California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, center, endorses Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., right, as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani looks on. But what's wrong with this picture? Ah, that's better... (Link to this)

Flowers bloomed in winter, the birds sang and joy spread throughout the land at the news of Ghouliani's departure... But what about John Edwards?

Glory hallelujah! He's out of the race after an ego-withering rout in his 'firewall' state of Florida. The NY Daily Times sums up the ignominious decline and fall of Mr 9-11:

Good riddance to bad rubbish say I indeed. But today also sees the departure of that frustratingly unpopular populist John Edwards. Why didn't we like him? Was he just too sincere and fair-minded to get elected in a country where honesty is commonly viewed with suspicion? Was his 86'ing the result of excessive honesty while Ghouliani's the result of excessive dishonesty? Perhaps, if this scenario is true, the upper limit of sleazy self-aggrandizement at which point a candidate becomes unviable could hereafter be called the 'Giuliani Tipping Point.' Similarly, the opposite limit at which good intentions and fair mindedness become just too cloying for the hard-headed electorate to stomach could be dubbed the 'Edwards Tipping Point.'

My model provides a perfect demonstration of America's fabled Manichaeism in action - that good-cop/bad-cop philosophy that enables us to feel good about America's benevolence even while our government commits murderous acts of depravity in the name of the national interest (like 'spreading democracy' to third world ingrates around the world). The Giuliani and Edwards tipping points neatly ensure that our government neither strays too far into outright evil, nor scampers elfishly too far along the road of niceness. That way, we can avoid chaos and have a country in which both the psychotic wingnut and the cow-eyed, fluffy liberal can feel at home.

American Manichaeism explains why JFK, as a classic example, is still revered as a good guy and not remembered as the ruthless ideologue who obsessed about killing Castro, who used the Mafia like an arm of federal government, and who screwed anything that stood still long enough.

So bye bye Ghouliani, bye bye Edwards. You must both step down lest the delicate balance of good and bad be upset. It is the American way. (Link to this)

I like Obama. Not only because it's high-time black folks got a chance to screw up the country too, but mainly because he's the only candidate possessed with that quiet, statesman-like dignity and smarts we used to look for in our candidates before Nixon lowered the bar and Reagan buried it.

While all the other candidates courting our approval come over too sweaty and desperate (or in Ghouliani's case, too creepy and rapey), Obama looks like the only one who actually deserves to win... and if you think I'm gushing, check out these 'Obamagasms' harvested from the Web:

"At Obama's victory rally, there were the rich and poor, old and young, black and white, Latinos and Asians all rubbing shoulders in an atmosphere of bliss." Mutual shoulder-rubbing interracial orgy?

"Barack Obama's first and only rally on election day came to a sudden and lengthy stop when a young woman in the Dartmouth College gym fainted, and was eventually rolled off on a gurney by emergency medical technicians." The ladies love B.O...

"As many of you may know, I'm a huge Barack Obama fan. I've known Barack since he was first elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, and I'm impressed by what he has accomplished in his relatively short political career." Dick Durbin's man-crush...

"From the reporter's point of view, it's almost hard to remain objective because it's infectious energy. It sort of goes against your core to say that as a reporter." Cynical NBC talking head finds love at last...

"Senator Obama is the one candidate who can unite the American majority that wants to move forward and improve the long-term economic well-being and independence of our nation." So damn sexy, even Republicans can't help it... (Link to this)

"There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."
- John "Insane In The Membrane" McCain (story)

"There's no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. ... His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face, he's threatening the Iranians, we're going to be in Iraq a hundred years."
- Pat "Bouffant My Comb-over" Buchanan

WTF? Canadian, please...

In other non-news, spare a thought for the double-murderer who's got to live with this arrest photo. Maybe punishment enough? (Link to this)

For Bill and Hillary, the hope is that America is still so obsessed with racist paranoia that Obama won't get nominated. Are they cynical racists or are we?

Thanks to Toni Morrison's meme-spawning dubbing of Bill Clinton as America's first black president, we somehow became convinced that he was an instinctual anti-racist and a pol in-tune with the cause of black advancement. And from people to whom race is an issue of more importance than content of character or soundness of policy, the Clinton Dynasty has scored a lot of cred. Until he decided to trash-talk Obama to boost his wife's presidential ambitions that is...

If you trade so heavily on something as quixotic as the uninformed, positive perceptions of people who agonize about attitudes to race, you should be damn careful not to swing your manners one degree in the wrong direction for fear of losing said cred. But Bill didn't misstep: he's banking on there being enough unreconstructed racists around whose votes could be counted on by a candidate willing to push their buttons.

Clinton's sly belittling of Obama by comparing him to Jesse Jackson - whitey's stock black boogeyman (and a guy many black people regard as an embarrassment) - is a shitty trick straight out of the Karl Rove playbook. This tactic only confirms Hillary as an old-school politicker whose yawn-worthy machinations have no place in a campaign that keeps prattling about 'change'. And, for those of us who bought into the idea of "Black Bill" against our better judgment it is, as The Nappy Diatribe says, something of a wake-up call.

So are the Clintons really racists? Although Hillary is running as a Dem-to-the-left of Obama, her voting record on National Security, Social and Immigration issues looks suspiciously wingnut. It's not exactly the M.O. of a typical liberal to vote against stem cell research, abortion, gay marriage or in favor of routine domestic surveillance, more war in Iraq and a new war in Iran... my, her friend Joe 'Quisling' Lieberman would be proud. Not to mention her other best bud John McCain with whom she looks forward to running as Tim Russert's "fusion ticket."

And for all her topical platitudes about fixing healthcare, Clinton II would just be Bush with a GED and the native ability to make people think she gives a shit. (For my money, I prefer the brutal honesty of the Bush government. You know where you are with those bastards... they don't lose sleep over you losing your home or your kids going without healthcare. And they don't even pretend, like Ma Clinton, that they do.) But aside from the casual white supremacism that underpins almost every wingnut opinion, right-wing tendencies do not necessarily a racist make. So let's consider the following examples from Bill's life that fit inconveniently with his image:

Clinton's determination to ignore genocide in Rwanda; his election-winning decision to execute a retarded black man, Ricky Ray Rector, in Arkansas; welfare reforms enacted during his presidency that broke up more poor black families than crack cocaine; his work for avowed segragationist 'mentor' Senator J. William Fulbright; disenfranchisement of black voters by failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act; tackily instituting Robert E. Lee Day as a public holiday in Arkansas on the same day as MLK day...

Clintons racist? As they say, if it quacks like a duck... (Link to this)

"Huckabee, Baptist preacher, knows Islam to be a cult. He knows its demonic dogma, hellish creeds and unholy writ—the Koran." — Grant Swank, The Conservative Voice

"And he's climb-ing a stair-way to the White House..." Mike Huckabee and his Christian Conservative bass.

An Afghan court has sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for distributing an article from the Internet that was considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. Which sucks.

But what sucks also is how this brutish application of religious law will be seized upon as another example of Islamo-barbarism by weasels like the above-quoted scribbler Grant Swank. Conservatives like Swank like to use Christianity as a cover for their own xenophobia and cultural chauvinism and like to perpetuate the myth that the Bible is way nicer than that mean old Koran.

But while many nominal Christians who have never actually read the Bible might labor under the delusion that their God is a far cry from the thuggish deity of the Koran, the truth is that they're eerily similar. With the same hair-trigger temper and smite-happy M.O., the differences are in name only. Leviticus 24:16 says "And he that ablasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him." In other words, our God would recommend death by stoning as a punishment for blasphemy as well. So where do we get off being all high and mighty about Islam? The real difference between "good Christianity" and "bad Islam" is only the keenness with which the respective 'words of God' are traditionally applied.

Perhaps the MSM should be hard-balling Mike Huckabee a few questions like "as President, would you put stoning on the books as a punishment for blasphemy?" Because anyone like Huckabee - who believes every word of the Bible as literal truth - would surely be theoretically amiss as a "good" "Christian" if they intended not to. (Link to this) (Related: AYATOLLAH HEART HUCKABEE...)

They've found a new way to cash-in that has nothing to do with Santa, Tolkein movies or Internet porn... Good work midgets!

Swedish criminal gangs have taken to sneaking dwarves onto long-distance buses inside suitcases allowing them to to rifle through the bags of other passengers while the buses are en route. Says the Telegraph: "Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime."

A Stockholm police spokesperson said "We are looking at our records to identify criminals of limited stature."

Am I the only one who is irresistibly reminded of Tony Cox plotting criminal scams in Bad Santa? (Link to this)

Fred Thompson quits the race... Or, more accurately, he woke up from an Alzheimer's-induced nap in the midst of the primaries and said "I'm where? I'm doing what..???" And went home.

"A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks." Say the AP. File under 'Well, duh." Or "Hysterical Liberal Anti-Americanism" if you're one of those half-witted dullards still batting for Bush. But how do you make 935 false statements in two years and still look honest? Over to you, Herr Hannity...

Israel is exerting a cruel reign of economic oppression over the occupied territories... But it's not nice to talk bad about Bush/Clinton's best buddy in Bible land (and the grateful recipient of billions of dollars of American largesse). But this doesn't make them look good: "Tens of thousands of Palestinians have surged into Egypt from the Gaza Strip after masked militants destroyed parts of the border wall." Hard to spin as a terrorist event when, as one local said, "we just want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese." (Link to this)

Every time a Democrat pol is caught engaged in some act of lewd impropriety, the moose-like bellow rises from the cuntservative herd: "If he was a Republican, he'd be crucified."

And, every time I hear them say it, I always wonder how morally and intellectually stunted you have to be to consider that a fair or constructive response. It's as if no-one gives a shit if their party of choice is crawling with thieves, freaks and kiddy-fiddlers. Just don't call any of them out or the supporters will yell discrimination.

I'm an instinctual liberal with minarchist tendencies. I'm what folks with a yen for dissective labeling like to call a 'Libertarian Socialist'. And I believe a perv is a perv irrespective of whether their tie is blue or red. But it's just so much more fun to skewer those right-wing clowns who set themselves up as moral guardians while living their lives with all the restraint and decorum of wolverines on heat. Cuntservatives are just so much better at being blatantly and hilariously bad.

Democrats and liberals rarely strive to proscribe other people's habits and proclivities because they're way to busy turning school kids gay and working to build Satan's empire on earth. Democrats and liberals rarely set themselves up as Moses-like paragons of ethical authority deputized by God to tell all those gays, atheists and lefties to knock it off. But wingnuts do. And then you see them coming down the mountain clutching their figurative Ten Commandments with their literal pants around their ankles, and there's nothing funnier. Ah, that sweet hissing sound of deflating hypocrisy... like an angel farting through a cloud in Heaven...

Here's a typically uninspiring bad Dem story:

But what's wrong with this picture? Like most Democrats-gone-wild stories this isn't even funny. Where are the classic slapstick elements of a good Republican sex scandal? Where are the snorkel masks? The glory holes? The clumsy transvestitism.?

Shame too that these complainers, like so many others in dirty Dem cases, just sound like uptight whiners making wildly exaggerated claims. Only a rube fresh off the last beet truck from Jeezuzland could say, for example, that "they fear AIDS and other diseases" after getting a smacker from a state representative. It's not like they got gang-raped by Brazilian shemale crack whores is it?

Of course it would be churlish on my part to suggest that Miles' ethnicity might have had something to do with the Rido's fearing "AIDS and other diseases". And it would be just plain spiteful to wonder if they'd have reacted the same way if it had been Larry Craig, Mark Foley or any other white pol. The irony is, given the feral nature of those guys' leisure pursuits, they most certainly should have. (Link to this)

Much as I dislike him (here are a few reminders why the simpering goon should never be President) I was still staggered to read Tom DeLay saying "there’s nothing redeeming about John McCain" and that he "has no principles."

Very true. But if John McCain has no principles, Tom fucking DeLay must be in severe negative equity - a veritable principles black hole if you will. And if McCain is an embarrassing pee spot on the tighty whities of rectitude, 'The Hammer' is nothing short of a mile-wide, indelible, pox-laden skidmark. (Link to this)

The chief deputy Republican House whip has launched a proposal to reduce the corporate tax rate by 28 percent. Because, of course, the best way to stimulate the economy is to starve the feds of revenue.

But the most revolting aspect of this 'economic stimulation' measure being bandied about by Rep. Eric Cantor (VA) is how it pretends to help the middle classes while screwing them royally in the finest traditions of 'Bushism.' It's called the Middle Class Job Protection Act though, paradoxically, it proposes absolutely fucking nothing that would ease the pain of America's destitute middle class.

And this week's Marie Antoinette 'Let them eat cake' award has to go to wild eyed cuntservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who argued at the press conference unveiling the Middle Class Job Protection Act that people like working long hours. "I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs." Frothed she before hitching her petticoats and being carried out to her carriage by sedan chair.

Just for the record, the current salary (minus illegal bribes, free vacations to child prostitution resorts, etc.) for members of the House and Senate is a few bucks shy of 170 grand a year for a 32 hour work week. At the same time, the average American works a 46-hour work week with 38% of us working 50 or more hours - the longest work hours per capita of any industrialized nation.

It's a good job this is the land of the spayed and neutered workforce. It would be difficult to imagine Michele Bachmann being able to spout her garbage in any other industrialized nation without provoking a severe and fully-deserved punch to the snout. (Link to this)

So will the conspiracy freaks finally be vindicated? Will Diebold be forced to concoct a whole new crop of excuses? Will we discover if Clinton really did manage to defy the pollsters and achieve a miracle comeback? The MSM isn't speculating, so it's down to plucky Dennis and whatever loose change he can find down the back of his couch to force the issue.

But the secretary of state's office estimated a hand tally of all Democratic votes would cost $69,000 and so far he's only stumped up $27,000. Thus the partial nature of the recount. (God forbid the state of New Hampshire should just 'fess up and do a recount themselves in order to look less like they've completely ceded power to Diebold...)

So I laugh ironically and die(bold) a little inside contemplating how the 2008 election is shaping up to be yet another wet fart in the face of democracy before it's even started... Sure, we can have moments where the machine briefly stalls and popular will finds genuine expression. But such events (see: Obama's win in Iowa, Kucinich's recount, Hannity being chased out of a restaurant by an angry mob) are just that: mere moments of fleeting fantasy. All we can do is file them in the political equivalent of the spank bank to give us just enough democratic titillation to endure being screwed daily by grim reality: America's control-freak corporatocracy is still firmly in charge. And, in case you hadn't noticed, it likes Clinton II because it has a kink for dynasties. (Link to this)

He's an agent for change you know...

Although he strenuously denies it (so it's almost certainly guaranteed to be true), Ghouliani's campaign is going broke. "About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are forgoing their January paychecks, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate and last year's national front-runner." Says Capitol Hill Blue. Ah... 'last year's frontrunner'. Such a polite euphemism for 'loser'.

At least it's nice to see some kind of consistency: not only he is he morally bankrupt, he also seems to be headed for literal bankruptcy too. Sweet. (Link to this)

A former aide to Benazir Bhutto says that she was planning to turn in a dossier on government election fixing to US lawmakers on the day she was assassinated. The 160-page report detailed "pre-poll rigging" by the government of President Pervez Musharraf and the military-run Inter-services Intelligence Service. It accused the Election Commission of "maliciously" omitting 3 million eligible voters from the rolls and wasting US$50 million in assistance provided by USAID for preparing a computerized roster of voters.

In a parallel universe known as New Hampshire, another dynastic female pol has instead benefited greatly from election fraud... courtesy of the ever-unreliable (or reliable, depending on your point of view) Diebold.

I'm sure they'll be telling us 'kooks' that every pundit, pollster, campaign strategist and TV news analyst in the country was just wrong about predicting a win for Obama. I'm sure they'll say it was pure coincidence that his Diebold-counted votes were -6,604 out of whack with the paper votes. Coincidence too that Clinton's were +13,475 compared with her paper votes...

Astronomically improbable coincidences combined with a universal outbreak of "duh" amongst the experts is, of course, a far more rational explanation for Clinton's 'surprise' win than the crazy notion that the fix is in. Again. (Link to this)

At last Ghouliani's self-serving obsession with 9-11 has made the transition from nauseating gimmick to fully-fledged madness.

On some twisted level, I admire his ability segue 9-11 into literally any conversation. But on every other level, I just want to submerge his shriveled, porcine pin-head in a barrel of leprous pus and hold it down 'til the bubbles stop coming.

This freak is a walking affront to the concept of human decency being an integral part of the national psyche. Ghouliani makes George W. Bush look like Albert Schweitzer on ecstasy.

I pray for the day when his last dubiously obtained dollar has been drained, his last crooked buddy has bailed on him and his grotesque presidential fantasies finally implode along with his monstrous ego. (Link to this)

It's hard to know whether to laugh at the pathos or choke on the chutzpah: Mitt Romney, he of the Eisenhower-era coiffeur and Andy Griffith argot, prattling incessantly about being an 'agent of change'??? You can smell the desperation from space.

After a year of hearing every other candidate tout "experience", now they're all jumping on "change" as the keyword in the aftermath of Obama winning in Iowa. Every would-be president is now trying desperately to muscle in on his shtick and convince us that only they can deliver American from the clutches of the old-school, business-as-usual crooks (i.e., themselves).

Even geriatric John McCain with his Wilfred Brimley celebrity endorsement (McCain/Brimley (19)08?)... Even Clinton, who's spent an entire year trying to cast Obama as the presidential equivalent of a pimply virgin Starbucks barista.... they've all flip-flopped magnificently like a school of trained dolphins.

This election is shaping up to be a hilarious spectacle for those of us who love watching grandstanding egomaniacs crash and burn into mountains comprised entirely of their own bullshit. (Link to this)

Interesting to see John Doolittle's name on the list of sponsors for the new H.RES.888 bill which seeks to officially designate these secular United States as a Christian country theocracy.

As one of the most ruthlessly crooked, reptilian sleazeballs in the house, it's grotesque to the point of self-satire that he should be included as one of the prime movers behind this ridiculous bill. Living proof that those who yell loudest about religion are the ones whose every action is a slap in the face for morality?

Whether it's 'fundamentalist Muslims' hijacking airliners or 'fundamentalist Christians' hijacking our constitution, the world is full of execrable frauds hiding their hardcore criminality under a thin layer of religiosity. Does hell exist only as a construct to explain why a just God permits these fuckers to thrive? (Link to this)

So... are the news pap vendors at CNN just trying to mobilize the conservative base by dangling the horrifying prospect of a black prez in front of them? Or are they for real? Is America really such a bastion of infantile racism that a black guy could never get into the White House without a tray of cocktails? Or is the reality that most people - wingnuts included - couldn't really give a flying fuck about color?

Call me a hopeless optimist, but I'm thinking Obama's popularity and supposed 'crossover appeal' to non-idiot conservatives is legit. And I'm also convinced that the supposed "oh-my-God-not-a-black-president!" populist paranoia is just wishful thinking put about by the establishment movers and shakers who exist to thwart black advancement for solely economic reasons.

Could the popularity of non-mainstreamers like Ron Paul and Obama signal payback for the fearmongers in Washington? After 8 fucking years of rule by terror, they're finally getting it back: the election is going hopelessly and pants-shittingly awry for the fearmongers and 'business-as-usual' de-scrupled dorks currently favored by the 'establishment.' When the best they've got is Clinton, Huckabee, impossible-to-like Giuliani and the McCain/Brimley dream team, you know they're in trouble. (Link to this)

There was a way cool priest brawl over in Bethlehem this Christmas. Seven people were hurt when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests lost it while arguing over cleaning the church where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.

And lo, "for a quarter of an hour bearded and robed priests laid into each other with fists, brooms and iron rods while the photographers who had come to take pictures of the annual cleaning ceremony recorded the whole event." Sayeth the AFP.

Another interesting development which, I'm sure, is nothing to worry about involves the Iowa caucus. For some reason, the task of tallying those crucial votes will be outsourced to an Israeli defense company. Says Christopher Bollyn at Rense:

The Denmark-based Saxo Bank bizarrely predicts Ron Paul victory in 2008 but, on the downside, they also predict that the US economy will plunge into a depression prior to the election. Wonder if the Saxo Bank would still be touting a Ron Paul victory based on who's counting the votes in Iowa? (Link to this)