How can anyone imagine the press to be supportive of Obama after this piece. First, Reuters writer Thomas Ferraro latches onto comments by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Nixonian) comparing Barack Obama to his old boss. He warned Barack Obama not to start an enemies list, as Alexander’s old boss Richard Nixon. Is this projection or what? From the Reuters Stenography Service:

A top U.S. Senate Republican invoked the memory of the scandal-marred Nixon administration on Wednesday to urge U.S. President Barack Obama: “Don’t start an enemies list.”

Senator Lamar Alexander told Reuters he sees the Obama White House adopting an attitude similar to that of the Richard Nixon White House four decades ago, that “everybody is against us and we are going to get them.”

Alexander cited as examples the Obama administration threatening to strip the insurance industry of its exemption of federal anti-trust laws, “taking names” of bondholders who opposed the auto bailout, its reported aim to “neuter the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” boycotting Fox News Network and “calling out” of others who oppose it.

“I’m suggesting to the president that he back up and start over,” said Alexander, a member of the Senate Republican leadership. “Don’t start an enemies list.”

This was followed by the ring of truth tolling from Alexander’s lips. Yeah, right.

“We want to work with you,” Alexander said.

Now some of us have memories. We remember Richard Nixon’s enemies list, and also the ludicrous people who showed up on it. Paul Newman considered his inclusion his greatest accomplishment. He was joined by Barbra Streisand, George Wallace, Bill Cosby, Pioneering heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, Carol Channing, Joe Namath and Gregory Peck. Check out Nixon’s enemies list yourself. But keep in mind that just because a Republican calims something doesn’t mean there’s a ring of truth to it. This warning of Alexander for Obama to avoid building an enemies list has the same ring of truth as might a warning to Obama not to fiddle while Rome burns. It’s bizarre in relation to the truth, and the Reuters article not only has no comment on that, but also interviewed nobody with an opposing point of view. Sloppiness or blatant stroking of the GOP? Or maybe this is incompetence on the part of Reuters writers and editors, an incompetence so similar to Republican incompetence that we might want to bring in Lamar Alexander to warn them.

And now to John McCain. Reuters writer Thomas Ferraro knows his stuff in at least one sense; you can always get a good quote from John McCain, even if that quote is throroughly stupid. Check out the words of John McCain in support of the ludicrous notion that Barack Obama might be constructing an enemies list a la Nixon:

Republican Senator John McCain, later at the Reuters summit, advised Obama to tread carefully in a town where political enemies come with the territory.

“I think I’ve been around this town, in the view of many, too long. But long enough to see what the Greek god Hubris will do to administrations,” said McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama.

“And if I were advising the president, which obviously in the administration I’m not, I would encourage them to tread very carefully in making enemies intentionally,” he said. “I’ve found in Washington you pick up enough enemies just conducting your normal life without going out and picking some out.”

My high school Latin teacher Mrs. Ringler is rolling in her grave. The Greek God Hubris? Wha. . .

Did nobody at Reuters, either reporter or editor, ever take history? Wouldn’t you think it’s a requirement to being a reporter, at least if one refers to history in a story? Sure, this guy screwed up on the supposed parallel between Nixon and Obama, but that’s to be expected given that he evidently set out to do a hit piece on Obama, or at the least merely a job of stenography while listening to Republican rants, then reporting them as “news.” But he allowed McCain to get away with fantasy, at best an old man’s memory lapse, and treated it as if it were fact. No, there was no Greek God named “Hubris.” Any reporter who takes John McCain at his word is not doing his job. Or shilling for the GOP.

I leave you with Neil Young. Even Richard Nixon has got soul.

This is a medical study showing that men who voted for McCain or for Bob Barr in last November’s election suffered an immediate drop in testosterone. According to a Duke University study:

Young men who voted for Republican John McCain or Libertarian candidate Robert Barr in the 2008 presidential election suffered an immediate drop in testosterone when the election results were announced, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Michigan.

In contrast, men who voted for the winner, Democrat Barack Obama, had stable testosterone levels immediately after the outcome.

Female study participants showed no significant change in their testosterone levels before and after the returns came in.

The men who participated in the study would normally show a slight night-time drop in testosterone levels anyway. But on this night, they showed a dramatic divergence: The Obama voters’ levels didn’t fall as they should, and the McCain and Barr voters lost more than would have been expected.

There’s a whole bunch of room for snark here. I’ll just leave it for comments, with the simple thought that all those folks are now taking out their low testosterone levels by drinking tea and bagging with each other.

Well, Curt Schilling is not a politician, and he’s not got a disfunctional family. He’s not been punked by Japanese PR guys, as has Sarah Palin. But it seems that Curt Schilling is being considered as a candidate for office, to replace Ted Kennedy. Curt certainly is a friend of John McCain, as we see here on the left, and he’s also got that “no comment” thing down pat. From the Curt Schilling web site, 38 Pitches, via the Boston Herald:

While my family is obviously the priority, and 38 Studios is a priority, I do have some interest in the possibility. That being said, to get to there from where I am today, many many things would have to align themselves for that to truly happen. I am not going to comment further on the matter since at this point it would be speculation on top of speculation.

Well, this is stupid from the get go. Schilling has a mouth on him that doesn’t know how to stay shut, and that’s the biggest disqualification for any politician. Still, it makes him more and more like Sarah Palin. And he’s a McCain Republican, which is more likely to play in Mass than is a right wing whack job Christian Republican like Palin. Still, this is a Democrat seat, and No Republican stands a chance. Not even one with a bloody sock to throw into the ring.

Much has been made about the 2008 Presidential election and what it says about the American electorate. According to the New York Times exit polling, Barack Obama took many demographic groups, such as the highest percentage of Hispanic voters by a Democrat since 1996, and even the highest percentage of male voters since 1972. There’s been much written about the election, but perhaps the biggest shift is the percentage of young voters going to Obama.

That 66% share of the 18-29 demographic is the largest percentage since the New York Times started breaking out the demographics in 1972, and by a long shot. It’s not surprising, is it? The Republicans put up a former beauty queen to act as sidekick to John McCain, a man whose heroics really ended in the 70’s, a couple decades before the youngest voters in this country were born. The beauty queen thing backfired, according to one study from the University of South Florida, and McCain seemed so out of touch that his past heroics may even have been a liability to anyone younger than 50, who saw more “grumpy old man” than national hero during the 2008 election. The undeniable fact is that the Republican base, already skewing old, aged considerably in the 2008 Presidential election. So, what is the GOP going to do about it? More of the same failed approach.

The GOP has announced an initiative to attract young voters, and it is being staged in Florida. That makes sense, at least, because the GOP might just have a chance to gain in Florida given the popularity of Jeb Bush and the closeted Charlie Crist, but check out the speakers at this rally, Carrie Prejean and Bruce Jenner. From UPI:

Florida Republicans enlisted a former beauty queen and a former Olympian to come to a conference aimed at recruiting young people to the GOP.

The daylong conference Saturday will feature Carrie Prejean, the former beauty queen best known for her opposition to same-sex marriage, and Bruce Jenner, the 1976 track-and-field gold medalist, the St. Petersburg Times reported Friday.

Carrie Prejean has a notorious reputation based in her questioning at the Miss USA pageant, but she’s got conservative cred from working for the extremist right wing National Organization for Marriage. Of course, this begs the question of whether being a beauty queen who is known for anti-gay campaigning is going to help in attracting young voters. I’m guessing not, given that the demographics in support of gay marriage skew young. Prejean will not succeed where the former beauty queen Sarah Palin miserably failed.

Jenner? What we’ve got here is yet another aging superstar hero. Sure, Bruce Jenner spent a year on the Wheaties box in the mid-70’s, but he’s been a zero ever since. Do people under 30 even know who this aging veteran of the Wheaties box and failed cosmetic surgery is? Well, maybe, given that Jenner’s sons have starred on reality shows and he’s the step-father (third marriage) of Kim Kardashian, she of the sex tape scandal?

Yeah, this pairing, designed evidently to attract young people and convince them that the GOP is the party for them, looks like a complete FAIL from top to bottom. Republican incompetence strikes again.

We don’t have to go back to John McCain dumping his first wife for an heiress to understand his judgement about women. For him it is always risk and reward, and the man likes to take risks. When he dumped his first wife he was rewarded with wealth that might have been a big key to his political career. Seems like he scored big there concerning his judgement with women. But his judgement last fall was hugely off the mark when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. The Washington Post has it dead on when it calls McCain’s choice of Palin a “huge gamble.”

While Palin was being driven to Sedona, McCain spoke to Culvahouse by telephone about the previous night’s interview. Culvahouse gave a positive report. She had knocked some of the broader questions out of the park, he told McCain. She would not necessarily be ready on Jan. 20, 2009, to be vice president, but in his estimation few candidates ever are. Culvahouse believed she had a lot of capacity. “What’s your bottom line?” McCain asked. Culvahouse later told an audience that he responded, “John, high risk, high reward.”

He said McCain replied, “You shouldn’t have told me that. I’ve been a risk-taker all of my life.”

We all know what came of McCain’s pick of Palin, but he’s maybe lucky nothing else came up from the Palin direction to blow the election sky high. Levi acted the difficult part, after all, and only started down the interview road as jilted baby daddy after the election loss. Now there may even be a divorce in Sarah Palin’s future, if the rumors are anything to go by.

But McCain isn’t done with his bad decisions about women. John McCain has been all for immigration reform in the past, which has stood well in the Latino community, so now he’s risking all that to vote against Sonia Sotomayor. That risks McCain’s standing in AZ, and the big question to me is what the heck he thinks he has to gain by riling up a large consituency in his own state. Well, I guess the Republicans don’t have anything to lose by opposing Sotomayor, not with the dismal numbers in their column. Perhaps McCain is reading things the same way. Still, as concerns women it seems John McCain has made, and continues to make, some terrible judgements.

John McCain decided to whine yesterday. Loud whine, partisan whine. The whine came just a day after the release of the Senate Armed Services Report on torture that he signed, a report that devastatingly details the abuses during the Bush Administration. that report has helped fuel the calls for investigations and possible prosecutions concerning the illegal use of torture presumably ordered by Bush Administration officials. So John McCain is partly responsibile for feeding the public’s interest in justice, but he’s whining about what would happen if such an investigation gets underway. He warns about a “witch hunt,” as reported by Politico:

The former GOP presidential nominee and POW supported Obama’s decision to end the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques but insisted that those who gave legal advice should not be prosecuted because they were “sworn to do their duty to the best of their ability.”

“Look, I didn’t agree, as you said, with the techniques — and I’d be glad to continue that debate with people. But to criminalize their legal counsel, unless you can prove that they intentionally violated existing laws or ethics, then this is going to turn into a witch hunt,” he said.

McCain compared the potential prosecutions with the actions of “banana republics” that “prosecute people for actions they didn’t agree with under previous administrations.”

“To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents — precedents that may be set by this, and certainly nonproductive in trying to pursue the challenges we face,” he said.

First of all, John McCain, these lawyers on the Bush Administration team may indeed have been doing the best in their ability, but it is clear now that their abilities were just fine as far as legal skills are concerned, and about nil as far as understanding and valuing the constitution. But this is a side issue. What we are talking about when we want justice concerning the illegal actions of the Bush Administration doesn’t have to do so much with the tainted lawyers, but about the people who ordered the policies that caused torture int he first place. That ain’t a witch hunt, John, and it ain’t just about disagreements in policy. This is about illegal acts that your report claims has massively damaged US reputation around the world and consequently our abilities to combat terrorism. It’s about crime, John.

McCain buggy whips out phrases like “witch hunt” and “banana Republic” in order to inflame things politically, but his own people are doing even uglier things. If John McCain values his party, of which he was the leader mere months ago, then he needs to take the lead in calming the rhetoric about “socialism,” and other crackpot crap. If McCain wants bipartisanship that lets us look forward without healing the wounds made to our national soul by the Bush torture policies, then he ought to check a little about whether bipartisanship is possible on his side of the aisle. The “Just Say No” faction of the GOP, which appears to be all of them, isn’t going to reconcile whatsoever even if Obama is successful in making the inquiries into Bush Administration torture programs go forward calmly and deliberately.

Of course, John McCain knows there are more reports going to come out, including a release of pictures of the degrading treatment of prisoners conducted under the Bush Administration. Heck, today’s report about over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths isn’t going to help McCain, and he knows that the calls for a reconciliation commission, the calls for accountability, are going to ring louder before they quiet down. And John McCain knows that Americans are happy with Barack Obama as President, are for the first time in a long time Americans are believing that this country is going the right direction.

John McCain needs to get his own political house in order before he goes slinging words like “banana Republic” and “witch hunt” around. Let’s dismiss that “banana Republic” is a new talking point foisted on him by the RNC and look at realities here. John, we have illegalities that have almost certainly gone down in the Bush Administration. Those illegalities revolve around the use of torture, among other issues. The crimes that have taken place have severely harmed our national moral image, the one thing America could always be proud of. John, YOU were proud to serve because America was a moral beacon to the world, but while you were serving, John, another Republican President broke laws. With Watergate we took the miscreants to task and it did not harm our country. I would argue it made us better. I need, and we all need, for America to be better. Don’t stand in our way, John McCain, as we seek to heal. Don’t you dare.

Isn’t it sweet, that Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi are the bottom dwellers when it comes to trust about identifying and solving problems for our nation. Of course Obama still ranks high in the trust of the people in this Public Strategies poll, consistent with other polling over the last few months. But Pelosi and Palin together? Odd bedfellows, eh? From Politico:

In a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO national survey of 1,000 registered voters, Obama outdistances figures on both the left and the right in earning the public’s trust, with two-thirds of respondents saying they trust the president “to identify the right solutions to the problems we face as a nation.”

Of those who said they trust the president, 31 percent said they trust him “a great deal.” An additional 35 percent said they have “some” trust that Obama will find the correct solution. Thirty-one percent said they trust Obama either “not very much” or “not at all.”

Voters were asked the same question of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and the two major political parties. Among those choices, only the Democratic Party was trusted to find the right solutions by a majority of voters, 52 percent to 40 percent. Forty percent of those surveyed said they trusted the Republican Party, compared with 54 percent who did not trust the GOP.

Only 26 percent said they trust Pelosi, the lowest total in the group. Palin attracted the highest percentage of those who did not trust her at all to identify the right solutions, topping Pelosi 33 percent to 32 percent. Romney got a mixed reaction, with 38 percent of voters saying they trust him and 39 percent saying they don’t.

Sane people didn’t trust Palin anyway, but I’d say it is encouraging that more people are waking to their own sanity. Still, who are those numbnuts saying they trust the woman to run the economy? Man! Even John McCain won’t mention her name.

Hooray for John McCain. He has enlisted several folks to help him procure a pardon for Jack Johnson, the boxer. Johnson was charged with the Mann Act and served a year in Leavenworth a long, long time ago. The Mann Act? That’s for transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. Peter King and a few others are joining McCain in sponsoring a bill to pardon Jaohnson, though why they don’t just send a petition I don’t know. Wouldn’t Barack Obama be receptive? Still, hoorah for John McCain working hard to posthumously pardon one of his childhood heroes. Childhood heroes? From Yahoo.com:

Sen. John McCain wants a presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, who became the nation’s first black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first black president.

McCain feels Johnson was wronged by a 1913 conviction of violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

“I’ve been a very big fight fan, I was a mediocre boxer myself,” McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview. “I had admired Jack Johnson’s prowess in the ring. And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done.”

He had admired Johnson in the ring? Johnson last fought in 1938 while in his fifties, far past his prime and when John McCain was in his infancy. I mean, I know John McCain is older than dirt, but even he isn’t old enough to have admired Johnson’s fighting. Sure, Ken Burns did a documentary about Johnson that aired in 2005. Yeah, maybe that’s what McCain is talking about, but the context speaks otherwise to me.

In last fall’s election campaign the GOP used an ad in Ohio that ripped off the Jackson Browne golden oldie, “Running on Empty.” The point they were trying to get across was that the Obama campaign energy policy would leave us without gas, or something like that. Jackson Browne was offended by the ad, and has sued all of the above, John McCain, the RNC, and etc. Turns out John McCain’s defense is that he never approved the use of the song. The man helped write the campaign laws, for Christ’s sake, and he can’t take personal responsibility for this kind of bungling? Here’s his defense, from Wired.com:

I was not involved at all in any way in the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video, nor do I have any knowledge whatsoever of how this video was written, created, produced or disseminated or who was involved in any aspect of the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video. I was completely unaware that this video even existed until I was informed of it after this lawsuit was filed.

The judge didn’t buy it.

Despite McCain’s claims of being a hapless dupe for his party, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner said (.pdf) the RNC and McCain were so intertwined — what the judge called an “agency relationship” — that McCain stays in the case. The judge wrote that, even if McCain’s statement were true, “once an agency relationship is established, the principal is liable for the acts of her agent, even if the principal does not expressly authorize or instruct her agent to take any action.”

The judge also did not agree with the Republicans and McCain that Browne’s lawsuit was bogus. Among other things, the judge kept the lawsuit alive to give the defendants a chance to demonstrate how using about 20 seconds of the song in the commercial was a fair use.

Yes, persons running for political office are responsible, just like we are, for using and paying for the artistic products they want to emply to back their own ambitions.

In the interest of full disclosure, my son goes to sleep quite well to Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.” I have not played “Rosie” for him.

I suppose someone might have seen this coming back in the fall, when Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson was passed over the nomination as John McCain’s VP nominee in favor of Sarah Palin. Well they were both in TV news at one point, and they are both of huge value to the NRA, but it seems this cat fight is about abortion.

One thing is sure concerning the Palin nomination over Hutchinson — if Kay Bailey wasn’t pissed, she sure was channelling that feeling to at least one reporter. From NewsMax, the transcript of some candid comments on MSNBC last September:

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And…

Noonan: It’s over.

Murphy: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

Todd: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

Noonan: Saw Kay this morning.

Todd: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this.

Murphy: They’re all bummed out.

Todd: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives…

Todd: Yeah, they went to a narrative.

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

I’m thinking Noonan and Murphy were wrong. Hutchinson and Palin are alike in several hard core Republican issues, such as gun control, and they are both women. Good candidates, except, of course, that Hutchinson can put together a sentence and Palin needs some help with that difficult task. There’s too big differences between the two. Hutchinson is older by 20 years, and thus couldn’t have balanced out McCain’s age on the ticket, and the kicker. Hutchinson supports Roe v. Wade, with restrictions. Palin is banking on the virulent anti-abortion extremist Christian vote in four years. So what does Sarah Palin do the other day? Palin endorses Rick Perry, despite that he’s rumored to be gay, because Rick Perry is the darling of the extremist right wing Christian conservatives down there in Texas. (Reports on Palin’s endorsement of Perry can be found in both the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal.) Here’s a few quips about Perry from Palin from the Monitor:

“He walks the walk of a true conservative,” she said of Perry. “And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns.”

. . .

“Not every child is born into ideal circumstances, but every life is sacred,” Palin wrote. “Rick Perry knows this – it is at the core of his being.”

There’s the ticket. Sarah Palin is beginning her 2012 Presidential run in Texas appealing to the extremist right wing Christian crowd by backing Rick Perry over Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Governor’s race. Texas has a lot of delegates, so it seems a smart political move for Palin, but time will tell on that, of course. One wonders, of course, if her backing of Perry also has to do with Hutchinson’s luke warm response to Palin’s Vice Presidential candidacy. Is this a form of payback? Now that’s old fashioned politics we all know and love, isn’t it?

Well, it cannot be denied that Hutchinson was luke warm to Palin last fall. An article in the Dallas Morning News on September 4, 2008 shows Hutchinson as a bit less than inspired by Palin, and lots of folks last fall were wondering why McCain picked Palin over Hutchinson (like here) if he wanted a woman on the ticket. But I’m thinking this is not Sarah Palin playing hardball and getting back at Hutchinson, who for the most part played the good GOP soldier after McCain picked Palin. This is simply a case of Sarah Palin snubbing the woman in a shrewd poltiical move to enegrize the extremist right wing Christians she will need if she decides to run for President.