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From HuffPost

By Seth Grahame-Smith
_________________________

It's over.

It's mathematically impossible for John McCain to win.

Were the great Tim Russert still with us, he would call the election for Obama at 7pm Eastern time. No, I'm not talking about November 4th -- I mean tonight.

Here we are in the present -- an electric casserole of breaking news ("Obama wears flag pin!"), Internet warfare ("lol McCain is teh oldz!"), and screaming gas bags who are terrified of women ("We'll do it LIVE!"). The MSM is trying to convince us that we're in for a twelve-round brawl. That McCain's going to give Obama a run for his $500M. That's all well and good, and I'm sure it'll make for some riveting television -- if you're the type of person who still watches Harlem Globetrotters games on the edge of your seat, convinced the Washington Generals will pull this one out.

But the truth is, it's not going to be close. Not even a little bit.

Imagine yourself in a high school history class a century from now. Imagine the teacher beginning the section on the elections of 2008 by setting the scene: "America's economy was in flames, we were fighting two wars with no end in sight, and global warming was accelerating at an alarming rate. The most despised president in 150 years was nearing the end of his two corruption-ridden terms, and had heartily endorsed his successor, John McCain -- who, despite a few ideological differences, planned on keeping the status quo intact. Running against him was a lightning-in-a-bottle candidate named Barack Obama. A candidate who had nearly six times the money to spend, drew crowds of 70,000, and who received support from a surprising number of disenfranchised Republicans -- even some of the Evangelicals who swept Bush to power. Obama was the story. He captured the imagination of young Americans and the world. Now, by a show of hands -- who thinks McCain won that election?" (A particularly easy question, since they're sitting in Barack Obama High).

Whatever you think about McCain -- whether you love him or hate him -- you can't deny that he's a victim of horrible timing. Everywhere you look, there are tidal forces -- geopolitical, economic, and social forces -- trending in Obama's favor. McCain is running on a war record in a country aching for peace. He's running on an admitted lack of economic knowledge in a country aching for economic reform. Healthcare, foreign policy, energy -- in each case his sales pitch is twenty years behind the curve, much like the declining party for which he has the unfortunate honor of being standard bearer. Worst of all, his base doesn't even like him. Sure, they might pull that lever, but they'll be holding their noses with the other hand. If Obama's base is "fired up and ready to go," McCain's base is more like "reheated and I'll get around to it."

All McCain's base are belong to us.

Call it whatever you want: arrogance, a jinx -- but let's be honest with ourselves -- this thing is over. I know, I know. "A lot can happen between now and November." I know that we Democrats are used to scurrying around like we're on Meerkat Manor, with a sky full of Neocon hawks overhead. I know that we've perfected the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But can't you feel it in the smog-kissed air? Feel that this year is different? This year, we've got a candidate who refuses to cower in the face of the old Rove/Atwater/Dobson line of attack. A candidate who understands that you can't change the world unless you win, and that you don't have to sell your soul to do it. And despite some bruises, we've got a Democratic Party on its way toward unprecedented unity and energy.

I don't care if footage of Obama snorting coke off Scarlett Johansson's boobs surfaces in late October. All it will do is bolster his standing with white males. I don't care if McCain is introduced by a resurrected Jesus Christ at the convention. All it will do is piss off Joe Lieberman. McCain won't just be defeated, he'll be crushed. And not just Bob Dole crushed, but crushed in a way that redefines the political map for the next 25 years.

He'll be crushed so decidedly, that bartenders will coin a new drink called "The McCrush" -- vodka and Orange Crush over crushed ice, served in a hollow flip-flop with a sprig of pandering. The networks will switch over to infomercials at 10pm on Election Night, because they'll have nothing left to cover after Obama's victory speech. Webster's will add the word "McCained" to its thesaurus entry for "crushed." Gamers will start taunting each other with new words like "Obampwnd!" and "McNoob!." Somewhere, out there in the everlasting ether of death, Barry Goldwater will feel better about himself.

Jinx or no jinx, I'm not going to be a Meerkat Democrat -- not this year. This year, I'm celebrating the Fourth with some burgers, some fireworks, and a nice, cool McCrush.

This year I'm the friggin' hawk.

Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of Pardon My President: Ready-to-Mail Apologies for Eight Years of George W. Bush

Bob Cesca
Barack Obama For President
Posted December 19, 2007 | 03:43 PM (EST)


From the very beginning -- back when our torture chambers still had that new torture chamber smell; and before our chief executive's incompetence exploded like an M80 inside the clenched-fist of the world -- George W. Bush has been an embarrassment.

We know his disgraceful deeds and policies. But it's his utter lack of quality; his unsubstantial presence; his marble-mouthed oratorical retardation; his inability to inspire greatness; and his empty-suit absence of intellectual curiosity which preordained him to be the worst President of the United States in modern history.

Admittedly, when it comes to the presidency, my personal level of idealism rests somewhere between Frank Capra and Aaron Sorkin. I'm a presidential geek. One of my life goals is to work in the White House for one week. My Dad's old office at the Treasury Department used to look out over the east lawn, and when I was a kid I used to imagine that one day the president would invite me and my Dad for a ride on Marine One.

But after seven years in this Dark Age, I've almost forgotten what it was like to have a real president occupying the White House: a president who, even if I disagreed with his policies and ideology, dignified the office with a stature that symbolized the awesomeness of America.

Emerson wrote, "Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even, 'I pray you, let me never hear that man's name again.'"

We seem to experience this routine with almost every two-term president. But President Bush was never a hero in the first place and only grew more ridiculous with each subsequent crime against the Constitution, against human decency and against democracy itself. If there's any justice left in this nation, history will record that President Bush was an entirely inadequate tool; a bungling villain whose early popularity grew out of a traumatic and patriotic need to support the office regardless of who occupied it.

And when the flood waters literally rose up and washed away the disguise, the slack-jawed poseur was revealed -- the "bore" who had always been there, but who had been previously and cynically costumed in cowboy drag. Some of us recognized the charade from the beginning, but it required a second national tragedy, this time in New Orleans, to alert the media and the rest of America to his criminal incompetence.

American history is inextricably tied to the presidency. It's how we mentally assemble the chronology of our past. For going on eight years, we've endured a chief executive who never should have ascended to this post. Consequently, this decade has been an aberration; a time when Americans somehow championed an illegitimate, Orwellian hooplehead and naturally suffered the consequences. This is how most of the first decade of this century will be remembered.

Yet our generation is being offered another chance here -- an opportunity to set things straight and elect a president who not only illustrates the historical qualities of the office, but who also defines an energetic new approach.

The next president has to be Senator Barack Obama.

Senator Obama's intelligence, passion and quality of character can inspire us to recapture our own potential for greatness. And after all these years of darkness, there is no alternative other than to correct our trajectory with someone who can elevate our common goals -- the American Dream. For the American Dream to survive, this era demands a new president who will include all of us in the debate over our future, whether or not we agree on every issue.

And I'm proud to say that I don't agree with the senator on everything. But it doesn't matter because this campaign is about much more than individuals and their pet issues. This is about the reacquisition of an ideal -- of a benevolent greatness which has been stolen away from us.

I see in Senator Obama an historic character who fits within my persnickety and idealistic template for the presidency -- and this time around, it happens that my idealistic choice has a realistic chance to win. So this isn't necessarily an endorsement based on ideology, but an endorsement based on that which is required from an historical perspective.

The alternatives on either side of this campaign are ultimately redundant to what we have now.

On the Republican side, each frontrunner represents a rage-inducing aspect of the present Bush regime. The Romney Unit represents the Paris Hilton fiscal policy of the Bush administration; Giuliani is the unstable, crazy-ass hubristic gunslinger; and Mike Huckabee is the cross-bearing fundamentalist who floats in the same fantasy world as Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort.

On the Democratic side, John Edwards is a tough call because he has the right idea. But there was a thing with Edwards from 2004 that I can't seem to shake. And I've really, really tried. During one of the primary debates, Howard Dean stood up to answer a question. As was the campaign fashion at the time, Dean rolled up his sleeves. Then, behind him, I spotted John Edwards whose eyes suddenly widened at Dean's sleeve-rolling as if to say, Oh crap, I should roll up my sleeves now or else I won't be awesome like Howard. Then he quickly rolled up his sleeves. It was an awkwardly candid moment which revealed a lack of originality and, for my admittedly nitpicky tastes, a little too much of the staged illusion of it all. But most importantly, I imagined him exhibiting the same derivative behavior when voting with the president on Iraq.

Senator Clinton, meanwhile, is certainly more intelligent and centrist than President Bush, but there's a secretive, calculating DLC side to the senator which drifts too dangerously close to the universe of Dick Cheney than the fresh approach her husband, President Clinton, offered in 1992.

Speaking of which, President Clinton said this week that Senator Clinton would dispatch the first President Bush on a world tour in order to repair America's reputation abroad. First, 'the hell you say?! Second, wouldn't that be just like a Cheney -- to use a Bush as a political tool. Seriously, we can't have this. Not even as a speculative talking point. Not any more.

This is what we're desperately trying to escape, goddamn it. This is why it's imperative that Senator Obama win the nomination and ultimately the White House itself.

Naturally, the day might arrive when President Obama becomes Emerson's bore. One day, years from now, we'll likely be lamenting the traditional media's "Obama Fatigue" narrative. But, by that time, I think we'll be prepared for the next era in American history. Hopefully, after two terms and eight years, President Obama will hand over his legacy to his vice president. But for now he's the historical antidote to the darkness and division we've endured for too many years. He's our best hope to restore the national equilibrium and to fulfill both the expectation of greatness the presidency deserves and, thusly, the greatness of America.

And no. However awesome it'd be, I'm not saying these things in exchange for a flight aboard Marine One. I mean, I wouldn't turn it down, of course... but that's not why.

From today's briefing with White House press secretary Dana Perino:





Reporter: Dana, on Tuesday at his press conference, when the president was asked about when he learned about Iran's nuclear program being halted, was he being completely candid?

Perino: Yes, he was ... If you look at the rest of that sentence, what the president is -- the president was clearly told that there was new information that was coming in, but he wasn't told the details of it. And the president was also told that the intelligence community was going to need to go back and check out to find out if it's true. What I said is that [Director of National Intelligence Mike] McConnell told the president if the new information turns out to be true, what we thought we knew for sure is right: Iran does, in fact, have a covert nuclear weapons program, but it may be suspended. He said that there were many streams of information that were coming in. They could potentially be in conflict. They didn't have a lot of confidence in the information yet.

Reporter: But the president said, "He didn't tell me what the information was." But you're now saying he was told that Iran may have halted its nuclear weapons program and also that there may be a new assessment, right?

Perino: Right, but he doesn't -- he didn't get any of the details of what -- what the information was, in terms of what the actual raw intelligence was.

Reporter: But he didn't say "details." He just said, "He didn't tell me what the ... "

Perino: OK, look. I can see where you could say that the president could have been more precise in that language. But the president was being truthful ...

Reporter: Can I just clarify? Is the president briefed every day by Director McConnell when he gets his daily intelligence briefing?

Perino: I don't know if it's him every day, but he does get a briefing.

Reporter: ... on a regular basis ...

Perino: Sure.

Reporter: ... Director McConnell's in the Oval Office.

Perino: Sure.

Reporter: So are you saying that from August when the president was tipped off by McConnell until last week ...

Perino: "Tipped off"? Come on.

Reporter: No, no, no.

Perino: Ed, "tipped off"? He was ...

Reporter: He was tipped off to the fact that the assessment may be changing. In your own words, you said he was told of that.

Perino: Sure.

Reporter: He wasn't told all the details. So from August till last week the president never asked Director McConnell, "Hey, how's that going? Are we getting any more on Iran?" He never asked ...

Perino: I'm not saying that.

Reporter: Well, so he did ask McConnell?

Perino: I don't know exactly what the president asked in the presidential daily brief. But say that I -- I'm going to do a hypothetical here, which I usually don't do -- but say I had and the questions from this room would be, "Did the president pressure the intelligence community? Did he meddle in the intelligence?" And the answer is no. Look, this is what -- stop.

Reporter: How about just being curious and asking, "Hey, you know, is there a new assessment? I'm out there talking about World War III."

Perino: No -- let me clarify that one more time. The president said, "If you want to avoid World War III, you will prevent Iran from having the know-how to make a nuclear weapon." What we know right now, for sure, is that Iran is enriching uranium, which is fissile material, to get a bomb. They are developing ballistic missiles in order to deliver a bomb. And we know something that we didn't know before, which is that they have halted a covert nuclear weapons program ...

Reporter: Can you just clarify one more thing? What day was the president actually briefed on the NIE?

Perino: I don't know. I don't know.

Reporter: Well, because [National Security Advisor Stephen] Hadley left the impression that it was last Wednesday.

Perino: Oh, on the NIE, specifically?

Reporter: On the NIE.

Perino: Yes, last Wednesday.

Reporter: Last Wednesday? OK. But there have been reports that the president briefed Prime Minister Olmert last week, maybe on Monday.

Perino: I don't know.

Reporter: Did he brief Prime Minister Olmert? And how could he brief Olmert on Monday about a report that he found out about on Wednesday? Can you ...

Perino: I don't -- I will check. I mean, it's possible that he knew that there was information coming; the intelligence community was checking it out ...

Reporter: The New York Times today is saying that there was a meeting in the situation room two weeks ago about this NIE and the vice president was there, but not the president. Is that true?

Perino: I don't know, but it wouldn't be a -- that wouldn't strike me as unusual.

Reporter: OK, but then it wouldn't filter up to the president if the vice president knew about the contents of the NIE two weeks ago? It wouldn't filter to the president until last week? He wouldn't know about the details?

Perino: I don't know, I'll check for you. But that would -- it would not strike me as unusual if the people are getting ...

Reporter: I want to follow up, Dana, on two subjects that have been coming through so far: Iran and the NIE. The most senior of the four senior intelligence officials who briefed reporters in downtown Washington on the day of the release of the unclassified judgments of the NIE ...

Perino: Yes.

Reporter: ... stated on that occasion that it was his belief -- that it remains his belief that it is Iran's, quote, "latent goal to build a nuclear weapon." ... Does [the president] believe that it is Iran's latent goal to build a nuclear weapon?

Perino: I think that -- I'm going to have to ask him the specific question ...

Reporter: If I can clarify -- two questions -- if I can clarify something you said earlier, you said they're enriching uranium, which is fissile material, "to get a bomb."

Perino: I'm sorry -- which can lead to fissile material to get a bomb.

Reporter: OK. So you're not saying at the moment they're currently enriching uranium to the degree necessary to have weapons-grade uranium?

Perino: We don't know.

Reporter: OK. All right.

Reporter: On Iraq ...

Perino: Iraq?

Reporter: Iraq, with a Q.

Perino: OK.

So I'm supposed to go to Topeka, Kansas next week for the SCCA Solo National Championships (racing) and we were gonna tow the Lotus and all the gear. Well, actually I was going to rockstar in on a plane (which is already booked) and my very responsible, alert and well-insured co-driver Glen Hernandez was going to tow the Lotus. This was supposed to be my first trip to Nationals in almost 10 years of racing and everything is all booked and registered and otherwise set up UNTIL....

The truck we were borrowing fell through and now we don't have a truck to tow the car. I have a trailer and a race car and lots of race tires and tools, but no way to get them to Kansas.

Is there anybody out there with a big truck they want to lend to us? PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSSSE?????????? It should be able to tow about 5,000lbs or more. We will even loan you a car in the mean time...your choice: A 2007 Mazdaspeed3, a Lexus ES300 or EVEN a 1979 Mercedes SL450 Roadster!

Somebody help! I need to get to Kansas!!!

Off to Packwood for some hardcore racing. I leave you with this:

I know most people could care less about politics, but ( this is important )