I could probably not be called a big fan of Jesse Helms, having driven all the way across the country in 1990 to volunteer for his Democratic opponent Harvey Gantt in the North Carolina U.S. senatorial race that year. The infamous "hands ad", with white hands crumpling a paper because "racial quotas" gave the job to someone else, I saw on a TV in North Carolina during that campaign: and it was unpleasant, believe me.
    And he was not an especially gallant opponent, unlike, say, William F. Buckley, Jr.; although I have joked before that a Jesse Jackson/Jesse Helms ticket would be the ultimate in balance and diversity, Helms' bigotry in racial and sexual orientation matters, among other things, does not cut a very fine record. We know this.

    Still, he didn't have horns. He adopted a lonely child with cerebral palsy. He worked with Bono on international debt relief, and after meeting Bono apologized for his meanness about AIDS.

    It's nice to see Fancy Nancy is now attending Netroots N, so that someone of some current political importance is attending. (If she shows up; remember what Pelosi did last year?) Still, what about You-Know-Who? Where the boo-hoo is Barack H.O.?
    (As per my previous diary, with poll showing Kossacks very much want him to attend)

    ...Back on the first July 4, when our ancestors were sweating to death at Valley Forge (maybe I've got the seasons wrong), did you hear THEM saying, "Ohhh, we're afraid to go to the big bad blog conference, we might get criticized?" Well o.k., NNation didn't exist, but they wouldn't have shied away if it did.
    (And anyway, Barack can do a better Sister Souljah if he attends NN and shouts, "You pinko pundits with Pentiums!", than if he stays away)

    I hear Mr. Obama likes faith-based initiatives these days. Well, let's see if he can keep some faith with the people who did so much for his campaign, and whom he expects to do more. I sure hope he has that cowboy hat, so he can wave it around onstage in Austin. . .

    Simple question.

    ...I may be missing something, but it seems that besides reliable fireplug Howard Dean and a few pundits, there seems to be a serious lack of political--I didn't say "star"--firepower at the upcoming NN.

    Especially compared to last year, when practically every Dem candidate came to the forum.

    If Barack Obama wants to Sister Souljah the netroots by refusing to attend Netroots Nation, that's a serious problem. After all the netroots did for him. (But how much will they do for him in the future if he doesn't pay appropriate respect? And I don't mean a "special videotaped message" from him, either. He can keep that for himself, I wouldn't want to see it.)

    So his absence (and maybe even the absence of others, including a New York senator, a former North Carolina senator, a present Nevada senator and majority leader, etc.) would be a serious comedown from previous conventions. Would the first Netroots Nation even be worth attending? One wonders.
       

    So now Kos is making $$ from male escorts? Cf. the current classified ad on DKos, with frontpage text

Executive Male Escorts

Traveling? Or just horny for a hot guy? Nominated "Best Escort Site 2003-2007" by CyberSocket Magazine! Your pleasure is most important for ALL these polished & professional male escorts worldwide! Each ad has photos, bio, stats, reviews & contact info. Listings are FREE!

    Now does Kos HAVE to take any Blogads submission? If the Klan bought an ad, would he have to run it? Hm.
    Hello Jeff Gannon!!

   $$$ makes peeps go Krazy!!! !

    See AFP via Breitbart, Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel: Obama,

    US Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama said Wednesday that Jerusalem must remain the "undivided" capital of Israel in a speech to a powerful US-Israel lobby group here.
    "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided," Obama told the vast annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC). ...

    Hmm.

    It's bad enough that El K dropped his book on libertarian Democrats; now he has the temerity to do another one instead, and with

     HIS BIG OL NAME

going in krossword-puzzle style down the title. Talk about ego! Woooooh! Don't let your head get too big Mr. K!!

    Now if someone really KOOL were to do this, say, Harvey Korman (RIP) were to publish (have published) a book titled

      "King
       Of
       Really
       Manic
       Asinine
       Nonsense"

, I could see that. But who's this Kos guy??

    Oh well he deserves some fun. Kongratulations!

    Not the engineer of the Enterprise; he doesn't exist. The other one.

    Yeah, I know, DKos frontpagers hate him, he wants to sell his book, he should have told us this stuff years earlier, bla bla. But if even Darth Vader can get redeemed at the end, I don't know why Scott McClellan can't.
    I suppose El Lessig will be of some interest as an NN speaker, but the Scott would likely be even more interesting: people turning from the "Dark Side", even with mixed motives, make for pretty good drama.
    And Rove-ocop said ScMcC was like a left wing blogger! Well well! Why not make the joke into the truth? !

    See you in Austin-sounds-like-Boston, Mr. "What Happened"! No one can say NN isn't bipartisan once in a while...

    Ten zillion, give or take a zillion, solutions to the Michigan/Florida delegate debacle have been tossed about, and not everyone will like the eventual solution. However, there is a solution which not only has a catchy name like the "50/50/50 solution", but also covers many bases:

1. Punishing the states and their delegations for breaking DNC rules;

2. Not advantaging, or disadvantaging, Clinton or Obama;

3. Punishing the superdelegates (aka "fat cats") more than the salt-of-the-earth pledged delegates;

4. Making sure every delegate has some kind of vote, rather than no vote, lest they cry "disenfranchisement";

5. Making sure at least some delegates have free will in the way they cast their votes.

   As you may have surmised, it is just dividing the delegates equally between the candidates. As Obama has supported; but that doesn't mean the DNC RBC are Obamabots, it just means they are looking for the simplest and most equal solution.
    And also giving the superdelegates half a vote each. I.e., 50% of a vote. So they are punished, but not completely disenfranchised either.

    I'm kind of neutral on that point; but since Ted Kennedy doesn't have a lot to fear from reprisals at this point in his life, I wonder what other people think.
    Of course, Ted has endorsed Obama, and Hillary Clinton is not being too kind to Obama, or even to the Party, maybe, these days.

    I imagine the senior Senator from the Bay State is not too fond, maybe, of Hillary evoking his brother's assassination four decades ago. (Especially since Kennedy himself is gravely ill now; did Hill forget this??) She's apologized, but still.

    ...Ted might not want to ask her to drop out immediately, but after June 3, say, he might want to play elder statesman and let his opinion be known, about a lot of things.
    Or maybe earlier than June 3.

    Your call. Poll below.

    Apparently. (from what exit polls done said)

    ...I have told myself for some time that with the celebratization of everything, soon North and South Dakota will be relabeled as North and South Dakota FANNING, and that Montana will be renamed...I don't think I have to tell you that one.

    So, at least as a fantasy exercise, I wonder how many states will be renamed after upcoming 10-term president (after Amendment 22 is repealed) Barack Obama: Ohiobama, New Mexicobama, Oregobama, and of course Alobama...feel free to contribute others.

    In other news, have purchased obamaism.org domain name, and am wondering how to develop it...

    See his "Man in Black" lyrics, in pertinent part:

...I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, ...

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold, ...

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

   This Cash is clearly an un-American elitist: claiming that people are "beaten down", "hopeless", and "lonely". This is America! No one would be so cowardly as to be "bitter" or "unhappy"!

    Barack Obama, take note. Unless you wear the Smily Face all the time, you'll just be some unsuccessful commie like Johnny.

    You couldn't make it up.

    In Joe Wilson's nastily-named HufPost Smears and Tears: How Obama's National Security Week Turned Into the Mendacity of Hype, he opines,

    ...In fact, the then-First Lady was told the plane was diving to land to avoid possible sniper fire. Whether there was or not is irrelevant. ...

    Huh?
    If false claims of Iraqi WMD and of Iraqi uranium purchase in Niger are bad, maybe a false claim of sniper fire isn't too good either??

    And to think this guy took up space at YearlyKos 1.

    Of the many critical comments to the HP article, see, e.g.,

michiganfan ...

Jesus Christ, Joe! Stop it!

Every time you post a pro-Hillary article here, you further destroy your own reputation. ...
So, just stop it!

You used to be a hero to me, but now your "kitchen sink" smears against Obama have destroyed all of the goodwill you had built up with your opposition to the war.

...Posted 09:55 AM on 03/27/2008

    You used to be a hero to LOTS of us, Joe.

    The second part--about inviting Hillary R. Clinton--may seem counterintuitive, with her NAFTuzlA meltown, etc.; but I still think it would be not only good manners but also prudent and appropriate to invite Hill, and Barack Obama, to the inaugural Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas.
    (Maybe they got invited already. No one tells me these things.)

    There is the meme of the Hillaryista boycott of the Kos to combat, too, including some Clinton rep applauding that boycott on O'Reilly. Ouches.
    I.e., if the convention don't invite Clinton to attend, maybe folks will think of the netroots as a bunch of hostile kommunistas who are taking revenge on Hillary because of the boycott, etc. Therefore, Hillary should be embraced, not rejected, by the convention. (Individual attendees can reject her, sure, but not the convention as a whole...)

(Courtesy of FooTube News Service)

    Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton held a brief press conference today in Darfur where she has gone to serve soup to starving children; or at least that's what it said over the stage in Wackwack, Pennsylvania, where she was on a campaign stop. The purpose of the conference was to explain the "Tuzla Twist" controversy about her apparently false claim that she had been under sniper fire while in Bosnia with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.
    One grimacing reporter, apparently puzzled by the "YOU ARE NOW IN DARFUR WITH THE HILLARY HUMANITARIAN EXPRESS" banner over the stage, asked Clinton, "You're sure you weren't just making things up?" whereupon the candidate replied,

    "I wanted to clarify some things, because I've been so busy following the crazed racist hatemongers working for some other candidates that I just plumb forgot the details. Haw haw haw!" she frighteningly laughed. "And here's the skinny...but first let me wish you a happy Easter," as she lobbed chocolate eggs into the audience like so many foil-covered grenades.

    No, I see no conspiracy here, but it's interesting to note anyway.

    Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton counselor (and YearlyKos 2 attendee; I spoke to him briefly at the Teamsters cookout, and he was cool/cold but polite), be in some trouble, see AP channeled by Yahoo, Police: Clinton aide to plead guilty,

   A senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to plead guilty to drunken driving after the arresting officer was ordered to Iraq making a trial on a more serious charge impossible, police said Monday. ...
    Now an unpaid adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign, Blumenthal, 59, was arrested Jan. 7, the day before the New Hampshire primary, and charged with aggravated drunken driving. Police said Blumenthal was traveling 70 mph in a 30 mph zone. ...
    The plea deal was reached after the arresting officer was activated by the military and ordered to Iraq, Segal said, adding that without the officer's testimony a trial would not have been possible.

    The intellectual father of the modern conservative movement, maybe, William Frank Buckley, Jr. has died at 82 and there's hardly a peep here at DKos. Ouch.
    He was the Kos of his day (I know that hurts to read, but...), with his National Review being a rebellion against liberalism, and against Republicans being too...liberal! (Unless your name was Barry Goldwater) Just as DKos is a rebellion against conservatism, and against Dems being too conservative. So let's show some respect, even if we disagree with most of WFB Jr.'s positions, his snobbery, etc.

    My personal Buck anecdote is that once when I was in New Haven, I heard people saying that during his visit to the Yale Political Union that night, he was visibly red-faced and showed other signs of drinking. ...WFB was no worse than Ted Kennedy, though, one must admit.

    Anyway, God rest his soul. As Drudge says, RIP WFB.
    So let's hear your comments and anecdotes. Inveigh away!

    Okay, the RI ain't got too many Dem delegates (33), especially vs. Ohio and Texas. But still, consider this:

    If Hillary wins ANYTHING on 3/4, including Rhode Island, you can almost count on:

    "I'm the Comeback Kid!! The state is Rodham Island now!!"
    "Little Rhody is turning the tide! I got my momentum back!!"
    "I AM BACK AND KICKING *SS!!!"

    So although OH, TX, and of course VT are important, Barack should spend some effort on nailing down the Island, so that Hillary has NO excuse, or very little, for crawling on to Pennsylvania. When the most excellent "Constitution Chris" Dodd is done stumping for O in Ohio/Texas, maybe he should be deployed to visit his neighbors in Rhody for a little get-out-the-vOte...

    I thought maybe Hillary had learned some decency and grace, by the end of the Texas debate and her "valedictory" thing about "it'll be fine if either of us is chosen" (paraphrase); but maybe not, cf. the DKos rec list about Hill's "shameful Rovebama" rant. Ugh.

    So I think members of this community should start publicly searching for, and encouraging, primary opponents of her for 2012. (Jonathan Tasini again, maybe not, though he's a nice guy. Someone who can win. --How about NYBri? He lives there, right?)

    Not only would someone else would be good for a change as junior U.S. senator D-NY, besides HRC; a strong primary challenger would also forcefully remind her that she can now either

a) lose to Obama with grace, but have a dignified political career herself, OR

b) lose to Obama without grace, and have NO political career, especially not a dignified one.

    Let's hear your suggestions about the optimum primary challenger for Hillary "Rovebama" Clinton in 2012, so that she doesn't have to "shame" us all again. Comments are open...