Also, nothing on the internet this weekend will top this, so just enjoy that for a few days.

You know, this really is the Iraq war bloggers all over again. And just like then, the most frustrating part of it all is going to be how they absoutely refuse to recognize how stupid they all were.

The pro-choice organization NARAL has endorsed Barack Obama.

Of course, they also endorsed Joe Lieberman and had a hand in giving us Justice Sam Alito.

And later in the thread:

Please don't try and spin this into I'm trashing NARAL. I'm putting their endorsement in context.

Uh-huh. By the way, Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina.

There is no way I'd ever vote for Obama because I think he's a liberal, and possibly a radical non-Christian. However, I would totally change my mind and vote for him over the conservative, old, white war hero if you said I could also have Bill Clinton's wife running the country along with him.

Now all Hillary needs to do is find a few million people who actually, you know, believe this, as opposed to three or four bloggers and Terry McAlluffe. I would prepare a case for the Rules Committe to seat delegations from the Magical Gumdrop Fairy Kingdom of Unicorns immediately.

That is all.

Update: Also: this is comedy gold.

I have no idea if certain female politicians would be the best pick for Obama as opposed to male ones, and I hope that Obama's running mate is picked for more than just a potential demographic advantage. But I think anyone claiming Clinton is the most qualified anything, let alone specifically the most qualified woman, to be Obama's running mate at this point is so far in the tank for Clinton that they've lost touch with reality.

Even if Clinton was more qualified to be Obama's running mate than any other politician- male or female- are we really stupid enough to believe that's the only thing that matters? Clinton isn't going to be Obama's running mate because she's spent the last three months saying Obama isn't qualified to be president. It's like asking why Joe Lieberman isn't being considered a potential running mate for Obama just because he happens to be voting for his opponent.

There are countless qualities that can be vetted for a potential VP, but I think that a really, really important one would be "thinks their running mate should be president." That "commander-in-chief test" is one that a lot of female politicians, as well as male ones, scored higher than Clinton on.

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Last week we covered that everyone in the Hillary campaign thinks we're all idiots. This week we cover how a lot of people who don't like the Hillary campaign are acting like idiots. For the record, I invented absolutely none of the metaphors used by Bob in this strip. All of them have actually been used either on a cable news show or a popular weblog in the last week alone. Yes, including the Hitler one.

There's no excuse for misogynist attacks on Clinton just because she's, you know, run a horrifically inept and race-baiting campaign that should have any fan of progressive rhetoric vomiting. Hopefully the former can disappear so there's less cover for people who want to blindly ignore the latter.

This week's strip is double-sized to make up for the fact that there'll be no new comic next Monday. Two of my best friends from high school are getting married, and they've even gone as far as to make everything convenient for me by marrying each other, meaning I can take only one trip and actually enjoy the hell out of it. They also decided to have the wedding right around my birthday, so I can feel like the giant banquet is really for me and Virginia just wanted to dress really, really fancy for it.

If you are also attending a birthday party or just want to totally make your significant other want you, nothing beats the irresistable humor and/or sexual enhancement factor of my book. Buy one. And join the mailing list.

So long. And thanks
March 11, 1952 - May 11, 2001

The Clinton backers were, in the simplest of schoolyard analysis, wrong. And that really pisses them off. So now they're looking for a series of "defeat with dignity" excuses to rationalize why they're wrong. It appears that this is going to be seating Florida and Michigan and a lot of whining that Obama cheated.

Which, for the record, I called two months ago. But Matt Yglesias said it even more succinctly today, and it still holds.

I know the Convention was planned years in advance, but... seriously. Someone in the DNC scheduling department just got a bonus.

Update: Huh. So apparently Sullivan's reader e-mails are from real people after all.

There aren't a lot of warblogs left these days, because, well, the war went to shit and all the bloggers like her who converted their entire online personas to rants about how bloggers like me were stupid, pretentious, and hated America found themselves being humiliatingly wrong to the tune of a few thousand dead Americans. Only the bloggers like John Hindraker and Glenn Reynolds, who never had shame to begin with, John Cole, who suprisingly repented, and Michelle Malkin, who is actually the devil, remained.

Anyway, I'm not saying all that to raise a fight with long-lost "9/11 changed how I think of everything" bloggers. They can live with and work out their own demons. But I wanted to point this out because what made those blogs so anger-inducing, and in fact quite frightening, wasn't just that they were rabidly pro-Bush and pro-war, but because they were simply just rabid. Even the slightest inkling of a pro-Kerry or anti-war view sent them screaming into a frothing rage. Careers were ruined, excuses were made, smug high-fives were exchanged.

I say this all now because only this morning did I remember, reading some liberal pro-Hillary bloggers, where I'd seen all this before. And I apologize if it's a terrible analogy but I really do believe it. Formerly rational liberal bloggers are writing about Clinton the way these warbloggers went insane after 9/11.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I agree with Sadly, No in that having read Corrente for years now I would have thought this post was a complete joke- a mockery of applying ridiculous post-9/11 right-winger rhetoric to the 2008 Democratic primary. But it's not. They are saying this now. TalkLeft, which apparently delinked me last week, was one of the first blogs I read regularly, and Jeralyn Merritt was one of my earliest fans. I recall, vaguely, that it used to be a blog about legal issues or something like that. It's apparently been cyber-squatted by a raving lunatic who writes about Obama supporters the way Michelle Malkin writes about people whose last name contain the letter Z.

I have no idea what happened to these people, but at least when the warbloggers went batshit a bunch of terrorists actually had to murder a few thousand people first. This time around, the enemy are simply smart people. "The creative class?" "Latte-sipping?" Can Lambert just copy-paste from Jonah Goldberg circa 2002, call Obama supporters "Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys" and get it the fuck over with?

As I noted before, much like the psychotic cheerleaders for Bush and the war, things went really, really badly for these people. And it's a damn shame that these bloggers don't realize what a hollow shell of formerly decent blogs they're going to be left with after they strip every piece of copper wiring out of them to melt into ammo to fire at other Democrats.

I hope they can at least understand what they're giving up here, the way those warbloggers gave up so much for their fervent worldview, as they told off gay friends because "winning the war was more important than stopping the Marriage Amendment," as they accused their opponents of being stupid, of being hateful, of being "deranged," and then helped to get the Republican elected. I hope the Hillary fanatics know this: There is no overnight healing process here. These are wounds that still hurt, and there are scars that are permanent. And by all means, feel free to do whatever it is you actually believe in. But if you really do believe this shit you're spewing, please try to find a few warblogs from 2003 or so and read how they sounded. It'll help you understand in 2009 why no one is forgiving you any time soon.

Update: I got a lot of responses to this, some from angry Hillary supporters and general contrarians. Look, I really didn't think that it's necessary to offer the caveat in every. single. thread about the primary that both sides have assholes. Yes, there are asshole Obama supporters. And the misogyny hurled at Clinton during the last eleven months (let alone the last eleven years) from both Obama supporters and people who just plain hate Hillary is inexcusable.

But the exploitation of national mood undergone by the Clinton campaign remains the most blatant and disgusting I've seen since the months following the 9/11 attacks. There was a difference between saying you initially supported the War on Terror and the people I was talking about above- essentially, to co-opt a term I and some other readers have used, the sudden argument from ex-liberal bloggers that 9/11 suddenly made them realize Ted Kennedy was a murderer. Because as the war in Iraq became more and more blatantly stupid, the only two options were A. accept you were completely wrong or B. declare your opponents to be, quite literally, enemies.

Short of Bush's CPAC cronies, Hillary Clinton is the most stubborn politician I have ever seen in my life. She shifted her campaign to a strategy of never remotely suggeting the notion that she could possibly be wrong about something, even when, quite literally, every expert in the world disagreed with her. That was the logic of the Bush administration post-9/11. And it's what turned formerly rational people into lunatics because they simply couldn't accept the idea of being wrong about something. That's what makes over half the country think global warming isn't real. It's what makes John McCain now support turture.

This isn't politics; it's the fundemental construct of human education. When you are not taught when something is wrong, you become stupid. Ergo, if you want people to be stupid, you don't teach them when they're wrong. 9/11 created a very large number of stupid people; to let that happen with the Democratic primary is unforgivable.

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Apparently, the last hurl of a kitchen sink involves topping even the rhetoric of George W. Bush in declaring that everyone on the entire face of the planet is an "elitist" for pointing out your idea to buy people's vote for about twenty bucks is an awful one. Let's imagine, for a moment, that the Clinton campaign's gas tax rebate idea was, instead, the sudden declaration that evolution isn't real, or that only abstinence-only sex ed should be taught in schools. And when told, flat-out, that this was contrary to what every single expert on said topic actually believed, it was scoffed at by saying that those were merely "quote-unquote experts." I imagine that even the most hollow shells of formerly dignified political discussion sites wouldn't simply praise what a "great political strategy" this was. Because maybe, just maybe, we want smart people in the White House again.

Let's just put it out there: Hillary Clinton's strategy is, quite literally, hoping every Indiana voter is incredibly, incredibly stupid. And regardless of leanings in the Democratic primary I don't understand why so few people seem to be outright insulted by that. I suppose given the remaining plausible scenarios in Clinton's path to victory call for such desperate measures, but to stoop to this level truly does leave me awestruck.

Thanks to everyone who sent in ideas for the list of most embarrassing Bush administration moments. I'll try to update the list in the next few days. Until then, buy some crap and join the mailing list.

Anyway, it occured to me that five years down the line, can we even call this the most embarassing moment in the last seven years of Bush as president? I figured today's as good as any to reflect upon some of the other candidates:

January 28, 2002 - Under the orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft, $8,650 of taxpayer money is spent on curtains to cover statues in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice which bear exposed breasts.

March 11, 2003 - In an attempt to chastise France for refusing to support a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Congressmen Bob Ney (R-OH) and Walter Jones (R-NC) order food in all House cafeterias renamed "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast." As Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Ney is allowed to do this without requiring any votes on it.

May 1, 2003 - President Bush arrives on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln wearing a flight suit and arriving in a fighter jet, despite the carrier being only 30 miles from shore and well within helicopter range. He then changes into a suit to deliver a speech beneath a gigantic banner reading "mission accomplished" in which he claims combat operations in Iraq have ended.

June 12, 2003 - President Bush is photographed falling off of a Segway motorscooter, hailed as being a device that is nearly possible to fall off of. Segway manufacturers would later explain the device is electrically-powered, and the President failed to plug it in.

January 26, 2005 - Following a White House press conference where a question asked is so partisan it actually piques enough curiosity to investigate it's asker, said asker is revealed to be Jeff Gannon (actually the alias of Jeff Guckert), a man who despite using a fake name, having no journalism background, and is a male prostitute, has somehow been granted credentials to be within fifteen feet of the President of the United States.

February 2, 2005 - Following parliamentary elections held a week prior in Iraq, several members of Congress goad war opponents during Bush's State of the Union Address by waving their fingers which they have dipped in ink.

September 4, 2005 - President Bush is photographed writing a note to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, reading "I think I need to go to the bathroom. Is this possible?"

Any others I'm missing here? This list stops in late 2005 and there's got to be some more from the last few years. I'm not including silly photos (like the Cheney hiding in the Bushes thing) or dumb or ironic quotes (a.k.a. "Fool me once...") or merely horrific policiy decisions that are disagreeable but at least practical applications of Bush being President (i.e. the PATRIOT Act, his court picks, etc.) I'm talking about moments that will actually potentially make the history books and be looked upon by future generations in wonder, as if they actually can't believe this really happened, because they are so freaking stupid. I'll put the carrier moment in here too to maintain chronology. Send any suggestions to and I'll put 'em up.

Update Wow. Okay, so a lot of you sent some good ones in. I will probably take the weekend to update the list with a few of the better ones. Good job, people!

That GTAIV doesn't offer a "female perspective" or "gay-friendly elements" to the plotline is honestly the biggest one for me. By the nature of Rockstar Games trying to make a realistic storyline, the action is going to be inherently misogynistic. The protagonist is a Serbian illegal immigrant trying to make his way up in the world of a parallel-New York city underworld. I think there are a lot of fields where gender and sex-orientation equality have made vast improvements; urban organized crime isn't exactly one of them. (For the record, Rockstar's previous game was last year's Bully, which does allow the protagonist to choose sexual advances toward both genders for various advancements in the plot)

The argument about violence against women is also curious. The major complaint here seems to be "you can kill strippers" and "you can kill hookers." This is technically true, in that you can kill everybody. While there are missions and objectives that are central to your character's interaction with various characters, I've seen no reports or reviews of the game indicating that specifically injuring or killing a prostitute is a play requirement. Yes. You can kill hookers. You don't have to. This also applies to men, children, animals, and an infinite number of other elements in the game.

That doesn't dispel the main argument about the game though- clearly, GTAIV is misogynistic. So is A Clockwork Orange. How you respond to that movie and whether you choose to view it or not is completely up to the individual. But suggesting that either the game or any movie "could have been done differently" is pointless. This is what the creators wanted to make.

None of this suggests I don't think a gender or orientation-neutral crime game wouldn't work. (Gabe & Tycho at Penny Arcade had a hilarious discussion in their podcast a few weeks ago about how much better a game Army of Two would have been if the protagonists were gay instead of, well, vile, offensive women-hating misogynists). Nor does it mean I think it's a great game for kids of all ages- I'm behind the ESRB 100% on this, and any parent who lets anyone under 18 near this thing is a freaking moron. But complaining about the game being what it is ignores the fact that, well, it is what it is.

Given the more common use of female characters in video games, GTAIV is in a way almost refreshing in making the misogyny at least relevant. The exploitation of women in the game is a theoretical focus of the storyline and the environment to which your character is attached. That honestly seems far more understandable than the typical fighting game in which the creators claim it's "for girls too" because three of the eighteen selectable players are either a half-naked Amazon with impossibly large breasts or a half-naked schoolgirl with even more impossibly large breasts. GTAIV features elements in which a male character playing a violent criminal can commit violent crimes against women. Bloodrayne was an action platformer which was promoted with digital images of its star character naked in Penthouse. Which of these is really the more unnecessary feature?