Monday: Things that make you go, “Huh?”

Did someone declare Opposite Day and forget to tell me? Up is down, white is black, Fox is “fair and balanced”? This new reality may not last as long as it will take to wrap my brain around it. So, let’s study the entrails carefully to see what they portend:

• In Faltering Economy Plays to a Clinton Strength, NYTimes reporter Jody Kantor describes Hillary Clinton’s stump speech on the economy in Indiana as being delivered with “sensuous detail”. Large throngs of voters are showing up for her appearances. Some are staring longingly into her eyes and mouthing secret messages? Where is the NYTimes reporter and what have you done with her, Jodi? Someone’s been up staying up late and reading too many policy papers. Either that or Hillary is really letting her hair down. Like, someone in the campaign took a look at the latest polls and said, “You know, your numbers go up when you’re flirtatious. Try doing something erotic on the globalization front.” Jeez and I thought it was only us geeks who got off on that stuff. But seriously, it’s a good read about Hillary’s thoughts on outsourcing and her vision of the green economy. She’s tapping into something. Very encouraging.
• Sugar ‘n Spice ventured to the dark side to catch Obama on Fox News Sunday and found- that she liked it? Bill Kristol said nice things about Hillary? Wha’?:
  

  KRISTOL: He’s ahead. Primary voters usually like to finish the deal and sort of go with the winner. He outspend her 2.5 to one in Pennsylvania, and she beat him by 10 points. She is a better candidate than he is. That is the fact.

  He has run a better campaign than she has. He has won the caucus states. She has gotten more votes in primaries than he has. When voters actually go to the polls, for all the talk about Obama’s bringing out unprecedented new voters, blah, blah, blah, she beats him. She’s better than he is.

  Just go read it. Bill Kristol becomes a Sensitive New Age Guy. It’s not real. It’s almost like… journalism. Weird. Update: MABlue pointed me to this new column by Bill Kristol in the NYTimes Op section today called “Hillary Gets No Respect”. I’m feeling vertigo. Kristol is a sadist for upsetting my equilibrium like this. It’s either that or Republicans really hate McCain.

• Barack Obama says that race is not a factor in US elections. Whew! That’s a relief. I guess I can put away my white sheets and hood. Did Obama tell the 90% of the African-American population that they can stop getting incensed over every little thing that a Clinton person says, ‘cos I’m not sure they got that message last week in PA or this week in NC. But anyway, it’s great to see that we can move past race for the rest of the year. I thought I was over it since, oh, I don’t know, kindergarten? (Wait, I didn’t go to Kindergarten. That probably explains my initial confusion) What a shock it was for me to find out that I an a latent racist because I didn’t think Obama was ready to be president. Learn something new everyday. Well, thank God I have been rehabilitated in time for November.
• Oh, wait, Donna Brazile says “There will be blood” if the African-American population doesn’t get Obama as its nominee. As if all of the regular, hard working, professional and working stiff African-Americans have time to start a revolution and torch the place if a neophyte, pandering, first term senator from Illinois who plans to sell them out if he wins doesn’t get to be the BMOC in August and some more deserving, harder working, concerned for their well being, more qualified female senator does. Like they don’t have better things to do with their time like most average Americans and are all just chomping at the bit to throw away decades of progress because Donna Brazile thinks they should be enraged. Yep, Donna is still an idiot. All’s right with the world.

One more thing: The “Possibly Related” links below are automatically generated by WordPress and may contain offensive material or titles. I don’t have anything to do with their appearance and I can’t figure out how to edit them out, yet. Proceed with caution and please be patient while I figure out how to get rid of them

An Unholy Alliance

Tom Watson writes a deliciously snarky piece about the meeting of the minds of Bill Kristol and DailyKos. {{shudder}}

I hate to see it come to this but I think he is on to something. That is not to say that everyone at DailyKos is being assimilated. There are still quite a few loyal Kossacks and lurkers who are valiantly holding out for the rest of the site to return to sanity.

Actually, Tom brings up a point I have been wondering about for some time now: What is it about Clinton that drives otherwise perfectly rational people absolutely crazy? (Kristol is excluded from this because he started out nuts) Why is it SO important to crush The House of Clinton?

In some respects, the last few months of anti-Clinton frenzy is reminiscent of the lead up to the Iraq War. Those who are virulently anti-Hillary act as though they’ve seen some secret intelligence document that spells out how dangerous and Un-American she is. But all I ever see are doctored satellite photographs of some trailers used for agricultural research.

PLEASE Mr. Kristol,. Frank Rich, Peggy Noonan, tell us what you know. If there is a deep dark awful secret about Hillary, like there’s medical proof that she’s really a paranoid evangelical with the IQ of a table lamp who has megalomania and messianic delusions of grandeur, it is your sacred duty for the sake of our great nation to tell us without delay so we don’t elect someone who’s going to lead us into a pointless, endless, expensive, destructive war or violate our civil liberties or torture people or ruin the economy or a city. I mean surely, SURELY these brave pundits would have told us if we were ever in danger of electing someone that nuts, a person capable of destroying the middle class. Surely they will warn us that we are making a big mistake by nominating a neophyte whom they will take great joy in levelling with the brutality of their poison pens.

I’m sure that Kos has his reasons for loathing Clinton. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t like her campaign people because, hey, who doesn’t loathe campaign people? David Axelrod makes my skin crawl and Joe Trippi makes me want to take a bath. If it were just a matter of Clinton people not trying out new campaign techniques, I’m sure Kos would have been happy to make suggestions to Hillary. No, it’s got to be something even worse than the House of Bush that has him thinking like Kristol that the worst thing in the world would be Hillary 44.

If only they would tell us I could stop being so skeptical. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I just couldn’t swallow the Iraq War stories and I just can’t swallow this one either. Oh, woe is me, cursed to be always out of step with my peers.

And always right in retrospect.