Thursday, June 12, 2008

BACK TO BUSINESS

And now that the primaries are over here's a reminder of what it's all really about:



Sweet dreams.

HIGHLIGHT REEL

Kieth Olberman has put together a great collection of highlights from the primary season:

Monday, June 09, 2008

IT'S DONE/ MCSAME GAMES

I'm a little late on this but here's (courtesy TPM) the video of Hillary's concession speech:



The blogosphere is on fire with reactions ranging from brilliant to "why was it AGAIN all about her?"

I think it was a fine speech and she hit all the right marks - Oh sure, she went a little dead-eyed when she was talking-up Obama, but I'll give the woman a break, she is human after all and it can't have been an easy speech to give.

In other news:

I've discovered (although I can't have been the first) a new drinking game! The first requirement is the toughest -you actually have to watch one of Grampy's speeches. But assuming you can do that without doing an Elvis on your TV -take a drink every time McSame says "my Friends" or some variant. Don't plan on driving afterward.

BTW if you really want some positive therapy when you get too down in the dumps re the state of the fall election and the ramifications for the country -watch McSame's town hall meetings with the sound muted. What you'll see is a wandering, shuffling almost limping, hunchbacked, very old white guy, who somehow thinks he actually stands a chance to be elected president. And it only makes you feel more warm and fuzzy knowing that this idiot actually wants to stand on the same stage as Obama and do this 10 TIMES!

Here -give it a try:



-remember to mute the sound unless you have a bottle of Jameson's (none of that protestant Bushmills shite) close by. Slainte!

Thursday, June 05, 2008

AND NOW THE REAL NEWS

John Stewart delivers the best post contest wrap up. (of course he does -he's the only pundit with more than space between his ears -well if you don't count Olberman )

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

SAVOR IT


BTW -in case anyone's wondering: I'm open to playing starting QB for the 49ers next fall.



Tuesday, June 03, 2008

OH AND BTW

NO. I don't want her as VP. Too much baggage, and after the campaign she's run why throw her a bone? She doesn't guarantee victory any more than anyone else because any democrats who won't vote for the democratic candidate after 8 years of hell are undependable anyway. She brings more damage than help after this campaign and already the republicans are using her lines against Obama.

Here's a question for all those (and that includes you Senator Feinstein) who insist that Hillary should be on the ticket: shouldn't she endorse him first?

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Will tonight be the night? Will she finally concede?

The news is all over the map from claims that she'll make a concession speech from New York tonight to the Clinton campaign itself still saying that they're in it to win it. She's got a tough decision to make as I think this really is her last best chance to exit gracefully and with any chance of preserving her career and her husband's legacy -both of which have been bruised if not broken by her incompetent campaign.

She can choose to stay and fight it out destroying herself and the party in the process and all but ensuring a president John Sidney McCain III, or she can show courage and stand down and put the country before her ambitions. I'm not optimistic.

In other news: you want to talk about a real dream ticket?

I was a Clark man from way back as I've said before and I was really bummed that he came out for Clinton though I understood why, but the case gets stronger and stronger for him on the ticket with Obama.

"Clark opposed the war, is unambiguous in his support for progressive values, has credibility and relationships with foreign leaders, and has “won a war using multi-lateral strategies with zero American casualties.” (I’d certainly like to hear some exploration this fall of the differences in the military’s planning and execution in Kosovo vs. Iraq.)

I’d just add that Clark does not have any obvious personal baggage — folks went looking for dirt in ‘04 and didn’t come up with anything. And, obviously, he comes with the kind of national security bona fides that are unrivaled by any political figure in the country.

As for the “unifying” factor, I think it’s also fair to say that Clark is definitely considered a Clinton loyalist. If the Obama campaign wanted to send a signal about bringing the camps together, Clark would appear to largely fit the bill."


With Clark on the ticket there'd be next to no argument that Obama couldn't be Commander In Chief. Now I'm not naive -I know there are down sides. For starters, he's another white male and therefore offers little to women other than his progressive values. Also he's been in Washington for a long time and so might detract from Obama's message of change. Also he's been publicly critical of Obama in the past, but I think that could be easily spun as his having been loyal to Clinton "in the trenches" as it were.

Still I think his positives outweigh the negatives and hope he's seriously being considered -and seriously considering- the VP spot.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

IT'S OFFICIAL -THE PATRIOTS WON THE SUPERBOWL!

The Jed Report has a good analysis of all of this

"The Obama campaign is going to need be ready to push back against the Clinton popular vote nonsense even harder. I keep on saying this, but the key reason why the popular vote isn't meaningful is simply that every state has a different mechanism for selecting delegates. You can't just total up all these different contests with different rules and call it democratic."

but I'd like to add an analogy: The Patriots apparently won the Superbowl

If you add up the scores from the World Series (which the Red socks won BTW) the last Celtics game and the Superbowl -the New England team clearly had more points than the Giants and therefore were the Superbowl winner.


In other news:

Pelosi says that the superdelegates need to declare by next week or she Dean and Reid will step in.

Don't know what they'll do exactly but it's encouraging. I have to go back on my previous post and say that Clinton's now clearly insane.

Taking this to the convention will ensure the democrats lose in the fall. It's never worked before -the party undecided by their convention inevitably loses. '64, '68, '80. Every time the party that was undecided by the convention lost.

Hillary has obviously decided (rightly or wrongly) that it's now or never -the irony is that the more she presses on the more she ensures it'll be never.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

THE REAL GRAMPS

Here's a short film by Robert Greenwald to give you a picture just who we're up against. Remember that at this time in 2000 W was a blithering idiot -but one that everyone (but me) wanted to have a beer with. Not like that "wooden elitest lying snob" Al Gore. And remember too that McCain back then was the Manchurian Candidate who's wife had a drug problem and who allegedly had an illigitimate black child (according to the South Carolina "push-polls") 4 years later he was campaigning for the man whose campaign had made those allegations against him. Now he wants to be president. ROTFLMAOPMP.

Here's gramps in all his twistedness:


But Hillary thinks he's "passed the Commander in Chief threshold".

And speaking of Hillary -here's Olberman with a classic "Special Comment":


Bye Hills, wish it was fun.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

...AND NOW THE PLUGS.

A friend I worked with about 15+ years ago has blossomed into an incredible singer/songwriter!

She's currently (among other things) working on a project called "52 songs in 52 weeks" where she composes a new song each week and then puts the video up on YouTube. At the end of the year she'll pick the best 12 or so and record an album.

Now, "how" you ask "does this fit into the scope of your blog?" Watch her latest "Rooftops of Babylon" (week 14):






Most of her songs aren't overtly political -but this one seemed like a great match.

You can find out more here, and here, and you can buy her album here or here

She's pretty amazing so help support her!

DEBUNKING MORE CANARDS

Let's debunk the barrage of lies, starting with the latest:

1. Obama's "white" problem

This is one of the most insidious and nasty dog-whistle attacks to come down the pike. Let's be honest "white, working class", "white rural" and "hard-working white" are all synonyms for the same thing -uneducated white redneck bigots. This is the narrow demographic who won't vote for Obama. What the media and the Clinton campaign want you to believe however is that they are representative of the larger demographic of white non college educated voters across the country, and this just hasn't played out in the numbers.

Where has it played out? Appalachia.

All of the states where Obama has had a "problem" are in that area of the country. north western PA, Southeastern OH, all of WV -in fact it stretches from northern AL to southwestern NY. Josh Marshall has more about who has settled in that area of the country as does Jonathan Tilove.

Moreover this whole area of discussion has focused on the false idea that ALL of the people who voted for Clinton in the primaries in those states will not vote for Obama in the general election which is unlikely -particularly if Clinton makes good on her promise and stands behind him once he's the nominee.

Obama has won "white" majorities in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Virginia -and in the second whitest state in the union- Vermont, he won 60% of the "white working class" vote. He doesn't have a "white" problem -he has an Appalachia problem -minuscule in comparison to the insinuation Clinton, the MSM and the Republicans are making.

That the media is fueling this story is predictable as they thrive on controversy real or manufactured ("You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war") and I don't even begrudge the republicans for using this line of attack (ignorant whites are after all their base) but for the Clinton campaign to advance this argument is not only desperate but despicable.



2. Obama is "elitist"

An "ist" is one who subscribes to an "ism". Elitism means one who believes in the elevation of the elite and in this context is generally taken to mean that one believes in the superiority and or advancement of the rights and privileges of that elite.

For Obama to be "elitist" then, he would have to espouse the belief that the wealthy, privileged and educated deserve to be placed above everyone else. I defy anyone to cite any quote from Obama where he advances this view. Even if we twist his "bitter-gate" words to mean what his opponents want them to mean -they can't be made to mean that he believes the above.

Is Obama "elite"? That's another question. Harvard Law School, editor of the Harvard Law Review, Law Professor, Illinois State Senator, United States Senator, Keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Yes. The man is elite. But one can be elite without being "elitist"



3. Obama's "Wright" problem will hurt him in the fall.

Perhaps, but while the results of the fall remain to be seen, here's the latest poll saying that Bush is a bigger problem for Gramps than Wright is for Obama.

Additionally, Grampy doesn't want to go down the controversial pastor road what with calling Rod Parsley his "Spiritual guide" and with his courting John "the Catholic Church is the Great Whore of revelation" Hagee, and all. Just sayin'.

Although I note with amusement that Hagee has now attempted to apologise -not in any meaningful way like to the Pope, but to Bill Donohue of the Catholic league. That's kinda' like Usameh Bin Laden apologising to the American Nazi Party for calling America the "Great Satan".

THE RIGHT HORSE AFTER ALL

Ok, so I guess I backed the right horse after all. -Here's John Edwards from last night:



Gooooorre? Al Goooooore? Where aaaarrrrre yoooouuuu?

Sunday, May 11, 2008

LIVE FROM NY, THE NARRATIVE HAS CHANGED!

Well, if this doesn't convince you that the story has changed I don't know what will:

Friday, May 09, 2008

TWO MINUTE WARNING

I'm fond of football analogies, and here, courtesy of M.S. Bellows is a good one:

"I know that sports cliches get old, but Clinton has portrayed herself as Rocky, battered but unbowed. (She forgets that after Rocky and Apollo Creed batter themselves insensible, Rocky loses.) Bill Clinton has said that if Obama didn’t want to get hit, he shouldn’t have suited up. They're right that sports are a good analogy; they've just got the game's situation wrong:

It’s late in the fourth quarter; maybe a minute to go. Obama is up by three touchdowns. All he really needs to do is drop to a knee four times to run the clock out, and he wins. The police are restraining the fans from coming onto the field; the announcers are naming the production staff. But Clinton doesn’t believe it’s over. She believes she still can win – after all, it’s not mathematically impossible for her to score on a Hail Mary, kick the extra point, successfully recover an onside kick, then do it all twice more, all in one minute. It’s never been done, but it theoretically could be.

And then she does what all inferior quarterbacks do under pressure: she tries that Hail Mary pass – today’s letter, trying to salvage a lopsided delegate count from Michigan – but, under pressure, she isn’t paying attention to fundamentals any more. She isn’t watching for the secondary receiver; she isn’t using her peripheral vision; she isn’t making a firm plant before releasing the ball; she throws away Latino and Asian and black votes by repeatedly emphasizing the importance of "the white electorate"; she isn’t even running SpellCheck on important documents. There’s not enough time! There’s not enough time! The candidate herself repeats her staffers' racist blunders; the important "open letter" is issued to thousands of media outlets with two typographical errors. The ball leaves the quarterback’s hand with a slight wobble ... the defender wants to end the game, and his eyes and his reflexes are sharp ....

Or we can return to Clinton's Rocky analogy. There's a reason fights have referees, and fighters have trainers who are authorized to throw in the towel: the boxer who's high on adrenaline and dizzy from being pummeled doesn't always realize how badly she's being beaten or how much she stands to lose by continuing. In some fights, when the fighter won't quit but should, it's completely proper -- humane for the fighter, and healthy for the sport itself -- for someone to stop the fight. Not because they're afraid of the fight continuing, but because they see, even if the fighter doesn't, that it's actually already over."

Personally, I still think all the fuss about Hillary's current blusters is overblown. She does know it's over - but she's not going to come out and say so until she's had a chance to try to get out of the debt hole she's dug herself. She'll probably stay in until after West Virginia and Kentucky on May 20th which will allow her to walk away a "winner" and fundraise in the meantime, hoping to cancel some of the debt.

So far she hasn't said anything since Tuesday that hurts Obama -and she could if she wanted to. The Florida and Michigan stuff is just a position that she can't reverse now without looking completely stupid, and the "white voters" stuff while it is stupid works more for Obama the against (those who won't vote for Obama in the general won't vote for a Democrat anyway). The talk about WV and KY as the "next test" is boilerplate political rhetoric which again does no damage to the nominee.

All in all if you examine the comments of Hillary since Tuesday there's nothing that really is attacking Obama.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

NOTES FROM THE SMACK DOWN

-WOW! Just wow. Last night was better than I'd imagined. I'd put Clinton winning Indiana at about 6 points any less than that and she would have lost any ability to keep making the argument that she's still viable. 2 points??? That's just unbelieveable. That's a statistical tie, particularly with Obama's comfortable double digits in North Carolina.

The speeches told the story too. His was definitely about moving to the next stage whereas hers had nary a mention of Obama and was more about thanking everyone who'd worked so hard on her campaign. On MSNBC wacko Pat Buchannan called it "valedictory". Watch:






Any time you see someone thanking their family, you know you're at the end. Even the Oscar(tm) winners save their families for last. Well, second to last -they always seem to have to address their final words to "all those hopefuls out there" or some such rot. In politics the last line of a speech is always about "American Ideals", or whatever.

In other news: you're finally starting to see the supers start to trickle (please let it be a flood soon) to Obama.

George McGovern switched from Hillary to Obama today, and (drumroll please) Wes Clark reportedly called Clinton last night to urge her to drop out.

I have to say that last comes as a HUGE relief. I was genuinely bummed when Clark got behind Clinton -though realistically it made sense: He was their big military brass and skippered the Kosovo campaign brilliantly. I had hoped he would run himself and was solidly in his camp at one time because I (mistakenly) thought that the only way you could beat the Repubs on National Security was to run a military man against them -not just a war hero, but a general who'd had something to say in shaping policy. Clark was not just a smart General, but a good manager -and anyone who can shepard a military conflict with no deaths is a leader to be reckoned with.

So anyway it reconfirms my faith in him that he sees the writing on the wall. Loyalty is a good thing but not at the price of ceding the nation to the GOP for another 4 years.

Optimistically I think she may drop out by weeks end, but realistically she'll probably stay in until May 20th because that'll give her easy wins in West Virginia and Kentucky (very few of those crackers would be caught dead voting for a black man -even the democrats) which will also allow her to fundraise a bit to offset the 11+ million of her own money she's dropped into her campaign.

Now don't be surprised if she (or her minions) talk tough until then, but I really don't think she's stupid -she sees the writing too. I'll wager that you see a marked softening in tone from her toward Obama. A sure sign that she recognizes he's the nominee.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

UNBEF%^&INGLIEVEABLE!!!!!

The script for the Clinton camp has kicked into gear and continues to befuddle and mystify.

Right now Terry McCauliffe is daring to say that they were down 15 points in Indiana a few weeks ago. WTF?!?!?!

In Indiana?!?!

Here's the standard Clintonian script on election night:

1. Grossly deflate their past numbers in states she was favored to win. (15 points down my a$$! She's always been favored to win that state!!!)

2. Talk up how this set of races is a make or break situation for Obama (even though he's already made it and broken her)

3. When she wins states she was favored to win claim that it was an improbable come from behind victory. (even though she wins by less of a margin than was forcast)

4. Pretend that the margin which she loses in the states where she loses is better than expected because it wasn't a complete rout. (even though it's pretty close to what the pre-election polls predicted and gains her nothing)

5. Repeat the above ad-nauseum until the MSM starts citing it as CW.


AAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!

I think I know why Elvis became such a big fan of shooting TVs.

IN, NC, LIVE COVERAGE

This is a great experiment. Here is the MSNBC live coverage of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries:

HILLPOCRISY?

Here's a thought for the day:

How many times will Hillary Clinton accuse Barack Obama of saying something she's already said?

So far we have:

  1. NAFTA-gate
  2. "Going negative"
  3. The "associations" with the Weather Underground figures
  4. Having "ties" to controversial religious figures
  5. Talking about the potential use or nonuse of Nuclear Weapons by the US.
  6. Guns
  7. Elitism (I'm not going to link to that -just think about it)
  8. And now the Teamsters

In fact, it's getting to the point that when you hear Hillary accuse Obama of saying something you can pretty much guess that she's already said it herself.

Can we be done now please?

Monday, May 05, 2008

UPDATE II: VETTY-VETTY-VET-VET

Carl Bernstein in a piece shaming Hillary for having attacked Obama using guilt-by-association on his "ties" with Weather Underground member William Ayers, puts some more meat on the bones of Hillary's own ties to controversial 60's figures. Apparently she only gives her work with the Oakland lawfirm (Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein) which defended the Black Panthers a single line in her bio "Living History".

This is not to say that her associations with "communists" mean anything -they don't (I mean really dude, that's sooooo 50-years-ago.), but that it's appalling that she would attack Obama with that weapon when his "ties" pale in comparison to hers. It's like grabbing the blade of a sword and trying to bludgeon someone with the handle.

And once again: has this been "vetted"? NO.