Wonkette

Here’s Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, posting a press release on his website which, unfortunately, is actually a mocking press release sent out earlier by his Democratic opponent, Rob Miller. It has been on the front page for many hours, highlighted by the following first paragraph: “Today, incumbent Congressman Joe Wilson began his election-year bus tour for the status quo. Wilson, who has proudly voted with the Bush administration over 95% of the time, is trying to convince voters that the country is on the right track and simply needs more of the same policies and ideas.” Maybe this is a new sort of double secret irony to which we are not attuned? OH SHIT, he literally just took it down. [Joe Wilson For Congress via Crack The Bell]

Oh Lordy be. Whenever there’s a slow news cycle, we need only look to our friends in South Carolina for a little pick-me-up. Here’s a bit of hilarity from State Senator Kevin Bryant, who put up this post a few days ago. Judging from the URL and one of the comments, it was originally titled “vacation and funny picture.” Now it’s been changed to just “picture” because apparently SOME PEOPLE CAN’T TAKE A JOKE. [Senator Kevin Bryant via Snead]

Guess who’s paying for this daring piece of Gay Travel advertising? The taxpayers of South Carolina! Yukyukyuk… MORE »

When God decided that fundamentalist Christians would have to be poor and obese, he gave them a consolation prize: Their churches could have tacky letterboard signs out front, just like those equipment rental warehouses out on the frontage road or county highway. These signs are used to share comical slogans with the heathens who race by in their fancy foreign cars with “airbags” and “valid registrations.” One such church in South Carolina recently put up this great message: OBAMA OSAMA HUMM ARE THEY BROTHERS, apparently meaning it to say, “Obama and Osama — Hmm, are they brothers?” MORE »

This is Ashley Zais, the 2007 Miss South Carolina and a graduate of some college called “Wofford.” That’s great! Unfortunately, however, she’s evil and will be working for Team McCain as the national intern coordinator. Sweet criminy, Where do we sign up? We’d bring this pretty gal some hot coffee any day and then kind of see where it goes. And for the record, Zais is a different Miss South Carolina than the famous retard. [Jonathan Martin]

Ann Coulter held a book-signing at South Carolina’s Furman University last night, and the University placed her signing desk in the toilet. Word around campus is that Coulter was on her period or something and out of diapers. [Palmetto Scoop]

This rapidly circulating flyer was seen ON THE DESK OF Bill Sandifer, a Republican South Carolina state representative. Can you see how horribly non-racially transcendent it is already? MORE »

It all started with a simple photograph of Barack Obama, dressed up like a Somali tribesman in Africa. Somebody helpfully e-mailed the photo to the Drudge Report with this message: “Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]?” Matt Drudge quickly put the goofy photograph on top of his website and blamed Hillary’s campaign for trying to get Matt Drudge to put the picture on his website. And somewhere, Barack Obama made his “I am embarrassed for you face” and gently shook his head, with dignity.

And that’s why Kenyan tribesmen are crazy with hate about what Hillary did to their dignity!

Tribal elders are still fuming over the appearance of the picture. They want an apology from the U.S. Government, which of course publishes the Drudge Report, and they also want Hillary to “clear her name,” or there will be riots, in Kenya.

The question remains: Why are the Clintons’ famously sleazy campaign methods suddenly not working?

Hillary and Bill and their campaign managers are getting all kinds of grief these days for the racism and the dirty tricks and all the things that people like to complain about during a campaign — but these tactics are used for a reason: They work.

George W. Bush had been anointed by his party in 1999 to be the GOP nominee in 2000, and all the big money lined up behind the chosen candidate. Then a charismatic smooth-talking “reformer” appeared — yes, that’s how we use to describe John McCain, nearly a decade ago — and won New Hampshire. Suddenly the establishment party choice was in trouble. So Bush’s campaign played as dirty as they could, ultimately winning the crucial South Carolina primary after word was spread that John McCain had himself a half-black baby with a black woman.

It mattered not a bit that the “black baby” was an Asian orphan the McCains adopted from the slums of Bangladesh. South Carolina Republican primary voters were just racist enough to pick Dubya over the alleged Maverick with the mulatto baby.

So it should’ve worked when Bill Clinton dismissed Barack Obama’s S.C. win as meaningless, because another black politician won the Democratic primary in South Carolina 20 years earlier. But it didn’t. Bill Clinton has been kept in a dog kennel ever since.

Is Barack Obama that good of a candidate, or is the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove/James Carville/Mark Penn school of campaigning no longer a viable way to rile up enough mouth-breathing imbeciles to throw an election?

TRIBES RAGE AT HIL [New York Post]

MORE »

Last Tuesday, as tornadoes swept the South and the Midwest struggled beneath a blanket of snow, the weather showed it would stop at nothing to foil the progress of Democracy. Now the weather has set its sights on Virginia and the Carolinas, sending down a plague of hellfire and howling winds–just in time to stop presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from campaigning in the area. MORE »

So the Bill Clinton “race card and overt co-presidency” angle somehow backfired in South Carolina. Whatever. The Clintons like to put it all on the line — the candidacy, remaining shreds of dignity, legacies, any supporters anywhere. This week, internet people have been debating the appropriateness of Hillary Clinton’s overt pandering to Florida — a state, like Michigan, stripped of its delegates for the illegal terrorist decision to move its primary earlier — where she’s expected to beat Barack F. Kennedy. MORE »