Becoming Somebody

Anyone who lives, as I have for years, in the Hudson River villages — Nyack, Piermont, Grandview, Palisades — knows how obnoxious local E-List celebrity Stephen Baldwin can be. Whether he’s trying to shut down adult-video boutiques or making multiple trips to the Starbucks on the corner of Main and Broadway, the star of such Hollywood classics as Bio-Dome and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas is simply an annoying presence in an otherwise decent community.

Sure, everyone loves them some Alec. And Billy seems content to keep to himself. Hell, even Daniel has been fun to watch in his latest stint as a manic celeb-reality TV star. But holy hell is Stephen irritating. It’s probably the whole insane, right-wing Jesus-loving shit he’s into that drives me most crazy, but even if he wasn’t a Jesus Nazi he’d still bug me. He’s a slimeball and just sort of creeps me out. I think most people who’ve observed him around town would agree, as well.

And that is why I was so happy to hear little Stevie Baldwin pledge to move out of the country if Barack Obama wins the election in November, as if Obama needed any more help winning this uber-liberal portion of New York State. No one man has done more to mobilize support for Obama in the Hudson River Valley than Baldwin did this afternoon. Right now, there are legions of villagers pledging financial and organizational support to the Democratic nominee. It’s not the politics. We just want Stephen Baldwin to go far, far away.

Watch:


Note to Laura Ingraham: Stephen Baldwin only barely counts as an “actor,” and he certainly is not to be considered a “celebrity” guest or Hollywood insider.

A recap of the primaries, courtesy of Keith Olbermann and Countdown.

With Barack Obama narrowing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, in recent days both he and John McCain have switched their campaign strategies from primary to all-out general election mode. In 2004, this meant a lot of talk about partisan, red-herring issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. This time around, though, the opening round of debate has focused primarily on foreign policy, something that is actually crucial to a president’s duties in office.

It’s an encouraging sign for American politics, and I’m hopeful the majority of people can handle such a weighty topic. But the more I hear McCain’s delusional, neoconservative rhetoric — all of which seem to have been pulled, unrevised, from an outdated and misguided Cold War playbook — the more I fear what could come if this senile, ill-tempered kook is elected into office.

Not only has McCain butchered on several occasions the vital difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a distinction at the heart of the post-invasion sectarian violence in Iraq that has taken the lives of thousands of American soldiers, a group McCain has sworn to protect despite never stating how he would achieve that goal, but he has also abandoned his role as a so-called maverick, choosing instead to fall in lockstep with the Bush administration’s foreign policy of condescension, vilification, and alienation. Of course, this system has done nothing to curb the influence of terrorist groups or sure up our standing in the Middle East, thus making the United States a more vulnerable target than it could have been had a more robust diplomatic approach been taken.

In the last two weeks alone, McCain has revealed what would be a disastrous approach to international relations, a series of plans that would likely keep the U.S. at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come and, to the satisfaction of military contractors alone, start a few new ones along the way. To recap, he has taken an abrupt about-face on dealing with Hamas, the democratically elected majority government in Palestine, saying to do so would be “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.”

He has referred to Hamas, and implicitly the majority of Palestinians, as a “transcendent evil,” which, even if the claim were true, fails to accept the reality of the situation: that Hamas is the political wing chosen by the Palestinian people to lead their government and represent their interests; that the United States, through the tough-talk and thuggery started by Bush-Cheney and echoed by McCain, has only emboldened Hamas and other extremist groups that use violence to achieve political ends and speak of eliminating the state of Israel.

He has agreed with President Bush’s ignorant, historically inaccurate claim that those who wish to engage Iranian leadership through tough diplomacy, because the Bush policy of antagonizing Tehran has only strengthened fundamentalist rule in the country, are the equivalent of those who handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938. McCain followed this up by once again proving he knows nothing about the nuances of Middle East politics — remember the persistent Sunni-Shiite confusion — when he was unable to accurately tell reporters who makes and sets Iranian foreign policy.

Joe Klein of Time magazine confronted McCain over false claims made by the Senator regarding Obama’s expressed willingness to meet with Iran’s leaders. McCain has taken this to mean Obama would sit down with Iranian President, and easy-bake villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presumably because it more easily reinforces the idea that Obama is a hack who wants to appease a raging anti-Semite. But, as it turns out, Obama has never said this. He has said he would meet with “Iranian leadership” to negotiate with them on matters of foreign policy and their nuclear program. In Iran, the person responsible for these areas is not Ahmadinejad, as McCain continued to insist even after Klein informed him of the error, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know,” McCain said to Klein, referring to Ahmadinejad. “Go ahead. Or anyone who’s well-versed in the issue.”

First of all, anyone who is well-versed in the issue, to use McCain’s words, should at the very least be aware of the most basic facts of Iran’s political system, one that places Khamenei at the head of government and reduces the president to little more than a spokesman for the government with little influence on setting foreign and domestic policy. McCain is then, by his own definition, not well-versed in the issue and unfit to be president.

And isn’t the job of the president to inform the American people on the facts, correcting public misconceptions when necessary, and to not simply go with the flow when the flow is horribly and dangerously wrong? We have seen the effects of allowing a president to advance the false assumptions of the majority (Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida, was responsible for 9-11). By once again endorsing the misinforming of the American people, McCain is setting this country up for another foreign-policy disaster, one it cannot afford at this time in history.

But McCain’s crash course around the globe doesn’t stop in the Middle East. Just this morning, in a town hall meeting in Miami, McCain expressed his unwillingness to advance U.S.-Cuban relations. McCain insisted his policy on Cuba would maintain the embargo that has led to nothing more than an impoverished Cuban population unable to fundamentally alter its nation’s course from the ground up. Instead of easing the embargo in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation, which Obama and many experts agree would provide numerous people with economic and social resources, ultimately strengthening the position of the U.S. on the ground and helping move Cuba to a more democratic system, McCain wants to keep things as they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War.

This has been the American approach for fifty years, and nothing at all has changed. There is no indication that the Cuban government is willing to make the “fundamental reforms” the right-wing insists are necessary before discussions can take place. It is time to try a different approach, to realize the benefits of a strong U.S.-Cuban relationship, to offer incentives and rewards for Cuban action, and to not simply stand tough, hands on hips, like a bully demanding Cuba’s lunch money if it wants to avoid a beating at recess.

Perhaps this best describes John McCain’s worldview, though: The United States must force other countries to yield to its demands or risk absolute destruction or global alienation. He comes from a family with a long military history, after all, one that stretches back to battles with Native Americans in colonial times. His grandfather fought in World War II; he and his father served in Vietnam; his own son is now a Marine who has served in Iraq. War is all this family seems to know, and the McCain now running for America’s highest office has shown he intends to use these kindred ties to shape his foreign policy, consequences be damned.

But not all American’s gleefully share in this legacy of war — at least those who are well-versed in the issues, a group whose numbers are increasing, according to most polls, as more and more people realize that not all problems have a military solution.

If anyone needs more evidence proving John McCain is a weak, slithering reptile willing to trade his principles to win over the neoconservative, war-mongering base of the Republican electorate, a two-year-old video has surfaced of McCain expressing his willingness to sit down with leaders of Hamas in order to broker peace between Palestine and Israel. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is what the Republicans would call “flip-flopping.”

You see, now that he has chosen to creep through the diplomatic muck heretofore inhabited by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, all in a cheap attempt to rouse fear and garner votes at the expense of America’s welfare, McCain has spent the last month berating Barack Obama for saying the exact same thing he said to Sky News two years ago. I can’t wait until I get to be so old that I no longer hold myself accountable for past statements.

Watch video:

Click here to read James P. Rubin’s op-ed in The Washington Post, calling out McCain’s Hamas hypocrisy.

Click here to read McCain’s new, hypocritcal stance on diplomacy with Hamas, straight from the decrepit, senile reptile’s mouth.

A few nuggets — with my own commentary added — from the Financial Times, in a story about Barack Obama’s inability to win votes in West Virginia because, in essence, he is intelligent and black (click here to read the full story):

1. “If [Obama] is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.”

Well, Missy, I think you just helped explain why your state has the lowest college graduation rate in the country. If you are one of the people responsible for educating children, then it’s pretty clear the poor tykes in your care have an uphill climb ahead of them.

What about “ordinary Americans” doesn’t Barack Obama understand, Missy? What is an “ordinary American” anyway? Something tells me, according to your narrow, redneck mind, “ordinary Americans” must believe in God, own at least three guns, be unable to read words of more than three syllables, and religiously TiVo episodes of “American Idol” and “Cops.” And what does understanding “ordinary Americans” have to do with carrying out an effective foreign policy or fixing a broken economy?

2. None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr. Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. … Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr. Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values,” stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim — an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months — despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr. Wright’s church in Chicago.

Where to begin breaking down the stupidity in this passage? Let me start with this whole notion of patriotism. Here’s the thing: You can’t measure it. You can’t prove that someone is more patriotic than someone else. Questioning someone’s patriotism in the Bush-Cheney era has become this generation’s version of McCarthyism. It’s a bogus slur without any base, and anyone with half a brain knows it — which explains why West Virginians are so preoccupied with it. My hope is that history will one day show today’s Middle-American, flag-waving faux-patriots to be nothing but ignorant pawns used by crooked politicians as a means to their evil end, that they did more harm to this nation than those of us who truly cared about the ideals outlined in the Constitution, things have nothing to do with lapel pins and Bibles.

I would also like to ask people in West Virginia which of Obama’s “values” they doubt. If recent political history is an indicator, I would guess that these include, but are not limited to, his valuing of fairness and equality (he doesn’t think homosexuals are minstrels of Satan actively working to destroy this Christian nation); his valuing of a woman’s right to make medical decisions and the importance of privacy between a doctor and a patient (he’s pro-choice); his valuing of generosity (he’s a liberal, after all, which is just a dirty euphemism for someone who wants to use tax money to help poor people do stuff, like send their kids to good schools and see a doctor when they’re sick); his valuing of not killing people for no reason (he was against the Iraq War). I could go on, because I’m sure there are many other objectionable values flowing through Obama’s heart, but I’m more interested in hearing how John McCain and Hillary Clinton’s “values” trump Obama’s.

Moving on to Obama’s cosmopolitan background. I didn’t know that not knowing your father; being raised by a single mother who used food stamps to put dinner on the table; moving all over the world as a child, even living in a place like Indonesia; working your ass off in the classroom to get scholarships to college and law school — the only way you could otherwise afford it; and passing up corporate jobs and tons of cash to work as a community organizer in the inner city constituted a cosmopolitan background.

Next on the list: his exotic name. Huh? You have doubts about his exotic name? Are you serious, West Virginia?

I’m passing on the Reverend Wright thing because it’s such a tired issue. At this point, there’s nothing you can say to convince a stupid person that the things Wright said, at worst, are just as atrocious as some of the hateful rhetoric spewed by white Christian clerics (see: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, the pope). The bottom line is that all religious leaders are batshit insane, and their comments should be treated as such.

Finally, West Virginia, repeat after me: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. If you hate him for belonging to a Christian church pastored by an “anti-American,” then how can you also hate him for being a non-Christian, which he would have to be if he were a Muslim?

And, for the record, who gives a shit if he was Muslim, you racist, xenophobic assholes? Not all Muslims are terrorists hellbent on killing innocent people. I think you’re confusing Muslims with evangelical Christian presidents from Texas. Zing! Gotcha, West Virginia!

3. Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr. McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president,” he said.

Oh, Josh Fry. You are my favorite of them all. Please know, Josh Fry, that as I sit here in my ivory tower, in this bastion of sin I call home, where I live out of wedlock with a woman and wipe my ass with the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Revelations while silently worshiping my college diploma, I am not just listening to NPR, reading The New York Times, and using my elitist Mac laptop to instant message with an openly and unashamedly gay friend. No, Josh Fry, that is certainly not all I do here. You see, I am also wishing for your death and the death of all people who think and speak like you. You are what make this country an awful and embarrassing place, and things would be so much better if you simply didn’t exist.

And another thing, Josh Fry. Not only are you racist, you’re also a Nazi. When you say that you want a “full-blooded American” to be president, you are saying that only pure, white people should be guaranteed the rights and freedoms of this country. Well here’s a little newsflash, Josh Fry: I guarantee, if we did a genealogical examination of both you and Barack Obama, we’d see that your “full-blooded American” status is about the same as that of the guy with brown skin and a silly name. Seeing as how this country was founded by immigrants who killed, raped, and pillaged their way from sea to shining sea, I think it’s safe to assume there aren’t too many “full-blooded Americans” out there. Besides, even if there were, they’d be too busy to be president. They have casinos to run, after all.

The most interesting thing I’ve read about last night’s results from primaries in Indiana and North Carolina isn’t that Barack Obama more or less locked up the Democratic nomination but that John McCain, running uncontested for all practical purposes on the Republican side, failed to muster 80 percent of the vote in either state, a pathetic showing for a man without any legitimate opposition on his party’s ticket.

The all-but-official Republican nominee garnered just 78 percent of the vote in Indiana. Mike Huckabee, out of the race since March 4, earned 10 percent, and Mitt Romney, who gave up his quest for the top slot back on Feb. 7, netted five. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, battling these days on principle alone, notched seven percent.

In the Tar Hell State, which many have been predicting McCain will carry in the fall, his performance was even more inept. He beat Huckabee 74 percent to 12, while four percent decided all options sucked equally and chose instead to cast their ballot for “no preference.” All this from the party that was supposed to be unifying behind their candidate and moving full steam ahead toward the general election.

Despite J-Mac’s electoral impotence, though, his daughter is still my girl. Can’t get enough of those McCain Blogettes. If you’re reading, Meg, call me. I didn’t mean what I said outside that town hall meeting in Charlotte. I swear. I take it back. Just because you wear adult diapers and can’t remember the day of the week and wake up in the night, dripping with sweat, screaming things about Charlie and napalm doesn’t mean you’re incapable of running the free world. So we’re good now, right? Say hi to mom for me. XOXO.

I mentioned in a post last week that the current debate raging between the three remaining presidential candidates over whether a summer moratorium on the federal gas tax, and the particular caveats in the enactment of that moratorium, is the only interesting, substantive policy question to arise since the Iraq War troop surge. I then derided people for focusing on bullshit, tangential issues instead of this far more important matter.

Of course, like a true political blogger, I fell victim to the very social plague I railed against, skipping right past the substance while taking great pride in pointing out how everyone around me was a big moron. Well, as it turns out, I am the moron. Shame on me for being so hypocritical. Allow me to rectify the situation now.

The federal government, as everyone knows, taxes gasoline at a rate of 18.4 cents per gallon. The government uses revenue from the tax to pay for the building and repairing of roads and bridges and other things of somewhat high-level importance. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pretty good tax. The public pays into a system and is rewarded with improvements to the services provided to them by their government. If all tax spending worked as efficiently and transparently as in this particular case, I think it’s fair to suggest people would stop bitching so much about paying taxes and be glad their money was being used to provide them with things they need and want, but I digress.

Somewhere along the way, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and the people who advise them got the idea that cutting the federal gas tax during peak summer driving months would be a good idea. In reality, though, it is completely asinine. And it’s not just a little asinine. It’s so asinine, in fact, not a single economist backs either McCain’s or Clinton’s plans — this at a time when you can get a so-called credible expert to support even the most egregious falsehood (see: the build-up to the invasion of Iraq).

To be clear, Barack Obama is the only reasonable one of the bunch. He has called out the gas-tax holiday for exactly what it is — a cheap political ploy that panders to voters but does nothing to help them. Of course, by once again treating the American people like adults capable of understanding the long-term benefits of not cutting a tax, Obama is taking a huge political gamble. The American people are notorious buffoons and suckers for the promise of extra cash.

McCain and Clinton, on the other hand, continue to talk to voters like they’re grubby, money-loving children and, as such, have slightly different versions of the plan. McCain’s proposal, as you’d expect, is the more ass backward of the two, at least on paper. The very senior Senator from Arizona wants to cut the tax without compensating for it, something most experts agree would cost the country the money it needs to maintain its infrastructure. Countless construction jobs would be lost, bridges and roads would continue to crumble, the economy would slip further into recession.

Now, I’ve come to expect such half-assed schemes from McCain, because, well, he’s not very bright. Unfortunately, bravery and the ability to withstand years of torture don’t counteract the effects of aging on the mind. He’s simply lost, like grandpa, full of piss and vinegar and crazy ideas, not to be trusted with anything more important than keeping the crystal stocked with rock candy.

But Clinton, for all her flaws, of which I humbly believe there are many, is usually a bit sharper, especially on more complex issues like this one. Her plan also calls for the temporary suspension of the federal gas tax, but unlike McCain she proposes to pay for the holiday — that makes it sound so fun — with a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. The windfall profits tax would charge oil companies a 50 percent tax on profits exceeding a certain dollar amount, something they can certainly afford considering how much money they’ve made in recent years.

There is only one problem with this idea: The windfall profits tax doesn’t exist and has little chance of getting passed by a legislative branch as inept and dysfunctional as this one. Even if Congress could get its shit together, I think it will take a bit longer than the month or two between now and the time when Hillary wants our little vaycay to begin. Throw in the fact that any increase in taxes on oil companies will likely be passed on to the consumer, thanks to our wonderful free-market capitalist system, and Clinton’s plan starts to sound even dumber than McCain’s.

For the faithful who still choose to believe in either McCain’s ill-conceived economic lunacy or Clinton’s adventures in a legislative fantasy land, perhaps because the hope of thirty extra bucks is just too enticing, there are more reasons why the gas-tax holiday makes no sense whatsoever.

First, there is nothing at all to suggest that gas-station owners will pass the tax cut onto consumers. This type of trickle-down economics never reaches the customer. We’ve seen it time and again since Reagan first introduced this mind-bogglingly stupid theory. Those at the top of the pyramid drown in excess profit and those at the bottom continue to struggle. The most likely scenario would see those who own gas stations reducing prices at the pump only slightly, while pocketing the difference saved by the repeal of the tax.

Following the money, then, thanks to the consumer frenzy likely to ensue once the “holiday” is announced, it becomes more and more clear that the oil companies would benefit most. The best either plan does to ensure that prices are set fairly is to “monitor for manipulation,” an empty, unenforceable promise from Clinton.

More importantly, though, the gas-tax holiday does absolutely nothing to get at the root cause of the ridiculous spikes in prices. In fact, it would make the problem worse.

Getting rid of the federal gas tax would only encourage people to drive more, increasing the demand for gasoline, which is already in short supply. Therefore, as any high-school economics student knows, the underlying cost of gasoline will only increase. The only way to keep things stable is to increase both supply and demand at the same rate. Unfortunately, McCain and Clinton don’t seem to be thinking that far ahead.

Increasing the demand for gas would also hinder the progress made by technology companies working to increase fuel-efficiency standards or the use of alternative fuels. The environment simply cannot take the postponement of these advancements.

Gas prices have surged for numerous reasons too complex for me understand or attempt to articulate, but these reasons are directly related to broader issues like the war in Iraq, the weakening of the U.S. dollar, and the increase in the number of oil companies owned by foreign states, namely those controlled by Venezuela and its America-hating president Hugo Chavez.

The issue has deep geopolitical roots that require long-term solutions and big-picture thinking. Attempted fixes involving anything less, like this ridiculous gas-tax holiday, simply miss the point, ignore the real problems, and dupe the public in as transparent and shameless a way as we are ever likely to see.

I’m starting to think that maybe John McCain, you know, doesn’t really know stuff.

From Think Progress:
McCain Gets Iraq Facts Wrong Again: Says Sadr — Not Maliki — ‘Asked’ for Ceasefire

P.S. — Happy 200th post to me!

I’ve spent the last few days trying to understand exactly where Hillary Clinton is going with her latest, most recent strategy. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. She cannot win the nomination. Well, she can, but it would come at the cost of the general election. She would need to somehow weasel Florida and Michigan into the delegate fold, in which case she’d still trail Obama, though by a smaller margin, and then convince a healthy number of superdelegates to piss off the entire party and put her back on top.

There’s just no way to win it without bargaining for it, tearing the party in half, and more or less handing the presidency to John McCain. And as much as she’s been tickling the tender underbelly of that beast, I just cannot believe she wants a Republican in the Oval Office more than a member of her own party.

So why, then, has she spent the last two weeks ripping Obama down and, at the same time, building herself and McCain up? It makes sense to attack the front runner, so that part of her ploy isn’t that strange. If she wants to overtake Obama — even though the math makes it virtually impossible — she needs to position herself ahead of him where it matters. But how does the McCain rub and tug fit in? Why is she making arguments that seem to best support her potential opponent?

Well, I finally have the answer. Get ready for it, folks. The endgame here can be summed up with these four words: Vice President Hillary Clinton.

As I and everyone else with a calculator has stated, the chances of Clinton overtaking Obama’s pledged-delegate lead are slim, at best. The only real chance she has of securing the nomination rests in committing some form of political suicide, destroying her and her husband’s already diminishing legacy. And the Clintons are legacy whores. They love holding the keys to the Democratic party. They can’t just go away without a fight. But that’s precisely what the math dictates they must do.

The party has also moved away from the politics-of-old mentality that the Clintons represent. While not signaling an outright rejection of that paradigm — the uneducated and aging still LOVE Bill and Hill — Obama’s rise in the party, at least for this election cycle, has put the power of the party in the hands of a more intellectual, youthful faction of Democrats. That said, there is a lot less room for a Clinton on the general election ticket. So not only was Hillary facing an unlikely loss in the primary, she was faced with the realization that she wasn’t even needed on the ticket. Her message of experience is stale and boring. Obama shouldn’t need or want that from his veep. His pool of running mates needed to be someone who represented his mantras of hope and change. It simply could not be the person who spent the entire campaign telling people how stupid and naive they were for believing in all that mushy stuff.

On the other hand, it had become indisputable fact that should Clinton ever figure out a way to evade all rational thought and broker the nomination for herself, she would have to take Obama as her running mate. That is the only way to quiet the potential riot that would erupt in the streets of Denver, or at least a cyber-riot led by hundreds of angry nerds with blogs who have spent the better part of a year Baracking man-crushes on the Illinois Senator.

But then Hillary started scaring the shit out of everyone and saying things that basically amount to, If that Obama guy is in the White House, all of your children are going to die. Hell, even McCain can keep you safer than Obama. Of course, this is an absurd strategy. It makes no sense. As Keith Olbermann has said time and again, using the strengths of the nominee of the other party in order to defeat your opponent in a primary is not only ludicrous, it is without precedent in presidential politics. It’s also stupid. And Hillary Clinton is not stupid.

She is deftly using the seven weeks between now and the Pennsylvania primary to reemphasize the importance of experience in the minds of Democratic voters. She is moving to make herself a vice-presidential front runner after being relegated to a vice-presidential afterthought. She is saying to Obama, You can’t win in November without me. Take me with you. Take me with you.

And the tactic is going to work. By making McCain’s arguments for him, Clinton is implicitly saying that she is the only one who can thwart his attacks once he begins making them for himself. Furthermore, by saying that she has everything that McCain has (buzzwords: strength and experience), she is telling the Obama people that adding her to their ticket will make the Dems unbeatable in November. It’s the best of both worlds.

Of course, most people already knew this. That’s why there’s been talk of the possible Super Ticket. But, like I said, it made no sense previously for Obama to share his ride to Pennsylvania Avenue with someone like her. Now, thanks to some shifty maneuvers and a head-scratching strategy, though, it seems like Obama has no choice but to bring her along. And once the two of them did their thing and secured eight years in power, washing away all of the bad blood that has developed between the Clintons and the rest of the party this primary season, Hillary will be back as the inevitable presidential nominee in 2016. And that’s exactly where she wants to be.

John McCain was born in the year 1191, presumably AD.

John McCain is the warming glow of the sun that illuminates all our hearts, represented here by the red rocks of Arizona. His machismo, indicated by the silver, military-style lettering, is the secret ingredient that makes Viagra and napalm possible.