Silent, But Deadly.”

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats are still deploying their stale, 14-year-old strategy, “Operation Where The Fuck Are My Balls?” Even as the conservative punitocracy launches “Operation Nuke The Darkies” and “Operation Gilead.”

I’ll be in the corner, curled up in a fetal position. That is, if I haven’t drunk myself into oblivion at DL tonight. (Which would be a first - I’m a total teetotaler when it comes to alcohol - never really found a drink I particularly like.)