It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”
It’s so transparent it’s not even entertaining to make fun of it’s mendacity.
To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a.
While I’m sure there are valid concerns about whether the case should be tried because of the legal issues about suing agents of the government, I don’t think this is a strategy they really want to pursue. It would reverberate all over Iraq where many people could argue that Iraqi law then applies to everything Blackwater does.
John McCain, no stranger to stupid thoughts, statements and general confusion about what reality might be like, has made yet another dumb ass statement:
The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.
I think you are either deluded or pandering, Mr. McCain. Or simply senile, which would explain the constant flip-flop of positions that change faster than the weather.
The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn’t talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government’s accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.
For those who think Bill Clinton was all roses financially, it wasn’t:
The Clinton administration reported a surplus of $559 billion in its final four budget years. The audited numbers showed a deficit of $484 billion.
The government needs to start using the same accounting procedures that all corporations are required: GAAP. They’re not perfect for the different structure, but it seems only fair that the government play by something resembling the same rules as the rest of the organizations in America. If not strictly using GAAP, they should use that as the basis and specifically derive changes that are codified and available to the public to understand.
After much internal strugle, I’m sure, Hillary Clinton has let her supporters know that she is bowing out of the race and supporting Barack Obama. This was done with much more humility and grace than I expected, and for that, I applaud her.
While Hillary Clinton ponders her next move, and some of her “supporters” have a bit of a nervous breakdown, the party is moving forward. Notice anything different about the lead-in page for the DNS?
Yeah, me too. And note the prominent “Thank you Hillary” on the front page. She ran a energetic campaign, that much can be said.
What’s her game? It’s this, I think. It’s not merely to be vice president. Although apparently it is that. I take it she and Bill have decided that being Obama’s vice-president for eight years is the most plausible path to the presidency. But she did not on Tuesday night merely try to make a case for herself as a good vice-presidential candidate. She held a rhetorical knife to Obama’s throat and said, in not so many words: I’m still calling some shots, buddy. You offer me the vice-presidency, or I walk away. But she has also forced Obama into a situation whereby if he chooses her now, he looks weak. So that’s the choice she is hoping to impose on the nominee: don’t choose me, and Bill and I will subtly work to see that you lose; choose me, and look like a weakling who can’t lead the party without the Clintons after all. Now that’s putting the interests of the party first, isn’t it?
Last night’s sound was not only roar the crowd in St. Paul, MN, but the sound of the door closing on an era. The era of Clinton-led Democrats is over. It began years ago with Howard Dean, and the transformation of the party from one of protection and defense to the 50-state offense. The DLC, perhaps the worst organization ever put together in the Democratic world, is dead. I think the next few days will see many, many people deserting the Clintons. Not only because Hillary lost, but because of how she lost. The bitterness, the anger and the narcissistic sense of predetermination. She’s not a Democrat; she’s a Clinton.
The chances of Clinton being Obama’s VP have been asymptotically approaching zero for the past few weeks. It was always a monumentally stupid idea, but it didn’t lose traction in the old media. They are now, in my mind, so infinitesimal that it would require a quantum physicist to find them.
Today, the Democratic primaries are over, and while the election was not as lopsided as it may have been in some past primaries, the final tally is quite clear: Clinton lost, and the gap is insurmountable without a “miracle”. If that’s her claim to electability—that she might benefit from a miracle—then it’s an even more laughable proposition than one might presume.
In the end, for all the attempts to plummet the discussion into technicalities and “ifs”—if we don’t count caucuses, if we count states that broke the rules and she agreed wouldn’t count—she lost on the only measure that matters in the primary: delegates. While we might wish the process were different, or that the general election were run on popular votes, it isn’t, and arguing that a fantasy win is more valuable than winning according to the rules is simply absurd.
What cinches it for me, though is the difference between the way the two candidates close the primary process. Obama offers kind words, complements and thanks to Clinton; then he proceeds to lay out a broad, inclusive, vision for the nation. Clinton spins, says nothing kind about her opponent and bathes her supporters in senseless platitudes. In the end, it is all about her. Even the absurd concept of having people go to her website and “tell her what she should do” is nothing by a narcissistic obsession that will fuel even more grandiose pathological behavior by supporters who want to claim “the man” kept her from winning.
I spy a traitorpolitician John McCain doing his best to be Emperor Palpatine Bush III:
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.
This man is not to be trusted with a Tinkertoy, much less the Constitution.
I don’t want this to be an overly political post, but more about the changing nature of America as a country; something to be intensely proud of as a nation. With the first major party non-white candidate for President in history, and talk of a “dream ticket”, I’d like to propose another ticket that also represents the changing nature of America:
I am at a loss to explain how offering $1m for a superdelegate’s vote is anything less than quid pro quo. It smacks of flat-out bribery and the aftermath smells of blackmail. If nothing else, I can hope that these sorts of thugs are sidelined more and more in the future. The revolution in campaign financing started by Howard Dean, and continued by Barack Obama, will hopefully make the obsequious behavior of candidates to fat-cat donors less likely.
That’s just unbelievable. Wow. What is disturbing though is the level of racist fear on the Washington Post blog post. It amazes me that people that stupid can operate a computer.
Seriously, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is spamming House members with a Powerpoint. Seriously, that’s how you campaign? Demand people come kiss your feet and send them a Powerpoint?
It’s insulting, ignorant and just plain stupid. I’d like to believe she’s better than that, but I’ve yet to see any evidence.
While voters in the California Democratic Presidential Primary backed Clinton by a 10-point margin, a new SurveyUSA poll shows that if given the chance to vote again, Californians would choose Barack Obama by a 6-point margin, 49%-43%.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton spent Wednesday in D.C. trying to lobby uncommitted House superdelegates, but she asked them to come to her and had limited success persuading busy lawmakers to leave the Capitol. Obama showed up on their turf, walking into a packed chamber this morning in the middle of a vote.
Who sits on their thrown and expects the courtiers to come to them? Exactly.
Somehow, the idea that a potential President, or two, is busy having drinking contests to see who can slam down the most shots is not comforting:
“She loves to sit, throw ‘em back. So to me this is nothin’ new. We all hear about the story that she and John McCain actually had a shot contest, I think in the Ukraine or somewhere around the world. And she actually beat John McCain in a shot contest. She’s a girl from Illinois who likes to throw ‘em down with the rest of us.”
No, not like the rest of us. Like a 20 year old college student too stupid to know better. Shot contests are not a behavior that one wants in a leader. So once again, either she’s an alcoholic wanna-be sorority girl, or lying. So tell me, how’s that hole coming?
More than 200 economists, including four Nobel prize winners, signed a petition rejecting proposals by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain to offer a gas-tax holiday.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin and 2007 Nobel winner Roger Myerson are among those who signed the letter calling proposals to temporarily lift the tax a bad idea. Another is Richard Schmalensee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was member of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.
The moratorium would mostly benefit oil companies while increasing the federal budget deficit and reducing funding for the government highway maintenance trust fund, the economists said.
So what does Hillary keep saying?
Obama’s opposition shows he is “somebody who just doesn’t seem to understand that middle-class families are hurting,’’ Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said yesterday.
Really? Says the woman who brought in $10M/year and hasn’t had to live on a middle-class salary in decades, if ever? What it demonstrates is Mrs. Clinton doesn’t understand basic elementary school math, much less high-school economics. Either that, or she’s a lying pandering politician. You pick.
Clinton yesterday dismissed economists’ objections to the plan.
Those damned facts keep getting in the way of pandering.
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,’’ she said in an interview on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. “We would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.’’
First off, nothing she could do as “President” could have an effect before she’s actually elected, so there’s the whole time travel problem. Then there’s the economic reality problem. Then there’s the pandering slime problem. And finally, there’s the whole basic math.
I’m not going to say what I think the “right” vote on this legislation is, but let’s look at what the basic summary is:
To prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law.
Nothing too extreme in that it reaffirms an already existing right as understood by the courts. So how did our potential Presidential nominees vote?
The US still believes a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians is possible by the year’s end, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said.
Really? This year? After 7 years of doing little more than ignoring it with the sporadic break to throw some more gasoline on the fire, you think you’re just gonna tie a bow around this decades old problem and it’ll all be good? I mean, we know how successful this administration has been at foreign policy, if by foreign policy you mean lie, cheat and kick anyone who gets in your way.
US President George W Bush is hoping for a peace agreement by the time he leaves office in January.
I wanted to win the lottery this week, but strangely it didn’t happen. Dubya’s chances of brokering a peace deal are about the same as that of winning the lottery—without buying a ticket.
I wish I could understand what was wrong with Hillary Clinton of late. It’s like at some point an otherwise intelligent person suddenly came down with a case of the crazies. Witness her latest episode:
In the face of criticism from a slate of economists who say her gas tax holiday plan would be ineffective or even harmful, Hillary Clinton said she wasn’t taking stock of their opinions and emphasized that this was a short-term fix that would primarily benefit long-distance drivers.
Not listening to over a hudnred economists who said that this was a (to paraphrase) “damned stupid idea”. First, Hillary tries to spin it as helping the middle class, but “long-distance drivers” sounds more like truckers than the “average” person.
Let’s say you commute 30 miles to work, each way, in a Chevy Malibu. Let’s further say that you get about 20MPG when doing this daily commute. That means, in a week, you’d do 300 miles. Add in another 50 miles for the weekend, and you’ve got 350 miles. Now, the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. That means if you cut the entire thing, and if by some magical coincidence this was actually passed on to consumers, rather than pocketed, the average person I mention above would save a whopping $3.22 per week, or around $15 per month. Not exactly a lot of relief. No, this smells distinctly like the most base form of pandering. Oddly, it’s also what John McCain supports.
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” Clinton told George Stephanopolous on ABC’s ‘This Week’ after he asked her to name a single economist supporting her plan. “If we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.”
Not going to “put her lot in with economists”? Sounds way too much like George W. Bush who isn’t very familiar with the facts, nor does he have any interest in them. Prefers his “gut”. Well, Hillary, shooting from the hip and trusting your “gut” has gotten us into this mess, and I’d rather not do that. Economists can be an odd bunch, and sometimes it’s hard to separate politics from the theories, but there’s some basic fundamental pieces of supply and demand at work here.
When every ounce of gas is purchased at $3+/gallon, why do you think the cost will come down? Only more supply or less demand will bring it down. Otherwise, the 18.4 cents will go into the oil company pockets, or more likely, into those of those middle-east states who hate us.
Even a good friend, who grew up in Iowa, understands that Iowa is perhaps not the most representative state demographically of the rest of the country. Regardless, New Hampshire and Iowa have maintained their first-in-the-nation status, even as the world has changed. I’d like to propose a very simple way to solve this problem.
Place the numbers 1 through N in a hat (depending on the number of states/protectorates/etc. at the time)
Have the head of the party for the state step up and withdraw that number from the hat
Hold your primaries/caucuses/both in that order
See, simple. It means each primary season, the order is different and a different set of states benefit from the early play. It’s consummately fair, which is exactly why it’s unlikely to happen.
Or, if you want to play the game in a slightly more interesting way. Order the states based on the percentage of total votes that went for the party’s main candidate in the last election. Get more vote percentages, get to hold your primary earlier.
On July 26, 1920, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, H.L. Mencken observed:
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Let’s see, January 20, 2001? And yet, the path was also forseen much earlier:
Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,
the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time
handed out military command, high civil office, legions—everything, now
restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses Satire X, Juvenal
There has been much talk of whether America is ready for a “black President” or a “woman President”, although strangely not as much about a “old white guy President”, even though recent experience would indicate that the latter is the most dangerous. I would like to introduce a Venn diagram to explain what I feel is the difficulty in assessing the impact of such a thing:
Voting block A is composed of voters who would “normally” vote Democratic and would actually have voted. Voting block A is composed of racist/misogynistic losers. The intersection, C, is the actual negative impact on the race. But this is entirely too simplistic an analysis in the end.
First, it must be analyzed in the context of the model and methodology used to elect candidates: the Electoral College. The relative size of the groups differs from block-to-block, region-to-region, and more importantly, state-to-state, and therefore the impact differs as well. In addition, one must understand whether the sum negative impact of this intersection has a meaningful impact on the race.
In nearly every state, the system is winner-take-all, and therefore the outcome depends on one of several factors:
The natural advantage/disadvantage of the Democratic party in the specific state.
The percentage of those voters who would change parties rather than vote for a “distasteful” candidate.
Let’s take California as one example. The Democrats won the state with 54.2% of the vote, to the Republicans 44.2%, leaving an approximate 10% delta. Let’s say that of that, one in 10 of the Democratic voters wouldn’t vote for a black man, and of those, 1/4 would switch parties rather than stay home. In that race, the Republicans would have taken 45.6% of the vote, and the Democrats 48.8% of the vote, still winning. In a different state, stacked the other way, Texas, the results are even more lopsided, and it would have had little, if any, impact.
Does that mean that it doesn’t matter? No. It obviously is a poor statement on anyone in this country that something so immaterial to the decision process as someone’s gender or racial background would be so important as to dissuade them from voting. However, I don’t think it’s a materially important issue in this election for many reasons, which I’ll get into later. More important than that, even, is the fact that making your nomination process contingent on the radical racism and misogyny of some elevates their power even further, and emboldens them with influence undeserved.
If we were never to look past those issues, we wouldn’t be Democrats, and more importantly, we’d never break the historic cycle of old white men that has been the touchstone of American politics for entirely too long. Bringing change requires a change in perspective and that is difficult when electing someone incubated in the same model of privilege as those that dug this hole in the first place. Whether that change comes from a difference in age, gender, race or even—dare I say—class, matters less than the change in perspective itself. More of the same is just simply that: more of the same.
Barack Obama has taken a lot of grief from the press, and others, about his comment that many Americans are “bitter,” but what exactly does that mean? The Oxford English Dictionary defines bitter as:
adjective (1) having a sharp taste or smell; not sweet. (2) causing pain or unhappiness. (3) feeling anger, hurt, and resentment (3) of a conflict intense and full of hatred. (5) of a wind or weather intensely cold.
I think we can safely exclude meanings 1, 4 and 5 from the discussion in this case. So what we are left with is that Senator Obama was saying that some Americans, especially those in the historic middle class, are unhappy and feel anger, hurt and resentment at their place in the world.
I’m not quite sure how this is a controversial opinion. The people he’s referring to have lost huge numbers of jobs to “outsourcing”, watched their real income stagnate or slip and worst of all, watched entire communities implode with dying industries. Many now make up the chronically un- and under-employed.
Whether you think such feelings are “rational” or “justified” likely depends on whether you’re one of the people suffering, or one of the true elite: the media class and politicians.
In attempting to prove she’s more of a nutcase than John McCain—an epic effort, if questionable—Hillary Clinton took the bold move of declaring her support for more nuclear war:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.
Seriously, do you really think this is a good choice? Never mind our ham-fisted subservience to Israeli governmental interests1, but to out-and-out say that you’re prepared to kill as many as 65 million people in response is quite a bold statement.
I want bold leadership, but I don’t want more stupid cowboy leadership of the past 8 years, and that’s exactly what this sort of thing implies. Either she’s nuts, or willing to toss off the murder of innocent civilians to get a few votes. Neither is a particularly desirable thing.
1 Keep your knee-jerk “anti-semitic” comments to yourself.
A diarist on DailyKos sums up Mark Penn, Hillary’s spin-meister beautifully:
So Penn wasn’t wearing his Clinton Camp Top BS Artist hat, he was wearing his Smarmy Lobbyist Against US Workers hat. How nice it must be to have such a collection of invisible hats that no matter what you’re up to, you always have an excuse.
A good thing, too, because without those hats, Penn would come off as a cynical jerkwad who would sell out anyone or anything just to put another buck in his pocket. And then Hillary would be putting her campaign in the hands of someone whose beliefs are no deeper than the oil stain on top of a mud puddle.
He might actually be less ethical than Karl Rove, and that’s saying something.
In it’s continuing effort to bring us the most important news available, Fox News is discussing Bill Richardson’s facial hair. Wow. Just wow. Personally, I think he looks a lot better with it than without it. And if he looks “more Hispanic”, it might be because he’s got a darker tan now. You would too if you’d just been on a nice vacation.
N.B.: I don’t look particularly Italian to most people, but when I tan, it’s Guido time. And no, not that Guido (or that one) although he too has a beard.
In their continuing race to the bottom with FOX News, CNN has posted a poll that is so loaded in its framing that I find it hard that it was an accident:
Seriously, is that what passes for “polling”? Why not frame it as “Should Richardson have stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back, or kissed her pinky ring?” Loyalty to the Clintons? If that’s what this is about, I’ll redouble my support against her and ending this duopoly of presidents. One Clinton was enough, and one Bush was enough. Just because we had to suffer through his half-wit bumbling moron of a son doesn’t mean we have to deal with his wife with dreams of pre-ordained wins.
“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.
Real class there.
What the Clintons expect, it seems, is nothing less than total fielty to their reign.
Pushing to seat the Florida delegates, at least one top Clinton fund-raiser, Paul Cejas, a Miami businessman who has given the Democratic National Committee $63,500 since 2003, has demanded Democratic officials return his 2007 contribution of $28,500, which they have agreed to do.
Or another latte-liberal:
Christopher Korge, a Florida real estate developer who is another top fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, held an event last year in his home that brought in about $140,000 for the national party, which was set aside in a special account for the general election battle in Florida. But he told committee officials this week that if Florida’s delegate conundrum was not settled satisfactorily he would be asking for the money back.
So what’s wrong with that? Well, the fact that Clinton herself signed an oath not to campaign and participate in Michigan and Florida because they broke party rules. They were warned, she agreed to the impact, and now she wants backsies. F-you, no backsies. This isn’t a playground game, this is supposed to be vaguely democratic:
Mrs. Clinton won the primaries in both states, but the contests were not sanctioned by the party, neither candidate campaigned in the states and Mr. Obama did not even put his name on the ballot in Michigan.
But now, Senator Clinton wants them. She will still be behind. She still can’t mathematically win, so now she’s sending in her money-thugs to try and beat up Howard Dean. Is this really what you want for the future?
