At the end of the day

SC Democratic debate liveblogging by Josh Marshall with a video clip, too.

Who won the debate? "John Edwards seemed to stay above the fray and that may inure to his benefit." The Trail

Obama in SC, Hillary goes elsewhere: "South Carolina has become a must-win state for Obama since Clinton prevailed in New Hampshire and Nevada. He was expected to campaign here all week." AP

Wingnut Repub Rep. John Shadegg (AZ-03) has been accused of "using his political-action committee to skirt laws that limit the amount of money donors can give a candidate." Plus, Shadegg ignored the serious drinking water "problems of his constituents in Paradise Valley." He was too busy campaigning for John McCain in NH and SC.

Avedon spoke well of Obama's MLK speech and then noted, "That might go some way to making up for that nasty little business of letting a virulently anti-gay creep speak up against gays when campaigning on behalf of Obama... maybe." Pam Spaulding offers more insights.

GA campaign organizer Johnson leaves Fred for Mitt saying, “[C]learly Fred Thompson is not going to be the nominee.”

Also in GA, "Gov. Sonny Perdue has made a major list of mentionables in the underground Republican contest for vice president." AJC Political Insider

McCain leaps ahead of Rudy by 12% in... drum roll, please... New York! Stick a fork in Rudy...

Someone, please, make him stop -- Ralph Nader eyes another run at the WH in 2008.

MLK unremembered: McCain voted against making MLK a national holiday in 1983. He's "spending today at the inauguration of Alabama Governor Bob Riley who is a member of an organization that has been criticized for excluding African Americans."

Rick Perlstein -- "Conservatives still don't get Martin Luther King."

Cheney's emails -- "Waxman’s report said 'Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.' Among the sixteen days for which email are missing from Vice President Cheney’s office 'is Sept. 30, 2003, the same day the day the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced they were investigating who outed former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.' " TP

Pentagon ponders Gen. David Petraeus for top NATO command. NYT

Inside Iraq -- Photos from the Army of Dude.

Bad news for the R-Noise Machine -- A new Pew study shows that "the number of people getting election news online has more than doubled since Bush first stole his way into the White House." Details at Down With Tyranny!

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Wasn't there something I was supposed to blog about today?

Oh yeah - I remember now.

There's a Republican primary election in South Carolina and both parties held their caucus in Nevada today.


Nevada first...With 88% of precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton was declared the winner with 51% to Obama's 45%. Edwards garnered 4%, and should probably think about withdrawing with his chances for a cabinet position - and his dignity - intact.

On the Republican side, Romney took it standing up with 51%. Ron Paul took 14%, John McCain came in with 13%. Huck and Fred tied at 8%. Rudy brought up the rear with 4%.

I guess the Nervous Nellies among Hillary supporters were a bit over-the-top. For the record, they totally took the wrong tack. They should have approached it from the position of "then you have to hold caucuses in hospitals, too." What judge would want to be seen as the guy who upheld a showgirls right to caucus, but nurses can go hang? It was a no-brainer. Apparently. Some no-brain out there fucked that up from Jump Street.

Okay - South Carolina - that's a Republicans-only primary election, and polls won't close for a couple of hours, but Politico.com has a pretty good summation:

Saturday's most crucial showdown was on the other side of the country, in South Carolina, where the Republican contenders try to wrest advantage from each other — after three different candidates won the first three major contests.

Most polls have shown McCain leading Huckabee, trailed by Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

The stakes for the entire GOP field are high if history is a guide — every Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan has won South Carolina.

And the weather is absolutely miserable. Can you believe it's snowing in parts of South Carolina?

Well it is.

In the part of the state where Mike Huckabee's support is strongest.

Wonder what God's own Candidate is thinking right now?

[Updates below the fold]


UPDATE - Pale Rider

God's own candidate, Mitt Romney, did well out in Las Vegas. I've seen some coverage writing it off, basically saying that an overwhelming Mormon vote is the reason for his win in Nevada.

Ron Paul pulling 14% and beating McCain is huge--as is the fact that Ron Paul has a larger constituency within the Republican Party than that of Rudy Guiliani. I'm reminded of Ron Paul explaining why we were attacked on 9/11 and Rudy "not getting it" and trying to belittle Ron Paul for his ideas. As nuts as he is, Ron Paul gets it right on the war and that's gotta be troubling for the overtly pro-war candidates on either side of the aisle.

UPDATE II - Pale Rider 7:45 PM- Eastern

Tucker Carlson is trying to fan the flames of a Hispanic vs Black split in the Democratic Party. As if. We don't even have a nominee yet. We don't have anywhere near enough information to make that assessment. We have yet to see a large, populous and diverse state vote yet. And the Republican shill machine is desperate.

Tucker--talk about Ron Paul beating main stream Republicans with 50 times the name recognition and then ask us about a split among Democrats. The split is on the Republican side, clearly, because they are seeing candidates who have spent millions go down in flames.

The MSNBC coverage is dominated by Olbermann and Russert. Matthews is the third wheel along for the Prom date, and no one wants to give him liquor because he'll get caught and everyone will get busted by the Gym teacher. This makes for stilted coverage. CNN is unwatchable. They have Bill Bennett in there and all I want to do is ask "did that lardass play the one-armed bandit all day?"

UPDATE III - Blue Girl

Lets look at the Nevada numbers:

Women were a strong majority for the Democrats in Nevada. 59% of Democrats attending the caucus were female, to 41% male.

On the Republican side, the numbers are closer, but males are a solid majority - 52% to 48%.

But more telling than the gender demographics are the age demographics.

Republicans

60-up_________45%
45-59_________27%
30-44_________17%
18-29_________11%

Democrats

60-up_________36%
45-59_________32%
30-44_________19%
18-29_________13%

The numbers tell this well-versed-in-stats political consumer that the Republican party is entering the twilight years, along with it's stalwarts. It is sooooo yesterday. People who want to move forward are throwing their lot in with the Democrats, and the demographics on the Democratic side are much more stable and desirable. If you read these numbers as if they were in the respective prospectus of companies competing for your investment dollars, where would you invest your money?

UPDATE IV - Pale Rider

Yes--the voters are turned off by the Republicans, they are identifying themselves as Democrats, and the Republicans can't raise money. It's shocking to see how broke some of them are--Guiliani and McCain are literally broke and running on fumes on a day to day basis. Romney is using his own money and Huckabee isn't spending any money. The only who has a legitimate fundraising machine is Ron Paul and he's not going to piss that money away. In 1999, George W Bush was raising millions and was building a massive war chest with which to run. There is no comparison this year. They are all running on fumes.

How about a shout out to Howard Dean? The Fifty State strategy means we are going to compete with Republicans everywhere, and we will make them play a full-court game. As their "brand" continues to sink, we will make gains in places the Washington DC establishment would have written off four years ago.

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At the end of the day

Whistlin' Dixie with South Carolina conservatives in mind, the Huckster flapped the Confederate flag. An "independent group" sponsored a "flag issue" radio ad that smacked McCain and poured a heaping helping of praise on how Huckabee "understands the value of heritage." On Huck's values, Joe Conason at Salon wrote about his religious extremism and his ties to it. His face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaver... Look away!

None of the above -- 19% of SC GOP voters are undecided. Is that big? No, it's "HUGE."

What's a GOP code word for heartless bastard? In, SC, Fred Thompson dissed Bush's global AIDS initiative because "Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it... ...we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.” Countering Fred's criticism, Bush's former speechifier Michael Gerson said of Fred, "he clearly is playing to isolationist sentiments." TP offers more, um, insight.

Mr. and Mrs. Obama took a swipe at Hillary's voting record. When it comes to taking a stand on an issue, you're either fer it or agin it. Oh, wait...

Picking up from Manifesto Joe, the Bush-league economic stimulus plan refrains that one-hit wonder -- Tax cuts, baby! Via Sam Boyd at Campaign for America's Future, the CBO applauds the Democratic solution.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "ain't buying" WH spokesman Tony Fratto's kooky denial, "We have no reason to believe that any e-mail at all are missing." Oh? Emptywheel explained why Tony should have kept his piehole shut and today connected a few dots to the Plame investigation. Way to go, Fratto! Fred Fielding must luv u.

The No. 3 U.S. diplomat -- R. Nicholas Burns -- will leave the State Department in March for personal reasons. Uh huh. He'll remain involved "as a special envoy on India." U.S. Ambassador to Moscow William J. Burns will replace Burns. The two are not related. Tomorrow's WaPo.

Bob Somerby aptly covered the truncated, bogus apology from Tweety. Transcript at Media Matters. Corpus Juris posted the video .

First, Lee Siegel called us blogofascists. Now he whines that we're Stalinists (h/t Avedon).

Passive-Aggressive: In today's NYT column, David Brooks compared presidential frontrunners, Democratic to GOP -- "...a daughter of the feminist movement, a beneficiary of the civil rights movement and a self-styled proletarian. These are powerful Democratic categories" vs. "a pastor, a businessman and a war hero. These are the three most evocative Republican leadership models." Is Bobo aware of his unconscious cognition? Doorknobs say maybe, maybe not.

[That's all...no more after the jump.]

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Merry Christmas, South Carolina, from ‘Mitt’

In the latest in a long tradition of South Carolina mudslinging, voters there got a Christmas card purporting to be from Mitt Romney. The catch? It claims to be from the Boston (Mormon) Temple and it’s filled with comments from The Book of Mormon and Mormon leads not the Christian Bible.

“We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives, one or more being in eternity by whom He begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus His first born, and another being upon the earth by whom he begat the tabernacle of Jesus, as his only begotten in this world,” reads one passage from Orson Pratt, cited on the card as an “original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.”

Obviously, it’s a fraud, but, to use the Latin, “cui bono,” who did it?

My No. 1 guess — Rudy Giu-lie-ani, or an official or unaffiliated surrogate.

McCain, for all his faults, just doesn’t seem the type to stoop that low, even through surrogates. Besides, he’s surging. Ron Paul’s libertarian faith-based campaign believes wishful thinking, or the power of the will, can win elections. Fred Thompson’s probably too stupid.

So, that leaves Rudy, right? He’s slipping in the polls, and he certainly does have the personality to pull something like that.

But, so does somebody else: Mitt Romney

Remember, Mitt’s own staff was a suspect in the anti-Romney Iowa robocalling this fall, still unresolved as to who did it. And, besides the personality (though less of a hatchet man than Rudy), the poll slippage and everything else describes Mitt as well as Rudy.

Interesting… your vote?

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Mitt Romney Will Do Anything To Win The Dittohead Vote

Here we see him holding a sign demonstrating he is a divider, not a uniter.




Thanks to TMZ who obtained these

photos of presidential candidate Mitt Romney trying to win over grammatically challenged South Carolinians Thursday by holding a sign that said, "No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea's Moma."

You have to be a really desperate candidate to hold a sign linking two of your political opponents with the world's most wanted terrorist. It speaks volumes about the level of hate the dittohead wing of the Republican party has for America and the lengths Republican candidates will go to suck up to them.

Hey Mitt, I hear you might win the KKK vote with a photo op of you sporting a white power tattoo.

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Lindsey Graham's southern discomfort

I found this news item amusing -- not in trivializing the serious problems of immigration reform -- but because of the language used. File it under, "When Southern conservatives attack!" The target: Repub Sen. Lindsey Graham. Up for re-election, the South Carolina senator is in hot water back home:

Thanks to his high-profile help in crafting an immigration reform bill that has stalled in the Senate, constituents call and leave screaming messages on his office voicemail.

"NO AMNESTY! NO AMNESTY!" one repeat caller yells for a minute or more in angry overnight messages that greet his aides in the morning.

Graham's staff estimates that his Senate offices have received about 3,000 letters, phone calls, e-mails and faxes about immigration in the last month, most of them critical of him.

Talk radio hosts within and beyond South Carolina deride Graham as a Ted Kennedy toady.

Rush Limbaugh has taken to calling him "Lindsey Grah-amnesty."

Bloggers challenge his manhood, assault his patriotism, mock his intellect.

Still worse for where he comes from, they belittle his Southern bona fides.

Say it isn't so. Interesting how right-wing bloggers utilize similar themes usually reserved for bashing Democrats. For example, he's acting like a sissy. Michelle Malkin referred to Graham as "Senator Hissy" no doubt because of a fit caught on video, and at "Dump Lindsey Graham," blogger Fed Up In SC suggested, "[Graham] passionately pleaded for the rights of terrorists, whose primary goal is to kill American children." Another blogger summed Lindsey up in one word: Traitor!

Graham's predicament piques my curiosity since I live in the South. Can a Republican be a moonbat? At what point does a Repub cease to be a Repub?

Apparently, the simple answer is when he or she negotiates and agrees with the other tribe, i.e., liberals, the definition of RINO applies. After all, in the Wingnutpedia, it's liberals and only liberals who are the party of "fags" and terrorist-coddling, American-hating traitors.

Real Republicans are manly men who shit red, white, and blue and ride around in pickup trucks. The tribe believes -- perhaps is compulsed to construct -- this idealization about themselves and their leaders whether it's factually true or not. I certainly wouldn't describe Scooter Libby as a patriot or a mensch. But he's the darling of conservatives who want him pardoned. Never mind his crimes. Scooter stuck it to the opposition and that's what Real Republicans do.

In "The right-wing cult of contrived masculinity," Glenn Greenwald explained, it's...

...how the right-wing movement conducts itself and the rhetorical tool they use not only to keep themselves in power, but more importantly, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected.

This rhetorical device hinges on promoting "us against them," our tribe versus their tribe. In this, Graham's mistake was to consort with the leftiest of the left, Teddy "Splash" Kennedy. I know, I know. The sticking point is amnesty. South Carolinian conservatives don't like it, don't want it. Come hell or high water, their home-state senator had better damn well dance with the tribe.

Yet, what strikes me reading the conservative bloggers and their comment threads is the intensity of the attacks against Graham and the similarity of demeaning verbiage found in anti-liberal diatribes. What's been posted about Graham isn't so different from what Ann Coulter implied about Edwards' manliness.

For me personally, this episode of Lucid Moments™ also shines a light on bipartisanship GOP southern-style. Never compromise. Graham did and now... *spit* ...he's a "sissy."

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Harvesting organs from prisoners moves closer to home

As an update to the Mandarin's recent post on the Chinese government's practice of harvesting organs for transplant from prisoners, especially those imprisoned for merely practicing their religion, here is a recent headline from our own, more enlightened country:

South Carolina lawmakers may cut jail time for inmates who donate organs

COLUMBIA, South Carolina: Inmates in South Carolina could soon find that a kidney is worth 180 days.

Lawmakers are considering legislation that would let prisoners donate organs or bone marrow in exchange for time off their jail sentences.

A state Senate panel on Thursday endorsed creating an organ-and-tissue donation program for inmates. But legislators postponed debate on a measure to reduce the sentences of participating prisoners, citing concern that federal law may not allow it.

"I think it's imperative that we go all out and see what we can do," said the bills' chief sponsor, Democratic Sen. Ralph Anderson.

Well, this isn't the same thing as killing prisoners to harvest organs for a profitable transplant business, as in China. And, the Mandarin (who had his own kidney disease as a child) would love to see more people donate organs, but somehow the quid pro quo here just doesn't seem right. Does it?


Crossposted at The Mandarin.

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