Kudos to The Huffington Post for leading me to this. Peggy Noonan, the current Wall Street Journal columnist and former Ronald Reagan speechwriter, was caught on a live mic yesterday calling the choice of Sarah Palin “political bullshit.”

I couldn’t agree more.

This has nothing to do with Palin being a woman (although it wouldn’t surprise me if some Johnny-come-lately feminist comments on here that I am a sexist because there is no other defense of her pathetic record). This has everything to do with McCain’s selection being a political blow job to the conservative right.

If you’re a Democrat who thinks everything that has happened since 2000 was just a nightmare, check out this analysis from Politico on the possibility of Barack Obama pulling an Al Gore–and I’m not talking about winning a Noble Prize.

What are the chances that Obama could win the popular vote but lose the election? Not very good, but for Democrats, if it were to happen again, especially after eight years of George Bush, I think the heads of roughly 50 million voters would explode the morning of November 5.

Now that it’s finally over, you have to wonder, will we see Hillary as the v.p nominee sending Clinton-haters everywhere into a frenzy against Obama too, or will Obama turn away from the millions of blue collar Clinton voters and go with another possibility? This post is by no means exhaustive, and I for one have been intellectually salivating since Sam Nunn’s name starting making the rounds. I have not been at all excited about the idea of Clinton as a v.p., until this morning when I thought about it in a different way.

While this doesn’t quite fit our typical mold for Comedy Friday, this video is intense, yet hilarious.

Radio show host Kevin James went on Hardball yesterday and Chris Matthews (who I am not a huge fan of) baited him brilliantly to reveal his ignorance of… apparently… all history beyond the words “Nazi” and “Hitler.”

If you watch nothing else, fast forward to around 4 minutes. But, honestly, it gets better the second and third times you watch it all the way through to really pinpoint the moments Matthews turns the rhetorical knife to fillet him amid the shouting. I don’t think I need to say anymore. Have a look:

It was an election that says volumes about what citizens want in more traditional parts of the country. Apparently tired of what they have had for years, voters turned out more of the same and voted for a new, fresh face.

So Bob Barr is running for president as a possible Libertarian candidate. Obamaniacs everywhere are practically squealing with delight in anticipation of finally getting to be on the other side of a Nader-esque spoiler in November. I can’t say I am much different. I think this could be fantastic for Obama in the long run by siphoning votes off from John McCain, but I’m not ready to declare it Christmas in May yet.

I haven’t had a chance to look in detail at what Rev. Jeremiah Wright has recently said, but from what I have seen from the front page of this morning’s Wall Street Journal, his recent comments are pretty offensive. It’s pretty ridiculous to say the government started AIDS, or whatever it was he said.

But, regarding his past comments that led up to his “God damn America” finale in the pulpit on YouTube, I personally didn’t see it as too far off the mark to be coming from a black man in America.

The day has finally come: Pennsylvania primary day!

I’m an Obama supporter, but personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the outcome is as long as it goes as planned and we don’t have to hear about it any more. I couldn’t believe how much press the Pope’s visit got last week, but at least it meant I didn’t have to listen to HIllary’s campaign throw everything they’ve got at Obama. The closer we can get to the end of the primaries the better. Their are bigger fish to fry in a race with John McCain.

Hillary will likely win, but it will likely not make any difference. Obama will still win the war. Also notable is that even if Hillary loses, it will likely not make any difference, because she will have plenty of excuses why Obama won but she should have - i.e. he outspent her, she’s the underdog, blah blah blah - and she will still continue with her scorched earth campaign policy of not letting any Democrat win if she doesn’t win the election she apparently feels she’s entitled to.

Do we have to keep talking about this? I don’t mean Hillary winning big last night, or Obama losing, but the Democratic race. I mean, seriously, is this still going on? Do we have to keep talking about this? I’m ready to hear something else in the morning when I wake up besides Clinton Obama Obama Clinton Obama Obama Obama Clintion Clinton Obama.

Of course, while I’m getting woolly… uh, weary* over it, I wonder if maybe it’s not good for the Democrats in the long run. McCain is just a side show right now. No one cares about him, it’s all Democrat all the time on the national scene. Blame it whatever conspiracy theroy you want, but it’s true.

From a different angle, I watched Obama’s speech in San Antonio last night, and I wonder, or worry, if this was the pin-prick moment and all the air is about to come out of his balloon. One of the most appropriate bumper stickers I saw between the 2004 Iowa caucus and the November election said, “Dated Dean. Married Kerry.” I wonder if in four months we will see some similar stickers that fill in the names of this year’s rock star and establishment candidates, respectively. I sure hope not.

*Name that movie reference.

Ralph Nader has again begun his campaign for president of the United States, and in doing so he has revealed his growing and unparalleled laziness in the world of United States activism. While it would be fair, in my mind, to compare his impact on American society in the 20th Century with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez his increasing laziness has has not only led to a regression in the world of corporate responsibility, it also shows he is no longer willing to actually fight the fight for social justice.

Tricky those Sulzbergers at The New York Times… First their editorial page slams Rudy Giuliani and endorses John McCain, only to have their political reporters drop the scarlett letter on him. I stumbled on the article Wednesday night by chance, apprarently right after they posted it, and I couldn’t figure out why the media’s collective head hadn’t exploded with excitement over it.

Then the 10 o’clock news came on and it all began.

There is so much that can be said, and I don’t think anyone would appreciate me rambling on and on about it, but I would like to point out a few important points.

We have a loose and unwritten rule here at S&P that we generally don’t post things from screaming extremists who add little to intelligent discourse. This rule can be called the “Ann Coulter Rule,” but it also applies to the likes of Maureen Dowd, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, etc. But, I’m going to break that rule today, because I think Maureen Dowd has a great column today worth reading on “stealing” words in campaigns.(Subsequently, after I started writing this, I realized that another S&P blogger had recently written a great entry regarding Rush Limbaugh that was so well done no one noticed he had broken the Ann Coulter Rule.) Take a look at Dowd’s column, which appropriately points out how ridiculous Hillary and her minions like Wolfson sound when they scream and shout and jump up and down about Obama using Deval Patrick’s words in his speech.

I try not to hero worship, especially with politicians. I see no reason. With all of the build-up and hype surrounding any campaign, I tend to get either disgusted with or caught up in the hype. If I get caught up, I try to take a step back and ground myself. Politicians are only men and women, just like you and me. They are not gods, nor are they superhuman. So, while I have tentatively been supportive of Barack Obama’s campaign since my man John Edwards dropped out, I have held off from throwing my support behind him entirely, mainly because of the hype but also because of my belief that Hillary Clinton could do an excellent job as president.

When Barack Obama’s supporter compared Bill Clinton to Lee Atwater, he could not have been more correct.

We have all known for years that Bill was a lacking in some areas of morality, so I don’t expect him to be a saint. He is also an astute politician, and so I understand that he has gotta do what he’s gotta do, but to see a former president get as nasty and dirty as he has during the campaign ahead of and after the South Carolina primary has really pissed me off. I was not aware that the so-called “first black president” was capable of stooping to levels below Karl Rove and pulling something that even Bob Corker would grimace at.

After campaigning heavily for weeks in South Carolina - a state where his wife led in the polls until the last month, Clinton managed to denigrate the state’s entire African American population to nothing more than a tribal community with a throw away comment saying essentially that Obama won South Carolina simply because he is black like Jesse Jackson. From it we can gather - without much reading between the lines - that Clinton is essentially saying “black people only vote for other black people if given the option, so we did the best we could.”

This is pretty low, and not something I would have expected from the guy who did more for the African American community since Lyndon Johnson (not that that is saying a lot at all, but at least he didn’t ignore them and jump start a campaign with the lingering white anger of the Civil Rights Movement). I guess it just goes to show: If you turn on Billary, you’re part of a conspiracy against them. Or, taking a page from the playbook of the only other family who has controlled America for the last 20 years, you’re either with them, or against them.

Just to clarify, I am not an Obama supporter, but an avowed Edwards supporter till the death. That said, with Bill Gates and Al Gore, I can’t think of any American who has done more for the benefit of the world in the last seven years than Bill Clinton through his Foundation. It’s a shame to see him sully the name of it by getting back into the pig pen of politics. I would hate to have to vote for John McCain only because the Clintons turned into race-baiters to win the nomination.