The Clintons have been shouting far and wide about how the Gallup poll has Hillary winning over McCain while Obama has been losing. But todays’ poll has Obama with a 10-point lead over Hillary nation-wide, and while Clinton still tops McCain 47-45, Obama wins over McCain 46-45. At best, a statistical tie.
But the truth they don’t want to speak is, these polls don’t mean squat. The election is six months away. Six months ago Hillary was inevitable. In November, Hillary could have been toast, or a runaway victor. So could Obama be in six months’ time.
The only thing that actually matters is that by the rules, Obama has won and now we move on, without trying to sabotage the results in order to prepare for a self-fulfilling told-you-so. We win this November, or everyone loses in an unimaginably horrific manner. Focus on what is important. Period. Move on.
It’s standard operating procedure, and fully expected by this time, but even so it’s startling, even mind-boggling, how the media continues to so bald-facedly cover for McCain. Even as the media lays focus on Obama for swapping Auschwitz for Buchenwald–once (not three times, like McCain did with Sunni and Shiite)–the same media is paying only 1/4 as much attention (18 stories for the Gramm scandal, 78 for Obama’s statement) to the fact that McCain’s chief economic advisor was a paid lobbyist for a Swiss bank, actively lobbying Congress on subprime mortgage legislation for UBS while advising McCain on subprime mortgage bailout policy. A bank which the advisor still works for, a bank which is advising its banking team not to travel to the U.S. for fear of being indicted. Josh Marshall put it this way:
Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I’m not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?
Few of the stories now out there on McCain and UBS are by any recognizable news outlet–the biggest is MSNBC, which broke the story, while almost all the big media sources cover the Obama story. For the most part, the MSM is simply burying the McCain scandal.
The lobbyist story is way bigger than a one-time slip–so why the heavy disparity in reporting?
McCain is now bashing Obama for another stupid reason:
“Sen. Obama has been to Iraq once — a little over two years ago he went and he has never seized the opportunity except in a hearing to meet with Gen. [David] Petraeus,” McCain said at a campaign event in Reno, Nevada. “My friends, this is about leadership and learning.”
Oy. Look, how many times had McCain been to Iraq when he repeatedly confused Sunni and Shiite? How many trips had he already gone on when he claimed you could walk through Baghdad without a security detail or even a flak jacket, or that Petraeus’ vehicle is not armored? Clearly, these trips don’t do McCain much good, unless they serve to correct him from making the most fundamental stupid mistakes. Obama seems to know Sunni from Shiite, and that Iraq is too dangerous to walk through unarmed, and that we need to withdraw, so he doesn’t need to go.
But more to the point: such trips are for show only. They give you the political cache of saying “I’ve been there” and maybe “I’ve got guts,” while not giving you the actual right to claim either bravery or expertise. As one soldier put it last year, these visits only serve to harass the soldiers and distract them from their mission:
Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and “battlefield” tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what’s going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they’ve been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.
He’s talking about you, McCain!
Obama should either ignore McCain or call him out on this–but unfortunately, it looks like Obama’s going to make a visit there himself, making the less-than-impressive claim that he intended to all along, which at the least is better than accepting McCain’s let-me-show-Iraq-to-you-dummy invitation. But no trip he makes will tell him anything he needs to know. It would be far more instructive for him to quietly meet with groups of veterans and retired generals who served on the ground, know the story, and no longer have to toe the party line that Bush lays down. That would be worth a hundred Iraq trips.
Sachi and I have decided to go with an outfit called “Subir” to do our wedding this September. A few weeks ago, they treated us to a sample dinner so we could choose the dishes to be served. About ten or so couples were there for that particular dinner. We were served two versions of each course, and allowed to decide which one to go with.
First, they led us through the wedding hall again. The good news: they do have an Internet connection, which means that my family in California can “attend”; I don’t know what kind of view we’ll be able to give them, but they can make a video appearance for everyone at the hall in real time via Skype, on the big screen.
Here’s the view Sachi and I will have, from that table up on the dais. They tell us we can get down from there and sit at an ordinary table at some point, which I would prefer; I’d rather not be on display like that all afternoon.
A table setting:
They take service pretty seriously at Subir. Whenever guests go through doors, for example, they have two people at either side so they can open both doors at the same time for you, in a bit of dramatic flair. Their service people are very helpful, attentive, and polite. Here, the chef introduces the serving staff:
They begin you off with some appetizers, and some drinks, including wine and champagne. If we understood them right, it’s an open bar, all you can drink.
For the first course, we chose this dish, smoked salmon crepe with vegetables in raspberry sauce with vinaigrette. Keep in mind that this is a lunch menu, by the way; we start at 1:00 pm, if I recall correctly.
The next dish, also fish, was a fried tai, or sea bream, in a white wine sauce.
For the entrée, we chose a very nice chicken filet dish:
Along with that, you get a nice salad with rolls:
After that is wedding cake:
And to top it off, they have a chocolate fountain, with strawberries, pineapple, marshmallows, and bananas.
This is the meal all the guests who attend will get. It was pretty good. The wedding will be on Saturday, September 27, very soon after we get back from our wedding in the U.S.
Q: Governor, will you spend what it takes if the US is involved in a war?
Bush: Well, let me put it to you this way: When I’m the president, we’re not going to obfuscate when it comes to foreign policy. If I ever commit troops, I’m going to do so with one thing in mind. And that’s to win. To win in a fashion that not only achieves victory, but gets us out of the theater in quick order.
Hey, zero out of three ain’t bad. In fact, it’s a trifecta!
Other classic Bush campaign promises from two elections ago:
“It must be in our vital interest whether we ever send troops. The mission must be clear. Soldiers must understand why we’re going. The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well-defined. I’m concerned that we’re overdeployed around the world.” –Oct 17, 2000
“Morale in today’s military is low. We’re having trouble meeting recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we’re overextended in too many places.” –October 3, 2000
“But what they ask our nation must provide: a coherent vision of America’s duties, a clear military mission in time of crisis, and, when sent in harm’s way, the best support and equipment our nation can supply.” –May 31, 1999
“Would deter terrorist attacks by ensuring that every group or nation understands that if they sponsor such attacks, the U.S. response will be devastating.” –GeorgeWBush.com, April 2, 2000 (too bad he wasn’t more specific about who would be devastated)
It’s pretty much the only one Hillary has left. She played the “inevitable” card, and it quickly folded; she played the “superdelegate” card, and that paled and eventually reversed. Then she played the race card, the “electability” card, the blue-collar card, and even the unmentionable card. Now she’s hanging on to the last vestiges of the “it’s not over until I say it is” card as her “Florida and Michigan” cards begin to fade into the realm of the unlikely.
So now she’s in full swing with the victim card. The campaign has been incredibly sexist, she claims–she’s a victim of gender discrimination! Really? How? Sure, some bozos held up a sign saying “Iron My Shirt,” but that helped Hillary, as have most overtly sexist acts. Even the story in New Hampshire about her getting emotional–never mind that a man could be judged in just as sexist a manner over tears and gender roles, never mind that Hillary got the emotional-manipulation analysis because of her behavior and not because of stereotypes, Hillary made the “sexism” work for her and scored a big victory there. Sure, Hillary was asked the “diamonds or pearls” question, but then Edwards was teased about his hairstyles and Obama for his ties and pins. There is undoubtedly sexism in play, but Hillary has benefitted as much if not more from gender than she has lost–witness all the hardcore Hillary supporters backing her because she’s a woman. And let’s not forget, Obama has been hurt in several states where Hillary supporters have said that they were voting against the black guy. You cannot name one state where Obama won because of the anti-woman vote. Hillary is not a victim here.
She’s even aggressively playing her horrific gaffe about assassination as another example of how she’s the victim, pushing with vigorous force to get everyone to accept the idea that her words were “taken out of context” and that the Obama campaign is maliciously and unfairly attacking her about it–the totality of their evidence being an email apparently sent out by a staffer with the Olbermann screed on it. Imagine the gall of actually bringing up the specter of assassination as an example of why she should stay in the race–and that is not a misinterpretation and it is not out of context, she was listing examples of how past races extended into June as reasons why she should stay in–and then using that atrociously inappropriate remark to attack the man who lives under constant threat of assassination.
Bill Clinton is also playing the victim card to its absurd conclusion:
“She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence,” Clinton said. “And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running. Her only position was, ”Look, if I lose I’ll be a good team player. We will all try to win but let’s let everybody vote and count every vote.’“
Good lord, how many prevarications in such a short utterance! She’s winning the general election? Only if you cherry-pick the polls and numbers. ”All the evidence“? Several polls have Obama out-winning Hillary.
Treated so disrespectfully? Major projection! How many times has Hillary scorned, blamed, attacked, and put down Obama? How many times has she said McCain is better? Obama has been incredibly respectful to Hillary as of late, and especially relative to how Hillary has treated him. And Bill Clinton has never seen such disrespect???
Her only position was to be a ”team player“??? Are you freaking out of your mind??? Is that why she praised McCain over Obama so many times? Is that why she’s pushing her supporters to be anti-Obama partisans? Is that why she’s bringing up assassination? Is that why she’s not bowing out gracefully and shoring up party weaknesses despite having no hope–outside of a gunman’s bullet–to win this race? If that’s ”being a team player,“ I’d hate to see her not be one!
And ”let’s let everybody vote“? You mean like she agreed not to count Michigan and Florida, how she claimed before Iowa that she’d have it all tied up by Super Tuesday? And ”count every vote“? Like all the Obama supporters in Michigan who voted for ”uncommitted“ and Hillary now wants many of them shoveled off of Obama’s plate and onto hers? Like she wants to count all the voters in caucus states? Like all the times she said that this state and that state ”didn’t count“?
You have to wonder what the hell they are doing. They cannot possibly think that they are going to win this, and they cannot possibly believe that they are doing the party no harm. If Obama loses the election without a major scandal on his part, it will be because Hillary sabotaged it for him. Even if Hillary tilts full speed the opposite way and supports and campaigns for Obama after she finally concedes, she still won’t be able to undo all the damage–and I have a feeling that her ”support“ will be far from full-fledged.
Far from being a team player, Hillary has shown herself to be the most single-mindedly selfish and egotistical person to take the political stage in a long time–and with the company of Bush and others like him on the Republican side, that is saying a great deal. That is not sexist–it is based wholly upon Clinton’s own actions–nor is it disrespectful to make note of the plain truth.
A traveler arrived at Narita two days ago and left the airport with his bags 142 grams heavier than when he arrived. The officials at Narita kindly comped the visitor 5 ounces of marijuana, slipping it into his suitcase and leaving it there.
True story, though the intentions were different. A customs official put the marijuana into the bag as a real-world test for his pot-sniffing dog. The dog failed to find the cannabis, and the official failed to keep his eye on the bag. The customs people are not supposed to do this kind of thing–use actual travelers’ bags in exercises, that is (I’m fairly confident that they’re also not supposed to give away free pot).
This would be more funny if it weren’t for the fact that had this traveler continued on to a country in Asia where such baggage finds are not kindly looked upon, he or she could have been in deep, deep trouble.
The traveler apparently discovered the hashish and returned it to the airport officials. Only in Japan, eh?
Here’s how Bush wants us to “sacrifice” for the troops in respect to Memorial Day:
This Memorial Day, I ask all Americans to honor the sacrifices of those who have served you and our country. One way to do so is by joining in a moment of remembrance that will be marked across our country at 3:00 p.m. local time. At that moment, Major League Baseball games will pause, the National Memorial Day parade will halt, Amtrak trains will blow their whistles, and buglers in military cemeteries will play Taps. You can participate by placing a flag at a veteran’s grave, taking your family to the battlefields where freedom was defended, or saying a silent prayer for all the Americans who were delivered out of the agony of war to meet their Creator. Their bravery has preserved the country we love so dearly.
Don’t give the soldiers sufficient equipment–not even after five years of war–because that would mean less money for mercenaries and crony-no-bid-contracts. Don’t allow their flag-draped coffins to be shown or their funerals made public, because that would be politically inconvenient. Don’t keep veteran’s hospitals up to spec–in fact, let them deteriorate into hell holes. Lengthen their tours of duty, bring them back again and again with stop-loss. Deny them extra pay or benefits, even take away some. Boost recruitment by lowering education standards and even allow criminals to apply. And for god’s sake, don’t ever give them a decent exit package, like paying for their education in any reasonable way, because in repayment for their war service, we want to lock them into fighting on the battlefields for longer than is humanly possible, as evidenced by the skyrocketing post-service suicide rate amongst veterans.
No, honor them with a moment of silence, a few bands playing, maybe a train whistle here or there. More than they deserve.
This is how George A. W. O. L. Bush “honors” the troops (aside from giving up golf, kind of), with McCain lapping at his heels. Anyone who supports this should be ashamed.
Here’s a preview of sorts; it’s kind of like an animatic (a video storyboard), black & white, used to storyboard the animation. It’s with the sound and voices of the actors, and has some good lines in it.
To be released June 24th (darn, too late for my birthday). Here’s the cover art to the DVD box; like the homage, not sure about the boot-less Leela.
I just listened to the podcast for This Week while exercising, and I have to say, it was pretty disgusting. I think that Stephanopoulos really ought to preface his broadcast with a disclaimer saying that he worked for the Clintons–his bias is certainly so evident that it’s not even funny. A lot of it showed with the ABC “debate” debacle where Stephanopoulos and Gibson essentially spent the first half of the debate ripping Obama with trivialities. But it was just as evident today.
Stephanopoulos opened with the “fallout” of Hillary’s RFK gaffe, but his focus was on Hillary’s defense, on how Hillary “called out those who took my comments entirely out of context.” He then invited on David Axelrod from the Obama campaign and tore into him, accusing the campaign of “deliberately misinterpreting” Clinton’s remarks.
Then Stephanopoulos made the bizarre accusation that the Obama campaign has been sending out emails with Keith Olbermann’s special commentary on Clinton’s remarks. I have not seen any evidence of this email–Stephanopoulos does not link to any of this on the show’s web site, there is no indication of who sent these (a low-level unpaid staffer? the head of the campaign?) or whom it was sent to (a thousand people? three? friends & family? the press corps?) or in what context–what else was said, how it was presented, etc. etc.
Obviously Axelrod had never heard of this email, and Stephanopoulos probably knew that and hoped to fluster him. But Stephanopoulos obviously wasn’t trying to discuss the issue, he was trying to vilify the Obama campaign and make Clinton out to somehow be a victim.
Who did Stephanopoulos have on as his second guest? Karl Rove. I kid you not. While some are praising Stephanopoulos for pointing out that he’s an informal advisor to McCain, Stephanopoulos proceeded to toss Rove softballs about the campaign against Obama–how can McCain be constructive, what does he have to do to win–Stephanopoulos stayed congenial until it came to general Republican vs. Democratic issues, after which he became adversarial again.
Stephanopoulos ought to be ashamed of himself. If he wants to be a Hillary advocate, then he should say so and work under those pretenses. But take an issue where Hillary had clearly made a damaging gaffe and then spend the first half hour of his show attacking Obama over it and then giving Karl Rove a free podium to attack the Obama campaign? I have to wonder if Stephanopoulos even pretends to be objectively non-partisan.
FOREMAN: John McCain’s having a fundraiser with a big name guest. Who is it?
SCHNEIDER: It’s a man who can raise a lot of money from Republicans. His name is President George W. Bush. Remember him? McCain hopes nobody notices. He doesn’t want a lot of publicity that he’s allied with President Bush, but he really needs the money.
FOREMAN: OK, shhh, everyone on that one. And General David Petraeus is mulling over a very big decision. Is he also possibly getting into hot water?
SCHNEIDER: Well, he can throw a monkey wrench into the fall campaign if he announces further troop withdrawals beyond those troops that were added by President Bush. That could undercut the Democrats’ argument that you’ve got to elect a Democrat to start withdrawing the troops. And the fall campaign would be very different.
Read that and tell me there’s not a definite right-wing slant on a supposedly non-partisan program. “McCain hopes that nobody notices”? He’s holding fundraisers with Bush in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Utah, and he hopes nobody notices. Yeah, right.
The big story with the fundraiser is that even though it’s in McCain’s home state, on his home turf, even though he’s got the President of the United States showing up with him, he can’t sell any tickets to it. In his home state. They’re afraid there will be more protesters than supporters.
And the big story is that McCain is hoping nobody will notice that Bush is there? Please. These clowns didn’t even report on the fact that the fundraiser was canceled, and that a far smaller even has been moved to a “private home.”
Then they segue into a story on how troops might start coming home and that will hurt the Democrats. As if a substantial-enough number of troops could be recalled in such a way as to remove Iraq as an issue before November. Right.
Lovely to see the Liberal Media™ is still out in full force.
One of my favorite cartoons in Bizarro, by Dan Piraro. It’s a more sophisticated successor to The Far Side. I don’t know how I missed finding out about his blog, where he features and discusses his comics, in addition to some other rather comically uncomical commentary, and celeb+Piraro photos. Maybe because it’s only been around for four or five months. But I’m adding it to my daily bookmarks, and may add it to my LinkBoard™ as soon as I get around to redesigning it. Won’t he be honored.
It may surprise some of you to know that I was sort of a “teen for Jesus” for a few years back in the early 70s, and went through some of the sort of evangelical Christian indoctrination that the film [Jesus Camp] depicts. I was older than the kids in the film, and so was better able to form my own opinions about what they were teaching. Still, it is difficult for kids to discern between fact and fiction, and I believe that heavy indoctrination in anything as a child has the potential to cloud your reasoning skills later on. The ease of the Neo-cons and Fox News in convincing people that the ridiculous things they were spouting were true, and everything the rest of the world was saying was false, is a case in point.
Well I was wrong on one thing–the Zune is getting a new feature. They will start supporting games–not apps in general, but just some games, very soon. Of course, this is the same thing that the iPod got some time ago, and Apple is soon moving on to more advanced stuff. But still, I got that one wrong.
But I got something else right: the Zune is a poor bet. So believes the gaming retailer GameStop, which has announced that it will stop selling Zunes. “We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson.
They probably just carried the Zune because Microsoft pressured them to, I’m guessing–the store is game-centered, after all. That fact is even more relevant since they decided to stop selling Zunes just before the Zune adds games to its repertoire. So for MS to be pressuring a retailer to sell its wares and yet have that retailer, dependent on MS’s other products (namely the X-Box line) drop those wares is a fairly significant sign of Microsoft’s waning power.
A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.
Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.
Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.
If more protesters than supporters show up for a fundraising event in McCain’s own state, then he can’t be in all that great shape.
Meanwhile, Obama shows up in mostly-white Oregon, far from his home base in Illinois, and draws stunningly huge crowds that overflow a large public park. In a city only one-third as large as McCain’s Phoenix.
Maybe that was beginning to dawn on her, as she released the summary of her 2006 returns–not the last seven years, only part of last year’s. Completely refusing to release anything, though brassy, was still at least consistent, if not defensible. But claiming privacy and then releasing some returns, that’s not even consistent.
Cindy McCain’s finances, being directly tied in with her husband’s presidential bid, are completely relevant to this campaign and have to be released, just like everyone else’s. Now that the information is leaking through a crack, I expect it’ll all have to come out eventually.
And don’t think that the timing is a coincidence: it is not by chance that this news was released at the same time McCain released his medical records. It’s the Friday before a three-day holiday weekend, the ultimate mid-year take-out-the-trash day, to avoid getting focused on in the media.
And with Hillary creating a huge uproar with the RFK comments, the McCains caught a huge break in terms of media attention–couldn’t have timed it better had they tried.
But that’s not all the McCain news this week. Yes, there’s the pastor hypocrisy, but I already covered that, and then there are the large lobbyist/campaign staff firings, but we all know that McCain’s campaign is rife with lobbyists–the half-dozen or so that left this week are just a fraction of the whole number of D.C. lobbyists that permeate his campaign.
No, more interesting was this remark by McCain after Obvama criticized McCain for his failure to support the new GI Bill:
I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.
Blue Texan at FireDogLake has :
So I guess that means Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Rudy Guiliani — not to mention Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson — and of course Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Reynolds and pretty much every other right wing blowhard and elected Republican henceforth needs to STFU when it comes to military affairs, right?
Because it does seem that McCain is saying that if you did not serve in the military like he did, then you have no right to criticize McCain on military issues. As if having served makes you automatically, 100% right and not having served makes you automatically, 100% wrong.
Finally, someone dug up video of McCain in 2000 saying he expected to be too old to run in 2008.
Key quote: “you know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. Right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”
Right after she says that, there’s a pause, where she seems to be thinking. I have got to believe that right there she has realized that she’s made a huge mistake, and quickly concludes that she should move on, act like nothing happened, and hope that nobody notices–a politician’s instinct. If it becomes a big thing, then it does, but don’t make it so yourself. Once it came out of her mouth, it would have been nearly impossible to take it back.
A bit later, she “apologized” (saying no more than that “it was not intentional” is not a real apology), but she of course did not even come close to hitting the main point of what was wrong with what she said.
Let’s face it: when you’re giving reasons as to why you should stay in the race against a candidate who has all but technically clinched the nomination, but even more so someone like Obama, who has been under threat of assassination so long that he was given secret service protection seven months before the primaries started–well, you don’t list as one reason that presidential candidates have been assassinated in June.
There is no doubt in my mind that Clinton did not mean that she’s waiting to see whether Obama gets gunned down, much less that she hopes such a thing will happen. It is simply the fact that what she said was so incredibly inappropriate, so vastly, jarringly wrong–well, she could hardly have not known immediately that she had misspoken. Who knows why she said it–I am guessing that this kind of talk goes on in her private campaign meetings to rationalize staying in the race, and maybe Clinton simply let it slip while in a comfortable, closed discussion, forgetting for a split second that she was being filmed.
This has to be an end for Clinton, if not to her campaign, then to many of the hopes she may have been holding on to. Yes, she has gall enough for any thousand people, but to make this remark and still expect to force her way into the VP spot? While not a “Dean Scream,” it is close enough.
Not to mention, she was wrong in her logic, in several ways. As usual, she botched the metrics misleadingly in her favor. Sure, in 1992 the race lasted until June–that’s because the primaries started more than a month later, and more significantly, several big states, including California, Ohio, and New Jersey, didn’t vote until June 2.
Also, June 1992 may have been when Clinton technically crossed the finish line, but it’s not when he tied up the nomination–that happened on March 17th, when he won Illinois. By March 20th, Harkin, Tsongas and Kerrey had all dropped out of the race, and only Jerry Brown stayed in, despite being behind 991 to 143. Clinton had clinched it; the race was over in all but the technical sense.
And though Hillary denies the idea that math should play a role, Ron Brown, working for seen as backing the Clinton campaign in 1992, used the math argument in March to suggest that the lone challenger, then Jerry Brown, should pull out:
“It certainly brings it much closer to a conclusion,” said Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman. “You could argue that it’s theoretically possible for Jerry Brown to mount a come-from-behind challenge, but the math and the reality of Bill Clinton’s momentum certainly work against him.”
In fact, Democrats praised Tsongas–the real challenger to Clinton then–for doing “what needed to be done”–namely, pulling out of the race in March:
Many Democrats, including many committed to Mr. Clinton, took pains today to praise Mr. Tsongas, who entered the race almost a year ago, when Mr. Bush was near 90 percent in the public opinion polls and when the silence on the Democratic Presidential front was deafening.
“When other people looked at the polls, Paul Tsongas looked at what needed to be done for the country,” Mr. Angelides said.
Apparently, Hillary is not looking at what needs to be done for the country. She’s only looking at what needs to be done for herself.
Add to that the fact that a key Clinton Superdelegate, Dennis Cardoza, has just flipped from Clinton to Obama–and there are rumors that Cardoza leads a group of 40 Clinton delegates (not all supers) who were already prepared to jump the fence and had planned to slowly migrate into Obama’s camp.
Today’s gaffe by Hillary should make it quite a bit easier for delegates to make public their decision. Hopefully. Hillary really ought to quit while she’s–well, not ahead, but as ahead as she’s going to ever get from now on.
Let’s say that I really, really want to attend a party at your home. I bug for months on end, follow you around, virtually begging you to let me go to your party. Finally, you relent and invite me. I am ecstatic–I tell everyone, “hey, so-and-so invited me! I’m going to the party!!”
Can I then, later, “reject your invitation”?
Sure, technically, you invited me, and I suppose I can technically reject it. But to say I “reject” it sounds like I never begged you for it in the first place. Especially since the reason I chose to reject it is a reason that I should have known long before. Yeah, those parties are crazy and you do crazy things at them, but everybody knew that. For me to suddenly act surprised that crazy stuff happens and then haughtily “reject” you makes me a bit of an ass, doesn’t it?
The right thing to say to you is, “I think you and I have some incompatibilities, I should have thought it out more carefully before I approached you. It’s just not going to work out. And to be fair, I won’t trash-talk you to maintain my image. I’ll just bow out of this thing as gracefully as I can.” Then to other people, “Hey, I made an error in judgment–it happens. I can’t blame so-and-so too much, it was my choice in the first place. That person’s views and mine simply differ too much. So I’ve made the tough choice that will upset different people for different reasons, but it’s what I have to do. My mistake, my bad. I can admit when I’m wrong.”
Instead, McCain said of Hagee, “Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Rev. Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.” As if he did not actively, for a long time, seek Hagee’s endorsement–of course not, as that would only make him look either more hypocritical or much more stupid. All that time he spent courting Hagee and he didn’t look into all the crazy crap the guy was spouting? Not very smart at all.
But McCain couldn’t leave it at that. No, instead of taking responsibility, instead of talking straight (god forbid), McCain instead took the opportunity to take a swipe at Obama: “I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright’s extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today.” Translation: Hagee’s not nearly as bad as Wright! Hagee didn’t shape me and make me into a lunatic like Obama! You can’t say what I’m doing is bad without saying Obama is worse!
Not to mention that McCain’s words are even more mealy-mouthed when you get to Rod Parsley, whose endorsement he also actively courted. Note that McCain clearly said that Hagee was not his “spiritual advisor”–however, he did say that Rod Parsley was “a spiritual guide,” in addition to a moral compass. He did not say “to everyone but myself, of course.” And while McCain made the not-so-credible claim that he “did not know of” Hagee’s remarks before the endorsement, he had to know about Parsley’s–heck, the papers mentioned that stuff nearly the same day McCain got the endorsement.
McCain on Parsley? “I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement.” Um, yeah, McCain saying that Parsley was “one of the truly great leaders of America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide” could never be interpreted as an endorsement. McCain is lying through his teeth. And of course, the media will take note of this and appropriately criticize him for it completely ignore it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you make a bad mistake, you stand up like a man and take responsibility for it, without trying to lie, dodge, equivocate, blame, or paint others as worse. Am I wrong on that?
Everybody believes that the military is relatively right-wing, that conservative values and often Christianity are emphasized. It is likely true, though not having been there, I cannot say–but that tends to be the impression given from a wide variety of sources, with little to refute it.
However, this is not a case of cause-and-effect in terms of policy and legislation, or else the members of the military are masochistic. The Bush administration and the Republican Party, for quite some time now, have treated the soldiery–at the very least–with disregard. Oh, sure, they talk a good game–support the troops, how dare you criticize the troops, and so on–but these statements are generally made in reference to attacks on Bush and Republicans, whereupon they try to make it sound like an attack on them is an attack on the troops. The whole “human shield” strategy of dodging criticism, using the honor and sacrifice of the troops as a means of evading responsibility for malfeasance and incompetence. They love using the troops, not actually supporting them.
It’s not as if they actually care about the troops themselves. I would not go so far as to say they dislike the troops; it is simply that they don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the troops when it comes to actual, real-life support. I would not suggest that the Bush administration or the Republican Party actively hate soldiers when they decide to arbitrarily lengthen their tours of duty, deny them benefits, scale down pay increases, or generally act in a way that disfavors the troops. I don’t think they do these things because they dislike or disrespect the troops. I think that they simply don’t care one whit, and would just rather spend the money on pet projects instead.
So it is no surprise that the new GI Bill, the one that actually benefits soldiers, is opposed mainly by conservatives and the Bush administration. The bill outlines broad new policies that allow for greater education benefits, not just for members of the active military, but also for those who serve in the National Guard and Reserves but nonetheless serve the same as those in the regular military. It is a promise that anyone who serves, learns. You get an education, an education that will benefit not only the soldier but will continue to benefit the country.
So why are conservatives opposed? Because it’s too generous. Well, after all the effusive praise, and “nothing’s too good for the troops” talk, and the protestations to defends and support the troops at all costs, that sounds a little, well, contradictory. But they insist: be too generous in post-service benefits, and you’ll have trouble with retention, with keeping soldiers in the service.
This attitude has two problems: first, it’s bogus:
The Congressional Budget Office, in its cost analysis, estimated that the benefits would result in a 16 percent drop in re-enlistments, a number opponents have repeatedly cited. But the office also predicted a 16 percent increase in recruitment because of the new benefits.
In short, we’ll get as many new troops as we’ll lose former ones, so it evens out. But the second flaw in the argument against is the attitude of “let’s treat the soldiers like crap when they get out so they’ll never want to leave.” Anyone see a problem with that?
Naturally, John “I’m a War Hero and I Love the Troops” McCain is against it (his response to Obama’s criticism: “you didn’t serve like I did, so shut up!”), as is George W. “I’m a War Hero Even Though I Went AWOL” Bush. McCain is against the bill (he simply didn’t show up for the vote), and Bush promises to veto it. Fortunately, enough Republicans are now so scared of losing their jobs that they crossed party lines (along with a few who actually do respect the troops) and supported the bill, so it has passed with a veto-proof majority.
But it is nice of McCain and Bush to go on the record and state officially that they would sooner short-change the troops than take even the smallest chance of decreasing the amount of cannon fodder they need for their perpetual war in Iraq.
Because, of course, they support the troops so much.
Am I the only one getting very tired of Clinton claiming rule-following and vote-counting principles in ways which are consistent only in that they net her the greatest number of votes?
Clinton says the rules say that Florida and Michigan be seated, even though the rules clearly say that they won’t if the states jump the primary-vote line, which they did. Clinton respected the rules (kind of–she didn’t campaign in Michigan but kept her name on the ballot) back at the beginning of the year when she thought she was a shoo-in (last October, she said, “It’s clear, this election [Michigan’s] having is not going to count for anything” and she accepted that much), but now she thinks those rules are bad and her new read on the rules is the only fair way to go. Clinton complained that Obama broke the rules when he ran a national ad that also aired in Florida, but now she’s saying the the rules insist those votes be counted, which contradicts the idea that Obama broke the rules. In short, rules only count when they help me or at least do not hurt me; if they do hurt me, I find new rules to follow.
Clinton also says that the votes must be counted–you can’t ignore any votes. But while she demands that the votes from Michigan and Florida be counted, she also insists that Obama should get zero votes from Michigan. Why? Because he followed the rules and withdrew his name from the ballot. 40.1% of Michigan voters chose “uncommitted” on their ballots–and Clinton is saying that those votes should not go to Obama. After all, they voted for “uncommitted,” not for Obama. Except that most of those votes came from black voters, 68% of whom voted “uncommitted,” and young voters, 48% of whom voted for “uncommitted”–and that’s Obama’s core base. What votes were not for Obama had to be for Edwards–the remainder would have been a tiny fraction for anyone else. And Edwards has now backed Obama, with his delegates joining the Obama delegates.
Not allowing the uncommitteds to be counted for Obama is to deny those people the right to their votes. Hillary says, “Too bad, those are the rules–the ones I choose to observe, at least. Not the rules that say the delegates won’t be seated, I don’t like those rules–I mean the rules which help me get votes but say Obama doesn’t get any. Those rules.”
Hillary doesn’t like the rules which say that the votes that went for her in Michigan and Florida won’t be seated, so she ignores them. But the rules which say that votes should not be counted for Obama, she likes those rules.
In short, Hillary has no respect for the rules–she dredges up only those which serve her and trashes the ones that don’t. Nor does she have respect for any vote that was not for her–she wants her votes counted, even though party rules say they shouldn’t be, and all other votes that can be trashed, she trashes–she doesn’t want those votes counted, so revives the rules she trashed only where they apply to denying Obama the votes.
There comes a point where the self-serving hypocrisy becomes so great that it breaks all reasonable thresholds. Follow all the rules or none; count all the votes, or not. But you can’t cherry-pick only the rules and the votes that go for you. That’s dishonest. That’s cheating. That’s wrong, and it is beneath the dignity of someone like Senator Clinton.
Wow. McCain’s lead media consultant, Mark McKinnon, is resigning from that post… because he likes Obama so much, he doesn’t want to make negative ads against the man. That is not an exaggeration; in the Summer of 2007,
McKinnon told Cox Newspapers that if Obama was the Democratic nominee, he would not play an active role in McCain’s effort to defeat the Illinois senator.
“I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy,” McKinnon told Cox Washington bureau chief Ken Herman; electing Obama, he added, “would send a great message to the country and the world.”
I repeat: Wow. That says something. Sure, McKinnon is a former Democrat, but he has worked for Republican candidates since 2000, helping elect Bush twice and working for McCain up until now. And yes, he says he’ll still vote for McCain, but considering what he’s doing, you gotta figure that he might be just saying that.
Not that everyone in the GOP feels that way. Sure, Republican Chuck Hagel likes Obama, but the Georgia GOP chair thinks that McCain is like Jesus on the cross. And no, I am not making that up.
Meanwhile, the media in the U.S. seems fixated on Bush’s cell-phones-to-Cuba gimmick, while apparently ignoring the fact that Israel, where Bush just gave his “talking to radicals is appeasement” speech, Israel has announced official talks with Syria (“it’s better to talk than to shoot”)–and the Bush State Department has no objections. Apparently no one outside a few liberal blogs has noticed the contradiction.
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