I'm in full agreement with Ezra---McCain is going to go with Lieberman as the VP pick. I largely agree with his reasoning---McCain's only chance at winning is distinguishing himself from the crazy wingnuts (of which he's a member of good standing) that have dominated the Bush administration, and for the low information voter, especially, the fact that he picked a former Democrat will show he's such a moderate guy. To quote Ezra:
The New York Times joins the "stop telling us what you're going to do, start telling us how you're going to do it, and don't bother us with any of that 'policy' crap" train.
I was in a cab once, and the cab driver told me that I looked like a sensitive, caring type with engaging eyes, a terrific smile and a personal warmth that touched everyone I met. Then I turned on the service light and went to find my first passenger.
UPDATE: Apparently, pictures of the mountains in Denver are too Messianic. I guarantee you this is the histrionic attack that comes out of the convention - Obama's step over the line from media Messianism to literal Messianism. God help him if he's seen anywhere near a loaf of bread. Oh, wait, "God help him" is redundant. Lord-made-flesh colloquial redundancy-ass bullshit, that's what I say.
John McCain's aides feel as if they've been "underusing" the POW card. It figures that the person doing the most to demean and marginalize McCain's military is McCain himself.
Of course the "wisdom" of political consultant Dave “Mudcat” Saunders makes my job even harder. His "redneck for hire" schtick -- sold to pols (like failed presidential candidate John Edwards) who want to get to know Mudcat's demographic -- pay handsomely for this advice to Barack Obama:
The nominee's difficulties are not about the colour of his skin but the tin in his ear. “White people in the South and throughout the Appalachians love black culture. I mean, Southern-style cooking is black food. Everything I eat is fried. Your swing vote in the Appalachians comes down to common-sense thinking people who have strong faith, and what Barack Obama needs to do is embrace his culture. Because we like his culture. But nobody knows anything about him; over 10 per cent of the rednecks out here — and I'm a redneck — think he's a Muslim 'cause nobody's ever told 'em any different.”
No, those folks have been "told different" and they stubbornly still believe he's a Muslim. Sorry, Mudcat, it's a weasely way of being uncomfortable about Obama's "difference" without saying it's racism (and it's not just a southern thing - remember that woman in Ohio who insisted Obama will "revert to his Muslim and "Arab tendencies.") .
And as if to prove my point, Mudcat reveals an aspect of Southern culture that he holds in high esteem by showing us his bedroom and the covers he slips between at night:
More below the fold. This does not help me with my non-Southern peeps, Mudcat. Why are you sleeping with the symbol of oppression and bigotry? He describes the flag as "a tribute to the gallant kids from around here who lost their lives" during the War of Northern Aggression Civil War. "Rebs" know exactly what they are doing when they put that Confederate battle flag on their pickups, but you sleep under a giant one? Come the F on. As if on cue, here's Oliver Willis's take:
Do you see, perhaps, why some of us may see folks like Saunders as knuckle-dragging dumbass hillbillies? The confederate flag is a flag flown in support of slavery. There’s not really any way around that. You can go on at length about horsepuckey “southern pride” or whatever the b.s. du jour is, but at its core that flag stands for fond memories of keeping black people subhuman and in chains.
Where I agree with Mudcat is that Democrats at the national level have failed to "get" the South, and the way to connect is to focus on how a vote for the GOP (based on fear and smear and "family values") has only resulted in that working class demographic getting screwed over and over again. It's fertile ground to focus on economic justice issues. It's not a positive development to continue clinging to an icon of pain and bigotry.
Catering to Mudcat's "redneck culture" wisdom with the flag may fly in the deep South, but the reality is, in Southern/Mid-Atlantic states like NC and Virginia, John McCain is the one who needs to worry -- his parade of homes that he cannot recall isn't playing well down here. Who's the elitist now?
I've been meaning to write on this situation that Lindsay blogged about for awhile, and it's good, I suppose, I put it off, because there's been an illuminating amount of follow-up. To summarize: Windsor High School in Wyoming has, like a lot of high schools, a routinely administered "torture them for being teenagers" program of the "scared straight" variety. When I was in high school, the big scary things that we teenagers were assumed to be doing were at least tangentially related to the horrible punishments that were trotted out---the naughty was drugs and the consequences were long prison sentences. Those were more innocent times, I suppose, since at least drug paranoia was equal-opportunity and, objectively speaking, based in the reasonable belief that kids shouldn't do drugs. That said, the scared straight programs I bore witness to were ineffectually maudlin and, in the classic tradition, seemed to be rooted in fear and loathing of teenagers for being teenagers, so the sum total effect was that if you didn't want to do drugs before the program, you sure did afterward.
I'll bet you weren't aware that until Barack Obama's quest for the presidency is over, Hillary Clinton actually owns the time 3:00 AM lock, stock and barrel. Anything that happens at 3:00 AM, from Taco Bell closing to your middle-of-the-night drink of water to someone's car alarm going off?
