Looks like Obama has been summoned to the principal’s office, and finally had sense enough to go. The New York Times politics blog, The Caucus, is reporting that during a September 11 visit to New York, Obama will join Clinton for lunch at his Harlem Clinton Foundation headquarters:
When Mr. Clinton learned that Mr. Obama would be in New York on Thursday for two appearances, he invited him to lunch at the foundation offices, aides said.
Lest anyone think this is a friendly get-together between political allies, the article states:
The terms of the Clinton-Obama meeting have been negotiated warily for weeks through a veil of mutual suspicion. Mr. Clinton has felt for months that Mr. Obama has not paid him the proper respect as a former president and many close to Mr. Obama believe that Mr. Clinton dealt dismissively with him during the campaign.
I guess when he’s tanking in poll, after poll, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Oh, man, the news is just coming fast and furious today. The website Chicagoans Against Obama is reporting via the New York Times that the Clinton-bashing duo we all know and hate is being broken up.
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
Matthew Weaver, posting on No Quarter is asking the question, “Where’s Hillary?” Matthew wants to know what Clinton’s role should be for the remainder of the election:
Should she be a nice girl and keep her mouth shut and campaign for Obama and/or down ticket candidates? (That might work for expediency but there is there future upside to this course, whether Obama wins or loses. Importantly, if she says nothing of the hate, does this mean it is okay to use hate against another party but not within the party?)
Should she punt and say that this is not her fight? The party rejected her and she’ll just sit out the campaign, thank you. (Just take a break for a few months. Return after the vote in November to help rebuild the defeated party.)
Should she fill the moral and leadership vacuum and say no, this campaign of hate has gone on far too long, enough-is-enough, I want no part of it? (My preferred choice as leadership requires grownup action, whatever the cost. Right and wrong are important judgments that are not a matters of expediency and convenience.)
Don’t talk about it as all we do is feed the critics.
Personally, I believe Clinton should not do anything to help Obama in any way. He’s the one who said,
“I am confident I will get her votes if I’m the nominee,” Obama stressed. “It’s not clear she would get the votes I got if she were the nominee.”
Let him try. He stole the election fair and square, now let him rape the country’s women by himself. That’s the American way, right?
“I don’t know how many, but I can tell you, with all due respect to previous administrations, it is not going to be a single, ‘Well, we have a Democrat now,”‘ McCain said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
One obvious McCain pick would be Joe Lieberman. But he faces a backlash from Dems, even though he’s technically an Independent. An equally obvious McCain pick, given their friendship and history, would be Hillary Clinton. However, to avoid a possible Lieberman-esque situation requires a delicate political dance. I don’t know if Clinton hears the music, but supporting downticket Dems while avoiding Palin-bashing seems like the most sensible first move in an intricate bipartisan two-step to me.
I think that should be a viable ballot option. It’s the only thing in this election I would want to votefor. Nobody is running for anything anyway, everybody’s running against.
“If they like what they’ve had over the last eight years, then they’ll go with McCain. And if they don’t like it, hopefully they’ll go with me,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Both candidates talk a lot of hooey about change, but the truth is, no matter who wins, the president will change and little of anything else will. The pundits and strategists implore voters to vote on issues, forgetting that we tried that in 2006, “changing” the hell out of things, and as far as we can see, we’ve been royally screwed; no less and no more than we were in 2005. The Washington Post claims that we voters are not as smart as everybody seems to think, but I think, as a whole, we’re a lot smarter than the Washington Post. We don’t need fancy degrees, high-priced experts or libraries full of poll data to show us who’s lying and who’s not. They all are.
Most of the coveted unregistered voters that the Obamacrats are so desperately courting are pretty smart, too. That’s why no matter how many are actually added to the rolls, it won’t matter much. Those voters not only know that their votes don’t really count, they know that no matter who is in office, their lives won’t change. They might be black, Obama might be black, but those black voters know what the South Side of Chicago looked like before Obama got there, and they know what it looks like now.
Most Americans are not blind, either. We can see that McCain is not George Bush; in fact, when it comes to experience and the snake oil Bush pushed to get elected, Georgie’s got a lot more in common with Obie than Johnny. We know that Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton, too; but that’s not the problem. The problem is, Barack Obama is no Hillary Clinton, either. Like Hillary or not, by the end of the primaries you not only had to admire her, you got the feeling you could trust her.
I don’t trust John McCain or Barack Obama. Nobody cares about Joe Biden one way or the other. Sarah’s a woman, and that’s about all I can say in her favor. I don’t want to hang out and have a beer or any other food or beverage with any of them. I don’t want any one of them running my country, either. The other candidates running don’t have a real shot, maybe that’s too bad, maybe it isn’t. But none of them have made me want to vote for them any more than the major party candidates do. I should be able to vote, dammit, and express my displeasure with the process at the same time, without rewarding an unworthy candidate with a vote they don’t deserve.
NONE OF THE ABOVE.
That’s who I want to vote for now.
Every other disaffected voter who agrees with me should do the same. Hopefully, that would include just about every voter in America. Let all the remaining votes cast cancel each other out. Why should we be the ones to have to flip a coin?
Barack Obama wants to prove he can out shoot Sarah Palin. On the basketball court, that is, not on the range. Gotta give it to the man, he knows his limitations. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Obama responded to a viewer-submitted question about a possible match-up with the Republican VP hopeful:
“You know, I would play her a game of horse,” said Obama. “She looks like she’s got some game.”
Palin was a standout high school basketball player whose skills on the court earned her the nickname Sarah Barracuda. But Obama said he doesn’t fear her.
“On the basketball court, I think I’d stand up pretty well,” he said.
Still, Obama said he wouldn’t want to go head-to-head with Palin in another sport: target shooting.
“I know she’s a sharpshooter, and I know that — I probably wouldn’t do target practice with her,” he said. “I think she’d be a better shot than me.”
Obama also said he was “puzzled” about why the Republicans would mock his community organizer creds. Maybe he should ask Michelle Malkin:
Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors’ lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Barack Obama’s brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan non-profits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.
Explaining his lack of military cred, Obama implied that since there was no war going on when he became eligible for service, there was no point.
The Democratic candidate said he briefly considered joining the military after graduating high school, but decided against it.
“I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue,” he said.
He also characterized his Saddleback Conference “above my pay grade” answer to the question about when life begins as being “too flip.”
But Obama told Stephanopoulos “what I intended to say is that, as a Christian, I have a lot of humility…all I meant to communicate was that I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.”
Finally read the briefing, eh, Obie?
*I went looking for a basketball clip to accompany this post and found one of the most racially insensitive cartoons I’ve ever seen. Made in 1975, it’s still the first clip you find in a You Tube search for “Basketball Jones Cheech and Chong.” The one posted is the “Space Jam” remake featuring Barry White and Chris Rock.
Some people will go a long way to try to turn a negative to a positive. But I’ve seen few try so hard as AP’s Charles Babington, who wants us to believe that Barack Obama’s rehashed 2 year old stump speech is a such a thing of beauty, it’s a work of art akin to Michelangelo, Picasso, or at the very least, Marcel Marceau. Whatever. Chuck’s got to be kidding.
We can all paraphrase Obie’s standard speech in our sleep.
“Now is the time to stand up and hope to change the world. George Bush sucks. John McCain is just like George Bush. I’m not John McCain. I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.”
That’s about it. Throw in about ten minutes of, “uhh’s” and “ummmm’s,” a few, “ya know’s” and a coupla “and…and’s” and you’re done. But Babington has the nerve to try to surgically dissect the thing, looking for what? Nuance? Good luck with that, Charley.
Obama delivers it without notes or changes from week to week. A campaign centerpiece for 19 months, the full-blown stump speech probably has done more than anything to rocket him to fame and to a lead over Republican John McCain in some national polls.
The sad thing is, this guy’s serious. He writes a lot more paragraphs to prove it, too. Since both the speech and the article about it are almost too sad for words, Obie, Chucky, here’s a video lesson to help you both become a little more entertaining over the next couple months. Use it. ‘Cause to tell you the truth, you’re both starting to bore the hell out of people.
Looks like Obama has been summoned to the principal’s office, and finally had sense enough to go. The New York Times politics blog, The Caucus, is reporting that during a September 11 visit to New York, Obama will join Clinton for lunch at his Harlem Clinton Foundation headquarters:
