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Hillary Clinton has had something on her mind for a while now.  At least since March 6th, when she spoke off the record with Richard Stengel, Managing Editor at TIME magazine.  She voiced it publicly Friday while speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and giving her reasoning for staying in the race.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it."

What the fuck, Hillary?!?  Are you so desperate to win the nomination and so incapable of accepting defeat that you are holding on to the dark hope that your opponent will be assassinated like Robert F. Kennedy?  Are you truly that batshit insane?

Get out now, Hillary.  GET. THE. FUCK. OUT!!!

Hillary Raises Assassination Issue

When John McCain was seeking the Republican nomination for President, he was doing poorly among right-wing Christian evangelicals.  Desperate to gain their support, he went shopping for endorsements and was thrilled to gain the support of televangelist pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

When McCain received Hagee’s endorsement, he said "I’m very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement today … He has been the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement in many areas, but especially, most especially, his close ties and advocacy for the freedom and independence of the state of Israel."

Speaking in Cincinnati on February 26th, McCain made a show of being endorsed by Rod Parsley and said "I’m very honored today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide - Pastor Rod Parsley …"

Their support helped to shore up McCain’s weakness among the Christian Right and to secure his nomination.

Now that McCain has secured his party’s nomination, he is looking to appeal to independent voters and the endorsements he sought and was proud to receive have become a problem.  Independents, it seems, aren’t too hot on so-called men of God who believe that Hitler was God’s instrument to drive the Jews back to Eretz Yisrael or that God created the United States of America to exterminate Muslims.

What to do?  Simple.  Repudiate them and pretend you never wanted anything to do with them in the first place.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said of the remarks by John Hagee. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

“I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he [Rev. Rod parsley] endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement,” McCain said in a statement.

Flip-flop accomplished.

Pro-Israel evangelical leader endorses McCain

McCain rejects pastor’s backing after Hitler remark

Preachers a problem for McCain too

McCain Rejects Parsley Endorsement

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Now that John McCain has repudiated John Hagee and rejected his endorsement - which McCain actively sought out - we are left wondering when and if the senator from Arizona will repudiate and reject Rod Parsley.

John McCain has called Rod Parsley "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide …"

Parsley has openly preached since 9/11 that God created the United States of America for the purpose of destroying the ‘false religion’ of Islam.

In other words, Parsley sees it as America’s holy duty to wage genocide against 1.5 billion Muslims.

"We were built for the battle!  We were created for the conflict! We get off on warfare!"

– Pastor Rod Parsley, World Harvest Church

Preachers a problem for McCain too

After actively seeking the endorsement of John Hagee and defending Hagee’s endorsement against critics who pointed out Hagee’s record of anti-Catholic rhetoric, John McCain has finally ‘rejected and renounced’ pastor Hagee and his endorsement.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said of the remarks by John Hagee. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

If making a career of calling the Catholic Church the ‘Great Whore’ wasn’t enough to make John McCain reject the endorsement he actively sought out, what changed his mind?

"’And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that," Hagee had said.

I guess Catholics now know where they stand with McCain.  It’s okay to bash the Catholic Church, calling it the ‘Great Whore’, but McCain draws the line when it comes to saying the Holocaust was God’s will to drive the Jews back to Eretz Yisrael.

I am reminded of the albatross that the GOP hung around John Kerry’s neck in the 2004 election.

John McCain: He was for Pastor Hagee before he was against him!

McCain rejects pastor’s backing after Hitler remark

Nonna Gorilovskaya writes in The Christian Science Monitor that she considers it her patriotic duty to defend the President when she is traveling abroad.

In my hometown of San Francisco, Bush supporters are called all sorts of names, and I rarely bother with defending them. When abroad, however, I feel a patriotic duty to try to explain the political views of those with whom I adamantly disagree.

I couldn’t disagree with her more.  When I joined the Army, I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  I did not swear an oath to defend the President’s reputation or policies.  That is the job of the President.  If his name is mud, the President has nobody to blame but himself.  The President is not royalty.  He is not our king.  We do not serve him - he serves us.

Furthermore, I consider George W. Bush to be a criminal.  He has violated the Constitution he swore an oath to uphold in more ways and on more occasions than I care to count.  I hold Congress in almost the same contempt for not doing their duty and impeaching the criminal oathbreaker currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The true patriotic duty of all Americans is to defend the Constitution - the supreme law of our nation and its heart and soul - against all who would seek to undermine or destroy it.  Presidents come and go and America survives.  Sweep aside the Constitution, however, and America goes into the dustbin of history along with it.

We are a nation of laws, not men.

Why I defend President Bush when I’m abroad

Conservative talk show host Michael Medved would have been a darling of the Third Reich.  Yes, I know, he’s a Jew - what could possibly have endeared him to the likes of Hitler and Goering?  How about Medved’s take on nationalism and racial superiority?

Mr. Medved has recently written an article, Respecting - And Recognizing - American D.N.A., espousing the idea that there is a unique and identifiable American genotype and that it is superior to other human genotypes.

In today’s ruthlessly competitive international economy, the United States may benefit from a potent but unheralded advantage: the aggressive edge sustained by the inherited power of American DNA.

If this idea sounds familiar it’s because it’s not new.  The Nazis espoused the same concept with their belief in the Aryan master race.  Like the Nazis, Medved thinks that other races, other genotypes, are inferior.  He even goes so far as to use the idea of a superior American genotype to explain "our most persistent and painful racial divide."

Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

Medved advances the notion that the racial divide between blacks and whites is not a matter of centuries of slavery, brutality, prejudice, deprivation and discrimination.  Instead he proffers the explanation that blacks in America are descended from inferior genetic stock - unlike the rest of the American population.

What makes Medved even scarier - apart from being a racist - is his attempt to tie racial superiority to nationalism just as the Nazis did.  In Michael Medved’s worldview, America’s position as a global hyperpower is not due to chance or circumstance.  America is on top because we are the master race, the inheritors of a superior genotype.

In recent years I have jokingly referred to the American right as the Reichwing.  It seems I may have unwittingly stumbled onto the truth.  With people like Michael Medved espousing Hitlerian concepts of national and racial superiority, one can only wonder how long before we hear cries from the right for lebensraum.

Respecting - And Recognizing - American D.N.A.

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Mike Huckabee, speaking at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky today, made an impromptu joke about someone pointing a gun at Barack Obama and him hitting the floor.  Way to go preacher!  Like the Good Book says, "Who would Jesus assassinate?"

Well, what can we expect from a hick Baptist preacher?  By the way, Mike - who the fuck wouldn’t hit the ground if somebody aimed a gun at them?  Not Jesus freaks like you, right?  After all, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!  Right??

Don’t worry, preacher - I’m sure that joke will slay at the next cross lighting.

Huckabee’s Obama Joke Falls Flat

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John McCain has made a point in recent weeks of criticizing Barack Obama because Hamas endorsed him, despite the fact that Obama has no control over what Hamas says or does and that he has stated on record that he is not open to holding talks with the group.

"We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction," Obama said.
"We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements," he added.

That hasn’t stopped McCain from taking the opportunity to raise funds by smearing his opponent as a terrorist appeaser.  The John McCain of 2008 is against holding talks with Hamas.

"It is a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader to meet with a terrorist organization like Hamas."

Yet, in 2006, John McCain was open to diplomacy with the newly elected Hamas government.

"They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

Which John McCain are we to believe?  The John McCain who was for talking to Hamas or the John McCain who is against talking to Hamas?  Either way, what is clear is that John McCain’s attacks on Barack Obama concerning Hamas are untruthful, disingenuous and hypocritical.

Hypocrisy on Hamas

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Today, while speaking at the Knesset in Jerusalem, President Bush proved that there is no level to which he will not stoop.  Breaking long-standing American tradition, he took a cheapshot at a domestic political rival while on foreign soil.  Bush compared those who would engage in diplomacy with America’s enemies to Nazi appeasers.

More than a cheapshot, it is so blatantly ignorant and hypocritical as to be comic.  Only this morning the Washington Post reported that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates thinks we need to engage Iran diplomatically.

"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

Does that mean the man Bush chose to replace Donald Rumsfeld falls into the category of ‘Nazi appeaser’?  What about Bush himself?  Has his administration not been engaged in diplomacy for several years now with North Korea - a nation Bush himself designated a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’?  I guess that makes Bush an appeaser as well.  Doubly so when you consider that his administration negotiated with Muammar Gadaffi, responsible for the terror bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in order to get him to give up his nuclear weapons program.

Even more distressing is that Bush and those who lend credence to his vacuous argument have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to the meaning of appeasement.  Neville Chamberlain is not known as an appeaser because he engaged Hitler diplomatically.  Chamberlain’s great error was not talking to the Nazis.  His mistake was in ceding territory - specifically, half of Czechoslovakia - in an mistaken attempt to satiate Hitler’s expansionist appetites.  It wasn’t engaging Hitler diplomatically that emboldened him.  It was the show of weakness by Chamberlain in acceding to Hitler’s desire for new territories that led the Nazi regime to believe it could take what it wanted unopposed.

The long and short of this story is that, once again, Bush is engaging in his typical election year politics of fearmongering.  "Vote for a Democrat and die!", Bush threatens.  Nevermind, we are told, that President Bush’s policies have made us less safe and our enemies stronger and more numerous.  Nevermind that Bush has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to become the ‘Pundit in Chief’ by injecting himself into the 2008 election.

President Bush, you, sir, are a putz.

Gates: U.S. Should Engage Iran With Incentives, Pressure

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Keith Olbermann let President Bush have it with both barrels after his claim that he gave up golf to show solidarity with the troops in Iraq. Way to go, Keith!