Hillary Clinton: Like School On Saturday

No class! I could swear I read somewhere that Hillary was going to meet with Obama before officially dropping out of the race. Nope. Not only did she not have the grace to concede and congratulate when Obama clinched the nomination, Obama had to learn from the media that she was dropping out this week. This, after news reports that calls from the Obama camp to the Clinton camp were not returned on Tuesday night.

How is that a woman with years in the highest tier of American politics has not mastered these basic political niceties and protocols? Everyday it becomes clearer and clearer to me why the Clintons were despised by the right and by the media, and it was not all about their politics. They simply have no class. They ARE completely narcissistic. And I say that as one who was disgusted throughout the 90s by the way they were treated. Hindsight is 20/20.

Brava Donna Brazile!

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.




For making a point I've been trying to make since Hillary began her heroic struggle for Michigan and Florida's suffrage.

“My momma always taught me to play by the rules,” she said, adding that “when you decide to change the rules, especially middle of the game … that is referred to as cheating.” Ms. Brazile said fairness dictated that the committee should take into consideration Michigan voters who might have written in a candidate or stayed away from the polls on primary day thinking that their vote would not count.

Thank you!!

How exactly is fair to voters of either of those states that their primary was misrepresented to them? How many, who would have otherwise made the time to cast a primary ballot, did not because they were told it was pointless. Even Hillary said it wouldn't "count for anything." But, no. Those Michigan and Florida residents who assumed that rules were rules didn't know Hillary Clinton, and the joke's on them.

Hillary Clinton is a study in disingenuousness; pleading for voters in Michigan and Florida not to be disenfranchised like the poor people in Zimbabwe, as she disregards the votes caucus participants in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington state, which don't provide vote totals as part of their usual process. She would also ignore the will of 40% of Michigan voters who showed up in a "meaningless" primary just to vote against her. Jonathan Alter explains:

This does not include Iowa (where Obama first broke from the pack), Nevada (where Hillary won the popular vote narrowly), Maine (where Obama won easily) or Washington state (another strong Obama state). Why? Because these caucus states don't officially report their popular votes. But if we're going to truly count all the votes, official and nonofficial, as Hillary advocates, you can't very well not include caucus states.

. . .

Beyond not being official numbers, there's another problem with counting Michigan in these totals. Obama wasn't on the ballot there. You can say this was his own choice, but that doesn't change the fact that had he been on the Michigan ballot he would have received a lot of popular votes. How many?

Try 238,168. That's the number of Michiganders who voted for "uncommitted." Were they possibly genuinely abstaining? Maybe a few hundred of them at most. The rest were clearly Obama supporters who launched a grass-roots campaign. Everyone in Michigan knew on January 15 that a vote for "uncommitted" was a vote for Obama.

As of this writing, the matter seems settled. Florida will have its delegates seated with half a vote each. Michigan will as well, with Obama receiving the delegates for those intrepid "none of the above" voters. Hillary's minions, protesting outside, are right about one thing. It's not fair. It couldn't be, no matter how this debacle was laid to rest.

Jaon Walsh's Embarrassing Hillary Apologia

Salon's Joan Walsh is outraged that anyone would think there was anything untoward about Hillary's reference to RFK's assassination as justification for her staying in the presidential race.

The world is divided between people who consider Bill and Hillary Clinton monsters, and people who don't. It used to be that the monster faction was limited to Republicans and certain mainstream media fixtures like Maureen Dowd and much of the MSNBC lineup. Now, increasingly, it involves too many Obama-supporting Democrats -- and the Clinton-hate is in danger of damaging the Democratic Party.

. . .

Thanks to my long weekend, I could probably get away without addressing the controversy over Clinton's RFK remarks, which is finally dying down. But I think this is an important and disturbing issue for Democrats. Criticize Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war, her pandering on the gas tax holiday, her lame remarks about "hardworking Americans, white Americans," her response to Obama's "bitter" remarks, her lackluster campaign strategy coming into 2008. I've criticized all of that, and more. But to argue that she was suggesting she's staying in the race because Obama might be assassinated -- even after both Clinton, and the journalists who interviewed her, said her reference was to RFK's June campaign, not to his heartbreaking murder -- requires either a special kind of paranoia or venal political opportunism.

That she was referring to Bobby's campaign and not his murder is objectively false. In the three documented instances in which Hillary has raised this issue, two of them referenced his assassination, specifically.

Scrolling through the 700 odd comments -- largely critical of Walsh's assessment -- I noted bowseat93's recommendation of Stephen Ducat's blog on Huffington Post, as food for thought on Hillary's motivations. Ducat lays out a far more telling time-line than Hillary's irrelevant primaries through history version.

On March 2 an ABC/Washington Post poll showed that 59% of Americans were worried "that someone might attempt to physically harm Barack Obama if he's the Democratic nominee for president." By March 6 Hillary Clinton was reminding her interviewer, Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel, of "the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A." This was a response to a question about whether her decision to stay in a race she couldn't win would hurt her party. It only seemed like a thoughtless non sequitur.

As we have recently learned, two months later, on May 23, while discussing the same issue with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, she called upon her audience to "remember [that] Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." When two utterances of the same "gaffe" are nearly identical, like Senator Clinton's oft-repeated Bosnian sniper "misstatements," such mistakes are likely to be motivated, either by a conscious strategy or an unconscious wish.

Ducat's time-line inspired to me to check on another. In the fallout since Hillary's appalling gaffe, it came to light that Obama has had increased security, possibly due to death threats. It occurred to me that this was probably something Hillary must have known. Likewise Mike Huckabee, whose "joke" in front of the NRA, did not receive the scrutiny it deserved. So I did a little googling and I find it hard to believe that both Hillary and Huckabee did not know that Obama was granted a Secret Service security detail, since it was reported in the beginning of May.

The Secret Service said Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama was being placed under their protection, the earliest ever for a presidential candidate.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authorized Obama’s protection after consultations with the congressional advisory committee.

. . .

Earlier reports said Obama had received a threat of some sort.

But a Homeland Security official said it was not in response to a specific threat.

Obama's campaign office deferred all questions to the Secret Service and Homeland Security.

So here are things Hillary obviously knew when she made her most recent, disastrous gaffe. That over half the country is concerned that Obama could be assassinated and that he has Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate -- and that there were non-denial denials about the issue of specific threats. Could she really be that careless and inconsiderate?

Here's the bottom line. Despite Walsh's protestations to the contrary on "Hardball" Hillary owes Obama a direct apology. And she owes an apology to the many Americans whose hearts went into their throats at hearing the word assassination in the context of her continuing to run against Obama. AND she needs to clearly and forcefully state that she has no desire to see the man assassinated? Why? Because she knows full well that she has a racist voter base, which she panders to on a regular basis. "Hard-working white people" indeed. You know. The people in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, who stated openly to pollsters that race was an issue when they cast their votes for Hillary. Unlike John Edwards, Hillary has made absolutely no attempt to disown the support of those racists. Any one of them could be hearing Hillary's assassination in June references as a dog-whistle and a prompt to make the nightmare of over have the population a reality. Unless and until Hillary learns to admit a single fucking error and do something proactive to stop the potentially life threatening damage of her idiocy, I must assume that her gaffe was not a gaffe at all.

Populist or Panderer?

A good explanation from Jonathan Chait of Hil and Bill's corporate friendly, or conservative, "populism."

Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found.

. . .

Likewise, Bill Clinton recently declared, "The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination." The corollary--that strong values and hard work is in shorter supply among ethnically heterogeneous urban residents--is left unstated. Hillary Clinton's statement about "hard-working Americans, white Americans" simply made explicit a theme that conservative populists usually keep implicit.

Here's a bit more from the Big Dog's mouth:

Per ABC News' Sarah Amos, this is what the 42nd president of the United States said Friday in Ripley, W.Va.:

"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say," Clinton said. "And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. She thinks you've got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be here than listening to that stuff I have to hear on television, I'd rather be with you. There is a simple reason: You need a president a lot more than those people telling you not to vote for her."

I'm so glad team Clinton is moving away from all the divisive rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton: Not Ready for Prime Time

Who's Tom Morrow?

A hat tip to Talking Points Memo on a couple of insightful perspectives on Hillary's hard-working white people gaffe. First from one of Bill Clinton's most ardent defenders and co-author of "The Hunting of the President," Joe Conason.

There is indeed a pattern emerging -- and it is a pattern that must dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.

. . .

But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.

As Conason goes on to point out, Bill Clinton has a proven track record on race issues in Arkansas. It's hard to imagine that the Clintons themselves are racist at all. The problem here, as per Conason, is one of being incautious with language, on issues where caution is paramount.

Not surprisingly, Peggy Noonan is less charitable in her assessment.

White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? "Even Richard Nixon didn't say white," an Obama supporter said, "even with the Southern strategy."

If John McCain said, "I got the white vote, baby!" his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party.

To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical "the black guy can't win but the white girl can" is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.

"She has unleashed the gates of hell," a longtime party leader told me. "She's saying, 'He's not one of us.'"

Whether it is incautiousness or a cold political calculus and deliberate race-baiting, Noonan is right in her assessment of how Hil's comments read. The point is essentially moot. Language matters in politics. And while all politicians find themselves in bad moments and make stupid gaffes -- like Obama on "bitter" voters -- the stakes on the issues where Hillary has been grossly impolitic are so sensitive as to require the greatest of care. How is it that with her many years of "experience," Hillary is so completely unready for prime time?

Scarier still, because of the direct impact on matters of national security, was Hillary's ghoulish commentary on Iran. Or as Joe Conason put it:

In this protracted and often dispiriting prelude to the general election, few remarks have been as poorly chosen as Senator Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran. What she obliterated with just those two words were her own boasts of superior diplomatic experience—and she managed at the same time to tar America’s international image with all the subtlety of the man she hopes to replace.

Context cannot excuse her, even though she uttered that gaffe in response to an intentionally provocative question: What would she do, as president, if the Iranian regime ever strikes Israel with nuclear weapons? First she could have noted that the question’s premise is wrong, at least according to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran neither possesses nuclear arms nor is likely to acquire them anytime soon. Then she might have answered as all presidents (or aspiring presidents) should when asked about such hypothetical military scenarios: “Our adversaries know very well that we have the power and the resolve to respond if one of our closest allies is attacked.”

Alluding to the potential use of justified force is far smarter than blustering about an act of genocidal brutality. So why wasn’t that distinction obvious to Mrs. Clinton?

Hillary has become completely embarrassing. From her surreal "victory" speech, as her Indiana win was dwindling almost to the point of slipping away, to the mounting number of dangerously sloppy attempts at talking points. Won't someone please take the mic away from this woman before she does serious damage to something more important than her own reputation?

The Vast Clinton Conspiracy

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Any residual sympathy I had for the Clintons as targets of the "vast right wing conspiracy" was expended in the umpteenth chapter of "The Endless Saga of the Eternal Primary." This because team Clinton insists on borrowing heavily from the very playbook they so famously decried. The tactics should be familiar to those who've watched the machinations of that very VRWC: insinuations of guilt by association, reliance on the media of the right wing noise machine, faux populism and disingenuous charges of elitism, and, of course, blatant distortions of reality. With a self-righteous arrogance befitting the Bushes, it seems the Clintons are operating from the belief that it's only wrong when other people do it. And in their Bush-league hypocrisy, the charges of motes they hurl only make them seem totally oblivious to the many beams in their own eyes.

Witness their exploitation of the Ayers red herring. As per Clinton biographer Carl Bernstein:

Which raises the question: Is the Clinton campaign's emphasis on the Ayers-Obama connection significantly different or less spurious than the familiar (McCarthyite?) smears against Hillary, particularly those promulgated and disseminated by the forces she labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s?

Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has (at least so far as this reporter and biographer has been able to determine) consistently rejected the ideological rigidity of the radical Left and -- especially -- the notion of revolutionary violence as a means of political change in contemporary America, despite claims to the contrary by the VRWC. Like Obama -- and John McCain for that matter -- she has valued her friendships with individuals who figured in the Left-wing and anti-war movements of the 60s and Vietnam era. And like Obama and McCain, she has never wavered from her belief and faith in establishment politics, within the two-party system.

As Bernstein explains Hillary has carefully expunged much of her own idealistic interest in radical politics -- such as the Black Panthers trial -- from public accounts; even going so far as to bury her thesis on Saul Alinsky in unobtainable Wellesley archives. Yet her campaign has attempted to leverage Obama's even more tenuous link to radicalism. Notes Bernstein, with dismay:

One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery (witness their fight against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and excesses). The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association--of which the Bill Ayers allegations are but one example: see Louis Farrakhan, or a comparatively-obscure African-American writer and perhaps -- communist party member named Frank Marshal Dixon, whom Obama knew in high school in Hawaii -- is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying. Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped, judging from Hillary's triumphant and collegial senate years, that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics when the Clinton Presidency ended in 2001 and the Right-wing threat to the Clintons' tenure in the White House had abated.

"The sad irony," noted Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "is that these are the same [guilt-by-association] attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women...

But, alas, no bit of Republican-style chicanery is too loathsome for the desperate Clintons to embrace. And, as this blogger was particularly dismayed to learn, a key architect of their new attack machinery is none other than Sidney Blumenthal.

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.

. . .

But, rather remarkably for such a self-professed liberal operative like Blumenthal, a staggering number of the anti-Obama attacks he circulates derive from highly-ideological and militant right-wing sources such as the misnamed Accuracy in Media (AIM), The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The American Conservative, and The National Review.

To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group.

Suddenly, Hillary's endorsement in longtime foe Mellon Scaife's paper seems not so terribly surprising.



Any reader of David Brock's "Blinded By The Right" will recognize, in Blumenthal's modus operandi, the familiar tactic of force-feeding propaganda from far right venues to more mainstream sources, and into the established media narrative. After years of defending against this very tactic, he seems to have learned it well.

Some Clinton supporters who also knew about Ayers have been discreetly trying to catapult the story out of the right-wing sandbox into the wider mainstream media. On April 9, Fox News' Sean Hannity interviewed fellow right-winger Karl Rove, who raised the Ayers-Obama connection. The next day, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper wrote about Ayers in his Political Punch blog. The following week, on his radio show, Hannity suggested to his guest, George Stephanopoulos, that he ask Obama about his relationship with Ayers at the upcoming Philadelphia presidential debate. Stephanopoulos, who was Bill Clinton's press secretary, replied, "Well, I'm taking notes." The following night during the April 16 nationally televised Presidential debate, Stephanopoulos dutifully asked Obama about Ayers, who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Possibly more insulting is watching the Clintons turn to that mainstay of Republican politics: making fun of pointy-headed intellectuals. Is there anything more disingenuous than the obviously well-heeled pol insisting that it's the other guy who's part of the elite?



In the annals of sheer audacity, I never thought anything could top the mind melting hypocrisy of the scion of one of the wealthiest, most insulated families in the world -- an alumnus of both Yale and Harvard -- convincing blue collar voters that he was just plain folk. Okay, Dubya still wins the prize on the faux populism scale. But there also, Hillary refuses to be outdone. Exploiting for all it's worth, Obama's "bitter" faux pas, she has once again joined forces with the Republican competition. This time to paint the black son of a struggling single mother as an "elitist," and her Wellesley and Yale educated self, as someone who couldn't tell arugula from iceberg lettuce.

In her latest triangulation two-step, Clinton has partnered with McCain on an all out assault on voter intelligence, with the shamelessly pandering "gas tax holiday." To drive the point home, this woman, whom the Secret Service has protected from all concerns automotive since 1992, set out on her own blue collar comedy tour of gas station photo-op destinations.



Would you want to have a cup of coffee with this woman?

Hillary Clinton: Unfuckingbelievable!

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.



It's no secret that I hate Hillary. And everyday she gives me another reason. Her everything but the kitchen sink strategy continues and accelerates and now she's lobbed a toaster at Obama's head for stating the obvious.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush," Obama said.

Says Hillary:

"We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee," she said.

Let me get in my time machine and go back a whole month and half.

Hillary Clinton told reporters that both she and the presumtive Republican nominee John McCain offer the experience to be ready to tackle any crisis facing the country under their watch, but Barack Obama simply offers more rhetoric. “I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say,” she said. “He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

Oh my gods and goddess. The woman will say anything. No matter how completely unmoored from reality and reason it may be, she will say anything to win. Much like Bush, little things like recently recorded history will not get in the way of her narrative. That's why her Bosnian fish story stuck in many a craw; because that kind of revisionism is par for the course with this woman.

In other news Michael Moore dissed Hillary, saying:

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry "Uncle (Tom)" and give it all to you.

A-fucking-men! Moore sadly notes that he could not cast his vote for Obama, because like Floridians, Michigan residents were excluded by party rules from a real primary. What he does not say, is that he could have voted for Hillary and that if she has her way, that vote would count.

To shrink Obama's 800,000 popular-vote margin, the Clinton campaign argues for the inclusion of votes cast in Michigan and Florida. Those two states lost their right to send delegates to the convention by scheduling their contests earlier in the year than party rules allowed.

Clinton and Obama agreed not to campaign in the two states, and Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan. Clinton won both uncontested races, and now says they should count in the nationwide popular-vote calculations.

Florida voters ``expressed their views,'' Clinton told the Newspaper Association of America in Washington on April 15. ``They have had their vote certified by the Florida secretary of state; it's part of the popular vote.''

That's what we're dealing with, in Hillary Clinton. A woman who thinks it's perfectly fair to include the results of an uncontested primary into the tally. A woman who just makes up the rules -- and the facts -- as she goes along. Unfuckingbelievable.

Some Things I've Had to Accept (Or: Today I Agreed with Peggy Noonan)

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.



It's a bitter pill, but I have to admit that Nooner has offered some pretty stunning insight into the psyche and motivations of one Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

. . .

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.

So what is it that I am struggling to accept? (Sigh) That the Clintons are a lot more like George W. Bush than I am comfortable considering.

Recently, I read a piece by Andrew Sullivan, that felt a little like a blast from the past; the Clinton years, I mean. But, his over-the-top comparison of the Clintons to a horror movie seems less like vicious hyperbole to me now. Well no more than the average lefty rant about Bushco.

The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can't escape; you can't hide; and you can't win. And these days, in the kinetic pace of the YouTube campaign, they are like the new 28 Days Later zombies. They come at you really quickly, like bats out of hell. Or Ohio, anyway.

Now all this may seem a little melodramatic. Perhaps it is. Objectively, an accomplished senator won a couple of races - one by a mere 3% - against another senator in a presidential campaign. One senator is still mathematically unbeatable. But that will never capture the emotional toll that the Clintons continue to take on some of us. I'm not kidding. I woke up in a cold sweat early last Wednesday. There have been moments this past week when I have felt physically ill at the thought of that pair returning to power.

And, I kid you not: So have I. My colleague in blogtopia,* Arthur Gilroy, no doubt counts me among the "kneejerk Hillary bashers," but there was nothing kneejerk about it. My loathing of Hillary took years to develop and was cultivated by one assault on small "d" democracy, and any semblance of good taste, after another. Even her odious vote to authorize war in Iraq was not enough. She was, after all, in the good company of most of the Democrats in Congress. Sure it made me leave the party, but it did not make me single out our Hillary for special contempt. No, that was the death of a thousand cuts. So how did this two-time voter for President Clinton and one time "Hillary for Senate" enthusiast come to find common ground with the "vast right wing conspiracy," in unabashed loathing for this potential first woman President of these United States? As Arthur would say, read on, if you dare.

My first inkling that there was something distinctly "wrong" with Hillary, above and beyond the rank and file Dem sell-out, came when I learned of a nasty maneuver in her Senate re-election bid.

If you doubt that the US is devolving into an oligarchy where powerful corporations and other moneyed interests control the political process, look no further than New York state. There, an unholy alliance between Hillary Clinton and TimeWarner has seized control of the electoral process by taking away the microphone of her opposition.

. . .

Because at another outpost of the Time Warner empire, decisions have been made that help ensure Sen. Clinton will have "virtually nonexistent opposition." Time Warner's NY1 TV news channel ("the CNN of New York")adamantly refuses to host a Democratic New York Senate debate. Despite protests over its decision, NY1 says it is giving incumbent Clinton a no-debate free pass because her antiwar challenger, union leader Jonathan Tasini, has not raised enough money; the channel arbitrarily set the bar at a half-million dollars. This despite the fact that Tasini has reached 13% in polls.

. . .

And there you have it. Hillary is the TimeWarner candidate, not the people's. And, in a bout of unintentional honesty, TimeWarner has admitted what it thinks elections are about: Money.

Yes, it was a stomach-turningly Rovian maneuver; one of Hillary's major donors cutting the mic on her only competition.

So, I was less than surprised when she moved to silence other presidential candidates this election season. And today, I find myself unable to gaff off Peggy Noonan's assertion that the Clintons bully the press, in a manner that must surely do the micro-managing press-Nazi Karen Hughes proud.

Over the last couple of years, I have written more than a little on Hillary's image-by-committee, her palpable disingenuousness, her bullying; cataloging my growing dislike. But her tactics in what has turned out to be a very competitive primary have pushed me over the edge into vehement disgust.

Even more disheartening I am being forced to reassess a former President I quite liked; her husband Bill. I always thought Bill was treated unfairly by the press... and by the vast right wing conspiracy. I stand by that assessment. If I had been forced to endure one more special news report on the President's penis, during his term in office, I probably would have stroked out. A witch hunt it was. But as "the first black President" has lapsed into subtle race-baiting and McCarthyesque insinuations about Obama's patriotism, I have had to consider the possibility that he did a little more than indulge sexual compulsions to earn the extreme ire of some of his detractors.

While I have never had any illusions about the wages of triangulation, and other tilts to the right, we endured during the Clinton years, I always gave him props for ameliorating some of the damage that could have been caused by the Gingrich Revolution. (Goodness knows, we have had a good, hard look at how bad free market fundamentalism run amok is for the country, under the current misadministration.) So even if Clinton's domestic policy was somewhere to the right of Nixon, he was to the left of Bush... and that's not nothin.' Bottom line: I found him likable; thought him earnest; considered him, overall, a good President. But his adventures in slime politics during his wife's run, have soured me but good. I've had a glimpse, seen a tiny glimmer, of the man the right wing hated with such passion. Good googly moogly, there really is "a character issue." Whoda thunk it?

I can simply no longer consider the Clintons the hapless victims of a cabal of right wing loons. Loons, though they may be, I now understand a bit of the disgust and frustration that arises from witnessing their relentless battle against reality. I must even consider the possibility that Sully is not blowing smoke when he says that the Clintons dragged out the Whitewater investigation by being secretive and evasive. I say this not because I had then or have now the stomach to rifle through the arcane details of a land deal gone awry, but because I've witnessed, in her run for the presidency, the stunning contortions Hillary goes through to avoid acknowledging error and telling simple truths. I've had a little glimpse of the woman behind the curtain, and a bungling, but affable wizard, she is not.

Hence, I was not surprised, though I was aghast, at the most recent eruptions of ugliness from the Hillary campaign. I speak of the Sopranosesque threat from her donors to Nancy Pelosi and her blatant lying about her adventures in Bosnia. Yes, Bosnia; a fish tale told by yet another chicken-hawk wannabe whose lack of military cred she tried to parlay into feats of daring do. Can a flight suit and "Mission Accomplished" banner be far behind? And even faced with incontrovertible, videotape evidence, she refuses to shrink that fish back down to its actual size.



So, yes, Ms. Noonan, I get it. The Clintons are almost as polarizing as the Bush regime that followed them into the White House. I have now spent seven plus years on the other side of that funhouse mirror. Not for the first time, I've had to address the curious parallel between my rabid disgust for an Administration trafficking in epic distortions of reality and my counterparts on the right side of the aisle, who experienced similar angst during the previous eight. There is far greater symmetry than I ever wanted to admit. As a matter of degree, the Bush years have been far worse. The toll on the economy, the military, the country as a whole, has been far greater than those endured by the worst Clintonian excesses. But, I admit to my chagrin, the Clinton presidency also greased the wheels but good.

As I look forward, the thought of enduring still more Bush Republican-lite, is almost as unbearable of the 4 more years of Bush reign a McCain presidency would almost certainly ensure. That politicians lie is not news. That they disappoint is a near certainty. But what we have endured for nearly 16 years borders on the surreal. Not one, but two, administrations fraught with the worst kind of lies and vitriol, volleying back and forth across a political and ideological divide. And as Hillary marshals on, against the blatant reality of delegate math, threatening to upend the will of the voter, if need be, to ensure her ambition, the déjà vu is simply more than I can stand.


* Yes, skippy coined the phrase.

Another Reason to Hate Hillary

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing.



She wants to pick your pocket.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to have workers' wages garnisheed if they refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed during a television interview, she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."

Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms. Under her plan, she said, health care "will be affordable for everyone" because she would limit premium payments "to a low percent of your income."

Because we all know how good the federal government is at determining what is affordable for average American workers. Just ask all those "Welfare to Work" mothers. Of course it may be hard to reach them between shifts of the two or three jobs many of them work to keep their kids clothed, fed and in daycare.

Yes, Hillary, in her infinite wisdom, has deduced that the ones responsible for our broken health care system aren't insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies or employers who are slashing benefits and pay raises, simultaneously. It's those flush workers who just refuse to pay for insurance.

Make no mistake. This is yet another Republicrat idea designed to utterly fuck the middle class.

But, if Obama is smart, he will take this ball and run with it, because Hill has just handed him a hell of a campaign issue right before Super Tuesday. "Hillary wants to garnish your wages." It just writes itself.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Appearing at The Blogging Curmudgeon, My Left Wing, and the Independent Bloggers' Alliance.



Dennis Kucinich has accused Hillary Clinton and John Edwards of attempting to rig the election. It appears they are definitely attempting to rig the debate process and attrit their competition.

Representative Dennis J. Kucinich accused two of the major contenders for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, of participating in a “conspiracy to rig the presidential election,” after they apparently suggested that future presidential debates should be pared down to include fewer candidates.

At the end of a forum with the eight Democratic presidential contenders in Detroit on Thursday, Mr. Edwards walked up to Mrs. Clinton, leaned toward her and said: “We should try to have a more serious … smaller group.”

“We’ve got to cut the number…” Mrs. Clinton responded. “I think there was an effort by our campaigns to do that … it got somehow detoured. We’ve got to get back to it,” and added, “our guys should talk.”

Edwards has confirmed the story, but says he doesn't want to eliminate candidates, just break them into smaller groups. But get a load of Hillary's official response:

Mrs. Clinton, who was campaigning in New Hampshire today, declined to be specific about what she meant by her comments on Thursday.

“I think he has some ideas about what he’d like to do,” she said, referring to Mr. Edwards, according to a dispatch from the Associated Press. A Clinton campaign spokesman said he would not comment on “a private conversation” between the two candidates.

In other words this one will be carried out in back-room negotiations, far from the prying eyes of that pesky electorate. And in public she will pass the buck to Edwards.

This is how Hillary deals with the nuisance of competition and democratic process. She cuts the field, like she did when her Democratic challenger in New York state started nipping at her heals. Let us never forget how her big money donor Time Warner eliminated her opponent John Tassini from their televised debate. Their reason for eliminating the up and comer, who was already at 13% in the polls: Not enough money.

Make no mistake. Hillary is as anti-democracy as our current crop of wheeler-dealers. She's determined to win no matter what minor player she has to cut off at the knees. She has no interest in actually letting the voters choose; not before she's eliminated as many of our choices as possible.

Oh well. As Tom Tancredo has proved, a debate of one can be damned entertaining.

Tom Tancredo Debates Himself
at NAACP Sponsered Event

Hillary: Thinking Laterally!

Hat tip to Skippy who alerts us to Hillary's newest attempt to reach out to voters on matters of great import. The war? The economy? No, no, silly voter. Hillary wants you to help her pick her theme song.



As E.A. Hanks explains in The Huffington Post, Hillary recently shelled out $70,000 for the wit and wisdom of one John Kao, in the form of the "Innovation Manifesto."

Senator Hillary Clinton is about to unleash a whole new version of herself. Again. This one is going to be a Hillary thinking outside of the box (!), thinking laterally (!!), and using innovation to find the way forward to the path of tomorrow where success isn't a secret, but a global promise (!!!).

Nothing grates on nerves quite like corporate-speak. It's the lingo of Type A suits everywhere, proselytizing to the inspirationally challenged while exploiting their own clip-art fetishes. Senator Clinton was thinking synergistically when she hired "serial innovator" John Kao (pronounced "Kao") as part of her senatorial campaign, and paid him $70,000 to show her that with can-do attitude she will flow with jazz magic.

...

Over all, this "manifesto" uses the word innovation upwards of sixty times, defined by Kao as "creativity applied with intention to create value." I think that means attempting to co-opt everything that's great, wring whatever money is possible out of it, and then move on to the next fad like a swarm of well-tailored locusts. By the time I got to the 25th use of the word "innovation," and was only on page three -- I was ready to proclaim that I did not think that word means what Kao thinks it means.

The entire manifesto can be downloaded as a pdf here. You can open to any page. It all sounds like this:

Innovation lives in places. It needs a home. Physical environment is a powerful enabler of innovation. Places serve as memory theaters within which knowledge is created, and persists as the object of ongoing collaborative process.

Pages and pages of this shit, folks; $70,000 dollars. I'm in the wrong line of work. Actually, this is the kind of self-important drivel that sent me running and screaming from the corporate board-room. I'm glad not to be a fly on the wall of Hillary's campaign meetings. I have a sneaking suspicion they sound an awful lot like this:

EXECUTIVE: We at the network want a dog with attitude. He's edgy, he's "in your face." You've heard the expression "let's get busy"? Well, this is a dog who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly.

KRUSTY: So he's proactive, huh?

EXECUTIVE: Oh, God, yes. We're talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.

WRITER: Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. I'm fired, aren't I?

MEYERS: Oh, yes.

Hillary Cuts Off Nose -- Spites Face

There have been rumors circulating for months that Hillary has been trying to win the money primary by means of extortion. We've all heard the tales of her threats to big money donors that she wants them to lard up her campaign and only her campaign. Now comes news that her strong arm tactics have backfired.

Under intense pressure from the Clinton team to pick sides, [Leonore] Blitz—who bundled more than $1 million for John Kerry in 2004—felt deeply conflicted. Clinton operatives have warned donors not to contribute to other campaigns, and put a price on disloyalty: early supporters will be valued and latecomers scorned. But now Blitz is coming out of the shadows, ready to test the rules. "I have been a lifelong advocate of women and minorities' participating and running for political office," she told NEWSWEEK last week. "Therefore, I'm supporting both Clinton and Obama."

Well I'm sure that'll be fine with Hillary, because when she told people it was her way or the highway, she didn't really mean it.

The Clinton campaign denies that it has strong-armed anyone, saying the warnings were made in jest.

Oh that Hil. Such a cut-up. Always with the teasing and the joking. I'm sure she had them in stitches over at the Jon Tasini campaign, when they found they were shut out of the primary debate by Clinton donor TimeWarner.

But seriously folks, Hillary understands what campaigns are about. Money. Who's got it and who wants to use it to gain access to the halls of power. She just didn't expect that some high rollers would consider Obama the better bet.

What happened to the Clinton juggernaut? The answer lies partly in her go-for-broke strategy. There's a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and for some fund-raisers the Clinton team crossed it. "They clearly communicated a message that this candidacy is inevitable because we'll have more experienced consultants, more political insiders, more money and more of every resource that is vital to being nominated," says a prominent New York donor who joined the Obama camp but declined to be named to protect friendships with Clinton supporters. "Therefore, you are politically stupid if you don't get it, if you can't add."

Big donors to any campaign are keenly interested in what their money gets them. [Emphasis Added] Newcomers to Clinton's orbit don't expect to have much influence or access. So they have fewer reasons to call on wealthy friends for more cash. "That tent seemed pretty much full," says Howard Gutman, a D.C. lawyer who was part of the small team that raised $10 million for Mark Warner's aborted presidential effort. Several campaigns courted Gutman, but he chose Obama over Clinton. "I could raise money from now to eternity and not really be on the radar screen. And the Obama camp seemed to offer more upside in terms of personal fun for the next year and change for the country for the future."

Ouch.

The Stepford Candidate

Who replaced Hillary Clinton with an animatronic doll? I liked the old one better. The one who was a chronic Glamour-don't, with the silly headband and doughty clothes. The one who made gaffes about not being Tammy Wynette. She was a real person. I could relate to her. Can we have her back, like in the execrable remake of "The Stepford Wives?" I fear this is like the chilling, original film and that the human Hillary is lost to us forever.

I don't get people who think she's a feminist icon. She's amassed a lot of power, but she's become the living antithesis of feminism; cautious, people-pleasing, self-monitoring... She apparently can't state an opinion that doesn't test well in 10 focus groups. To put it bluntly, she has no courage.

This morning I learned from Chris Durang on The Huffington Post, that she weaseled out of answering yet another direct question.

In the short article -- part of a blog called "The Caucus" on the New York Times website -- Hillary Clinton is asked if she agrees with General Pace that homosexuality is immoral.

What do you think she answered? "No, I don't agree"?

No, what she answered was: "Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude."

Thanks, Hillary! Really brave. Really forthright.

How hard would it have been for her to say: "Well, I think it is not immoral, and I know many Americans don't think it is and don't want to interfere with consensual adult behavior. But I understand other people believe other things. I hope in time that will change."

Isn't that probably what she actually thinks? Wouldn't that be taking a stand?

For Durang, who was talking straight about bisexuality long before it was cool, that's got to rankle.

Somewhere along the line, beltway Democrats seem to have decided that nothing bad can happen to them if they can make themselves completely inoffensive. And they have not yet learned that when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

It's a formula that works least of all for Hillary. She wasn't born slick or charming and she can't pull it off without appearing terribly inauthentic. She seems so afraid of being her natural, divisive self, she's become positively insipid. She's more and more like an overly airbrushed photograph, or a plastic surgery disaster. Her entire personality has become like a face immobilized and expunged of character by too much Botox.

Worse than her coy evasions, when asked directly if she thought homosexuality was immoral, is her politically calculated clarification.

"I should have echoed my colleague Senator John Warner's statement forcefully stating that homosexuality is not immoral because that is what I believe," her statement said.

In other words if the big, strong, military, Republican man says it's ok to gay, it must be safe to have that opinion. This from someone who wants to be the first woman President?! A woman who needs a man's imprimatur to state an opinion? She might as well go back to baking cookies.

I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.
-- The Stepford Wives (1975)

Jefferson Would Be Appalled

Who does God want me to be today?
Blond? Brunette? Shaft?
-- Bo Chrysalis, "Absolutely Fabulous"

Election 2008 is gearing up to be the most sanctimonious, Bible thumping, separation of church and state be damned, election in my memory. And Democrats are the worst offenders. I made the mistake of turning the TV on today, and was assaulted by Hillary's sad rendition of the "southern preacher character" a good ten times. Pulling off that suit was no mean feat, but her flair for color ends about there.



The style-over-substance news channels declared Obama the winner of the dueling preachers contest, in historic Selma, Alabama. And, yes, I do appreciate that in the black community churches serve a much broader social function than they do in the white-bread world I grew up in. But Martin Luther King didn't harp on religion as much as these two do, and he was a preacher.

But the icing on the cake of my day was opening The Huffington Post to be greeted by a photo of a haloed John Edwards scolding the country for failing Jesus.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school.

Edwards, in an interview with the Web site Beliefnet.com, said Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country's willingness to go to war "when it's not necessary."

"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards told the site. "I think he would be appalled, actually."

Considering that a healthy percentage of Americans don't have reason to care one whit what Jesus would think, isn't there some other moral arbiter we can reference?

And the sanctimony continues:

Edwards told Kuo he stood by a decision to keep two bloggers on his staff despite their provocative writings criticizing the Catholic Church. Edwards said he also found the writing offensive, but "decided to forgive them and stand by them, knowing there would be potential political consequences for that."

Excuse me. Forgive them?! For what? Exercising their First Amendment rights? He was offended. Fine. But making them "wrong" is a whole 'nother matter.

The bitterest irony is that as our national obsession with religiosity is reaching ahistorical heights, the country has come completely un-moored from its moral underpinnings.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

I'd like to hear our Presidential front-runners talk a little less about God and little more about how they intend to restore the Constitution. See, you don't need to be religious to know that torture is wrong.

Hillary's "Lie"

A few weeks ago, I almost fell out of my chair when I heard Hilary Clinton tell Keith Olbermann that she had opposed preemptive war with Iraq at the time. Not only did she say it with a straight face, she breezed through the comment with the same light, dismissive tone she always uses when she's talking about the debacle she co-created.

Via TPM's "Election Central," a story that gives a little more context to Hillary's apparent lie. In her interview with New Hampshire Union Leader, Hilary explains:

“I have taken responsibility for that vote. It was based on the best assessment that I could make at the time, and it was clearly intended to demonstrate support for going to the United Nations to put inspectors into Iraq.

“When I set forth my reasons for giving the President that authority, I said that it was not a vote for pre-emptive war,” the former first lady said.

A Clinton campaign spokesman later noted that on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002, Clinton stated that her vote for the resolution “is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for unilateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose – all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people the throughout the world.”

She said the Bush administration forced an end to the final round of weapons inspections and invaded prematurely. The administration is responsible for the status of the war, she said, and for being “grossly misinformed” or for having “twisted the intelligence to satisfy a pre-conceived version of the facts. [emphases mine]

I was mistaken. Hillary was not lying to Olbermann. Everything she's said was factually accurate, but it makes her neither a good Senator, nor a good Presidential candidate. Nor has she demonstrated remotely that she has taken "responsibility."

In his self-described "polemic," "Worse than Watergate," John Dean explains in detail how the authorization granted by Congress to wage war in Iraq, was no "blank check." Rather the President subverted the will of Congress by dispensing with key conditions of that authorization.

The heart of Dean’s argument is that the congressional authorization — far from being the "blank check" that war critics such as former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean have claimed — actually had some stringent and important conditions attached to it, and that Bush simply cast them aside.

According to John Dean, the resolution required Bush to certify that diplomacy had failed, and that there was no longer any way other than war to resolve the "continuing threat" posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Bush also had to certify that war against Iraq was consistent with the ongoing struggle against terrorism, specifically "the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." Needless to say, it was Bush who walked away from the diplomatic efforts that the UN was still engaged in over Iraq’s alleged WMD. As for ties between Iraq and the terrorists of 9/11, there weren’t any, despite Bush and Cheney’s numerous insinuations to the contrary.

So how did Bush get around these conditions? The tack he took was so cynical that Dean seems scarcely able to believe it. Included in the original authorization were a few "whereas" clauses specifying that Iraq had WMD and ties to international terrorism; the language had been inserted at the suggestion of the White House. Then, when the time came for Bush to certify that the conditions for war had been met, he simply regurgitated that same language. "Bush, like a dog chasing his tail who gets ahold of it, relied on information the White House provided Congress for its draft resolution; then he turned around and claimed that this information (his information) came from Congress," Dean writes incredulously. [emphases mine]

So the so called "blank check" actually required good faith diplomatic efforts and proof of the key arguments the White House was using to justify war. And the White House's response was to play what Dean describes as an "absurd game" with Congress.

Dean concludes that this is one of many egregious offenses, meriting impeachment. All that was missing was the political will to apply the law. Even with the Democrats back in control of Congress, that political will is still MIA. To Hillary, this subversion of the Constitutional process merits a tut-tut-tutting that sounds more like a mother scolding her teenager for failing to clean up his room, than an epically undermined Senator calling a criminal President to account.

As of this writing, we have lost 3,123 troops, US, since the inception of this nightmare. The thousands of dead Iraqis will never be properly accounted for. And we appear to be careening towards yet another unjustified, illegal, military action. We need Senators and Presidential candidates who understand the seriousness of the stakes. Not politicians mouthing weaselly justifications of a vote that, fairly or not, has landed this nation in the greatest military blunder in our nation's history.

Hillary joked recently that she's had experience dealing with "evil" and "bad" men. She has. From the vast right wing conspirators to an entire administration of audacious criminals. The punchline is that her track record on confronting that evil isn't good.

Hillary's Cash & Carry Election

If you doubt that the US is devolving into an oligarchy where powerful corporations and other moneyed interests control the political process, look no further than New York state. There, an unholy alliance between Hillary Clinton and TimeWarner has seized control of the electoral process by taking away the microphone of her opposition. I first learned about this in Matt Taibbi's most recent take-down of the DLC.

Remember 2000, when Ralph Nader was not only not allowed to debate with Al Gore and George Bush, but wasn't allowed in the building -- not even allowed in a second, adjoining hall in the building, not even when he had a ticket? Well, we have a replay of that proud moment in our history going on now, with Hillary's Senate primary opponent Tasini being shut out of debates by New York's NY1 TV channel (owned by TimeWarner) which is insisting that qualified candidates not only reach 5 percent support in the polls (Tasini is at 13 percent and rising) but raise or spend $500,000. Said NY1 Vice President Steve Paulus: "All Tasini would need is for each [New York state registered voter] to send him a dollar. Right now, with the money he's raised, he does not represent the party he claims to represent."

So a war chest is now the standard for representation? In order to get on television, you need a dollar from every voter? (Are we electing a Senator or holding a Girl Scout raffle? What the fuck?) And this is decided by . . . an executive for a corporate television station?

This morning Buzzflash guest contributor Jeff Cohen connects the dots.

The cover story in the new issue of TIME, the flagship publication of the Time Warner media empire, informs readers that Hillary Clinton has "virtually nonexistent opposition for her senate seat."

Hold that phrase in your head. Because at another outpost of the Time Warner empire, decisions have been made that help ensure Sen. Clinton will have "virtually nonexistent opposition." Time Warner's NY1 TV news channel ("the CNN of New York")adamantly refuses to host a Democratic New York Senate debate. Despite protests over its decision, NY1 says it is giving incumbent Clinton a no-debate free pass because her antiwar challenger, union leader Jonathan Tasini, has not raised enough money; the channel arbitrarily set the bar at a half-million dollars. This despite the fact that Tasini has reached 13% in polls. (NY1 first announced its no-debate ruling just as Ned Lamont -- given no chance months ago -- was defeating pro-war incumbent Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's primary.)

Ironically, NY1 has already hosted and televised a Democratic New York gubernatorial debate between frontrunner Eliot Spitzer and a Democratic challenger who was at only 10% in the polls. But that candidate had raised about $6 million. So spending millions to get just 10% in popular support was rewarded by Time Warner's channel, while building a more effective grassroots campaign, largely of volunteers, was punished. (One wonders how much of the money went to NY1.)

Did I mention that Time Warner's PAC is one of the many corporate PACs that underwrites Hillary Clinton's reelection campaign against the "virtually nonexistent opposition"? Or that conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch has also raised funds for her reelection? Or that Hillary Clinton doesn't criticize a media system now dominated by a handful of (JonBenet-obsessed) entertainment conglomerates -- while Tasini wants to see those conglomerates broken up? [emphasis added]

And there you have it. Hillary is the TimeWarner candidate, not the people's. And, in a bout of unintentional honesty, TimeWarner has admitted what it thinks elections are about: Money.

Date Rapists Givin' You Trouble?

Originally published: Friday, March 31, 2006

Just give 'em a hummer. Thus spake Sharon Stone.

Young people talk to me about what to do if they're being pressed for sex. I tell them (what I believe): Oral sex is a hundred times safer than vaginal or anal sex. 'If you're in a situation where you cannot get out of sex, offer a blow job.' I'm not embarrassed to tell them.

Well I'm mortified to read it.

My contempt for Sharon Stone was well established with the first "Basic Instinct" movie. Her gleeful participation in a depiction of lesbian and bisexual women that was at equal turns derivative and demonizing; her endless revelry in the tasteless beaver shot that made her career... Must she enjoy turning female sexuality into a cheap sideshow so very much?

With the release of the stunningly unnecessary "Basic Instinct 2," Stone has been turned loose on an unsuspecting public once again. Her statements, compiled here by Salon, are worth the price of admission.

Stone's Madonna/whore dichotomy divides the world into women who show their boobies and women who can be taken seriously. As ever, she revels in her role of trivialized sex pot.

People just are sitting there going, like, 'I don't care what she's saying, I don't care what she's saying, I just want to know, does she get naked in that movie? Is she naked? Nude? Nude? Naked? Do I see her boobies? I don't care what she's saying, I don't care, I don't care, is she naked?' So let's just get through to that ... YES!

Hillary, however, who has never shown her naked boobies in public, to my knowledge, is still just too sexual to have any real gravitas.

Hillary Clinton is fantastic. But I think it is too soon for her to run. This may sound odd, but a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It is too threatening...

Perhaps the Senator from New York should go back to her cookie recipes and leave all the politicking to the hopelessly unattractive.

Note to Miss Stone: It's harder with you around.

Molly Ivins Calls Bullshit on Hillary Democrats

Originally published: Friday, January 20, 2006

Note to Chris Bowers: It's not just lefty bloggers who are washing their hands of Hillary Clinton. It's not just the netroots who are fed up with Democratic Party insiders with a political tin ear. Don't take my word for it, when Molly Ivins says it so well.

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

Liberal bloggers may be among the first to notice how far the Democratic Party establishment has drifted from its progressive roots, but "the people" -- who Mr. Bowers assures us are a breed apart from the energized "base" -- are on a decidedly different page than Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, and the rest of a beltway crowd that seems to have forgotten how to read polls.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

Their corporate donors, Ms. Ivins. That's who.