• People who forget their keys in the car: 43% Obama.
• People who own dogs, cats, fish and birds, but draw the line at capabaras: 54% McCain.
• People who buy boxed wine and pour it into bottles before serving it to company: 61% Barr.
• People who write checks at busy supermarkets: 89% McCain.
• People behind them in line: 87% Obama.
• People who need jokes explained to them: 39% Nader.
• People who leave up Christmas decorations until February: 59% McCain.
• People who name their children with too many vowels: 74% Obama.
• People who wait until their midlife crisis to rebel against their parents: 62% Clinton.
• People so pissed at stupid polls they could scream: AAAAAARGH!!!

McCain tops Obama among pet owners [LAT]

We sat out the Bomb America First kerfluffle, but it comes to mind that both parties have potential disasters in their corner:

Bertha formed last Thursday near the Cape Verde islands off Africa. It is unusual for storms to form so far east so early in the season, and when it does happen, it is frequently a harbinger of heightened storm activity.

So, let’s all look forward to another summer of global-warming inspired mayhem, guaranteed to peak just as the two conventions are getting underway. And if anyone is maintaining the Nuke Iran Pool, we’d like the slot one week after the next major American city gets wiped out from Shrub’s incompetence.

First hurricane of 2008 forms in distant Atlantic [Reuters]

There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.
  —Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker

• Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
• The refrigerator light goes out when you shut the door.
• Use of a brand-name hygiene product does not turn the women around you into ravenous beasts.
• Mystical creatures are not involved in the production of factory cookies.
• Four out of five dentists are paid to agree, while the fifth is holding out for more money.
• Your favorite plush characters all have hands up their asses.
• Dancing with earbuds makes you look like a dork to those surrounding you.
• Saying somebody’s name three times in front of a mirror does not initiate a supernatural event.
• Attacking a country without provocation tends to rally the populace around their criminal leadership, allowing it to aggrandize power, silence dissent, spy on its citizenry, and engage in rogue military adventures.
• This will, in fact, hurt a bit.

Preparing the Battlefield [New Yorker]

John Adams on Thomas Jefferson:
“[He has] a mind, soured, yet seeking for popularity, and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition, yet weak, confused, uninformed, and ignorant.”

Thomas Jefferson on John Adams:
“[He is] distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”

Alexander Hamilton on Thomas Jefferson:
“A man of profound ambition and violent passions… the intriguing incendiary, the aspiring turbulent competitor… prone to projects which are incompatible with the principles of stable and systematic government.”

John Adams on Alexander Hamilton:
“[Consider] the profligacy of his life; his fornications, adulteries and his incests.”

Alexander Hamilton on John Adams:
“disgusting egotism… distempered jealousy… ungovernable indiscretion… vanity without bounds.”

Thomas Jefferson on Alexander Hamilton:
“I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which not only has received and given him bread, but heaped its honors on his head.”

John Adams on Benjamin Franklin:
“His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency… From five complete years of experience of Dr. Franklin… I can have no dependence on his word… I wish with all my soul he was out of public service.”

Benjamin Franklin on bloggers:
“I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men.”

Brotherly Love among the Founding Fathers [American Heritage]

Blah blah blah Geezer chooses new campaign chief blah blah blah — what’s this?

[Steve] Schmidt is a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and he worked closely with Karl Rove…

Mr. Schmidt’s elevation is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s campaign efforts in the McCain operation… Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation, has joined the McCain communications operation. Mr. Jenkins is a former Fox News producer…

Normally we ignore inside baseball as even more boring than real baseball, but what with the recent talk of sellouts, we thought it instructive to show how real men cash in. These are the folks who perfected push-polling against McCain, who ran the black-baby line against him, who insinuated he was a mentally unstable Manchurian Candidate after his POW years. And now they’re running his show.

We can’t deny the smears: McCain is indeed suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. But his captors aren’t the Viet Cong.

McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign [NYT]

John McCain 2000: The Swiftboaters’ First Mission [HuffPo, 2006]

There’s been some rumbling among the cadres that our Unicorn is turning into a Pinhead, and while we tend to be lenient about electoral politics, we’re not immune to deal-breakers. We don’t mind the “flip-flops” we’ve seen in the major media — campaign funding? really? — but the Stinque proles insist that we pay attention to substantive issues. Freaks.

So, let’s have a look.

OMG! Fundies!

You would think the Stupid Fucking Office of Fucking Jesus would be one of the first atrocities to be dispatched under a Unicorn Administration. And you would be wrong. No, he wants to expand it, going all Liberation Theology with social programs and stuff. Of course, any programs would be Closely Monitored for proselytizing. And of course, any money received for Good Works frees up money for Black Ops. Look for some fun scandals starting in 2011.

The iLives of Others

This one has become such an internecine pissing match, we prefer to stand back until the hazmat team mops up the room. The crux of the matter is whether AT&T can be sued for channeling all its Internet traffic through the NSA’s Big Brother machine — oh, and whether the Fourth Amendment has been rendered quaint by current events. Unicorn is promising a “thorough review by the Inspectors General” — strongly worded letters! — but our favorite passages in the Federalist Papers discuss the wisdom of not taking the benevolence of authority for granted.

Grab Your Flintlocks

The Second Amendment is the Third Rail of Stinque Re-education Sessions, and the hazmat team can handle only one mess at a time. Unicorn advises us to “act responsibly”, and we’ll be sure to have a Designated Shooter at our next bar brawl. But let’s be honest:

The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause… Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

And now that we’re forced to agree with Scalia, J., we expect shortly our first sighting of flying pigs.

Yet Another Shill for Corporate America

STFU, Ralph. The Corvair was forty years ago.

Our conclusion? Look at the alternative. We’ve been expecting Unicorn to trim a few sails sooner or later, and while we may yet be obligated to include a signing statement with our November ballot, we’ve had far worse arguments with our in-laws.

Libertarian veep wannabe Wayne Allyn Root is no stranger to failure — he even wrote a book about it. But rather than go for the easy gag about The Joy of Failure, we figured that must be the tip of an iceberg filled with even easier gags.

We were not disappointed.

From Millionaire Republican: Why Rich Republicans Get Rich — and How You Can Too!:

There is a “Red Storm” brewing in America. Currently, the GOP controls the United States presidency, Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, and majority of governorships and statehouses. That will not change.

Publication date: 2005.

So, how does a guy who has been “rejected from law school, failed at real estate, lost an election, became an entertainment agent and was fired six months later, lost several jobs, and failed at numerous businesses in several different industries” finally succeed?

Gambling!

That’s right — all you need to do is start your own Vegas handicapping business, and soon you’ll be enjoying fame, fortune, palatial estates, trophy wives, and that black hole where your soul used to be.

But not to worry, Root remains a friend to failure. He’s the vice-presidential candidate because he lost the top spot to Bob Barr.

Milliionaire Republican [Amazon]

Vegas’ White House hope [Vegas Sun]