The Maverick Tribe

Not because it's judicial activism - because it's likely to win a popular vote in California.  Not because it's bad for children - because that has been disproven by the facts.  Not because it's an extension of the sexual revolution - because marriage of any kind discourages promiscuity and self-centeredness.  Not because marriage has a consistent definition historically - because the Mormons, Warren Jeffs and old European aristocracy say otherwise.

Same sex marriage is wrong - just because.

Can anybody get me the Cowboy Hat Guy's number?

Enjoy:

As the Clinton campaign complains about the media's sexism and compliments Fox News for the fairest political coverage this year, it's important to remember all this:

(But I still think Obama has to engage Fox directly instead of shutting them out.)

Fox News never disappoints:

Looks like I have something in common with Mrs. Clinton:  today we both brought up the specter of an Obama assassination - in my case it was intentional, in her case as a result of the following comments in response to a question about why she remains in the race against very long odds:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June.  We all remember how Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.

So is Mrs. Clinton hanging around in hopes that Obama gets shot?  Not even I think she's that evil, but it's a very, very unfortunate comment indeed - right up there with Mike Huckabee joking about Obama having to dodge a bullet at an NRA event.

It's startling how few outside the African American community appreciate the real danger of an Obama assassination, isn't it?

I know I'm in the minority in saying this, but isn't there something a little lurid and crass about our quadrennial fetish with presidential candidates' health records?  John McCain has just released his after a good amount of harping about it by the media, but, personally, I'd rather not know, and I'm sure Sen. McCain would rather not have us know.  Don't get me wrong - I love transparency.  Let me see your tax returns (Cindy McCain?  We're still waiting!), your campaign contributions, the power lunches you've had with unseemly lobbyists.  But let's keep our prostate enlargements to ourselves, shall we?

Belying their powerlessness over metaphysics, many Americans want to believe they're voting for someone who will finish out their term still breathing (at which time we can resume poking our noses into all of their bodily cavities should they choose to run for reelection).  But let's look at history.  In the last hundred years, only four presidencies have met with untimely ends:  Nixon's, JFK's, FDR's, and Warren Harding's.  And Nixon's downfall wasn't even health related - unless you consider sociopathic paranoia to be a medical condition.  Kennedy concealed an array of serious health issues, but his most problematic turned out to be a bullet through the brain.

Before the era of television, things apparently worked a bit differently.  Roosevelt died early in his fourth term at a time when Americans probably would have reelected his cryogenically frozen head, had it been on the ticket.  And back in 1923, Harding died of a heart attack.  (Who knew?)

People die.  The old generally keel over more than the young, but that's far from certain when it comes to presidents.  If I were a betting man, and a morbid one at that, I'd wager that the 46-year-old Obama has more to worry about than the 71-year-old McCain.  Bullets, after all, don't do age discrimination.

Why does Barack Obama lose so badly in West Virginia and Kentucky?

All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the most probable:

(Brought to you by Al Jazeera - the politically correct mainstream media fails to do this type of basic journalism.)

Perhaps in deference to her dignity in the final days of Mrs. Clintons dying campaign, the press is letting her lie repeatedly without correcting the record.  When Mrs. Clinton says, daily, that she is ahead in the "popular vote", this is not the "Clinton campaign's position", it is not their "argument", it is not even political spin.  The claim that she has more popular votes is an objective falsehood, and I simply can't understand why the media doesn't call it this.  Even if you ignore the debatability of what the "popular vote" actually means in many states' complex caucus systems, the notion that Mrs. Clinton is "winning" is flatly untrue because it counts votes cast in the Florida and Michigan contests.

In order to count the results of Florida and Michigan, they need to be actual Democratic (and democratic) primary elections.  An actual D/democratic primary election is not one in which the candidates have previously agreed that it wouldn't count.  It is not one in which no one is allowed to campaign, run ads, hold rallies, and generally make their case to the voters.  And it is not one in which many of the primary contestants do not even appear on the ballot for Christ's sake.  To say that Hillary Clinton is ahead in the popular vote is to say that no one would have voted for Barack Obama had he been on the ballot in Michigan.

It is legitimate and correct to say the DNC fucked this one up.  It is legitimate and correct to say that Michigan and Florida should have a say in the Democratic primary.  It is even legitimate and correct to say the Obama campaign should have cooperated more in efforts to stage a fair re-vote.  But it is neither legitimate nor correct to say that the votes that did happen give Mrs. Clinton any kind of popular vote "lead".  In fact, it is an outright lie.

And it makes me want to barf.

To the extent that the general election has begun, Barack Obama is losing.  He supports a $300 billion farm bill Congress sent to the president last week - a bill that expanded subsidies to a variety of food growers and agribusinesses and is a marvel of special interest handouts, corporate welfare, government waste and irresponsibility, and politics as usual.  In short, everything his campaign supposedly stands against.

John McCain, as expected, was one of the few who voted against the bill, which passed with a veto-proof majority.

Yesterday, David Brooks had an excellent column on the gap between what Obama says and what he sometimes does.

For shame!