The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario.
[...]

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Some comfort.

And what’s it like being strapped to the roof of the car going down the highway for 12 hours – with no consideration for “comfort” (HA) breaks?

We have a man running for President devoid of empathy for his own dog. How will he treat the rest of us Americans, let alone the rest of the world?

Say what you will about President Obama, at least he loves his dog.

(h/t watertiger)

photo: Just Us 3 (flickr)

There’s nothing that the people running campaigns in downticket races fear more than a tidal wave at the top of the ticket. Some voters will be discouraged at being swept away by the wave, and won’t come to the polls. Other voters, excited to be part of the wave, will come and vote in that big race and maybe a couple more, but then leave the booth and neglect the other races entirely.

But next week, which seems destined to turn DC into gridlock once more, may prove the importance of those downticket races.

Foreclosure fraud: If your state is electing an attorney general, the results on Tuesday may determine how weak or strong a voice you will have in standing up to robosigners, filers of false affidavits and legal papers in courts, and other unscrupulous legal practices engaged in by the financial industry. Having a state AG willing to stand up for the rule of law, rather than the convenience of the banks, may be the best safeguard any homeowner could ask for, given the lack of any meaningful federal oversight.

Health insurance reform: The absence of a public option, the continued ban on drug reimportation, and the shackles placed on Medicare that prevent them from negotiating prices more strongly all combine to neuter the market forces that might have reined in PhRMA and Big Insurance. For people angry over the whole mess, what’s left? State regulation. Some states are scrambling to improve their regulatory structures for the new system, while others are more prepared for it. If your state has an election for state insurance commissioner (or whatever the chief regulator is called), this may be the biggest election no one is talking about. Rules will be set for the state insurance exchanges, escalating rate requests will have to be approved, and a thousand and one details will have to be dealt with. Since DC punted on holding back PhRMA and Big Insurance, state insurance commissioners will have to.

School boards: Beyond the headlines garnered when the Texas Board of Education tries to rewrite history, or when Kansas TheoCons try to play God and remake science in their own image, school boards don’t get a lot of press. But when states and local governments are cutting budgets left and right, school boards are one of the big places that feel the pinch, and the disasters that can result from bad school policies are, well, disastrous. Maintenance gets deferred, pink slips go out, and everything gets squeezed as administrators try to stretch things as far as they can. Local school boards matter, and the more of a mess things are at the national and state levels, the more critical having a good local school board becomes.

I could go on and on — city council elections, bond issues, local zoning issues, regulation of puppy mills, etc. Top-ticket races get the headlines, but when times are rough, it’s the local races that may matter more. Most folks still have a couple of days to find a sample ballot, look past the top tier races, and dig into the critical things buried down below.

It’s worth the effort. The house, the health, and the schools you save may be your own.

(photo h/t: Just Us 3)

One of the lesser-known propositions on the ballot this year is the Humane Society-backed Proposition B in Missouri, which would establish minimum standards for how dog breeders can treat their animals.  The objective is to eliminate the appalling conditions found in the state’s 3,000 puppy mills (30% of the country’s total, according to the Humane Society).

Needless to say, wherever there is an effort to eliminate cruelty and exploitation in the name of profit, you will always find conservatives right there to oppose it.

In this case, it’s the Missouri Tea Party and the Orwellonymic “Alliance for Truth,” which has Joe The Plumber Legal Scholar blogging screeds for them about how the Humane Society is “cowardly hiding behind animal cruelty” to “[take] our constitutional rights away.”  Which presumably means that animal abuse is a constitutional right and same-sex marriage is not.  Or something.

But as ridiculous as the conservatives’ all-purpose “constitutional right” argument is, it pales in comparison to the one the Alliance for Truth dropped on TPM.  In the long and storied history of phony pretzel-logic right-wing arguments, this is surely one of the all-time greats:

Anita Andrews from Alliance For Truth told TPM that it’s a “deceptive, lying bill” that is “trying to purposefully get rid of the breeders.” The state of Missouri, she said, has been given a bad rap as “the puppy mill capitol” of the U.S. but “in truth we have the best ribbon breeders in the country.” And, Andrews said, the state already has anti-cruelty laws on the books.

“They don’t like animals,” she said of the Humane Society of the United States.

That’s right, the Humane Society wants to shut down the puppy mills because they hate dogs so much that they want to prevent any more of them being born.  Those bastards!!!  Why, they’re probably the same big-government dog-hating busybodies who made it illegal for these proud animals to prove their mettle on the field of competitive endeavor!

But why do I have this strange sense of deja vu…

The [“Black children are an endangered species.”] billboards… were created in conjunction with a new Web site, www.toomanyaborted.com, which says that all of Georgia’s abortion clinics are in “urban areas where blacks reside.” The Web site connects abortion to segregation, saying that after the civil rights era, racists went “underground,” and that today “abortion is the tool they use to stealthily target blacks for extermination.”

Ah yes.  It’s pretty much the same argument, only even uglier.  They would have us believe that there is absolutely nothing females – human or canine – want more than to be pregnant and having babies all the time, so any effort to improve quality of life and slow down the pace of reproduction must therefore be a shadowy population control plot by liberals who hate them.  Because believing that is so much easier than trying to understand what words like “compassion,” “empathy,” and “dignity” might mean.

Some of my neighbors enjoying the weather

– JK Rowling puts the boot to Tory nonsense — and what’s more, got Rupert Murdoch to publish it. Would that she could come over here and do the same to our Tories.

– Dean Baker’s looking to smack around Pete Peterson and the Cat Food Cabal. Care to join him?

– Speaking of kitties, the Walk for Animals is coming up in a couple of weeks. Teams of walkers take a little stroll to raise money for kitties, doggies, and other companion beasties. My favorite Twin Cities team name: Suffragette Kitties.

– And the Twins are kicking ass and taking names, both on the road and at their wonderful new home, Target Field.

So what’s shakin’ in your neck of the woods?

Each proscribed and terrifying act of handing out leaflets, chanting, chalking, or — gasp — Googling is now a Federal crime, punishable by up to five years in Federal prison. How did the Homeland’s security police make speech a crime? They used AETA, the Animal Enterprise Terrorist Act: the law that makes America’s civil rights movement a Federal crime.

Who wrote AETA and bribed pushed it through Congress? ALEC, the American Legislative Enterprise Council: the megacorps’ mega-lobby group that includes Pharma and the drive-through diabetes junk food industry. Why do Homeland Security and ALEC want to defy our Constitution and destroy our civil rights?

Oh, the usual reason: freedom’s bad for capital. Our civil rights and our Constitution might somehow someday mean some bankster or CEO may get a smaller bonus. Now that’s worth destroying a democracy for, right?

Yesterday the Civil Liberties Defense Center and the Center For Constitutional Rights joined defense counsel for the four arrestees (the AETA 4) in petitioning the US District Court for Northern California to strike down the Animal Enterprise Act as unconstitutional.

Damn good thing, too. The San Jose Mercury News reports the AETA 4′s alleged crimes include:

Oct. 21, 2007: A group of 20 protesters demonstrated outside of a UC Berkeley professor’s home in El Cerrito. Some wore bandanas to hide their faces. They trespassed on his front yard, chanted slogans and accused him of being a murderer because of his use of animals in research.

Jan. 27, 2008: Demonstrations, including chalking, in front of the homes of several UC researchers

July 29, 2008: Fliers left at Caffe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz that contained the names, addresses and telephone numbers of several UCSC scientists. The fliers said the researchers were “murders and torturers alive and well in Santa Cruz” and stated “We know where you live. We know where you work. We will never back down until you end your abuse.”

Though taking protests to people’s homes is a tactic many folks find unacceptable, many other Americans choose to exercise their right to peaceably assemble and protest in residential neighborhoods, as well as outside of offices and factories. This form of public speech is as old as the Republic, and as recent as public protests outside of banksters’ estates.

Is trespass a crime? Yep, and under California law, it can be prosecuted. Are assault and battery and attempted forcible entry crimes under California law? Yep, and those too may be prosecuted. California’s been prosecuting people for violence before Carter marketed little pills. Nothing in AETA is required to prosecute the following alleged crime:

Feb. 20, 2008: A group of five protesters tried to forcibly enter the Westside home of a UC Santa Cruz researcher during a child’s birthday party. The researcher’s husband was hit during the demonstration.

I’ll never support violence or home invasions, but AETA isn’t about prohibiting those acts. AETA’s about prohibiting speech and public advocacy: that’s why protest and chalking and chanting and fliers are specific acts of allegedly criminal content. Because AETA sez so. And our trusty Federal minders have decided they want to enforce the corporatist law that makes speech a crime.

They have plenty of company in their corporate servitude. When ALEC wanted to make effective civil disobedience against megacorps a crime, their carefully bribed servants hired hands in Congress gave them exactly what they wanted:

Virginia Representative Bobby Scott-often called the “go-to-guy” in the House on civil liberties and civil rights issues-came out swinging in support of the “ecoterrorism” bill. Scott, a Democrat, said that existing laws have been “reasonably effective,” but “gaps and loopholes” prevent law enforcement from going after animal rights “extremists.”

[snip]

Disturbingly, Scott said in passing that civil disobedience could be covered in the bill-which some other supporters of the bill have denied-but he tried to ease public fears by saying that the civil disobedience would have to cause disruption and loss of profits to qualify, and that “it must be proven that such losses were specifically intended.” The same congressman who frequently praises the achievements of the civil rights movement is suddenly standing on the House floor and advocating the inclusion of that movement’s tactics in a “terrorism” bill.

Gee, so Representative Scott now only wants America to allow protests whose organizers don’t expect to disrupt business profits…say, by sitting for hours at a lunch counter without being served. Thanks for pulling up the ladder behind you, Congressman Scott.

As they showed back when they rubber-stamped the Patriot Act and confirmed last week when they pretended the MP’s at Leavenworth couldn’t handle Gitmo detainees, the vast majority of what pass for our Congresscritters are rank cowards who piss themselves whenever opponents brand them “soft on terror”. Same thing the vast majority of their predecessors did when the corporatists’ Mighty Wurlitzer screamed “soft on commies”, and later “soft on crime”.

The only thing that can make them betray their oath to protect and uphold the Constitution faster are the bribes campaign contributions the American Legislative Exchange Council’s megacorp owners eagerly provide. Hey – thanks to their prior “donations”, it’s all tax-deductible. Shredding our Constitution for the corporatists – such a deal.

Don’t you just love those patriots at ALEC – and the one-third of ALEC’s legislative members who are Democrats? People For The American Way have more on ALEC’s mission:

ALEC’s agenda includes rolling back civil rights, challenging government restrictions on corporate pollution, limiting government regulations of commerce, privatizing public services, and representing the interests of the corporations that make up its supporters.

Who could have anticipated? Well, anyone who watched what happened after ALEC’s sponsors wrote AETA’s parent, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The Center For Constitutional Rights watched what happened with AEPA:

The AEPA was put on the books in 1992 by well-funded industries that exploit animals. Proponents of the AEPA argued that the number of violent attacks committed by so-called animal rights extremists on farming and research facilities was escalating, and that the AEPA was necessary to protect these facilities. They claimed that (1) existing state & federal laws had failed to curtail such acts, and (2) these attacks disrupted vital services relied on by millions of Americans. Despite these assertions, the language of the AEPA swept up constitutionally-protected free speech activities, even though legislators believed they had struck a balance between the right to protest and the need to provide additional criminal penalties for violent acts. Despite the claims of the corporate interests that this law was vital, the law has only been used twice during the last 16 years.

In one of those two uses, our brave servants in Federal law enforcement prosecuted the “SHAC 7″ — six activists and a non-profit (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA Inc.) — for the crime of posting information about animal rights protests on the internet. The activists covered a global campaign against a private firm, Huntington Life Sciences, that contracts to perform hideous painful animal testing for cosmetics manufacturers, but were not direct participants in other folks’ illegal actions against HLS.

In January DOJ attorneys sword to uphold the Constitution told the Third Circuit Court of Appeals the SHAC activists convictions must be upheld. Why?

Will Potter of Green Is The New Red reported on the hearing.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the appeal was hearing the government speak so candidly and succinctly about what kind of conduct should be prosecuted.

For instance, Darius Fullmer was a leader of the Animal Defense League in New Jersey. He sent emails to the defendants saying that, although his group is focused on anti-fur campaigning, he will try to get people to start showing up at protests. He also forwarded a SHAC email to his members which describe “Black Fax Mondays” (electronic civil disobedience where activists fax black pieces of paper to the targeted company, in hopes of draining their toner cartridges and tying up their fax machine lines.)

“That’s his embrace,” Moramarco said. “That one document is sufficient evidence.”

Similarly, Josh Harper made two speeches in which he supported the “black fax” tactic. One was to a local group in Seattle, the other was to activists in Little Rock. Those speeches, the government said, are enough for a conviction. Two speeches. Three years in prison.

Moramarco stretched even further in the case of Lauren Gazzola. He pointed to a radio interview in which Gazzola says, “We support property destruction, we support illegal action, we support home demonstrations and economic sabotage.”

In what might have been the boldest, most chilling argument made by the government in this case, Moramarco said that such a statement of her political beliefs and her personal views, such a statement about which tactics she believes are effective, was “tantamount to a confession.”

Wonder if US Asst. Attorney Glenn J. Moramarco went to law school wanting to prosecute thought crimes, or if that’s something he only picked up in the Bushie DOJ?

We’re lucky that Lauren Regan and the CLDC together with the good folks at CCR stepped forward yesterday. Let’s hope they can persuade Federal Courts to uphold the same Constitution that most of the Congress would so eagerly destroy.

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Good luck.

Photo by Tim Proffitt-White

I can’t figure out if these Bushies are doing this for the usual bribes or because they’re homicidally jealous of sentient beings.

Greenpeace nails this:

Bush Holdovers Attempt to Undermine Obama Foreign Policy on Whaling

Greenpeace Calls for Obama, Clinton to Assert Authority and Replace Officials

WASHINGTON – Just days after the inauguration of President Obama, holdovers from the Bush administration are already attempting to undermine his foreign policy on whaling.

According to news reports out of Hawaii, Bush appointees on the International Whaling Commission – Doug DeMaster and commission chairman William Hogarth – participated in closed-door negotiations with Japan to finalize a deal that would allow increased whaling off the coast of Japan in return for marginal limits on Japan’s illegal commercial whaling program in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The trade-off will not benefit whale conservation and could actually put additional endangered populations at risk.

Such a deal would directly violate President Obama’s stated policy of working to end Japanese whaling. In December of 2007, then Senator Obama responded to a question from Greenpeace by laying out his foreign policy on whaling issues:

"As president, I will ensure that the U.S. provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling," Obama wrote. "Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable."

"President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have the opportunity to show the world that they’re in charge and that the United States is firmly committed to marine conservation by appointing new commissioners to the IWC who will faithfully implement President Obama’s foreign policies," said Greenpeace Senior Oceans Campaigner Phil Kline, a longtime commercial fisherman. "We hope that these Bush appointees’ actions aren’t allowed to set a precedent for foreign policy freelancing by other Bush holdovers.’"

So do I.

While Greenpeace spotlights the Bushie whale-killing cell at State, this year the Sea Shepherd Society are the only folks going to sea to save whales from the "research" ships Japan sends into the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary:

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Steve Irwin has departed Hobart, Tasmania to return to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. . . .

"It’s back into the Whale Wars for us," said 1st Officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden.

Hobart welcomed the Steve Irwin very warmly. Tasmanians brought down all the food needed to replenish the pantries of the ship. The dollars and cheques handed over the rail to the crew more than paid for the berth, the pilotage, and port costs.

"There is no doubt that Australians love whales," said Captain Paul Watson. "And we love Australia. It’s hard to believe but back in 1978 we were fighting to stop Australian whaling at Cheynes Beach near Albany in Western Australia. And today we now have a former whaling nation as the most passionate defenders of the great whales on the planet. It gives me great hope that eventually Japan will become as passionate about protecting whales as their government now is dedicated to slaughtering them."

I don’t know what motivates the Bushie accessories to slaughter at State, but I do know I’ll support the whale defenders on the Steve Irwin. Thanks to Greenpeace, we all know President Obama’s committed to ending Japan’s cetacean killing sprees.

We also all know Iceland is another rogue whaling nation–one that just happens to need the IMF real bad. The same IMF where, despite our bankruptcy, we still control the vote. More precisely, President Obama controls the vote.

Ending Japan’s and Iceland’s commercial whaling is Change we all can believe in.

And here we all thought the Humane Society was a place to pick up Spot and Fluffy. Nope. Rick Berman’s "Center For Consumer Freedom" tells us the Humane Society’s kitten-huggers are really terorrists.

Over at Green Is The New Red, Will Porter tells how CCF bought a full page ad in the NYT and blew the ad on a risible "six degrees of separation" link between the Humane Society and some supposedly scary terruhists. Yep. Six whole Bacon units: when a mere three Bacon units separate Poppy Bush and Osama Bin Laden. And Rick Berman tells us we should be scared of the Humane Society?

OK, folks. Who do you trust? Rick Berman – the humanoid suppuration who falsely accused PETA of killing animals? Rick Berman – industry’s highly paid smear expert? Rick Berman – the safety saboteur who attacked PETA MADD on behalf of his booze industry paymasters? Rick Berman – the neuronal assassin and fetal abuser behind the campaign to get pregnant women eating more tuna with mercury? The Berman who created a lie – mercury’s OK for kids and pregnant moms – so toxic even the Bushie FDA won’t back it?

Why does Berman do this for the megacorps who made him wealthy?

…ads showing children being exploited by union bosses are all in a day’s work for Rick Berman.

In the end, Berman says it’s all about "shooting the messenger."

"Shooting the messenger means getting people to understand that this messenger is not as credible as their name would suggest," Berman says.

Who would you trust: the Humane Society, or a scumbag like Rick Berman?

Kevin Drum does the honors:

Farm Animal Confinement. YES. This initiative requires that farm animals be penned in cages that allow them to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs, and turn around freely. In practice, it would affect only the egg industry, and it moves California very moderately in the direction of more humane treatment of farm animals. The factory farming industry is running the usual campaign claiming that it would put California farmers out of business entirely, but that dog just won’t hunt anymore. That’s what they always say. In reality, it will probably increase the cost of eggs a few pennies per dozen and nothing more.This initiative passes most of my smell tests too. It’s a genuine grassroots initiative that would have a hard time getting past the legislature thanks to corporate agribusiness lobbying. It’s a moderately written law that allows us to experiment a bit without going off a cliff. And it’s not ballot box budgeting.

The corporate agribusiness lobby managed to buy themselves the support of a lot of unions and others who should’ve known better anyway. They look like a bunch of dupes for promoting such hysteria.

When I was in Sunday School, the Book of Genesis we read there taught us all the living creatures on Earth were God’s creation. Though different Biblical translations and versions use different words, I’ve never heard of any version of Genesis that left out God’s role in creating all life on Earth; I’m confident even Sarah Palin’s atavistic, violence-loving Dominionist sect tells the Genesis story this way. So why does Sarah Palin have it in for so many of God’s creatures?

To make the bit of God’s Creation we call Alaska safe for Big Carbon, Sarah Palin ordered Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game to go forth and oppose the Federal proposal to list polar bears as threatened.

Ken Taylor has had easier jobs than this one. It’s not like the good old days chasing rhinos, climbing into bear dens and wrestling beluga whales in shallow water.

These days, sitting at a desk as deputy commissioner of fish and game, the veteran wildlife biologist has to muster the best science he can find to argue that Alaska’s polar bears are in good shape and need no special protection from hypothetical doomsday scenarios.

This requires Taylor to stand up to the prevailing wisdom about global warming in most of the world’s scientific community and the public — not to mention some pretty strong opinions in his own department.

But Taylor, the Palin administration’s point man on polar bears, argues that the scientific justification simply isn’t there — at least not yet — to declare the polar bear "threatened" and touch off a cascade of effects under the Endangered Species Act.

When even the Bushie-controlled Department of Interior listed the polar bears as threatend species, Sarah ordered her obedient servants to go forth and sue to overturn the listing.

Maybe it got personal for Sarah. You see, she didn’t simply leave the fight to her disciples. When even the Bushie-controlled U.S. Geological Survey predicted last year that

two-thirds of the world’s polar bears — and all of those in Alaska — would be gone in 50 years because of the shrinking summer ice cap.

Sarah used her bully pulpit to proclaim the Feds shouldn’t list polar bears as endangered species.

There’s still too much uncertainty about the future melting of the polar ice cap to justify such a listing, Palin told the federal government last week. And declaring any species "threatened" because of possible global warming effects would "open the floodgates" for petitions affecting thousands of other species, she said.

Those pesky "thousands of other species"? Sarah has it in for them, too.

When Alaska voters faced a Clean Water Referendum that effectively decided whether to destroy Bristol Bay’s thriving fisheries and ecosystems with a vast pit mine, Sarah so loved the opportunity to off some more of God’s creatures that she gave her only office broke the law to push for the measure’s passage.

Sarah so hates God’s creature the wolf that she goes forth to profess the cruel practice of exterminating wolves from the air:

Animal advocates, environmentalists and hunters agree. Shooting animals from the air or chasing them to the point of exhaustion and then shooting them violates all standards of fair chase hunting. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Is that how Sarah follows Christ’s merciful Word?

Even the NRA admits the aerial killings aren’t "hunting".

It is not sport. It does not follow the basic tenets of fair chase, and it was never intended to do so.

Whatever it is, Sarah so loves the death it brings she wants to buy more of it:

The program, now in its fourth year and operating in five areas of the state, is designed to increase moose and caribou numbers by reducing the number of predators.

The incentives include offering 180 volunteer pilots and aerial gunners $150 in cash for turning in legs of freshly killed wolves, Gov. Sarah Palin’s office announced Tuesday.

[snip]

Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group opposed to the predator control program, said it was outraged by Palin’s decision.

"Bounties have no place in modern wildlife management and undoubtedly would lead to the illegal killing of wolves," Karla Dutton, director of the group’s Alaska office, said in a statement.

Alaska state laws allowing bounty hunting were repealed in 1984, but why would Sarah let a little thing like State law stop her from using her divine power as Governor to pay for more slaughter?

Defenders of Wildlife, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club asked the Alaska Superior Court to shut down Governor Palin’s $150-per-wolf bounty program citing the fact that Alaska’s bounty laws were repealed in 1984 and the State has no current legal authority to implement the bounties.

In her Dominion, Sarah Palin loves her those bounties for killing God’s creatures.

The voters of Alaska twice approved referenda to ban aerial "hunting". After those voters lent Sarah the power to be their governor, she sought to remake her Dominion to subsidize using airplanes to kill off not only wolves, but also black bears.

The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs.

Guess global warming won’t kill enough bears for Sarah’s vision of the Promised Alaska.

Killing the salmon, crab, and other creatures of Bristol Bay. Sacrificing ANWR and the caribou to Big Carbon. Condemning the polar bears, walruses, seals, and Native communities to extinction by global warming. Sacrificing Alaska’s remaining 350 Cook Inlet beluga whales to the Fossil Lords. Slaughtering the wolves and black bears from the air.

When it comes to what the Bible tells us is God’s Creation, is Sarah Palin a servant of the House of Exxon, or the House of the Lord?

Why does Sarah Palin so hate God’s creatures? Creature as she is of corporatist dogma and the death-loving Dominionist sect she so loves she hath funded it with Alaska tax dollars, should she gain yet greater power, what else — and who else — would she condemn to die?

Hallelujah!

Let us pray.

Not much to add here. The self-deprecating reference to attendance at the United States Naval Academy in the Coolidge Administration did not get the laugh Old Lord McCain expected — and probably gets from the BBQ Krew on the Double Talk Express.

But talk about how you rely on others to staff your internet use is just ludicrous. I don’t expect the President to have texter’s thumb from Blackberrying constantly. But McCain’s approach — "rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get" — does not bode well for a presidency facing many challenges on the technological front. How do you even explain cyberterrorism to this guy?

America has had its ride with a stupid, ill-spoken, illiterate, spoiled rotten child of privilege as President. We don’t need another one. No Bush third term, please.

{YouTube from www.jedreport.com, h/t Joe Sudbay}