Friday random

1. Mark Morford has some zingers this week:

It was Earth Day weekend. The president talked about how mountain biking helped him "settle his soul" and "burn off excess energy when you're living life to its fullest," which apparently means blindly running your nation into a bloody flaming wall at full speed like a drunk NASCAR driver on Ambien.

[...]

Bush on Earth Day. It's like Satan talking up the joys of Easter. It's like Paris Hilton chatting about treading the planet with humility and grace. It's like Jerry Falwell gushing about his love of Brokeback Mountain, Eli Lilly extolling the virtues of meditation and green tea. It is, in a word, embarrassing. Humiliating. Intellectually bludgeoning. And hypocritical in a way, and at a depth, that is as nauseating to stomach as the testosterone levels at a Duke lacrosse frat party.

[...]

And right now, we are, it seems, living smack in the middle of a decade of just such madness, led by a bumbling and confused, tepid little devil himself, happily biking through the trees as the forest groans.

2. Poll numbers.

I can't post it, but I got forwarded a Hotline doc on polling. Included in a packet was a relase, the headline:

Democratic Voters Show Strong Support for Hillary Clinton as Presidential Candidate Kerry, Edwards Tied for Distance Second in 2008 Primary

Diageo/Hotline Poll Conducted by Financial Dynamics Finds John McCain More Popular among Democrats than Reid, Pelosi and Dean;Democrats Cite Iraq War as Primary Reason for Disapproval of Bush

Does anyone else see the crazy fucking cognitive dissonance here?

Dems don't like Bush b/c or Iraq but like Hillary for Prez, who aided and abetted Iraq?!!!!?!!!

Fuck that. I'm with Molly Ivins on this one.

Molly Ivins
I will not support Hillary Clinton for president
January 20, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president. Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

Anyway, the poll says Hillary gets 38% to Kerry's 14%, Edwards 13%, Biden 5%, Clark and Feingold 3%, and Warner and Richardson 2%.

How meaningless is this poll right now? I guarantee Warner has more of a shot than Kerry or Edwards at getting the nomination.

Even more misleading is the McCain stuff. The press release has McCain favorability at 55% among Democrats compared to 23% for Reid, 33% Pelosi, and 47% Dean. Sounds like that's more a measure of name id. Reid's obviously not at 77% unfavorable with Ds, I just imagine that most people who self-id as a Democrat just have no idea who Harry Reid is, or Bill Frist or Mark Warner either. It's like "McCain higher favorables among Ds than 99% of Dem congressmembers." Well, no shit, you have to report the % for "No opinion/don't know enough/haven't heard of" for this to be an accurate representation.

Which all leads me to:

3. Consultants suck.

Category one: losers who walk around like they know shit. As a friend put it, if you lent your car to a friend who wrecked it, why would you give him the keys again? Yet the people who have fucked up D campaigns for years continue to get paid.

4. I know I just dogged pollsters but I just saw some polling that made me say, holy shit!, we could take back the Senate. Seriously. Santorum, DeWine, Chafee and Burns are all going down.

5. This video is fucking hilarious. Joe Jamail calls another lawyer "fat boy"