Snapshots, 4/5/08

1. A Fineman You Turned Out To Be

Now we have Howard Fineman of Newsweek, in an interview in today's Tribune-Review, ringing a death knell upon Hillary's campaign. It's hard to figure why the MSM are piling on to quite this extent -- especially when they know darned well that Bill 'n' Hill have more dirty tricks up their collective sleeve than Boris Badinoff and Natasha. Maybe it's because the dirty tricks keep backfiring -- or at least not gaining traction. The Rev. Wright flap already sounds like last week's news... the revelation that Obama is a black man (by American standards, if not African-American standards) failed to surprise anybody... his drug "history" turned out to be a yawner, probably because no one any longer gives a damn whether you "inhaled" or not... his links with Chicago mobsters have been identified as merely part of the baseline for any politician from Illinois... and darn, he and his family stay as photogenic as ever, unlike Hill and Bill, who look like they have to be re-embalmed before every public appearance. Plus, now it turns out -- according to their tax returns -- that the Clintons have gotten fat on ill-gotten gains... and these are the people who had to beg school children to send their pathetic little allowances (think: coins Scotch-taped to Reese cup cardboard inserts) to the White House to help with Bill's "defense fund" during the impeachment hearings. The problem -- as always -- is that Barack represents all that is fresh, and new, and -- yes -- radical, whereas the Clintons represent the same old tired, gray, failed, liberal crap and criminality. But hey, it's still a long way to November...

2. The names of three "top Michigan Democrats" are: Cheeks, Gettelfinger, and Dingell. Um... OK. And I guess "Johnny Wadd" was something someone just made up?

3. Costa Rica has banned ads that depict someone trying to assassinate Burger King. Hey -- _you_ try putting up with that smile for more than five seconds. It's one thing when you can isolate "big, eternally-smiling plastic heads" to Mardi Gras and Disney World, but to have to see them on TV is more than I can bear.

4. In China, a "mentally ill man" got into a tiger's cage in the zoo and was promptly devoured. The man's parents said that he "especially loved tigers". And vice-versa, I guess. But at least he had an excuse, unlike those nimrods out in San Francisco. "We're all Siegfried and Roy now."

5. That Was Mighty White Of You

Seems that a favorite scam of witch doctors in Tanzania is to "kill albinos and harvest their body parts in the hope it will bring prosperity." Well, one can hardly blame them for equating "white" with "prosperous". Maybe someone ought to point out that you can be as white as Julian Bond and still be considered "black". The president of Tanzania "blamed charlatan witch doctors" for the offenses. (He didn't elaborate on what distinguishes a "charlatan" witch doctor from the real thing.) Word has it that the U.N. Committee on Tokenism and Totemism is dispatching a team to investigate further.