Obama's Mama

So, Obama's mama's side of the family used to own slaves.....What I want to know is, can he deduct paying himself reparations on his income taxes?

Thurmonds Owned Sharptons

I read today that Strom Thurmond's family once owned a slave who was an ancestor of Al Sharpton. I don't know what it is, but something about that is funny.

Hey, at least old Al can now sue for reparations to pay off his presidential campaign debts.

Bob Herbert, Republican Stooge

Herbert has no shame in borrowing from the same right wing, empty, broad-stroke criticisms always leveled at Hillary (but not so much Bill) regarding ambition and general political gamesmanship.

"There would be no Obama phenomenon if an awful lot of people weren’t fed up with just the sort of mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners politics that the Clintons and the Bush crowd represent."

Bullshit. Obama is charastmatic - that's it. I have yet to hear any ideas from the man that could be characterized as revolutionary in any way. Hell, Fox News is already letting him have it for 100% party-line voting record in the Senate. For me, charastmatic and the right ideas are enough, even if they aren't new ideas. The man just doesn't have his machine together yet. He's too new. Give him some time to live up to all the hype. Sending him up against republicans now is sending a lamb to slaughter.

Lumping the Clintons and the Bushs is also insane. One is a dynastic family of skull & bones aristocrats who have ruled this country for generations. The other is poor white trash from Arkansas who had a one in 300 million gift for reading people and was the scariest thing to challenge the aforementioned dynasty since Kennedy (and look what happened to him).

Herbert is the perfect voice for the suicidal utopian left who keep waiting for Jesus to come back and in one fell swoop turn planet earth into a Disney movie. You want mean-spirited? It's republicans. It's the Bush family. It's Dick Cheney. Don't tear down the only people who have the will and ability to fight that fire. The only concrete thing I've ever heard Hillary accused of - although it's been disguised as "conniving", "whore" "evil" whathaveyou - it's all the same thing - ambition (ok, that and whitewater...:). It's total crap. No man has ever been so vilified for ambition, hell even for actual evil acts. Thank God (you know, in my way) that Hillary has that ambition or we'd be shit out of luck in 2008.

Honestly, really....c'mon now. I LOVE Obama. He's awesome. Ask yourself, do you REALLY think this country would elect Barack Hussein Obama President? You want to talk about mean-spirited, you ain't seen shit until you seen the republican machine in full tilt going after this guy.

Addressing Herbert's feeble point, yes, he's right. Wolfson's aim was to knock Obama out from under his halo. The real story is simply that it was uncharacteristically ham-fisted and poorly executed for the Clinton camp. Rather than present some juggernaut machinery it looked more like a freshman mistake. As I've written elsewhere, the only thing Clinton should've addressed regarding Geffen's comments was that they were both sexist and hypocritical in accusing her of some kind of abnormal ambition. This wasn't the opening they were looking for to get Obama dirty and it's too bad they couldn't see that. Is there anything wrong with the overall strategy? Hell no. That's politics. Are they making shit up about him? No. Are they swiftboating him? No, just campaigning against him and trying to show that he's human too. This is what any serious challenger would be doing right now. I'm sure Obama's people take it as a sign of their power and potential, as they should.

I saw Hillary campaign against Rick Lazio and.... I shit-you-not I can't remember the name of the guy she just beat last year, but there was no BS in either campaign. They were fair and square and she won through hard work and listening to people. This BS propaganda from utopian losers and the right is just that.

Also, the bit about her losing the black vote... Maybe in the primary...maybe, but I got news for Mr. Herbert. Blacks in general have no problem whatsoever casting a vote for a Clinton. The real fear is that Obama, being black, still won't pull in that whopping percentage of the voting public. Like most people who aren't crazy assholes who like losing year after year, blacks want to win and they've seen Clinton do it before. An even deeper truth is that Clinton actually doesn't need the black vote, but the point that everyone should pay attention to, is that she wants it anyway. Good luck painting the Clinton's as racists. See if you can get Maya Angelou on that bus while you're at it.

New Light on Dr. Evil

"...a close reading of the testimony and evidence in the case is more revelatory, bringing into bolder relief a portrait of a vice president with free rein to operate inside the White House as he saw fit in order to debunk the charges of a critic of the war in Iraq.

The evidence in the trial shows Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Libby, his former chief of staff, countermanding and even occasionally misleading colleagues at the highest levels of Mr. Bush’s inner circle as the two pursued their own goal of clearing the vice president’s name in connection with flawed intelligence used in the case for war."

NY Times 2/20/07

Just another example of things in life being EXACTLY what they seem to be.

Clinton Stands Firm

"Clinton Gives War Critics New Answer on ’02 Vote" - NY Times (Feb 27, 2007)

Hillary Clinton announced that she wouldn't apologize for her vote on the Iraq war. THIS is the kind of experience democrats have been lacking.

The truth is, the people who have been clamoring for an apology not only won't be the ones to decide the general election, but they won't decide the primaries either. They are the fringe left, vocal like all fringe groups but ultimately without muscle. Clinton didn't toss them aside willy nilly. She did what a smart politician does. She polled, found out the numbers and made the expedient decision.

Democrats are sick of losing. They were sick of it when they nominated the lackluster candidate John Kerry. The idea was that at least he could win. Well, now we have a candidate who actually fits that bill (so to speak).

David Brooks' sincere defense of Clinton's motivations for the vote notwithstanding, it's all about positioning. The fact is, the margin of the vote was not "1". Her vote didn't make the difference. So, with that in mind, she took the opportunity to show that a woman can vote for the use of force so that she could not be viewed as potentially weak on defense in 2008. If the senate had not voted to authorize the use of force, Bush would've done it anyway. The evidence of massive resources being redployed from Afghanistan to Iraq long before the vote is well documented now. And then, we would've had the same vote that republicans are blocking now - to not fund troops already in combat. Guess what? A republican majority would not have voted against their president any more then than the current republican minority has now.

So, what does this all mean? It means Clinton's vote was meaningless and it's only purpose was to craft her image as tough, which it did according to polls, so the apology thing is total bullshit.

Only 2 things on earth will stop this war: A democratic president or 60+ antiwar votes in the senate (preferably both). Since neither is going to happen before 2008, it's pointless to focus on the 2002 vote. The question is, who can make it happen in 2008?

I was a supporter of John Edwards in 2004. I find him intelligent and charming and I was annoyed that he couldn't seem to speak off script. I supported him among a dismal field of candidates. Next to Obama and Clinton he looks like a child trying to play with grown ups. Obama just issued his first apology for calling the lives of soldiers killed in Iraq "wasted". This was a defensible thing to say, but he chose to back out of it.

Hillary did something you hear a lot about in Washington by rarely see. She actually DID take responsibility for her vote. She accepted the losses she might incur from it and stuck to it. Does "sorry" from Edwards bring one soldier back to life or hasten getting any of the troops currently in harm's way to safety?

As it turns out, this whole idiotic thing about an apology will be meaningful after all. It shows the oh-so-rare image of a democrat with a spine. She's going to make a great president.

Obama's first mile

Maureen Dowd is following Obama with the same bloodlust as the rest of the country. Waiting for the savior to stumble. Waiting to see the 'human' side.

The only problem is, the human has always been there and what's new, the giving up smoking, getting irritated with reporters, freezing in Iowa, is all understandably human too. This doesn't tear down the image of Obama so much as point out what (I at least) meant by "unprepared". What's not precise about that word tho is that it expects him to eventually be prepared. I hope not.

My problem with Obama is that he's too good. He's too real. I've met him. He is everything that's fine about the human race, including having familiar, down-to-earth, forgivable failings. Think about it. That's not who gets elected president. And if by some freak of history someone like that sneaks in (Carter), they are woefully bad at navigating the pitfalls once they are there.

Bill Clinton gave some interview I caught on CSPAN where he described how when he first took office he tried to ram through every great idea he ever had. The result was the 1994 takeover of the legislature by the republicans. Being president means prioritizing, picking battles, living with all you haven't accomplished. And being hated for it by someone.

A president has to make ugly decisions. They have to horse-trade. A Senator can spend his whole career voting his conscience (or not) but a president who doesn't give up a pawn or even a knight every now and then doesn't succeed. Witness Mr. "Never admit you're wrong" in office now.

It's ironic that everything you hear Hillary criticized for is EXACTLY what makes her perfect for the job.

The black community, the American people and the entire world need Obama, but they need him "clean and articulate". Does anybody really want a jaded Obama who learns to parse what "Is" is?

Rich on Iraq

Frank Rich writes:

"My own guess is that the Republican revolt will be hastened more by the harsh reality in Iraq than any pressure applied by Democratic maneuvers in Congress."

No way. Events in Iraq didn't do a thing to budge the republicans. The calculus is more specific (and petty) than that. The question they faced was "Will we look obstructionist if we block these hollow resolutions or will it benefit us to keep a bunch of dems from soapboxing on a resolution that won't pass a veto anyway?"

The answer was obvious and I disagree with Obama that it turns any heat on republicans to force them to squelch the issue. That would be the case if it was in the face of a united democratic party who were on talk shows marching in lock step with the aid of Chuck Hagel and few other re-pube-licans. However, instead the dems appear as disunited and disorganized as ever. The story isn't that republicans blocked a debate, the story is that dems couldn't muster enough unity to even pass a non-binding resolution. They couldn't provide a place for 'revolting' ("You said it, they stink on ice") republicans to go. So, instead Warner votes against his own bill with his tail between his legs. Not much of a revolt.

Pelosi Flying High

NY Times Blog asks:

>>Republicans accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of putting on royal airs because her cross-country travel could require a larger military jet than the one used since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to ferry Speaker J. Dennis Hastert home to Illinois. Ms. Pelosi and fellow Democrats said that House security officials insisted that she travel in a government plane and that if she had her way she would fly on commercial craft. They suggested that Republicans were hypocritical, scheming sexists trying to deny the speaker the same protection afforded her male predecessor.

Do you think Ms. Pelosi is being criticized unfairly because she’s a woman?<<

My response:

No, I think Pelosi is being treated unfairly because she's a democrat, not a woman. But in the end it's all for the best because the republicans who thought they had something to crow about have made asses of themselves.

The difference that Pelosi's gender brings in is actually a positive (for her). A man in the same situation simply looks like he's suffering politics as usual, whereas a woman appears to be being victimized based on gender. Hillary Clinton enjoyed the same kind of inverted sexism in her first senatorial campaign and probably will again in the 2008 general election. It's a particularly convenient mechanism for women who are neophites in a particular political position (candidate, speaker). It's also fun to see what is always an uncalled for attack self destruct.

Republicans are getting started early in losing the female vote for 2008.

Japanese Birth Machines

From CNN:

"TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's top government spokesman said on Monday the health minister should stay in his post despite a furore over his reference to women as "birth giving machines," but pressure to resign looked unlikely to fade."

- The Minister later confided that he had first heard the term on a visit to the United States whereupon he met with Senator Joseph Biden's mother for tea. :)

Bartlett Right Almost All The Way

I don't know Bruce Bartlett well. His resume doesn't put him in places I'm comfortable with - Reagan, Bush Sr, but I absolutely agree with ALMOST every single word of this article. People who know me have essentially heard this article practically verbatim for a while now.

I disagree that Obama would make a good VP for Hillary. It's just asking too much of this racist, sexist, backwards-assed country to elect a woman and an African American in the same year.

My wish for Hillary's VP is Bill Nelson. Help deliver Florida.

- Edit -

To elaborate on why Obama shouldn't be anyone's VP. Vice Presidents are always forced to run on the record of their predecessor. Obama is too fresh, too new, too many other things that Biden should've said instead of what he did. The man (Obama) needs to have his own platform, not run on someone elses.