Dwahzon's Village

Moving

2008-06-19T14:05:00.003-04:00

For those who check in here on a semi-regular basis, there's a new place to start checking. dwahzon's village is moving to a new location at www.dwahzonsvillage.com and joining a new blog called Reality Window.

Please join me over there.

Catching up ... sort of

2008-05-22T12:49:00.002-04:00

Looks like we weren't the only ones to have a busy week / weekend.

The pictures in this dkos diary are stunning. Almost as good as being there in person.

And then there's video from the Washington Post:

And here's a video of the rally courtesy of NWCN via dkos diarist Patch Adam who wrote about his experience at the rally. The video includes his complete speech without any commentary or voiceover.

Click on picture to go to website with video

This is the picture that just amazes me.

This is a primary rally. Not a general election rally in October but a primary rally in May. Simply amazing.

Tis the season for graduations

2008-05-22T11:33:00.000-04:00

It's been a very busy couple weeks in our household, preparing for not one, but two college graduations in two different states only a couple days apart. But I can now report we did it.

One from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA with a major in Government and International Politics and the other from Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT with a double major in International Studies and German with a minor in History.

Whew!

Oh, and the Fairfax graduate just found out that she got her Fulbright scholarship so it's off to Germany in September for her.

Items of Interest

2008-05-10T09:34:00.000-04:00

-- Matt Stoller has a significant piece of analysis about Obama's consolidation of power over on OpenLeft which I highly recommend.

-- Publius has a very interesting post arguing that Iraq is the fundamental reason that Hillary's campaign stepped off on the wrong foot and never recovered. Recalling what she said at the YearlyKos convention, I have to agree that she never figured out that it was a huge disadvantage for her but I do also think that the campaign mismanagement was a big contributing factor.

-- John Cole at BalloonJuice points out that the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick are cheaters.

-- Standing in love vs. falling in love by Mark Vernon via Sully. Yeah. Given that my 29th wedding anniversary is 9 days away, I'd have to say that I agree with that assessment. It's good to see it outlined in such straightforward language.

Arianna and West Wingers Expose McCain

2008-05-09T15:45:00.000-04:00

Per the LA Times, West Wing aides back up Arianna on McCain's vote.

John McCain called out by Jed Bartlet's aides

It turns out that hobnobbing with liberal blogger Arianna Huffington and the cast of NBC’s "The West Wing" on the left coast can be a risky proposition for a Republican with White House ambitions.

In Jersey City Friday morning, John McCain emphatically denied a report by Huffington on her blog that he confessed, during a Beverly Hills dinner party in 2001, that he had not voted for George W. Bush after his bitter defeat in 2000. But "West Wing" cast members -- who said in published reports they supported a Democratic ticket -- back up Huffington’s story. [...]

But actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, who played White House deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman and communications director Toby Ziegler on the show, told the New York Times -- at Huffington’s prompting -- that they too heard McCain’s confession at the dinner party at actress Candice Bergen’s Beverly Hills home.

Whitford told the New York Times and the Washington Post that when a guest asked McCain at the dinner if he’d voted for Bush, McCain put his finger to his lips and mouthed "No way."

West Wing is the house favorite here. We own all 7 seasons on DVD. If Josh and Toby say that Arianna told the story accurately, then McCain hasn't a chance on that one.

If he says that he doesn't remember it, then one has to question his memory and his age. Of course, Arianna does a good job of pointing out McCain's memory problems in her update to her original post:

Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."

Items of Interest

2008-05-09T10:54:00.002-04:00

-- Rasmussen: It's Over - H/T to Walt starr

...while Senator Clinton has remained close and competitive in every meaningful measure, she is a close second and the race is over. It has become clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. [...]

With this in mind, Rasmussen Reports will soon end our daily tracking of the Democratic race and focus exclusively on the general election competition between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

-- Bill Moyers was interviewed on Democracy Now yesterday and quoted:

All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the nonstop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said, “Beware the terrible simplifiers.”

The whole interview is interesting and worth checking out.

More on Hillary's Low Road

2008-05-08T12:02:00.002-04:00

More reaction to Hillary's claiming the low road:

From Ben Smith,

And it's also noteworthy that the blunt talk on appealing to whites surfaces the day after the last round of primaries in which there's a substantial number of black voters.

Good point, Ben. I did find some satisfaction in this daily kos rec listed diary from a Utah resident, Plea from the bleach-whitest state in the union: Give us the inspirational black president!

It may be true that Hillary Clinton is the only acceptable candidate to some narrow income group of Caucasians that reside between the Mississipi river and the states bordering the East coast. But, MY GOD, who cares? It is Hillary Clinton's utter lack of ability to be competitive among white voters in Western states that resulted in Obama breaking the proportional allocation system, and making narrow Clinton wins in states that satisfy the Penn/Wolfsson criteria insignificant.

[...]

All of this brings me to my simple and main point: These people hate Clintons. I do too, but that is irrelevant. There is a reason why our primary had a record turnout, and why Obama absolutely trounced her here. There is a huge and growing number of voters here in the West that is looking for some sign that the Democratic party is ready to be something new. These people aren't particularly happy about voting for another Republican, but they sure as hell know they aren't voting for a Clinton. More than any problem with message or organization, our party suffers here from a stigma and an association with ugly political battles of the past. If we are going to build on what we have here, we have to offer something new. It doesn't even have to be a new message; it just needs to come in a new package. It needs to come in a package that doesn't remind skeptical voters that are upset and ready for a change of anything they despised in the past. We are doing good things here in Utah, and it will get better if we have a real chance to appeal to independents and disaffected Republicans. That will happen with Barack Obama. It will never happen with Hillary Clinton. In fact, I'm afraid a Billary ticket (even in the VP slot) would so inflame the Republican base here that it would threaten my beloved and effective local elected Democrats.

And I would add my own plea to his:

Superdelegates: Please do not disregard our huge and one-sided primary elections this year in red Western states. These developments mean something. End this thing quickly. Give us a case to take around our neighborhoods that this is a new Democratic party. Give us a chance to show that the 50-state strategy is working.

There was another dkos diarist with a diary that responded to the implicit and explicit racism being expressed in the media and in certain outposts in the blogosphere. Jeff Lieber pointed out in "I am Not Worth Much":

In the last Presidential election, with the exception of the odd voter who wrote in Bill Cosby or Tiger Woods, 99.99% of WHITE Americans voted for a WHITE candidate. In that same election, 99.99% of AFRICAN AMERICANS also voted for a WHITE candidate.

But 99.99% of any group can't have the same political beliefs, right?

So all those white people must be... what?

And all those African Americans... all voting for the WHITE candidate... what's THEIR deal?

Well... wait... let's go back another election.

In the year 2000, 99.99% of WHITE Americans voted for a WHITE candidate and 99.99% of AFRICAN AMERICANS also voted for a WHITE candidate.

Oh, and in 1996? And 1992? And 1988?

There was a slight rash of black on black voting in 1984 when Jesse Jackson was around, but in 1980 and 1976 and 1972 and 1968 and 1964 and 1960 and 1956 and 1952 and 1948 and 1944 and 1940 and 1936 and 1932 and 1928 and 1924 and 1920?

99.99% of WHITE Americans and 99.99% of AFRICAN AMERICANS voted... WHITE.

Now there was a period when not one single African-Americans voted for the WHITE candidate of the cycle, and that was prior to 1865 when "those people" couldn't even be bothered to stop picking the cotton long enough to cast their ballots.

It's so obvious it shouldn't need to be highlighted but it did. This is what's wrong with the media's fixation on slicing and dicing everyone into groups. Is it the race group or is it the gender group or is it the age group? Based on my race, age and gender, I supposedly should have voted for Hillary. However, that's not how I made my decision. I decided based on who I thought was the best choice for the nomination -- not on what gender, race or age they were. My race, gender and age are irrelevant to my choice.

That anyone can seriously try appeal to be chosen for the nomination based on slice'n'dice statistics, overturning the candidate chosen by individual voters in the in the Democratic primary process is appalling.

UPDATE: George Will does snark so nicely in pointing out Hillary's duplicity in today's WaPo.

Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball's rules -- pesky nuisances, rules -- say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code.

Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted by counting each African American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).

"We," says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, "don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric." Mere numbers? Heaven forfend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics -- numbers of popular votes and delegates -- are inconvenient.

The audacity of hopelessness ... what a perfect summation of the Clinton campaign.

Bobby Kennedy, Where Are You?

2008-05-08T10:39:00.002-04:00

Sen. Clinton has gone 'there' in her rationalization of why she is continuing her quest for the nomination. In an interview with USA Today,

Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

And what pattern would that be, Hillary?

First of all, the assertion that people who voted for Hillary in the primary would not vote for Obama in the general election is based on highly-malleable opinions which are at a height of emotion given the hard-fought primary contest. Any exit poll numbers on that count will surely change by the time of the general election as they always do.

Second, it is a comparison of unlike contests to suggest that the breakdown of voters in Hillary vs. Obama is comparable to that of Obama vs. McCain. Choosing between Hillary and Obama is like choosing between brownies and chocolate chip cookies for dessert ... which form of chocolate do I like best? Suggesting that there is any comparison between brownies, chocolate chip cookies and brussel sprouts for dessert is absurd.

Third, does the Democratic Party really want to select a nominee based on the fear that there might be some racist Americans who won't vote for the nominee? Does Bobby Kennedy need to come back to life and give them some spine? Did we let racists dictate what happened in school desegregation and the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

As RFK said, "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope..."

It's time for the Democratic Party to stand up and do the right thing.

Hillary, I'm ashamed and angry that you're choosing this path. I thought better of you.

Items of Interest

2008-05-07T12:32:00.004-04:00

-- McCain is having problems living in the 21st century. Looks like he's somewhere back in the 20th century based on his references to Czechoslovakia as his preferred missile location and his inability after 5 years worth of war in Iraq to differentiate between Shia and Sunni, Al Qaeda and Iran.

Then there's his supposed defense expertise in which he demonstrates his ignorance of who does what in the current structure. For someone who's the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services committee, it's a huge gaffe. I mean, how do you NOT know that when it's your day job and has been for quite some time?

-- Here's something that I missed when it came out. From Martha Raddatz at ABC News, Surprising Political Endorsements By U.S. Troops. The video is the best. Watch it if you can. (I'd embed it if ABC News offered that option but they don't. Need to catch up with the times.) H/T to dantrotheplanetman

-- Sully has a real cute anecdote here

-- Via John Cole at Balloon Juice, a tale of pre-school politics:

-- Also from Balloon Juice via The Grand Panjandrum at TPMCafe, the:

Best. Blog. Comment. Evah.

John Cole, ruminating about the potential disaster awaiting the GOP this November found this gem in his comment section:

The GOP let Alfred E. Neumann sit behind the wheel of their bus and drive it off a cliff. The fuckin’ thing is falling, Alfred’s grinning mug is turned to them asking “Hows that fellas?” and somewhere from the back of the bus a genius removes his tongue from the window and mumbles “Pssst, I think we have a message problem.”

Now if we can just get Danziger or Oliphant to draw the cartoon.

-- Watch Taylor wiggle. Interesting how past rhetorical outbursts come back to bite one in the ... so to speak.

John Cole: It Is Over

2008-05-07T09:23:00.001-04:00

I so enjoy reading John Cole at Balloon Juice. I know that I'll go away with a smile on my face with his irreverent approach to things and he doesn't disappoint today either. It seems he stayed up late along with the rest of us political junkies and then had insomnia and couldn't sleep. So he penned some thoughts for the morning.

At any rate, I feel a profound sense of relief the whole nomination process is finally over. I guess I am just not used to the messy way you all do things here in the Democratic party, but these past few months have been excruciating. The primary, for me at least, was over after March 5th, when she failed to blow him out in the firewall state of Texas, but as a new member of the party I guess I am in the wing where “firewall” and “math” still mean things. So I endured another month of listening to certain wings of a party (that, again, I am a newcomer to) do their best NRO and Weekly Standard impressions and talk about electability, stealth Muslims, lapel pins, patriotism, new new delegate math, Rev. Wright, and whatever else they could dream up.

Whatever. She threw everything she had at him. He weathered the storm. Consider him vetted. Consider Rev. Wright kicked in the junk. Consider me relieved. Now, can we get to the very serious business of dismantling the GOP? I have a very serious axe to grind, and it is deeply, deeply personal for me. There are a bunch of frauds, crooks, and phonies with whom I have a serious grudge that I want to settle. You see, I still have my “Peace Through Strength” button from when I campaigned for Reagan. I believed in limited government, I believed in a strong national defense, I believed in fiscal restraint and balanced budgets and I believed in personal integrity and individual liberty and personal freedom.

I am pissed. I want the frothing nutters, the fraudulent hucksters, the race-baiters, the anti-science frauds, the anti-intellectuals, the gay-bashers, the big-money cheats, the torture fetishists, the religious nuts, the tax and spenders, the xenophobes, and the phonies to pay. I want payback. I want the people who ruined my former party relegated to permanent minority status. I know I am a newly minted Democrat, and, as such, it is ballsy for me to start telling you what I want from the party, but this is my website and you are just going to have to deal with my opinion.

I am under no illusion I will buy into everything Barack Obama puts forward, but I am damned sure convinced he is a decent man who, at the very least, will restore a sense of competence to the national stage. I am willing to meet most Democrats half-way, and I am already doing everything I can to get this man elected. I think Obama will act in good faith for this nation, and I am responding in kind. His policies are not outlandish or crazy or uber-left- they reflect a rational, and I would argue, a decent and progressive way forward out of the mess I helped to create. I won’t like all of them, and I will not agree with all of them, but there is no chance that I will ever be President, so perfect agreement is never a possibility.

And don’t get me wrong- I am not for Obama because of what I am against. I am for Obama because he is a decent man, a break from the past, and really a once in a lifetime opportunity. He has treated us like adults throughout this primary, and it is time to act like adults. There will be times we feel he lets us all down, but we are not electing a diety. We are electing a leader, and Obama is that leader. It is time to get past the bullshit of the last 20 years, the battles I am really tired of fighting, and time to turn our attention to the really important issues of the day- the economy, the budget, our international presence, our crumbling infrastructure, our military, medicare and medicaid and social security, and on and on and on.

If Barack Obama was not your your preferred candidate, I am sorry that person did not win, but it is time to remember that the target is John McCain and the Bush/Cheney way of doing things. If you can not accept that and help move us forward, please at least get out of the way.

Thanks John. You said for me some of the things that I think sometimes but never quite overcome the politeness threshold and actually blurt out. Go check out the rest of his post... you'll like the picture.

The Next President & the Next Congress

2008-05-07T07:57:00.000-04:00

First, I'd like to thank the people of Indiana and North Carolina and the volunteers who worked so hard in the Democratic primary. Both states are responsible for the change in the race as of last night (or this morning if you want to include Lake County results). As I was watching Barack Obama speak in North Carolina last night and then when Michelle joined him onstage, I kept thinking I'm looking at the next President and First Lady of the United States.

Though I look at what our nation faces and I realize that one person won't ever be able to address all the damage and all the needs alone. We need a Congress that is ready to go to work with our President to put our nation back together after the last 7+ years of Republican ravaging.

So here's to the next stage in the 2008 campaign. Barack was right last night. It's not about him, or Hillary or McCain. It's about us, the American people. Get ready to work to recover our nation.

The Primary Day Drill according to Al Giordano

2008-05-06T16:16:00.000-04:00

Al G. nails it in his post, The Primary Day Ritual.

Today marks the 47th and 48th primaries or caucuses for the Democratic presidential nomination. More than 90 percent of the delegates will have been chosen by tonight. By now, we all ought to know the drill.

The day begins with the Clinton campaign “leaking” something to the Drudge Report to set expectations for the day. That then gets repeated on political blogs and cable news, where Clinton surrogate Terry McAuliffe elaborates. Today’s “expectation”: That the Clinton campaign expects a “15 point” defeat in North Carolina. Clinton’s yapping puppies in the news media repeat the manufactured expectation all day long, in which the bar is supposedly now that if Clinton comes within 15 points in that state that she has somehow “won” with a 14 point (or 6 point) defeat.

Around 4 p.m. rumors of exit polls begin circulating on the Internet. Around 5:30 p.m. AP and other news organizations leak minor data from the exit polls that explains almost nothing of value. Sometime after 6 p.m. Drudge posts raw numbers from exit polls that - if past is prologue - show Obama doing an average of seven percentage points better than he actually does.

Obama supporters then get prematurely jubilant and after polls close (tonight at 7 p.m. ET in Indiana and 7:30 p.m. ET in North Carolina) the real results start to come in and reveal Clinton then doing “better than expected” (at least better than the new expectations promoted during the day).

The media talking heads then ask aloud why Obama can’t “close the deal” (in Clinton’s own words) and what is numerically a defeat for Clinton (because the results, even in her recent wins, bring her objectively farther from the nomination in the context of the smaller number of delegates then available) gets spun as a Clinton victory.

Clinton takes to the stage, claims “unexpected” victory, gives out her web site address and pleads for elder women on fixed incomes to send more money to the $109 millionaire. The following day they claim that $10 million rolled in, only to be disproved more than a month later when the actual FEC filing is due. Obama’s FEC filing simultaneously reveals that he raised much, much more, from more small donors, and the Clinton campaign plays the victim card over being outspent.

Go read the rest at Al's place. Great job, Al. I think you got it just right.

Items of Interest

2008-05-06T10:25:00.001-04:00

-- Jesselyn Radack called for action yesterday in a diary about an EPA whistleblower who's just been fired. Mary Gade refused to back down on a study of serious dioxin contamination in western Michigan and her attempts to get the source of pollution stopped and the contamination cleaned up. Jesselyn noted a few items worth repeating here:

"There is all of this mystique about dioxin . . .Just because it's there doesn't mean there is an imminent health threat."
Jim Musser
Dow Chemical spokesman

"[The only way someone could be exposed to dioxin is if they] eat the dirt."
Bob VanDeventer
President, Saginaw Chamber of Commerce

FACT: Low levels of dioxin have been found to cause cancer, immune system disorders, and reproductive problems.

FACT: Saginaw Bay, one of the sites Mary Gade sought to clean up, has the highest concentration of dioxin ever recorded in the country.

The Chicago Tribune has the whole story.

-- Keith Olbermann does a masterful job summarizing the "Clinton Rules" concerning which votes really count. Just wait till he gets to his final summation sentence at the end! H/T to dsharma23

-- I bet Mrs. Conyers wishes she hadn't lost her temper. And I hope someone is looking out for Ms. Kierra Bell. That young woman has a bright future.

The Company They Keep

2008-05-06T08:19:00.002-04:00

Steve Benen summarizes it so well in Judging them by the company they keep that I'll just quote from him.

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman posed an interesting question in his column over the weekend about John McCain having a Bill Ayers-like problem of his own. [...]

What McCain didn’t mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers — in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.

How close are McCain and Liddy? Pretty close. Liddy hosted a McCain fundraiser in ‘98 at his home. When McCain appeared on Liddy’s show in November, Liddy greeted him as “an old friend,” and McCain gushed like one. “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,” McCain told Liddy. “It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”

Given Liddy’s “principles,” McCain’s praise seems more than a little out of place.

Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn’t disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history–and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as “a prisoner of war.”

All this may sound like ancient history. But it’s from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy’s penchant for extreme solutions has not abated.

In 1994, after the disastrous federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, he gave some advice to his listeners: “Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests. . . . Kill the sons of bitches.”

He later backed off, saying he meant merely that people should defend themselves if federal agents came with guns blazing. But his amended guidance was not exactly conciliatory: Liddy also said he should have recommended shots to the groin instead of the head. If that wasn’t enough to inflame any nut cases, he mentioned labeling targets “Bill” and “Hillary” when he practiced shooting.

McCain doesn’t distance himself from this guy; he embraces him, accepts his campaign donations, appears on his show, and praises his “principles.” And yet, McCain still feels perfectly comfortable demanding that Obama “apologize” for knowing Bill Ayers.

(On a related note, the NYT’s Frank Rich over the weekend highlighted the story that political reporters are reluctant to touch: McCain’s ties to bigoted televangelist John Hagee.)

To clarify, I’m not necessarily arguing that I want more guilt-by-association attacks in the presidential campaign. Major political figures meet and know plenty of people, some are going to be controversial, and some are going to be unsavory. In an election this important, there are far more important things to cover.

I do care, however, about consistency, hypocrisy, and fairness. If Wright is a reflection on Obama’s judgment and character, it’s incumbent on the media to take McCain’s suck-ups to Hagee, Parsley, and Falwell seriously. If it’s important that Obama knows Ayers, it has to be at least as important that McCain has picked G. Gordon Liddy as one of his buddies.

And if McCain is going to go after Obama directly over his associations, as he did last week, then McCain should expect similar questions about the company he keeps.

Why did McCain seek and accept the support of an anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic televangelist? Why did McCain cozy up to a preacher who blamed 9/11 on Americans? Why did McCain praise the principles of a right-wing shock jock who instructed his audience on where to shoot federal officials?

I really don't want a political campaign that consists of guilt-by-association accusations flung ad infinitum throughout the media. But as Steve said, let's be consistent and fair about this. If those types of questions and attacks are deemed appropriate for one candidate, then they're appropriate for all. So why isn't the corpmedia pursuing John McCain?

"Elite Opinion"

2008-05-06T07:58:00.001-04:00

Regarding "elite opinions", Steve Benen speaks for me including the headbanging, though I should add that I tend to yell at the radio and tv as well. My family has taken to rolling their eyes and leaving the room. Really, Steve's post is excellent. Check it out.

And when you're done with that one, read his next post: This … is CNN?

State-by-State List of Cost of Gas Tax Holiday

2008-05-05T09:27:00.004-04:00

dkos diarist Jimmy Crackcorn posted a chart from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association which pretty well sums up just how ridiculous Clinton and McCain's gas tax holiday proposals really are.

Jimmy went on to say:

John McCain and Hillary Clinton have suggested suspending Federal Taxes on all Gasoline/Diesel sold between Memorial Day (5/26) and Labor Day (9/1) this year. According to this study by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, this "Gas Tax Holiday" will lower tax revenue for infrastructure by roughly $9 billion and potentially cost 300,000 highway construction jobs. The highway trust fund that the gas tax finances provides money to states and local governments to pay for road and bridge construction, repair and maintenance.

Obama addressed this issue on Meet The Press yesterday and not only explained what was wrong with the gas tax holiday concept but clearly laid out what he plans to do to address the rising cost of gasoline and oil consumption.

The Cognitive Age

2008-05-04T09:27:00.002-04:00

I rarely agree with David Brooks who I believe is a highly over-rated talking head that's too impressed with himself. Nonetheless, he makes a point in his NYT column today on the changes in manufacturing globally that I think is well-made.

The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.

It’s not that globalization and the skills revolution are contradictory processes. But which paradigm you embrace determines which facts and remedies you emphasize.

Of course, he then ends with one of his usual nonsensical summations: "Politicians, especially Democratic ones, have fallen in love with the globalization paradigm. It’s time to move beyond it."

David, just how would you describe what the Republican administration and politicians have done for the last 20 years?

Gen. Sanchez: Bush Admin's "gross incompetence and dereliction of duty"

2008-05-04T08:27:00.003-04:00

Another retired general steps forward to tell us just how the Bush administration screwed us over and in the process, screwed over our military forces as well. From Time magazine via Andrew Sullivan:

Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq in 2003-2004, has written a new memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story, an account of his life and his service in Iraq. Sanchez was a three-star general — and the military's senior Hispanic officer — when he led U.S. forces in the first year of the war. He was relieved of his command by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2004 following the revelations of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. In 2005, Marine General Peter Pace, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him to say his career was over and he wouldn't get the promotion to a full general — four stars — that Sanchez says he was promised. Six months later, at Rumsfeld's request, he showed up at the Pentagon for a meeting with the defense secretary shortly before retiring. In this exclusive excerpt, Sanchez details what happened next:

I walked into Rumsfeld's office at 1:25 p.m. on April 19, 2006. He had just returned from a meeting at the White House, and the only other person present in the room was his new Chief of Staff, John Rangel.

"Ric, it's been a long time," Rumsfeld said, greeting me in a friendly manner. "I'm really sorry that your promotion didn't work out. We just couldn't make it work politically. Sending a nomination to the Senate would not be good for you, the Army, or the department."

"I understand, sir," I replied.

Then we walked over to his small conference table. "Have a seat," he said. "Now, Ric, what are your timelines?"

"Well, sir, my transition leave will start in September with retirement the first week of November."

[...]

Secretary Rumsfeld then pulled out a two-page memo and handed it to me. "I wrote this after a promotion interview about two weeks ago," he explained. "The officer told me that one of the biggest mistakes we made after the war was to allow CENTCOM and CFLCC to leave the Iraq theater immediately after the fighting stopped — and that left you and V Corps with the entire mission."

"Yes, that's right," I said.

"Well, how could we have done that?" he said in an agitated, but adamant, tone. "I knew nothing about it. Now, I'd like you to read this memo and give me any corrections."

In the memo, Rumsfeld stated that one of the biggest strategic mistakes of the war was ordering the major redeployment of forces and allowing the departure of the CENTCOM and CFLCC staffs in May - June 2003.

"This left General Sanchez in charge of operations in Iraq with a staff that had been focused at the operational and tactical level, but was not trained to operate at the strategic/operational level." He went on to write that neither he nor anyone higher in the Administration knew these orders had been issued, and that he was dumbfounded when he learned that Gen. McKiernan was out of the country and in Kuwait, and that the forces would be drawn down to a level of about 30,000 by September. "I did not know that Sanchez was in charge," he wrote.

I stopped reading after I read that last statement, because I knew it was total BS. After a deep breath, I said, "Well, Mr. Secretary, the problem as you've stated it is generally accurate, but your memo does not accurately capture the magnitude of the problem. Furthermore, I just can't believe you didn't know that Franks's and McKiernan's staffs had pulled out and that the orders had been issued to redeploy the forces."

At that point, Rumsfeld became very excited, jumped out of his seat, and sat down in the chair next to me so that he could look at the memo with me. "Now just what is it in this memorandum that you don't agree with?" he said, almost shouting.

"Mr. Secretary, when V Corps ramped up for the war, our entire focus was at the tactical level. The staff had neither the experience nor training to operate at the strategic level, much less as a joint/combined headquarters. All of CFLCC's generals, whom we called the Dream Team, left the country in a mass exodus. The transfer of authority was totally inadequate, because CENTCOM's focus was only on departing the theater and handing off the mission. There was no focus on postconflict operations. None! In their minds, the war was over and they were leaving. Everybody was executing these orders, and the services knew all about it."

Starting to get a little worked up, I paused a moment, and then looked Rumsfeld straight in the eye. "Sir, I cannot believe that you didn't know I was being left in charge in Iraq."

"No! No!" he replied. "I was never told that the plan was for V Corps to assume the entire mission. I have to issue orders and approve force deployments into the theater, and they moved all these troops around without any orders or notification from me."

"Sir, I don't ... "

"Why didn't you tell anyone about this?" he asked, interrupting me in an angry tone.

"Mr. Secretary, all of the senior leadership in the Pentagon knew what was happening. Franks issued the orders and McKiernan was executing them."

"Well, what about Abizaid? He was the deputy then."

"Sir, General Abizaid knew and worked very hard with me to reverse direction once he assumed command of CENTCOM. General Bell also knew, and he offered to send me his operations officer. In early July, when General Keane visited us, I described to him the wholly inadequate manning level of the staff, and told him that we were set up for failure. He agreed and told me that he would immediately begin to identify general officers to help fill our gaps."

"Yes, yes," replied Rumsfeld. "General Keane is a good man. But this was a major failure and it has to be documented so that we never do it again." He then explained that he would be tasking Adm. Ed Giambastiani, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to conduct an inquiry on this issue.

"Well, I think that's appropriate," I said. "That way you'll all be able to understand what was happening on the ground."

"By the way," said Rumsfeld, "why wasn't this in the lessons-learned packages that have been forwarded to my level."

"Sir, I cannot answer that question," I replied. "But this was well known by leadership at multiple levels."

After the meeting ended, I remember walking out of the Pentagon shaking my head and wondering how in the world Rumsfeld could have expected me to believe him. Everybody knew that CENTCOM had issued orders to drawdown the forces. The Department of Defense had printed public affairs guidance for how the military should answer press queries about the redeployment. There were victory parades being planned. And in mid-May 2003, Rumsfeld himself had sent out some of his famous "snowflake" memorandums to Gen. Franks asking how the general was going to redeploy all the forces in Kuwait. The Secretary knew. Everybody knew.

So what was Rumsfeld doing? Nineteen months earlier, in September 2004, when it was clearly established in the Fay-Jones report that CJTF-7 was never adequately manned, he called me in from Europe and claimed ignorance, "I didn't know about it," he said. "How could this happen? Why didn't you tell somebody about it?"

Now, he had done exactly the same thing, only this time he had prepared a written memorandum documenting his denials. So it was clearly a pattern on the Secretary's part, and now I recognized it. Bring in the top-level leaders. Profess total ignorance. Ask why he had not been informed. Try to establish that others were screwing things up. Have witnesses in the room to verify his denials. Put it in writing. In essence, Rumsfeld was covering his rear. He was setting up his chain of denials should his actions ever be questioned. And worse yet, in my mind, he was attempting to level all the blame on his generals.

But why now? Why was he doing it in September 2006? I wasn't completely sure. I knew it had been a hectic week. The media was hounding Rumsfeld, because a number of former generals had staged something of a revolt and were calling for his resignation. Perhaps he wanted to set up this link in his chain of denials before I left the service, or gauge how I was going to react to his position. Or Rumsfeld might have been anticipating a big political shift in Congress after the midterm November elections, which, in turn, might lead to Democratic-controlled hearings. I didn't know exactly why it happened at this particular time. I just know that it did happen.

Upon returning to Germany, I had some very long discussions with my wife, especially about Rumsfeld's offer of a possible high-paying job in the Department of Defense. "I'm not sure I want to pursue something like that," I said. "But given my reaction to Rumsfeld's memorandum, he now knows that I'm not going to play along. So I don't think he'll pursue it."

"Ricardo, they are just trying to buy you off and keep you silent," said Maria Elena. "I don't think we should mess with them anymore."

My wife had hit the nail right on the head. "I believe you're right," I replied. And sure enough, no one from the Department of Defense ever followed up. So at that point, I closed out all options of doing anything with DoD after retirement.

Gen. Sanchez then goes on to describe a conversation he had with Admiral Giambastiani who had been charged with the task of doing a study on just what had happened with the withdrawal. Sanchez notes that he was interviewed in depth by the investigative team from the Joint Warfighting Center (JWC). A few months later he was back at the JWC to do a presentation and saw some of the investigative team. He asked them about the study.

"Say, did you guys ever complete that investigation?" I asked.

"Oh, yes sir. We sure did," came the reply. "And let me tell you, it was ugly."

"Ugly?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. Our report validated everything you told us — that Franks issued the orders to discard the original twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment, that the forces were drawing down, that we were walking away from the mission, and that everybody knew about it. And let me tell you, the Secretary did not like that one bit. After we went in to brief him, he just shut us down. 'This is not going anywhere,' he said. 'Oh, and by the way, leave all the copies right here and don't talk to anybody about it.'"

"You mean he embargoed all the copies of the report?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, he did."

From that, my belief was that Rumsfeld's intent appeared to be to minimize and control further exposure within the Pentagon and to specifically keep this information from the American public.

Continuing the conversation, I inquired about the "original twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment," because I wasn't sure what he was talking about. It turned out that the investigative team was so thorough, they had actually gone back and looked at the original operational concept that had been prepared by CENTCOM (led by Gen. Franks) before the invasion of Iraq was launched. It was standard procedure to present such a plan, which included such things as: timing for predeployment, deployment, staging for major combat operations, and postdeployment. The concept was briefed up to the highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the President of the United States.

And the investigators were now telling me that the plan called for a Phase IV (after combat action) operation that would last twelve to eighteen months.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had never seen any approved CENTCOM campaign plan, either conceptual or detailed, for the post-major combat operations phase. When I was on the ground in Iraq and saw what was going on, I assumed they had done zero Phase IV planning. Now, three years later, I was learning for the first time that my assumption was not completely accurate. In fact, CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job.

That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.

There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done.

In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.

I don't think I can add anything to General Sanchez's assessment. Do go read the entire article. I think I may have to find a copy of Gen. Sanchez's book.

Update on Delegate Numbers

2008-05-04T07:46:00.000-04:00

Here's the update from DemConWatch and Daily Kos after yesterday's primary in Guam and other superdelegate endorsement announcements.

The Magic Number (2,024 delegates needed)
Barack Obama	1,739	285
Hillary Clinton	1,608	416

2008 Democratic Convention Watchgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

Hillary's War

2008-05-04T07:38:00.000-04:00

The truth about Hillary's stance on the Iraq War and how she's shaded her past statements to protect her candidacy. H/T to LJW and peraspera for highlighting this article.

Hillary's War
By Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.
Published: June 3, 2007

Nevertheless, on the sensitive issue of collaboration between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Senator Clinton found herself adopting the same argument that was being aggressively pushed by the administration. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials had repeated their claim frequently, and by early October 2002, two out of three Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. By contrast, most of the other Senate Democrats, even those who voted for the war authorization, did not make the Qaeda connection in their remarks on the Senate floor. One Democratic senator who voted for the war resolution and praised President Bush for his course of ''moderation and deliberation,'' Joe Biden of Delaware, actively assailed the reports of Al Qaeda in Iraq, calling them ''much exaggerated.'' Senator Dianne Feinstein of California described any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda as ''tenuous.''

The Democratic senator who came closest to echoing Clinton's remarks about Hussein's supposed assistance to Al Qaeda was Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Yet even Lieberman noted that ''the relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime is a subject of intense debate within the intelligence community.''

For most of those who had served in the Clinton administration, the supposed link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had come to seem baseless. ''We all knew it was [expletive],'' said Kenneth Pollack, who was a national-security official under President Clinton and a leading proponent of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Pollack says he discussed Iraq with Clinton before her vote in 2002, but he won't disclose his advice.

The lengthy article is well-researched and it cosupports what I recall hearing on NPR. My local NPR station broadcasts to southwestern CT and Long Island hence we get both CT and NY news including coverage of the respective senators Dodd, Lieberman, Clinton and Schumer. I recall yelling at the radio regularly when they reported on Lieberman and Clinton. The real point is that Hillary and Hillary's campaign has done a good job in spinning her into a candidate acceptable to the cultural right. And her stance on the Iraq war and the flag-burning bill and numerous other items were all highlighted as attempts to triangulate, to make herself acceptable to conservatives when they happened. Somehow people have forgotten that.

What concerns me most though is her nuclear umbrella stance and war-mongering concerning Iran. I thought we'd learned our lesson about politicians who talk about war for political purposes. We've just had 7+ years of that. We don't need anymore.

The Hard Data from the NYT via Al Giordano

2008-05-03T18:20:00.002-04:00

Al Giordano highlights an NYT article by Charles Blow:

I turn on the TV, read the political columnists (and a significant number of analytically-challenged bloggers, too) and all I hear is a bunch of white folk prattling on about their favorite narrative: “Obama’s losing white voters!”

They’ve swallowed the Clinton racially-obsessed spin, hook, line and sinker. [...]

So imagine my pleasant surprise this morning to see a New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, who did what none of these chattering lunkheads have done. He looked at the hard data of how voters, white and black, view the two Democratic candidates - favorably or negatively? - and how those views have progressed over time. The data is based on multiple CBS-New York Times polls (among the most respected survey outfits among competing pollsters) over two years and more. Check it out:

Click on image for larger picture
Nobody - not blogger, nor superdelegate, nor cable news anchor - should open their mouths with another word about this contest until they’ve studied those graphs and the numbers upon which they are based. Blow explains:

Since January, the Clintons have pummeled Barack Obama with racially tinged comments and questions about his character…

The question is this: Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

Wait. The numbers show that the cynical effort to turn the 2008 campaign into a race riot has hurt the popularity of one candidate among an important demographic, and it’s not Barack Obama:

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

So, to sum up: Look at the damn graphs. You can see that Clinton is in a staggering free-fall among African-American voters, her favorability is down 36 points while 17 percent view her more negatively than before, while Obama’s favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases. You can even see the small dip - about two percentage points - in his popularity among whites that can be attributed to the news cycles about his ex-pastor, and see that it has leveled out and is now on a straight horizontal line (meanwhile, Clinton’s numbers among blacks continue on an extreme downward precipice). The greater context is that even including Obama’s slight dip, he’s more popular today among white voters than he ever was prior to February.

Not since Ronald Reagan has an American presidential candidate withstood such an assault in the media and seen his popularity not hurt by it, but, rather, galvanized by it. That’s what is meant, in politics, by the term “Teflon.”

Those facts won’t stop many media (and Internet) talking heads from continuing - whether out of gullibility or intentional dishonesty - to prop up the “white voters” narrative, but it ought to inoculate you, kind reader, from believing it.

So the next time you're tempted to give some consideration to the talking heads on CNN, MSBNC or wherever you get your news, do keep this bit of hard data in mind.

Obama Countdown

2008-05-02T10:41:00.002-04:00

From DemConWatch blog:

2008 Democratic Convention Watchgreat free widgetsWidgetbox

Or as Daily Kos puts it:

The Magic Number (2,024 delegates needed)
Barack Obama	1,733	291
Hillary Clinton	1,603	421

UPDATE: The Daily Kos numbers above do not include the just-announced endorsement of another former DNC Chair, Paul Kirk. According to the story broken by ABC's The Note, there will be other superdelegate endorsements for Obama today as well.

Don't blame me for this mess

2008-05-01T13:56:00.001-04:00

From John Cole at balloonjuice today:

... I read that and my first thought was that if McCain wins, it is profoundly unfair that I have to go down with the ship with this idiot, and then I immediately realized what it must have been like for the people who hated Bush all along, knew he would be a disaster, and had to sit around and suffer while jackasses like me voted for the guy they wanted to have a beer with or voted for Bush because they didn’t really “trust” John Kerry.

John, why else do you think that people left their Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers on their cars for so long? It was their way of saying "Don't blame me for this mess".

McCain Flip-Flop # whatever

2008-05-01T12:45:00.000-04:00

Via Matt Yglesias:

It seems that back in 2005 John McCain understood how dumb John McCain's current position on Iraq is:

Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue. "You've heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I've heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German...the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"

McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don't pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

Items of Interest

2008-05-01T11:18:00.006-04:00

-- Roger Simon at Politico really smacks down the Hillary number counting approach in this post. He agreed with me.

-- Obama received the endorsement today of superdelegate Joe Andrew, former DNC chair appointed by Bill Clinton and current Indiana resident. Dkos diarist slinkerwink has posted the entire letter from Mr. Andrew about his decision. It's a must-read: The Amazing SuperDelegate Letter of Joe Andrew

-- One of my favorite Kossacks, Unitary Moonbat, who does the History for Kossacks series has a new book coming out. Check out this announcement diary:

History for Kossacks: Role-Playing Games, the Crusades, and Moonbat's Book

-- Sen. Kerry tells the Traditional Media to get focused on the right things. KerryVision, Daily Kos and TPMCafe all cheer.

-- Reuters lines up the policy wonks who all think that the gas tax holiday is a really bad idea. H/T to Ben Smith And ABC News does the same with this clip per Matt Yglesias: "...a reporter informs us that he spoke to several economists about the issue and they all agree that "Obama is essentially right" that what Clinton and McCain are proposing wouldn't accomplish anything".

And here's Obama's comment on it during an Indiana appearance if you haven't already seen it.

-- The MOMocrats blog disliked the PA debate as much as I did and came up with their own questions for Obama and Hillary and sent them off to the respective campaigns. Obama has answered them. Good questions. Good answers. H/T once again to Ben Smith

A side-note: I just want to say I love the MOMocrats blog comment policy.

Comment Policy: Use Your Big Girl Voice

We would love to hear from you, so please feel free to comment or ask questions. Please use your inside voice and mind your manners. Potty mouths, fibbers, and bullies will be given a timeout. Don't make us moderate you.

-- A TPMCafe report from a NC resident about Obama's appearance at the UNC's Dean Dome offers something a little different from the current CW line the corpmedia are pedaling.

-- OpenLeft diarist JewishJake has an interesting post about Obama's appearance on Fox News. He discusses it in the light of Dan Rather's interview of Bush 1 and the subsequent right-wing conservative reaction to CBS. What really caught my eye was the video clip of Rather's interview of Bush. You'd never see that kind of interview of a Republican candidate in today's media. It will take your breath away to realize just how different yesterday's journalists are from today's lapdogs and stenographers. Check it out here:

and here:

Go read the entire post for additional background on what happened then and how it relates to what's happening with today's media chorus.

Elizabeth Edwards 1, Mainstream Media 0

2008-04-30T13:37:00.005-04:00

Elizabeth Edwards does it again. And the accompanying illustration by the NY Times sums it up so well graphically.

Bowling 1, Health Care 0

Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture. [...]

The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do so, particularly if they do not have access to the Internet.

Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.

What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. Just to be clear: I’m not talking about my husband. I’m referring to other worthy Democratic contenders. Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.

And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say. [...]

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.

...A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals. [...]

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

And the future of news is not bright. Indeed, we’ve heard that CBS may cut its news division, and media consolidation is leading to one-size-fits-all journalism. The state of political campaigning is no better: without a press to push them, candidates whose proposals are not workable avoid the tough questions. All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter. (Look, the press doesn’t even think there is a difference!) [...]

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie “Network” but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.

Italics and bold added for emphasis.

NYT: Obama on Wright

2008-04-30T09:29:00.002-04:00

The New York Times has embedded video of Obama's press conference concerning Rev. Wright's appearances. They have chosen to include 27 min of it -- not just a soundbite or two. The video appears on the left side of this article.

If you haven't seen it and if you're interested in learning more about Obama as a person, you may want to spend the time. It does give a glimpse of a man speaking forthrightly about something that has pained, angered and confounded him. The measured response tells you something about the man.

Stone, Light, Water & Ice

2008-04-28T18:12:00.002-04:00

A distillation of photos ...

View it in larger full screen mode here.

Thank you Helen Thomas

2008-04-28T10:02:00.001-04:00

Helen Thomas asked the hard questions. Dana Perino then illustrated why sane people think that the White House lies, openly and brazenly. But what this video is really about is how some in the US have lost their moral compass.

There is NO JUSTIFICATION for torture. None. Ever. And for those who approve it, remember it is likely that you are authorizing it for your loved ones... your sons, brothers, cousins. Why should any country refrain from doing to US citizens what the US feels free to do to citizens of other countries as well as its own?

The Republican party has developed a moral and ethical morass so great, it's inconceivable that they'll recover from it. It should be rejected so utterly, so thoroughly that it is destroyed. No one, even a "moderate" Republican, should think that it's okay to associate with people who are so morally bankrupt that they think it's okay to lie with impunity, to torture, to scorn the law and the treaties of the United States of America.

What really counts: delegates vs. popular vote vs. superdelegates

2008-04-25T13:12:00.004-04:00

feliks at mydd posted a brief diary about the WSJ article below to which one commenter responded with the Clinton meme du jour ... she's ahead in the popular vote and the superdelegate count.

Oh please. Superdelegates as a category don't count for anything. That's a pretty silly thing to itemize as a positive -- though per DemConWatch, Obama has 234 and Clinton 256. That's a difference of 22 -- a difference which has shrunk dramatically since Jan. 13 per DemConWatch's Superdelegate History Tracker. (The chart is pretty cool if you like numbers and graphs.) And then there are the officially undeclared superdelegates who are known to favor Obama such as Rep. James Clyburn. I know it's not comforting to Hillary supporters to confront these numbers but they're real.

As for the popular vote, NO - she does NOT lead.

I've seen the twisted counting methods by which one arrives at a number that says she has more in the popular vote. Even 3rd and 4th graders know that something stinks when the methods leave out people who showed up to be counted in states with caucuses, and include a state in which one of the candidates didn't even appear on the ballot. But no problem -- go ahead and include that state counting the 238,168 uncommitted votes as Obama's as well as the people from the caucus states (see point #2 below). Guess what? She still doesn't lead in the popular vote. [Note that the figures at the top of RCP's chart do NOT include Michigan's uncommitted votes. Obama leads in 4 of 6 methods of summation without those votes. When those are added in, Clinton does not lead no matter how one adds up the figures.]

And last but not least, there's PocketNines' insight (h/t to Ben Smith) on the popular vote metric when applied to primaries. #2 is my particular favorite.

Point Number 1: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no candidate would ever go to Iowa or New Hampshire. They'd spend all their time in big urban areas all over the country from the outset of the campaign, racking up raw numbers. What would be the point of even visiting New Hampshire if you could camp out in Brooklyn? Concrete Example: Barack Obama would not have spent only a day and a half in California before the Feb 5 primary. He would have never gone to Idaho. Duh.

Point Number 2: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no state in its right mind would ever hold a caucus, instantly disenfranchising itself. Concrete example: Minnesota-Missouri. Minnesota gets credit for 214K votes, and Missouri gets 822K votes, but they each get 72 delegates. Is Missouri's voice 4 times more important than Minnesota's?

Point Number 3: The arbitrary distinction between who gets to vote in these primaries is nothing like the general election, where everyone registered gets to vote. In the primaries, sometimes it's just Dems, sometimes Dems and Indies, sometimes anyone. Concrete example: Texas gets a million more votes than similar overall population New York (2.8M to 1.8M), even though New York is far more Democratic, simply due to this arbitrary restriction on who can vote (NY = closed, Texas = open).

Overall point: regardless of the fact that Obama will win the popular vote, it is completely illegitimate in this race. THIS IS NOT LIKE POPULAR VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.

I'd also like to point out Elizabeth Drew's thoughtful post which points out:

The torrent of speculation about the end game of the Democratic nomination contest is creating a false sense of suspense – and wasting a lot of time of the multitudes who are anxious to know how this contest is going to turn out.

Notwithstanding the plentiful commentary to the effect that the Pennsylvania primary must have shaken superdelegates planning to support Barack Obama, causing them to rethink their position, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are unbudged. ... Their reasons, ones they have held for months, have not changed – and by their very nature are unlikely to.

Essentially, they are three:

(a) Hillary Rodham Clinton is such a polarizing figure that everyone who ever considered voting Republican in November, and even many who never did, will go to the polls to vote against her, thus jeopardizing Democrats down the ticket – i.e., themselves, or, for party leaders, the sizeable majorities they hope to gain in the House and the Senate in November.

(b) To take the nomination away from Obama when he is leading in the elected delegate count would deeply alienate the black base of the Democratic Party, and, in the words of one leading Democrat, “The superdelegates are not going to switch their voter and jeopardize the future of the Democratic Party for generations.” Such a move, he said, would also disillusion the new, mostly young, voters who have entered into politics for the first time because of Obama, and lose the votes of independents who could make the critical difference in November.

(c) Because the black vote can make the decisive difference in numerous congressional districts, discarding Obama could cost the Democrats numerous seats.

One Democratic leader told me, “If we overrule the elected delegates there would be mayhem.” Hillary Rodham Clinton’s claim that she has, or will have, won the popular vote does not impress them – both because of her dubious math and because, as another key Democrat says firmly, “The rules are that it’s the delegates, period.” (These views are closely aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement earlier this year that the superdelegates should not overrule the votes of the elected delegates.)

Hudson's point about the fallacy of choice being perpetuated by the chattering class and Jack 'N' Jill's highlight of a comment about how persons of color view the Clinton manipulations of the Democratic nomination process underscore the point Ms. Drew and Mr. Henninger both make. The next Democratic party nominee for president will be Barack Obama.

Sen. Clinton's only real choice is how to exit the race gracefully.

UPDATE: I bookmarked this NY Times article the other day but never got it posted. It basically makes the same points along with a little emphasis on Obama's broader appeal.

Yet for all of her primary night celebrations in the populous states, exit polling and independent political analysts offer evidence that Mr. Obama could do just as well as Mrs. Clinton among blocs of voters with whom he now runs behind. Obama advisers say he also appears well-positioned to win swing states and believe he would have a strong shot at winning traditional Republican states like Virginia.

According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones — just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries.

And national polls suggest Mr. Obama would also do slightly better among groups that have gravitated to Republican in the past, like men, the more affluent and independents, while she would do slightly better among women. [...]

But the Pennsylvania exit polls, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for five television networks and The Associated Press, underscore a point that political analysts made on Wednesday: that state primary results do not necessarily translate into general election victories.

“I think it differs state to state, and I think either Democrat will have a good chance of appealing to many Democrats who didn’t vote for them the first time,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster not affiliated with either campaign. [...]

Mr. Hart, as well as Obama advisers, also say that Mr. Obama appears better poised than Mrs. Clinton to pick up states that Democrats struggle to carry, or rarely do, in a general election, like Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Virginia, all of which he carried in the primaries. Obama advisers say their polling indicates he is more popular with independents, and far less divisive than Mrs. Clinton, in those states.

WSJ: The Democrats have a new magician. It's Obama.

2008-04-25T08:37:00.001-04:00

Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal pronounces the end of the Clinton campaign with this:

For modern Democrats, winning the White House always requires some sort of magic to get near 50%. For the Clintons, that bag is empty. The Democrats have a new magician. It's Obama.

He noted that:

No matter how many kicks the rest of us find in such famously fun primary states as Indiana and South Dakota, it's going to be McCain versus Obama in 2008.

I believe the cement set around the Clinton coffin last Friday. The Obama campaign announced it had received the support of former Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma. [...]

The 2008 nomination was hers. There was no competition. She was a lock to run for the roses against the Republican nominee. Republicans must have had this conversation a hundred times back then: "It's Hillary. She's got it. Get over it."

Sam Nunn and David Boren by political temperament should be in her camp. Instead, they threw in with Obama, who calls his campaign "post-partisan," a ludicrous phrase. The blowback at ABC's debate makes clear that Obama is the left's man. So what did Messrs. Nunn and Boren see?

The biggest event was the Clinton Abandonment. In a campaign of surprises, none has been more breathtaking than the falling away of Clinton supporters, loyalists . . . and friends. Why?

Money. Barack Obama's mystical pull on people is nice, but nice in modern politics comes after money. Once Barack proved conclusively that he could raise big-time cash, the Clintons' strongest tie to their machine began to unravel. Today he's got $42 million banked. She's got a few million north of nothing.

But it's more than that. Barack Obama's Web-based fund-raising apparatus is, if one may say so, respectable. The Clintons' "donor base" has been something else.

Yes, that's been noted elsewhere. The 1996 John Huang-Lippo-China fund-raising scandal, Hillary's difficulty with Norman Hsu, the reliance on the Tan family, Bill's 60th birthday gala which has been noted before, her list of donors with legal difficulties and dubious backgrounds.

Amazing that the mainstream hasn't gotten around to doing their "vetting" on that point until now. Just waking up to the idea that Hillary really isn't fully vetted yet? Well, it seems the Wall Street Journal has finally gotten there.

UPDATE: I didn't even mention the story about Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra and Kazakhstan or Bill's involvement with Ron Burkle and Dubai World or his involvement in Acoona or Senator Clinton's involvement in the 2000 Hollywood fundraising bash. That fundraising effort resulted in Andrew Grossman admitting wrongdoing and a private settlement with the FEC (for more info, enter case # 5225 at this FEC link) and a civil lawsuit which is proceeding in California* in which she will have to testify, most likely shortly before the November election. According to that article, the trial date is supposed to be set in a hearing today in California.

There's more background in this youtube clip from ABC's 20/20 program and if you don't think this will come out in the general election mudslinging fest, you're sadly mistaken. The wingnut sites that I unfortunately viewed in the process of researching that particular story make it extremely clear that they can't wait for her to be the nominee. They feel they have so much dirt to unload on her.

----

* I apologize for linking to WorldNetDaily but evidently no other media organization is following the various hearings and motions in this civil suit.

Balloon Juice Rules

2008-04-24T15:29:00.000-04:00

John Cole at Balloon Juice has such a deliciously wicked sense of snark.

In a post reflecting on the rice rationing at Sam's Club and Costco, and the arrival of the $100 fill-up at the gas pump, he writes:

For all the Canadian readers who are upset they don’t get to contribute to the Obama campaign, here is how you can help. We have six more months of Bush, and at this rate, what we need most from our allies are a stable currency and the willingness to send in the RCMP to help stop the food riots. Thanks in advance.

In an analysis of one of Bill Kristol's unfortunate assaults on the English language and the politically-conscious public, John summed it up with:

"I tried to get back into things this morning, and the first thing I read was Bill Kristol attempting to determine political world views by analyzing campaign Passover statements. Seriously. Up next, Red State attempts to figure out the candidate’s tax policy by examining past Hallmark Mother’s Day cards they have sent. [...]

Apparently Red State will not be examining Hallmark cards, as they are too busy sniffing out godless communists at google. In all seriousness, this Red State piece has to be considered an early frontrunner to sweep the 2008 Golden Wingnut Awards.

Why do white voters matter more than black voters?

2008-04-24T12:33:00.001-04:00

Al Giordano at The Field has an excellent post up that I'm not going to attempt to excerpt. It must be read in its entirety. The maps are very interesting but just as important is the comment highlighted by Jack and Jill.

I wish the chattering classes would address this question.

Why, in all the MediaMath^TM discussions we've seen on the talkinghead shows, do white voters matter more than black voters?

Chuck Todd and Charlie Cook: The Game's Over, Hillary

2008-04-24T12:26:00.000-04:00

Chuck Todd: 'Impossible for Obama to Lose His Lead'

Charlie Cook weighs in once again, noting that Hillary has won some battles but she has lost the war.

The good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she’s winning a lot of battles. The bad news is that the war is pretty much lost. Sure, she won Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary by a strong 9 points in the face of being outspent on television ads by Barack Obama 2-to-1. She also won Ohio, Rhode Island, and at least the primary part of the bizarre “Texas two-step” primary-and-caucus combination on March 4. But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway. [...]

At the end of the day, the popular vote for the Democratic nomination means nothing. I doubt that having won the popular vote in the 2000 general election is of much solace to Al Gore. Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points. [...]

But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.

H/T to dkos diarist timmyc

WSJ Editor quits - Is Rupert involved in Syria story?

2008-04-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

Larisa Alexandrovna exposes the WSJ report on what was at stake when Israel bombed Syria last year. It seems it's not all as the WSJ or the Bush admin is spinning. From Larisa's blog, at-Largely:

Massive Propaganda Laundry at the Wall Street Journal...

This may or may not be related to why the Wall Street Journal's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, quit yesterday, but it sure looks to be connected. The "this" that I am referring to is the propaganda piece published in the WSJ - now owned by propaganda magnate, R. Murdoch - today on what went down in Syria last year:

"North Korea was helping Syria build a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor before Israel bombed the site last September, the Bush administration is set to tell Congress.

The new information could increase the position of hard-liners in Congress and the administration who have argued against a deal being negotiated to dismantle North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. The hard-liners say Pyongyang hasn't provided enough assurances it will dismantle its atomic arsenal in return for economic and diplomatic incentives.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. has made public information about the strike in Syria, though speculation has been widespread that the targeted site was a nascent nuclear reactor. Some Republicans have charged that the U.S. is playing down the matter to avoid hurting talks with North Korea.

Larisa quotes more of the WSJ assertions and then follows up with this:

The claims regarding a Syrian nuclear facility are patently false. How do I know? Because I was on the story for months. It is not true that North Korea is helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. What is true, however, is that Syria has a chemical weapons program - that for some reason no one seems much interested in. But I suppose for the Cheney mechanism to move forward, introducing a whole new type of WMD to the mix might confuse the propaganda.

Furthermore, anyone from the CIA who testifies to Congress that Israel bombed a nuclear facility in Syria last year will be all-out lying. Let's go back to my first article on the bombing of Syria by the Israeli military:

"Israel did not strike a nuclear weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 6, instead striking a cache of North Korean missiles, current and former intelligence officials say.

American intelligence sources familiar with key events leading up to the Israeli air raid tell RAW STORY that what the Syrians actually had were North Korean No-Dong missiles, possibly located at a site in either the city of Musalmiya in the northern part of Syria or further south around the city of Hama.

While reports have alleged the US provided intelligence to Israel or that Israel shared their intelligence with the US, sources interviewed for this article believe that neither is accurate.

By most accounts of intelligence officials, both former and current, Israel and the US both were well aware of the activities of North Korea and Syria and their attempts to chemically weaponize the No-Dong missile (above right). It therefore remains unclear why an intricate story involving evidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons program and/or enriched uranium was put out to press organizations.

The North Korean missiles -- described as "legacy" by one source and "older generation" by another -- were not nuclear arms."

You want on the record sourcing kids? Here you go, from my same article:

"Vincent Cannistraro, Director of Intelligence Programs for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan and Chief of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center under President George H. W. Bush, said Sunday that what the Israelis hit was "absolutely not a nuclear weapons facility."

"Syria has a small nuclear research facility and has had it for several years," Cannistraro said. "It is not capable of enriching uranium to weapons capability levels. Some Israelis speculated that the Syrians had succeeded in doing just that, but according to the US intelligence experts that is simply not true."'

There's more good reporting from Larisa along with some well-informed speculation which I'd encourage you to read. Then I'd recommend taking some selected quotes from the articles she references and sending them to your congressional representative and senators today. Tell them not to be taken in by the testimony from the Bush admin spinners.

Jon Stewart says it for me

2008-04-24T09:47:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama: On Iraq and National Security

2008-03-21T08:40:00.002-04:00

Year No. 6

2008-03-20T16:54:00.004-04:00

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.

Items of Interest

2008-03-19T17:19:00.001-04:00

-- 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:

(click here to view)

Deb Milbrath
Freelance
Mar 19, 2008

EditorialCartoonists.com

Obama and the American psyche

2008-03-18T12:11:00.005-04:00

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.

Items of Interest

2008-03-17T11:57:00.001-04:00

-- 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

Obama, his church and his former pastor

2008-03-16T12:29:00.001-04:00

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.

Hillary's Endorsements and Earmarks

2008-03-15T17:37:00.001-04:00

-- 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?

2008-03-15T13:06:00.009-04:00

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

2008-03-15T13:06:00.007-04:00

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, inexperienced, 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.

Now, 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.

McCain and Hagee

2008-03-14T12:08:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-14T08:44:00.005-04:00

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

... 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.

Geraldine -- Just shut up

2008-03-12T18:25:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-12T07:59:00.004-04:00

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.

Obama sets the record straight

2008-03-10T16:42:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-08T09:05:00.001-05:00

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.

Hothead McCain

2008-03-07T14:11:00.004-05:00

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

2008-03-07T12:51:00.003-05:00

-- 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.

More Clinton Campaign Dirty Tricks

2008-03-05T13:45:00.003-05:00

-- 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

2008-03-05T13:43:00.001-05:00

-- 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

2008-03-05T13:23:00.001-05:00

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

2008-03-05T13:12:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-05T11:17:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-05T09:56:00.005-05:00

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.

I'm Not Ready to Make Nice

2008-03-04T17:56:00.001-05:00

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

2008-03-04T14:34:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-04T13:24:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-04T11:02:00.000-05:00

-- 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.

Winter Soldier II

2008-03-04T09:37:00.011-05:00

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)

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

2008-03-04T07:59:00.002-05:00

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?

Incompetents'R'Us

2008-03-03T15:06:00.001-05:00

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

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

2008-03-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

Lee Stranahan strikes again.

Howard Dean on John McCain

2008-03-03T13:58:00.000-05:00

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

Going with the flow in Beaumont, TX

2008-03-03T13:44:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-03T12:25:00.003-05:00

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

Items of Interest

2008-03-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

-- 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

2008-03-03T10:12:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-03T08:52:00.003-05:00

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.

creative class II

2008-03-02T13:07:00.003-05:00

The creative class and Obama

2008-03-02T12:22:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-02T11:50:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-02T11:38:00.003-05:00

H/T to Ben Smith @ Politico

Back to the future of gasoline

2008-03-01T09:52:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

-- 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.

The Paucity of Hillary's Crisis 'Experience' Exposed

2008-03-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

From The National Journal Hotline via Politico,

It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

Go listen.

Good question, John. Way to go.

Everything you need to tell your neighbors about Obama

2008-02-29T15:27:00.001-05:00

Baratunde (funny African American comedian who appeared at YearlyKos) has put up a remarkable diary at dailykos that you must go read. His story is great. And then download all the goodies he's included and use them.

How To Canvass For Obama: Toolkit, Arguments & Anecdotes

and then check out the newest Obama youtube video from will.i.am

Yes. We. Can.

Teaching children to hate

2008-02-29T15:15:00.002-05:00

This is too sad for words.

H/T to Sully and The Stranger

Real plagiarism by WH staffer Tim Goeglein

2008-02-29T13:48:00.003-05:00

First, a shout out to Hillary's campaign people. This is plagiarism.

Nancy Nall, former reporter for the Fort Wayne, IN News-Sentinel, spotted something a little unusual in a column written for her former employer by Tim Goeglein, who has "worked in the Bush White House since 2001 as the Bush administration's liaison to religious organizations".

When I saw he had a piece in the paper Thursday, the day after Buckley died, I thought for a second the wait was over, then spotted the headline — Education: Ideas worth defending, honesty of reflective thought — and realized, no, this has been in the pipeline for a while.

Not that it was a total disappointment. I started to read, and a name jumped out at me — “Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey,” described as a “notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth.” Now, I’m sure Tim’s spare brain space isn’t cluttered, as mine is, with “American Idol,” the internet and what’s-for-dinner concerns. Certainly string quartets waft through his paneled study, where he reads and thinks under the mounted ibex head, far from the vulgar buzz of pop culture. Surely he can acquaint himself with notable professors of philosophy at Dartmouth while I watch the Oscars. But this name was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it. And look what I found.

Go look at her examples and scroll down and look at the updates to the post in which other commenters and bloggers have now identified other examples of Mr. Goeglein's plagiarism.

The Ben Domenech school of writing indeed. H/T to Atrios

Hillary's already had her red phone moment

2008-02-29T12:54:00.008-05:00

Via Ben Smith at Politico,

Obama responded to Clinton's ad in a speech to veterans in Houston today, according to prepared remarks. He accused her of playing on fear, and echoed his staff's retort that she's had, and blown, her red phone moment:

Now before we open this up for conversation, I just want to take a moment to respond to an ad that Sen. Clinton is apparently running today that asks, “Who do you want answering the phone in the White House when it’s 3 a.m. and something has happened in the world?”

We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on peoples’ fears to scare up votes.

Well it won’t work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is — what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer.

And we need go no further than this bit of advice from Bill Clinton in 2004:

One of Clinton's laws of politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you, and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes; you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope," he said.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

UPDATE: kubla000 found the video clip of Bill's advice

Don't you just wish you could say that?

2008-02-29T12:36:00.002-05:00

In following some links around the interweb today, I came across a piece at the UK Independent that made my eyes widen a little. Matthew Norman has such a way with words.

Under section 17 (b) iv, the socalled "Clinton Indestructibility Amendment to the Political Pundits (Smart Arses, Know-Alls, and Assorted Puffed-Up Ponces) Act 1991, it is a statutory offence to begin this obituary without the pre-emptive disclaimer: "Barring a miracle..."

The amendment briefly fell into disuse in January when, after her disastrous showing in the Iowa caucuses, Hillary was hubristically written off. Nemesis struck three days later with The Miracle of the Coffee Shop Lachrymals, and after New Hampshire no one has dared ignore 17 (b) iv again. So then...

Barring a miracle, it ends for Hillary early next Wednesday (our time) with the release of the exit polls from Texas. It could even end a few hours before that, should Barack Obama win Ohio. But that's an even money contest, whereas he is a red-hot 1-3 favourite in Texas. This is the state Bill himself said she must win to stay in the race, and God have mercy on him if she doesn't because Hillary will be needing a scapegoat, and there's only one winning candidate for that post. She might have to sew them back on first, but among the multiple personalities she's unveiled of late there must be room for a seamstress.

During the past 10 days, Hillary has been changing from role to role with bewildering speed. She concluded one TV debate, in what was mistaken for a valedictory, by saying she was deeply honoured to share the stage with Obama. While the audience rose to cheer her, the poll numbers rose to cheer him. So the next day she did a total volte face, and scolded him harshly for dirty campaigning ("she who smelt it, dealt it" coming to mind here).

You had to admire the chutzpah, but it didn't help, and nor did her next performance as victim of wicked media bias. Then the campaign took a stroll down Karl Rove Avenue, raising the Muslim sleeper issue by releasing that snap of Obama in Somali tribesman gear, and that bombed too. Currently she is veering between new but wildly unfocused attacks and repeating the trite bletherings (Ready On Day One, and so on) that haven't exactly enthused the electorate so far.

You'd need a heart of diamond-coated tungsten not to laugh, because even now that the obese soprano is audibly gargling her scales backstage, Hillary still doesn't comprehend how it's gone so wrong. The US media is less baffled, ascribing it primarily to electoral history's worst campaign since Noah ran for the Ararat House of Representatives on the "I'll keep the sun shining!" ticket, and you can hear the sharpening of scalpels from 3,000 miles away as the pathologists of the East Coast commentariat prepare to dissect her mistakes in the autopsy.

There's more where that came from.

Amazing what you can say when you're not worried about access journalism.

Matt Drudge - Wanker of the Week

2008-02-29T10:04:00.002-05:00

Matt Drudge -- those words cannot be spoken with enough contempt -- screws up.

ACLU estimates over 1,000,000 names on terrorist watch list soon

2008-02-28T19:08:00.003-05:00

From the Baltimore Sun:

The American Civil Liberties Union is warning today that by July there could be as many as one million names in terrorist watch-list databases maintained by the federal government, with many of the names those of innocent people who get repeatedly hassled by additional security scrutiny when they attempt to fly.

[...]

"At the current rate of growth, the U.S. watch lists will contain a million records by July. If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

WIRED magazine's post had some follow-up action in the comments from someone associated with the list at DHS plus a more complete explanation of how the list is used. It's worth taking the time to read their complete post.

They promised a follow-up article in a few days.

West Wing Based on Obama

2008-02-28T16:15:00.003-05:00

Check out this one from SlateV.com ...

USAF hates blogs

2008-02-28T16:09:00.002-05:00

Yep, that's right. Blogs are evil. At least, according to some Air Force brass.

The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."

Until recently, each major command of the Air Force had some control over what sites their troops could visit, the Air Force Times reports. Then the Air Force Network Operations Center, under the service's new "Cyber Command," took over.

[...]

As a result, airmen posting online have cited instances of seemingly innocuous sites -- such as educational databases and some work-related sites -- getting wrapped up in broad proxy filters.

"A couple of years back, I fought this issue concerning the Counterterrorism Blog," one Air Force officer tells Danger Room. "An AF [Air Force] professional education course website recommended it as a great source for daily worldwide CT [counterterrorism] news. However it had been banned, because it called itself a blog. And as we all know, all blogs are bad!"

He's joking, of course. But blogs and social networking sites have faced all sorts of restrictions on military networks, for all sorts of reasons. MySpace and YouTube are officially banned, for eating up too much bandwidth. Stringent regulations, read literally, require Army officers to review each and every item one of his soldiers puts online, in case they leak secrets. And in televised commercials, screensavers and fliers, troops are told that blogging is a major security risk -- even though official sites have proven to leak many, many more secrets. Now there's the Air Force's argument, that blogs aren't legitimate media outlets -- and therefore, shouldn't be read at work.

But this view isn't universally held in the military. Many believe blogs to be a valuable source of information -- and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, at home and abroad. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. effort in Iraq, has commended military bloggers. Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who replaced Petraeus as the head of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, recently wrote (in a blog post, no less) that soldiers should be encouraged to "get onto blogs and [s]end their YouTube videos to their friends and family."

Within the Air Force, there's also a strong contingent that wants to see open access to the sites -- and is mortified by the AFNOC's restrictions. "When I hear stuff this utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.... Piles of torn out hair are accumulating around my desk as we speak," one senior Air Force official writes in an e-mail. "I'm certain that by blocking blogs for official use, our airmen will never, ever be able to read them on their own home computers, so we have indeed saved them from a contaminating influence. Sorry, didn't mean to drip sarcasm on your rug."

One of the blogs banned is In From the Cold, which examines military, intelligence and political affairs from a largely right-of-center perspective. It's written by "Nathan Hale," the pseudonym for a former journalist and Air Force intelligence officer, who spent more than two decades in the service. He tells Danger Room, "If knowledge and information are power -- and no one disputes that -- then why not trust your people and empower them to explore all sides of issues affecting the service, air power and national security?"

Trust people to use their minds? How anti-Bush-policy can you get?

Ben Smith on Who ID'ed Obama First

2008-02-28T14:18:00.002-05:00

From Ben Smith of Politico:

I've been reading back to some of the coverage before it became clear, early last year, that Obama would enter the race, or that he would be as strong as he now is. And I thought it was worth giving some credit to writers and others who seem to have gotten it right -- about his strength, whether or not he closes the deal.

Anyway, give Ryan Lizza some credit. He wrote the December, 2005 New Republic piece titled, "Why Barack Obama Should Run for President in 2008."

The next November, Lynn Sweet wrote with confidence that he'd run, and mapped out his campaign.

That December, Markos Moulitsas wrote an item titled "2008: If Obama runs, he wins."

Jonathan Alter also flagged Obama's strength in a Newsweek cover story late that year.

I'd add the documentarian Amy Rice, who started working on what is now a quietly, eagerly anticipated campaign film not all that long after his 2004 convention speech.

My latest entry is in May, 2007, when Andrew Sullivan called him the "Reagan of the Left" in terms that are very familiar now.

This isn't by any means a comprehensive list, just a few that stuck in my head. Please send in other examples, and I'll add them.

UPDATE: How could I forget Eric Zorn? He predicted an Obama run on January 20, 2005; and outlined his great strength very early last year.

Also, Tomasky in November of 2006 looked at the potential for Obama's "new politics."

Items of Interest

2008-02-28T13:19:00.001-05:00

-- There's a nice analysis job in this article: Who's the Better Closer?

-- George Will takes a hit at McCain:

-- Then there's this item from David Ignatius.

Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light.

What distinguishes his new book, "Leaderless Jihad," is that it peels away the emotional, reflexive responses to terrorism that have grown up since Sept. 11, 2001, and looks instead at scientific data Sageman has collected on more than 500 Islamic terrorists -- to understand who they are, why they attack and how to stop them.

The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.

I'm adding another book to my list to read.

-- Daniel Henninger of the WSJ has an interesting analysis piece on Hillary in "Hillary's Close-Up". He gives credit to Howard Dean and the netroots.

A year ago, Hillary Clinton assumed the effort would bring her the prize. Instead, it has brought her to the precipice. What happened? What was supposed to be triumph has turned to tragedy. Who rewrote the plot?

The first revision came at the hand of Howard Dean. The Vermont governor's quixotic 2004 presidential run did one big thing: It let the netroots out. It empowered the Democratic Left. Web-based "progressives" proved they could raise lots of political money and bring pressure, especially when allied with labor unions.

They didn't defeat centrist Joe Lieberman in 2006, but they drove him out of the party. They pushed the party's Iraq policy under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into total, rejectionist opposition. In this world, the Petraeus surge is a failure, period. Thus, Obama calmly gives the surge little or no credit. Also in this world, trade and Nafta are anathema, as seen in the House refusal to pass the trade agreement with Colombia, the U.S.'s strongest ally in South America.

What the netroots has done is bunch up the party ideologically. While the Republican Party slices conservative ideology as thinly as aged prosciutto, the Democrats, in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, are all swinging a populist anvil -- with the left hand.

I don't believe he meant it as a positive compliment but I'll take it that way and I know a few friends who will do so as well.

McCain, Al Qaeda and Iraq

2008-02-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

This pair of video clips is interesting. It shows the exchange between John McCain and Barack Obama yesterday on Al Qaeda in Iraq. Watch the first one which shows the CNN view of the exchange.

Now watch Barack's complete response to McCain.

I think that Barack got the better of McCain on yesterday's exchange on Al Qaeda in Iraq and he did a better job at it than CNN dared to show.

Items of Interest

2008-02-27T17:03:00.001-05:00

-- Tim Russert did not distinguish himself by last night's performance in the last Democratic candidates' debate. I've reread this diary at dkos at least three times now and it keeps on getting better. It puts Russert's Farrakhan business in perspective.

-- Matt Yglesias had already sussed up Timmy in "The Unbearable Inanity of Tim Russert". Just add last night's 'gotcha' performance to the list of inanities.

-- Interesting post at TPMCafe on why Obama should reject public financing for the general election campaign.

-- MoDo (aka Maureen Dowd) takes a swipe or two at Hillary. One thing you have to say for Maureen's writing -- the images are always vivid.

-- US magazine slide show with captions by Barack.

-- One of the most temperate and reasoned rebuttals of the Obama smear emails I've seen.

Over 1,000,000 Voters Fund Obama's Campaign

2008-02-27T13:43:00.005-05:00

I'd say that Obama's campaign is already publicly funded. This TPMCafe post adds a little more thought to Obama's options on public funding.

I did a little digging and found Michael Dobbs' WaPo Factchecker column on this topic which has links to all the original documents. My bottom line differs from Dobbs. There is nothing in any of the prior letters or statements in which Obama says he will unilaterally commit to public financing. Even the most recent specific statement in Sept. 2007 indicates that if he becomes the nominee, he would pursue a joint plan with the Republican nominee.

Political Prosecution of Gov. Siegelman?

2008-02-26T10:56:00.001-05:00

60 Minutes aired a segment on Sunday evening about the prosecution of Gov. Siegelman by the Bush DOJ and asks if it was politically motivated. Somehow it failed to air in parts of Alabama. The corporate office says the feed was fine. Larisa Alexandrovna has the definitive post on Siegelman, the 60 Minutes feature and what happened in Alabama. If you don't know who Siegelman is, I'd advise checking out her post. And if you missed the 60 Minutes segment yourself, CBS has kindly posted it on the net. Check it out below.

Diarist homerun adds this note at dailykos:

It has been 20 months since Siegelman’s trial ended and no trial transcript has been produced by Fuller's court. This is in violation of the rules of criminal procedure which require a transcript within 30 days of sentencing. Siegelman can't appeal his conviction with out an official trial transcript.

Source: donsiegelman.org

What kind of justice system do we have? What is going on in Alabama and the DOJ?

Obama Endorsements

2008-02-26T10:53:00.001-05:00

-- Senator Dodd is endorsing Senator Obama

-- A former Cleveland mayor switches his endorsement from Clinton to Obama.

As an African-American, I am proud to see Barack Obama make such an extraordinary effort to become the President of the United States. But being Black is not enough for me to vote against my friend. I am voting for Barack because he has rekindled my hope again through his experience, vision and leadership for change in a political system that has gone so awry.

[...]

Yes, Senator Obama gives me great hope, but hope is not enough when you're voting for a presidential candidate. I believe Barack Obama has the experience, ability, courage and vision to translate his call for change into a new direction for America just as other great Presidents have in the past. He is no less qualified or able than any other candidate, and the fact that he's poised to become the Democratic nominee for President is testimony to the good judgment and need for change desired by so many Americans.

I wonder how many other Clinton endorsers are rethinking their endorsement as Michael R. White has.

A Question for Sen. McCain

2008-02-26T09:37:00.001-05:00

From an Iraq vet via Votevets.org

H/T to Marc Ambinder

Brandon Friedman identifies her as "U.S. Army Captain and VoteVets Senior Advisor Rose Forrest" in his dkos diary along with some more info about McCain's reponse to the ad.

Videos and Obama

2008-02-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

The KV post today features two new videos. The first is an interesting compilation of pictures and video clips from Barack Obama's life. The second is a highly creative collaborative video effort based on the Yes. We. Can. video by Dipdive.

Tip for the collaborative video: Click on 'Explore Now' and then run your cursor over the images while the video is playing.

It's interesting how Sen. Obama's campaign has inspired so many creative efforts.

Mark Halperin wrote what?

2008-02-26T07:49:00.002-05:00

I'd expect to see this type of speculation at RedState, not on the pages or website of a major mainstream media publication such as TIME. Recommending that one presidential candidate use bigoted, racist appeals in campaigning against another is not journalism. Perhaps it's Halperin's application for media strategist for John McCain's campaign.

Brad Delong and Mark Kleiman have more to say about it.

Obama's Edge in Foreign Affairs

2008-02-26T07:21:00.002-05:00

Fareed Zakaria acknowledges what an edge Sen. Obama's upbringing gives him in foreign affairs. It's something that I know is true from my own upbringing overseas in Liberia.

I never thought I'd be in this position. There's a debate taking place about what matters most when making judgments about foreign policy—experience and expertise on the one hand, or personal identity on the other. And I find myself coming down on the side of identity.

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been squabbling over who has the better qualifications to lead the world's only superpower.

[...]

Obama's argument is about more than identity. He was intelligent and prescient about the costs of the Iraq War. But he says that his judgment was formed by his experience as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I'd agree with Obama. I've spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I've got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I've never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I've never written an article that contains the phrase "As an Indian-American ..." or "As a person of color ..."

But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have over others in understanding foreign affairs, it is that I know what it means not to be an American. I know intimately the attraction, the repulsion, the hopes, the disappointments that the other 95 percent of humanity feels when thinking about this country. I know it because for a good part of my life, I wasn't an American. I was the outsider, growing up 8,000 miles away from the centers of power, being shaped by forces over which my country had no control.

When I hear confident claims about liberty and democracy in the Third World, I always think about rural India, where I spent a great deal of time when I was young, and wonder what those peasants struggling to survive would make of the abstractions of the American Enterprise Institute. When I read commentators fulminating about women wearing the burqa—which I don't much like either—I think about one of my aunts, who has always worn one, and of the many complex reasons she keeps it on, none of which involves approval of misogyny or support for suicide bombers. When I talk to people in a foreign country, no matter how strange, they are always, at some level, familiar to me.

[...]

We're moving into a very new world, one in which countries from Brazil to South Africa to India and China are getting richer, stronger and prouder. For America to thrive, we will have to develop a much deeper, richer, more intuitive understanding of them and their peoples. There are many ways to attain this, but certainly being able to feel it in your bones is one powerful way. Trust me on this. As a Ph.D. in international relations, I know what I'm talking about.

H/T to Andrew Sullivan and Brad Delong