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Via Dan…

Hey Dave… how’s that Giuliani endorsement working out for you?

Join us tonight for a fun-filled evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Some of us will be there early to watch coverage of the Florida primary election. The early results show it too close to call between Sen. John McCain and Gov. Willard Mitt Romney. Either way, tonight’s theme song will be War Pigs by Deep Purple.

Perhaps we will make a drinking game out of Mayor 9iu11iani’s concession speech.

Not in Seattle? Check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Rudy Giuliani’s stunningly stupid “Florida Strategy” has been the subject of speculation and the butt of jokes for months — a strategic failure of historic proportions that has instantly become a classic case study in how not to run a presidential campaign. It is fitting that a man whose national profile was forged in disaster has run one of the most disastrous campaigns of all time, frittering away his apparent frontrunner status in only a matter of weeks.

But could Giuliani and his high-paid strategists really have been that stupid? Or, is it possible that the Florida Strategy has actually worked exactly as planned?

While the rest of the presidential field were trudging through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, trading rhinoviruses with voters in diners and VFW halls throughout the heartland, Giuliani and his team were leisurely soaking up the rays in sunny Florida, making a few appearances, playing a little golf, and all the while laying claim to the Sunshine State’s winner-take-all primary. While Romney, McCain and Huckabee were emptying their campaign coffers duking it out in Nevada and Michigan and South Carolina, Giuliani apparently spent his $50 million-plus campaign war chest on what…? Sunscreen and greens fees? Two percent of the vote, and a single national delegate? According to media reports the Giuliani campaign is so broke his top staffers have foregone their salaries, raising questions of how he could have spent so much money for such poor results? But perhaps the better question might be, did he actually spend the money at all?

Think about it. Giuliani may be arrogant and vindictive and ethically challenged, but nobody’s ever accused the man of being stupid, so perhaps he and his advisers knew all along that he didn’t stand a chance on the national stage once Americans really got to know him. But just because he couldn’t win the White House didn’t mean he couldn’t make a little scratch on the side, and taking a lesson from Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks’ legendary The Producers, perhaps Giuliani realized he could make a helluva lot more money from a presidential flop than he ever could from a respectable run?

How would the scam work? Simple. Raise tens of millions of dollars while you’re riding high in the national polls, but stay out of the expensive media wars in the early primaries to “focus on Florida.” Then when your Florida strategy inevitably fails, you bow out of the race, having spent all your cash on high-priced “consultants” for, well, who knows what? Once out of the national spotlight, Giuliani and his “consultants” just split the loot and fly off to Rio, just in time for Carnival.

Sure, Bialystock and Bloom are fictional characters, but then, in many ways, so is “America’s Mayor.” And while it may seem a fantastical fit of Truther-worthy paranoia to suggest that the entire Giuliani campaign was never anything more than an elaborate con, well… it’s as reasonable an explanation for Giuliani’s mind-numbingly idiotic Florida Strategy as anything else we’ve heard thus far.

Read this.

Entirely devoid of compelling candidates or, you know, ideas, the GOP just sent out a fundraising email offering a free, plush toy elephant with every $35 donation. The email reads in part:

“Meet Maxine, the newest member of the Republican National Committee.

Embroidered with the official logo of the RNC, Maxine proudly shows off her allegiance to the Republican Party’s principles of lower taxes, a strong national defense, limited government and personal responsibility.”

And judging from the state of the GOP these days, it looks like Maxine is the member of the RNC who is making most of the day to day decisions.

My inbox is inundated with Democratic and progressive fundraising emails talking about ending the war in Iraq, combating climate change, protecting our privacy and personal freedoms, promoting health care security and economic justice, and touting the qualities of various candidates. But the Republicans, they’ve been reduced to hawking toy elephants.

Hmm. I wonder if these toys, like the GOP’s consumer protection policies, are made in China?

Apparently, Jonah Goldberg has some difficulty figuring out when people are making fun of him.

How bad is the economy in Michigan? Despite having the best record in the NHL, the Red Wings have only sold out a handful of games this year. They had an 11 year long sellout streak that only ended in 2007.

Frustrated with the slow pace of Bush’s efforts to bring freedom to the Middle East, people in Gaza took matters into their own hands this week.

Mexico is still a mess.

The term libertarian is now one step closer to having no definition at all.

It rained last night in Seattle. Who knew?

I was watching the “storm coverage” last night on KIRO-7, and actually burst out laughing a couple times… you know, like at the shot of a reporter in Bonney Lake standing in a dusting of snow, in front of a bare road, talking about hazardous driving conditions… or the shivering driver exclaiming that the temperature dropped all the way down to thirty degrees! And I couldn’t help thinking… what a bunch of fucking pussies.

For a region with one of the most temperate climates in the world (it could be 58 degrees and drizzling virtually any day of the year,) we sure do spend an awful lot of time talking about the weather.

Whenever I’m at the bank, I like to pick up a few of these:

With a pocket full of twenty or so dollar coins, I like to spread them around. Sometimes people will give you this look that says, “Why did you give me this? I know that it’s real, and that it’s a dollar, but why do you purposely upset the rickety apple cart that is my life with this coin?”

Today I gave one to a Real Change vendor. The fella looked at it and gave me the biggest grin I’ve seen in a long time.

I’ve found that dollar coins work in every modern vending machine I’ve run across. There is a reason why this is true. The vending machine political lobby is a major player in the “dollar coin” movement. Dollar coins are much cheaper to accept than “paper” dollars. Those bill readers are an extra expense they’d love to be rid of. Alas, Americans (other than myself) aren’t taken by the dollar coin phenomenon.

King County Metro takes them, however. If you’ve ever seen someone try to feed a buck into the fare box during rush hour, you know that this can be excruciating. Dollar coins would solve this problem.

The dollar coin has had two recent iterations. Several years ago was the “Sacajawea”, and more recently was the “Presidential” series. The “Sac”, as it was nicknamed (by me), didn’t really catch on, so the new ones are shinier and more robust in their features. Also, the Native-American choice may have thrown some folks. Not me, but I do find the choice somewhat odd. It’s like, “sorry about the years of genocide. Here’s a coin.”

Of all people, Republicans should love these coins. You guys love to put Reagan on all sorts of shit. Here’s your chance.

So the next time you’re at the bank, ask the teller to load you up on some dollar coins. You’ll never have so much fun spending your money.

I appreciate everything ECB’s been doing to bring to light some pretty egregious anti-woman crap. That said, what did you think was going to happen? Hillary Rodham Clinton has been hated by the Right for years and years. This stuff is not a surprise.

Besides, politics ain’t beanbag. If her political operation can’t handle this stuff, then she doesn’t deserve to carry our banner in November. Plain and simple.

Four years ago, the GOP took aim at a Vietnam war hero, a recipient of the Silver Star, and mocked his war medals. They’re shameless.

There is no reason to think that they’ll be any more reasonable if Hillary is our nominee.

Jesus… if John McCain makes Pat Buchanan “nervous”, the rest of us should be shitting bricks.

Presidential candidate John McCain shocked observers on Sunday when he told a crowd of supporters, "There’s going to be other wars. … I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked old-line conservative Pat Buchanan about McCain’s remarks, saying, "He talked about promising that more wars were coming. … Is he so desperate to get off the economic issue?"

Pat Buchanan replied that McCain never used the word "promise" but simply said there would be more wars, and that from McCain’s point of view, "that is straight talk. … You get John McCain in the White House, and I do believe we will be at war with Iran."

"That’s one of the things that makes me very nervous about him," Buchanan went on. "There’s no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. … His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He’s in Putin’s face, he’s threatening the Iranians, we’re going to be in Iraq a hundred years."

I’m pretty sure that Pat Buchanan and I agreeing on stuff was prophesied as a sign of the impending End Times. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if John McCain wins the Republican nomination, this election won’t be about the war in Iraq, it will be about war with Iran.

WhackyNation’s eminently whacky Mark Gardner accuses me of “smearing” Assistant State Treasurer Allan Martin, by describing him as a licensed mortician. But… um… Martin is a licensed mortician:

Martin, 54, is a former funeral director who says he has kept his license current for doing funerals and embalming.

Because as State Treasurer, you never know when that might come in handy.

Ironically, in his zeal to brand me as unworthy of serving in a profession that includes such beacons of journalistic integrity as Michael Savage, G. Gordon Liddy and Bill O’Reilly, Gardner overlooked a genuine factual error in my original post, that could actually rise to the level of constituting a “smear” had I known the information to be incorrect. But since the error concerned one of the Democrats in the race, Gardner apparently couldn’t give a shit.

In my post I pointed out that the name of the state’s chief economist, Dr. ChangMook Sohn, appears as a signatory to an online petition from the libertarian Cato Institute, calling for Social Security privatization, and technically, this true — Dr. Sohn’s name does appear on the petition. But Dr. Sohn assures me via email that he has “never signed or been asked to sign a petition to privatize Social Security,” and has no idea how his name got on the Cato petition. Furthermore, when asked specifically about his stance on the issue, Dr. Sohn writes:

As a principle, I do not comment on the Federal government policy issues. I am a state government official. As a private citizen, however, I oppose Social Security privatization. Given its expected negative cash flow situation within 10 years, the overhaul of the current system is inevitable, I believe.

I raised the issue in the first place because Social Security privatization doesn’t strike me as a Democratic value, and I am pleased to clarify that Dr. Sohn does not support it. I have contacted the Cato Institute, asking them to explain how Dr. Sohn’s name came to be attached to their petition, but have yet to receive a reply.

As for Martin, if he wants to send me an email denying that he is a licensed mortician, I’d be happy to post that correction as well.

Standing four-foot-something with a metal hook in the place of a left hand, Oregon US Senate hopeful Steve Novick certainly doesn’t look like your typical candidate… and he certainly isn’t running your typical campaign ads. I don’t know if these ads are effective in terms of actually getting votes, but damn do I love ’em.

Seattle Times political reporter David Postman is reporting from eastern Washington this week, and he’s sending back some great stuff. His most recent post is from Garfield County. (Anti-government types, pay attention: Garfield’s two largest employers are the federal government and the county itself. Go figure.)

Postman interviews some rock-ribbed Republican family farmers, and finds that not everything is going as planned:

These are no longer the energetic Republican backers who in 2000 spent $3,000 of their own money to make a batch of 4-by-8-foot “Save Our Dams” signs that urged people to vote Republican. You won’t see them at a rally this year, or maybe even at the Republican caucus Feb. 9. Where Mary had “a totally intense feeling” about the campaign in 2000, today there is a palpable sense of disillusionment.

In the GOP’s SOP, meaningless fringe issues are used to rile the peons, while the Wall Street faction gets exactly what they want. (Dividend tax cuts! Corporate tax cuts! A farm bill that pays millions to ADM and peanuts to the little guys!)

Meanwhile the Dyes sold off their life insurance policies, reduced their health insurance to a bare minimum, and put their kids on the state’s Basic Health Plan. And they all scrimped. When there was a bit of milk left in the bottom of a glass, it got poured back into the carton for another day. Mary said:

“In large part, there’s something really awful to me about a man who has been farming since 1978, now in his mid-50s, having to struggle like this.”

Farmers were at the epicenter of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century. They said, through their great champion, that they would not be crucified on a “cross of gold.”

Mary stayed involved in politics up until mid-2004. She was a Bush supporter and leading the Washington state effort to draft that year’s party platform. Then as her family and friends struggled she no longer wanted to be part of the system that had once energized her.

She quit the campaign and all the party business. She didn’t tell anyone why and everyone was apparently too polite to ask.

“George Bush has betrayed me personally. … I just definitely thought he understood.”

Software folks have a saying for when something doesn’t work right. They say “it’s a feature, not a bug.” The Bush Administration was always all about screwing the little guy and using the government for the advantage of the powerful. That was the idea all along.

It would be easy to go all “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” on these folks, and to dis them for voting against (what I perceive to be) their economic self interest, but that’s gauche. I can’t expect them to be wooed by an argument of economic populism if the leading Democratic candidates aren’t wooing them with one. It’s as simple as that.

Huh. The polls were off big time again in South Carolina, predicting 38-percent of the vote for Barack Obama, when he actually pulled in over 55-percent. And yet nobody is leveling charges of election fraud, like the did in New Hampshire. Hmm. I wonder why?