Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

McCain’s been riding high, convincing the American people that by simple virtue of his being a Republican, he’s better on the economy – even though McCain’s major backers are the investment bankers and stock gamers who put us into the mess we’re currently in in the first place.

But while McCain keeps selling himself as good for the economy and just like the common man, there’s obvious proof that he doesn’t know what’s going on with his own family finances, let alone what the common man goes through economically. See McCain’s Mansions:

And when quizzed about how many mansions he owns, what’s McCain’s response?

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”

In a crashing housing market and a recession spiraling rapidly into depression with the devaluing of the dollar imminent, do we really need the economy in the hands of a business-first Republican with more McMansions than he can remember? He’s got his – and he really doesn’t seem to care about people who can’t afford theirs.

Advice for living in a McCain administration: If you don’t have a stock portfolio worth at least five figures and you live near a levy – move.

Jed’s Report carries a story on the Associated Press-hosted luncheon where Obama was grilled and McCain was given Dunkin’ Donuts doughnuts (with sprinkles!) and coffee. Barack Obama was asked if he would increase troop levels in Afghanistan where “Obama bin Laden” was still operating. McCain’s moderator, in the meantime, waxed eloquent about the wonderful times reporters spent with McCain on the Straight Talk Express, declared the luncheon a chance to invite everybody else to share those great times, and then offered the doughnuts to McCain, noting that she knew they were his favorite snack.

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Above is the point where I would usually put a quote from the original article – which, in this case, might be a good thing for them, since it might contain some pearl of wisdom that I had missed that would completely justify the difference in how the two candidates were treated.

The AP, however, has decided that the thing they truly hate is having their own words quoted when people critique their journalism. To that end, they have created a bizarre, counter-intuitive, and definitely counter to fair use policy that they will license quotes of more than five words for a fee – a license which they reserve the right to revoke if they feel it shows the AP in a bad light. Given these new guidelines, I can in good conscience only give the AP four or fewer words to state their case – and that’s three quoted words in the first sentence. Tsk. Too bad.

I told you! I told you to pay close attention to Rachel Ray-Gate! Now the mad cookbook-copier Cindy McCain has struck again, as this Parents Magazine web site testifies. It’s a humble little recipe for oatmeal butterscotch recipes – that, as Wonkette has found, just happens to have come from a corporate website.

To atone for this, Cindy fired a hapless intern. But the problem was systemic! Cindy has contributed another recipe, to Parents magazine. This recipe for Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies was, of course, directly cribbed from Hershey’s website.

Hey, a lot of us go to websites for our favorite recipes. Of course, we don’t usually try to pass them off as traditional family recipes – or if we do, we give a source for them. For instance, I have told people that my family recipe for pumpkin pie is the one on the Libby’s can “with a twist.” Or that my oatmeal cookies are the Quaker Oats recipe with all-fresh ingredients (fresh raisins – very important).

And, just wondering, is butterscotch the food of the common people?

Yes, last night I followed my typical pattern of spending an hour or two watching primary coverage after the polls closed before I finally got disgusted with the coverage—and with the fact that CNN is still willing to put Bill Bennett in front of a microphone at every possible opportunity—and tuned in to repeats of “Family Guy” on Adult Swim.

Then this morning I awake to find that not only has Ezra Klein devised the perfect campaign blogging strategy, but my brother tops even that by actually doing something worthwhile with his time.

Simple points: Obama has not lost ground anywhere. Obama’s gained ground with middle class white males. Cable news is not real news. Obama’s ahead in delegate count and popular vote—and mathematically, by Clinton’s own estimate, he’s going to stay that way. Clinton’s losing double-digit leads in major states simply by showing up. Bill Bennett is a big doo-doo head. And so is Wolf Blitzer.

Now that we’ve established all of that, I’m going to go actually accomplish something. I’m going to watch the episode of “Good Eats” I recorded last night.

Boy, has this election season gotten ugly. With nitpicking over individual words used in campaign speeches, you could be forgiven for thinking you had walked out of the Presidential election and into a mid-semester session of Remedial English Grammar. At every turn, somebody says something or pulls some minor infraction that feeds the cable news beast – and, frankly, appears to be sickening the electorate.

It is, of course, too early to assess what lasting impact this story is going to have on the race, but the way the audience at the Alliance For American Manufacturing forum in Pittsburgh received the candidates, and reacted to the issue, will be heartening for the Obama camp. Obama, who greeted the crowd at 8:45am, raised the issue and received applause. Clinton, addressing the same crowd later in the morning, brought up the remarks and received mostly silence, with a few audible impatient jeers.

It’s nice to see people getting sick and tired of the “He/She used word ‘X’ – that makes him elitist” attack. But Goddess forbid that we at the ArtMachine should ever let an opportunity to show our moral outrage slip by. So here are two stories I’m sure will be all over the news.

First – Joe Lieberman thinks that Barack Obama needs to answer the question of whether or not he’s a Marxist. This, I’m sure, would be the story of the year—if anybody aside from conservative wonks really cared what Joe Lieberman thinks any more. Then again, Joe Lieberman thrives off of media attention, and cable news is heavily populated by conservative wonks these days. So who knows? Maybe we’ll hear more about Cuppa-Joe-Gate in the future.

What’s more upsetting is what I’m lovingly calling “Rachel-Ray-Gate,” or just “Ray-Gate” for short.

On a section of McCain’s site called “Cindy’s Recipes,” you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading “McCain Family Recipe.” Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the “McCain Family Recipes,” were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

I don’t it offensive that Cindy McCain (or one of John McCain’s staffers pretending to be Cindy McCain—oooo, kinky) plagiarized Food Network. No, what upsets me is the selection of recipes that Cindy McCain (or, again, one of John McCain’s costume-fetish indulging political staff) chose in order to give their campaign that down-home, man-of-the-people feel.

1. Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage Slaw
2. Passion Fruit Mousse
3. Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage, Peas, and Mushrooms

Dude. I’m a whiny, bitter, liberal elitist Food Network watcher (with degrees from those two great ivy league institutions, Virginia Tech and ETSU), and even I had to go to the article three times to convince myself I’d spelled “farfalle” right. I’m still not even sure it’s a real word. This is how you convince people that your family is a real, salt-of-the-earth group? Feh. I call a ”-Gate” on that.

With Hillary’s image being tarnished, her trustworthiness doubted, and victory a mathematical, let’s say, “impossibility,” it’s Bill Clinton to the rescue once more! The once-great former President is now insisting that Hillary didn’t say on multiple, highly-publicized occasions that her visit to Bosnia was under constant fire, but rather that it was once. Only once. Late at night. After an exhausting day.

President Clinton’s version of the story has several inaccuracies. Hillary Clinton actually made the exaggerated comments numerous times, including at an event in Dubuque, Iowa on Dec. 29th, in Waco, TX on Feb. 29th, and twice—bright and early in the morning—on March 17.

I’d say that’s more than once. Probably more than when she was just exhausted. And I’d say she didn’t “apologize immediately” after each and every one of those. And let’s face it – that’s one Hell of a “misspeaking.”

But that’s all right. Bill Clinton has an explanation for how somebody could misspeak so badly.

“You woulda thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them, when they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11:00 at night, too.”

blink. blink.

So, I understand it’s 3 AM, and our children are safe and asleep. But there’s this phone in the White House, see, and it’s ringing….

I have a friend who has a violent reaction any time somebody makes the simple statement that the Civil War was fought over slavery. And when I write, “a violent reaction,” I don’t mean raising his voice, I don’t mean eyes bulging – I mean jumping up and down, clenching of fists, and screaming. His reaction usually consists of this statement repeated frequently and loudly: “Saying the Civil War was about slavery is stupid! It wasn’t about slavery! It was about states’ rights!”

Well, yes. And the right being argued in particular was the right to own slaves. So what’s your point?

As a matter of fact, the Civil War is a perfect example of how those who claim states’ rights the loudest are usually the fastest to take them away. A violent conflict in Kansas was the result of Southern states sponsoring “border ruffians” to cross into the predominantly-abolitionist Kansas territory and steal the elections, ensuring Kansas would enter the union as a slave state. In a territory with only 2,900 registered voters – not all of whom voted – over 6,000 votes were cast in the election, the vast majority coming from people who were not legal residents and whose pilgrimage had been sponsored by the pro-slavery South.

At the height of the conflict, conservative President James Buchanan urged ratification of the Lecompton Constitution, which would have made Kansas a slave state against the wishes of the majority of its citizens. Congress, however, voted down statehood and called for another election. Through it all, it should be noted, the “states’ rights” champions of the South who would later go on to justify secession from the union as a revolt against an unfair federal system that restricted their self-governance were the same people who sponsored the efforts to subvert the will of the Kansas territory residents.

In the modern day, we see the so-called “states’ rights” conservatives declaring that medical marijuana bills – though popular in the states and popular with the voters – do not, in fact, legalize medical marijuana, because it’s still a crime under federal law. Which doesn’t sound much like states’ rights to me. Then again, this is the same group of conservatives that paints pictures of “jack-booted thugs” kicking down doors to rifle through your dirty laundry, but feels that the medical treatment of Terry Schiavo is too important to be left in the hands of her own husband.

Or, more recently, that states have no rights to protect their own citizens when they fly on national airlines.

Under the New York law, the only of its kind in the country, airlines could be fined up to $1,000 per passenger if they failed to supply water, fresh air, electric power and working restrooms during lengthy delays. A federal judge in Albany upheld the law in December, only to be reversed on Tuesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The appellate judges agreed with the Air Transport Association of America, an airline industry group, that New York’s law was pre-empted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and hindered the Federal Aviation Administration’s ability to maintain uniform standards for air travel.

In other words – the rights of the corporations that own the planes supercede the rights of the people, or the states’ attempts to protect those rights. But those corporations contributed roughly $25,000 directly to George W. Bush in the 2004 election through their corporate PACs, not to mention the money that was slipped to the President by airline executives through donations to other funds and PACs. In the 2008 election cycle, the airline corporate PACs have contributed over $522,000 to both Democratic and Republican politicians, with $193,500 of that coming from the American Airlines Political Action Committee alone. (figures from campaignmoney.com)

People standing in line for canceled flights have been interviewed on the news, and by and large they’re angry because “I’m not getting out of here tonight.” But, honestly, they should be angry – and we should be angry – on a much larger scale. The abuse of customers by the airlines is on a systemic level, and now we learn that the airlines aren’t even taking measures to ensure the basic safety of the people who fly with them. The air transit system in America is broken at its very foundation, and the problem starts with the exploitation of the very people who purchase the product. And, to top it all off, we now learn that the states have rights – but not when those rights involve protecting the environment, civil liberties, access to health care, or consumers.

For those of you not particularly eager for a political discussion right now, might I suggest you pop on over to First Look and take a look at the first pictures of costumes from the upcoming film adaptation of Watchmen? The sprawling anti-superhero graphic novel is coming to the big screen, and the costumes have gotten the Batman Returns treatment, it seems.

And now on to political news.

Following the Texas and Ohio primaries, Hillary’s supporters are back and screaming for blood. A strong showing in Ohio and a razor-thin win in Texas seem to have trumped the fact that she made minimal gains on Obama in terms of delegate count, and it’s time for Obama supporters to gird their loins as they get attacked for yet another few weeks as idiots and cultists by the same people who will be begging for their vote should their candidate actually take the nomination.

At the heart of Clinton’s strategy is a simple notion that I honestly find offensive – that it doesn’t matter how many states you lose, as long as you win the “big” states.

Of course, the strategy has its proponents. It helped put Bill Clinton in office, after all. It also lost both Gore and Kerry their elections. But the fact of the matter is that when you decide to focus on “big” or “important” states, you alienate the other states. Your message doesn’t get played in them, and the voters wonder why they should care about you. In the last Presidential election, Virginia – my home state – was considered a “swing state” for once. The DNC made the decision not to campaign there because it’s a traditional Republican stronghold. Almost immediately the state went red.

I find I side more with the people who push the 50-state strategy – which happens to include Senator Obama. The notion is that all states are important, and all states should be campaigned in. As for the big state strategy, Robert Creamer has a better criticism of that at Huffington Post than I could ever hope to write. I will, however, say this – pronouncing your candidate the most “electable” of the potential nominees loses some of its effect when between the Chesapeake primaries and the latest batch, Senator Clinton went from a 10 point lead in the polls to a 2 point victory. Losing 8 points after practically living in the state for a few weeks does not bode well for electability.

As to why Texas and Ohio went the way they did, there are a number of theories. Some people suggest that the photo of Obama in a turban turned people off. Hillary flogs are particularly fond of what they’re calling “NAFTA-gate” as a reason. And over at The World According to AmericanGoy, he’s got his own theories.

What’s a republican voter to do? It’s simple – the republican voter will vote in the democratic primary for his state, and vote for the WEAKEST democrat nominee, that McCain could beat, to help his republican party.

It’s an interesting theory, and it’s made even more interesting by the fact that Rush Limbaugh has been encouraging his listeners to do exactly that – to vote for Clinton in open primaries because McCain is already the Republican nominee, and if they can’t have Clinton to campaign against then they can at least keep her in the race to make Obama “bloodied” by the time he hits general elections. So, tell me – does anybody have the numbers on how many Republicans voted in the Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas, both of which are open primary states?

Back when Obama made a comeback after Hillary supposedly beat him down, I received a rambling e-mail in my inbox. It had misspelled words, no paragraph breaks, and a line of logic that made no sense to my poor Earth-bound, reality-based brain. Basically, it said that Obama should bow out of the race following his wins because his campagin was a “distraction.” From what, I really couldn’t tell. But since that time as Obama has gained more and more momentum, I’ve seen Hillary supporters screaming that asking Hillary to bow out of the race is unfair.

The fact is, however, that the longer Hillary has stayed in this race, the less I have liked her. It was hard enough back when she was part of the pro-censorship lobby in the Senate, but her campaign practices at first made her seem slightly spoilt, then un-democratic (either big “D” or little “d” democracy – take your pick), and now she seems to be bordering on full-blown megalomania.

For starters, the argument of “experience” has never washed with me. One: She is unwilling to speak up and name her experience for what it truly is – wife of a governor and First Lady. Frankly, I think she should be proclaiming it loudly and proudly, and explaining to the American people how, exactly, that prepared her for office. It would make for a compelling argument and a stirring debate. However, time and again she has shown that she desperately wants to claim the experience without actually having to talk about how she got it. This is moot, however, since it’s not experience that equals leadership, it’s judgment. If experience equaled leadership, then Dick Cheney would have ensured that the last seven years would have gone smoothly.

Second, she campaigned in Florida. I know, I know – she didn’t land in Florida until after the polls had closed. The fact remains, however, that both Edward and Obama signed pledges along with Hillary not to campaign in Florida, and she was the only one who promised to show up for a victory party at the close of voting. Making that promise is campaigning.

Third, she has downplayed the power of the written and spoken word. Her constant refrain against Obama has been that he makes “pretty speeches.” It’s not an implication – she outright states that Obama talks pretty while she acts. However, Obama has acted, has a plan, and can make the speeches that get people rallying behind his plans. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a President who can both talk and play a good game?

Fourth, she has demonised hope. ‘Nuff said, really, but honestly – whose bright idea is it for the wife of Bill “Keep Hope Alive” Clinton to go out on the stage and proclaim that it’s ridiculous to hope for things to change in Washington?

Fifth, she wants to count Michigan and Florida after the DNC decided not to seat them, and has suggested that she will be at the convention not only schmoozing superdelegates, but Obama’s pledged delegates, as well. In other words – screw what the people actually want. Nominate me anyway!

Sixth and finally – CBS News reports that Clinton has endorsed McCain.

Hillary Clinton told reporters that both she and the presumtive Republican nominee John McCain offer the experience to be ready to tackle any crisis facing the country under their watch, but Barack Obama simply offers more rhetoric. “I think you’ll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say,” she said. “He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

Of course, the quotes don’t explicitly endorse McCain, and CBS News doesn’t proclaim it to be an endorsement. However, Clinton’s statement clearly suggests she is saying, “If I’m not the Democratic nominee, you should vote for McCain.” After all, she says McCain has the experience – but Obama just has speeches.

The Democratic party needs to recognize that at this point, the Clinton campaign is out of control. Her rhetoric is unhinged, and her statements are damaging the party in what should honestly be a “gimme” of an election. After eight years of Bush, people want a change in our leadership – but Hillary is ready to make sure that the White House remains in Conservative control if she can’t be the one running for it.

Much like Thudfactor, I already thought we were doing this everywhere, too.

The program takes treated sewer water, runs it through the same reverse osmosis process that bottled water companies use to purify their artesian (or tap) water, and then injects it into a deep aquifer that provides water for Orange County. The idea is to recycle as much of the water as possible and, in the process, reduce the water needs of a very arid and highly populated region of the country, southern California.

The article says that many people are “squicking out” about the fact that their water supply may contain water that came from someone’s toilet, but – as they also point out – pretty much all water came from someone or something’s toilet at some point in history. Heck, it’s only relatively recently that we’ve managed to find ways to ensure that water is safe to drink. Prior to that, people depended on the anti-microbial properties of alcohol in weak wine and beer to get safe hydration. Well, that is to say, they depended on it without realizing what “anti-microbial” meant. Let alone “microbe.”

Just like land, they’re not makin’ any more of water. The more we can process and reclaim it, the better off we’re all going to be.