Proud

Boston Globe:

MILWAUKEE — So what did Michelle Obama think of the United States before her husband decided he wanted to run the place?

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,” she told a Milwaukee crowd today, “and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

I’m glad that we all lived up to your ultra-high standards for once, Michelle. And sorry that all us knuckledragging retrogrades never did anything to meet your high standards before now.

UPDATE 2/19:  Jamie Allman this morning had a good point.  Mrs. Obama is 44 now, so this means that the 26 years of her “adult lifetime” included the eight years that Bill and Hillary Clinton were co-presidents.  Did this comment double as a subtle barb against Billary?

I Thought the Meth Problem Was Solved

P-D:

Budget battle could hurt Mo. meth fight

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — One of the first major disagreements over President Bush’s budget proposal could hurt Missouri’s efforts to fight methamphetamine.

Missouri, which has had more meth lab seizures than any other state in the country for more than a decade, depends on money from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program to fund its drug-fighting efforts.

Currently the state gets almost $9 million from the program, with $6.3 million going to state law enforcement and $2.7 million to city and county police departments.

Last year, the president tried to kill the program. Under his current budget proposal, the program would get an extra $30 million for 2009, with a total budget of $200 million. Since 2002, the program’s funding has been cut from $900 million.

I thought Talent-Feinstein and equivalent state laws stopped the trailer park operations.  Not that there isn’t any more meth problems — there are still addicts, and Hispanic gangs are filling in the supply void.

That Crazy Little Thing Called Ego

Rush Limbaugh referenced this paragraph from Armstrong Williams writing in Human Events today:

The word on the street is that the Obama campaign and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg have already met and devised an incredible plan if Clinton wins the nominee. Mayor Bloomberg would give nearly $1 billion to Obama’s campaign after which Obama would bolt from the Democratic Party and run as an Independent candidate with king-maker Bloomberg as his running mate. The Obama campaign realizes that Obama is too new at this game and doesn’t have the political weight of the Clintons to bring in the true heavy-hitters of the party’s hierarchy.  So, according to sources it was Bloomberg himself who suggested this cunning strategy. It’s mind boggling that the Clintons are willing to destroy the entire Democratic Party, and potentially in the process lose the White House and seats in Congress, for their own selfish thirst for power and glory.

Sorry, ain’t buyin’ it.  I hardly think someone who has so much money that he can take an idle billion and give to some plastic banana is then going to play second fiddle to said plastic banana.  Besides, I thought McCain’s apparent victory in the GOP games deflated any Bloombergmania, due to their relative similarity.

Fun With Headlines

Financial Times:  Europe favours Obama but Britons like Clinton

Very well.  Let Obama run Europe and Hillary run Britain.

WND:  ‘Hola! Mexico!’ says the Fed in Dallas

It makes sense to praise Mexico while in Mexico.

AP:   JFK-related items bound to titillate

Knowing JFK’s life, this might be a double entendre.

AP:   Democrats: What Clinton must do to win

Take Barack on a picnic to Fort Marcy Park.

Obama/Patrick 2008?

There is a plagiarism scandal blowing up around Barack Obama. There are accusations that he’s lifting the words of now-Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick during his own 2006 campaign for Governor.

I have thought for some time that Obama had Gov. Patrick on his radar screen for a running mate. It would serve Obama just as well to pick a Governor as it would HRC to pick one — if either ultimately lose in November, they have to return to the Senate. If they pick a Senator as a running mate, then they’ll have made a lot of their other colleagues mad and jealous (“You picked so-and-so instead of me???”), and either HRC or BHO would have to return to the Senate and face down those mad and jealous spurned colleagues in January 2009. The Senate, far more than the cattle-call atmosphere of the House, depends on the complex web of the interpersonal relationships of its 100 members to get things done.

Another perceived benefit for BHO to pick DP is that, if BHO thinks that there would be some white racist cabal that would want to assassinate him after he becomes President, DP would be his ultimate assassination insurance in that stead.

In fact, BHO and DP sort of cross-pollinate — Patrick is a Chicago native who now lives in Boston, whereas Obama now lives in Chicago but attended Harvard Law School. Also, Patrick’s campaign for Governor and his ultimate victory as seen as a microcosm for Obama’s political success.

And, as it turns out, Patrick’s tenure as Governor has been rather corrupt and disappointing, and in spite of his campaign rhetoric of hope and change (sound familiar?), he’s nothing more than a standard liberal. As many people think an Obama Presidency would be like.

Also, it’s not as if anything Obama is saying on the campaign is so profound and unique that, assuming Gov. Patrick did write those words, that stealing them is honestly stealing very much. And, per my theory, Patrick could be handsomely rewarded very soon.

That Obama is borrowing the words of someone he describes as a good friend is not only not surprising, but more circumstantial evidence that he thinks Gov. Patrick should be at the bottom of the ticket. Turns out we might well have a Massachusetts Governor to vote for in November after all.