Office of the Independent Blogger

John McCain is in some trouble, but I’m not sure how dire it is. Let’s go to the Wall Street Journal, first.

It began with reports of the heavily guarded senator shopping at a Baghdad market and declaring “things are better,” and it ended with a New Hampshire poll showing Mr. McCain, the longtime leader in that first-primary state, now in a dead heat with Mr. Romney. Sandwiched in between were the stories of his money woes.

All of that makes next week — and the next month — critical to the survival of his candidacy. Mr. McCain’s campaign scheduled three policy speeches in consecutive weeks, culminating April 25-27 with his “official” announcement tour through early nominating states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina and finally to his home state of Arizona. Wednesday’s first speech, at the Virginia Military Institute, will showcase Mr. McCain’s “commitment to winning the war in Iraq.”

Trouble is, no one doubts Mr. McCain’s commitment. But recent polls show the public is increasingly doubtful of the prospects of winning the war. And that, in turn, may be undercutting Mr. McCain’s chances of winning the nomination.

The senator’s war stand is a popular one with Republican voters, but polls show they are not rewarding him, given longstanding resentment of his maverick ways. Meanwhile, the independents once attracted to him for just that reason no longer see him as the straight-talker of the 2000 campaign. For many independents, that brand has gone to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. And with Mr. McCain’s electability in question, many conservative donors appear to have decided he is not a good investment.

re: the bold — Mitt Romney might very well win the New Hampshire primary. He’s from their neighbor. If he wins, or comes close to it, that doesn’t mean anything about his electability or anything like that.

re: the italics — that is my biggest concern (and hope) with regard to John McCain’s Presidential run. That the Republican Party still won’t trust him because a) he’s such a maverick and b) they must realize that the American public is tired of the War. I’m glad to see there’s truth in this based on his low donation figures.

Where will this all lead McCain? Hopefully to the pit of political hell. Beyond hope, I think that’s where he’s headed, anyway.

Now this is just funny.

Pigeon poop has long sullied downtown St. Paul sidewalks, but the slippery, smelly mess is gaining urgency with the Republican National Convention coming to town next year. Sticky foam, hawk balloons and nets haven’t gotten rid of the birds, so officials have a new plan: stealing pigeon eggs. After pigeons lay their eggs on rooftop nesting grounds, maintenance workers plan to sneak up through trap doors and grab the next generation before it hatches.

“We’ll build them little condos. We’ll keep taking the eggs, and they won’t have little ones,” said Bill Stephenson, the city’s animal control supervisor. “Slowly they’ll die off.” The scheme has the blessing of the St. Paul Audubon Society. Member Val Cunningham said pigeons aren’t native, and their eggs aren’t protected. If the plan works, “it would be sweet for the city,” Cunningham said. City officials also considered feeding contraceptives to the pigeons but rejected that idea on fears of also inadvertently sterilizing eagles or hawks.

Guess Republicans are so full of their own shit that they can’t stand to compete with anyone else’s!

I can’t help but laugh when I read this. Seriously, what is wrong with Massachusetts politicians? Michael Dukakis goes riding in a tank; John Kerry won’t release documents that’ll prove he isn’t lying about his THREE PURPLE HEARTS; Mitt Romney wants to be the Republican nominee for President but admits he’s more Elmer Fudd than John Wayne.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is taking a second shot at describing his hunting experience. The former Massachusetts governor has called himself a lifelong hunter, yet his campaign acknowledged that he has been on just two hunting trips _ one when he was 15 and the other just last year. Campaigning in Indianapolis on Thursday, Romney said he has hunted small game since his youth. “I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve made that very clear,” he said. “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times.”

He should drop out of the race right now and spare himself further embarrassment, but I imagine that he’s shooting for Quayle: that is, the Vice Presidency, although I imagine him falling off a cliff before I see him, say, joining someone and leading them to victory in an intergalactic basketball game.

Not much else to say about poor Mitt Romney. Except for, That’s all folks!

Excuse me if I become a Libertarian for a moment. Stories like these do that to me.

Police have arrested an activist for feeding the homeless in downtown Orlando, Florida.

Eric Montanez, 21, of the charity group Food Not Bombs was charged with violating a controversial law against feeding large groups of destitute people in the city center, police said Thursday. Montanez was filmed by undercover officers Wednesday as he served “30 unidentified persons food from a large pot utilizing a ladle,” according to an arrest affidavit. The Orlando area is home to Disney World and Universal Studios Florida.

The Orlando law, which is supported by local business owners who say the homeless drive away customers but has been challenged in court by civil rights groups, allows charities to feed more than 25 people at a time within two miles (3.2 kilometers) of Orlando City Hall only if they have a special permit. They can get two permits a year. Police collected a vial of the stew Montanez was serving as evidence. Police spokeswoman Barbara Jones said in an e-mail it was the first time anyone had been arrested under the feeding ban. Montanez was charged with a misdemeanor.

What a ridiculous law. Listen: I feed homeless people all the time. If I’m downtown, and I’m alone, and I grab some lunch, it’s not at all unusual for me to invite someone from the Red Line to catch a meal, so I think this Law is ridiculous as a spectator and a participant. It’s completely unacceptable for any government to rule in such a manner.

I’m just glad I don’t live in a city with a fascist for a Mayor!

Right. With that out of the way, this is a great story and I’m glad to hear it.

The Walt Disney Co. has changed its policy to allow same-sex couples to participate in a popular Fairy Tale Wedding program it runs mainly at its two U.S. resorts and cruise line, a Disney spokesman said on Thursday. Disney previously had allowed gay couples to organize their own weddings or commitment ceremonies at rented meeting rooms at the resorts, but had barred them from purchasing its Fairy Tale Wedding package and holding the event at locations at Disneyland and Walt Disney World that are set aside specifically for weddings. “We are updating our Fairy Tale Wedding guidelines to include commitment ceremonies,” Disney Parks and Resorts spokesman Donn Walker said. “This is consistent with our policy of creating a welcoming, respectful and inclusive environment for all of our guests.”

It’s little things like these that’ll carry over and make the American public more accepting of gay people’s love. Kudos to Disney! (Although I must ask — I must! Why, oh why, is this something that they can do, but distribute Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 wasn’t? Guess it’s not an election year so the Republicans aren’t leaning on them.)

I’m not a Republican. Sorry I told you so. It’s just that I was going to shower and I don’t support your campaign so I don’t want to give you money but I didn’t want to spend ten minutes explaining to you that I am un nino and no, my mother is not home but if she were, she made 7,000 dollars last year, so she has no money to give you! so I said, “Sorry, I’m a Republican!” and hung-up.

At least you’ve still got The Internets to tap into, Barack Obama and his intern. How’d you get my phone number, by the way? I never shared it with you.

Let me get this straight: Hillary Clinton raised a little more money than Obama, but Obama is designating more of it toward the primary, and so everyone says that Obama raised more money, even though he didn’t? In the same story, Jesse Jackson says, “This is a long road and a long process to the White House, but make no doubt about it, Barack Obama is driving the fastest car.” Which is a bad thing. “Peaking” before the actual primaries begin. People that peak during fundraising stages are a dime-a-dozen in politics and Barack would do well to remember that when everyone is labeling him a Winnar!

God bless American politics and journalism.

A billionaire, Sam Zell, bought the Tribune company, which means that he owns the Chicago Cubs, the LA Times, WGN and Chicago Tribune. My first thought hearing it was, Maybe they’ll finally move the Cubs out of town and tear down Wrigley, but that’s mean, and I don’t mean it. My second thought, upon further review, was how ridiculous this all is. Eccentric billionaires buying newspapers and media? That’s how we get Rupert Murdoch, and that’s not a bad thing, but then I thought about it some more and said, “Better than having, say, governments buy the newspapers.” But not by a lot.

Thank God we’ve got a Capitalist system that allows a lesser of two evils to buy our media instead of the greatest evil of all: government! and I’m serious but for the “evil” label on the government.

It’s a helluva choice, though, between Bill Frist and Richard Mellon Scaife, but at the least, we can ignore Scaife. If the government ran the media there’d be no escape.

I can’t believe it. This guy is spreading rumors on the Internets that Hillary Clinton can’t win the Presidency because she can’t get enough dudes on the Internets to fill her campaign coffers. Oh, sure, The Author tries to pre-empt The Argument that Obama is Dean 2, and it’s true enough that Obama !=(doesnotequal) Dean. Howard Dean wasn’t as good at receiving money from the traditional sleazy sources as Obama is, but the truth is that Barack Obama will find himself unable to raise as much money as The Clinton Machine and I imagine that grassroots supporters will be more plentiful for them as they’ve done it before and therefore have a greater base of support, which is quite important. More important than, say, Barack Obama’s 100,000 internet donors. But wait!:

Every one of those 100,000 contributors is a passionate, fired up mini-evangelist for the Obama campaign who can email friends, attract new supporters, create networks, and create the “virality” that online marketers lust for but seldom achieve.

Oh! I get it now. Obama’s Howard Dean but cooler and Hillary Clinton is John Kerry with sexxxy. To rephrase: Dean was, I don’t know — Livejournal.com, and Obama is MySpace+Facebook.

OkayStupid, I got it. That makes a lot of sense. Except for the fact that it doesn’t. People who do their politicking on the Internet are far less likely than their peers IRL (LOL!) to go out and vote, drive a carpool of old folks to the polls or pass out flyers. And that’s important and always will be, moreso than the Internet — and by that I mean, The Internet can work as a tool. A tool, but it is not a campaign and anybody who talks about having Internet strength or of the Internet as their shield — they’re bound to lose. I imagine that Obama, and Clinton, and Edwards and old man McCain, even, understand this, and it’s time that we all do.

Listen. I think the Internet is an amazing tool. It’s great, but you can’t politick online, and people emailing does not a winning campaign make no matter how much you want to spin it that way. And if Obama does win — which I have always doubted — it won’t be because someone posted on FaceBook.

Sorry.

In England,

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history ‘as a vehicle for promoting political correctness’. The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into ‘emotive and controversial’ history teaching in primary and secondary schools. It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

It isn’t the first time something major in history is whitewashed. The truth is that American textbooks through high school gloss over important details — Truman, for instance, was given about a page in my history textbook, and that was mainly a paragraph with a picture describing his role in the atomic bomb — and so do other textbooks. The Japanese pretend that the Rape of Nanking and the crimes of its ilk during WWII didn’t happen; Russia is the most peaceful nation in the world’s history; the French valiantly fought WWII with their resistance until the Americans worked up the courage to help out a little; the American indian — nay, the World’s Indian — wasn’t wiped out by white folk…okay, they were, but the governments give them reservations now, so it’s okay.

The last place to learn about history is in the classroom. But still, I’m disappointed in any attempt to wipe out history for fear of offending segments of the public in any place. It simply isn’t right…but that’s education today.

On another educational note, Newt Gingrich has joined John McCain as the Pander Bear to watch in this Presidential cycle by calling for the abolishment of bilingual education.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich equated bilingual education Saturday with “the language of living in a ghetto” and mocked requirements that ballots be printed in multiple languages. “The government should quit mandating that various documents be printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows up” to vote, said Gingrich, who is considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He made the comments in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women.

“The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. … We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,” Gingrich said to cheers from the crowd of more than 100. “Citizenship requires passing a test on American history in English. If that’s true, then we do not have to create ballots in any language except English,” he said. Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, which supports bilingual education, said, “The tone of his comments were very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto.”

He said research has shown “that bilingual education is the best method of teaching English to non-English speakers.” Spanish-speakers, Zamora said, know they need to learn English. “There’s no resistance to learning English, really, among immigrants, among native-born citizens,” he said. “Everyone wants to learn English because it’s what you need to thrive in this country.” In the past, Gingrich has supported making English the nation’s official language. He’s also said all American children should learn English and that other languages should be secondary in schools. In 1995, for example, he said bilingualism poses “long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation” and that “allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous.”

Bilingual programs teach students reading, arithmetic and other basic skills in their native language so they do not fall behind while mastering English. On voting, federal law requires districts with large populations of non-English speakers to print ballots in multiple languages.

My friend Kap pointed out, with regard to the bold, that “the masses turned out for Newt’s speech!” I thought it was the funniest thing.

Jokes aside, his speech is alarming. Not because it’ll change anything, as it won’t and shouldn’t. Bilingual education in this country is harmless — it’s Dora the Explorer, not Are You Afraid of The English Language? and should be treated accordingly. No, the scary thing is that he’s appealing to the lowest wrung of the Republican Party, the xenophobes. I’m sure he’ll get no traction but it’s shameless all the same, and I daresay, it’s more disgusting because the only reason he’s running is to make money.

The world is killing off the seahorse. Another victim of pollution and overfishing. Terrible.

Let’s take a look at a couple of other endangered animals. The Republicans and the Democrats.

Despite the threats, Democratic lawmakers expect to open new fronts against the president when they return from their spring recess, including politically risky efforts to quickly close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; reinstate legal rights for terrorism suspects; and rein in what Democrats see as unwarranted encroachments on privacy and civil liberties allowed by the USA Patriot Act.

“I suppose there’s always a risk of going too far,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), “but the risk of not going is far greater.”

Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a “political price” at the polls: “If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react.”

I’ll buy that. If the Democrats, say, pass a bill legalizing gay marriage and pledge to give money to terrorists, they’d be homosexual Ronald Reagans — and out of work come 2008.

If you noticed, I boldened “reinstate legal rights for terrorism suspects” and that’s because I believe it’s the riskiest and perhaps the faultiest. I’ve got no problem taking away a terrorist’s rights that we find on the battlefield, in which case he should be treated as a Prisoner of War rather than an American Criminal. If they’re going to ensure that Osama bin Laden has access to the most expensive, most accomplished defense attorneys in America, the public will revolt and rightfully so.

Beyond that, I can see mild political problems in closing down Guantanamo Bay but I don’t imagine it being as explosive. Make sure you point out that there are plenty of prisons to hold them at, and the public won’t care in a month, let alone by the next election. Nor should they because that’s the true. Guantanamo Bay is utterly unnecessary and beyond that, it’s a hypocritical institution.

We’ll detain people in Cuba. But otherwise, we won’t deal with that evil country.

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In other news, it’s opening day for my Chicago White Sox today. Happy day!

I didn’t know that the Department of Health and Human Services was a launchpad for Presidential ambitions, but I suppose it is now with Tommy Thompson’s announcement that he’s running for President. I, for one, am not sure what to make of it. He’s angling himself as a reliable Conservative but that’s what Senator Brownback is in the race for. Perhaps he’ll catch fire if Brownback’s big mouth catches up to him, but otherwise I don’t think he’s got much of a chance to make waves.

In other news, the Washington Post is examining Obama’s support, which comes mainly from online donations, and I must say, I still think he’s going to fizzle, crash and burn.