Blue Girl Temporarily Offline

Hi everyone.

I just got off the telephone with Blue Girl. She is having some computer hardware issues that are still being diagnosed and that may take her a day or so to resolve.

She hopefully should be back online by late Sunday afternoon or early Monday, has asked me to post this notice for her, and hopes the rest of you will carry the ball in her short absence.

-- Edger (OOIBC)

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Obama Wins South Carolina

It wasn't even close...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - NBC News declared Sen. Barack Obama as the projected winner in South Carolina's Democratic primary.

Obama won South Carolina by a substantial margin, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in second and John Edwards third, NBC reported.

Obama was projected to rout Clinton in the racially charged primary, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National Convention delegates.

A third-place finish for Edwards would come as a sharp setback in the state where he was born and scored a primary victory in his first presidential campaign four years ago.

Landslide margins among black voters fueled Obama's lead, allowing him to overcome the edge that Clinton and Edwards had among whites in the state. Black women turned out in particularly large numbers. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, got a quarter of the white vote while Clinton and Edwards split the rest.

The victory was Obama's first since he won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, scored an upset in the New Hampshire primary a few days later. They split the Nevada caucuses, she winning the turnout race, he gaining a one-delegate margin. In an historic race, she hopes to become the first woman to occupy the White House, and Obama is the strongest black contender in history.

The South Carolina primary marked the end of the first phase of the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, a series of single-state contests that winnowed the field, conferred co-front-runner status on Clinton and Obama but had relatively few delegates at stake.

THIS Democratic Primary Voter would now like to see less talk about personal issues, and more talk about substantive issues. The media be damned--if this doesn't send a wakeup call to all camps that they better leave the mudslinging behind and start talking about issues that matter to voters, the end result is going to be a further fracturing of the Democratic Party.

One thing I do not want to see is the 50 state strategy thrown under the bus. Today showed that a whole lot of voters in a red state are willing to come out and vote for a Democrat. Is anyone paying attention?

They'd better be.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Tonight, Obama got almost 300,000 votes. In a "red" state.

Last week, McCain and Huckabee combined got less than that.

Wow.

So much for compassionate conservatism

In fact, would someone just take that notion out to Miller's Crossing and put a couple of .22 rounds behind the left ear? There is nothing compassionate about these authoritarian jackasses - they are all about punishment - and if that punishment is capital, all the better so far as they are concerned.

Here is what has me all pissed off this afternoon.

For less than ten bucks apiece, rescue kits can be put in the hands of drug users, and people who die of overdoses could be saved. (Chart here) Frequently, when a person overdoses on heroin, or Rush Limbaugh's favorite substance to abuse, Oxycontin, they are not alone; but the person who is with them doesn't call for help because they are afraid they will be arrested, or lose their housing, or lose custody of their kids. The opiate-overdose rescue kit is a nasal spray that administers a drug called Narcan, and if it is delivered in a timely manner, approximately 75% of overdose deaths can be prevented.

But of course, the Bush drug policy office disagrees vehemently.

Dr. Bertha Madras, who heads up the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, gets downright apoplectic at the notion that common rabble and not the ordained high priests of medicine might administer a lifesaving treatment. "First of all, I don't agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That's No. 1," she says. "I just don't think that's good public health policy." [Yes, we all know that death is a better public health policy than life.]

Madras takes the position that drug users are not likely to be able to handle an overdose emergency. Then she makes the same leap of illogic that all of the "drug free America" idiots take - if they have access to the kits, they won't be motivated stop using drugs, because they aren't likely to be scared by the prospect of an overdose. "Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services." [Yes, we all know that addicts are supremely reasonable and make rational choices.]

Her statement is also patently dishonest, but honesty isn't the long suit of these people, as we have tragically learned. Heroin and Oxycontin are both extremely long-acting opiates, and Narcan is a short-acting opiate agonist. The person needing Narcan should still seek medical attention - and the street-level training that is given along with the rescue kits stresses this. (In my experience in emergency medicine, it is not uncommon for Narcan to be administered four or five times to an OD patient.)

And by the way, in case you think this frame sounds vaguely familiar, it is the same one they use to argue that teenagers shouldn't have access to birth control, because if they didn't have the specter of a life-changing pregnancy hanging over their heads, they might be inclined to fuck.

Like I said, it's all about punishment and "just desserts" with these fascistic bastards prone to adhere to the authoritarian/punishment line.

[Tip o' the cap to Kevin Drum for getting me off my ass to finally post about this. I've been putting it off in favor of politics for days.]

Since when...

...does that sad old queen Andrew Sullivan represent feminism?

Look, Sully, we get it...

You have a terminal case of Hillary Derangement Syndrome.

At the merest mention of her name, his eye begins to twitch, he starts foaming at the mouth and in seconds he is in full-on, deranged-wingnut rant.

But kindly leave us actual feminists out of it, would you?

If there is one thing that has been glaringly illuminated by Hillary's run for the roses, it's this: While we have come a long way since my grandmothers were marching for the right to vote, we still have a long way to go. Misogyny is alive and well and it's most vile practitioners walk among us every single day, passing themselves off as decent human beings.

I would remind the screeching, deranged subject of the crown that women in this country have only been empowered by suffrage since the 19th amendment was ratified on August 19th 1920. The struggle took seven decades.

What is the behind Sully's latest screed?

Something Faye Wattleton said on Hardball:

Chris Matthews: Faye, you first, you know Hillary Clinton, you know Bill Clinton. What's Bill's role in this thing, is it a good role or a bad role?

Faye Wattleton: Well, I think that Bill Clinton's role is that of the spouses of all the candidates, he's participating as a surrogate for his wife who is running. And I think that its entirely consistent with the ascension of other women to the top offices in their country; they come about it as the result of the president being their spouse or being members of prominent families. So I don't think that we should be so upset and agitated about Mr. Clinton's participation - we should continue to focus on the issues that the people want to hear about...these other matters are really side issues.

Like it or not, women have tended to ascend to power via family connections. Indira Ghandi was the daughter of Jawarhalal Nehru, a pivotal leader of the independence movement in India and the first prime minister. More recently, Benazir Bhutto assumed the head of her fathers party after her father and brothers were killed. In this country, the only Republican I have ever voted for is Nancy Kassebaum - who picked up the mantle of her father, Alf Landon.

Sully can twitch and writhe all he wants. He can froth like madman and fall on the floor - but that does not make what Faye Wattleton said any less true, nor does it make what she said a banal acceptance of nepotism.

I don't like the way things are - it's the twenty-first century, for fucks sake! We should be equal by now. That we aren't goes far beyond embarrassing.

Sully is just getting ridiculous with his HDS. He needs to shut the fuck up. And if he doesn't, he needs to have his ass kicked by a group of women wearing sensible shoes.

So does anyone really believe Matt Blunt's 'spend more time with my family' dodge?

Less than two weeks before Matt Blunt dropped his "I'm not seeking reelection" bombshell, he gathered his cronies at the posh Big Cedar Lodge south of Branson to plan the campaign strategy for his upcoming reelection battle.

Present at the meeting were top-tier staffers from his administration, media specialists, fundraisers, pollsters, communications specialists and ground-game organizers. There was no doubt in anyones mind: the meeting was the kickoff to his reelection campaign. Those present reported that the Governor was engaged, inquisitive and involved in every aspect of the planning. Prior to the meeting, Blunt had prerecorded video footage for his initial volley of campaign commercials that were to be rolled out before spring, with the goal of beating Nixon off the starting blocks with a couple of weeks of uncontested air time in which he could tout his ostensible "accomplishments" with no counter message.

The brainstorming session in the Ozarks turned over every rock they could find. The participants pored over internal polling data; they discussed initiative petitions currently making the rounds, keenly remembering the effects of 2006's Amendment 2 (the stem cell initiative) and the influence of that initiative on other races.

During the meetings his message was honed: He would accentuate that he had turned around a $1 Billion inherited state debt to show three years of surplusses, that spending on education had been boosted, and that 90,000 new Missouri jobs had been created. He even planned to claim that he had transformed a broken health care system.

The messages crafted at the Big Cedar Lodge formed the foundation for the State of the State address he delivered on January 15.

Those in attendance were convinced that the message could be framed successfully, even though Jay Nixon would assail the governors record of kicking poor people off the Medicaid rolls, warn that the economy was shaky, and the education system was still lagging.

So what happened?

It wasn't money - Blunt had a proven ability to rake in massive amounts of cash, and some people present thought he could take in as much as $20 million for his war chest. He had raised almost $10 million since being elected in 2004, although his campaign warchest was sitting at about $4 million, and he still needed to return $2.3 million in excess contributions. After the reimbursements were made, he and Nixon would be on a level playing field.

So again, what happened?

There are plenty of instances of wrongdoing to point to. Those who haven't done anything wrong are not usually inclined to spend $89,000 in legal fees in a single quarter. You may recall that the Eckersley scandal broke in the last quarter. In case you have forgotten, Scott Eckersley was a staff attorney for the governor who was fired for having the temerity to tell Baby Guv he needed to follow the law and archive email, not delete, delete, delete. Of course, Baby Guv lashed out.

Or maybe the money he took from Jack Abramoff for his 2000 Secretary of State campaign has finally caught up with him?

Or did his pioneering work in vote caging catch up to him? When he was still Secretary of State, he instructed county election officials to provide him with lists of absentee voters, and then forwarded those names to Republican campaign operatives, and the GOP began contacting those voters. This ploy by a graduate of the Naval Academy disproportionately disenfranchised military personnel who were serving overseas in a time of war.

Or perhaps something came of the probe into his 2004 campaign for governor, when he used $48,000 of the public funds to run ads to encourage the citizenry to go to the polls. This scheme gave Blunt an unfair edge over his opponent, and allowed him to win by a nose.

Of course, there is the fact that former state representative Nathan Cooper was due to report to prison just days after Blunt's announcement, and of course it is just a coincidence that Cooper hearing those doors slam behind him has now been delayed.

Could it be that Nathan is singing like a canary, and Matty B knows there is an indictment in his immediate future? Dare I hope?

Or could it be the fee office scandal? I've been waiting almost two years for an indictment on that mess. There is just no way that little arrangement among insiders was on the up-and-up.

Whatever the reason for his sudden one-eighty, there is one thing for sure - I'm not buying the whole "spend more time with my family" smokescreen. Unless he is trying to soak 'em up now before he goes to the federal pen for some corruption charge or another, and the wife goes back to Virginia from whence she came.

Crossposted from Show Me Progress, Missouri's Progressive Politics Community