So Much for Doing Anything in the Morning

My Sharks and the Stars are about to go into a 4th OT. At least I'm not in the eastern time zone.

That Explains the Pantsuits

"If [Hillary] gave [Obama] one of her cojones, they'd both have two."

-James Carville

From the Pen of: Jim Morin

Hillary's Elite Friends Tapping Out

She's run into a pretty nasty fundraising snag. She now has to grovel to the plebs. McClatchy:

Now, a senior Clinton fundraising operative confided, big donors are nearly tapped out.

"I think the tank is empty,'' said the fundraiser, who spoke without authorization and insisted upon anonymity. "This is just unprecedented money raising. It's like the movie that wouldn't end. Hillary excelled at all of this major donor money, but there's a limit. Where there is money left is on the Internet.''

When an Electrocuted GI is the Son of a Friend of a Writer...

...the writer writes about it - and if there's any justice, people will pay attention. Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell:

Last night, I was surprised and happy to find a photograph of my friend Cheryl Harris at the top of the New York Times' web site. She was hugging her young son, Ryan Maseth, an Army sergeant who was dressed in his uniform and cap. The were both smiling broadly. A few months later he was dead. The military told her this past January that he had foolishly carried an electrical appliance into a shower in Baghdad.

That was a lie. 

It turned out the fault was an improperly grounded water pump. With a little help from me, she found out that at least 10 other military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq in recent years. Now she is suing the contractor KBR, though there is evidence that the military and the Defense Contracting Management Agency are also to blame for being lax in its own inspections.

The military obviously didn't count on this two degrees of separation situation. They thought Ryan would just be another anonymous Iraq death which they can blame on his completely fabricated stupidity. Let's see if Mitchell's account can make any difference.

This is murder. We hope they sue Halliburton/KBR for every penny they made off this war.

If The Clinton Campaign Does This - And If They Succeed...

I swear to God I will quit the Democratic party. (Link fixed.) They're calling it the nuclear option, and it's complete desperate sore loser bullshit...just like the rest of her campaign since Super Tuesday.

I'm not kidding. I will quit this party which I've stuck with through hell and high water since I got my first voter registration card when I was 18, and become an independent. I don't need this anymore. Not from my party. Not from my candidates. And no way in hell from this one.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives.

Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

First, this coming Tuesday, Clinton would have to win Indiana and lose North Carolina by a very small margin - or better yet, win the Tar Heel state. She would also have to demonstrate continued strength in the contests before May 31.

Second, and equally important, her argument that she is a better general election candidate than Obama -- that he has major weaknesses which have only been recently revealed -- would have to rapidly gain traction, not only within the media, where she has experienced some success, but within the broad activist ranks of the Democratic Party.

Okay! Okay! Democrats Appeared on Your Network!

Are we going to see another month of this frigging navel-gazing instead of what was actually said? (Rhetorical question - we know the answer.)

If it's so discussion-worthy, maybe your newsroom IS hostile to the Democratic party. Case closed.

Zogby's Mission in 2008

To drive everybody fuckin' crazy.

ox News! Now in High Defini

A little trouble as FNC went high-def, via TV Newser. Regular-def viewers were treated to delightfully cropped graphics.

We're still waiting for Monday to see the drop in viewership once they see Brit Hume, John Gibson and Alan Colmes in hi-def. Unless they get to use Cybil Shepard's old soft-focus camera.

"Millions of Viewers"?

I don't know what I like better about Howard Dean's appearance with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday today - Dean's declaration that Fox News is "shockingly biased" (YES!) or Wallace's declaration that Fox News Sunday has "millions of viewers" (HUH?).

The Tim Russert-moderated Meet the Press tallied 4,016,000 Total Viewers, compared to This Week with 2,611,000, Face the Nation with 2,356,000 and Fox News Sunday with 1,316,000.

Meet the Press was the only Sunday morning show to gain in total viewers week-to-week.

Economists Are Elitists!

Isn't this just one sneeze away from saying "Science isn't real"? Hillary uses the "E" word to describe the blowback to her gas tax holiday.

So the girl who summered in Scranton (until the economy there went south) is a down-with-the-commonfolk hillbilly, and the guy who grew up on the streets being home schooled by his grandmother is an elitist.

This "elite" business is so fucked up, it's breathtaking.

Bombs Still Detonate at Disneyland's Future Home

So, Maverick...this is what we can look forward to for the next 100+ years?

Iraq's first lady unharmed after her motorcade is bombed

A bomb hit a motorcade carrying Iraq's first lady through Baghdad on Sunday, while the U.S. military said a roadside explosion killed four Marines in the deadliest attack in western Anbar province in months.

The motorcade bombing in Baghdad's Karrada district injured four of Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed's bodyguards but left her unharmed, according to the office of her husband, President Jalal Talabani.

She was headed to the city's central National Theater to attend a cultural festival when the attack occurred just before noon, said the presidential office. It was unclear if she was the target or if the bombing was random.

The four Marines were killed in Anbar province on Friday, but no other details of the incident were released.