The major “news” outlets - with ZERO percent of the precincts reporting, a mere four minutes after the polls closed - have projected Barack Obama the winner of the Democratic primary in South Carolina.

In related “news,” the New England Patriots have been declared the winners of the 2008 Super Bowl.

Congrats to Tom Brady - oh yeah, and to Barack Obama. Who needs a scoreboard?

I’m being glib in the title of this post, but if I’ve ever felt the need to use “slaughtered” and “destroyed” in a sentence after reading a blog post, this is it. No, silly, not physical violence, but in the intellectual sense: I think NO’s comment at the bottom sums it up best:

…why in hell should any politician deliver for unions? implied “ever again?”

One will have a very difficult time defending some decisions and leadership in the unions after reading this devastating post. Don’t read it as about Edwards. Take out his name and insert the candidate of your choice; it could’ve happened to any of them.

Unions in America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than 15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly the same percentage as it was in 1930 before FDR took power and encouraged the growth of unions. The first crucial battle the unions lost came after FDR died, when over Truman’s veto the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947. Truman called the Taft-Hartley Act a “slave labor bill”.

Since then unions have lost critical battle after battle  Read more 

Natasha says a lot of what I’ve been trying to say here re Edwards and the media. One comment really struck me:

Edwards is a little too goodlooking for my taste. He should have a scar across one cheek, maybe grease up his hair and comb it back.  Read more 

Just got in from an Edwards fundraiser, and I’m pretty tired; it was a long drive there and back for me after an early morning. But I thought I’d share a few thoughts. She was kind enough to speak with me briefly, and to the group of supporters as a whole at some length. Bottom line: Elizabeth is the Real Deal, a human being with a heart, someone who is Doing It because she cares about the future, and not because there is gain in it for her.  Read more 

Via Ian:

Flying below the radar, the former vice-presidential candidate is pulling off a feat that Democratic consultants have long considered impossible: staking out the most progressive platform among the viable candidates while preserving an aura of electability. In head-to-head polling against the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, Clinton and Obama have managed to post only modest leads. Edwards, by contrast, not only bests every Republican candidate in the race, he trounces them — by an average of twelve points.  Read more 

The courtiers in Versailles on the Potomac have apparently concluded that Hillary is the Democratic candidate most likely to keep their various corrupt enterprises on the government tit, uh most likely to carry their funding forward, uh, the most likely to be Moderate. (Sure, Bernstein has his book, but I’m talking the working press here.) So I guess Hillary’s vote in favor of the Iraq Clusterfuck was good for something.

And I’d like to like Obama more than I do, because he seems thoughtful in a way that the others aren’t, but to claim to be a movement, you’ve got to have a movement, and that’s not the same thing as having enthusiastic crowds.

And so—leaving aside Gore, who keeps polling at a steady 15% without spending a dime—we come to Edwards. There’s a semi-reasonable piece from the very well paid Nags in the Times today, which you could almost read as a make-good, except they’ve already fucked Edwards over so badly that nothing they do can make it good. And give Nags credit: at least his crushes are heterosexual:  Read more 

Got a lot to get to today, so here are some links to interesting reading.

Please check out this Sibel Edmonds blog. There is so much going on in her case. She’s a CT foiler’s wet dream: a high ranking intelligence official who is spilling the beans. Everyone should keep in mind what she is talking about, because it touches on so much of what is happening in our government today.

It just gets more and more absurd in the Padilla case. Now the government is claiming they “lost” interrogation tapes. What are they hiding? He was torutured interrogated over 80 times. More here.  Read more 

One of the reasons my online nym is “dyke” is because by using that word proudly and publically, I take away the power of homophobes to use it against me. Coulter has once again accomplished her mission, and has everyone talking about her use of the term “faggot” to slur Edwards. People on the left are decrying her, again, for being an eliminationist extremist, and unrepentent fascist, and rightly suggesting that the way to use this outburst of hers is to chain it to those Republicans who praise her. Mitt “I hate faggots too!” Romney introduced Coulter at this event, and said that he “liked her.” She has also endorsed him. So from now on, never refer to Romney without also attaching some term relating to his homophobic friends, OK?

Quiddity has a great post up with the conservative response. Oh, look at the pearl clutching. “Ann was a bad, bad girl. We’re so upset.” No, they’re not. I know it, you know it. Because if they were at all interested in stopping homophobia, they wouldn’t be supporting the party that has introduced bill after bill for the express purpose of denying me my civil rights. They wouldn’t endorse politicians who whip up theocratic bases with the boogeyman of the homosexual. They would speak out about incidents of gay-bashing and inequality in the work place, in our laws, in our culture. Winger pundits never bother to “defend” queers until one of their own has gone a tad too far, and threatened to upset favorable political conditions. Their supposed concern is little more than calculation, mixed with a the need to keep a hand in the pockets of rich, closeted Republican donors.

Speaking of the closet, let’s take a closer look at Bareback Andy, and his supposed awakening at the CPAC hate-fest:  Read more 

We’re always complaining that no one takes us seriously, and that the media ignores our devotion to fact in favor of misdirection and gossip. Well, I can’t think of a bigger sign that all that is changing than this. The exciting word: unscripted. Thousands of Little People like you and me, all of us with our computers and databases of quotes, bills, policies…I’m salivating.  Read more 

I’ve refrained from too much blogging about Donohue’s idiotic campaign to get Amanda fired since the first couple of days, mainly because so many others have picked up on it and Edwards came out and did as close to the right thing as he could. But let’s put it all in perspective, shall we? Who is the Donohue guy anyway? Well, besides being a gay-bashing, Jew-hating bigot, he’s also the guy who decided that one of 2001’s top ten anti-Catholic atrocities was…onion dip. No, I am not making that up.

For those who missed it, Lipton ran a print ad in the June 13, 2001 edition of The New York Press featuring a person holding a bowl of onion dip while waiting in line to take communion—the implication being that this person planned to dip the Eucharist in the onion dip.

Reasonable humor? Clever Madison Avenue marketing? Not according to Bill Donohue. In his eyes, the onion dip ad was an anti-Catholic “atrocity.”  Read more 

Meta, meta, meta. (rhubarb)

Amanda’s plight is so fascinating, and regardless of what happens, there is going to be ink spilled upon the matter for months to come. One angle I’ve not seen too much discussion on yet is what this battle tells us about Who Really Is In Charge. Short version: it’s may not be who you think.  Read more 

That’s going to be my theme for the day. (Scroll down for update)

Perhaps it’s a common enough story, but I’m one of those people who has in my past been both very popular in certain circles and very much an outcast in others. The most painful memory of being unpopular comes from my time in the Marine Corps. Think of that poor guy in “A Few Good Men” and you’re somewhat close to what it was like for me. I was naive and young enough at the time to not really notice until it was too late, and when I got kicked out I was actually quite stunned. I had thought that I was “part of something special” and that my friends would defend me. One young officer, whom everyone in the Company agreed was a wonderful example of everything that is excellent and right about servicemembers, did defend me, and to this day I hold her opinion above those who thought I was the ’wrong stuff.’ Such is life, by such surprises and disloyalty we learn that the world is often an unfair and lonely place. It was an important lesson for me, in that I learned that people frequently clothe themselves in the language and trappings of “honor” and “loyalty,” when in fact what they are really all about is getting ahead, even if it means stepping on their friends and colleagues to do so.

In other situations, I’ve known what it’s like to be “the belle of the ball.” Again, one learns important lessons in that role; there are pitfalls and challenges to being the person everyone wants to know and be seen with, and true friendship can be as hard to find in such conditions as when one is a pariah. Everyone loves a winner until the winner stumbles, and there is little that is more soul-destroying than realizing that without your (money/popularity/power), your “friends” would disappear like cockroaches under bright light. True friendship, and loyalty, are among the most precious things in the world. And nowhere are they more rare than in the world of politics.

This is a Great Test for Edwards.  Read more 

Let’s just make it simple. John, here’s what you say: I support full and equal rights for all Americans, period. That includes the right to marry, regardless of orientation. That’s not hard. As Pam notes, “moral values” handwringing and wishywashy “my daughter is for it before I was against it” really won’t help you. Fact: gay-haters will never vote for you anyway. Fact: you can ride a huge wave of mobilized, loyal to the death gays and progressives (see: Dean) if you come out on the right side of this issue. Fact: every passing year there are more of us and fewer of them (homophobes). Only the right wing noise machine gives the impression that they represent some large portion of the population. Fact: even in states where anti-gay initiatives passed, progressive candidates beat out the gay hating Republicans who ran on gay bashing (see: VA)It’s likely Hillary and Obama will also take the “faggots at the back of the bus” stance, so you’re not going to win over any of their supporters by echoing them.

Be brave man, take a stand. You can’t be the Progressive Candidate without getting on board the equality train all the way.

Here is some interesting advice about how candidates can and should use the Web and blogs. Seems like fairly good advice and the right way to understand what blogging can and cannot do for your campaign.  Read more 

His Royal Highness The Grey Turtleneck points us to Matt’s place for a look at the Donna Edwards/Wynn primary in MD, which in turn points us to the ever estimable Professor Rubin’s blog, in which he gives me all the motivation I need today to don the foil.  Read more 

I guess I’ve been giving them too much credit, it seems the plan is simply to have such completely unreliable machines which cause long delay and lose vote totals is the plan. Rubin leaves the door open for more sinister stuff however.

“Dean’s List” is an Honor—“Dunce” is Not

So the “National Republican Senatorial Campaign” wanted to say something cutting and cruel and derisive about John Edwards, because he was meeeen to Dear Leader in a fundraising letter. (He said Bush didn’t handle Katrina very well. O the horror! O the shock!)

So they called him “Dean for a Day”! Oooh. Owwie. I bet that just made Sunshine Johnny cry big tears.

Eh, okay. Not. And why should it, pray tell? If I didn’t know better I would think this “NRSC” was a gang of unpaid interns from the College Republicans whose campaign bible was “The Wit & Wisdom of Ann Coulter” or something.  Read more