BartBlog

– An Early Xmas Present for Obama: They don’t come much dumber than former GOP Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the UBS corporate shill who is the McCain campaign’s senior economic advisor, and he proved it July 10th by calling America “a nation of whiners” for complaining about the miserable state of the Bush Boy’s economy that he helped craft when he was in the senate. McCain quickly jetted away from Gramm’s remarks, denying they represented his opinion, but he notably didn’t fire the fifth Mutant Ninja Turtle from his campaign. Gramm, finally noticing he had wet his pants at the dance, attempted to back track, claiming desperately that he meant the leaders of the country, not the citizens, but think about it – how is that better? After all, isn’t McCain trumpeting himself as a leader of the country? He just called the War Hero he works for a whiner? I can see this line replayed on Dem oppo ads in the fall to show just how boneheaded and crass the Republicans really are. Crawl inside your shell, Phil, and hope they don’t roll you on your back before you arrive home in Stupidville.

– Another Obama Gift: South Park on the South Side: You’ve probably already heard about the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s supposed ‘error’ of saying he’d like to “cut [Obama's] nuts off” for blaming black fathers for not taking more responsibility for their kids. Jackson was appearing on Fox News and made the comments in front of a microphone he claims he didn’t know was ‘hot.’ Bull-dooky. Jackson’s a media-savvy creature who has lived in front of the cameras for over forty years and well knows the first rule of television and radio: Never say anything near a microphone that you don’t want broadcast to the world, whether you think the mic is live or dead. I saw the video of the ‘mistake’: Jesse was right up on the mic and didn’t even bother to put his hand over his mouth when he said it. Recall Nixon’s line that he’d speak for or against someone, whatever would do the most good? In the same vein, Obama and Jackson know there are large segments of the white population of the USA who think the name ‘Jesse Jackson’ is barely a notch above Al Sharpton and synonymous with ‘scary urban black man who is coming to take my job, daughter, rights, testicles away.’ Jackson is trying to get Obama elected as the first black president in November: What better way to separate himself from Obama, and vice versa, than to drop this kind of bomb on Barack so that the nice ofay folks, especially the mentally-challenged Fox News audience, can say, “Gee, if Jesse Jackson wants to cut Obama’s balls off, I guess that Halfrican guy can’t be all that bad.” This was nothing more than political performance art, in Your Tattlesnake’s Humble Opinionating.

– In More Humble Opinionating, I think Obama committed a major tactical error by voting for the FISA act that included immunity for the telecoms that will come back to haunt him this fall. While many progressives and young voters who fervently supported him during the primaries will still, less enthusiastically, vote for him in November, they won’t be as likely to donate more money or volunteer to hit the streets to GOTV. (The money part could be particularly painful for a campaign entirely dependent on campaign contributions.) Obama will likely win anyway, but he may have just brought the score closer, hopefully not Kerry-close so that Diebold can save the day for Bush-replica McSame. Of course, with clown-college grads like Phil Gramm working for him, McCain may need a bulldozer after Election Day to unbury himself from the landslide.