Friday, March 21, 2008

Barack Obama: On Iraq and National Security


Thursday, March 20, 2008

Year No. 6

From lao hong han, Don't Turn Your Eyes Away, Dammit!

I understand why, even as this sucking chest wound of an occupation enters its sixth year, there have been relatively few diaries here dealing with it. It's a drag to contemplate, and it's hard to figure out what to do about it. It's easier to write about the Democratic primary campaign and the dangers of McCain. It's easier to assume that Clinton or Obama will move to pull the troops out in a year or so.

Nonetheless, I ask that you give me about four minutes to watch a short video from Baghdad, just produced by The Guardian and ITV News.



Sucks, doesn't it?

Our President, our government, our military created this awful wasteland. They are enabling it, even as you read, pumping money and weapons to the perpetrators of these massacres.

And you know what?

It is not enough to be appalled or to denounce Bush. The grieving families in that Baghdad park-turned-cemetery do not need our sympathy or our solace. They need us to act to end this unjust and unjustifiable occupation.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Items of Interest

-- Thucydides Junior co-owns a used and rare bookshop and notes this.

On occasion, current events spark interest in certain books, some of which are out of print. Sometimes, it makes signed or first editions collectible, even if the book is in print....Regular 1st editions sell for between $25 and $100 or so (and by sell I mean the prices that actually move the books out the door, not what folks ask for).

But Obama's own books (and other books signed by him) are different.

Signed Obama books are selling for between $150 and $350 on average (up to $500 on the high end) and rising since early March.

So Madame Defarge, how much do you want for your autographed copy of The Audacity to Hope?

-- Good story here about watching Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech with a group of strangers at a car dealership while the author waited for his car to be repaired.

-- Here's a diary which is a compilation of newspaper editorials, op-eds and blog posts about the speech. It's pretty impressive if you care about what editorials say.

-- Someone mentioned Obama's interview on Nightline last night and linked to the full transcript. The whole interview adds insight to Barack's thinking. Though, I have to say the concluding exchange provides a bit of a wake-up call for white Americans. Check it out.

-- Another defeat for democracy with a small d:  Sequoia Voting Systems SUCCESSFULLY threatens Princeton researchers, a dkos diary by RiderOnTheStorm.

-- Speaking of voting, Glenn Hurowitz just posted a note about a study that he and Gregory P. Nini have just completed:

Wharton Study: FL/MI Results Highly Distorted

Among the proposed alternatives for seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan is to use the results of the primaries that already happened, based on the argument that doing so would avoid disenfranchising the 1.7 million Floridians and 600,000 Michiganders who already voted. However, doing so would disenfranchise many people from FL and MI who did not vote in the earlier primaries because they did not expect their delegates would be seated at the convention. Based on a statistical comparison with turnout in other states' primaries, it appears that roughly two million more people would have voted in FL and MI had they expected their delegates would be seated.

PDF of full study


-- Mark Kleiman nails it in this one: If Ann Coulter had liveblogged the Gettysburg Address. I'm still chuckling.

-- And then there's this from Mike Luckovich and this from the cartoonists' guild:



Deb Milbrath
Freelance
Mar 19, 2008

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Obama and the American psyche

I just watched Obama's speech in Philadelphia and I am so struck by it. He understands our psyche, America, and he understands the goals. What an extraordinary time to be an American.



He didn't shy away from expressing hard truths. He said them and then he said we can do better and we will do better and now is the time to make the choice to do better.

And in understanding how he views many of problems America confronts, it also explains his statement that now is the right time for him to run -- that waiting is not a choice. We do not continue to grow toward our potential as a country if we ignore or push aside this discussion.

We need this man as President of the United States.

UPDATE: Ben Smith has the full transcript of the prepared remarks posted over at Politico.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Items of Interest

-- More sloppy work by corporate media: this time it's Bill Kristol in the NY Times. Of course, he's already been nailed at least a couple times for inaccuracies. Just add this one to the list. Real journalism evidently doesn't care about accuracy and truth anymore.

-- Per Bloomberg, Obama Cuts Into Clinton's Delegate Lead Among Elected Officials

-- The NYTimes Freakonomics blog has an interesting interview with a high-priced call girl.

-- Justice Scalia: "Oh get over it" ... no, really, he said that.

-- CapitolHillBlue notes that The Clinton Machine Needs WD-40

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Obama, his church and his former pastor

First, Obama set the record straight about his thoughts on Rev. Wright and his preaching at Huffington Post.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue. [...]

Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

...And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

Please read the entire post if you haven't already or watch it here.

But that's not all that Barack has said. He reflects on Bobby Kennedy's words about Martin Luther King's death and speaks out about his church and his faith in Indiana on March 15, 2008.



His comment, 'the little bits of America all in me' line really struck home with me as did his overall point of choosing to not be divided.

I read blog posts on this topic from two other bloggers I respect that I want to share. Andrew Sullivan's and Poblano's comments both add critical elements for consideration when thinking about this.

From Sully:

All I can say is that very, very few public figures have been so candid about why and how they found the message of Jesus so compelling, or have explained their faith journey so pellucidly (certainly not our spiritually inarticulate current president). The appeal of that church to Obama was not anger or racism or the ugliness in some of Jeremiah Wright's tub-thumping. What Obama discovered - as a previous atheist - was the spiritual power of Christian hope.

Here's the relevant section:
"And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of the ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones.  Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had been spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until the black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. 

Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild.  And if part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."


My italics. I don't know how you can read Obama's writing or listen to any of his speeches and believe that Wright's ugliest messages are what Obama believes or has ever believed. He wrote these words long before he was running for president. They struck me powerfully as I read them; because they helped me understand how hard hope can be for the very poor or those from broken families or gripped with addiction. I don't see how the impulse to listen to, bond with, and help those people is an ugly impulse, however ugly the anger that can come from those places sometimes is.

Poblano goes on with this analysis of Sully's post and Barack's situation:

What this suggests is that Obama's personal journey has involved not so much the development of a belief in the power of a Christian God, but rather, the development of a belief in the power of the Christian Church, and in particular the Black Christian Church, to be a transformative and potentially positive force in poor, black communities.

Now, let me be very careful here. I am not suggesting that Obama does not believe in God. The truth is that that none of us are in a position to evaluate the faith of anybody that we do not know personally. [...]

But I am suggesting that Obama is intelligent enough to recognize the distinction between the private role of faith, and the public role of the Church, and that he is courageous enough in his own beliefs to hold the two somewhat at arm's-length from one another.

The fact is, there are a lot of things said by Reverends and Rabbis, Mullahs and Ministers, Popes and Deacons, that are not believed in their entirety by many of the people sitting in the pews. This extends to the occasions on which comments are made about politics or the community in a place of worship, but also to their interpretation of religious texts themselves, and even their underlying belief in a deity.

Faith is supposed to be like a cosmic on-off switch: you are either a Believer or you are not, you are either a Chosen One or you are not. But in fact, the vast majority of Americans, and perhaps the vast majority of people around the world, are sort of half-pregnant with faith. There are some things they believe and some things they do not. There are some things they believe at some points in their lives, and not at other times.

This is what Obama cannot quite talk about, because it is something that we haven't become comfortable talking about in American public life. Obama can't say something like this:

"You know, there are a lot of things that the Reverend said I was uncomfortable with -- and most of them had nothing to do with politics."

To say something like that, Obama would risk being branded as an atheist by the hypocrites on the right who conflate public proclamations of one's faith for personal virtue, and who callously use faith as a political bargaining chip. [...]

However, just as there are those who would use religion as a tool to divide and conquer (regardless of their own personal beliefs about God) -- there are also those who would use religion as an affirmative force in their community (again, regardless of their own personal beliefs about God). Barack Obama would seem to be one of these people. In fact, it was precisely because of this recognition that Obama chose to join the Trinity United Church of Christ:

It was because of these newfound understandings —- that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved —- that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. (source)

And then Poblano mentions this which to me is critical in understanding Barack's relationship to his church.

A little bit of context is important here. Obama came to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. This was a terrible time on the South Side of Chicago, in the midst of the crack epidemic. Obama was working alongside local church groups, and the people he was working on behalf of were mostly black, and almost uniformly poor. Many of them also came from a religious tradition, which was not the case with Obama. And so it would have been very important for Obama to understand the role of the Church in poor, black, urban communities. There would have been few better ways for him to do this than to join the Trinity United Church of Christ, which with more than 10,000 members, is among the largest religious institutions on the South Side of Chicago. Along the way, Obama navigated the complexities and came to develop a belief in the power of the Church -- and perhaps also (or perhaps not!) a belief in the power of God.

Barack did not grow up in a church; in fact, his childhood and teen years were not anything like the experiences of most African-Americans growing up in the Chicago area. Which brings me to a point I feel compelled to make. And I come at it with this background - I was raised overseas (in Liberia) and did not return to the US until I was part way through high school.

After having read/listened to Dreams of My Father, I deeply appreciate that Obama has an understanding of different cultures both within and without our nation. I do not think that Barack Obama can be easily sussed until one reads that book.

I know from my own experience of moving through different cultures that as an outsider there are things that you hear differently than those who have been immersed in it since childhood. When you come to it as an adult, you select what you choose to accept. But neither do you presume to correct all those who have grown up in it.

The variances in culture don't stop at the doors of our places of worship. We all bring them with us when we walk through the doors, whether church or temple or mosque. Our faith is impacted by our cultural mores whether acknowledged or not. What I saw as a missionary kid returning to the US in the 70's, is that much of what people assumed was an essential part of their practice of faith was really an essential part of their culture, not their faith. Some of their standards, their do's and don'ts, would have appeared nonsensical in other cultures.

I would emphasize that Obama was present in the culture of Trinity UCC but not one with it. The whole of his life experience argues against that.

However, none of this discussion is easily summarized in TV-friendly sound-bites so how much of this is likely to be covered by the corporate media is highly debatable.

UPDATE: 1 - The UCC has released a lengthy statement about Trinity UCC and Rev. Wright. It puts all of this kerfuffle in perspective.

2 - Andrew Sullivan has posted the complete transcript of Rev. Wright's sermon entitled "The Audacity of Hope". It's interesting and inspiring reading.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Hillary's Endorsements and Earmarks

-- There's this from dkos:

In mid-January 2008, Clinton received an important endorsement from Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem and a prominent black leader. But this endorsement is tainted by the fact that Clinton provided $1,431,500 in earmarks in the 2008 federal budget for Butts' Abyssinian Development Corporation and its youth and social service programs.


-- That diary points to a HuffPo post titled:

Clinton By Far Worst Abuser Of Earmarks

Definitely worth a little reading time.

Recession for who?

In my mind it will have to go some before it matches the early 80's recession which in the upper midwest went longer and had a deeper impact than it did on the coasts. That's when much of the manufacturing belt became the rust belt. The 90-91 recession impact was definitely milder in the upper midwest than the 80-83 recession, in part because the midwesterners rebuilt their economy in a more conservative fashion and were less susceptible to the factors in the 90-91 downturn.

I say that as a simple observer with very little economic background so take it for what it's worth.

Here's who I worry about though. If you'll note on this graph, the bottom of the y-scale goes to -30. The blog post gives more background and the origins of the graph plus another graph.

File under self-inflicted wounds

Al Giordano and Mark Schmitt have made some interesting observations in the last 24 hours. First Al takes a look at the Gallup poll numbers on Clinton's and Obama's favorable and unfavorable ratings that Jon Chait briefly blogged about at TNR. Al comes to a different conclusion than Jon.

The drumbeat has been so steady since last year from the Clinton campaign and its surrogates: that Obama is naive, galobamafavinexperienced, not vetted, with a constant drip-feed of racial innuendo. Enough time has passed that we can get a good look at how this strategy has worked.

Here’s a graph of the Gallup poll’s data on how Obama is perceived by the general (November) electorate over the past year as he’s become known to more voters.

Al goes on to analyze ups and downs during the time period represented by the graph, concluding with:

The attacks on Obama - particularly since the New Year, which have included negative TV ads - have only served to drive his popularity higher. That is a sign of a “Teflon candidate” of the kind that the USA hasn’t seen since President Reagan.

galhrcfavNow, what has happened to public perceptions of Senator Clinton during this same time period? Here’s the money graph:

Clinton partisans like to say that their candidate has already been “vetted” and withstood attacks to the point where her negative ratings have hit a hard ceiling. Not true. The facts don’t bear that out. Since a year ago, a little over five percent of the electorate has gone back and forth on Clinton: they liked her in May, they didn’t like her in July, they liked her again in September, and since then they’ve liked her at decreasing levels, and held increasingly negative views to the point where, in early 2008, for the first time in a year, more voters now view Senator Clinton negatively than favorably.

While the attacks by Clinton and surrogates against Obama - now including the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing Republicans that want to give Clinton oxygen and salvage her flagging campaign - have put Obama at center stage again and again, caused worry among some Obama supporters (particularly of those new to electoral political campaigns who he has brought into the process by the millions), and given the ambulance-chasing mass media lots of red meat for trumped up controversies du jour, few have noticed that the net effect of so much negativity has been not harm to Obama’s popularity, but, rather, that of Clinton.

[...]

But keep your eyes on Clinton’s favorable-negative rating from here on out: She’s bleeding popularity from the sharp blade of her campaign’s own knife. And a large part of that has to do with the public’s increased savvy in understanding that surrogate attacks are part of a top-down strategy from the candidate herself.

I would even go so far as to say that Chait - who thinks, like many pundits, that the Clinton campaign’s attacks “may” work “by the time the convention rolls around” - is going to be proved wrong by the voters. In fact, I’d be willing to wager some money on it, tied to the favorable-negative ratings of both Democratic presidential candidates. Anyone out there care to part with your hard-earned cash?

File under: self-inflicted wounds.


I believe that Al has nailed it in his analysis and this post by Mark Schmitton the Tapped blog just adds confirmation to what Al says; in fact, Mark comes to the same conclusion via a different route.

There aren't many windows into a strongly pro-Clinton/anti-Obama view in the blogosphere, making TalkLeft invaluable, where "Big Tent Democrat" (the former Armando of DailyKos) has been focused like a laser on the issue of how to deal with the Michigan and Florida Democratic delegations. The claim made there... has been that it is Obama who is blocking re-votes in Michigan and Florida, raising legalisms or obstructing agreement, but that the Clinton campaign should be more aggressive in pushing for revotes. Big Tent Democrat puts it in the context of the argument about the popular vote:

[T]he problem with the Clinton campaign's refusal to fight for revotes in Florida and Michigan [is that] to be perceived as the popular vote winner, Clinton needs revote wins in Florida and Michigan. I do not understand the Clinton campaign strategy at all on Florida and Michigan.

But it's actually easy to understand. What would happen if an agreement were announced today that there would be re-votes in Florida and Michigan? Immediately, the previous primaries in those states would become dead letters. Instead of being 200,000 votes down in the popular vote (by her campaign's count), or 500,000 down (by my count, which gives Clinton her Florida votes), Clinton would be down in the popular vote by almost 1 million. And 193 delegates that they are currently counting would suddenly disappear.

And at that point, the magnitude of Clinton's deficit would be too obvious to spin away. Yes, there would be two additional large-state contests in which to win back the million popular votes and hundreds of delegates. But unless she did significantly better in both states than she did in the illegal primaries, she would lose, not gain, ground, by her own calculations. Since she was on the ballot alone in Michigan before, it's highly unlikely that she will do better there. It's very possible that she could do better than the 50 percent she won in Florida in January, but since it would now be a two-person race, it's a dead certainty that Obama would do significantly better than the 32 percent he got in January, thus adding to his total popular vote margin and delegate count even if he lost again, and so it would be a net loss for Clinton. Re-votes cannot help Clinton be "perceived" as the winner of the popular vote.

Contrary to the gullible media's belief that "time" is a "powerful ally" on Clinton's side, in fact, Clinton's only ally is uncertainty. The minute it becomes clear what will happen with Michigan and Florida -- re-vote them, refuse to seat them, or split them 50-50 or with half-votes, as some have proposed -- is the minute that Clinton's last "path to the nomination" closes. The only way to keep spin alive is to keep uncertainty alive -- maybe there will be a revote, maybe they'll seat the illegal Michigan/Florida delegations, maybe, maybe, maybe. In the fog of uncertainty, Penn can claim that there is a path to the nomination, but under any possible actual resolution of the uncertainty, there is not.

...the specific resolution doesn't matter, because whatever it is, it will introduce certainty and finiteness, and without the comfort of ambiguity, the Clinton spin-campaign cannot survive. The Clinton campaign began -- unwisely -- by spinning inevitability; it ends, equally unwisely, by spinning cosmic uncertainty. In between the two spin campaigns, they apparently forgot to give people enough of a positive reason to actually vote for Senator Clinton.

Friday, March 14, 2008

McCain and Hagee

I did some poking around for some background on Dr. John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain so proudly acknowledged, at least when it was first given. It does make one wonder who on McCain's campaign staff is responsible for background research.

Bill Moyers covered Hagee last fall and again this last week. October 2007's program was titled Christians United for Israel (CUFI). The March 7, 2008 program had two segments - another one on CUFI and a second titled The GOP's Nominee. Videos and transcripts are available for each of the segments as well as links to additional source material.

Hagee's a very nasty piece of work. Troutfishing on daily kos posted about him recently.

Questioned on CNN March 1st, about whether he had been aware of John Hagee's writings prior to soliciting Hagee's political endorsement, John McCain refused to answer but for not denying it McCain's response seemed closer to a confirmation that, yes, he had been aware of the political extremity of John Hagee's writing. In pastor Hagee's book 2006 "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee claimed the Roman Catholic Church conspired with Hitler to kill Jews in the Holocaust but also, in the same book, blamed the Holocaust on Jews themselves (for worshiping idols) and wrote that Hitler and the Nazis were actually working for God, divine agents sent to chase Jews, through the rather inefficient and brutal mechanism of killing them in massive numbers, towards Palestine, "the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have." One can read a grotesque collective theological justification for genocidal campaigns against Jews as being inherent to John Hagee's view which decries anti-Semitism but also depicts Jewish residence anywhere else but in Israel as an affront to God.

The implication is that Jews living anywhere but in Israel should expect violent persecution until they relent and make Aliyah. But Israel, in Hagee's and the Christian Zionist vision, resembles not so much a refuge as, for the implied element of violent coercion, an ethnic bantustan that will, in the end-time, function as an enormous death camp for all the Jews chased there by Hagee's 'divine anti-Semitism'.

Several leaders of John Hagee's CUFI have discussed the coming "Holocaust" they expect for Jews, and former CUFI executive board member Jerry Falwell once told a congregation that "millions of Jews" would be slaughtered. CUFI leader Dr. Chuck Missler is even a bit more explicit and John Hagee, in Hagee's 2003 book "Battle For Jerusalem", both publicly acknowledged and also seemed to agree with Missler's view that the end of days will be, for Jews, "worse than Auschwitz."

There's more in the diary as well as a link to the blog, Talk to Action, which specifically focuses on following the insanity of the Christian dominionists and those such as Hagee. Talk to Action's link to more resources on Hagee and CUFI.

I don't see why people aren't calling on McCain to "denounce and reject" the endorsement of this man and his teachings. He's every bit as reprehensible as Farrakhan and I don't believe he's really 'flown below the radar'. It's probably more accurate to say that many in the corporate media do not closely monitor the Christian dominionist movement and all its many offshoots.

UPDATE: One more reason 'denouncing and rejecting' is most definitely in order.

Media Matters has more on Hagee's many outrageous stances including his words on Katrina and New Orleans.

On the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, host Terry Gross said to Hagee, "You said after Hurricane Katrina that it was an act of God, and you said 'when you violate God's will long enough, the judgment of God comes to you. Katrina is an act of God for a society that is becoming Sodom and Gomorrah reborn.' " She then asked, "Do you still think that Katrina is punishment from God for a society that's becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah?" Hagee responded:

HAGEE: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

Earlier in the program, Gross asked if Hagee believed that "all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews," to which Hagee replied, "Well, the Quran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly."

There's more including the 'slave sale' that his church was going to sponsor and of course, his denigration of Catholics.

Black and Missing But Not Forgotten

AndyT has done an important service to us all by highlighting a blog that attempts to cover something that corporate media sadly neglects.

Chioma Gray's picture ... Franciene Black's little girl, the teenager who loved her new Chihuahua puppy, who was close to her family. Her name is Chioma Gray and she's gone. Missing since December 13th. Not a trace.

But nobody cares. Nobody outside of her family noticed. It hasn't made the news. It's like Chioma Gray does not exist.

There is someone besides her family who noticed. There is someone who cares. Her name is Deidra and she runs a blog called Black and Missing but Not Forgotten, a blog devoted to to missing black women and children whose cased are overlooked and ignored by the media. And Deidra could use your help.

One dkos commenter mentioned how he learned of the blog with a link and a quote that sums it up well:

over at AverageBro.com:

The Stepha Henry Case Takes A Turn For The Worse

I could go off on some tangent about how that pregnant marine story is all over the news, yet I wouldn't have heard about the break in this case unless my readers told me about it. Would more media attention to Henry's disappearance have possibly lead to her safe return? The world will never know.

Why is it that the media, and by proxy (in some cases), the police don't seem to care about missing people of the wrong hue? If you're a male college student like Julian McCormick, a female college student like Henry, or any age above and below, reality is, you better find your own damn self, because nobody will be looking for you. Except for your family, friends, and Black and Missing, nobody cares. There is no Laquita Alert.

AndyT has a number of specific things that each of us can do to help Deidra and most of them are easily done. I've added Deidra's blog logo to my sidebar and viewed and recommended her youtube video. Go read AndyT's diary and then see what you can do to help out.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Geraldine -- Just shut up

Geraldine just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper. TPMmedia has put together a mashup of her media blast defending her slur of Obama.



Markos found that Geraldine had tried out the same talking points on wingnut John Gibson's show February 27, 2008. Ben Smith of Politico found that Geraldine had dished up a similar talking point back in 1988:

And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."


And the creative class is right on top of things with this parody of the Clinton campaign.



The final word on Geraldine's performance is from Tchridy at dailykos. She wrote a diary which I (and judging by the comments, a lot of other white women) totally support.

A White Woman’s Open Letter to Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi

... Mrs. Ferraro, the ignorance of your remarks left me speechless. Senator Clinton, your response and the response of your campaign infuriated me. Since the two of you are White women, and you initiated and orchestrated these remarks, I believe that it is my duty as a citizen, as a daughter and as a mother, who happens to be a White woman, to reject, renounce and censure the two White women who are responsible for these remarks and their use in political discourse. [...]

I am trying to teach my daughter the lessons that my mother taught me. I am trying to teach her to work hard, to persevere against adversity, to look at a person’s character rather than the color of their skin, their accent, their religion, or whether they are rich or poor. When Geraldine Ferraro complains that Hillary Clinton is not achieving success in her campaign to become the Democratic nominee because Barack Obama, as a Black man, has gotten breaks that he doesn’t deserve, Geraldine Ferraro is undermining the lessons that I am trying to teach my daughter. When Hillary Clinton or her campaign manager refuses to reject, denounce and censure Mrs. Ferraro’s comments in the strongest terms or implies support for these sentiments by claiming that opposition to these statements is itself racist, she is teaching young women to accept victim status and to base their vote on racial or gender prejudice rather than on a candidate’s character. Senator Clinton, either you can convince the people that your ability and your character entitle you to be President or you can imply that people should vote for you out of some misbegotten idea of overcoming victimhood or racial or gender loyalty. What are YOU teaching YOUR daughter?

The only reason that Geraldine Ferraro has a public forum from which to make such reprehensible remarks, is because Geraldine Ferraro accepted the spot as the Vice Presidential Candidate on Walter Mondale’s ticket knowing that it was offered to her in part because she was a woman. Only a person who has agreed to be a "token" would believe that another does not get to a position of power apart from a racist or sexist agenda. Only a woman who is in the position of being a contender for nomination by her party as President because of who her husband is and who is running on her husband’s record because she fears her own record is too shallow, would accept and use the sentiment that race or sex plays a role in the qualities on which a candidate should be judged to revive her campaign. Senator Clinton, are you that afraid that your merits do not qualify you to be President? [...]

I am neither naïve, nor misinformed, nor stupid. I consider myself to be a feminist and a womanist. I hope that other White women will speak out on this issue and will join me in denouncing, rejecting and censuring Mrs. Ferraro’s remarks and the use that is being made of them by Senator Clinton’s campaign. Speaker Pelosi, I look to you to speak out also and to make it clear that such remarks and their use, have no place in this campaign or in the Democratic Party.

Mississippi Remembered

One of the most respected diarists and front-pager at Daily Kos, Meteor Blades, has a diary today discussing his work registering black voters during Freedom Summer and some reflection on how the work done that summer fed yesterday's voting in Mississippi. It is a remarkable diary and representative of some of the best that daily kos has to offer.

The vote today in Mississippi had special resonance for me. It was 44 years ago this month that I decided to participate in Freedom Summer in the Magnolia State, registering black voters. After training at the Summer Project in Ohio, I traveled by bus to Jackson, arriving with a handful of others the fourth week of June.

Four days earlier three young men had gone missing – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Goodman and Schwerner were New York Jews. Chaney was from the deepest shadows of the segregationist South, a black Mississippian. I might have shaken hands with one of them at our training. But if somebody had asked me to pick them out of a crowd on that early summer day in 1964, I couldn’t have. A few days later, everybody knew who they were. Six weeks later, as a result of an intense federally coordinated manhunt that must have had FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover grinding his molars into dust, authorities pulled the three men’s bodies from an earthen berm.

You can read the rest here. One of the commenters included this youtube embed of the relatively recent prosecution of the men who killed the 3 civil rights volunteers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. If you're unfamiliar with the details, it's a good refresher.



Yesterday's win by Barack Obama is a direct result of the brave men and women who fought for the right to vote back then. It's good to see their work rewarded.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Obama sets the record straight

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Hillary Clinton:  "It's all about me."

Jonathan Chait did an interesting analysis about the race:

The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton would obtain the Democratic nomination despite an enormous deficit in delegates. Instead, the memo offered a series of arguments as to why Clinton should run against John McCain--i.e., "Hillary is seen as the one who can get the job done"--but nothing about how she actually could. Is she planning a third-party run? Does she think Obama is going to die? The memo does not say.

The reason it doesn't say is that Clinton's path to the nomination is pretty repulsive. [...]

Still, there are a few flaws in Clinton's trial-by-smear method. The first is that her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election, because attacks are harder to refute when they come from within one's own party. [...] If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.

Second, Obama can't "test" Clinton the way she can test him. While she likes to claim that she beat the Republican attack machine, it's more accurate to say that she survived with heavy damage. Clinton is a wildly polarizing figure, with disapproval ratings at or near 50 percent. But, because she earned the intense loyalty of core Democratic partisans, Obama has to tread gingerly around her vulnerabilities. There is a big bundle of ethical issues from the 1990s that Obama has not raised because he can't associate himself with what partisan Democrats (but not Republicans or swing voters) regard as a pure GOP witch hunt.

What's more, Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won't exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton's claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn't qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won't quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn't be so reluctant.

Third, negative campaigning is a negative-sum activity. Both the attacker and the attackee tend to see their popularity drop. Usually, the victim's popularity drops farther than the perpetrator's, which is why negative campaigning works. But it doesn't work so well in primaries, where the winner has to go on to another election.

Clinton's path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama's elected delegates might break off and support her.

Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn't necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton's kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost--to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months--uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.

Thanks for the straight talk, Jon. The Clinton campaign is ultimately a "me campaign". "It's all about me." Not a campaign focused on bring the country together and heading in a new direction.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Hothead McCain

From ThinkProgress

In an article titled “Hothead McCain,” for the upcoming issue of The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss quotes Col. Larry Wilkerson (Ret.) — former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell — saying that with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “[n]o dissent, no opinion to the contrary, however reasonable, will be entertained.” Wilkerson added that McCain is “hardheaded,” “arrogant,” “hubristic,” and “too proud for his own good.” Referring to McCain’s foreign policy advisers, Wilkerson said: They “scare me.” “Scare me.”

UPDATE: In an article in Salon, Mark Benjamin writes that some military officials are worried about McCain:

“I like McCain. I respect McCain. But I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor,” said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and is now campaigning for Clinton. “I think it is a little scary. I think this guy’s first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse.”

H/T to The Carpetbagger Report

Brainstorming for Obama ads

-- Great concept for an Obama ad:   It's 3:00 PM

-- Here's another from Larry David at Huffpo... the graphic at the bottom is quite something.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

More Clinton Campaign Dirty Tricks

-- Kos weighs in on the Clinton campaign's doctoring of Obama's appearance in their campaign ad making him look darker and broadening his facial features horizontally. It backs up what I mentioned about John Aravosis's analysis. Check out the pictures in that post and then in Kos's post.

-- Goes right along with the Clinton GOTV calling script that uses 'Osama Bin Laden' in place of Barack Obama's name.

-- James Fallow weighs in on the 'scorched earth' tactic that Hillary is using in her McCain experience comment. His ruminations on it are sufficiently thorough for me to say go read it there. I won't attempt to excerpt it.

Items of Interest

-- WaPo reporter has a really interesting article, The Ballot Brawl of 1924 about the 1924 convention. Definitely not an event for the faint-hearted.

-- John Aravosis intimates there may be more dirt yet to come on Hillary.

Plutarch and the Obama campaign

Adam B, one of dailykos's resident lawyers, has a great post up with a quote from an unusual source: Plutarch in 75 AD.

He concludes with this:

Let us remember, please, what it took to get Sen. Clinton to her narrow delegate victory (at best) last night: skipping the eleven previous contests and losing big in each, then going all-in for one last battle.

Well, guess what -- contrary to what she said on The Daily Show this week (FF to 1:20 in or so), the "next state" is not Pennsylvania -- it's Wyoming. Then Mississippi. She will lose them both, and these voters count. Don't let her tell you otherwise.

Right now, she is broke.

Right now, she doesn't want you to think anything matters for six weeks.

Right now, she doesn't want you to pay attention to Obama's pledged delegate lead, because right now, we are winning significantly.

Right now, we have already dusted last night off our shoulders.

Right now, we have won twelve of the last fifteen contests.

Right now, Clinton's campaign leadership and finances are in disarray.

Right now, she cannot afford a fifty-state strategy.

Right now, we are strong.

Right now, if you can give $10, $25, $50, $100 or more, we will be even stronger.

Right now, you can tell a superdelegate why you're supporting Barack Obama.

Right now, you can help us write the next chapter in American history. Join us.

Twisted GOTV call in Columbus, OH

I meant to make note of this item the other day but overlooked it. It typifies the Clinton campaign tactics.

From the Chicago Tribune's The Swamp:

A lawyer in a predominantly Democratic suburb of Cleveland relates this tale to The Swamp on the day before the all-important Ohio primary:

So last night around dinner time, the phone rings. It’s the Hillary campaign–official number, per the caller ID. The woman on the other end asks me if Hillary can count on my support Tuesday. I say I have not decided.

She asks what would help me decide. I say, “Well . . . maybe she can make Bill her vice president.” She does not know how to take me, of course, but has to assume I am serious. “I don’t think she can do that.” “Bill will have a significant role in major decisions, though, won’t he?” I ask. “Oh, certainly he will be very involved. Do you like Bill?” “Very much.” I reply.

She then launches into a two-minute spiel on all the very specific initiatives and proposals Hillary has put forth on health care, the war in Iraq, etc., etc. At the end of her spiel, she says, “And we haven’t heard anything that specific from Osama bin Laden.”

I say, “You did not just say that.” She replies, “I’m sorry . . . just a slip of the tongue.” She then thanks me for my time and encourages me to vote for Hillary on Tuesday.

The lawyer says he was "stunned" and tells The Swamp the call originated from the Clinton campaign in Columbus.

I wonder how many others received phone calls like that but didn't have the connection to get it publicized as this lawyer did.

David Axelrod sums it up

I saw this on tv last night. WaPo kindly posted his comment as an article.

SAN ANTONIO -- As Sen. Barack Obama wrapped up a brief speech to his supporters, who had huddled outside for two hours on a chilly night here, chief strategist David Axelrod sought to set the record straight about what appeared to be a good night for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"When you've lost 12 in a row, any good news qualifies as a comeback," Axelrod said of Clinton's claim of resurgence. "The reality is, though, they promised to cut our delegate lead, and I don't think that's going to happen tonight. They set a test for themselves, which was to wipe out our lead in delegates in the Ohio and Texas primaries. I don't know if they're going to reduce our lead at all, and we may actually add to it by the end of the night."

He was just getting warmed up. "So, I think they have to spin this as best they can, but the reality is still the reality," Axelrod said. "We're in the lead. We've won 28 contests, they've won 13. We've won more popular votes. We've got somewhere in the neighborhood of a 160-delegate lead, and time is running out. And at some point, the party is going to coalesce around the nominee, and the nominee is going to be Barack Obama."

It's About Delegates

Let's add some perspective to last night's results counting. First, the tv talking heads are soooo into horse races because it gives them something to talk about. Second, the conventional wisdom "CW" switches so quickly depending on what gives them a narrative to talk about.

John Aravosis put it like this:

Look at what the pundits were saying before this evening. They were saying that even if she wins Ohio, Hillary is toast when it comes to the number of delegates.

Charlie Cook via Chuck Todd:

NBC political analyst Charlie Cook writes in his CongressDaily column, "[W]inning by slight percentages in Texas and Ohio aren’t real wins for Clinton. A 'win' would be anything that significantly closes the gap in delegates. Symbolic victories mean nothing at this point, other than encouraging her to plow ahead in this campaign, amassing a greater campaign debt than already exists and delaying her ability to get on with the next phase of her life."

Jonathan Alter used the following assumption when determining earlier today that Hillary is toast:

Let's assume Hillary beats expectations and wins Ohio tonight 55-45, Rhode Island 55-45, Texas, 53-47 and (this is highly improbable), ties in Vermont, 50-50....

So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

Alter gave Hillary Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and a tie in Vermont (which she didn't get). And even then, he determined that she can't win enough delegates.

As Al Giordano points out at The Field:

...And even later than that - it will take much of tomorrow to sort out - the 67 delegates to be determined by the Texas caucuses.

The effort to stampede the spin based on partial results is getting media traction for one reason only: National political reporters don’t want to get off the bus yet. They don’t want to go back to the office, with grumpy editors on their case and on site. They want to keep the game going longer. [...]

Other media and other blogs can choose to go along with the media spin. Not me. Only a month ago the media spin on the night of Tsunami Tuesday was that Clinton “won” the overall “national primary” that day. Within days, though, reality set in, and was then reflected by 11 states in a row (12 if you include Vermont coming in first tonight).

It’s about delegates. That has been The Field’s analysis all along, and that will continue to be the basis of the conclusions here. Stubborn? Yes. Will time prove this emphasis to be right? Yes.

PocketNines has an excellent diary which needs to be read in full. Here's his intro:

...the issue here is that the way this is discussed in the media narrative does not fully educate the audience how daunting the math is for Hillary Clinton. Chuck Todd is clearly the best at articulating all of this, and I am convinced he understands these numbers in detail. However, even Todd has not been terribly aggressive in stressing the difference between needing 62% or 65% of the remaining delegates and the voting margins required to make that happen.

He goes onto to crunch the numbers about the percentage increase by which Hillary needs to take all the rest of the states in order to increase her relative delegate count in a very straight-forward way which even math-allergic people will get. The bottom line, Hillary can't get there from here.

And as JedReport points out in this video (which he must have stayed up most of the night creating), Barack Obama is still winning. By the rules. Yesterday doesn't change that.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

I'm Not Ready to Make Nice

Atrios highlighted this one:

Whatever one thinks about Obama generally, this notion that opposing the Iraq war back when it was the most awesome war ever wasn't a big deal really pisses me off. It was a big deal, and I'm tired of the few courageous people such as Bob Graham who did oppose it getting written out of the script. Those were crazy days, and the "crazies" who stepped way out on that limb to yell "stop" deserve our praise and admiration for it.

The entire anti-war movement hasn't just been marginalized, it's been largely erased from our political narrative. It existed. It marched. It gave speeches. And some even cast their votes in Congress.



From a discussion I had with a Hillary supporter:

...she supported it without looking at the NIE file, yes, that she did do.

And people are right to talk about that.

To the extent that she supported it, she's complicit.

At the same time that she was saying that, Obama was running for office in Illinois.  In a time-period where the pressure to "be patriotic" was tremendous, he had the guts and the judgment to say:

I don’t oppose all wars.

And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Roves to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Queda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Queda, thru effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

The entire speech is available at Lawrence Lessig's site.  

Let's be clear here.  There was as much pressure on Obama to support the war as there was on Hillary.  She had access to intelligence that he did not.

He made the correct decision.

She did not and she is STILL NOT WILLING to say that she was wrong.  She has to qualify it, to equivocate, to say well if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have done it.

That's the point.  Obama has the judgment part down cold.  Hillary does not.

John Aravosis on the Clinton Campaign

First, John Aravosis intimates there may be more dirt yet to come on Hillary. I'll let you go read that one for yourself.

When I was done reading that post, I noticed this one:  Why is Obama's skin blacker than normal in Hillary's new attack ad? And the more I think about it, the madder I get.

Courtesy of John:


(click image to see larger version)

DailyKos has the original scoop. I went and got the original footage from the Clinton ad, and then compared it to 3 different video clips of the same debate from 3 different sources. I did this so as to take into account any editing, or quality issues, that might have accounted for Obama having darker skin in any particular video. None of the 3 video sources I found showed Obama nearly as black as the Hillary ad does. Click the image above to see a larger version. Look at his lips. Look at his eyebrows. Look at how the red MSNBC background has turned more purple. Clearly the image was darkened. The question is "why."

It just keeps happening again and again and again. The Clintons keeps doing things, saying things, that sound awfully racist. And we're to believe that this, the - what? 8th, 10th time? - this has happened is again just a coincidence. The first half a dozen times you launch seemingly racist attacks on your black opponent, maybe - maybe - we can write it off as "boy you're really dumb not to get it." But having a seemingly-racist attack from the Clinton folks on Obama every single week, after a while, you don't get to play the "I had no idea!" card anymore. After that many times, you're race-baiting. You're using racism to win. And you're destroying your legacy and your husband's. Enough already.

Torture:  Banned by the Media

This makes me sick at heart. From Scott Horton's article in Harpers on Torture:

In the last eighteen months, Antonin Scalia, one of the most influential judges in American history, has twice suggested that he would turn to a fictional television character named Jack Bauer to resolve legal questions about torture. The first time was in a speech in Canada, and the second, only three weeks ago, in an interview with the BBC. This is evidence of the unprecedented influence of a television program on one of the most important legal policy issues before our country today. And it is, or should be, very troubling. [...]

I discovered that when I gave interviews to major media on this subject, any time I used the word “torture” with reference to these techniques, the interview passage would not be used. At one point I was informed by a cable news network that “we put this on international, because we can’t use that word on the domestic feed.” “That word” was torture. I was coached or told that the words “coercive interrogation technique” were fine, but “torture” was a red light. Why? The Administration objected vehemently to the use of this word. After all, President Bush has gone before the cameras and stated more than three dozen times “We do not torture.” By using the T-word, I was told, I was challenging the honesty of the president. You just couldn’t do that.

In early 2005, I took a bit of time to go through one newspaper—The New York Times—to examine its use of the word “torture”. I found that the word “torture” was regularly used to described a neighbor who played his stereo too loud, or some similar minor nuisance. Also the word “torture” could be used routinely to describe techniques used by foreign powers which were hostile to the United States. But the style rule seemed very clear: it could not be used in reporting associated with anything the Bush Administration was doing. [...]

But something happened beginning in 2002 which was a bit surprising, and that was the fairly dramatic transformation of the way in which torture was addressed by Hollywood. I will be generalizing here, and there are exceptions to every statement, but I will focus on one single program: Fox’s “24,” which takes an easy first place in this process—if offers 67 torture scenes in the first five seasons—so it is responsible for a large part of the total number of incidents shown here.

Whereas before, torture was the “tool of the enemy,” now torture is the tool of Jack Bauer. Its use is a heroic act of defiance, often of petty bureaucratic limitations, or of conceited liberals whose personal conscience means more to them than the safety of their fellow citizens. While Bauer is presented as an ultimate heroic figure (and also a figure with some heroic flaws), those who challenge use of the rough stuff are naïve, and their presence and involvement in the national security process is threatening. We see a liberal who defends a Middle Eastern neighbor then under suspicion, and who winds up being killed because the neighbor is in fact a terrorist.

We’re looking at a Hollywood specialty: a “reality” show which is divorced from reality. It grossly simplifies necessarily complex facts, and it pares away critical factors which a responsible citizen should be thinking about. But more importantly, perhaps, it is a head-on attack on morality and ethics. The critics of torture are shallow figures, self-serving politicians—vain, arrogant, indifferent to the harm they are doing to society. But in fact the arguments against torture are profound and informed by centuries of human experience and religious doctrine. Torture has in the course of the last two hundred years emerged as an intrinsic evil in Christian teaching; the teaching of most churches—protestant, Catholic, Evangelical—rejects the idea that a state can ever legitimately employ torture.

Key to “24’s” success is the ticking bomb scenario—indeed you hear it with all the introductions, breaks and trailers—the seconds ticking off. The myth of the ticking bomb is the core of the program. Torture always works. Torture always saves the day. Torture is the ultimate act of heroism, of defiance of pointy-headed liberal morality in favor of service to the greater good, to society.

We should start with a frank question: has “24” been created with an overtly political agenda, namely, to create a more receptive public audience for the Bush Administration’s torture policies? I think the answer to that question is now very clear. The answer is “yes.” In “Whatever It Takes,” Jane Mayer has waded through the sheaf of contacts between the show’s producer, Joel Surnow, and Vice President Cheney and figures right around him. There is little ambiguity about this point, namely, if the torture system introduced after 9/11 can be traced back to a single person, it is Vice President Cheney. He pushed relentlessly for use of the tools of the “dark side,” and he ruthlessly took out everyone who stood in his way. He also worked feverishly to disguise or cloak his intimate involvement in the entire process.


What's sickens me is that people have allowed their values of life and standards of human dignity to be so twisted as to condone torture. There is no moral or ethical argument in favor of torture that has any value whatsoever. Bush-Cheney has sold us all out. And packed the Supreme Court to the best of their ability with justices who are equally warped.

There's much more in his article and it's well worth your time. H/T to Andrew Sullivan

Items of Interest

-- Poblano has done some heavy duty analysis on rating pollsters.



Check out how he arrived at this chart.

-- Here's a great on the ground story from Ohio

-- Al Giordano did some number crunching and is reporting that Hillary's 3 AM ad has backfired big time in Texas.


vote2.JPG

Winter Soldier II

IVAW is sponsoring a hearing based on the first Winter Soldier hearing which culminated in Sen. Kerry's appearance before Congress on April 22, 1971.

Senator John Kerry: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? - Listen to the audio clip (or download)


warcomeshome.org


Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan
Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations
Live KPFA Coverage: March 14th-16th


From March 14th to 16th, Pacifica Radio will suspend regular programming to broadcast the historic Winter Soldier gathering in Washington, DC. The three day live broadcast will be co-hosted by Aaron Glantz and former Army medic and KPFA Morning Show host Aimee Allison. A live web-stream of the broadcast will be available through the War Comes Home website, as well as at KPFA.org.



Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan

Learn More about the March 14-16 Broadcast

Shades of Orwell

Andrew Gumbel caught Hillary doing some Orwell-speak yesterday.

Hillary Clinton may fancy she opposes the war in Iraq, but she has a funny way of showing it. On Monday night in Austin, she had this to say about what the United States military has done over the past five years:

"We have given them the gift of freedom, the greatest gift you can give someone. Now it is really up to them to determine whether they will take that gift."

There was nothing accidental about this line. She delivered it in response to two Iraq veterans introduced at a town hall meeting at the Austin Convention Center by her friend and campaign surrogate Ted Danson. She liked the line enough that she delivered it again a couple of hours later, at a campaign-closing rally at a basketball arena in south Austin.

"The gift of freedom" is, of course, a curious way to describe an unprovoked invasion and occupation causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and leaving just about every aspect of life chaotic and fraught with daily dangers. To then lay responsibility for the mess on the Iraqis -- we did our bit, now you do yours -- is the worst kind of dishonesty, a complete abdication of moral principles. It's the sort of thing George Bush has said to justify his decision both to launch the invasion in the first place and then stay the course -- a course Hillary Clinton has spent many months telling primary and caucus voters she thinks was misconceived from the start.

Why, then, is she taking on the president's rhetorical tropes? Could it be she didn't -- and doesn't -- oppose the Iraq war quite as much as she's been letting on?

Monday, March 03, 2008

Incompetents'R'Us

Hilzoy exposes another US government failure. How bad does it have to get?

The Best Parody --- It's 3:02 AM




Lee Stranahan
strikes again.

Howard Dean on John McCain

Howard Dean delivered some straight talk on Wolf Blitzer's show.

Going with the flow in Beaumont, TX

I've seen discussion of this clip but finally just watched it courtesy of Sully who commented: "Unscripted in Beaumont, Texas. It gets really riveting when he starts lecturing neglectful parents around three minutes in. Seriously, guys, this isn't Al Sharpton. Or George W. Bush." No kidding. And as a parent I would have been standing up clapping and cheering too if I'd been there.

Obama's 2 Minute Texas Closer Ad

Per TPMElectionCentral, this ran last night in Texas and will be running again tonight.

Items of Interest

-- Ben Smith has a great post on the ad that launched a thousand parodies -- you know -- Hillary's 3 am red phone. Go check out all the parody links.

IMO, here's the best of them: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

-- TimF over at Balloon Juice delineates the 5 stages of climate denial.

-- Cliff Schecter posted a parody of Jack Nicholson's support of Hillary. Funny stuff.

Washington Post: A Platform for Stupidity

The Washington Post published an article by Charlotte Allen that's amazing in its stupidity. I can't believe that they actually published it. It looks like she got the envelopes mixed up and sent it to the Washington Post instead of The Onion. My daughter, 21, and I, 50-something, are both equally insulted by this ridiculous bit of trash.

Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that people stood in line in bad weather for many hours in some cases, perhaps ill with colds or flu, dehydrated from lack of water and then felt faint from illness and dehydration?

Please, Charlotte Allen, go crawl back into bed and next time the urge hits you to write something, do us all a favor and hit the delete button when you're done.

UPDATE: What she said. Actually it seems Charlotte Allen is a miserable self-hating hack. Why did the WaPo give her any space at all, much less the front page?

Switching from Clinton to Obama

Evan Handler explains his switch from Clinton to Obama in a very thoughtful article that should be 'must reading'.

My conclusion is based on several components, but coheres around one theme. Besides what I have experienced as his superior demonstrations of strength, composure, restraint, and reasoning during their last two one-on-one debates, Senator Obama has structured his campaign around what I feel is an irrefutable truth: the United States government will never again function efficiently unless United States citizens force it to do so. His insistence that the U.S. government must serve its citizenry, and his acknowledgment that it will do so only if the citizenry once again holds its government accountable is a statement so simplistic that it is, for some, dismissible. It also happens to be a truism so profound that it might, I have come to hope, be unstoppable.

[...]

The crucial difference is she continues to insist she knows what's best for those people even as they reject her insistence, while Senator Obama states over and over that what he wants is to assist the American people in doing well for themselves. The most crucial way they can help themselves, he stresses, is to create a government that works for them in the ways they want it to, and to exercise oversight to ensure it achieves its missions. There must be accountability in order to have success, he says. To have accountability, there must be transparency. He encourages us to insist upon both, and once the view has been cleared, to keep our eyes peeled.

Some insist that's all he's saying, though I don't see that to be the case. What he is doing that might make it appear that way is repeatedly relating every idea and policy position back to that central theme. But he doesn't seem to be doing that solely out of a desire to stay "on message." He seems to be doing it as a result of his understanding that without those conditions of transparency and accountability being met, nothing else is possible. At least nothing other than what we've seen for the past seven, fifteen, twenty-three, or forty-odd years.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's not a revolutionary thought -- at least not like it was when the notion was first conceived. It is, however, a stunningly unusual platform for a contemporary presidential candidate. With increasing consistency, each of our more recent candidates has stressed what he is going to provide to the populace, either as an entitlement program, or as a tax break. Concurrently, we've recently endured a nearly decade-long period of previously unthinkable power grabbing and consolidation by the executive branch of our government. Of even greater concern than the power grabbing has been the purposeful erosion of the divisions between the executive, the judicial, and the legislative braches. Attorneys General refusing not only to indict, but even to testify truthfully; Justice Department employees enforcing executive branch vendettas, then refusing to appear in answer to subpoenas; Supreme Court justices ordering an end to the counting of votes. Senator Obama is not raising his flagship position out of the ether, or, as far as I can see, out of excessive opportunism or ambition. He's speaking out about a very real crisis -- one of existential proportions -- in the history, health, and wellbeing of our republic. And he's doing so without histrionics, with tremendous grace and understatement. He seems increasingly to me to be a man of vast insight, both in terms of what he's trying to accomplish, and in terms of his methods of attempting to accomplish it.

Contrast that with Senator Clinton's more recent methods. I took a great deal from the moment during their last debate when Senator Obama questioned Senator Clinton's belief that the best way to accomplish things was to be willing to fight for them. A combative stance, he suggested, is not necessarily the strongest position from which to maneuver. His point is absolutely correct. And the increasing emergence recently of her anger toward him, toward the press, and toward those who've voted against her -- and the ways it has backfired on her -- seems to bear Senator Obama's truth out.


Do read the whole post. I appreciate his skepticism and his honesty.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

creative class II

The creative class and Obama



Of course, this one made news in many places when it came out over a year ago.



And responses to the will.i.am video



Statewide Connecticut for Lieberman Party Meeting

It's not a joke. I suspect Joe Lieberman will have a tough time getting nominated again by the Connecticut for Lieberman party. More history on the CFL party.

New Obama Ads in Texas





H/T to Ben Smith @ Politico

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Back to the future of gasoline

KerryVision has a post on Bush's press conference moment where he had no clue about the projections on the future price of gasoline. What a loser. Go check it out.

But Faith uncovered something else. "And here's an oldie but goodie. Two years ago, Barack Obama recorded this message to the American people about the cost of gasoline." So check out what Barack had to say in 2006 about gasoline, energy and what we as a country should be doing.



UPDATE: From Dan Froomkin's White House Watch

Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post about Bush's surprise upon hearing from a reporter yesterday that Americans are facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline: "You could've knocked Bush over with a feather. 'Oh, yeah?' he said. 'That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.'

"Uh-oh. The president, once known for his common-guy skills, sounded eerily like his old man, who in 1992 appeared surprised that supermarkets had bar-code scanners. On Wednesday, the $4-a-gallon forecasts had been on the front page of the New York Times, and on NBC's 'Today Show' and CBS's 'Early Show.' In the days before that, the prediction -- made by AAA, among others -- was in the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, even the Kansas City Star. The White House press secretary took a question about $4 gas at her Wednesday press briefing. A poll last month found that nearly three-quarters of Americans expect $4 gas."

Items of Interest

-- It seems NBC has found a Clinton donor which she should be ashamed of yet perversely insists on retaining the $170k donation because "because none of the sexual harassment allegations has been proven in court."

Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return $170,000 in campaign contributions from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.

The federal government has accused the Illinois management consulting firm, International Profit Associates, or IPA, of a brazen pattern of sexual harassment including "sexual assaults,” “degrading anti-female language" and "obscene suggestions."

In a 2001 lawsuit full of lurid details, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that 103 women employees at IPA were victimized for years. The civil case is ongoing, and IPA vigorously denies the allegations.

"This is by far, hands down, the worst case I've ever experienced," said Diane Smason, one of the EEOC lawyers handling the lawsuit. "Every woman there experienced sex harassment, they were part of a hostile work environment of sex harassment. And this occurred from the top down."

More details here. H/T to Ben Smith/Politico

-- The National Journal Hotline discusses Hillary's tax returns or rather the lack of them and includes the highly informative letter sent out by the Obama campaign on what's customary for release of tax returns.

-- Chris Crain makes a good point about denouncing and rejecting a supporter's views vs. denouncing and rejecting a supporter.