Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

“When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn’t necessarily mean you were there.”

That’s Mitt Romney, describing his figurative methods of vision on the campaign trail. It is his attempt to backpedal in the face of his own lies. It is the most disingenuous candidate on either side tripping badly, not only over his initial claim that he “saw” his father march with MLK in 1963, but also the hilarious explanation, quoted above, that puts the National Football League’s New England Patriots in Major League Baseball’s World Series.

Mitt Romney is, of course, the former Governor of…wait for it…Massachusetts! That’s like Blago saying that he “saw” the White Sox win the Super Bowl! Something tells me he’s going to have a hard time with the “I’d like to have a beer with him” kind of crowd.

Enough with The Mormon. Let’s move back to The Christian. What was that movie? I Fart Huckabee? I forget the title, but anyway, I digress. Mike Huckabee. Wow, man, this guy is a real wackjob!

Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities . . . It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.

Those words come from a book he wrote way back in…1998. Kind of weird to have homosexuality and…environmentalism (?) in there with necrophilia, but hey, whatever, that’s just how The Huck rolls. Thankfully, he clarified his words today, or, his campaign researcher, Joe Carter did:

“He considers homosexuality aberrant, but that’s at one end of the spectrum. Necrophilia is at the other end. No way is he saying that homosexuality is like having sex with dead people. That’s not it at all.”

Well, thanks for clearing that up! We already know that he thought (thinks?) AIDS patients should be quarantined, and that women should graciously submit to their menfolk like the good Lord intended, but this is a whole other level of social conservatism–the kind that wins votes from a very select and important group. You guessed it: the Religious Wrong!

These guys are tripping over themselves trying to out-god each other in the GOP race, and I must say, it’s fun and funny to watch here in the secular world of booze and necrophilia. Mike Huckabee, you’re a winner in my book! Or at least, I hope so!

Apparently Hillary Clinton is not only one who is in “softening” mode this week. In order to make their candidate appear “human” and have “feelings” about “people,” Mitt Romney’s campaign had him cry for the second day in a row. This time he became sad imagining what it would be like if one of his five sons were to die in a immoral, unjust war such as the Iraq misadventure.

None of his five sons (ages 26-37) are enrolled in the military, of course, but are instead working toward getting their father elected as President of the United States.

Good column by Frank Rich in the NY Times yesterday:

For those Americans looking for the most unambiguous way to repudiate politicians who are trying to divide the country by faith, ethnicity, sexuality and race, Mr. Obama is nothing if not the most direct shot. After hearing someone like Mitt Romney preach his narrow, exclusionist idea of “Faith in America,� some Americans may simply see a vote for Mr. Obama as a vote for faith in America itself.

This was before Romney did his crying routine on Meet the Press, which I didn’t watch. He cried because he realized that his church was dropping its racist policy toward African-Americans. In 1978. Never too late I guess! By comparison, the Mormons dropped the polygamy kick way back in 1890. Some things are more obvious than others.

Me, I’d be embarrassed to be a part of anything like that, and I don’t understand why people stick with it. I don’t get why anyone would continue to participate and give money and waste time in such a practice, when it holds such antithetical views to your own. Unless they’re not.

(It’s like if I woke up one Sunday and said “You know, forget that I am pro-choice, pro-birth control, pro-gay marriage, pro-women-becoming-priests-or-whatever–I’m going to church!”)

What about Mitt? He was relieved that the rules were changing, but make no mistake, he wasn’t about to do anything about it if they weren’t. “I love my faith. And I’m not going to distance myself in any way from my faith,” he said to Tim Russert. Racist or not, Mr. Romney was and is a Mormon, dammit!

It’s nice that he can shed tears, now that his faith has limped boldly toward the future (the “future” being Brown v. Board of Ed. 1954 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964), but nothing he said puts his judgment at a particularly high level. He, like so many others, was blinded by the light. Maybe still is.

I find it interesting that Mrs. Clinton first made the remark about Obama’s kindergarten foreign affairs experience and now the whole high school drug thing, both of which have backfired on her quite nicely. It’s almost as if she has nothing negative to say about his political experience. Which is what we’ve been judging them on this primary season, right?

Wasn’t Hillary a Barry Goldwater Republican back in high school or college? I’d take Obama’s drug use over that any day. Maybe she just doesn’t want to focus on the relevant past: Obama’s position against the Iraq War and hers for it.

Just happened upon this article from Sunday’s Trib about Crested Butte and other “authentic” Colorado ski towns. Coincidence? I think so!

There’s a cooler underneath all that snow that we had to dig out to get at the beers.

I missed a few things while I was gone, such as this CIA videotape thing–business as usual, but still noteworthy for Bush’s standard know-nothing response to it. He really doesn’t have any clue as to what is happening around him, huh? He loves not to know. There are so many real scandals and lies in this administration that it must be hard to keep up with them; I know it is for me. Ah, well, a year to go in this failed presidency.

The Republicans are busy demonstrating the divisive nature of religion in hilarious fashion, as The Mormon and The Christian battle for the nomination by appealing to the basest of the base. From what I can gather, Jesus and the Devil are brothers, Mormons are racist, and you’re all members of brainwashed cults! Is this Huckabee guy for real? Because if this guy is the nominee even Dennis Kucinich will crush him–Kucinich would be the less insane one, by far. Huckabee seems to have a firm hold on the religious nutism; he makes Romney’s Mormonism look relatively harmless.

And so Barack Obama did blow. I imagine he inhaled, snorted, and did a little teeth-grinding too. Was he an alcoholic like Bush? It doesn’t sound like it, but who knows? Does it matter? It didn’t stop almost half the voters in 2000 from nearly electing Bush, why should it matter for Obama now? Clinton should know better than to go there, and apparently now she does.

As I said before, and will repeat now, no one is inevitable. Obama’s time is now and it is happening. I am excited for what’s to come.

UPDATE:

Sullivan on the Right and Religion:

And that is why part of me, I confess, wants Huckabee to win. So he can lose. So the GOP can lose – as spectacularly and humiliatingly as possible. If we are to rid conservatism of this theocratic cancer, we need to start over. Maybe it has to get worse before it can get better. But it is certainly too late for fellow-traveling Christianists like Lowry and Krauthammer to start whining now. This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it.