You know what? If Barack Obama honestly believes this, then he’s finished. Done. Cooked. Hopeless. Expired.

And in some of his strongest language yet, Obama suggested that, in its new ad, the McCain-Palin ticket was simply trying to “make stuff up.”

Senator Obama, I know you have spoken time and again about listening to opinions from the global community. You’ve mentioned the need to allow the rest of the world to whisper in those overlarge, Will-Smith-as-Fresh-Prince-style ears that you have. You’ve stressed that the United States cannot exist in a vacuum and that our — speaking as a non-American citizen — views count, too.

So, on behalf of the rest of the world, I offer: Yes, you fucking idiot. Yes, they are.

There is reams of data from all walks of life to back this argument.

There are studies that place the American national IQ at 98, the lowest national average among the world’s developed countries.

There are surveys that find that only 20 – 25 per cent of American are “scientifically savvy and alert.” The rest of them are embarrassingly ignorant:

Dr. Miller’s data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

There are dozens more articles, studies and surveys exactly like these, and you can find them by typing “American stupidity” or “Dumb Americans” into Google. Doing that, Senator, will no doubt depress you. And it should.

But fear not. If you type the same thing into Youtube, you get all sorts of amusing clips:

Who could forget that shining example of how retarded the populace you are currently courting can be?

You have probably never heard of a man named Rick Mercer (or maybe you have, you sometimes seem like you might be into that kind of humour — you know, the kind tinged with ‘elitism’), but I urge you to consult his research before placing your faith in those mouthbreathers who will be punching ballots in two months.

Senator Obama, Americans can be good people and they can do good things, and I hope to God they elect you President.

But a solid percentage of them are so fucking dumb that they can’t find any country aside from America on a map and the depths of their ignorance continues to reveal itself on an almost-daily basis.

If you honestly believe the statement you made above … you are as stump fucking dumb as the rest of them.

Sincerely,

A Canadian Dude

So … the whole ‘OMG! Obama’s Pastor hates Amerikkka! Can’t ever vote for him!’ bullshit of the past few days has brought about an interesting result:

I have a great deal more respect for a completely crazy Evangelical Conservative who wants the Constitution to more properly reflect the values of the Bible.

Don’t get it twisted — Mike Huckabee would be a dangerous, dangerous man with his fingers pushing the buttons that move the lumbering giant that is America. If I were religious, I would be praying to whatever the heck I believed in that a fundamentalist never again finds himself wielding political power in the United States of America.

But Huckabee is a rational person about non-religious matters, it seems. And about race. And he’s got Obama’s back on this whole Pastor-taints-candidate’s-campaign idiocy.

If you managed to miss the whole thing, I’ll sum up briefly with links:

• Obama’s pastor, it turns out, has a history of saying some very inflamatory and occasionally racist and hateful things.
• Obama’s political critics use this material to illustrate why this ‘militant black man’ should never be allowed to become President.
• Pundits from both the Republican and the Hillary Clinton (that blog is terrible!) side of the blogosphere, nearly pee themselves with glee because they finally have something to turn their dirty politics on.
• Obama uses the occasion to give — what else? — a fairly open and moving speech, finally addressing racial issues in this campaign and condemning his pastor’s remarks without denouncing the man himself. A quick excerpt:

“And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Full text and video of the speech.

Anyway, so where does Huckabee come in? Well, here. After Obama’s speech, when his supporters are fellating him and his detractors are claiming that he hasn’t distanced himself enough from Wright’s remarks, the most conservative, religious and just plain fundamentalist of all the Presidential candidates gets on a radio program and says that … he totally understands. Wuh-Huh?

A transcript from ‘Morning Joe’ this morning:

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.”

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS…

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you’re not. I know you’re not. I’m just wondering though, for a lot of people…Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what’s the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don’t think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it’s not October. It’s March. And I don’t believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It’s the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going “boy, there is some deep resentment there.”

So there you go. Mike Huckabee. Still religious and crazy as hell, but with a healthy dose of common sense where race is concerned. Like the title says … who knew?

So … if the Democratic primary was a baseball game between, say, the Yankees and the White Sox, it would look something like this:

Yankees jump out to a large first inning lead, thanks to absentee balloting, four years of momentum and their already-famous manager. Call it 6-0, Yanks, after one.

The Sox play some scrappy ball and chip away with a run in their side of the first and another in the second before both starters find their groove. 6-2, Yankees.

After a couple of scoreless frames pass before the Sox bang out a leadoff double and follow it up with a moonshot of a homer (this would be Iowa and South Carolina) to cut the lead to 6-4.

Let’s say last night’s clusterfuck of a Super Tuesday was the equivalent of a suicide squeeze for the Sox in the bottom of the sixth, since Obama seems to have won more delegates when all is said and done. So it’s 6-5, Yankees heading for the seventh inning.

The Sox have the hotter bats, at the moment (polls show Obama had been making steady gains in all the states Clinton won last night and he’s spent more time in the states that are still up for grabs) and they also appear to have a much deeper bullpen to dip into for the final stretch run.

Would you put money on the Yankees holding onto a one-run lead in crunch time against hot bats and a deep bullpen?

In other news, I’m going to start posting a few fun links every morning that I’m stuck on my computer at work (Sunday-Thursday, most weeks). Since I probably read the equivalent of four or five papers every morning through various websites that provide links, commentary, data and other such nonsense, I figured I’d find an excuse to pass along good reads, inane examples of media hyperbole/hypocrisy and ever-so-sweet nuggets of schadenfreude.

As soon as I figure out a clever name to post them under, I will give them their own post. For now, enjoy:

• “For the love of God, for pity’s sake, somebody shoot this team. Put it down, out if its misery. And if Mats Sundin isn’t saying today, where do I sign, or un-sign, then he’s a sadomasochist, perhaps a fool.” Rosie DiManno — as fair, balanced and undereactionary as ever. This piece, by the way, manages to combine both tasty schadenfreude and media hyperbole. Still, the adolescent boy in me points, giggles and chants “Golf Leafs, Golf!”
• Anytime Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sean hannity are uniting behind something — even if it is as innocuous as their opinion on Tim Hortons doughnut of the month — I am hauling ass in the other direction. Has unity ever been so divisive? (Newshounds, by the way, is an awesome site for people like me who will never watch Fox but still want  evidence of just how evil they are).
• A quick and dirty look at how the potential presidents swing on technology issues. Except, of course, for the ones who refused to answer or dodged the question. Probably because they believe they ‘don’t have to answer any question that comes from that series of tubes that makes up the internets.’

In closing, anybody who tells you that this Democratic primary is coming down to anything other than the last day of the convention this fall is an idiot. I wonder what a real convention will be like? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where the leader wasn’t all but acclaimed before it started.