Ever heard the expression, “stop the world I want to get off?” Suffice it to say that if the world were ever to stop for me, I wouldn’t be disembarking, I’d be tossing looney toon butt wiping twits left and right into the stratosphere with gleeful abandon. Maybe then, the rest of us could return to some degree of something that in some way at least resembles something approaching normalcy and reason.
Over at The Widdershins, in the comment section of the post, “Hillary Clinton: Ready To lead On Day One” which examined the differences and similarities between the media treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, by “Be Mindful,” commenter “La-t-da” was moved to ask this question near the middle of the thread:
Where is all the Sarah rah rah fest coming from? Aren’t there some liberal women out there that we can be rah rahing about?
I responded that yes, there is an ostensibly liberal woman we could be rah rahing about: Sonia Sotomayor, which touched off a pretty spirited discussion. I pointed out that just the day before, the Associated Press had run an article, which was reprinted many places, including Salon, noting that women’s groups were, by and large, taking a “wait and see” approach to giving full support to the newest Supreme Court nominee. Yet, throughout the PUMAsphere, and elsewhere, support has been given much more freely to the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska, sometimes becoming full-throated, energetic, and downright passionate. Christianity Today pointed out that when David Letterman made his insulting “slutty flight attendant with the daughter that should be knocked up during a baseball game” jokes, women’s groups rushed to her defense. The groups named in the article range from the conservative “anti-feminist” Concerned Women for America, to that bastion of feminism, the National Organization For Women, though they seem to be unaware of the vigorous campaign launched by PUMA Pac, participated in by women all over the PUMAsphere and GretaWire. Those combined efforts forced the unrepentant talk show host to issue a series of “apologies.” Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve heard the leadership style of Pretendident Black Whosayin Yomama referred to as “11th Dimensional Chess on Pluto.” I call it, “wimpitude.” For those hopium hooked Kool Aid addicts impressed with the Waffler’s habit of saying one strangely enticing, yet ultimately, incomprehensible thing and doing another, polar opposite, incomprehensible one, the Celebritician’s “hardball with clean hands” approach seems Solomonaic. To rational people, his TelePrompTer read doublespeak is infuriating. And, it pisses people off, too.
Basically, Obama’s style is to try to get his goals accomplished without revealing what they are, by getting other people to do the dirty work. He imagines himself Godfather-like; “send Clemenza out to get Paulie and the cannoli, but make sure nothing comes back to me but dessert.” Thus, his interminable, ubiquitous speeches sound like wire tapped phone calls between the Capo and his henchmen, “tell the guy to do the thing, but, if it gets done, he didn’t go it, and we never had this conversation, capice?” Read the rest of this entry »
There seems to be a movement afoot to send women back to the kitchen, happy, barefoot and maybe, unwillingly pregnant. Now, I could be seeing bogeymen in the bushes, so to speak, but, this “women need permission to make decisions, men don’t” developing theme bears watching. Between the Barackulator’s backtracking on selecting a woman to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, (which really doesn’t count as backtracking since he’s only responded to that trial balloon floated in the Omedia by advocates, like the Wimpy Wishy Washer he is) and “Michelle’s Got The Whole World in Her Bare Arms” articles all over the place, one can be forgiven for seeing a typical Axelrovian AstroTurf campaign in the making. Add the feminist-endorsed-by-their-silence, “FOCA is not a legislative priority, because women usually do the right thing when they talk to their Daddies” happy crappy recently uttered by the Face of Feminism, and, I think it’s past time to worry. Read the rest of this entry »
Okay, I’m on record as saying that I’m not a big poetry fan. But, it’s not often that poetry moves me to tears. Yet, when I saw a CNN filler story, pretty much lifted whole from WROC-TV, about nine and ten year olds in Rochester New York, who were assigned to write “I am…” poetry about themselves, I found myself blubbering like a baby with a heart breaking and melting at the same time. The simple elegance and eloquence exhibited by these young people would soften the heart of the grinchiest Grinch, and make generous the heart of a Scrooge. If people like Jo(k)e Biden really want to know from “articulate,” the potery of these children would be a good place for them to look.
President (Can’t I Just BE My) Waffles Obama is going to subject us to yet another boring Reading of the TelePrompTers From On High on his unremarkable 100th day of equivocating, even though his spawn of Tom Arnold Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs claims the day has no special significance. Yep, typical ObaLogic. None.
“It’s an arbitrary day in which presidents are measured. We get that. We’re playing along,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.
Gibbs said Obama and almost everyone in the White House agrees with “a huge majority” of the American people “that the 100th day is not a ton different than the 99th, the 101st or the 123rd.”
Politico, the Blog Up The President’s Butt, is reporting that the public is by and large, waiting for this upcoming speech with bated breath according to some poll they found.
The rate of one news conference a month seems to sit well with the public, which likes to see Obama on TV, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released this week.
More than half of the public, or 59 percent, say the president is on television about the right amount of time. Just 28 percent say he’s on too much, and only 10 percent would like to see him on the tube more often.
The Gruesome Twosome now being referred to in the British press as “Gordbama,” ala “Brangelina,” (which will never fly here, no way the Holy O takes second billing lying down, uh-uh) seem united in their determination to compel their citizens to work for the government. While the Presilebrity prefers to remain quiet, (and thus, blameless, for He Who Bears No Blame is his real middle name, and job description) and let Congress carry the ball as they “explore the feasibility” of “mandatory service,” Gordy’s writing op-eds in tabloids pushing his pile.
Writing in the News of the World, and referenced elsewhere in the British press, Brown calls for 50 hours of “compulsory” service for all young people, to be completed by the age of 19, as a companion to his already mandated “citizenship classes.” One of Browns’ stated goals, however, according to the Daily Mail, is to use forced charity as an attempt to combat juvenile crime. Kinda like sentencing kids to community service whether they screw up or not, ‘cuz you know they’re gonna. Judging from the comments section responses to Brown’s original missive, which include phrases such as “cold day in hell,” “hell will freeze over,” “stupid,” and, “bloody fool,” it doesn’t seem like people in Britain are embracing the idea with open arms (something that’s impossible to do, anyway, when you think about it.)
Somebody needs to get Vice-President Jo(k)e Biden a TelePrompTer so he too, like the Obamessiah he serves, can read White House-sanctioned policy positions without fear of inconveniently telling the truth. Because it seems clear that the virtual muzzle they’ve applied to him is not always going to work, and ya gotta let the guy out sometime, if only to attempt to justify his phony baloney position. Since he hasn’t changed, you have to wonder at the wisdom of a crew that chose Jo(k)e (Generated Crisis) Biden in the first place. It’s not like they didn’t know who he was when they picked him. They can’t possibly be surprised that a guy infamous for his ability to speak clearly with his foot in his mouth, shows no sign of sticking to the Obministration’s script, even when ostensibly cheerleading for it.
As the disenchantment with his boss grows amidst the increasing suspicion, long held by PUMAs and others for whom his ineptitude and unreadiness has always been clear, that President Alfred E. (What, me work?) Urkelbama is a puppet for unknown string pullers hellbent upon radically redesigning the country for their own benefit, Biden unwittingly goes and lets the cat out the bag. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee event for supporters, Politico reports that Biden, in stark contrast to the Obministration’s latest McCainian “the economy is only so crappy” official position, had a lot to say. First, the crappy economy setup: Read the rest of this entry »
“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.” – Joe Biden, October 20, 2008
When now vice-president, then Senator Jo(k)e Biden (D-Mastercard) made his less than cryptic remarks about the possible scenarios facing his running mate should he be elected, his comments were largely passed off as yet another, “Oh, Uncle Joe’s found the brandy, again” moment and not really given the scrutiny they deserved. However, in light of ensuing developments, perhaps we should take a closer look at Jo(k)e’s “off-the-cuff” campaign rhetoric.
The first part of Biden’s “mark my words” statement was generally seen to be in reference to foreign policy:
“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”
However, everything after “gird your loins” was clearly economic in nature. Could a “generated economic crisis” have been what he was talking about all along? The events I explored in an earlier post, “Inside The Wall Street Whisper Campaign” could certainly add kerosene-type fuel to the bottled acetylene torch Molotov cocktail of that kind of speculation. The possibility that Obama’s scripted response to the global economic crisis we now face represents the validity of Biden’s now-prescient warning, and indicates that the first few weeks of their joint administration are rather smoothly proceeding according to plan, somehow doesn’t seem as far-fetched to me as one might reasonably expect.
Watching and reading the initiallygushing, yet, now more tempered, media reviews of President Black Obama’s not really a State of the Union speech that they keep calling a State of the Union speech even though it was really just a Getting to Know You speech to the joint Congress that he’s supposedly been working with since he’s been president to pass the historic legislation he read to them about from a TelePrompTer, I get the feeling the rest of the country and I, or, in ObaSpeak, me and everybody else, are living in parallel universes.
Not even a particularly well delivered one, either, and I don’t care how many people try to tell me otherwise. Barack Obama is just not a dazzlingly brilliant speaker. In fact, as I’ve said before, he’s not even that good. His head-swiveling, squinty-eyed, nose-in-the-air, stumbling, boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck delivery is not only annoying, if it passes for anything more than mediocre, that only shows just how far we, as a nation have lowered our intellectual standards and expectations. Frankly, the man sucks.
That’s why listening to “bubble-headed bleach blondes” and their multi-hued comrades in arms on what passes for “news” wax idiotic through endless cycles about not only the new President’s oratorical skill, but his verbal healing powers, is in itself, a Herculean exercise in restraint. To listen to them tell it, merely forming words aloud imbues him with abilities, strengths and unlimited gifts not just far beyond those of mortal men, but those of a leader begotten of a beneficent God.
Forget “laying hands,” “open mouth” cure cancer. “Clear debt.” Debt, be gone. It is spoken, so it is done. Whooosh! I know I feel better.
Not.
If I remember correctly, on Monday, the world sucked. Our banks were broke and only going through the motions of normal functioning. They were on life support, even though they had already been pronounced dead. Their rotting corpses were infecting global markets, and we were facing the end of the world as we know it. Then, yesterday, Obie made a speech. Now, all is right with the world, the sun has come out, the sky has opened up, a light is shining…you get the idea. No wonder Oblahblah has such reverence for “just words.”
After forcing myself to read the transcript of this miraculous speech that I couldn’t sit through to its conclusion, due to the fact that, between the constant jumping up and down of the elderly in the audience, cruelly insisted upon by the ObaTurfers insistent upon making “good TV,” and the excruciating drone of the vapid Spokesmodel-in-Chief, I was not only having trouble keeping my dinner down, I was getting dizzy and genuinely afraid for my mental health when I realized something. This “outside looking in” feeling I have, while at the same time being “in it, but not of it,” is akin to being the only one at a Creeple People on Mars Meet the Three Stooges cartoon movie marathon who was sitting outside on the porch when the bong went around. Under those circumstances, folks get pissed off at people who point out how stupid the whole situation, including the movie, is, too. And, they tend to get downright nasty if you refuse the bong that would bring you their level of “clarity” and “enjoyment” the next time around. They never even seem to appreciate it when you point out that your leaving the room doesn’t make the movie any better.
I’m sorry, but there’s not enough KoolAid flavored Boone’s Farm and hopium smoking in the world to make me believe that “just words” can solve a “generated crisis” of “cleaning the Augean stables” proportions overnight. Unless the “generated crisis” itself was only “just words” from the beginning, the Creeple People are still on Mars this morning, and we all need a deep bong hit to make it funny.
Fraudulently generated cheerleading of an inartfully articulated bogus rah-rah response to a possibly “generated crisis” so at odds with reality, is what we’ve been trained by the media and the Obama administration to expect and accept as sufficient.
And that’s a truly frightening wonder to behold.
We may not “be quitters,” but Obama and Co. should really cut it out.
*NOTE: I got the Biden (D-Mastercard) idea thing from Chicago Tribune’s John Kass. He does that kinda thing alla time.
Uh-oh. The Obacrats, with their shaky grasp on the law, coupled with their pre-school level truculence are going down on the Roland Burris appointment. Burris, who seems to be a mild-mannered, harmless enough sort, nonetheless, also seems to have the ramrod backbone of any narcissist personally challenged. None of this matters one whit, however, the bottom line is, Roland Burris is the duly appointed, by the sitting governor, replacement for Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Period. And, there’s nothing in the law that says the Obacrats have to like it.
It’s not like they weren’t warned. Blagojevich made it clear that he was the governor, exercising his duty in making a appointment. Rep. Bobby Rush helpfully pointed out, that contrary to the misguided wishes of the clueless political allies of Barack Obama, black doesn’t cancel black, whenever you have black people involved, you have a racial element to consider. And deal with. Now, Roland Burris is channeling his inner Malcolm X. In an appearance on Face the Nation, Burris, a relatively savvy politician, had a lot to say, and let it be known that with the inauguration coming up, the president-elect doesn’t need this sort of “distraction,” that contrary to the Obacrats’ earlier stated position, things were now indeed about him, and he planned to be seated. One of the more interesting statements was the invocation of the spirit of the man whose memory still causes sphincters to clinch and spines to tingle in certain segments of American society:
“Well, don’t you feel you’re being used by someone who is just trying to save his political skin?” Schieffer asked.
“Whatever means necessary,” Burris said, paraphrasing the 1960s radical Malcolm X. “I have nothing to do with the governor’s motives. What we needed was something to be done for the people of Illinois. That was his constitutional duty. That was his responsibility. The Illinois Constitution does not say the governor ‘may’ or the governor ‘might’ or the governor ’should.’ Bob, it says the governor ’shall’ appoint a person to fill the vacancy. That’s what happened.”
Now, the Obacrats who refused to act to nullify the powers invested in re-elected Governor Rod Blagojevich upon the event of his arrest, presumably because an accusation of criminal activity is not enough to empower them to do so, are desperately trying to erase the line in the sand they insisted upon drawing and trying to hide behind.
It didn’t have to be this way, President-elect Barack Obama could have held on to his Senate seat like Vice President-elect Jo(k)e Biden, and Secretary of State-designate, Hillary Clinton held on to theirs. PUMA sites, among others, including this one, have questioned this particular move since Day One. Why the rush to distance himself from his own Senate seat? Are we supposed to believe the Smartest President In the Room didn’t know that the governor of his state was under investigation? Everybody else did. Why give him yet another, irresistable opportunity to implicate himself? Or, was that the point? And if so, to what end? Is Obama so high above the kind of “pay-to-play” corruption seemingly so rampant in his home city and state that he need fear no blowback from any possible investigation, or, might he be motivated by a desire to deflect attention from himself by shining the brightest light imaginable on an inconvenient rival? Had Obama not relinquished the seat, there’s no guarantee Blagojevich would have been arrested before the inauguration, (andU.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s traditional replacement) if at all, since he had already been under investigation for 5 years without indictment.
Despite all their combined years of political experience, the Obacrats, under their rookie leader, seem to have forgotten one of the basic tenets of politics and life; when you play with fire, you’re gonna get burnt. Yet, that is precisely what the Obacrats tried to do with the Blagojevich situation, fan the flames ignited by a random spark from their deliberately dropped match, then attempt to juggle the embers. Too bad the fact that it is a fire of their own making does not render it any more safe.
That something so obviously a no-brainer is being seriously debated by lawmakers is so beyond the pale as to be unfathomable. If the Obacrats already had power to nullify Blagojevich in any way, why would they be so adamant about him resigning? Besides, what on earth about a Blagojevich resignation now would invalidate Roland Burris’ appointment? And, more importantly, does anybody really want to open the door to allowing the Senate to legally deny Americans employment simply because the person who lawfully hired them has been convicted only in the court of public opinion, without benefit of indictment or trial?
Internal report’s a-comin’! We got a report, and we’re gonna show it to ya! Boy, oh, boy, just wait til you read our report! That’s the gist of what we’ve been hearing about Barack Obama’s personal investigation into the degree of his and his surrogates’ involvement in the ongoing BlagoGate Hot Senate Seat for Sale scam. I expected to wake up to details being revealed, discussed, debated, analyzed, etc., but so far, the New York Times, the Associated Press, AFP, CNN, CBS, and everybody else is telling us, still, that the report’s a-comin’ and it will exonerate Obie and all who love him. But…seems to me, when all the info in the stories comes from people sympathetic to the Obamessiah, who have no more access to inside information than you or I do, something fishy stinks. CBS, at least, gives an ETA:
The report’s release is expected at around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, with the timing based on an agreement with the U.S. attorney. It comes as Mr. Obama is vacationing in Hawaii. Mr. Obama has been very clear that this report will allay any concerns about any improper contact between his staff and Blagojevich, reports CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy. But he kept the details private while the federal investigation continues.
How could a report corroborating the US Attorney’s assertion that Team O is “not involved” compromise the investigation? And what the hell was Jo(k)e Biden talking about on This Week?
“I know in our system you are innocent until proven guilty, but those tapes that were released by the special prosecutor, excuse me, by the U.S. attorney seem incredibly, incredibly incriminating,” Biden said. “From where I sit, he looks like a guy who is not capable of governing.”
Somebody released some tapes? FOX News says Patrick Fitzgerald has asked the Illinois (Get Blago) Impeachment Committee to hold off on its’ investigation, but might release wiretap transcripts to them:
Federal prosecutors are asking the Illinois House impeachment committee not to dig into criminal charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
In a letter released Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says the panel could “significantly compromise” his investigation by interviewing Blagojevich aides about possible crimes.
Fitzgerald is also declining to provide information about his investigation, such as the identities of people mentioned in a criminal complaint.
But the prosecutor does say he hasn’t ruled out giving the committee copies of Blagojevich conversations caught on wiretaps.
So, as far as I can see, people with no business commenting on information they don’t have are trying pretty desperately to get the word out that everybody in ObamaLand is pure as the driven snow ahead of the release of Obamessiah’s Edict of Absolution.
Why not just release the damned report already and be done with it?
Okay, Barack Obama is not implicated in today’s allegations against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is suspected of trying to sell Barack Obama’s now vacant Senate seat in return for personal favors. U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and all the President-elect’s pundits, have gone to great lengths to make that perfectly clear. From the Associated Press:
Federal prosecutors say the investigation into allegations that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (bluh-GOY’-uh-vich) tried to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-electBarack Obama found no evidence that Obama did anything wrong.
At a news conference in Chicago on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald reiterated a number of times that there were no allegations of impropriety on Obama’s part.
However, the question I have is, how much more valuable did Obama’s record-setting resignation make said seat? After all, Jo(k)e Biden has not officially resigned his. Nor has Hillary Clinton. So, why did Obama hand Blagojevich such a “juicy plum” so soon to give away for Christmas? From Lynn Sweet, Nov. 13, 2008:
Blagojevich is under no legal deadline to select an Obama replacement. The governor has to weigh a few factors: whether racial politics play a role, because Obama was the only African-American in the Senate and who has a political and fund-raising network that could help should Blagojevich seek a third term.
It’s been a long time since an Illinois governor had this juicy a plum to give away: the last Senate vacancy was in 1969 when Ralph Tyler Smith was selected by then Gov. Richard Ogilvie to fill the slot left vacant by the death of Sen. Everett Dirksen.
Was Obama helping the U. S. Attorney in some as yet unexplained and unexplored way, was he repaying Blagojevich in the old school, Chicago politics, you scratch my back…style, or was he pursuing some other personal agenda with his lightening quick exit out of Dodge?
At any rate, Blagojevich was arrested early this morning at his home for being criminally stupid, even though, according to Reuters, the official charges were mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery:
The 51-year-old Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were each charged in a federal complaint with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and a second count of solicitation of bribery.
In his statement, Fitzgerald said the charges “allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism.”
Blagojevich was accused of threatening to withhold state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of the Chicago Cubs’ baseball home, Wrigley Field, in order “to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical” of him, Fitzgerald said.
However, Politico reports that Blagojevich was apparently less than happy with Obama, who he refers to as a “motherf*cker.” It seems Obama’s reluctance to “pay to play” for the “juicy plum” he handed to Blago rubbed the good guv the wrong way:
“F**k him,” Blagjoveich says of Obama during a lengthy call with top aides and his wife recorded on November 10th, “For nothing? F**k him.”
In another section of the complaint, Blagojevich expresses exasperation that Obama and his team aren’t willing to offer him an inducement in exchange for appointing an aide, apparently Valerie Jarrett, to the Senate.
Blagojevich “said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but ‘they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them,’” says the complaint.
Blago, who certainly qualifies as stupid, given that he engaged in this wreckless behavior knowing, as did everyone, that he and his wife have been under investigation for years. Also, Blago, who replaced former, and now imprisoned, Republican Governor George Ryan by pledging to reform corruption, recently joined Illinois Senator Dick Durbin in an appeal to have Ryan’s sentence commuted by George Bush.
It’s official, just call her Madame President Secretary. Shhhhhh, it’s Secretary in public, okay? We’ll all play along and call him Mr. President ‘cuz…well, the sheeple voted for him, but, hey, how much damage can he do as long as he just reads what’s on the cards? Plus, it’s all good; keeps those women’s issues in focus and balances out the black thing. Cool. Now, unlike some people, I don’t think we’re seeing Bush II or Clinton III. I think it’s Clinton 1, Obama 0.
Game, set, match.
Oh, Susan Rice is short, and Janet Napolitano barks.
Jo(k)e Biden is extraneous.
And Hillary needs to work on her poker face. She looked like a cat in a room with a missing canary.
With the recent news that former Obama “monster-calling-the-kettle-monster,” Samantha Power, has re-upped (now that a suitable amount of time has passed since her “resignation“) as one of 14 members of the Agency Review “team-within-a-team” for the State Department transition, another “where are they now?” question comes to mind. Where’s Patti Solis Doyle? Given that the two women (Doyle and Power) have both been hostile to Hillary Clinton, putting Power in a position to influence Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State is as much a slap in the face as was Solis-Doyle’s June addition to Team O, ostensibly as chief of staff to the then “as yet to be named” vice-president. Now that Jo(k)e Biden has “as yet been named,” and elected vice-president, and has appointed Ronald Klain as his chief of staff, where’s Doyle? And what was the purpose of hiring her for any position in the first place?
Solis-Doyle, was allowed to step down (shitcanned) as Clinton campaign manager in February, and was replaced by Maggie Williams, who served as chief of staff to First Lady Clinton, and had recently joined the team. It was said at the time that Doyle’s “resignation” was primarily due to “family considerations,” not hurt feelings because of the addition of Williams to the staff, or Doyle’s soap opera watching incompetence in the face of a string of caucus losses which derailed Clinton’s air of “inevitability.” However, make no mistake, she was canned. So, why would Obama reward such incompetence with an obviously meaningless, mythical job? Was it really just the big “eff yew and your veep hopes” many Clinton supporters took it to be? On Nov. 10, AP’s Beth Fouhy reported that Obama had offered Solis-Doyle a cabinet related position she was supposed to be mulling:
Democratic officials say President-elect Obama’s transition aides have approached Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former campaign manager about taking a senior White House post.
These officials say Patti Solis Doyle is considering taking the job, although she worries about the effect it would have on her two young children. She was contacted about possibly becoming Cabinet secretary, a job that involves coordinating the efforts of the White House and cabinet-level agencies.
That’s the last word I could find on Solis Doyle’s whereabouts. But it makes you wonder, was Obama merely paying a political debt to an ally’s family member, as MSNBC reported he said in June?
“Patti Solis Doyle I think is a terrific experienced campaign hand. She’s from Chicago. Her brother and I organized on the southeast side of Chicago when I first moved to Chicago as a community organizer, so I’ve known the family for a very long time. I think that she will bring not only a set of skills that we’re gonna need as we put our ticket together but shes going to be a terrific adviser and offer insight and judgment that will help us.”
It should be noted that due to Doyle’s longtime association with Obama campaign manager David Axelrod, as well as her Chicago family connections, her name was being bandied about by the Obama camp in mid-May, according to Politico:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former campaign manager and confidante, Patti Solis Doyle, and Sen. Barack Obama’s top adviser have informally discussed the former Clintonite’s going to work for the Obama campaign in the general election.
So, was Obama just clueless or cunning? Or, both? Was Solis-Doyle a mole planted in Camp Clinton by Obama/Axelrod? Or is she just a walking screwup-waiting-to-happen, turning everything she touches to crap? That prospect makes knowing where she might pop up pretty relevant. Then again, maybe Obama is just a lying manipulator, releasing Axelrod-inspired, Astroturf press releases designed to play the public. A strong case could be made along those lines since “hiring” Solis Doyle put a female with a Hispanic surname on his roster, and Power always believed she would end up in his cabinet. Speaking at Columbia University in March, Power said:
And, to the delight of many in the crowd, she even hinted that she could be part of that hypothetical cabinet. “Because of the kind of campaign that Senator Obama has run,” Power said, “it seemed appropriate for someone of my Irish temper to step aside, at least for a while. We will see what happens there.”
Considering that with her views on Israel, Power is considered worthy of State Department related rehire by The Most Awesomest President-elect Ev-er, and that Solis Doyle was given a job to nowhere for unfathomable reasons, it kinda makes Barack Obama’s “judgment to lead” a wee bit suspect, doncha think? And it makes the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State seem like a deliberately laid rug about to be yanked just for the Camp Obama fun of it.
In late October, MIA Vice President-elect, Jo(k)e Biden told the country to “mark his words,” that if we elected his running mate, Barack Obama, it “will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” to “remember he said it,” that “we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” After alluding to Hercules’ Fifth Labor, cleaning Augean’s Stables, and all sorts of “doom and gloom” scenarios that would cause the country to find Obama’s response lacking, and react with comments of “Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision,” Biden exhorted us to believe him because he has “forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you.”
“Falsely humble”? Where’s the humility in “Oh, shit, you’re gonna elect a doofus and blame me when he fucks up!”? No wonder Camp Obama keeps him locked up, whenever he sneaks out, he says something stupid, or frighteningly revealing. Sometimes, like in the “gird your loins” speeches, he does both at the same time.
So, now that the country has gone ahead and elected the guy we were warned about, anyway (by a guy who should know, even if he is stupid) a world crisis has indeed erupted. Though Obama has not yet been inaugurated, and George (The Lamest of Ducks) Bush is the only politician keeping a lower profile than Biden, the media, and even Obama himself, to an extent, with his “Office of the President-elect,” have dubbed them “co-presidents,” at the very least. And, there are those in the press who see the horrific attacks in Mumbai as the Obama test to which Biden referred. From Der Spiegel:
The crisis could be Obama’s first big foreign policy test. The world is going to dissect his response. The president-elect has already been in the spotlight for days because of the worsening financial crisis. Given the extent of the economic catastrophe, the January 20th inauguration date seems too far in the future for an ever-growing number of Americans. For three straight days, Obama has held press conferences in order to introduce economics experts who will advise him and stimulus programs that should help the country out of the crisis. His message was clear: “Help is on the way.”
Now, Obama may also be forced into taking responsibility for foreign policy earlier than expected. Indeed, the attacks could be seen as a personal warning directed against him. During the campaign, his vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden attracted attention for announcing that, in the first six months of his presidency, Obama would be tested on the international stage.
With the revelation that British and American citizens were targeted in the attacks, it seems that many are looking to see how Barack Obama reacts. The Australian reports that Obama has previously consulted with former president Bill Clinton during their meeting in Harlem about the potential for conflict in the region, even going so far as offering him the position of “peace envoy,” a prospect that has been explored over on No Quarter. While Obama has issued a statement about the Mumbai attacks, and is said to have called Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, some see Obama’s “strong condemnation” as a rather weak response. And while speculation about Bill Clinton’s future is fun to contemplate, the burning question in my mind is, with the emergence of this “test” of Obama’s foreign policy strength, what are the new implications of his possible appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State?
After days and days of speculation, allegations, accusations and just plain gossip about Barack Obama’s pending “official” appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, today – nuttin’. Result? Dull as dishwater news. Who cares if Hannity and Colmes split up? Colmes might as well have never been there in the first place. We already knew who Obama was going to name as economic advisers; big freakin’ deal. So, some guy is taking Jo(k)e Biden’s old job. Nobody’s gonna miss Jo(k)e, nobody even thinks about him until he says something stupid. That’s why he’s veep. Duh. Yeah, yeah, bailouts, stocks up, Bush sucks, blah, blah, blah. Where’s Hillary?
Okay, CNN is reporting that Bush’s scriptwriter says Obama will “own” Hillary if she takes the SOS job. And, we should care what he thinks because…? He’s a flippin’ Canadian neocon for Goodness’ sakes. Fat lot I care about his opinion.
Let’s face it, Obama needs Hillary, and so do we. Without her, Barack Obama’s presidency will be a snoozefest. He’s boring. They can write about his exciting, historic, rousing campaign until they’re blue in the face, the fact is, the primary campaign was only exciting when Hillary was in it. It has always been the conflict between Barack and Hillary that made things interesting. When she dropped out, we were stuck with unevenly matched, dueling TelePrompTer readers in the Obama/McCain powder puff slugfest, until Sarah Palin gave the media a new female subject to kick around. And, though she provided a few giggles for news junkies, she’s no Hillary, not by a long shot.
The bottom line is, Hillary makes everybody sit up and take notice. Love her or hate her, without her, Obama’s screwed. The American people can tolerate a lot of things; incompetence, corruption, condescension, arrogance, etc., are all fine. We’ll even take goofy.
For many of us, this year’s election cycle has seemed to be nothing more than theater, a scripted playlet mounted on the world stage with a predetermined outcome, performed to appease, rather than entertain, enlighten or engage the masses, at the same time occupying the time and attention of the fourth estate in order to minimize their relevance. I’d like to make the case that, at least for the Democratic party, that’s exactly what happened. So, get your tinfoil hat strapped on tight, your Orville Redenbacher ready, and your Barcalounger seatbelt tightened. We’re going on a bumpy ride.
At about 2:20 on the above You Tube clip from Yearly Kos, August 2006, Senator Clinton says:
We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely, and really putting together a network, uh, in the blogosphere, in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.
Now, most of the information about this quote and what it means for future generations, blah, blah, blah, comes from conservative sites who seem to have had a real bug up their butts about HRC’s “confession” at the time. The other side seems noticeably silent on the issue. Discover The Networks, American Thinker, and Newsmax have all spun tales of evil Hillary witchery at political play in conjunction with equally evil billionaire Georege Soros. The theory goes, Hillary Clinton and George Soros hatched a plan in 2003 to take over the world. Or, at least, the country. The means for doing so, was to establish a think tank (Center for American Progress) and a media watchdog group (Media Matters) to manage the message and combat the “vast rightwing conspiracy.”) In 2006, the Washington Post ran an article claiming that CAP was funded by a group of mega-money men, Democracy Alliance, Soros included, who determined which “progressive” entities received funding, and which ones didn’t. One that didn’t is the Clinton-centric Democratic Leadership Council. What’s up with that? Why would a group reportedly founded to fund “progressive” entities give money to one organization supposedly founded by the Clintons and not another? Is the DLC an old school Bill Clinton faction and CAP Hillary’s new way of doing things? If so, where does Rahm Emanuel fit in? Tom Daschle? Are the Clintons the architects of the Democratic resurgence using both the DLC and CAP? Too much tinfoil?
Okay, moving on. On November 18, Bloomberg News ran a piece claiming that CAP was setting Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Say what? The Bill Clinton chief of staff-lead organization Hillary Clinton helped found, by her own admission, is now at the forefront of the new Democratic president-elect’s policy panel? Huh?
Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.
Now, in case you’ve forgotten, Barack Obama is said to be “thisclose” to naming Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. The recent media reports have been full of speculation about the impact and implications of such an appointment, with some praise and much gnashing of teeth, but there also has been specualtion that this deal was done in June when Obama and Clinton met at Dianne Feinstein’s house, though MSNBC says the Obama/Clinton “good vibrations” relationship began to evolve after the Democratic National Convention. Not only does MSNBC’s characterization seem unlikely, it also seems irrelevant.
Hillary Clinton is “dragging her feet” in accepting Barack Obama’s “unofficial offer” because it too, is irrelevant. This seems to me to have been a done deal all along. With the news that Clinton will choose her own team, with Obama’s loyalists being relegated to White House staff, or booted completely, it’s hard not to see this as a preordained fait accompli. Not that everybody was in on the deal, that wouldn’t be necessary, in fact, too many people in the know would likely screw things up. It’s not even like the outcome of the primaries was absolutely fixed, the deck was stacked to increase the likelihood of the ultimate desired result, but Clinton as president wouldn’t have been considered failure. After all, the goal, as stated by HRC, over, and over again, was to “get a Democrat in the White House.” However, Obama as president allows the Democratic party to not only re-brand itself while reinforcing it’s inclusive image, it redirects the party in the age of the internet in the manner John F. Kennedy did in the age of television. Therefore, with Obama as the puppet-face of the Democrats and Clinton actually wielding the power, an argument could be made that an impressive win-win situation resulting from a well-planned, long-term “plot” has been achieved.
Maybe all the angst and interplay between competing Democratic factions played out in the news and blogosphere was merely smoke and mirrors distractions all along. Perhaps PUMA was born out of the frustration of knowing something was wrong that we just couldn’t put our finger on. Could it be that the frustrations of those feeling disenfranchised by the results of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and the subsequent farce of the Democratic National Convention were just a byproduct of the implementation of a foregone conclusion? Is that why Obama selected an HRC supporting veep nobody would pay much attention to?
Could be.
Or, not.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Remember when speculation was swirling back in August about Barack Obama’s veep pick? Is it Kaine? Bayh? Sebellius? Whoever it was to be, Jo(k)e Biden famously told reporters camped outside his house before the announcement, “Hey, guys, I’m not the guy.” Of course, as it turns out, he was the guy, and likely knew it all along. Now, the “will she or won’t she” drama surrounding whether or not Hillary Clinton is to be Obama’s Secretary of State seems to be evolving along the same lines.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has engaged three prominent lawyers to help President-electBarack Obama vet her candidacy for secretary of state even as some insiders criticized the pick and advisers to the former first lady said she was weighing whether to take the job if Obama offered it.
If Sen. Hillary Clinton is to be picked by President-electBarack Obama as his secretary of state, it may well depend on a review of the business activities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
AFP wonders if Obama has taken leave of his senses:
Signs that Barack Obama may make once bitter foe Hillary Clinton his secretary of state are provoking a flurry of questions over the president-elect’s motivation and vision for foreign policy.
Politico claims HRC might be motivated by a desire to retire her debt:
If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she could wipe away her lingering $7.6 million presidential campaign debt.
But Bloomberg says her campaign debt might be a problem:
Hillary Clinton will face a financial decision if she is nominated as secretary of state: what to do about the more than $7 million in debts left over from her presidential campaign
Politico reported earlier today that Hillary might turn the job down:
Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t certain she would accept the Secretary of State post even if Barack Obama offers it to her, several people close to the former first lady say.
Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.
So, obviously, nobody in the press really knows shit. However, none of the so-called obstacles seem to amount to much, and the “she’s thinking about it” stuff sounds like “I’m not the guy.” And, we all know how Jo(k)e feels about Hillary.
I guess West Wing-lite President-elect Barack Obantos is so uncomfortable making decisions that the idea of sitting back and letting Chris Matthews’ frat brothers in the media who want to help him be a success ‘cuz it’s their jobs, do it for him, is just fine. After handing out a couple of plum gigs to his ace boon cronies Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, and naming a “transition team” straight out of the library of past Harvard year books, the soon-to-be-Waffler-In-Chief was tapped out. Since even he knows he’s got to name somebody to something sooner or later, he, or most likely David Axelrod, since Obie never thinks anything Axelturf doesn’t think first, dispatched a couple of the professional “unnamed sources” they keep on the payroll to metaphorically stick their fingers in the wind to see which way which trial balloons would float.
That’s what it looks like with the “Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State” rumors. Whether Camp O put Clinton’s name out as a serious contender, or for appearances sake in an effort to avoid a replay of the “not even vetted for veep” uproar, or, if, as I believe, the job really is hers for the taking, it’s also pretty clear that final approval comes not from the O Team or the Senate, but from the public, via the media. That’s why, in this American Idol-inspired public vetting process, AP has been running, and continuously updating, a story about Bill Clinton being a potential threat to a possible Hillary appointment:
Former President Bill Clinton’s globe-trotting business deals and fundraising for his foundation sometimes put his activities abroad at odds with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and could cause complications if President-electBarack Obama picks her to be secretary of state.
It’s doubtful that the current Senate-elect would reject any Democrat for anything for any reason. And if Joe (Gird Your Loins) Biden’s plagiarizing, racially insensitive, gaffe-prone ass can be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, which is soon to be occupied by the least experienced candidate for president in the world, Peewee Herman should be able to qualify any other job available. Therefore, I’m willing to bet Obama did indeed offer Clinton the job Friday, and she, as reported, said, “maybe.” Thus, the AP assist on a semi-plausible “out” in case “maybe” becomes “I’ll pass.”
Barack Obama called himself a “mutt” and received kudos from at least one “journalist” for his racial ease and awareness. WTF? Isn’t a “mutt” by definition, a “son of a bitch?” Or maybe I’m too sensitive. Maybe expecting people who are obviously uncomfortably clueless about the realities of ethnicity to provide objective analysis of stupid statements from black people is too much to ask, even of people whose job it is to do just that. Otherwise, how could you excuse Alan Fram’s AP article entitled, “‘Mutt like me’-Obama shows ease discussing race”?
It popped out casually, a throwaway line as he talked to reporters about finding the right puppy for his young daughters.
But with just three offhanded words in his first news conference as president-elect, Barack Obama reminded everyone how thoroughly different his administration — and inevitably, this country — will be.
“Mutts like me.”
This is not satire; this Fram guy is dead serious:
If he thought nothing of such a remark in his first news conference, doesn’t that signal that over the next four years, the country is likely to hear more about race from the White House — and from the perspective of a black man — than it ever has before?
So, does Fram think all black people are “mutts?” Or does he think that’s what Obama thinks? Or, is Fram unaware that everything Obama says is likely to be from the perspective of a black man, since Obama is a black man, albeit one who thinks of himself as a “mutt?” Also, nothing Obama says will ever be representative of all black people, since he is only ever going to be one black person. Does Fram know this? Is this as stupid as I think it is? The article is full of such nonsense. Fram ends it (mercifully, eventually) with a quote from Silvio Berlusconi:
Ironically, Obama’s remarks came just a day after Italy’s Premier Silvio Berlusconi, in an apparent joke, described Obama as “young, handsome and even tanned.” Critics called the comment racist, while Berlusconi defended it as a compliment.
Just like John Kerry’s comment that Obama’s blackness is a foreign policy asset, and Jo(k)e Biden’s “clean, articulate black man” characterization, Fram’s article is an example of America’s discomfort with the reality of the “historic nature” of the bullspit they’ve bought into in electing this man. Calling himself a “mutt” can be classified as an insult to his mother, no matter what color she was. It’s dumb and unnecessary. By Obama’s definition, aren’t his daughters “mutts,” too? Is it a big deal? No. Is it a signal of the refreshing change in the hearts and minds of men and women suddenly able to embrace a new racial dynamic, blah, blah, blah? Please. To elevate such drivel to racial progress is a startling revelation of the utter cluelessness driving this phenomenon that is Obama. The only thing it shows is that given the level of racial discomfort existent in this country, Barack Obama can get away with just about anything.
Word History: Clipping not of sheep but of a word having to do with sheep has given us our term mutt for a mongrel dog. Clipping or abbreviating words, a standard process of word formation, sheared mutt from muttonhead, a pejorative term meaning “a stupid person” based on the notion that sheep are stupid. Mutt in its first recorded use in 1901 is used in the same senses as muttonhead, but it is soon recorded (1904) as a term of contempt for a horse and then (1906) for a dog. We can be reasonably certain that the New Yorker critic writing in 1970 that “The cast includes a Sheepdog, . . . a Mutt Bitch,” had no awareness that a sheepdog would make the ideal mutt.
Ah, the Dawning of the New Day has arrived! We are standing on the precipice of deliverance from all oppression, despair, and yucky stuff. Oh, yes, Barack Obama will now lead us to betterness. Like all Americans, I want the next president to succeed. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to fervently praying for just one good “told ya so” smack upside the head moment to rub in the face of all the balloon heads who voted for pr driven campaign slogans of “hopey-changey-happy-happy” as if that had something to do with actually governing this country out of the hell or handbasket we’re riding so jubilantly toward. And even if “hopey-dopey-happy-crappy” really was a governing strategy, how on earth could a dour, humorless theoretician who’s natural reaction to anything is “Umm, uh, let me think about it and consult with some smart people” lead us skipping trippingly to NeverLand? But anyway, like I said, good luck with that. Because where we once could limit repercussions-suffering to Obots, what happens from now on is on all our heads.
And, oh, are we in for some fun, fun, fun. While everybody was busy watching the Obamessiah’s “happy-changey” right hand, nobody was paying attention to what his (dominant) left hand was doing; which is basically flexing for the screwing we’re going to get. If Obama has his way, we’re all about to get “volunteered.” Media Matters quibbles that Obama’s “we need a Civilian National Security force” statements refer to expanding existing programs:
Summary: On Bob Grant’s radio show, Ann Coulter suggested that President-elect Barack Obama’s “civilian national security force” would lead to “a lot more Waco raids, Elian Gonzalez snatchings.” In fact, Obama’s comments about the necessity of a “civilian national security force” referred to expanding the Foreign Service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps.
Their point is that Obama’s comments were taken out of context. Hmmm, where have I heard that before? Anyway, here’s the whole July 2, Colorado Springs, “Call To Service” speech, with the money quote coming at about 16:42, judge for yourself.
Whatever it means, Examiner.com says Obama’s new Chief of Staff agrees with it. Quoting from Rahm Emanuel’s book, “The Plan: Big Ideas For America:”
It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. …
Here’s how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They’ll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we’re hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities’ most pressing needs.
Obama and his running mate, now veep-elect, Jo(k)e Biden, believe in community service, too. For college students:
Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.
Retired Americans have a wide range of skills and knowledge to contribute to local and national public service efforts. Obama and Biden will engage more interested seniors into public service opportunities by expanding and improving programs like Senior Corps to connect seniors with quality volunteer opportunities.
Obama and Biden will set a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year. They will develop national guidelines for service- learning and will give schools better tools both to develop programs and to document student experience. Green Job Corps: Obama and Biden will create an energy-focused youth jobs program to provide disadvantaged youth with service opportunities weatherizing buildings and getting practical experience in fast-growing career fields.
Just about everybody. Now, I’m all for doing my part, but “volunteering” for government stuff is spooky. Especially when you remember Michelle Obama saying this:
“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed.”
Oh, happy, happy, joy, joy. Bring on the freakin’ prancing unicorns, will ya?
That’s my prediction; when all is said and done, the Obama administration will look like the VIP section of Comiskey Park . The selection of Rahm (Take Your Knitting And Shove It) Emanuel is the first step in that South Side headed direction. Other names to look for, in my opinion, will be Valerie Jarrett, William Daley, and Jamie Dimon, to name a few. AP reports Obama will be meeting with his finance committee Friday, Dimon and Daley, both of JP Morgan Chase, are on it, as well as Chicagoan Penny Pritzger.
Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden were to meet Friday with 17 members of their transition economic advisory board. Members include former presidential Cabinet officials and executives from Xerox Corp., Time Warner Inc., Google Inc. and the Hyatt hotel company. Investor Warren Buffett was participating by telephone.
In a July 28, CBS News article, Obama’s finance team was partially named thusly:
The list of attendees was long and impressive: Warren Buffett participated by phone; former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former SEC Chairman under President Bush, William Donaldson; Chairman of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi; Former Treasury Secretary under Bush, Paul O’Neill; Former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich; Google CEO, Eric Schmidt; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, among others.
Dimon’s name has been floated as possible Secretary of Treasury, Google it, the stories are numerous. Jarrett has already been named to Obama’s transition team according to the Telegraph:
In one of his first appointments, Mr Obama named Valerie Jarrett – an African American businesswoman, senior advisor and close family friend – as one of the leaders of his White House transition team.
Transition team appointee John Podesta is also a Chicagoan, while Pete Rouse, the other team member named by the New York Times, is linked to Obama through Harvard Law. I expect that most of Obama’s administration will be made up of Harvard and Stanford alumni and/or Chicagoans. Pay no attention to the media insistence on Clinton links, they’re coincidental. Also look for the names David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Austan Goolsbee to be prominent in the coming days. One prominent Obama supporter with University of Chicago ties, Lawrence Lessig, just might not make the cut. It’s a very telling toss-up on that one. At any rate, the Hyde Park-ization of the Democratic party will soon be extensive and dramatic, unless I’m wrong. In that case, Obama’s cabinet will be entirely different. But I don’t think so. Like the move of DeaNC headquarters in June, “Washington to Chicago” is likely the “change” Obama has always been talking about.
People trashing Sarah Palin have extra-strength blinders on when it comes to Joe (If I Said It And Didn’t Steal It, It’s Probably Stupid) Biden. One never need question whether what Biden says is stupid, one need only note if his teeth are showing. Today, FOX News is reporting that Joe, though relatively good at telling time, lacks comprehension about much of anything else, and is largely unintelligible:
Biden called his sister a “girl-boy,” meaning a tomboy, and then explained that girl-boys are softer than “girl-girls.”
“You know why I think Jill likes Claire McCaskill so well, Senator McCaskill? Jill is one of five sisters, Claire is one of three sisters. And I tell you what, you women raised with sisters are different than women raised with brothers,” Biden said as both women joined him on stage.
“My sister is smart, runs every one of my campaigns; is beautiful; graduated with honors from college; is homecoming queen. But she’s a … she is what I call a ‘girl-boy’ growing up, you know what I mean?”
“And I tell you what? Girl-girls are tougher than girl-boys,” he said. “But there’s one important thing I noticed.The great thing about marrying into a family with five sisters, there’s always one that loves you. ‘Cause you can count on splitting them a bit. You know what I mean?
“I shouldn’t be going off like this, but — hey, folks, 37 more hours, 37 more hours,” he then said.
One can only imagine the stunned silence and blank expressions of those exposed to this gibberish. The perplexity continued as Joe kept talking:
“In the most recent debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, John McCain felt the need to say to Barack, to the commentator and to all America that he was not John McCain,” Biden said in the slip-up. “I mean, he was not President Bush.”
First, Barack Obama’s running mate Joe (Will Somebody Shut Me Up?) Biden tells at least two different audiences (Seattle and San Francisco) that Obama, if elected, though made of steel (like Superman) would be tested as soon as he got in office, so “gird your loins,” because you’d never want to be caught in a crisis with an inexperienced president with your loins ungirded, everybody knows that. Before that, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, told a crowd to vote for Obama, just to piss Bill O’Reilly off. Now, according to ABC’s Jake Tapper (a reporter everybody hates for the right reasons since he’s one of the last decent journalists left, imo) via Atlas Shrugs, another Obama supporter has made it difficult for the novice junior senator to get by with this kind of help from his friends:
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, was down in Florida over the weekend, and one supposes that he thought he was helping Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., but it will ultimately be hard to make that case.
Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugged has posted some video of Nadler at a synagogue in Boca Raton trying to explain why Obama was able to stay in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years.
He starts off my saying he has no idea of what he’s talking about. And then he proceeds to open mouth, insert foot.
Tapper proceeds to tell Nadler’s tale, editorializing along the way. For purposes of inserting my own editorials economically, I’ll just post Nadler’s direct quotes; you can read Jake’s takes later:
Says Nadler: “I have no personal knowledge of what I’m about to say. What I’m about to say is my guess…”
“My guess,” Nadler said, “knowing how politics works, what I’m about to say is not particularly…”
“…not particularly complimentary towards Sen. Obama,” he says.
“Think of the history here,” says the six-term New York congressman. “You have a guy who’s half-white, half-black. He goes to an Ivy League school, comes to Chicago … to start a political career. Doesn’t know anybody.
“Gets involved with community organizing — why? Because that’s how your form a base. OK. Joins the largest church in the neighborhood. About 8,000 members. … Why did he join the church? … Because that’s how you get to know people.
“Now maybe it takes a couple years,” Nadler says, suggesting that soon Obama starts to think of Wright, “’Jesus, the guy’s a nut, the guy’s a lunatic.’ But you don’t walk out of a church with 8,000 members in your district.”
Suggests a woman: “You don’t walk in though.”
“He didn’t know it when he walked in, presumably,” said Nadler.
“Now, what does it tell me?” Nadler asked. “It tells me that he wasn’t terribly political courageous. Does it tell me that he agreed with the reverend in any way? No. It tells me he didn’t want to walk out of a church in his district.”
“He didn’t have the political courage to make the statement of walking out.
Tapper says this is not the first time Nadler has been less than supportive of Obama. Supposedly, when asked by Hillary Clinton in 2005 for his support for a potential presidential run, Nadler said, “sure,” explaining:
“‘I don’t see a lot of other good possibilities in our party,’ said Nadler… ‘Someone like Barack Obama, who is suddenly a real candidate, always worries me, because he is a novice candidate. He hasn’t done it before. Novice candidates, not always, but 95 percent of the time make a mistake. I made some terrible mistakes in office, when I was district leader, no one remembers what they are. I wasn’t in front of all the news cameras.’”
Golly, Nader says Obama’s got no nuts, and now Nadler says, “ya got that right.” So, remind me why anybody should vote for him, again?
CNN is reporting that Barack Obama is warning his followers that those mean ol’ Republicans are going to try to do everything they can to make him lose. Duh.
“Don’t believe for a second this election is over. Don’t think for a minute that power concedes anything. It’s gonna get nasty, I’m sure, in the next four days,” Obama told a crowd in Columbia, Missouri, on Thursday night.
“They will throw everything at us like they’ve been doing, and we’re gonna have to work like our future depends on it in this last week. You know what? Because it does, and every single young person here tonight — I’ve gotta have every single one of you voting, and you’ve gotta grab five more, all of you, have gotta vote,” he said.
FOX News says, because Obots are delusional, Camp O knows they’ve got to take pains to let them down easy, even if Obie wins:
Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harboring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.
The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.
One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair.”
Gee, I wonder why you would have to lower expectations of what a novice, junior senator with no practical experience doing anything but running for office and rabble rousing could potentially accomplish if a rock star obsessed nation actually elected him president? Hmmmm, it’s a puzzlement, all right. I guess you don’t want too much truth too soon to assault the senses of true believers, kinda like you don’t want to force drug addicts to quit cold turkey. System overload leads to massive breakdowns or something. Anyway, one way to “massage the message” is to manage the messengers. Politico’s Ben Smith verifies Drudge’s report that Team Obama is doing just that:
Obama spokesman Bill Burton confirms Drudge’s report that two right-leaning papers, the Washington Times and the New York Post, have lost their seats on the Obama plane, along with the Dallas Morning News.
“We’re trying to reach as many swing voters that we can and unfortunately had to make some tough choices. but we are accommodating these folks in every way possible,” he said.
The Post and the Morning News are both read primarily in states that aren’t in play, but the Washington Times is read in Northern Virginia.
Burton said the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times had returned to the plane, and confirmed that Ebony and Jet magazines have seats on the plane. (The Tribune has had a reporter on the plane for most of the cycle, but recently added a photographer.)
Makes you wonder why the Sun-Times, Tribune, Ebony and Jet, Chicago publications all, were not all on the plane to begin with. The move pissed the Washington Times off, the Dallas Morning News was just a little miffed, and the New York Post doesn’t seem to care much at all, as far as I can tell.
Some Obama apologists pointed out the fact that “McCain did the same thing,” referring to the ejection of Maureen Dowd and Joe Klien from the Straight Talk Express, but it seems nobody wants MoDo aboard:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said in an email that, contrary to Drudge’s suggestion, she won’t be on Obama’s plane.
But Dunn insisted that editorial criticism was not a factor. She said her staff is working with the excluded reporters to find them hotel accommodations if they can catch up with Obama on their own, and has offered them space on the plane of running mate Joe Biden. “It’s not like we’re trying to block coverage of our campaign,” she said.
Naaaah, and it’s not like anybody should have any unreasonable expectations of truth, logic, and fairness from your guys, either. Right?
Looks like another tv station asking Joe (Yeah, I Said It) Biden questions he didn’t like, has been banned by the Obiden campaign at Joe’s request. I say, “looks like,” ‘cuz, this one kinda smells. You decide.
Since, according to AP-Yahoo News, the Feds have proven that some loony white skinhead guys were determined to kill Barack Obama by driving really fast and shooting at him, after they killed over one hundred other black people for no reason, I guess I have to vote for him now, huh?
Federal agents have broken up a plot by two neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives said Monday.
In court records unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn., federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school in a murder spree that was to begin in Tennessee. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.
Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of ATF’s Nashville field office, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.
The men also sought to go on a national killing spree after the Tennessee murders, with Obama as its final target, Cavanaugh told The Associated Press.
“They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama,” Cavanaugh said. “They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.”
An Obama spokeswoman traveling with the senator in Pennsylvania had no immediate comment.
The men, Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of West Helena, Ark., are being held without bond. Agents seized a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and three pistols from the men when they were arrested. Authorities alleged the two men were preparing to break into a gun shop to steal more.
Attorney Joe Byrd, who has been hired to represent Cowart, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.
Cowart and Schlesselman are charged with possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer, and threatening a candidate for president.
The investigation is continuing, and more charges are possible, Cavanaugh said.
The court records say Cowart and Schlesselman also bought nylon rope and ski masks to use in a robbery or home invasion to fund their spree, during which they allegedly planned to go from state to state and kill people.
For the Obama plot, the legal documents show, Cowart and Schlesselman “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows.”
“Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt,” the court complaint states. “Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt.”
Cavanaugh said there’s no evidence — so far — that others were willing to assist Cowart and Schlesselman with the plot.
He said authorities took the threats very seriously.
“They seemed determined to do it,” Cavanaugh said. “Even if they were just to try it, it would be a trail of tears around the South.”
I can understand the rope, ski masks, etc., but they would both wear white tuxedos and top hats? My other question, if the records were unsealed in court today, when did this happen? Well, according to KAIT in Jonesborough, Arkansas, last week:
The pair was arrested on October 22, 2008 by the Crockett County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Department.
Good thing they didn’t tell us about all this last week, we might have missed all that Biden stuff.
Say you’re the Obama campaign team (okay, I know that’s distasteful, but play along, I won’t hurt you) and you’re (rightly) worried that whenever Joe Biden opens his mouth, he’s going to stick your foot in it. What would you do? Limit him to untelevised fundraisers? Appearances at VFW halls? Local TV interviews? Probably. But what if that didn’t work? What if no matter what you tried, Joe (You Really Wanna Elect My Guy?) Biden found a way to screw it up? Well you could try punishing shows that ask hard questions and then blame the station for it. And, according to The TV Guy, Hal Boedecker, in Orlando, Florida, that’s exactly what Camp O did:
Why did Barack Obama’s campaign cancel an interview Jill Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden, was going to do with WFTV-Channel 9?
The campaign cited “an unprofessional interview” that WFTV’s Barbara West conducted with Joe Biden (pictured) on Thursday. WFTV news director Bob Jordan has defended the interview as hard-hitting and unlike many satellite interviews where softball questions are posed.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Adrianne Marsh, Florida spokeswoman for Obama’s campaign, said the station, in talking with Sen. Biden, was “both combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts.”
Marsh said West’s insistence that Obama was an organizer for ACORN was “100 percent false.” “In a line of questioning that would make Rush Limbaugh proud, West even went as far as to quote Karl Marx, a Communist icon, in a disturbing attempt to associate Barack Obama with socialism,” Marsh wrote.
Saying that since Jill Biden wasn’t running for anything, they weren’t going to put her through that kinda stuff, the O Team also said they weren’t going to let anybody on their side play with WFTV anymore:
The Obama campaign earlier Friday suggested that future interviews with WFTV were unlikely before Election Day.
Poor Joe. They could always try limiting his press availability to his campaign plane. No chance of a screw-up when you’re talking to yourself.
Joe Biden is “likable” like that uncle every family has who only shows up once every couple of years or so, out of the blue, with a bottle of Scotch, so they let him in, and everybody seems to like him well enough, even though nobody really knows him very well, except whichever parent he’s related to, and they don’t talk about him much. He’s easy to make fun of because he talks too much, really loudly, and he always says something he shouldn’t have because your parents didn’t want the kids to know.
First of all, Andrea Mitchell was wrong. Surprise! Joe Biden has not been muzzled and sent to a neutral corner after his, “vote for my guy and you’ll be sorry” comments this weekend. Nope, no how, no way, baby. Joey’s still talking, and nobody’s yet sure about what. Campaigning in Charlotte, N.C., Joe took aim at “John McClain,”
“John McClain. John McClain. Excuse me, John McCain. John McCain — I don’t recognize him anymore,” Biden said to laughter from several hundred supporters in attendance.
Biden also said this:
“What worries me most is the McCain campaign seems to have gotten a little loose,” Biden said. “John’s getting a little loose. He doesn’t have much of a steady hand these days. Now’s the time we most need a steady hand.”
Wonder what’s got Joe talking double? Anyway, with Barack Obama heading out of Indianapolis lickety-split to run and see his gravely ill “Toot,” Biden and Michelle Obama are left to do all the heavy campaign lifting. Look for a couple of “this country sucks, so elect my husband,” and “if I wasn’t scared to death my guy would win, I could remember my lines,” comments from the Dynamic Duo over the next two days.
Moving on, I don’t believe Alan Greenspan is “shocked” about shit. The “Bankers are greedy? Say it ain’t so!” routine sucks, and is about as believable as Joe Biden’s teeth. And whether you’re “shocked” or not, Al, it’s still partially your fault.
African Press International is pissing me off. Not because they haven’t released any tapes of Michelle Obama yelling at them about being black and oppressed, like they promised, I didn’t expect them to really do that. What I’m pissed about is, they’re letting the story get stale. Where’s today’s “twist”? I was all ready for a juicy development and…nothing. And the “Chief Editor Korir’s going to be on MommaE’s radio show” report hardly counts. Bummer. I need drama, dammit!
And lastly, Andy Martin, a bit of a professional yahoo, is claiming that Barack Obama is really the son of Frank Marshall Davis, based upon the fact that he (Martin) is in Hawaii, and…well, it really, really makes sense. Whatever. But, in his bugle-blowing statement Martin says a lot of things that don’t make sense. (Okay, that’s redundant. Andy Martin, don’t make sense. I know. It’s the residual Biden influence from above.) Anyway:
“Ironically, what I have to say today dilutes the ‘Muslim’ theory that has propagated. Davis was not a Muslim.
There’s other stuff about Martin’s “investigation” to nitpick, but enough about him, and that. I want to talk about the current media narrative of Barack Obama’s “inevitability.” They can write and report all the “McCain sucks” stories they want, Obama’s not inevitable in my house. Unlike the unseen “great unwashed” the media selectively depicts, through their creative coverage, of a nation of seemingly hypnotized, if not lobotomized, Obots determinedly clomping to the polls, chanting, “Must vote Obama, must vote Obama,” the members of my household are far more likely to throw something at any television screen showing such reports, and if asked about voting for Obama, are likely to respond by throwing the question back in the infidel’s face. “Me, vote Obama? You must be joking. I know you’re not talking to me!” This is only the beginning, the opening strains of a litany of incredulity and rejection of an objectionable, unacceptable premise, unworthy of consideration. “What time was it when you lost your mind? And who let you in?” Those are typical of the sort of questions one who bespake the unthinkable might be asked in return.
And we’re black. Democrats, until this year. So, I don’t know what kind of polls they’re taking, but they sure haven’t asked me.
With Joe Biden being sent to his room without supper for being an idiot in front of company, and Barack Obama “rushing” off to Hawaii to visit his “gravely ill” grandmother after a quick campaign stop in Indianapolis, Thursday, who’s minding the store? Monday, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (Mika Brzezinski?!) were commenting about the lack of mainstream media attention to Biden’s “gird your loins, they’re comin’ after Barack” comments…
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well you know it’s interesting, because I’m going through the papers. I figure there’s got to be, just as you analyzed, Joe, political ramifications to that comment, gaffe, however you want to make it—two in a row, though—but I’m seeing spotty media coverage. I feel like half the media covered this. I’m just going through the papers and seeing if it plays highly, and I’m not finding it in the [Washington] Post so far.
and yesterday, Andrea Mitchell said he’s been spanked.
We know Biden was in Colorado Tuesday because AP-Yahoo News reports he warned us off the whole “birth certificate/who’s your daddy?” stuff:
“If it’s about the economy, talk about the economy, not about Barack Obama’s heritage,” he thundered to a crowd at the University of Northern Colorado.
We also know he was in Richmond, Va. Wednesday, because Politico’s Ben Smith says so:
Answering questions after a meeting with Biden and national security advisers, Obama insists that Joe Biden intended to say that the next president will be tested by foreign powers, regardless of who is elected.
“Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes, but i think his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested, regardless of who it is,” he said at the Richmond, Va., event.
Talk about “rhetorical flourishes.” Notice, it says Obama met with Joe, but he didn’t let him come out and talk. But, according to Lynn Sweet, who claims to have audio of Sunday’s Seattle fundraiser, that ain’t quite what Joey said, anyway. This is kinda long, but it’s important. Lest we forget:
“We’re gonna find ourselves in real trouble when we get elected. This is gonna be really hard. This is gonna be really, really, really hard. We’re gonna have the largest systemic deficit in modern – not modern – in the history of the world. Literally. Literally. We’re gonna find ourselves inheriting a debt, yearly debt this year, that may approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars. You hear me? We left this guy with a $232 billion surplus. At a minimum when we take office – God willing – we’re gonna have a $450 billion deficit. And the way the economy is tanking the way it is now it may be as high as $750 billion.”
“28 states are in serious trouble and they’re about to contribute to the economic downward spiral because what are they doing? Cutting services, laying people off as they lose their tax base. So there are going to be a lot of tough decisions Barack’s gonna have to make, a lot of tough decisions, including on foreign policy.”
“And here’s the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough – I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you, not financially to help him, we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they’re made if they work, then they weren’t viewed as a crisis. If they don’t work, it’s viewed as you didn’t make the right decision, a little bit like how we hesitated so long dealing with Bosnia and dealing with Kosovo, and consequently 200,000 people lost their lives that maybe didn’t have to lose lives. It’s how we made a mistake in Iraq. We made a mistake in Somalia. So there’s gonna be some tough decisions. They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia’s newly-emboldened position because they’re floating in a sea of oil.”
After again touting Cantwell’s judgment, Biden told the crowd to “gird your loins.”
“Only thing I’m asking you is, you know, gird your loins. We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Aegean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets, this is a systemic problem we have with this economy.”
That’s not even all the scary stuff Joe said, Lynn’s got more. Now, The Prophet of Doom did say that the “next president” was gonna have a huge task, but he also made it abundantly clear that he believes that next president is Barack Obama, when he said, “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.” Kinda hard to fudge the meaning of that one. And here’s the thing, just like Andrea said, Biden said it twice! From Fox News:
Biden made the comments over the weekend to two fundraising audiences, saying he expects that Obama will face an international challenge early in his presidency if he is elected on Nov. 4.
See? Remember, the long quote is from a Seattle fundraiser, this site refers to the earlier San Francisco one:
At a recent fundraiser in San Francisco, Joe Biden dazzled his audience with his grasp of foreign policy: “Mark my words, ” he said. “Within the next, first six months of this administration, if we win, they’re going to — we’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They’re going to want to test him.”
No wonder they sent him home. Hasn’t it dawned on Camp O, though, that they might want to send somebody with a leash and a muzzle out with Joe to these things? That is, once they let him out. It’s not like there’s no room on the plane. If I was Obama, I’d want to take some time off, too. Maybe, he’ll stop in Vegas, see what Mark Davis has to say about things. Compare COLB’s, perhaps?
Sarah Palin, speaking in Henderson, Nevada, invoked Hillary Clinton’s reference to “the highest, hardest glass ceiling,” and verbally smacked Barack Obama upside the head for his lack of commitment to feminist values. As reported by The Washington Post:
Palin surrounded herself onstage with two higher-profile defectors from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s camp — Lynn Rothschild, a member of the Democratic Platform Committee, and Elaine Lafferty, a former editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine — along with Shelly Mandell, the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, Linda Klinge, the vice president of Oregon’s NOW chapter and Prameela Bartholomeusz, a small business owner and member of the Democratic National Platform Committee. The L.A. chapter of NOW has endorsed Palin’s bid.
The Post amended it’s original article, lining out the L.A. chapter of NOW endorsement, without noting that Shelly Mandell, NOW’s L.A. chapter president, did indeed endorse Palin, as an individual. Palin went on to say:
“When the time came to make a decision, Barack Obama couldn’t bring himself to pick the woman who got eighteen million votes in the primary,” Palin said of Obama’s vice presidential pick, comparing it to the discrimination women face in the workplace every day. “The qualifications are there, but for some reason the promotion never comes … You’ve got to ask yourself, why wasn’t Senator Hillary Clinton even vetted by the Obama campaign?”
“Our opponents think they have the women’s vote all locked up, which is a little presumptuous,” she said, as the crowd’s roar of approval drowned her out. “A little presumptuous, and only our side has a woman on the ticket.”
While it is true that Obama did not choose Clinton as a running mate, it is also true that she has served as a better surrogate advocating for his campaign than Joe Biden, the man who was actually chosen, and who has by his own admission, acknowledged Clinton’s superior qualifications, if not her efforts. It is likely that Clinton will be responsible for delivering far more votes to the ticket than Biden ever could, especially when his tendency to spew gaffes is considered in tandem with his general lack of popularity.
When Sarah Palin called Obama out about “equal pay for equal work”…
“There is a difference between what Barack Obama says and what he does,” she declared. “Out on the stump, he talks about things like equal pay for equal work, but according to Senate records, women on his staff get just 83 cents for every dollar that the men get. What is with that? Does he think that the women aren’t working as hard? Does he think they’re 17 percent less productive?”
…she missed the opportunity to point out that in the injustice of using Senator Clinton as a de facto running mate, he was reaping the benefits of using a woman’s considerable services and not paying her anything at all. In fact, she’s paying him.
Here’s audio of Joe [Urkel (Did I Say That?)] Biden’s “you sure you wanna vote for this guy?” Seattle moment. If anyone has video, or knows where I can find it, please let me know.
And here’s Sarah Palin’s “gee, thanks for the endorsement, Senator Joe (Have You Been Drinking Again?) Biden!” Reno, Nevada response.
It will be filled with expletives, swear words, cursing, cussing and every other way to fucking say I’m going to use the word “fuck” a lot. I’m fucking sick of this election and just about everybody associated with it. I’m furious at both major political parties, the mainstream media, the blogger bullies, and all the self-interested entities masquerading as being “compassionately concerned” about our “rights” and “freedoms” and “well-being” when all they really want is the post masturbatory good feeling that comes from the greaseless rape-by-proxy butt fucking of the electorate for profit.
The Democrats force-fed us an unacceptable novice whose running mate thinks is a clueless jerk, yet the rah-rah boys employed to keep us informed think it’s a-okay to pump and prop him up because he’s black and if they don’t people might think they’re “racist,” and Lord help us if that happens because all those just-shy-of-savage black folks who never had a president before might get mad and riot.
The Republicans basically washed their hands of the whole affair from the beginning and figured they might as well give their least favorite perennial loser a shot since they don’t have a chance in hell to win anyway given the fact that their last “shoot first and ask questions later” standard bearer is a total bungler and just slightly more popular than herpes.
The mainstream “infotainment” media abandoned all pretense of journalistic objectivity in favor of leg-tingling partisanship, gleefully fudging inconvenient facts whenever well-aimed mud-slinging wasn’t enough, while the misogynistic bullies of the blogosphere adopted a “by-any-means-necessary” mindset to promote the candidate they flipped a coin to decide to promote over the qualified candidate they hated for being born female.
Then there are the fucking fringe elements, disguised as relevent, nobodies, pushing their personal career agendas down the throats of the “let’s get Mikey, he hates everything” minded public in an attempt to secure their extraneous phony-baloney jobs, whether we like them or not.
And let’s not forget the corporate rapists-turned-extortionists holding our global finances for ransom, boldly demanding 7, 8, 9 hundred billion dollars a pop or they won’t let us borrow any of our own money back from them so we can pay too much for things we need, and their fox in the hen house government homeboys who laid the foundation and greased the wheels and paved the way for the scheme to work. But fuck us, what do we know?
African Press International, Larry Sinclair, Joe the Plumber, Keating 5, William Ayers, Fannie, Freddie, and all the “spaghetti against the wall” distractions that have been thrown out to divert attention from the fact that we are being asked to choose a fucking president from a 2 man pool of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, piss me off too. When a guy can’t form whole sentences without help, who cares if he was born in a manger or in a Muslim country, and who cares if a man called his wife a “cunt” when people can wear t-shirts calling his running mate the same thing, and everything’s hunky-dory?
The head-in-the-sand public is no better. Don’t you guys get it? When you hear a candidate say, “vote for me early, you never know what might happen,” doesn’t that set alarm bells off in your head? When somebody raises enough money to bail out Wall Street, but won’t name his donors, doncha get at least a little bit suspicious? When one side says. “you’re cheating,” and the other side says, “no I’m not, I’m winning so your guys might as well stay home,” don’t you see the game on both sides?
My primary reason for not supporting Hillary Clinton right now is two-fold. One, she’s not running for anything at the moment, and, two, she’s stumping for Barack Obama.
I decided very early on in the primary season that I did not like Barack Obama, at all, and have always felt that he would make a lousy president. I agreed when Joe Biden said so, and, unlike FootMouth Joe, I have seen no reason to change my mind. In fact, as the election process plays itself out, my resolve not to vote for Obama, under any imaginable, or unimaginable, circumstances, grows ever stronger.
My initial reaction to the Oily One was, “eh.” The only thing he inspired in me, once he appeared on my radar, was mild curiosity, at best. If that. I’ve never heard him say anything that gave me confidence, let alone hope, and his canned, generic, ghost-written speeches, read from a TelePrompTer, nose-in-air, drone on interminably, and have grown from the mild annoyance associated with sharing living space with a housefly, to the full-out rage and frustration of living with that same pest for over a year.
Lacking any accomplishment of note, surrogates tout his “policies,” yet his inability to articulate them in off-the-cuff situations only serves to highlight his inadequacy. Incessant media drumbeats attesting to his wonderfulness, coupled with nonstop ads intruding every avenue of modern day entertainment and intellectual pursuit, ratchet up the annoyance factor to intolerable levels. Especially since they’re all lies.
Hey, HuffPo, Who’re You Callin’ Conservative?
As evidence of the “it must fit the narrative” media mindset, I offer up my own experience. On Sunday, upon hearing of Colin Powell’s “officializing” his “help a brother out, hook a brother up,” Obama endorsement, I immediately posted my opinion on my blog. Imagine my surprise when I noticed a dramatic traffic uptick on my small little site, linking here from Huffington Post. Peeking into the situation, since I’m reluctant to expose myself too fully to the rancor against all those not pledging allegiance to He Who Must Not Be Examined, I found that my site was included as an illustration of conservative racism in a post by Sam Stein.
There were, down the conservative line, other voices who gave credence to the race-over-politics theory. A prominent Republican attorney in Maine, Dan Billings, accused Powell of racism, stating: “If Obama was a white man, Powell would not have made the endorsement.”
I’m the “other voices.” Obviously, Mr. Stein didn’t bother to read my post, had he, he might have noticed the PUMA/Just Say No Deal tags I use to label each one. Heaven forbid he read my “About” page which features a short paragraph identifying me as a black woman so fed up with the faux nominating process employed by the Democratic party to coronate their “selectee,” that I now have no affiliation to any political party. As far as being a “George Will/Rush Limbaugh” conservative is concerned, had HuffPo not included me in their post, I probably would not have known what either man thought. The only thing I can see that we have in common is…well…we all walk on two legs, and at least two of us still have hair on our heads. This sort of “racism to prove racism” narrative of the Obama campaign and their mainstream media/blogger boyz enablers is one of the main reasons I could never vote for him. Having experienced it for over a year, as a Hillary Clinton supporter, not only can I attest to the ugliness, I lament the coming to fruition of the fears I’ve had since first becoming aware of the Obama practice of pouring gasoline on smoldering racial fires and encouraging his pre-pubescent-minded bullies of the blogosphere to climb on chairs and point gleeful fingers at the flames.
Which brings me to Hillary Clinton. That she stumps for Obama distresses me, though she obviously has her own reasons for doing so. Given what she experienced at the hands of the Obama thugs, what those reasons might be, boggles the mind. Since I haven’t seen or heard about the whereabouts of Chelsea lately, I’m of the mind that David Axelrod has her locked away in a secure location, only to be released once her parents have done his bidding to his satisfaction. Whatever, that’s Hillary’s business, not mine.
So, since Hillary Clinton is not running for anything, and she, for her own reasons, sees the benefit of supporting Barack Obama, a man I will never vote for, I cannot support her. At this time. If she were to run for national office again, I’d probably be the first one aboard the bandwagon.
That “Party Unity My Ass” thing still works for me just fine, though.
Is Joe Biden working for the McCain camp undercover, or what? Why else would he try to scare people about Barack Obama? After months of Camp O telling us the world looks forward to Obama’s election with bated breath, now his running mate says the world can’t wait to test his mettle. From ABC News:
“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
WTF, Joe? And we should elect him because…why, exactly?
“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”
And we should believe you Joe, because…?
“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it,” the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”
I don’t know about anybody else, but I can’t think of a better argument for electing John McCain than that.
It’s getting harder and harder to tell the Democratic presidential candidate from the Republican one. If you’re not looking at them, that is. Just listening to them talk, or reading about their proposals, you’d swear they either switched sides, or sides don’t matter anymore.
Last night, though the “we’re smarter than you” pundits near and far scored the debate for Obama, saying since McCain didn’t deliver a knockout, Obie wins on points, in the light of day, it looks like McCain may have knocked them all silly at the opening bell. In answer to the first question presented to him, McCain said this:
You know that home values of retirees continues to decline and people are no longer able to afford their mortgage payments. As president of the United States, Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.
Now, the first I heard of this plan was from Hillary Clinton, but nobody paid attention to her. Last night, immediately after the debate, Obi-WanNaBePresident seemed to take credit, at least according to a press release published by Politico:
The statement, “John McCain Lies Tonight,” began: “McCain today said he had a new plan to allow the Treasury to purchase and restructure mortgages. The truth is that this is not a new proposal and is already part of the rescue plan that was signed into law. It was Obama, not McCain who called for this move two weeks ago.”
But today, Camp O is singing a different Dixie; from AP:
The plan would cause the government “to massively overpay for mortgages in a plan that would guarantee taxpayers lose money, and put them at risk of losing even more if home values don’t recover,” Obama economic adviser Jason Furman said in a statement. “The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud.”
I can’t underscore enough what a rotten idea John McCain’s ACORN-like government mortgage buy-up is. I said it during my liveblog. And I’ll say it again: “HE WANTS TO EXPAND THE BAILOUT. He wants to do what ACORN wants to do. We’re Screwed ‘08.”
And, even though Obama slammed McCain just last night for saying the fundamentals of the economy are strong, today the O-man said:
“America still has the most talented, most productive workers of any country on Earth,” Obama said. “We’re still the home to innovation and technology, colleges and universities that are the envy of the world. Some of the biggest ideas in history have come from our small businesses and our research facilities.”
Having trouble keeping “who’s who” straight? Well, let me tell you, whatever you do, don’t call the black one “Hussein.” I know it’s his name, but it seems to really piss his friends off.
Last night, Joe Biden cried. Again. With a month to go before the election, were those the tears that were supposed to melt America?
How does a white woman attack a white man?
That was the challenge facing Sarah Palin in last night’s debate. A strong, powerful woman going up against a sensitive man has to be careful how she approaches such a delicate situation. Does she attack? Or, does she simply allow for his vulnerability? Now that the debate is over, I feel we must examine Joe Biden’s tears.
While recounting the story of the tragic loss of his wife and daughter and the serious injuries to his two sons, Biden became understandably emotional at the memories of the grief and hardship he experienced as a single father and widower.
He cried for himself.
He did not cry for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina or Gustav. He did not cry for the women disenfranchised in the primaries that lead to his being tapped as vice-presidential nominee. What of their suffering?
What of the sense of loss felt by the parents of the 125 people murdered in the streets of his running mate’s hometown, or those of the parents of more than 4,000 American casualties of the Iraq war? Did he cry for them?
No.
He shed not one tear for the thousands of women who are injured or killed at the hands of husbands and lovers, or even for the rape victim his campaign sought to exploit for a negative ad. No emotion was shown for women like Britney Spears, who face the loss of custody of their children just because they don’t like to wear panties when they take their kids for a drive.
The things written here are almost too shameful to type, and certainly don’t reflect the sympathy I feel for the victims, and the families of the victims, mentioned. If I offended anyone, I humbly apologize. However, in light of the fact that similar statements made by Obama campaign surrogate, Jesse Jackson Jr. against Hillary Clinton, a woman Joe Biden himself admitted would have been a better VP pick than him, and who, I believe, would have made a much better president than either he, or Barack Obama could ever hope to be, were allowed to stand, Biden’s tears must be examined.
And considering that Biden shed no tears over that, he, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party, come up seriously lacking.
Obviously the press has received it’s official Camp O “what we’re supposed to tell them to think” memo about last night’s debate, since article, after article, struggles to find new and clever ways to make their tediously predictable, “she was great, but…” spin seem tolerably credible. Espousing David Axelrod’s astroturf seed, these happy yappers are running off at the keyboard in gleeful abandon of reality.
Truth is, she smoked him. No matter how many stories are written about what the squiggly lines on the rigged little meters mean, or what all the drunks in the bar the writer was in, said, when it comes to perception, Palin won hands down.
As I said all along, my mind is not changed one iota about who I’m going to vote for. “None of the above” is still my personal choice, so far. But looking at the debate, it’s easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, or to be more descriptive, manure from the bull shit.
Joe Biden, and those who love him, are touting his superior foreign policy credentials as proof he “won.” But it was not a foreign policy debate. In fact, there’s no real reason to expect a vice-president to be overly-knowledgeable about…much of anything, really. Besides, every time Biden opens his mouth, one is reminded of his tendency to insert foot, or say someone else’s words, or flat-out lie. So, even if he “wins,” he loses, because the legacy of his own big, mouth-juicy foot will always follow him around, just to trip him up and make him fall flat on his Pinocchio nose. Every time.
Palin, on the other hand, came across as everything Barack Obama claims to be; a wide-eyed, innocent, Washington outsider, hell-bent on reform. More importantly, she projected small town all-America to…all America. She was mom and apple pie standing on a stage taking up for the little people, just because, gee whiz, it’s the right thing to do. The fact that stats and facts didn’t roll off her tongue worked in her favor; she was a female Jimmy Stewart, and while she may not have been around as long as her debate opponent, she sure knows moose patties when she sees ‘em, and gosh darnit, knows how to turn ‘em into fertilizer, too.
So, the Camp O team can spin themselves dizzy laying fake grassroots seed from here to Alaska with their, “she did okay, but…” stories. Hockey and soccer moms shopping in Wal-Marts for tube socks for Joe Sixpack all across the land just found themselves a shero.
And yeah, there’s an element of racism in the fact that Sarah Palin is so appealing to some voters simply because she’s an All-American White Woman, but so what? If Barack Obama hadn’t tried to win the presidency by race-baiting and girl-bashing, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. She probably wouldn’t even be in the race.
When the endless analyses and commentaries have all been written about tonight’s debate between vice-presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and they will, one thing will stand out in America’s mind as it does in mine. With the benefit of a few hours of reflection, I can process that which is most memorable to me about tonight’s events into some sort of perspective.
From the moment the two combatants greeted each other, she owned him.
“Nice to meet you. Can I call you Joe?”
With that simple phrase, she took over the debate, set the terms and served notice, “I will take no shit from you, Mister.”
“Of course,” Biden replied with a smile.
Biden, clueless, had no idea he had just surrendered any advantage he might have imagined he had. However, her charmingly dismissive embrace of him was the most effective weapon she had, and she deployed it liberally.
It came late in the debate when Biden had made one of his pre-designed points, bashing the Bush administration and tying the miscreants in power to his would-be Republican successor John McCain. With the sprightliness of a quarterback calling a gimmick play designed for a certain kind of defense, she offered this: “I say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards.”
Sure, on the surface, it was a cute Shoeless Joe-Ronald Reagan call back, but in reality, it was much, much more. That was Sarah-speak for, “You’re not so tough, big guy, and I’m not scared of you. At all.”
Again, and again, Governor Palin gently chided, scolded, and nudged her “more experienced” opponent back into the place in which she wanted him to stay. Over and over, she made her point, “I don’t care what you say, I’m in charge of me.” She didn’t try to outdo him in his area of expertise, it wasn’t neccessary.
“I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter … of the mainstream media kinda telling viewers what they just heard,” she said. “I’d rather just be able to speak to the American people.”
All she had to do was exactly what she did; tell America directly, who she was. Joe Biden was incidental to Sarah Palin’s debate, and to anybody who was paying attention, she made that abundantly clear at “hello.”
*UPDATE: Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen this Peggy Noonan video when I wrote my post, in fact, most of the time, I write my impressions, then search for support data, primarily looking for direct quotes or salient facts. There are times however, when I will write commentary about something I’ve read, like in the post about the CNN/Rock The Vote debate event. In the case of Palin’s “can I call you Joe” moment, it caught my attention as soon as she said it, but I didn’t really think about it until later. Anyway, looks like Ms. Noonan saw things pretty much the way I did.
CNN, always looking for an angle, camped out for tonight’s VP debate at Atlanta’s Hard Rock Cafe, where Rock The Vote held a debate night registration drive. While young people drank themselves silly, they tried to stave off boredom by playing “Palin Bingo.”
The game was the focus of a group of four friends, all in their 20s and early 30s, as they put Xs in boxes containing keywords they anticipated Gov. Sarah Palin might say during Thursday’s vice presidential debate.
Words like: Special needs, Wasilla, maverick, Main Street, Washington outsider.
“Special needs … I won bingo!” shouted Laura Butler, 30.
Satisfied with her win, and a full hour into the debate between Republican Palin and Democrat Sen. Joe Biden, she headed for the door.
“I thought it was entertaining and so, you know, it was fun,” she said, a White Stripes song blaring in the background.
Can you say, “predictable?” The word applies to both candidates, too. Joe Biden pulled out most of the familiar stops: loose facts, manufactured tears, and unfortunately, managed to do it without committing a major faux pas. Bummer. Sarah Palin, also avoided “foot-in-mouth” disease, relying on “hockey mom” and other suburban colloquialisms that went a long way to help her connect with the little people, “you betcha.”
The young people were not only bored, they were, like me, completely unmoved. No minds were changed, in fact, they were, on the whole, way unimpressed. One of them, Daryll Cordeiro, summed things up this way:
“I’m disgusted by the whole process because I don’t see a difference between either of them: Obama, McCain, Palin or Biden,” Cordeiro said. “[Biden and Palin] are agreeing on so much. You take tax reform, for instance. What did they say that was different, really? They aren’t speaking to me. There’s all this talk about change, change, change. It’s all gimmicks.”
Ahh, there’s hope for the youth of today, after all. Laura Butler, the young lady who won the “Palin Bingo” game, claims to be an Obama supporter, but if I was Team O, I wouldn’t be popping any champagne about the “youth vote,” if she’s typical:
“If it really mattered, if it was really close between Obama and McCain, I would go with Obama,” Butler said, sipping a tall peach drink. “But that’s not because I like him or that he speaks to me. He doesn’t. They are all the same. But I don’t like McCain. It’s a matter, to me, of who you don’t want.”
Though the Rock The Vote representative claimed the event to be a success, and that young people really care what’s going on, a strong case could be made that he’s either deliriously clueless, or trying to protect his phony-baloney job:
The Rock the Vote event was intended to register new voters. But no one registered to vote during the debate, according to volunteer Demarcus Peters, and most of the tables cleared out before the debate was over.
Good to know my faith in America’s future is not misplaced.
Well, we all just watched a debate that will change absolutely nobody’s mind, and I, for one, am glad it’s over. Listen, my mind’s made up; I hate Joe Biden and I don’t hate Sarah Palin. I hate Joe Biden because he’s Barack Obama’s running mate. I don’t care about Sarah Palin because she’s John McCain’s running mate. I hate Barack Obama because he’s a creepy, curiously funded, incompetent, inexperienced joke of a candidate who wants to change America in fundamental ways. I don’t like John McCain because he’s a Republican.
Nothing I saw or heard tonight changed my mind one bit.
All that’s left is to sit back and watch the spinmeisters lay Axelrod’s astroturf.
If that’s not bad enough, if elected, this “politician” would preside over a country undergoing a complete restructuring of it’s banking industry, a country that is about to bailout Wall Street with 700 billion dollars plus of taxpayer money. This comes after re-naming the “bailout” a “rescue” in an attempt to placate disgruntled voters who expressed their displeasure to lawmakers, only to seem to change their minds after the overloaded House website was shut down. Makes you wonder how Congress got the message.
Yet, nobody mentions the other bailouts, like the one in March for JP Morgan Chase, or the 630 billion the Fed pumped into the global financial market Sept. 29, or the other 630 billion dollar government spending bill, including 25 billion bucks for automakers, that Bush signed Tuesday. And, heaven forbid anyone from talking about monies paid to Congress by companies involved in the big bailout, or question donations to the “politician” benefiting most with voters from the country’s economic troubles, even when those donations come from the same banking industry whose executives advise him, like Jamie Dimon and William Daley (Chicago mayor, Richard’s brother) of JP Morgan Chase. If you’re not going to ask about those guys, you certainly won’t pay attention to donors to the “politician” like Mr. Good Will or Mr. Doodad Pro. Naaah, everything’s fine.
So, while I may seem to be a tad irrational in my daily ranting about this “politician,” I assure you, I am not. In a society gone mad, when the deck seems stacked against you, and the other side is just as bad, insanity is relative, anyway.
Could the recent bickering between Barack Obama and his running mate Joe (Oops, I Did It Again) Biden be the first bricks being laid in the groundwork to dump old Joe for Hillary Clinton, who, according to Bill Clinton, doesn’t want the job anyway?
Maybe.
Today, Barack said that Joe “should have waited” before disagreeing with him, like there’s ever a good time to do so. Here’s the video:
Looks like Obie got caught playing politics, while JoBi was being apolitical, i.e., honest. Can’t have that in a running mate for an astroturfed presidential candidate, can we? After all, appearances are everything.
The rumors of a planned Obama-Biden divorce are still floating around, (my favorite is the lack of available Obama-Biden merchandise is the “proof” that such a thing is in the works) however getting such a thing done might be a problem for a number of reasons. What possible excuse might work? The old “Muskie tears“ and “Eagleton-esque mental issues” routines are out, hoping Sentimental Joe might break down and turn on the waterworks, and the fun of watching him try to extract his foot from his mouth fast enough to say something even more stupid are the only reasons anybody shows up to see him speak anymore . Health problems probably won’t work either, as long as McCain is in the race. No, looks like Obi-Wan-NaBePresident is stuck with Shoeless (Makes It Easier To Insert Foot) Joe, which serves him right for picking a guy who said he sucked in the first place.
Ya gotta love Joe Biden; he’s never dull. The fact that his brain doesn’t always seem connected to his mouth is a source of constant entertainment. The latest incidence of “Joespeak” has the Democratic veep candidate calling out the guy who picked him as a running mate (you can’t make this stuff up) for one of his ads. In an interview with Katie Couric, Joe criticized Obama’s “McCain can’t use a computer ad” before catching himself and trying to talk it back:
Couric asked: “Are you disappointed with the tone of the campaign? The ‘lipstick on the pig’ stuff, and some of the ads – you guys haven’t been completely guilt-free making fun of John McCain’s inability to use a computer.”
“I thought that was terrible by the way,” Biden said.
“Why did you do it then?” Couric asked.
“I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it,” Biden said. “And I don’t think Barack, you know. I just think that was …”
Did Obama approve that ad?
“The answer is I don’t think there was anything intentional about that,” Couric said. “They were trying to make another point. That’s very different than deliberately taking a vote Barack Obama had to teach children about how to deal with child-predators and saying he was teaching them sex education in kindergarten. Very different in degree.”
To make bad matters worse, the above statement was mis-transcribed on the CBS website, attributing Biden’s last line to Couric.
Everybody’s heard of the “Bradley effect,” which is based on the premise that white Americans are wimpy, racist liars at heart. From Wikipedia:
The term Bradley effect, less commonly called[1] the Wilder effect, refers to a frequently observed discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in Americanpolitical campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other.[2][3][4] Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite being ahead in voter polls, the Bradley effect refers to a tendency on the part of white voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, when, on election day, they vote for his/her white opponent.[5]
Now, it should be noted that the “Bradley and Wilder effects” were terms coined by a loser and a barely-winner to rationalize their unexpected results. Conversely, there is no “Patrick effect” or “Kilpatrick effect” to explain wins by Deval and Kwame and the impact that race may or may not have had in their elections. We also don’t have a “Kerry effect” to explain how big a role Swiftboating, or a “Gore effect” explaining how to lose before all the chads are unhung, can play.
The PUMA effect, which is a new phenomenon, will not be fully appreciated until the impact of disaffected Hillocrats can be assessed, examined and evaluated after the election. A number of relatively high-profile women who supported Hillary Clinton for president have been quite vocal about their disenchantment with the Democratic Party and it’s eventual “selectee.” The latest, Lynn Forrester, Lady de Rothschild, joins Wisconsin delegate, Debra Bartoshevich, Rules and Bylaws Committe ejectee, Harriet Christian, whose invective filled rant fully expressed what most of us awakening PUMAs were thinking and feeling, and Ann Price Mills, whose heartfelt disappointment with the sham roll call vote at the Democratic National Convention was preserved forever on tape by CNN. (To clarify, I do not agree with every word spoken by each of these women, what I do agree with is the overwhelming sense of outrage brought about by the Democratic Party’s betrayal of it’s principles.) Though not identifying themselves publicly as PUMAs, they exhibit all the known characteristics; a disdain for this season’s nominating process, enmity for the party elite who orchestrated the charade, and a total, flat-out, complete rejection of Barack Obama. That these women do not call themselves PUMAs is not surprising; though there is a real PUMA coalition online, the movement has always been a reflection of a shared sentiment, not a dues-paying political action entity. Not all of those qualifying as PUMAs will ever be identified as such, nor will they all vote the same way.
That’s the DeaNC’s problem. When trying to quantify the resistance to their chosen one, they rely on unreliable methodology, like polling and website traffic. That might work in other areas of assessment, to a degree, but it is unlikely to yield them any real usable data in this instance. Most of the people (not just women, not just white, not just old) who are resistant to Obama’s “charms” because he is an illegitimate candidate with a postage stamp sized resume who has to carry a TelePrompTer around to stump speeches or else he forgets how many states there are, don’t fall into neat, tidy, categories, and most don’t blog even if they are online. They are not racists, they are not bitter, and a lot of them aren’t even Democrats anymore, at least not in their hearts, no matter what their voter’s registration card says. The one thing they have in common is, they’re heartbroken.
The Welby effect is my own terminology for the potential for voters to subconsciously prefer the image of a white-haired, older, seasoned Marcus Welby-type professional in matters of grave importance, over the leap of faith required to entrust one’s country or health-care to a promising newcomer like the one played by James Brolin on the old ABC series. Some might conclude that such a preference is due to racism, and while there is an element of that in play, it is small. I’m not sure there would be much difference if McCain were black and Obama white, the imagery holds. We like to put our lives, when necessary, in the hands of those we imagine know what the hell they’re doing, having done it hundreds of times before. No matter how many other doctors refer us to the young Doogie Howser-like genius innovating exciting new techniques in just the areas we need addressed, we still want to know that when our procedure is being done, our old trusted family physician will be there, too. The Obama camp is hoping that the selection of Joe Biden will offset this reality, but that begs the question, is Joe Biden trustworthy? Do voters think so?
Then there are the “issues.” Everyone wants to pretend this election, unlike any other, is about “issues.” “Issues,” schmissues. “Issues” never win elections because the “issues” candidates lie about in this phase of the campaign are far different than the ones that will define their presidency. Nixon didn’t say “Vote For Me and I’ll Betray Yor Trust,” Cater didn’t say “Hey, Y’all I’m A Pushover,” Clinton didn’t promise to be impeached for lying about being a bad husband, and George Bush didn’t get a single vote because he promised to take us to war within 2 years of taking office. Screw “issues,” who can I trust my country to? That choice comes down to gut feeling just as much as handicapping horses does. No matter how many variables you factor, how much rainy-day research you do about history and conditions, that damned mudder is probably going to show. At best. If that.
So, if any of these “effects” are real and come into play, Obama will have a hard time winning. If all of them do, he loses in a landslide.
Amid recent grumblings in the blogosphere that Barack Obama should dump running mate Joe (What Did I Say Now) Biden for Hillary Clinton, who many, including Biden, seem to feel should have been offered the position in the first place, it seems that Camp O has settled on a unique new strategy: run Biden/Clinton together. The AP reports that Clinton and Biden will even make campaign appearances together, like this one:
Biden and Clinton held an online video forum with women voters where they took questions on pay equity, abortion rights and other issues. The forum was to be broadcast Wednesday evening on Obama’s campaign Web site.
According to the story, the O Team is just tickled pink with Clinton’s efforts on their behalf so far:
“We couldn’t be happier,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, adding that officials would ask Clinton to step up campaign appearances after the Senate adjourns this month.
It also appears that HRC’s cancellation of a protest event appearance featuring Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, likely came at the behest of the OBidens:
Advisers to party nominee Barack Obama and to Clinton say that she will resist pressure to speak out against Palin, believing it would diminish her own stature while creating a “cat fight” sideshow that would only distract voters from the contest at the top of the ticket. Any mention Clinton makes of Palin will only be in the context of her partnership with GOP nominee John McCain, aides said.
Hey, I guess when you’re co-running mate with the guy who thinks you’d be a better pick than him, sometimes you gotta take one for the team. Lord knows the team could use all the help it can get. Politico’s Roger Simon lays out the problems Obama is facing and ends with the sum-it-all-up quote from Donna (My Mama Taught Me Race Is The Bottom Line) Brazile:
“He has had some moments where he seems unsure of his own voice,” Brazile said, “but I still think he can pull this off.”
And if he doesn’t?
“If he doesn’t, then Obama didn’t lose,” she said. “The country just wasn’t ready.”
Okay, that’s not exactly what he said, but he did say Obama was “different” because he’s so smart he couldn’t be from your neighborhood. It was the woman who introduced Biden in Flat Rock, Michigan Monday, Barbara Theaker, who called Sarah Palin a “bucket of fluff.”
The video below, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, shows the whole sordid mess, though interestingly, there’s nothing of note about it on their website. For the details, you gotta do a little, but not much, digging. Newsbusters gives the quote from Theaker:
Barack Obama has made an intelligent choice for the vice-presidency. How so very different this is from that bucket of fluffthat the Republican candidates have chosen for the same position.
Gateway Pundit quotes Joe (Stop Me Before I Speak Again) Biden: (their emphasis)
“All this stuff about how different Barack Obama is, they’re not just used to somebody really smart. They’re just not used to somebody who’s really well educated. They just don’t know quite how to handle it. Cause if he’s as smart as Barack is he must not be from my neighborhood.”
ABC News says that Joe responded to Theaker’s comments approvingly before telling an audience member to pipe down at a later point when the crowd got rowdy:
“You are good! My Lord!”
edit
“Shush up for a second will ya?” he said bluntly.
The ABC article also mentions another lively introduction Joe got about a week ago:
This is not the first time a Biden supporter has used the introduction to hit out at Palin.
Last Tuesday in St. Louis, Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan said of the Alaska governor, “There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick.”
That Carnahan guy sure has a unique clerical hobby. I guess he couldn’t find any pigs in need of a makeover. Either that or he didn’t get the official “Obama Lipstick/Pig/Palin And How To Sneak It In” memo. Anyway, here’s Joe and Mika on Joe and Barbara:
Every time Hillary Clinton makes an appearance on behalf of Barack Obama, she makes him look bad. She doesn’t do it on purpose. It’s not even her fault; she says and does all the right things, with much more sincerity evident in her demeanor than one might imagine possible. The problem for Barack is, she just looks so damned impressively presidential doing it.
Every time she offers a suggestion about how a Democratic presidential candidate should handle an issue, it highlights another Obama deficiency. Those rabidly suffering wretches infected with virulent cases of Clinton Derangement Syndrome will, of course, suggest that she’s doing it on purpose, just to make Obama look bad. Once again, the Obama Delusionally Faithful give their Messiah way too much credit.
Hillary Clinton is the superior candidate. To Barack Obama. To John McCain. To Bill Clinton. That’s what her supporters saw, and what made us vote for her. That’s what made the sexism and downright mysogyny directed at her so infuriating. That’s what made the bogus racial exploitation by her opponent, with the blessings of the greedy, misguided Democratic leadership, so egregious.
While Obama flounders in the waters of his own political undoing, further fouling his prospects for rescue by pissing in the pool, he might want to consider that deploying Hillary Clinton to do his dirty work is like asking someone to throw you a cement lifeline. Even a sincere desire to fulfill your request puts you down.
Hillary’s GMA interview this morning was bittersweet. She looked relaxed and comfortable, sounded poised and composed, and, as always, had a firm grasp of the issues. She handled the questions easily, even the attempted “gotcha” ones about Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. She expressed her disappointment with the outcome of the primaries while imploring her supporters to vote Democratic. She said she was excited to work for an Obama/Biden ticket, and in the process of doing her very best to make them both look good, made them both look pitiful.
The DeaNC, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, et al, should have remembered something I’m sure Donna Brazile’s mama taught her:
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get stuck with it.
Maybe the two guys running for president, John (He Did Say That) McCain and Barack (At Least I’m Not The Other Guy) Obama, should just use the feet they both have stuck firmly in their mouths as pacifiers and suck on them like the big babies they are and keep quiet. On Good Morning America today, Obama proved he can’t even defend himself right. Asked about negative ads, Obie said:
“If we’re going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily,” Obama said.
Hey, who am I to argue? Meanwhile, AP reports that in Jacksonville, Fl., McCain commented about his Lipstick/Pig-gate ad:
Did Barack Obama really call Sarah Palin a pig, as a John McCain ad leads people to believe? “No,” McCain said Monday. The Republican presidential nominee defended the ad anyway, saying Obama “chooses his words very carefully.”
So, I guess that while Obama didn’t call Palin a “pig,” he implied that she was. Any way you look at it, a pig’s a pig, right?
Geez.
These are our only two choices?
Of course, there’s always Joe (Somebody Rescue Me) Biden, a guy you can count on to speak his mind, whether you want him to or not:
Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, campaigning in North Carolina where black votes could help swing the state to the Democrats, said today that electing a black person to the White House would be transformative.
“That will be a transformative event in American politics and internationally,” Biden said. “That all by itself will be significant.”
Now, vote for the black guy, dammit, transform America. Tell ‘em Joe said so.
With a deadly hurricane aimed at Texas, Barack Obama cancelled his appearance on Saturday Night Live this evening, spokesman Jen Psaki in a statement.
“In the light of the unfolding crisis in Texas, Senator Obama has decided it is no longer appropriate to appear on Saturday Night Live tomorrow evening,” she said.
Gee, I’m thinking it might have been very appropriate to appeal for help for Hurricane Ike victims in front of such a large audience. But, hey, what do I know? He did appeal to his supporters for help at a rally in Manchester, N.H. that his previously also-scheduled-to-attend running mate, Joe Biden (who?) didn’t:
Barack Obama urged his supporters Saturday to help victims of the monstrous Hurricane Ike but also vowed to work for all hard-pressed Americans suffering “quiet storms” in their own lives.
edit
“Even as we think about this enormous hurricane that’s moving its way through the Gulf, one of the things I’ve learned over the last 19 months is that a lot of people are going through their own trials and their own tribulations,” Obama added.
“There are a lot of quiet storms that are taking place throughout America,” he said pointing to rising job losses, home seizures and a healthcare crisis — to all of which, he said, McCain had no answers.
Though damage is widespread, the latest reports are that it will be less than feared. Obama has said he will honor the severity of the situation by refraining from attacks on his rival, John McCain, says Ben Smith:
AFP reports that campaign aides say they will “scale back his savage attacks on McCain of recent days to avoid a show of overt partisanship in Ike’s potentially tragic trail.”
Huh?
What will Obama do instead of SNL?
Obama planned to return to Chicago after the New Hampshire rally and spend the rest of the weekend at home.
This is one of the saddest stories I’ve written about since I started this blog. Nobody is paying any attention to Joe Biden. Now, I mentioned just yesterday that nobody was paying attention to Joe Biden, but according to CNN, absolutely nobody is paying any attention to Joe Biden.
Sen. Joe Biden faces a paradox: He offers the most unfiltered contact with the media of any of the big four. But he’s the least likely to be covered.
Poor Joe. It’s all Sarah Palin’s fault.
On Wednesday, Palin’s staff told the press corps traveling with the governor her plane had become too heavy, and asked for volunteers to fly commercial.
There’s plenty of room on Biden’s plane. At one point this week, only six reporters climbed aboard. But they got one thing the press traveling with Palin didn’t: access to the candidate.
Don’t worry, Joe, I’ll keep telling people you want out. I don’t have a lot of readers, but maybe if we both say it often enough, somebody will listen to one of us. Hillary would have been a better pick.
Sarah Palin told Charlie Gibson that Barack Obama will live to regret not choosing Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Okaaaay?
“I think he’s regretting not picking her now, I do. What, what determination, and grit, and even grace through some tough shots that were fired her way — she handled those well,” the Alaska governor told Charles Gibson in her third and final exclusive interview with ABC News.
Wow! Clearly, Obama has been making major mistakes, the first of which was to reject Hillary. The over-the-top “I’m the Messiah” stuff and the grandiose backdrops haven’t sold well either, except with impressionable liberal college kids.
Child, it’s getting dee-e-ee-ee-eep! Everybody in the world seems to be talking about it. Joe Biden even came out and said he even thinks HRC would have been a better pick. Ain’t that something?
Speaking at rally in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Mr Biden said: “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice-president of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight.”
He continued: “She’s a truly close personal friend…quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate.”
The candidates running for president and vice-president pretended to take the day off from campaigning to honor the memory of the victims claimed on 9/11/2001, but they really didn’t.
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama made ground zero their common ground for one rare day, free of politics and infused with memory. Putting their partisan contest on a respectful hold, they walked together Thursday into the great pit where the World Trade Center towers once stood and, as one, honored the dead from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Since neither candidate ran ads today, the “non-campaigning” thing holds up. In an alternate universe kind of way. However, at a televised community service forum, they did mention campaign stuff. I guess if 9/11 victims and their families attend, it doesn’t violate the “no-campaigning” thing.
Republican John McCain declined to disavow Thursday the tough criticism by his campaign of his Democratic opponent’s experience as a community organizer, saying politics is “tough business” even as he praised Barack Obama’s service.
“Our campaign from the beginning has been about changing government,” he said, recalling some great accomplishments of American government: Civil rights legislation, the interstate highway system, and the National Park system.
Obama would, he said, “transform Washington” and “make government cool again.”
“This is not about politics today,” Biden said, seated on a stage alongside five first responders. “This is about remembering our fallen heroes and remembering that there are a whole lot of people like the people I’m sitting with here today and many of you who will and are ready to God forbid respond to anything that would happen.”
Not about politics, huh? Suuuurrre, we all went to an American Legion hall today, Joe. Joe also was supposed to show up at the forum, but it seems like either nobody noticed, or nobody cared, since nobody mentioned him. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, spent the day sending her son off to the military at a “non-campaign” deployment ceremony.
“We’re going to miss you,” she said at Fort Wainwright, a large Army installation near Fairbanks. “We can’t help it. We’re going to miss you.”
“With our prayers and with great pride, we are sending off these brave men and women,” she said.
Since this appearance had been scheduled before she was tapped as McCain’s veep pick, she deserves some slack. Besides, she was sending her kid off to war, for Goodness’ sakes, or else she’d be 9/11 sham scum in my book, too, just like the fellas. On second thought, her Charlie Gibson interviewwas taped shortly before the ceremony, so maybe she is 9/11 sham scum, after all.
“I’m not sure I’d advise everybody to run for president,” Obama said with a smile. “I’ve been sleeping out of hotel rooms for two years now and I miss my kids.”
He also told them that at their age he was a “goof-off.” No mention of the “Junkie. Pothead” thing, though. Meanwhile, Joe Biden said Hillary Clinton “might have been” a better VP pick. You get the feeling these guys know they’re in way over their heads and are ready to pack it in?
We can only hope.
Maybe if these two would just give it up, we could talk the “better pick” than either of them into rescuing us all from this increasingly farcical travesty of a campaign.
“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”
Whether Obama was talking about Palin directly is immaterial, the timing sucks. Either he was being sneakily sexist, or he’s stupid. On The David Letterman show he explained:
“Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way –- she would be the lipstick!”
“The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig,” Obama says. “I mean, just following the logic of this illogical situation.”
Logic? No, Senator O, if logic were involved, you’d take your buddy Joe and go home. Leave the politics to the grown-ups. They’re always the “better pick,” and they usually know exactly what to say. Surprisingly, I do agree with you on one thing, though, B.O.
Barack Obama’s vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., Wednesday said that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, might have been a better pick for the position than him.
At a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, a man in the audience told Biden how glad he was that Obama picked him over Hillary “not because she’s a woman, but because look at the things she did in the past.”
“Make no mistake about this,” Biden responded. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight. She’s a truly close personal friend, she is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she’s easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate, so let’s get that straight.”
Spokesman Ben Porritt offered this response from the McCain camp: “Barack Obama’s most important decision of this election and Biden – the candidate he selects – suggests himself that he wasn’t the right man for the job and that Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice. Biden certainly has a credible viewpoint on this.”
Duh.
And, ouch.
*This is the only clip I could find of the event so far. Depending on your point of view, either ignore the sarcastic laughter, or enjoy it.
Whoopi Goldberg is not only “aggravated” by Sarah Palin, she thinks the woman is “very dangerous.” On the View and in an article on the website, WOW (Women On the Web) Ms. Whoop let it be known that when it comes to Sara P., Whoopi got issues. She said Sarah gave an “amazing speech,” she’s a “tough chick and a babe” and a “mom” who gave the Republicans the “message they wanted to hear,” which I suppose, was all well and good, until she stepped over the line.
“…I thought once she began her discussion about community organizers and that they don’t have real responsibilities … I guess I can’t say I don’t know where she’s been living, because she’s been living in Alaska and maybe they don’t have community organizers there but they do in Chicago. Anyone who leaves their gig from school and goes to the people who most need help, that seems to me an admirable American way of thinking. It used to be in America that you helped people if you could, you organized them you made sure their rent was paid, made sure they had heat and all those other things and that helps to build character. If you want to become a politician you can at least say, “I understand how people live, I understand what happens when people lose everything and this is how we can work on it.”
WOW is right! There are so many things wrong with this take on things, I don’t know where to start. In the proverbial “interest of full disclosure,” let me be very clear, I am not a Republican. I don’t think I could possibly care less whether Sarah Palin is John McCain’s running mate or the next contestant on Dancing With The Stars. (Okay, I would care about that, but you get the point.) On the face of it, given that I am a black woman with a pretty good sense of humor, you’d think I would have much more in common with the Whoopster. But not on this.
Second, Palin’s point was not that community organizing is not worthwhile, it was that it is not as demanding as being mayor of even a small town. Given that Obama’s efforts affected relatively small enclaves of a large city, with no governing responsibility, I don’t see how you can argue with that.
Another thing that got Whoopi’s panties in a bunch was Palin’s assertion that her daughter’s pregnancy is a family affair, which Whoopi agrees with, but kinda doesn’t because if it was a black teenager or Chelsea Clinton, it would be different. Okaaaay. She goes on and on about that.
Whoopi also said on The View that McCain’s POW experience is no more “adverse” than the crises Obama, Biden or any other American has had to face in life. I’m not sure I buy that, but I don’t think that was Palin’s point, anyway. In relating McCain’s experience, she was saying that the only guy in the race who has had to put his life on the line for his country was John McCain. As far as I know, neither Biden or Obama served in the military.
There are many reasons not to support Palin. She’s a Republican who supports the Republican platform. That does it for me. But as far as I’m concerned, she’s no more “dangerous” than Obama. And he’s running for president.
Whoop, that makes all the difference in the world.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has no intention of becoming a Sarah Palin attack dog — but has no qualms going after John McCain, people close to the former first lady say.
“She’s not the answer when it comes to winning conservative women — she never was — and we’re not going to be anybody’s attack dog against Sarah Palin,” said a Clinton insider. “To be fair to Obama’s people, they haven’t asked us to do that.”
Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday.
However, lest anyone be unclear about HRC’s position, “her people” went on to say:
Slamming Palin to win back women already hostile to Obama is pointless, the insider said, because Clinton’s most loyal base is working-class voters, not women in particular. “Attacking Palin is checkers, attacking McCain on the economy is chess.”
Uh, guess you’re in check, Barack.
The former first lady, who is due to appear at an Obama event in Florida on Monday, hasn’t gotten back to them yet. When she does, she’s likely to add a few stops of her own — fundraisers, including at least one in Texas to help her repay more than $20 million in debt incurred during the primary.
“They probably don’t want her in Texas, but, hey, that’s where the money is, so that’s where she’s going to go,” said a source familiar with travel planning.
Prominent Clinton backer Lynn Forester told The Times of London quote, “He has provided her with a pittance compared to what the Clintons have given Obama. Her debt could have been cleared within 10 days. It’s ungracious.”
Today, I have come back to Springfield to tell you that I’ve found that leader – a man with a distinguished record and a fundamental decency – Joe Biden.
I wonder if they vetted him? MSNBC, among others, doesn’t think Biden’s vice-presidential rival, Sarah Palin, has been vetted at all:
The Washington Post says the news that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, “Palin’s revelation continued to reshape what Republicans had hoped would be a boisterous send-off for the McCain-Palin ticket. It also left some Republicans privately voicing concern that the campaign may have missed other potentially damaging background information about McCain’s little-known pick… McCain aides pushed back hard Monday night against any suggestion that they had mishandled the selection process. ‘Nothing that has come out did not come out in the vet — she was fully vetted,’ said a senior campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.”
Ya think the Democrats are holding the Republicans to a different standard, just because the Republican vice-presidential candidate is a (gasp!) woman? Oh, no, say it ain’t so, Joe. She’s so good looking!
Oh, boy. Yesterday I thought this year’s presidential campaign would be a snoozefest from now on, but was I wrong! The hits just keep coming!
MSNBC’s Athena Jones is reporting that Rev. Jeremiah Wright managed to crawl out from under Barack Obama’s bus long enough to sing his praises at Houston’s Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church today:
“The Lord turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. Y’all just saw it this past week. It was on national television,” Wright said to applause. “This ordinary boy just might be, come November, the 4th, this ordinary boy from a single parent home with a daddy from Kenya and a mama from Kansas. This ordinary boy just might be the first president in the history of the United States to have a black woman sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania, legally.”
You think the good reverend was referring to White House guests during the Kennedy administration? Okay, probably not. But depending who you talk to, God’s either a Republican or a Democrat with a curiously mean generosity streak. The Wall Street Journal says Quinnipiac’s Peter A. Brown thinks God’s with the GOP.
No Republican in his right mind will acknowledge it, but Hurricane Gustav affords the GOP a political opportunity that could boost Sen. John McCain’s odds of winning the White House.
“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in Heaven.” Moore said with a chuckle in a televised interview.
“That it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day one of the Republican convention up in the twin cities at the top of the Mississippi River,” Moore said, in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, on Countdown.
“That just demonstrates that God is on our side,” Fowler added, according to a video posted on YouTube under the headline: “Fowler Fouls: Hurricane is God’s Favor To Democrats.”
Considering the potential for destruction Gustav represents, I feel comfortable saying, screw all of you. The people facing the wrath of yet another devastating hurricane with no confidence in their government’s commitment to their safety and well being deserve better than the lot of you. And whatever God’s plan, I’m sure neither He, nor the weary, frightened, beleaguered residents in the path of Hurricane Gustav appreciate your ill-timed, self-important, pitiful attempts at bad humor. You should be ashamed, but then, that would be expecting too much from you.
In an unrelated note, just to clear our mental palates of the bad taste left in our minds by the above, Seacoast Online examines Barack Obama’s “just words” in his speeches and comes to some interesting conclusions. Given what we know about his running mate’s history with plagiarism, this could be a problem.
*I swiched out the video because, well, I just had to.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Democratic standard bearers, have weighed in on Hurricane Gustav and the impending disaster facing New Orleans: y’all better hope and pray. According to the AP, they offered the still suffering people of the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina 3 years ago…not much.
Barack Obama expressed hope Saturday that the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina three years ago would help to protect the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Gustav this time. His running mate, Joe Biden, urged people to pray that the levees in New Orleans hold.
That’s it. No helpful suggestions for contingency plans, no promises that if elected they would use the full resources available to them to assist with rebuilding, no assurances that they would make certain that the efforts to update the levee system would be accelerated in an Obama-Biden administration, just directions to hope and pray. Well, that’s not quite true. In Youngstown, Ohio today, they did tell New Orleans residents that their best bet was to get the hell out of town.
Obama and Biden visited a diner in this Youngstown suburb, an area that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton carried during her failed presidential bid. Trying to connect with those who are economically struggling, the Democratic candidates and their wives chatted with diners and told reporters that a properly orchestrated evacuation would be key to protecting the Gulf Coast.
“It wasn’t last time, and hopefully we’ve learned from that tragedy,” Obama told reporters as he left the diner, heading to a memorial service for the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress. She died Aug. 20 from a brain hemorrhage caused by a ruptured aneurysm.
Way to squeeze in a funeral between campaign stops, guys.
Biden said the Gulf Coast appears better prepared for a major hurricane this time than it was for Katrina, which left New Orleans and surrounding areas submerged. He said it appeared officials had learned from Katrina, and he praised moves to make major highways one-way routes out of the storm-targeted areas.
“It looks like they’re incredibly well prepared, much better than they had before,” Biden said. “Just pray to God that those levees hold.”
I wonder if it ever dawned on these two that it might be nice to offer the anxious residents of New Orleans their prayers. Especially since it seems the Obiden team doesn’t have much in the way of practical advice to offer. But, hey, what else is new?
Checkmate! Yeah, I know it’s two different games, but so what? This whole election cycle so far has been completely divorced from reality, so I figure, why not play along?
“Whacha got?”
“I got an inexperienced black guy and a big mouth. You?”
“I got an old guy.”
“C’mon. Ya gotta do better than that! I got hokum in the hole!”
In an article in The Amerian Prospect about ( what else? ) Democratic “party unity,” there’s a very interesting little gem in the very first paragraph.
A random sampling of delegates arriving in Denver suggests that the mood is nervously hopeful. There is broad anxiety about why Obama is not doing better, given the favorable external circumstances. However, the selection of Joe Biden as running mate played even better than expected. The running joke is that the white guy is going to give the black guy some soul, as well as some street-toughness that Obama has lacked.
The rest of the piece goes on predictably, Clinton must deliver…blah, blah, blah…delusional bitter supporters…blah, blah, blah…Obama won fair and square…yada, yada, yada…good of the party…just get over it…gag me with a spoon. Okay, the last part’s not in there, and I paraphrased a lot of the rest, but I’ve read so many of these cattle-prods of semi-pseudo-quasi-journalism that my eyes are crossing from being stuck at the top of my head so long.
What’s fascinating, though is the ballsy assertion that Biden is capable of infusing Obama with “soul.” What the hell? Define “soul.” First of all, what is it that a normal person would assume a black guy should have, that Obama obviously doesn’t? If it’s something black that Obama is lacking, why is Obama so popular with black people and Biden isn’t, since Biden’s rumored to have it? Does “street-toughness” equate to black? Or is “street-toughness” “soul?” Is Obama missing both “soul” and “street-toughness?” Do you need these things to be black? President? Frankly, I’m confused. And I’m black. I guess I’ll have to wait for one of Obama’s “interpreters of black expectations” like Roland Martin, or Bob Herbert or Eugene Robinson to explain to me how I’m supposed to feel about this statement. Because left to my own devices, I’m liable to get pissed.
The fact that the reality of lowered expectations towards black Americans impacts Barack Obama’s candidacy is something I have written about before in a post called Barack Obama and The Trained Monkey Curve. Simply put, the collective American assumption that black people have limited potential for accomplishment due to our inherent deficiencies accounts for the over-the-top praise of his otherwise average-ness. These media-reinforced perceptions inhabiting the subconscious psyches of a great number of Americans is what lead Joe Biden to suggest that Obama is prepared to lead the nation just because he’s an articulate black guy. Barack Obama’s own insecurities are what lead him to brush the insult off.
Now, the schmoos at Yahoo News are suggesting that lowered expectations somehow equate to humility:
Barack Obama took a sermon on humility to heart Sunday, predicting his presidential acceptance speech might not be the best at this week’s Democratic convention despite his famous oratory skills.
Lowering expectations is one of the oldest tricks in the political book, especially before a pivotal event like a political convention. And expectations for Obama are sky high because he’s delivered such rousing speeches before.
“I’m still tooling around with my speech a little bit,” Obama told reporters on a stop in this Midwestern battleground state. “May not be as good as the other headliners the first three nights, but hopefully it will make clear the choices the American people are going to face in November.”
Could it be that Obama is simply making an honest assessment of his speaking abilities? Where before mediocre performances were unduly praised, perhaps he realizes that he is now more likely to be judged appropriately; as a presidential candidate and not as a black presidential candidate. Humility doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it, otherwise, he wouldn’t be making excuses about a speech to be delivered in a freakin’ football stadium.
And if Obama’s multinational formative years seem unusual to many voters, Biden is almost a caricature of the American story. Now a white-haired, full-throated senator from Washington central casting, he was born “Joey” Biden to a blue-collar family in Scranton, Pa., and has never seemed to lose touch with his Irish Catholic roots.
That Philly connection is a really big deal according to USA Today:
In choosing the Delaware Democrat, Obama gave the Democratic ticket a blunt-speaking, Irish Catholic who can appeal to the blue-collar voters important to the party’s base. Many of those voters flocked to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries, especially in battleground states such as Indiana and Pennsylvania — where Biden was born and raised in Scranton.
“Better than anybody else,” Biden said, when asked on “Fox News Sunday” to rate his chances of winning Southern states.
“You don’t know my state,” he said. “My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.”
BIDEN: “I think that the only reason Clarence Thomas is on the Court is because he is black. I don’t believe he could have won had he been white. And the reason is, I think it was a cynical ploy by President Bush.”
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
So Biden is not always so eloquent, himself. Even if, on occasion, he’s even been known to put his foot in his mouth, that’s not always a bad thing. Not according to a guy named John Harwood, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
JOHN HARWOOD: He is not somebody who is infused with political correctness, the verbal equivalent of putting his pinky up when he opens his mouth. So this is what, the way ordinary voters are as well. They’re not always worried about sort of calibrating every single word by “ooh, is this racially insensitive?” That’s something that Joe Biden brings as an asset to the ticket. The gaffes actually show one of his strengths.
Biden’s embarassing remark about Obama may actually make him a more appealing running mate, however. Obama publicly absolved Biden of any taint of racism at a debate in Iowa last year, and that narrative of racial reconciliation is central to his appeal.
Hey, I don’t have to understand the logic of statements like that for them to work, right? In fact, even if I thought that Obama’s glossing over of a racially insensitive insult made him look wimpy, Biden’s toughness counters his weakness.
Richard Ben Cramer, in his masterful look at the 1988 race, “What It Takes,” wrote that even from boyhood, Biden was not to be underestimated.
“He was little too, but you didn’t want to fight him - or dare him,” he wrote of Biden. “There was nothing he wouldn’t do. Joe moved away from Scranton, Pa. in ‘53, when he was ten years old. But there were still a lot of guys in Scranton today who talk about the feats of Joey Biden. … Joey would never back down.”‘
Maybe that’s why Biden got the nod. He threatened to beat Obama up if he didn’t. Or maybe, when the offer call came in, he was home.
Most noteworthy is what he says about Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Awwww
As I said in a comment on Sugar’s blog, I’m sure Obuhbuh agrees with Biden’s assessment. In fact, I’m sure Joe’s discerning taste in Negroes is why he got the job.
Spit it out, man. You’re getting the hell on everybody’s nerves. C’mon, Barack, if you really know who you want your VP to be, and they agree to do it ( which, from what I understand, is no sure thing ) wouldja just tell somebody and get it over with? Good golly, Miss Molly, you’re really starting to piss me off.
Now the fact that you’re working my nerves should come as no surprise. I don’t like you. But you’re starting to annoy people who would drink your bathwater as an aperitif. Even your buddies in the MSM are getting antsy. The Yahoo News/Politico schmoos think you’re dragging this out way too long. And they used to love you.
Delay brings two potential risks for Obama.
As it now stands, his announcement will land on a weekend and bleed right into the nominating convention—a time when a nominee can already expect to be dominating national attention.
What’s more, by keeping expectations hanging for so long, Obama makes it harder to deliver on all the anticipation. A weeks-long strip tease, ending with a naked Joe Biden or Evan Bayh—or some other safe but unsexy choice—might prove deflating.
Might? Prove deflating? How can you de-flate a limp di candidacy further?
“The only explanation that makes sense is that he really does have a surprise pick or he’s trying to convince someone to join the ticket,” said a skeptical operative who has worked for Hillary Clinton, who believed that Obama has squandered a good opportunity to set the agenda in the week before the convention.
Now, I agree with S. O. ( Skeptical Operative ) that you’re having a hard time getting somebody to go down on with you. You’re blowing this thing so completely all by yourself you don’t need any help. And make no mistake about it, you’re not picking a running mate, you’re picking an anchor. Whoever you chose is going to sink you even faster.
Politico’s schmoos did try to find support for your interminable delay:
Tad Devine, John Kerry’s chief strategist in 2004, agreed that delay makes sense in the current environment. “When you have an announcement it’s immediately positive, typically,” Devine said. “Things move so quickly that the inevitable negative front would have come in 48 hours. [In this case] the convention occurring within 48 hours will cut off the inevitable scrutiny of the vice presidential pick.”
That guy did work for Kerry, though, so I wouldn’t put much stock in his opinion. Though, Lord knows, cutting the scrutiny time down is always a good thing for you. But Bob Shrum seems downright pissy about the whole thing:
“If it’s Biden,” said veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, “it’s sort of like a long movie about the Civil War. We know who won. If they did it Friday evening at 5:30 they would dominate the evening news, Olympics or no Olympics. If they do it tomorrow, it will dominate tomorrow and Sunday and we’ll move on as we go into the convention….But it doesn’t matter a whit to the outcome of the election. I think we are consumed by this. Here we are sitting here talking about it.”
I agree with Bob, Barry. I’m sick of people talking about it, too. And talking about it, and talking about it, and so on, and so on, and so on, and…oh, say something, willya, so they can shut the hell up! That’s what it means to be HSIC ( Head Schmoo In Charge ). Sooner or later, you gotta uh…umm…ya know…uhhh… spit it the hell out, man!
Ever heard the expression, “stop the world I want to get off?” Suffice it to say that if the world were ever to stop for me, I wouldn’t be disembarking, I’d be tossing looney toon butt wiping twits left and right into the stratosphere with gleeful abandon. Maybe then, the rest of us could return to some degree of something that in some way at least resembles something approaching normalcy and reason.
I’ve heard the leadership style of Pretendident Black Whosayin Yomama referred to as “11th Dimensional Chess on Pluto.” I call it, “wimpitude.” For those hopium hooked Kool Aid addicts impressed with the Waffler’s habit of saying one strangely enticing, yet ultimately, incomprehensible thing and doing another, polar opposite, incomprehensible one, the Celebritician’s “
There seems to be a movement afoot to send women back to the kitchen, happy, barefoot and maybe, unwillingly pregnant. Now, I could be seeing bogeymen in the bushes, so to speak, but, this “women need permission to make decisions, men don’t” developing theme bears watching. Between the Barackulator’s backtracking on selecting a 
Okay, I’m 
President (Can’t I Just BE My) Waffles Obama is going to subject us to yet another boring Reading of the TelePrompTers From On High on his unremarkable 100th day of equivocating, even though his spawn of Tom Arnold Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs claims the day has no special significance. Yep, typical ObaLogic. None.
The Gruesome Twosome now being referred to in the British press as “
“Gird your loins,” Biden told the crowd. “We’re gonna win with your help, God willing, we’re gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It’s like cleaning the Augean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than – think about it, literally, think about it – this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets. This is a systemic problem we have with this economy.” – 
another, “Oh, Uncle Joe’s found the brandy, again” moment and not really given the scrutiny they deserved. However, in light of ensuing developments, perhaps we should take a closer look at Jo(k)e’s “off-the-cuff” campaign rhetoric.
Uh-oh. The Obacrats, with their shaky 
Okay, Barack Obama is not implicated in today’s allegations against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is suspected of trying to sell Barack Obama’s now vacant Senate seat in return for personal favors. U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and all the President-elect’s pundits, have gone to great lengths to make that perfectly clear. From the 
With the recent news that former Obama “
In late October, 
Remember when speculation was swirling back in August about Barack Obama’s veep pick? Is it 
In an article in 
The fact that the reality of lowered expectations towards black Americans impacts Barack Obama’s candidacy is something I have written about before in a post called 
Though the selection of Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate is being 
Spit it out, man. You’re getting the hell on everybody’s nerves. C’mon, Barack, if you really know who you want your VP to be, and they agree to do it ( which, from what I understand, is no sure thing ) wouldja just tell somebody and get it over with? Good golly, Miss Molly, you’re really starting to piss me off.
