Well, it's been a hell of a week. A.G.A.G. gone. D. James Kennedy retired. Larry Craig a bathroom pervert.

So, why not call it a day? If you're ridiculously astute, you have noticed that the old Southflorida.com Web site is already down -- the address transfers directly to the Sun-Sentinel's entertainment page. Over the next week, more stuff will be happening online. The end result is that the entire Southflorida.com domain name is going to come down and, when it does, so will this blog.

It's been a great place to vent, and I hope some of you have enjoyed the ventings (I get a few thousand hits a month, so I know somebody must be paying attention.)

However, this is not the end. I'm working on Doomed Generation, v. 2.0. Hope to have it up in a couple weeks, and I hope that by then you haven't forgotten. I'll post the new URL sometime before Sept. 6, when this blog goes down for good.

Cheers!

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous entry, I also promised to get into the Castro Death Party if the rumors proved true. Unfortunately, they weren't -- the man that local Cuban punk-rock act Guajiro refers to as having a "beard of pubic hair" is apparently still breathing. But that didn't stop the Cubans from heading out into the streets. About two dozen of them stood across from the Miami-Dade Auditorium carrying signs and flags and yelling for Obama to "go home," as though he were visiting a foreign country. Meanwhile, as everyone lined up to get into the auditorium, a provocateur with a video camera went up and down the line yelling, "Look across the street! They've paid money and made their own signs to support their cause! Why haven't you? Where's your signs?" Happily, he didn't get much of a response from the crowd, who laughed at him more than anything else. And, really, that seemed the logical reaction -- after all, this was a fundraiser. The people outside were paying $30-$100 to see Obama, so the idea that they weren't spending money on their candidate seemed ridiculous on its face.

Next to the Cubans was a large group of Ron Paul supporters. Yes, you read that right. I used "Ron Paul" and "large group of supporters" in the same sentence. They numbered maybe 30 or 40. I felt sorry for them. They seemed to consist mostly of people who were angry at the corruption of the current Republicans, angry at the war, but couldn't bring themselves to vote Democratic because of some inexplicable, visceral hatred. And so, they intended to go with the darkest of dark horses. The few I talked to said that if Paul didn't win the primary, they'd stay home on election day.

Inside the auditorium, we had to sit and wait through about four (4) hours of speakers and musicians before Obama came on. Every candidate for office in Miami-Dade and Broward counties wanted to say a few words. Most were unremarkable, though Javier Betancourt, running against incumbent Republican state representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera in district 113, made a lasting impression. In any case, I'll save most of my commentary on the candidates for my upcoming political prognostication entries, which I'm currently working on and should post by mid-Sept. or so.

The crowd grew more and more impatient and annoyed as time went on, but all was forgiven when Obama finally hit the stage after a warm introduction by State Senator Frederica Wilson, who was dressed, as usual, in a costume that looked like something out of a '70s blaxploitation flick.

Sen. Wilson -- what she wore Saturday made this look tame.

While I've said before that I tentatively support Obama, and I do agree with him on most of the issues, that's not what the title of this entry is about. When I say he's the best, I'm not talking about his position on the issues. What I mean is that, despite what I believe to be an honest optimism, Obama may be the most brilliant political animal of my lifetime. He oozes charisma the way Karl Rove oozes malice. He makes Bill Clinton look like a cheap conman trying to pick up floozies in a bar -- yeah, he's that good.

At one point, someone in the huge crowd from the University of Miami yelled, "We love you, Obama!" She hadn't even gotten out the whole sentence before Obama returned, "I love you too, baby."

And that was only the first of about a half dozen times that someone yelled something at the senator during a lull in the applause. Every time, he had a snappy rejoinder, delivered without even a second's hesitation. When he said he didn't like the administration's misusing our troops and someone called out, "Or our Constitution!" I didn't even have time to blink an eye before Obama retorted, "Oh, we'll get into that too," and then launched into a several-minute litany of the current administration's brutal pillaging of our founding document.

Hell, Senator Obama's almost too perfect. I still believe that his calls for hope, for optimism, for great changes in Washington are real. But after Saturday, part of me can't help but wonder if I've simply fallen under his spell.

Senator Obama -- my mancrush

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 5:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the Herald has acknowledged the rumors, but they're still just that -- rumors. Word from the island, per Stuck on the Palmetto, is that there's been no unusual movement of police or military in Cuba.

As for me, I'm already planning to be in Miami tomorrow for the Barack Obama event. If it's been confirmed by then that Castro's a dead man, I'll even get down into the madness on Calle Ocho. It's a once in a lifetime thing, and whenever I have the opportunity to be an active participant in history, I take it. I am, after all, a professional.

Coming tomorrow: A rare weekend edition blog post or two, covering the Obama event and the possible Castro Death Party.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the fall, the war was still there, but we did not go to it anymore.
-- Ernest Hemingway, "In Another Country"

Autumn is nearly upon us now. Down here in South Florida, it's almost impossible to tell from the weather. Each day is a sweaty, messy struggle filled with the whines of blood-sucking mosquitos and the shouts of Haitian cabbies and cracked roads only slightly less traffic-filled than in season, when the Creole of the Haitians mixes with the French of the Canadian snowbirds, and none of them can quite recall what drove them to come here in the first place.

But autumn is nevertheless on its way. Football is finally back on the television, which is certainly one of the first indicators. In a few weeks, General Petraeus will come before Congress and, if early reports that the White House itself will write his words are any indication, will tell our congresspeople that the war is progressing nicely. Sure, there's problems, but they'll all be overcome with another surge or three. Nothing that anyone outside the military needs to worry about.

Of course, we all know that's not true. Very few people take the White House seriously anymore, and after going through generals as though they were Kleenex, it's pretty obvious that the man they finally ended up with was not necessarily the best man for the job, or the brightest. Just the one willing to say the right things.

What is left of the Iraq War, the historic debacle that I have come to call The Big Dumb? General Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs, intends to call for withdrawing half of our troops from Iraq. This will doubtless be greeted poorly in the West Wing, and Karl Rove is no longer around to properly spin the news.

But Pace's point is that the military simply cannot keep up with the demand, which has been apparently to all but the most obtuse observers for quite some time now. I'm actually rather amazed that none of the Democratic presidential contenders has drawn the distinction that we either need to end the war or start a draft, a notion that would likely get a few more people on the right side of history.

Because at this point, history is all it comes down to. Even Bush has nothing anymore except for bizarre, convoluted comparisons to Vietnam. At least we now know where the president stands -- he wants a war lasting more than a decade and costing at least 50,000 American lives. And even after all that, he doesn't want us to leave.

No, history will not be kind to Bush, or to The Big Dumb. Of course, our president is right to compare Iraq to Vietnam, just not in the way he did. In reality, the apt comparison is that wasting the lives of our family and friends a half a world away for reasons that are never properly explained is never a good thing. Vietnam ended before I was born, but as a student of history, even I am smart enough to take that lesson from America's adventure in Indochina.

Which makes me quite a bit smarter than our president, I suppose, but that's hardly comforting. Perhaps the lesson America will take away from these times is this -- who we elect as president should be decided on something more than whoever makes us feel good. The president should be the best among us, not someone who reminds us of Norm from Cheers, only a little meaner and stupider. Because autumn is coming, and Iraq has shown us what happens when we make the same mistake twice.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 1:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza's latest entry on his blog, The Fix, handicaps the presidential race. Cillizza does these handicapping posts fairly regularly, and he's usually on point. Of course, I have my own long history of political predictions, and I've been right a lot more often than I've been wrong. But in this case, Cillizza speaks for me -- at least as far as the Democrats go. He's got the top 5 Dems as Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Dodd. The Top 5 Republicans come in at Giuliani and Romney tied for first, then Fred Thompson at 3rd, Huckabee at 4th and McCain at 5th.

Dodd at 5th for the Dems seems more of a "why not?" than anything else. He stands about as much chance as Biden, Gravel or Kucinich, which is to say, no chance at all. The top 4 Dems have been the same, in the same order, for almost the entire campaign season thus far.

I disagree with Cillizza's take on the GOP. Like him, I was quick to dismiss Giuliani as a serious GOP contender, but unlike Cillizza, I still am. He may poll well, but when Republicans step into the voting booth, that's gonna change. It seems odd that the Christian conservative base has been all but forgotten, in Cillizza's take on this thing and elsewhere. That base would probably swing Thompson, assuming the guy finally gets in the race. At this point, Thompson's like Ted Kennedy in the late 70s and early 80s -- a constant presidential threat that never actually materialized. If he dries up the way Kennedy always did, who do the so-called values voters turn to? Pro-abortion, pro-gay rights Giuliani is out. And Romney's Mormon faith dooms him to a lot of these voters, right or wrong. Believe me, ace, I spent four years in Colorado Springs, the beating heart of American Christian fundamentalism. Romney's faith is a problem, no matter what touchy-feely platitudes about tolerance the fundies may throw out.

So, now that we've discounted both the front-runners, and if Thompson fails to show, we're once again left with Huckabee. (McCain, as we all know, is finished, and this is the only time I'm mentioning him). I keep coming back to the preacher from Arkansas.

And indeed, the forthcoming rise of the Huckster may take place here in Fort Lauderdale, at the Values Voter Debate on Sept. 17. They call themselves the largest voting bloc in the country, ace, and they're really not willing to concede things like abortion and gay marriage. And when they tune in to the debate in mid-September, they will see:
1) A relatively liberal New Yorker
2) A Mormon
3) A Baptist preacher

See that? And, hell, ValuesVoter.org has only confirmed the presence of seven out of nine candidates. They haven't released names yet, but the chances are good that Giuliani and Romney are the ones skipping the event. After September, if Thompson isn't in yet, and especially if the other "values voter" candidate, Sam Brownback, has dropped out, expect Huckabee to be No. 3 with a bullet, if not No. 2.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 12:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The full text of a press release I received this morning:
CORAL SPRINGS, FL – Ben Graber, former state representative, county commissioner, and mayor of Broward County, is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President.

Graber, who is a longtime supporter of the Clintons, was an advisor on healthcare reform to the White House in 1993 after successfully passing groundbreaking health reform in Florida. Graber’s bill reached far beyond the state and was used as a model for health reform in several other states.

“I am excited to lend my support to Hillary,” Graber said. “She is the most experienced candidate and understands the issues facing our nation today.”

___________________________________________________________________________

Hey, good for Graber. At least he's finally supporting a Democrat. Back in the 2006 elections, that wasn't the case.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Scientists discover universe's birth canal.

OK, my headline may be a little off, but still, the idea that a billion-light-year-wide void has just been discovered is certainly jaw-dropping news to an astronomy buff. Of course, since the void is 6 to 10 billion light years from us, it may not even exist anymore, since we're seeing it as it was 6 to 10 billion years ago. The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is particularly true on the largest scales possible.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 9:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Jeb Bush is the newest boardmember of Lehman Brothers financial group. The news comes as a short brief from the St. Pete Times, but it helps confirm what I've thought about Jeb for a long time -- that he's really not as interested in politics anymore as he is in cold, hard cash.

It was obvious some months ago, after he pointed all his fundraising pals in the direction of Mitt Romney's campaign, that Brother Jeb had no designs on the 2008 presidential campaign. And the more board positions he gets, the more fat paychecks he collects for allowing corporations to use his name, the more likely he is to sit out 2012 as well.

My thoughts: Sweet Jesus, won't somebody else hire this guy?

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The story comes out of the Toronto Star. An excerpt:

"A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.

Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.

Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot."

Major kudos to Dave Coles. The story doesn't do him justice. Here is the YouTube video of the altercation. It's definitely worth watching. Here are the same people being arrested by the police. Note the yellow markings on the soles of the "protesters" shoes, identical to the markings on the soles of the officers' shoes:

This occurred up in Canada during a meeting between the heads of state of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, mostly dealing with the same issues that had Miami cops beating the hell out of us down here in Nov. 2003.

Of course, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that American police use the same tactics, or even used them in Miami four years ago. After all, Miami police chief Timoney is perfectly willing to break the law when it suits him. And using undercover officers as an excuse to invoke a police state for a few days would certainly suit that jack-booted yahoo.

Meanwhile, our president was back in the U.S. As news of Canada's use of police-state tactics hit the wires, Bush was speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars audience, comparing Iraq to Vietnam -- FAVORABLY!

I have truly seen it all.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 12:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My parents visited this weekend. Oddly, I come from Republican stock -- neither of my parents has voted for a Democrat since JFK and his brains went their separate ways in Dallas. My father is a bit further to the right than my mother. Dad and I have a standing agreement to avoid most political discourse, after nearly coming to blows on several occasions. Mom and I, though, still banter a bit, especially in times like these, when we're coming up on a presidential election.

Like many Republicans, Mom doesn't like any of her options in the primary. She's a sweet 69-year-old lady who doesn't smoke, rarely drinks, and jokingly offers to "pray for all of us heathens" when the rest of the family refuses to attend church with her. She is, quite simply, as American as apple pie. I love Mom.

And surprisingly, Mom's best options, in her opinion, this year look like Edwards or Obama, or maybe Richardson or Biden. She likes a lot of the Democratic candidates much better than she likes any of the Republicans. But the front-runner? We ended our political conversation with my mom saying, "I can't believe that bitch Hillary might be president."

Mom never curses.

On the left, the problems with Hillary are often two-fold:
1) She can't win the general election -- too many people don't like her, and too few people have yet to form an opinion.
2) She's a Republican in Democrat's clothing, and she's for all the anti-progressive agenda items her husband stood for -- free trade, corporate-friendly welfare "reform," and so on.

I disagree with both of those positions. Against just about any of the GOP candidates, Hillary's got a pretty good chance of winning. Poll after poll shows this. In general, she enjoys a narrow lead against all of the GOP front-runners. As for Hillary being just like Bill, that's somewhat blown out of proportion. Hell, a lot of progressives still insist Hillary is pro-Iraq War, despite the fact that her plans for Iraq are fairly similar to those of Edwards and Obama. Quite simply, the left dislikes her about as much as the right.

I think Hillary can win, and I think her positions on the issues are not totally incompatible with my own. My problem with Hillary comes in this -- what exactly does she do after she wins?

Since the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, and especially since the Bush boys' 2000 coup d'etat, this country has become torn apart politically. The next president had better be somebody who can pull all sides -- including the right -- together, or we will continue down this destructive path, no matter how good or bad the intentions of the new president.

And here's where we come back to Mom. I've met plenty of registered Republicans who, like her, actually find Obama and Edwards to be acceptable candidates, but the minute you start talking about Hillary, they start foaming at the mouth. Eight years of Hillary means another eight years of political trench warfare, and that is a very bad thing. On the other hand, either Obama or Edwards has a chance to unite America for the first time in my adult life. Yes, there will always be hardcore conservatives who won't want anything to do with a Democratic administration, but those people are outnumbered by their more-rational, moderate colleagues.

In the end, my lack of support for Hillary stems not from a belief that she cannot win the election (she can), or even from a disagreement with her positions (many of which, currently, are quite similar to those of Edwards or Obama).

I don't support Hillary because I think a Hillary Clinton administration would be bad for America -- all of America, not just the people I'm sharing a trench with. I'm tired of avoiding conversations with Mom.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

A press release from the BSO came in today, documenting the arrest of Paul Bryan Trucchio and Robert Mackey for the murder of Lorraine Hatzakorzian, whose head was found floating in a canal next to Alligator Alley back in April. Over at the stalwart blog Stuck on the Palmetto, they're calling it "a brilliant bit of police work that involved the collaborative efforts of three different agencies in two different states."

But, really, I think it's more about stupid criminals than brilliant police. The case really broke open after Trucchio and Mackey's roommate, Douglas Stein, walked into the Port Orange Police Department headquarters and relayed how his roommates had told him all about how they had murdered and dismembered a woman. After police picked up Trucchio and Mackey, Trucchio told a similar story to a fellow inmate, sealing his fate.

The mind reels. Look, if you're going to kill a woman, then dismember her and hide the various parts, maybe you should try never speaking of it for the rest of your life. Just a suggestion.

But in the meantime, whatever the reason, it's at least good to know that these two degenerates are off the street.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Rumors of the dual headliners have been swirling at Miami Nights and Cool Junkie for a couple weeks now, but I can confirm this more or less. I received a press release from a nice lady at Epic Records this morning, pushing an interview with Automatic Loveletter, a pretty solid female-fronted rock band out of Clearwater. That press release led me to Automatic Loveletter's MySpace site, where the upcoming shows includes "Nov. 11, 8 p.m., Bicentennial Park w/Smashing Pumkins and Kanye West."

I wouldn't call that definitive confirmation, but it's as close as we'll get before an official announcement.

My reaction? Meh. This isn't the real Smashing Pumpkins, it's a Billy Corgan vanity band (whether the original was the same thing is certtainly open for debate, admittedly), and Kanye West would be cool to see, but it'll take an impressive second-tier lineup to make this festival pop.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Merv Griffin is gone now. Thousands mourn, not the least of which is Milk and Cheese.

MERV GRIFFIN!

Tommy Thompson is gone too. ... So is Phillip Tattaglia. Moe Greene. Strachi. Cuneo. But all of them pale in comparison to the news that Karl Rove has resigned and will leave office at the end of the month.

What can I say about Karl Rove that hasn't been said already? I could go the way of most on the left and say he forever coarsened political dialogue. I could say this with a hint of irony by adding that he's a steaming pile of shit and if his heart was on fire, I wouldn't piss down his throat to save his life.

All of this is true.

I could go the route of more-moderate voices and say what a genius the guy has been over his career.

This, however, is not true, and so I'll once again argue against it.

I pointed out right after the 2006 election that Karl Rove "will go down in history as a short-sighted, so-so campaigner." I stand by this assertion. After the bridge-burning Clinton impeachment years, instead of any attempt at reconciliation, Karl Rove's politics involved whipping up the base and ignoring centrist moderates. That worked for awhile, but in the long term, those centrists start to realize that the government is looking seriously demented, and they actually get off their asses and vote. By abandoning the center and instead milking the right for every vote it was worth, Karl Rove doomed the Republican Party to decades of minority status as a reactionary party populated entirely by the old, the stupid, the greedy and the insane — provided that the Democrats can stay away from scandal and get some things done after 2008.

Rove's failure as a political guru — after "winning" two questionable presidential campaigns and legitimately winning campaigns in conservative-friendly locales like Texas and Alabama — marks the final defeat of an entire lifetime whose hallmark has been ignominy. The simple fact that Rove became the Executive Director of the College Republicans but never actually graduated from college describes the man's entire biography. A history of doom and failure, with only political kingmaking to brighten it. And now, that one bright spot has gone dim.

The left should be on its knees thanking Karl Rove. In the end, his cutthroat politics destroyed the possibility of long-term GOP control of Washington.

Don't cry, Karl. It'll be all right.

In other news in the things-I've-been-right-about-for-months-that-no-one-else-saw-coming department, Mike Huckabee came in second place to Mitt Romney in the Iowa straw poll over the weekend. Back in January, I called the general election race as being Huckabee v. Obama. And while that's still a long shot, and while the Iowa straw poll means little since McCain and Giuliani didn't participate, it is significant that Huckabee beat out all the second-tier candidates, and did so while spending a lot less money. Romney spent untold millions on the straw poll, while third-place Sam Brownback spent about twice what Huckabee did.

There's really only room for one Jesus freak in this race, and Huckabee's it. If Brownback drops out before the primary elections, Huckabee becomes a serious contender. Bank on it.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 3:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The news in places like CNN is all about the stock market these days. And hell, why not? The market dropped by something like 150 points in the first 10 minutes it was open today, along with the near-400 point drop yesterday. Rich people are scared, and when people who have lived their lives free from the workaday concerns of average Americans start sweating about their livelihoods, it's never a good sign.

But this laser-like focus has meant that a few important stories have been ignored. In Spain, they're burning 400,000 hectares of crops in a mad effort to exterminate a giant plague of voles.

The Spanish Plague

In Bangladesh and other areas of Southeast Asia, millions have fled their homes in front of the worst floods in memory.

The Amazing Race: Bangladesh Flood Edition

In Philadelphia, a political columnist is actually hoping for another 9/11, saying it will bring our country together and failing to even mention the thousands more Americans who would be killed in such an event.

Stu Bykofsky, who is at least decent enough to identify himself as a "bastard" in the above-mentioned column

But more important than any of this -- for our politically minded purposes here at Doomed Generation, in any case -- is brain fog. Wikipedia defines brain fog as "episodes of cognitive dysfunction or confused thinking. Brain fog is associated with forgetfulness, losing one's train of thought, depersonalization, the inability to remember the correct words when speaking or writing (aphasia)."

Sound like any presidents you know? You bet, ace. Brain fog, notably, is a symptom of long-term Lyme Disease, and the news just came out yesterday that Bush suffered from that tick-born plague.

Not much has been written about the effects of brain fog on the Bush administration. The syndrome is not commonly known, as it generally results only from Lyme Disease, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, or psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or manic-depression. And while the White House played down how badly the president suffered from Lyme Disease, if there's anything we can trust about news from the White House, it's that we can't trust any of it.

Who knows? Bush could've been hit with a blood-sucking little insect years ago. It certainly explains the constant fumbling for words, as well as the tendency to forget where he is, who he is, how he got there and even how to properly eat a pretzel. And it gets worse, ace. Oh, ye gods, does it get worse.

How long before the president decides that life is little more than a waking dream, and then nukes Iran simply because "it seemed the right thing to do?" We're in a race against time now. January 2009 cannot come soon enough. Hell, brain fog is only one of the many neuropsychiatric symptoms that we, as American citizens, must now consider.

The president finally, terminally sinking into deep psychosis is a real possibility. At the next State of the Union speech, he'll come rolling into Congress with his necktie wrapped around his forehead, his shirt unbuttoned, and a machete in either hand. Will our Democratic congressmen, who have been rolling over left and right, be able to defend themselves against a machete-wielding maniac who believes the portrait of Richard Nixon hanging in the West Wing has ordered him to kill them all? It's almost too much to bear.

"Holy fuck, the president just decapitated Pelosi!"

"Well, then, we'll need to establish a quorum to determine the Speaker of the House with regards to the Democratic caucus, in relation to the— "Aiiieeeeeeeee!"

"Great jabbering Christ! He got Steny! Somebody get Murtha up here! He's a war hero, for God's sake!"

"Hee heee heee! Freedom's on the march!!"

"Back, you thug!"

Well, you get the idea. A Columbine-style massacre in Congress at the hands of the president is only a matter of time now. Terrible, terrible. We are through the looking glass.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This online test asks its takers to answer whether they support or oppose various issues, how important the issues are to them, and then tells them which of the presidential candidates best suits them. I've blogged about a similar test before, but this one's particularly interesting because, while it gives you your results, it also aggregates those results to determine the candidate that best represents the most people.

The result? More than 50 percent of the more than 80,000 people who have taken the test are for Dennis Kucinich.

Here's my own results from the test. Basically, it adds points when you agree with a candidate, and removes points when you disagree:
Kucinich 65
Gravel 50
Obama 49
Clinton 47
Biden 44
Edwards 44
Dodd 41
Richardson 39
Paul 18
McCain -24
Cox -24
Brownback -26
Thompson -28
Huckabee -31
Giuliani -44
Tancredo -49
Romney -55
Hunter -62

If you're like me, your first question was, "Who the hell is this 'Cox' dude?" Here's his Web site. Basically, John Cox is a paleocon, declared his candidacy for 2008 several years ago, and has been shut out by the party apparatus for reasons I'm unable to comprehend. Other than strict fiscal conservatism and a preference for fair trade over free trade, I can't see much difference between him and most of the GOP contenders.

In any case, the point is, as I've said before, the American people want Dennis Kucinich. They just don't know it because they only know him as that freaky guy who CNN says is a fringe candidate. Read his issues page here, and tell me that's not a righteous dude. Vote accordingly.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Radical cartoonist Ted Ralls' view of Pat Tillman, that he was some sort of lame Bush poster boy, has begun to look more and more dim as time has gone on, especially now that word comes down that Tillman's death wasn't even a friendly fire incident, but more of a fragging.

I usually depend on Wonkette for little more than a sort of political version of Perez Hilton or TMZ.com (did you see whose vomit Jean Schmidt was cleaning off herself in the bathroom? OMG! WTF?), but under the cruel heading of "Dept. of Political Assassinations," Wonkette has offered the most disturbing summary of the Tillman case yet. Some of the 20 bullet points offered there:

# He was shot three times in the forehead at close range with an American M-16.
# This was after he was shot in the chest, legs and hand.
# And this was after he screamed to the “friendlies” that he was Pat Tillman and please stop shooting him.
# But they didn’t; they executed him.
# They were Americans.
# There wasn’t even an “enemy” around; not only was nobody shot by “enemy fire,” no equipment was shot by “enemy fire.”
# “Members of Tillman’s unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide the fact that he was killed by friendly fire.”
# Army medical examiners tried to get a criminal investigation opened, but they were shut down.
# The Army brass who conspired to shut down any criminal investigation into the U.S. assassination of Pat Tillman sent “congratulatory e-mails” to each other after shutting down the snoops.
# The Pentagon heavily promoted Tillman’s enlistment and service as both a recruitment tool and a domestic propaganda tool.
# The Pentagon maintained for long after his murder that Tillman died in combat, finally admitting to his family that “friendly fire” killed him — which wasn’t exactly true, either.
# Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who commanded Tillman’s base in Afghanistan at the time of his assassination, dismissed Tillman’s family’s attempts to find out what happened. Why? Because Pat Tillman was an atheist, like his family, so they were having “a hard time letting it go.”

More here. That last one really gets me. These sort of Jesus-freak radicals have no place in our government, military or otherwise. It's just this sort of egg-sucking halfwit that is giving our country a bad name, turning what started as a righteous cause post-9/11 into a bloody, stupid religious crusade. If Ralph Kauzlarich loves Jesus so much, I say we fucking crucify him. He'll be nearer his God than any of us.

Of course, that'll never happen. The right people never get nailed to the wall — or the cross, as the case may be. Now, Joe Biden says that the Senate won't impeach A.G.A.G. because there's no "smoking gun," despite the fact that any idiot with a PC and Internet access can hop online, go to YouTube and see for himself how Alberto Gonzalez willfully, deliberately perjured himself before Congress. No smoking gun? Jesus, Joe, it happened right in front of you.

How embarrassing is it that this guy's running for president on the Democratic Party ticket. I understand now why senators are never elected president — the senatorial process is a castrating experience. If you spend as much time there as Joe Biden, you turn into some sort of delicate, hysterical eunuch, with neither the will nor the intestinal fortitude to remove even a corrupt attorney-general, much less a degenerate, war criminal of a president.

And, sweet Jesus, a lot of people need to be removed from politics these days. Mike Gravel has apparently decided to dress in drag and back Sam Brownback. Chief Justice John Roberts sneaked away to some nameless island off the coast of Maine, and then began flopping around like a fish out of water and babbling incoherently. Certifiably crazy talk show host Michael Savage attributed the disturbing incident to some sort of Democratic plot, and doctors dismissed the event as an "ideopathic seizure," meaning that Roberts had a massive seizure from no known cause. But sources close to the jurist say that it wasn't a seizure at all, but that the Chief Justice was suddenly seized by a vicious bout of speaking in tongues, something that had to be covered up as a seizure — we could not, after all, have a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court turn out to be a snake-handling, jabbering Jesus freak, worse than anyone who attends church with Ralph Kauzlarich. That, after all, would be it — the final death knell of the Republican Party. They'd be hounded across the country by angry mobs wielding torches and pitchforks, dragged out from inside penthouses and under slimy rocks, and tarred and feathered like a group of biblical scapegoats. A Republican wouldn't be elected in this country for another 90 years.

So enough talk of John Roberts' speaking in tongues. No one needs that heavy thought on their brain, least of all me. What does it mean, this terrible portent, this pigfucking omen? At the very least, it means we got a lot more than we bargained for when this guy donned the black robes. How long till he has one of these mad tongue-speaking sessions while in trial? How long before the solicitor-general begins to argue the government's case, only to be greeted with the ravings and writhings of a Supreme Court justice doped up on rattlesnake venom and wrathful messages from God?

No one is safe from the craziness anymore. Politics is a giant padded room that breeds insanity. Even the celebrity tabloids are reporting violence and horror when they briefly touch on the presidential race. One reported that Angie and Brad came to blows in an argument over the merits of Edwards or Obama.

And the primaries are five to six months away. By that time, Angie and Brad will have been found dead on the floor of their Beverly Hills home, which will look their house after the gunplay in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. John Roberts will have suspended the elections because "God told him to." The military under newly minted five-star general Ralph Kauzlarich will declare Bush king for life and begin rounding up the dissidents. Joe Biden will giggle hysterically and say something like, "No one could have done anything to prevent this" as they put a sack over his head and throw him in the back of an unmarked minivan.

See you at Gitmo.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 4:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)