You have to see it to believe it.

This is what the Republicans have left to debate. It doesn’t matter if they actually know what they’re talking about, a certain X of the American public will believe it.

Poor Kevin. I hereby nominate this for the most embarrassing TV appearance of the year.

What. A. Moron. Craptacular!

We have become sadly and somewhat curiously, if we’re able to detach ourselves emotionally from the whole nightmare to a sufficient degree, immune to fantastically stupid, vicious and corrupt politics and policies.

We’ve developed a callous where our sense of decency used to register pain.

Let The Rude Pundit say it as it really is, I like to say.

You’re a Republican elected official running for a political upgrade in a state that could go either way. Things don’t look very good for your party.

It’s time to go to the airwaves, to convince all the geniuses who let the Great Tube of Learning determine their vote, and you do this.

This is profoundly funny stuff. I mean, do these people not understand Teh Google? How far out of touch do you and your staff have to be to vet this kind of thing far enough along to air it?

Mrs. Greenspan, Chris, and Pat Buchanan tackle the touchy issue of uneducated voters of low income who look at race when considering their vote.

Watch Crooks and Liars for the video. Though I’m sure this one is going to be all over the place.

The tension actually woke me up from a nap. It was funny and weird. Pat, of course, was arguing that people are supposed to vote racist, or that black people voting for the first ever possible black President are themselves racist, whereas white people who told pollsters race was a factor in their vote was the same. Or something. It got pretty tense, and in the end, remarkably real for TV.

It’s gonna be one interesting summer and fall.

I’ll see if I can find this gem myself as soon as possible.

Update: Bingo! God I love the internet.

Update 2: A great measure of how far the conservative movement has fallen is my gradual gain of “respect” for Pat Buchanan. He’s a brilliant man in many respects, a terrific historian, and most of all, he’s honest and forthright about his own rotting, archaic soul. I appreciate that.

Mississippi-01. The GOP has held this district forever, and if the Dem wins there, a 50-50 proposition, you’ll see some very sweaty palms among the GOP leadership.

Sure, they’ll be encouraged by whitey’s overwhelming support in W. VA., but do they really want to be the electoral party of uneducated racist white voters?

Wait. Sorry. The GOP is already happy with that. But the math is changing, and it doesn’t look good over the long haul. Youngsters don’t care about your sexual orientation, among other things. Even a lot of GOP youngsters. The libertarian wing lives.

Time is on the right side, as it always is when it comes to culture wars. Or, perhaps, the “inevitable” side. Culture drives politics, despite what the GOP would have you believe.

Too bad time isn’t on my side.

Update: Current results are here. Thanks to DKos. This one will hurt, if you’re a Republican political pro.

I would have to say she has the uneducated racist white vote locked up. Personally, I think she might be the best suited Dem to capture the GOP base of uneducated racists.

Terry McCauliffe said Hillary’s speech would be one of the “best of all time.”

That could mean a lot of different things. He’s seen it, though, so that should count for something. The problem is, he’s a money-whore shill of craptacular proportions, so his definition may be different than mine.

Update: Exit poll: 95% white. 68% to Clinton of whitey. 72% whitey earning less than the median. 74% women whitey. 65% without a college degree. She’s gotta be proud.

MS-1 is where the action is tonight.

Update: I’m not making fun of people without college degrees. I grew up with them, lived with them, love them, and respect them. It’s just that they’re not all that politically attuned. And, for the record, college educated voters are not very politically savvy, either. Many of them want no more than to know which candidate will lower their taxes. That’s it. The rest of the country should just work harder.

And that one reason is that Media Man’s love of St. McCain knows no bounds.

Rarely do I give a hat tip to Digby, since she’s a genius in her own right and doesn’t need tips, but Steve Benen of the never-shrill Carpetbagger Report has this right. Read it. It’s embarrassing in the extreme, the way the press has anointed Mr. Maverick Straight Talk of the Lobbyist Express as the one person in national politics willing to deviate from prostitution. And I won’t count Obama in the pure club, either, since I largely agree with this. Where I disagree, strongly, is that Obama has made it very clear he understands that change comes from the ground up. That’s a start, and Arthur should understand that, even if I agree that it isn’t the finish.

What people have to understand, and clearly don’t, is that to do any good as a national leader you have to say some things you might not believe in your heart of hearts to be true, because if you don’t get elected you can’t do jack-squat. Obama threw Wright under the bus to get elected, and I’ll bet both of them will consider it a good deed should Obama win the election, and get 1/4 of what he’d like to get done accomplished.

Bill Clinton sacrificed his sexual mores on the alter of doing this country a favor, and personally I think he was successful. Did he move the proverbial progressive ball as forward as I would’ve liked? No, he didn’t. But our Constitution was not built for radical change. And our years under his watch were almost indisputably OK, at worst, in terms of peace and prosperity. And his sex life had nothing to do with anything except infotainment.

IMHO, everyone needs to chill out a little bit, give up on the Obama-as-Messiah theme (Yo! Arthur! Has Obama ever suggested he was a Messiah? I can’t remember him doing so; feel free to correct me), and give up on the gender-based tribal politics of Taylor Marsh or Jeralyn Merritt, and try to find out a way to move this country forward, even if only incrementally.

(OOPS! Two reasons: The other being the idea that Hillary supporters will either sit it out in Nov. or vote for St. McCain. My apologies.)

And McCain ain’t it. The only thing more stupid than the Obama as Messiah complex is thinking he’d be worse than McCain.

That would be virtually impossible.

Update: I couldn’t argue my way out of a paper bag where Arthur, Steve, Jeralyn, or Taylor are concerned. At least not in writing. But I also wouldn’t be the first person who observed that genius, as commonly defined, didn’t include the occasional inability to tie one’s shoes. Just sayin’.

Update: OOPS again! Race. I’m just taking that one for granted now, so I skipped it.

The Cubs could win the World Series.

They’re wailing on their 4th straight sad, pathetic victim. They’ve gotten off to a good start. They seem to have good chemistry and people who need rest are getting it. They have players who can play multiple positions, and they have role players who seem OK with their roles. The pitching is adequate to good where it is needed. They can hit it all over the place (including a few of their pitchers), and play good defense.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, they’re willing to take walks.

They’re honestly pretty good this year.

Sure, there’re downsides, one being my chronic inability to let it go and avoid getting my heart broken (it happened first in 1969, when I was 10, knew every stat in the league, and was in love, so gimme a break), though that problem has subsided a lot over the years. Now it’s just big fun if they’re competitive, win or lose.

The main downside is that damn apocalypse thing.

I don’t know. But having always upheld the principle that nature will find balance, whether we like how it is happening or not (war, famine, plague–we’re yet to see a bad plague in a while–it’s OK with me if you name your own horseman), it seems to me hard to avoid this fundamental fact of, well, “nature,” in this case defined as the way things go naturally.

Global warming? I don’t know. Nor do I care. Neither does Ma Nature.

I don’t think the current and predicted increases in population are sustainable from food or energy points of view. If I’m right, neither will Mother Nature.

So, you’re left with a choice: Do you try to do something about it, or do you let nature run its course?

A rhetorical question, if there ever was one. Human beings are incapable of big change until they are getting abused by the lack of it.

I say The Man is on the run, and I’ll be alive just long enough to see the unfolding of it all. I predict it isn’t going to be pretty.

It never really is, using history as a guide.

I didn’t pay enough attention to the details to calculate whether or not I should expect one, so just sort of common sense-ishly assumed I wouldn’t be a beneficiary, since I do just fine, but there it was, unannounced in my checking account!

I’m off to stimulate the economy. I must be poorer than I thought.

Invest in food, oil-based products, and liquor, and you’re a market genius, by my math!