I'm headed out to South Central, to see if I can score some estrogen.

Back later.

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seems to be cooking right along. At more than $100,000 a day, they aren't doing too badly.

Oh, I know what you're thinking: "A hundred grand is nothing in the scheme of a national campaign."

But $100K here, $100K there: sooner or later (as they say), it all adds up to real money. Particularly when it's coming in at the rate of every 24 hours.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until my next client pays up to send anything more in; the billing cycle is one of the worst things about freelancing, and I don't want to have to dig through my desk for change to gas up the car later on this month.

But it's nice to know that things are healthy over at Fred HQ. I know his numbers appear low in New Hampshire, but everyone's are low at this point. The numbers are deceptive because the field is still so wide-open. Nothing has gelled yet. I wouldn't presume anything until one or two people get knocked out of the GOP side of the race.

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Obama, that is:

Joyner talks about Obama's crossover appeal to the GOP, and discusses the fact that a lot of conservatives have said they'll vote for Obama over Huckabee. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm waiting to be convinced. Of course, Joyner doesn't think either Huck or Obama will get their respective parties' nominations, though it would be interesting to watch from a "sociological" point of view if they did. (Obama, sure. Huck?—I'll be at my local Hemlock Bar.)

It’s also noteworthy that none of the Republican candidates last night did a particularly good job last night answering the question why, if Obama were to get the Democratic nomination, voters should pick them over him. Simply shouting “Liberal!” isn’t going to work after seven years during which elected Republicans demonstrated a combination of incompetence, disregard for civil liberties and the Constitution, and lost any claim to fiscal responsibility.

Well, yes. There's that. I'd call it the elephant in the room, but it's really a sort vacuum-like Black Hole where an elephant ought to have been.

And the Anchoress muses on how difficult it is to consider the potential candidacies of Mrs. Clinton and Obama without wrestling with the ghosts of biogotries past in this country:

Back in 2004, I felt like the press was blocking my view of John Kerry, asking me to hire someone without really letting me interview him or take his full measure. I’m wondering if the press will allow us to really see either one of these candidates fully, or if all this hype is just prep for an eventual Hillary/Obama ticket that no person would dream of voting against for fear of being called a sexist or a racist. If politics is reduced to nothing but labels and name-calling, then such a ticket would be perfect, right? It’s the “noble-person’s choice!”

I do hope we're past that. But I'm not positive that we're all the way there.

The candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going to force—and hopefully help—the country to finally confront bigotries old and new. If the nation can start to really dialogue about racism and sexism honestly and openly, unconstrained by political correctness or by the knee-jerk fingerpointing and labeling that has managed to muddy up and obfuscate any real discussion on those issues for a few decades, that will be a very good thing, for all of us.

I wonder if we’re ready. I ask that knowing full well that I will probably be called every sort of variation of “racist” for daring to even suggest that racism or white guilt or bigotry plays any part in the current media circus. And, of course, for suggesting that Barack Obama’s thin resume demands that we learn more.

Okay, call me anything you like. But when youÂ’re done calling me names, how about we start really talking?

I'm ambivalent, of course. Sometimes I think we need to talk more about these things, and sometimes I think we need to just STFU.

Nonetheless, read the whole thing, which has a lot of thoughtful facets to it that I can't summarize here. As a bonus, it includes TA's commentary on the Dick Meyers remark that Barack Obama is a sort of "Rorschach test," which I thought was interesting at the time.

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It's Romney, with eight delegates. Thompson got one, and Duncan Hunter got one . . . just to be make things a bit interesting. Details here.

So . . . on to New Hampshire, if you like. Or go directly to South Carolina. Do not pass "Go." Do not collect $200.

I'm still interested in what might happen in New Hampshire. But South Carolina will be very, very important. I hear that in a single day, Fred's campaign raised $150,000—more than a quarter of what it needs for its South Carolina media buy. So it seems like they're on the way.

I kind of hope that the Huckaschmucks have stopped smoking whatever it is that they're on before South Carolina: I'd like to see whom people will be supporting in the clear, cold light of day.

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Totally sucks green monkey dicks. I mean, the way it's abused in this country.

Drew Carey asks whether Los Angeles has something to learn from [choke] Anaheim. Let me repeat: Ana-fucking-heim.

In the past, I've been against emulating what they do behind the orange curtain. Just on principle.

Yet they got this one right.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 03:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Gives us the blow-by-blow:

7:42 PM: As if things couldn't get any worse, now the Democrats are coming upstairs to use the hall toilet because of the problem in the basement. The environmentalist only use one square of paper, and the others steal entire rolls. None of them wash their hands. I'm headed out on the deck to smoke another doob with the Thompson people, who seem to be the only sane ones here.

7:58 PM: Jeeeeshh. About 5 minutes ago a big black Lincoln stretch pulled up on the lawn and out pops Hillary, along with 15 or 20 of her closest flunkies and footmen. They barge right into the house, without ringing the bell, without so much as a "hey Dave," and head straight down to the basement. Apparently with the plugged up toilet and all the vote was not going real good for her, so she was here for a little last-minute canvasing. Some of the people in her entourage started instructing the caucus people in the basement to vote for her, but they pretty much ignore them. Then Hillary starts screaming at her main flunky, "goddamn it, I told you to make them vote for me!" Normally I'd probably feel bad for the guy, but I'm pretty drunk right now so I kinda laughed. But I laughed harder when Tammy pushed by the security people and grabbed Hillary by the hair and booted her ass out the front door into the driveway snowbank. I probably won't laugh as hard when Tammy does that to me later tonight.

* The guy who opens his comments up once or twice a year, without telling me in advance,and then closes them before I can make it over to his site. This is typical Patriarchal behavior.

Another nice sequence from crush/nemesis/oppressor Dave:

8:31 PM: Shit, talk about a buzzkill. Down in the living room Huckabee has won the GOP caucus and his salvation freakshow is pouring all my beer down the sink (even the good stuff like MGD), shouting"Praise Jesus!" I yell at them to stop, but they crank some godawful Creed song on the stereo and tell me they're going to perform an exorcism on me. The Democrats are screaming in the basement, apparently because they can't decide on a candidate and how to divy up the shit they stole from my garage and liquor cabinet. I'm too high to figure out what to do.

9:11 PM: All my friends know about Tammy's mean streak, and some of them wonder how I can risk staying around her. Well, sometimes that mean streak comes in handy. Like tonight when she grabbed her .410 and shot it off into the living room ceiling. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," she yelled. "I will thank you to now get the hell off my property."

There was a lot of mumbles and grumbles, but they did all shuffle towards the door. Some Guiliani guy mumbled something about "sensible gun regulations," but Tammy cracked him on the back of the head with the stock of the .410. I laughed pretty hard at that, but then she turned and glared at me. "What are you laughing at, Party Boy? You get the hell out like the rest of them."

Long story short, I'm at Super 8 for the night and my laptop battery's almost dead. So no matter what the pundits and newspapers tell you, the real winner in Iowa tonight just locked me out of the house.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:37 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Among the actual GOP/semi-GOP candidates, Romney came in first, followed by Thompson, and then McCain. I can totally live with that.

So once people see that the evangelical doesn't have any clothes, the situation should fall right into place.

I do want to be clear, though: any ticket that includes the Huckster on any portion of the ballot will not get my vote, and will probably get voted against. So no sneaking Huckabee in as a VP possibility, okay? A heartbeat away from the White House is too freakin' close.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:27 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Like I said: 49 more where that came from.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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And, no: Fred won't be taking his dollies and going home if he doesn't do well today. But his numbers have been going up the past several days, so I suspect it'll be a good day for him.

Also: there are 49 other states. Let's keep that tiny little datum in mind.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. . . is to start watching more television this year.

Expecially the stuff on the History Channel, but also—gasp!—network shows.

I've got it figured out how I can get back into the habit of seeing Boston Legal. But what else do people like? What's worth watching—or was until the writer's strike upset the applecart?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 04:16 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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. . . over at McSweeney's.

Don't it always seem to go . . .?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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. . . still isn't good. But I have hope.

Please keep them in your prayers.

BTW, Baldilocks is back in the blogging business, and will be paying close attention to events in Kenya. It's a sad thing to see a country falter when it had seemed to be a full democracy.

Let's keep our eyes open, and our petitions before . . . well, Whomever/The Universe/YMMV . . . that the violence will stop.

h/t: Dan at Protein Wisdom, who reminded me that I was going to link dear Juliette a few days ago, but forgot to because someone held something shiny up in front of my face. (Probably a stray Christmas ornament, calling out to me that it did not want to be put back in its box to be stored in the garage.)

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. . . is getting emotional again, and Desert Cat is there to explain why we don't do things that way in this country. Why we shouldn't. Why we can't.

In the past I've often gotten it into my mind that all Western countries have similar intellectual frameworks, but the older I get the more I realize our particular system is unique: we have a system of government that includes a Bill of Rights, and our Constitution has a "by the way" clause in it that points out whatever ain't spelled out in here is not something the government can do. Of course it doesn't work out that way completely in real life, but that language does keep the state from overreaching to the degree that it does in Western Europe, and in some other English-speaking countries.

As for anyone who thinks we can marginalize and "shoot on sight" members of any group that is well-armed represents a minority point of view . . . I've got one word for you: Waco.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 06:44 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The blogger suggests that Mrs. C. might end up crying in public, but I don't thinnk she'll go that far to "humanize" herself, or steal her husband's favorite trick in such a fashion. (And, of course, if she bit her lower lip she might get lipstick on her teeth, so that's too risky.)

And yet, despite how disgusting this whole spectacle is—Hillary getting Pakistan wrong, and the media giving her a pass on it—I could still see voting for Clinton if the GOP nominates someone who's even worse, such as Huckabee.

I'll do it, too: don't make me pull that trigger.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:52 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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. . . by a scumbag anti-military attorney. You'll recall that the Marine was told that the crime wouldn't be prosecuted as a felony, despite the fact that the damage exceeded the monetary amount to bump the charges up to felony level.

There's now a new update on the case at Blackfive, and it looks like (1) the case will indeed be prosecuted at the felony level, (2) the attorney/vandal involved is not making his situation any better, (3) the Marine had some civilian and military supporters there in the courtroom due to blogosphere attention, and (3) bloggers have really pushed this case to the top of the priority list for the local DA's office.

So I guess it won't be left up to the Chicago PD to dog this guy and watch how he handles stop signs.

In a way, that makes me sort of wistful . . .

Via Craig at Protein Wisdom.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yeah, I know. I'm linking 'em a bit late for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's. But they're still useful for Kwanzaa—not to mention your friends who had the temerity to be born in the first week of January!

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:58 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And it's nothing like what they promised me. For instance, my house is still a mess.

These things don't ever quite live up to the advertising, do they?

Happy new year, everyone.

Note: Due to another spam attack, I'm closing comments down on this post. It's probably safer to respond on another thread—though if you want to comment on this one, just email me what you have to say, and I'll see what I can do.

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