Here’s Mike Huckabee speaking to an NRA Convention. He hears a loud bang and tries to make a joke about Barack Obama “diving for cover” because someone just aimed a gun at him.

Frankly I can’t really even figure this out. It’s not really racist on its face but it’s also utterly unfunny. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld: “I’m not offended as a Democrat, I’m Offended as a Comedian.”

In February, when the New York Times ran a story questioning John McCain’s marital fidelity and relationships with lobbyists, it was a rallying cry for McCain’s conservative doubters. The Times, long a perceived enemy of the right, provided just what McCain needed - a common enemy.

I’m wondering if Bush’s veiled Obama insult in Israel won’t have the same effect for the Democratic Party. Even though the primary isn’t technically over, the dust-up is providing Democrats with a similar rallying cry. It’s also giving us a preview of just how powerful a unified Democratic party will be this year. Here are a few examples:

First Obama:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack…George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel…It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel…Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what (Presidents) Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.”

This opened the floodgates for other Democrats like Senator Joe Biden:

“This is bulls**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement…He is the guy who has weakened us. He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

“Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round. For the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics.”

Even Hillary Clinton went after Bush and defended the Democratic party’s honor:

“President Bush’s comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy.Unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect from President Bush.”

Clinton partisan Paul Begala also got into the act:

“All this is to say George W. Bush is a hypocrite. So deep is his cynicism that he would go on foreign soil to invoke history’s greatest crime to condemn conduct he himself has engaged in.
“As an American I am ashamed that such a man represents me.

I say this as someone who has not supported Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries; someone who has reservations about Sen. Obama’s plan to engage Iran in talks without any preconditions. But there comes a time when intra-party rivalries must yield, and all of us must stand together against the degradation of the Office of the Presidency.”

Finally. We’re no longer the party that begs for apologies. Now we’re a party that stands-up for itself, doesn’t take any shit and forcefully juxtaposes our approach to that of Bush and the Republican Party.

Side note: Now, I’m not one of the Obama supporters who believes he walks on water, but from the very beginning, I noticed that he doesn’t beg for apologies. He has always used GOP sleights as an opportunity to contrast his approach and criticize theirs. I know this isn’t the entire reason Democrats are standing up for themselves, but it sure doesn’t seem to hurt.

Yup, we did it. The Crue classic dedicated to our favorite lady who really needs to go away…Hillary.

This is a true gem. Chris Matthews just destroys right-wing radio host Kevin James in this clip. Parroting President Bush, James accuses Democrats of being appeasers in the same vein as Neville Chamberlain. So Matthews asks a simple question: What did Neville Chamberlain do?

Hilarity ensues when James has no idea:

If the press is as sick of this kind of crap as we are, this is very good news for Democrats.

This just in:

In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation’s biggest state to tie the knot.

Domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage, the justices ruled 4-3 in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George.

Read more here.

This is really too good for words:

Politics is classically analogized to one of two pursuits: war or chess. But although both endeavors involve a combination of skill and strategy, chess possesses an added element that war abandoned sometime around Kaiser Von Wilhelm: Honor. Analogies are always pushed beyond their logical limit but, in the case of this Democratic Primary race, I think the chess analogy does illustrate an important point…

That Hillary is unfit to be Obama’s Vice-Presidential running mate.

A quick background if you aren’t familiar with the game (e.g., you’re not a nerd like me). Chess — if played by the rules — does not end in a “win.” It ends in either a draw (both players agree neither can win), a resignation (where the player quits when he realizes the situation “looks hopeless“), or checkmate (when one player puts the other’s king under immediate attack [in "check"] and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move). In other words, no one truly “wins” a game of chess in the conventional sense. At best the final outcome might be described as a TKO.

This may surprise you but Checkmates are rare. In fact 95% of all games end in resignation. Once the situation looks hopeless, the smart player resigns. Don’t let the vernacular fool you, “looks hopeless” is not the same thing as “no possibility of winning.” In fact most resignations happen when there are many avenues of success left. Although no position of weakness will cause a Grandmaster to resign to a novice, even the infamous Bobby Fischer — as arrogant as they come — resigned many a game. Viewed from the perspective of sport or war, this seems illogical. “Never say die,” as they say. But chess is not war. Because chess is not just about strategy and skill it’s about something else:

Respect.

I’m not talking about the “Respect” that deluded crooners demand from Simon Cowell, I’m talking about real respect: an assessment of the opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and the logical extrapolation of those odds to the outcome. When Karpov resigns to Kasparov it’s not because he thinks there are “no moves left” — that’s Checkmate — it’s because he looks across that table, sizes up his opponent, and says “he’s too good an opponent to make that move.”

Let’s take this back to Earth.

With John Edwards’ endorsement today this race has reached its endgame. Hillary can dart her King about for a bit but checkmate is inevitable. But the real truth is that the race reached “looks hopeless” status about three months ago; when Hillary’s own advisors told her she should preserve her dignity — and the dignity of the party — and resign. But Hillary looked across that table and reached the conclusion Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer and every other Grandmaster who has realized defeat was imminent did not:

He does not deserve my respect.

And for that reason alone she can’t be the VP. Hillary may feign respect today but that’s because the race is finished. At this point it’s just face. When there was still game to be played and moves to be made Hillary looked at Obama and said “I’m not leaving, he might just fuck it up.” This is the kind of thing you do against a pure opponent of course but that’s because a race against the other party is war.

But intra-party fights aren’t war, they’re chess. They are competitive but they are competitive with honor. Hillary’s failure to abide by that honor makes her unfit.

Just watched John Edward endorse Obama. I’ll update in a minute with more details on his speech.

The other day Rich Lowry of the National Review, wrote a column deriding what he called the “Obama Rules.”

After his blowout win in North Carolina last week, Obama turned to framing the rules of the general election ahead, warning in his victory speech of “efforts to distract us.” The chief distracter happens to be the man standing between Obama and the White House, John McCain, who will “use the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.”

Lowry continues. Mocking the absurdity of the notion that Republicans have ever tried to “distract” voters.

Ah, yes, the famous distractions with which Republicans fool unwitting Americans. Ronald Reagan distracted them with the Iranian hostage crisis, high inflation and unemployment, gas lines and the loss of American prestige abroad. Then, the first George Bush distracted them with the notion of a third Reagan term, as well as the issues of taxes, crime and volunteerism. After a brief interlude of national focus during two Clinton terms, another Bush arrived wielding the dark art of distraction.

Forget “bitter”; Obama must believe that most Americans suffer from an attention-deficit disorder so crippling that they can’t concentrate on their own interests or values.

Yes Rich. Odd that Obama would get the impression that Republicans use a “playbook” that distracts from the issues. I wonder where a smart guy like Obama would get that impression?

I suppose by reading columns like this from 2004, from writers like….wait for it….Rich Lowry:

The JFK wannabes know the centrality of image to Kennedy’s magic. Between Kerry’s expensive haircuts and Edwards’s hair-sprayed bangs, my guess is that no presidential ticket in the history of the planet has cared so much about personal grooming. When the ticketmates travel together, there will probably be stiff competition for the mirror and hair products. Teresa herself has gotten into the act, recently pronouncing herself “sexy” — an odd boast for someone auditioning for a job that usually involves reading to schoolchildren.

Or maybe columns like this from the 2004 version of Rich Lowry:

One of the prisoners of war featured in the new ad, Paul Galanti, spent nearly seven years in captivity in Vietnam. “John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and my comrades in the prison camps in North Vietnam took torture to avoid saying,” Galanti says. That is to say Kerry recited a denunciation of the U.S. war effort so sweeping and absurdly over-the-top that only a tortured American soldier or a North Vietnamese propagandist could have done better (or worse).

Or it could be the 2000 version of Rich Lowry:

Gore is vulnerable on this score because his demeanor plays into a conservative cultural and anti-elitist populism that has historically been the best foil to the Democrats’ economic populism. There was probably a strong element of anti-elitism in the reaction to Gore’s debate performance, which by any reasonable measure was solid and well-informed. But maybe we don’t want a presidential candidate who can pronounce Kostunica and recite the constituent parts of Yugoslavia — or at least not one who shows off about it.

So yes, there are people who believe that Americans have attention-deficit disorder and thy name is Rich Lowry.