I said earlier this afternoon that these people can come and make a scene and make fools of themselves, and it will be as obvious as at the RBC meeting. Obama will be the one who appears to have class and dignity.

The flesh and blood equivalent of the “I’m a Democrat, but I’m voting for John McCain” commenter.

These people are Republicans,never would have voted Dem in the first place. It’s crap designed to disrupt the convention and to get themselves plastered on the teevee.

What I want to know is who is funding them. Not that they’re raking in the big bucks,but someone is behind this,I’d like to know who.

I KNEW McCain would start drawing Democratz. Goddam guy’s a goddam lefty, ya see?

A couple of weeks back satirist Bruce McCall wrote a dry piece at the Washington Independent. The title, “Fans Realize Obama Is Not Divine” while not a Gallagher sledgehammer, does telegraph humor to those who don’t recognize the name.
And then there’s the PUMAs. The commenters plow right past the humor to deliver their mindless assaults on Barry. I waiver whether these folks remind me more of lemmings or some twisted cult in Garp.

I’m a Democrat but I voted for Ronald Reagan twice and George Bush three times and I call black people “niggers” and I LOVED Hillary Clinton. Now I’m voting for John McCain.

On the whole, I think I’d rather play “guess how much Fenway will end up weighing.”

It would appear that the PUMAs, as most expected, are another Gooper astroturf.

…self-promoting nitwit Diane Mantouvalos

I saw this woman make a complete fool of herself on Hardball this week. Nitwit indeed. Ya think Hillary is proud?

Hillary could derail this ‘movement’ by calling out the so-called leaders of these anti-Obama, pro-Republican hit squads. Name names Hillary. These people have neith Barack’s nor your best interests in mind.

Considering all of the calls for candidates to “reject and denounce” various people during the primaries it strikes me as strange that Clinton has been silent about the PUMAs. Couple that with her willingness for a roll call vote during the convention and the fact that she and ol’ Bill haven’t exactly been stumping for Obama and a pattern emerges. It isn’t quite clear but, the outlines look vaguely like 2012.

“It’s a total diss to Sen. Clinton, in my opinion,” said Diane Mantouvalos, co-founder of the Just Say No Deal Coalition. “It just speaks volumes about how Barack Obama doesn’t stand for anything.”

Oh nonsense it speaks volumes as to the corporate shill Obama has always been but that doesn’t go along with their narrative as it matches to closely with their own idol. I won’t vote for McCain but I’m not voting for Obama either (living in ID that point is moot though).

If you want to make yourself feel slightly better, watch David Shuster bitch-slap a couple of these racist idiots Trojan Democrats fervent Hillary supporters on Hardball.

Over at his blog The Field, Al Giordano offers some good evidence on why Republicans so badly wanted Senator Clinton to be the candidate, or at least the choice for VP. The poison injected into the veins of our political process in the 90’s (e.g., see here) has worked very well, leaving self-described independent voters very sour on the Clinton name. [The fact this poison worked so well says more about the level of ignorance in this country, and the broken state of national discourse, than it does about the Clintons.]

For all of her attributes, those extremely well funded initiatives sponsored by right-wing corporatists ensured that she would arrive on the scene ”pre-damaged” in ways beneficial to the Republicans. Frankly, in my very non-expert opinion, I predict these Trojan-horse PUMAs will be unmasked during the Convention, when it will be found that most of them are demonstrating outside, rather than inside the Hall. Whether that turns out to be true, and whether our corporate media covers it honestly, will become apparent soon enough.

Hopefully folks realize that — phony Republican-funded PUMA operations notwithstanding — there are a sizable number of genuinely, profoundly disappointed people who supported Clinton, often for reasons that make sense in the context of their own lives. Lots of working women, across the spectrum from minimum wage level to professional class, particular those old enough to remember earlier battles for social and workplace fairness, and who rightly fear losing what few gains have been made. I think Senator Obama is aware of this, and I hope his supports have sufficient insight to see it as well. The one lesson I’ve learned out of this campaign is to get under the hood of ”identity politics”, and understand its motivations. That exercise has led me to not be so dismissive of the phenomenon as I have been in the past, regardless of what ’identity’ is involved.

Clueless in San Francisco:

In the Insight Section of the Sunday SF CHRONICLE there’s a “Good Week/Bad Week” box that purports to pick the top winners and losers in the news that week.

Today it listed John McCain as having a “good week”…

Polling gods are smiling. He’s come back to even or slightly ahead of Barack Obama. The numbers blunt the bliss of this week’s Democratic convention.

They wrote this on Wednesday??

Incredible. On Thursday McCain made one of the greatest blunders in the history of Presidential politics, but when a Village organ like the Chron gets a horse-race meme in its pointy little head, the facts don’t matter.

And can you imagine the headlines if Obama had picked Clinton VP:

Desperate To Stop Slide, Obama Taps Clinton

Will Hil & Bill Outshine Barack?

Can Clinton Save Obama’s Sinking Candidacy?

Correction: McCain made the I Dunno My Homes gaffe on Wednesday, but it was reported on Thursday.

You can’t spell coincidence without the c-o-n

Not to mention the c-o-i-n.

I’ll tell ya who had a good week: Hillary Clinton.

Do the math: in 2016 she’ll be 69, still young enough for the White House.

Joe Biden will be 73, too old, and Biden Fatigue might also come into play.

We can reasonably speculate that Clinton would be the presumptive frontrunner for the Dem nomination in 2016.

What if Obama had picked the much younger Kaine or Bayh for Veep?

Not so good for the aging Clinton.

So I don’t buy the idea that Clinton is going to undermine Obama.

You’re overlooking the fact that Biden may want to retire or to return to the Senate at the end of Obama’s first term. He seems pretty sensible.

I was about to say the same. And I was thinking when I watched it, what a damned shame it is that Hillary Clinton’s reputation will forever be sullied by her refusing to stand up to these harpies and the mewling idiots that listen to them.

Way back when, I was actually quite happy to see her doing so well and, even though she wasn’t my first choice, I would have been delighted if she became the nominee and would have enthusiastically voted for her. Not any more.

Now, because she apparently is flattered by the bogus cheerleading these hucksters are doing, she doesn’t realize they were never for her. Ever. But even if they were for her originally, she won’t say that she thinks they are wrong and immature and unsportsmanlike and hurting the party and the country because they won’t work for something good.

Being forever viewed as a petulant loser full of vengeance is not what I had always hoped would happen to the first woman to come so close to the Presidency.

You’re overlooking my point that the current Dem VP nom isn’t going to challenge Hillary Clinton in any year.

Bayh or Kaine as Veep would have had the inside track given two not-disasterous Obama terms.

McInane Watch:

He runs one ad featuring Biden’s attacks on Obama in the primaries.

He runs another ad claiming that Obama by-passed Hillary because she attacked in the primaries.

The only thing keeping Krusty’s campaign temporarily afloat is his base: the AP, Faux, and Tweety/Joe.

Probably not. And of course no other Democrat will rise to prominence during those eight years.

I’m sure Ms. Adkins is a sincere Hillary supporter, just as I’m sure that when Hillary Clinton made reference to the “vast right-wing conspiracy” way back when, she really meant to say “Hollywood and the left-wing news-nut media.”