Spinning a swan song

Pam Spaulding noted the latest Zogby poll, margin of error +/- 4.1%:

There are 8% "Not sure" with a 4-point margin of error but Pam uses this poll to question Clinton's potential success in PA: "You pair [the poll] with the fact that over 35,000 attended an Obama rally in Philly yesterday, and there has to be a certain level of panic in the Clinton camp. " Ahem. The Zogby poll was conducted in partnership with Newsmax. Newsmax!?

Also read John Zogby's footnote about the "Not sure" cohort, which he asserts are white/Catholic Democratic voters who prefer McCain in the general election. They don't like Hillary and "aren't breaking for Obama." But if they do vote, "then they will probably vote for Clinton and she can conceivably meet the 10-point victory threshold that meets pundits' expectations."

Let's review: Zogby was wrong about New Hampshire when its poll showed Obama ahead by 4 points and with 22% "Not sure." Who won NH by 3 points, a 7-point swing over Obama? Clinton.

Zogby was wrong about Ohio showing Clinton and Obama tied at 44% apiece and 8% "Not sure." Hillary won Ohio by 10 points: 54 to Obama's 44.

Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll showed Obama ahead in California with a narrow lead and "Obama and Clinton were deadlocked in New Jersey." Clinton won CA 52% to Obama's 43%, and Hillary won NJ 54% to Obama's 44%.

PA is a state where Obama is outspending Clinton 3-to-1 in advertising and with misleading health care attack ads and a deceitful lobbyist ad smearing Hillary when Mr. Obama himself is hooked up with Wall Street, Big Oil, and K Street. Jeebus! The denial in the Obamasphere about Barack is breathtakingly pathological, a symptom of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

The difference between Hillary and Barry--they both accept corporate cash--is Hillary can beat McCain in November. Obama can't, IMO. Go look at what's available most recently from SurveyUSA in state-by-state match-ups between Clinton and Obama vs. McCain, a better measure than national polls unless you diss politics is local. If I get a chance, I'll post an update for folks daunted by going through each of the recent polls on NM, MO, NY, OH, OR, VA, MN, WI, KS, AL, CA, IA, KY, and WA. One swing state worth mentioning is OH: Clinton clobbers McCain, 53 to 42, and 4% of undecided voters can't make up the gap. However, Obama loses to McCain by 2 points with 8% undecided. Hillary is much stronger candidate to win OH with its 20 Electoral College electors.

In big blue Massachusetts, a primary state that Hillary won, Clinton beats John McCain easily, 56% to 41% with only 3% undecided. But Obama barely beats McCain by 2 points--in Massachusetts!--with 7% undecided voters predominantly women. Democrats solidly support Clinton, 86% of them, with a 21-point advantage over Obama at 65%. In an Obama vs. McCain match, 28% of Democrats switch to McCain. Hillary engenders more loyalty: only 12% of Democrats defect. Massachusetts is a gay and lesbian stronghold and maybe part of the Obama-McCain undecided group. What if they won't vote for the guy--McCain or Obama--with a sweet spot for homophobes? Twirl on that.

Regarding PA, take the Zogby poll--all the PA polls--with a great big shaker of salt. Pam asked in her wrap-up:

If Clinton only wins by single digits, how will that be spun?

If she wins the popular vote in PA, but the delegate split doesn't close the gap at all, how can that be declared a victory?

If she somehow manages to lose PA, how on earth will her camp explain that away?

Once upon a time, winning the popular vote was something Democrats valued as a "victory." What's changed? Seriously. WTF has changed? PA offers 21 electors via the Electoral College determined by... wait for it... the popular vote. Have a go at Fun with the Electoral College.

The question I have: how is the Obamasphere going to spin a single-digit Clinton PA win if that happens? Will they shriek their fauxgressive anthem, WWTSBQ?

Pam has applied the nicknames sHillary, "sHill," and "DOMA-wife" to Clinton for years. M'yeah. Guess we can speculate who Pam's voting for in NC, a southern state that hasn't voted for a Democratic president since 1976. I also live in a southern red-state but I cast my ballot for Hillary because I was, and still am, more confident in Clinton beating McCain in the general election especially on the economy. I considered the positive rub-off of "Clinton-era prosperity," to borrow a descriptor from Krugman--OH, PA, MI, WV, MO, AR, NM, IA, for example, voted for Bill Clinton twice, FL in 1996--and Hillary has done her own homework, differentiating herself from Bill, offering more details about her plans than Obama.

Why Democrats discount the clout of the states that can deliver an Electoral College victory and are leveraging their votes to pick Obama, a nominee who can't win the big swing states such as Florida, is as mystifying as why Hillary-hating lemmings blindly follow "The Precious" to step off the cliff. For a reality check, Anglachel offered her typically super-smart analysis on Saturday. Two brief insights: "[Obama] is as mainstream as anyone else within the party power elite, which itself is a fairly narrow slice of all possible political stances," and she described the "trial balloon sent up by the DNC" in seating the FL/MI delegation via TalkLeft. Go read both and ponder the behind-the-scenes manipulation.

For bloggers who haven't noticed or have been preoccupied due to a terminal case of CDS or OFB cha-ching euphoria, the mainstream press corps is once again playing favorites as they did in 2000 and 2004. Our clueless so-called liberal blogosphere has ignored the carnage of influencing the Democratic nomination that began Oct. 30, 2007, through November and February (see subhead, Red Faced With Rage, and for background here, also here and the media racist storyline that the fauxgressive blogosphere swallowed like candy packaged with Bill's Jesse Jackson remark here).

Did the media give John Edwards a fair shake? No. And they have treated Hillary Clinton abysmally. Now that Obama has been getting his ax Gore-d... oh, how the Obamasphere has screeched its disapproval. The liberal blogosphere should have been howling all along, a disquieting non-reaction I will never forget. When the media smears Obama, one must call it out as the despicable crap that it is. Same goes for any Democrat including Hillary. Props to Media Matters on that score. What was the A-List Blog Boyz response to the sliming of Hillary and Bill Clinton by the press? They piled on or hung a Do Not Disturb sign on their blogs and took a nap. The SCLB has failed to understand that the media hates Democrats, all of them. Look at who owns the media? When media savage any Democrat, the long-term impact undermines the Obamasphere's "Precious."

When media darling McCain takes the oath of office because Democrats allowed a flawed caucus system to disenfranchise working-class Democrats, hyped the "Holy Grail" of pledged delegates, and other silliness like punishing FL and MI to eventually crown Obama as the nominee--unforgivable if Hillary ends up with the popular vote edge--remember who's to blame. It won't be Hillary. Look in the mirror.


POSTSCRIPT: Corrente offers a glossary of acronyms like WWTSBQ.

UPDATE: If only I had checked my RSS reader before posting. Jeralyn comes through with Why Hillary Is More Likely to Beat McCain with analysis by a veteran Democratic party activist, William Arnone.

Attacking health care

Gawd! When Barack Obama appropriates propaganda mimicking "the vile smear campaign the insurance lobby waged against health care reform in 1993," one wonders whose side is he on? Via Lambert, BTD at TalkLeft:

Petey points to Obama's last PA ad - he's going Harry and Louise again on health care:

[Obama] ad attacks Clinton’s health care plan, saying it “forces everyone to buy insurance even if you can’t afford it."

I've lost count of how many times Obama has conjured up Harry-and-Louise style attacks on Hillary's universal health care plan. Is this the third wave? Hillary Clinton's campaign responded:

1. The Obama ad claims that Hillary's "plan forces everyone to buy insurance even if you can't afford it." Health policy expert Ken Thorpe reviewed this claim and found it to be false. Under Hillary's plan, everyone will be able to afford coverage.

"Ken Thorpe, a health-policy expert at Emory University who has advised all three major Democrats, said he ran cost estimates for the Clinton plan at the Clinton campaign's request, and found there should be enough money to make insurance affordable for all." [Wall Street Journal, 12/5/07]

2. The advertisement also claims that that Hillary's plan would make people who fail to enroll "pay a penalty." Sen. Obama's own plan would fine parents who fail to enroll their children and he has said he will consider imposing penalties on people who don't enroll.

Hillary would consider a range of ideas, including automatic enrollment, to ensure everyone is covered. Sen. Obama's plan, would, experts agree, leave 15 million people out.

3. The ad also claims that Sen. Obama's plan reduces costs more than Hillary's plan. There is no citation for this claim because it is false. Hillary's plan has more aggressive cost cutting measures and has more generous subsides [sic]. Because Sen. Obama's plan leaves 15 million people out, it would drive costs up, because everyone would have to subsidize emergency care for the uninsured.

The last link clicks to Paul Krugman who has repeatedly taken Obama to task over health care, for "attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points," and ringing the alarm bell unnecessarily on Social Security. Melissa McEwan questioned why Obama distances himself from liberalism awhile back. Wise to listen. Also smart to remember what has worked previously in presidential politics to the detriment of our country. From 2001:

Television is a medium of propaganda, of the sub-rational suasion of advertising. The essence of propaganda is reason-obliterating repetition. Bush got his message across in the campaign through incessant repetition. His use of the same words over and over again in the same sentence, seen in this light, is not a handicap; it shows his affinity for TV and matches our expectations, built up over the decades, for "message" communication of the "Great Taste, Less Filling, Great Taste, Less Filling" order. As Ryan Lizza reports in The New Republic, Bush's handlers have him say the same thing so often that it is difficult for the TV cameras to catch him saying anything else. On August 7, during his "working vacation" at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, Bush used the word "home" six times in a minute of conversation with reporters: "It's nice to be home ... This is my home ... It's good to be home ... This is where you come home ... This is my home," etc. In fact it is not his home. "The Crawford ranch does not precede Bush's life on the national stage," Lizza writes. "It is a product of it." Bush lived in the Texas governor's mansion and vacationed in swank resorts and at Kennebunkport before the campaign began. Never mind. Bush got his message across: unlike Bill Clinton he has a "home." . . ."And the repetition works," Lizza writes. . . His job approval rating went up during the Crawford propaganda-fest. TV has finally found a President willing to sound like an idiot in order to exploit its inherent properties, to master its baldly manipulative code. Bush, the verbal bumbler, is the Great Communicator of the age. [Emphasis added.]

Obama is no bumbler of words but his repetition tactic on TV works. He's hacked away at Hillary's double-digit lead in PA. How?:

What's behind the shift? . . . "Obama has outspent Hillary Clinton three to one just on television advertising in Pennsylvania. He spent more than $3 million trying to get his name out and his message out to Hillary Clinton's $1 million," said Mark Preston, a CNN political editor. [Emphasis added.]

Repeating the same old misleading information in attack ads imitates the same old Washington politics that Obama promises over and over and over again that he will change. M'yeah. Pardon moi for noticing the fraud.

UPDATE 2:42 PM: Republished with the correct time stamp. I inadvertently didn't notice it was set for PM since I had started the draft last night, but in fact, the post published this morning at 11:32 AM.

As the Blog Boyz twirl

The first panel of a cartoon by Joseph Cannon.
To enjoy the full cartoon strip, visit Cannonfire. Funny!

Totally slobbering:

Liberal bloggers continue to slam Clinton for her attacks on Obama during the ABC News debate:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Clinton has chosen her side, and it's of the corporatist status quo. That's no surprise. There's a reason she's in the leadership of the DLC. She may think that economically distressed Americans are 'optimistic' and 'resilient' and oh-so freakin' happy to lose their jobs and face few economic opportunities. All she's had to do is throw in a nice dose of San Francisco bashing (you know, the place where those gays live!), and her message is now indistinguishable from John McCain or Sean Hannity."

First, probably because I'm a lesbian, I wonder why the king of the Orange Sippy Cup™ tied SFO with "where those gays live!" Says more about *cough* him than it does Hillary Clinton who is far more LGBT-friendly than Mr. Homophobe as you can read here, here, here, midway down here, and LGBT irony alert, blast from the Hillary Haters Club past here.

When Hillary mentioned Obama's SFO fundraiser, I heard her tying Obama to Pelosi, who favors the Illinois senator. Where's Madam Speaker's congressional district? Ooooh, will I be slobbered on if I say, San Francisco? Well, I'm not homophobic and unafraid to name that city but some people seem to automatically associate it with gays and lesbians. Why is that?! We live all over the United States. Can you believe it?! I could rattle off lots of lesbian and gay hotspots--LA, Santa Fe, Miami, NYC--but the Damron City Guide already has and it covers 75 cities.

Is the Blog Boy inventing a storyline--"San Francisco bashing"--out of thin air from his perch on the pique peak of Mt. Orange Sippy Cup™? Gays and lesbians love Hillary. She has marched in our Gay Pride parades. Chelsea campaigns at our gay bars. And Hillary Clinton has not invited an ex-gay homophobe over the objections of the LGBT community to fundraise for her. But Obama did.

Is the kiddie king trying to twist the truth to undermine LGBT support of Clinton in a big state like California that delivers a lot of electoral punch? 'Cause a large number of self-respecting gays and lesbians like moi won't GOTV for Mr. Homophobe if he's on the November ballot. Or is he just slobbering? Could be both.

As to the "corporatist status quo" smear, smell the Obama hypocrisy here. Are facts out of fashion at the Orange Sippy Cup™? Or are they embargoed, shut up in a deep freeze to benefit The Precious?

And this drool dripping in sarcasm:

She may think that economically distressed Americans are 'optimistic' and 'resilient' and oh-so freakin' happy to lose their jobs and face few economic opportunities. . .and her message is now indistinguishable from John McCain or Sean Hannity.

*Sigh* It's sad to see someone so in need of intervention from disingenuous BS.

Maybe the Orange Sippy Cup™ king can find a Unity Pony in all the pony sh*t he's wading in but he's delusional to suggest that it exists. Blaming Hillary for voters disliking Barry the Unelectable, sweetie darling, just makes us appreciate Clinton more.

Keep it twirling, boyz. The faux outrage just makes the Democratic leadership appear inept or corrupt for selecting big bucks over competence if they pick The Precious over Hillary Clinton.


CREDITS: Cartoon added with permission by Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire. Go see the full strip. Worth the click!

I don't know who coined the "Unity Pony" but I see it most often at Lambert's blog at Corrente. And "The Precious" by Anglachel.

Gays love Hillary now Chelsea

Oh, how divine!

It's no secret that more than a few gay men have harbored a crush on Hillary Clinton ever since her days as First Lady. But Chelsea is now emerging as a close runner up in her own right. It all started in Dallas, TX when she attended last-minute events at JR's and Sue Ellen's (the two gay bars in town ... for real!) with Gloria Steinem and Rob Reiner. The trio drew nearly 1,000 people total at the two events (not bad for 24 hours notice). Since then, Chelsea has really come into her own, attending Portland's Red Dress party, and a couple weeks ago she head-lined a town hall meeting organized by the Liberty City Democrats at Woody's, a local gay bar in Philly.

New York LGBT activist and Clinton supporter Jon Winkleman has volunteered for Hillary in several states and he summed up Chelsea's evolution this way: "Early in the primary she was very quiet and reserved -- never really spoke at events in Iowa and New Hampshire. When I waited on her at the Four Seasons and told her I was going to both states for her Mom, she simply gave a thumbs up but didn't really speak. But over the course of the campaign, she really found her voice and comfort level. She gets a great response from gays. And with the response she's getting, I'm suspecting that she is really enjoying us. I liked her in December. In April, I'm in love with her. As Chelsea finds her voice, she is becoming a better secret weapon for Hillary than Bill." [Emphasis added.]

Tonight, Chelsea will join Gov. Ed Rendell of PA for "his traditional pre-election LGBT pub crawl." How divine is that! They will gay-bar hop in Philly from "Bump and Woody's to Sisters and Tavern on Camac." But I hadn't thought about Chelsea's name, which she shares with "one of New York's most legendary gayborhoods."

It's so encouraging to see Hillary and now Chelsea fully out in the open with LGBTs. No homophobia there. Heart-warming. And in stark contrast to Obama.

Stereotypically wrong

Krugman's column today revisits Barack Obama's "bitter" remarks about small-town stereotypes with facts and figures.

Mr. Obama’s comments combined assertions about economics, sociology and voting behavior. In each case, his assertion was mostly if not entirely wrong.

First, Krugman examines the economics, which exposed how Obama's claim was "deeply misleading." (The numbers.) Gotta agree with this advice: "But if I were a Democratic Party elder, I’d urge Mr. Obama to stop blurring the distinction between Clinton-era prosperity and Bush-era economic distress."

On sociology, the operative word is "cling," not "bitter":

Does economic hardship drive people to seek solace in firearms, God and xenophobia?

It’s true that people in poor states are more likely to attend church regularly than residents of rich states. This might seem to indicate that faith is indeed a response to economic adversity.

But this result largely reflects the fact that southern states are both church-going and poor; some poor states outside the South, like Maine and Montana, are actually less religious than Connecticut. Furthermore, within poor states, people with low incomes are actually less likely to attend church than those with high incomes. (The correlation runs the opposite way in rich states.)

Over all, none of this suggests that people turn to God out of economic frustration.

Finally, Mr. Obama, in later clarifying remarks, declared that the people he’s talking about “don’t vote on economic issues,” and are motivated instead by things like guns and gay marriage.

That’s a political theory made famous by Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” According to this theory, “values” issues lead working-class Americans to act against their own interests by voting Republican. Mr. Obama seemed to suggest that’s also why they support Hillary Clinton. [Emphasis added.]

Problem is Frank was "mostly" incorrect. The evidence shows:

...small-town, working-class Americans are actually less likely than affluent metropolitan residents to vote on the basis of religion and social values. Nor have working-class voters trended Republican over time; on the contrary, Democrats do better with these voters now than they did in the 1960s.

It’s true that Americans who attend church regularly are more likely to vote Republican. But contrary to the stereotype, this relationship is weak at low incomes but strong among high-income voters. That is, to the extent that religion helps the G.O.P., it’s not by convincing the working class to vote against its own interests, but by producing supermajorities among the evangelical affluent. [Emphasis added.]

The reason, Krugman explains, that Republicans win is because " 'the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement' explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story."

Living in the South since the early 1970s, I have witnessed the transition. Anyone who's studied migrant patterns knows that the poor states of the South have been booming with an in-flux of new residents headed for white-collar professional jobs boosted by corporate relocations. A major hub, Atlanta, for example, has ranked third for Fortune 500 headquarters nationally for the sixth year in a row, up from its former fourth place position. In the 1990s, the Atlanta MSA, America's ninth largest metropolitan statistical area, grew at a rate of 100,000 newcomers per year over the entire decade and continues to swell in suburban growth deep into exurbia. The greater metro's demographics, particularly in the sprawling burbs, is highly-affluent, well-educated, and upwardly mobile, plus the city hosts dozens of evangelical megachurches. Birmingham, AL, is another professional boomtown as is Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, NC. I don't want to digress into a socio-economic analysis of the South, but I can personally testify--living amongst its wealthy, church-going Republicans, and having grown up in a rich northern state from a family of poor evangelical Democrats--that Krugman is correct.

He concludes with a relevant point from Frank's book, which issued:

...a blistering attack on Democrats who cater to “affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” while “dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans.” Doesn’t this sound a bit like the Obama campaign?

Anyway, the important point is that working-class Americans do vote on economic issues — and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems.

And one more thing: let’s hope that once Mr. Obama is no longer running against someone named Clinton, he’ll stop denigrating the very good economic record of the only Democratic administration most Americans remember.

Are you listening Howard Dean? Trashing the Clintons isn't smart during these troubled economic times and I'm willing to bet that a ticket with Candidate Obama and without Candidate Clinton will have a chilling effect on GOTV in November.

UPDATE: Last night, Anglachel weighed in with two fan-tast-ic (such a gay word and I am) posts that add more flesh: Myth of the Bitter Working Class that reinforces what Krugman said but with more political prose attached, and second, Stereotypes, Facts, and Ideals. Check her last grafs on the "the Blogger Boyz and The Precious." You know who The Precious is, right? I wish I had more time to write more about the South, my home of exile as a left-of-center liberal and lesbian feminist artist but... have to make some donuts, which means getting pantsuits dry-cleaned and prepping for a professional gig.

Obama, Juvenile-in-Chief

Barack Obama talks about how he's got the leadership qualities to change Washington politics. M'yeah, Mr. Big Talk showed what he means. Watch him flip the bird when he mentions Hillary Clinton during yesterday's rally in Raleigh, NC. Egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women posted the video and a bunch of links to blogs talking about it for you to peruse. Saw the YouTube link first on a comment thread at The Confluence.

If you think the flick of Obama's middle finger is a benign gesture, view a longer video version--Obama fingers a 'gotcha' debate--that also shows him making a fist and thrusting his arm in a "get a dig in there" motion. Check another angle from CBS News video. The dude's got a 'tude. Why does he continue to alienate Hillary supporters? Not real smart or mature.

Hard to believe that people have fallen for Obama's post-partisan unity spiel but it wouldn't be the first time that folks believed in someone who made that promise.

A blast from the past from another finger-flipper (video).

Comment moderation

A CDS-suffering twit using the handle Byrdeye from Chrysler Technologies Airborne Systems of Waco, Texas, showed up earlier today to hit my comment threads with a series of sexist, noxious spittle. Byrdeye is or was a Ron Paul supporter from what I could ascertain from his complaint that Paul was "smeared for accepting a measly $500 token donation from a White Rights advocate." He also has a blog--nasty sexist tripe--but I deleted the link from Haloscan. So sorry. Not.

I have since employed a technique that Boing Boing calls disemvowelling. So if you come across some jibberish, perhaps it was Byrdeye's droppings or a new offender who was edited.

I'm fairly tolerant of dissenting opinions but abusive, sexist, racist, or inflammatory language that annoys me, I will not tolerate. If you don't like it, exercise your First Amendment rights at your own blog.

Asking for your patience, if you come across an unseemly comment, give me time to disemvowel.

UPDATE: Add cyber-stalkers who annoy me to the list as well.

Clinton, Obama and the P-word

Don Imus is hopelessly sexist. And, hey. Misogyny isn't just for women anymore. The uncouth, ever-offensive Imus aims his seething piehole to spit at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with one sexist shot:

During the April 17 edition of Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus asserted that Sen. Barack Obama is "almost a bigger pussy than" Sen. Hillary Clinton. While discussing the April 16 Democratic debate, Imus said he thought that co-moderator George Stephanopoulos was "great" and that the debate was "fine," adding: "I thought Senator Obama was on the defensive most of the night. But they're both sissy boys or sissy girls, or whatever. Because they talk big when they're out on the campaign trail, wolfing on each other." News anchor Charles McCord interjected, "But then," and Imus continued: "And then when they show up at the debate, they fold up like a couple of cheap lawn chairs. I mean, I don't understand that. And he's almost a bigger pussy than she is."

As Media Matters for America noted, on the March 7 edition of Imus in the Morning, Imus asserted that Clinton won her campaign for a U.S. Senate seat due to "a sympathy vote," adding, "She came here, everybody felt sorry for her 'cause her fat ..." At that point, guest and Fox News host Alan Colmes interjected, asking, "[W]hy did she get re-elected?" Imus continued: " 'Cause her fat, stupid husband was getting BJs from the poor little intern there in the Oval Office."

Despite his being fired by MSNBC and CBS in April 2007 -- his show is now syndicated by ABC Radio Networks and simulcast on RFD-TV -- Imus continues to attract prominent guests. From April 1 to April 17, Imus hosted Sen. John McCain, NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer, Washington Post media critic and host of CNN's Reliable Sources Howard Kurtz, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford. [Emphasis added.]

The morally bankrupt media continues to deem the blatantly sexist and reprobate behavior of Imus as acceptable in the marketplace of ideas. Look at who's still patronizing this unrepentant sexist dinosaur: a presidential candidate and leading media personalities. What's their excuse? Gotta email, express my disapproval, and ask what are their reasons for appearing on Don Imus' show. I want to know. What are they up to?

It's bad enough to hear the B-word thrown around as if it's a normal term for people to use--and it's not--but the P-word rates up there with the ugly group of demeaning epithets that dare not be spoken aloud, not in civilized circles or in the public arena. In Imus' cesspool of imagination, it's OK to use the P-word. In fact, it's fun, completely spot on. Never does he think of the denigration of femininity inherent in the P-word or its power crudely hewn to dismiss and devalue men and women.

Don't you wonder what advertisers are sponsoring Imus? I do 'cause I will cease to buy or recommend whatever service or product they offer in my sphere of influence.

I may be a Hillary supporter, but it is not ever OK to use misogyny against anyone. Ever.

The contacts to complain via Media Matters:

ABC Radio Networks
customerservice@abc.com
ABC Radio Networks

When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.

While I'm thinking 'bout it, send Media Matters some love. They provide an incredible service keeping the media in their sights and holding them accountable. God(dess) love 'em for the heavy-lifting they do regularly.

NOTE: You can watch it on video at the link.

Debate atrocity

Compare and contrast last night's debate to the Oct. 30, 2007, debate in which, to quote Bob Somerby, "Two of Jack Welch’s most famous 'Lost Boys' had been banging away at Candidate Clinton for about forty minutes. . . much as they’d done with Candidate Gore just eight years before. . . Has there ever been a debate like this? A debate where the moderators so plainly intended to spend the evening trashing the character of one of the candidates?"

That one candidate was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now here's Atrios' reaction to last night's debate starting from the top with the latest to the earliest post at the bottom. Note the outrage over the "atrocity" (condensed depth-wise):

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Deep Thought
DC journalists are obsessed with serious policy issues.
-Atrios 23:20
Comments (560) Trackback (0)

wuh?
I've rewound the tivo 8 times and each time I hear Pat Buchanan saying:

I think Obama sounded very defensive when he talked about the cookies.

??? I've obviously missed something.
-Atrios 22:42
Comments (329) Trackback (0)

Embarrassing
Indeed.

NEW YORK In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

ABC Switchboard: 212-456-7777
-Atrios 22:28
Comments (156) Trackback (1)

Switch to MSNBC
Keith not happy with debate.
...switching between Tivo tuners, Rendell is blasting the questions on the local ABC.
-Atrios 22:03
Comments (213) Trackback (0)

Light'Em Up
Complain about this atrocity.
Main ABC switchboard: 212-456-7777
...complain here.
-Atrios 21:31
Comments (262) Trackback (0)

So Stupid
..."Gibson and Stephanopoulos shame media, America". Indeed.
...My God. It gets worse and worse. Just move the whole thing to Fox.
-Atrios 21:01
Comments (273) Trackback (0)

So Stupid
Aside from the lack of policy questions, so far this "debate" has been played entirely on wingnut ground. If BillO and Sean Hannity hosted it the questions would've been the same.

In a general election debate it would make sense to get questions from the right like that, but in a democratic primary it's just fucking stupid.

I hope I have a superpowered liver.

...53 minutes in, policy! Though corrupted by Charlie Gibson's dream of a military coup.
-Atrios 20:48
Comments (54) Trackback (0)

So Stupid
29 minutes in, not one policy question.
...32 minutes in...
...35 minutes in...
...38 minutes in...
...41 minutes in...
-Atrios 20:29
Comments (270) Trackback (0)

So Stupid
17 minutes in, no policy questions yet...
...West Coasters can watch here.
-Atrios 20:17
Comments (131) Trackback (0)

Jeepers! Was he not happy or what?! Now begin here on Oct. 31, 2007, and see if you can detect any Eschaton outrage as you scan downward to and through Oct. 30, 2007, the day of the debates when Clinton was savaged by Russert and Williams.

Notice any? Even a hint of indignation at the stupidity of the inane and relentless interrogation of Hillary? I saw one post referring to Paul Waldman's critique of Russert on Oct. 30 and an Oct. 31 remark: "Our very serious policy debate is driven by impotent racist old men." But that's the extent of the mighty Atrios wrath. Hmmm, curious, isn't it? Well, maybe he was too busy last October to pay much attention, and after all, it was frontrunner Hillary who was then getting Gore-d. Now that the primary has arrived in his neck of the woods with Obama in the lead, last night's debate was an atrocity!

Of special note: Bob Somerby observed of Tim Russert during the Oct. 30, 2007 debate:

Russert was rather slick all night, as has long been his wont. His July 2000 Meet the Press with Candidate Gore remains the most disgraceful hour we’ve ever seen a broadcaster offer. That same year, his gruesome work in the Clinton-Lazio debate was recalled by Media Matters, just yesterday. Yes, he was playing some slick/silly games with about “recent” statement by Kennedy. And yes, he let Clinton’s opponents play fast and loose with the truth (examples below). But at last, the gentleman couldn’t help it; on such occasions, it feels good to lie. Well, let’s scale back our language a bit: It feels good to play the voters for fools, knowing you’ll get a pass in the press—and, almost surely, on the web. Here’s a question the man from Buffalo asked mid-way through Tuesday’s witch-burning. As always, he was concerned about Clinton’s honesty. Just like Gore before her! [Emphasis added in bold.]

Our SCLM has discredited Clinton for a long, long time and her honesty was fodder in last night's debate pertaining to her low poll ratings. And no wonder they're low. The refs have been working this angle for ages. On the sniper fire story in Bosnia, she 'fessed up, said she was embarassed, and apologized. But you darn well know, the harangue won't stop. Pay no mind to the other pols who embellish. They're precious.

If you click the Somerby link, you can read further about the "examples below" that have little to do with "policy questions." A few relevant excerpts:

Russert’s concerns about “credibility” and “consistency” extended to no one but Clinton. In the night’s second question, Russert invited Edwards to orate about Clinton’s troubling “double-talk.” As he ended, Edwards misstated a fact. And Russert was happy to let him...

[snip]

The agenda this night was to slime Clinton’s character, as Gore and Kerry were slimed before her. So Edwards was allowed to misstate. Meanwhile, when Obama was challenged, just one time, about his own “consistency,” high comedy quickly transpired...

[snip]

...when Obama was asked to explain his change, he uttered one unintelligible sentence, then went right back to bashing Clinton for her lack of “straight talk.” But did Russert, so filled with concerns about credibility, ask his question again in his follow-up? Of course not! After Obama finished waxing about Clinton’s “convoluted answers”—thereby failing to answer Russert himself—the Head Raccoon offered this “follow-up:”

[snip]

RUSSERT: But when asked by The New York Times whether Senator Clinton has been truthful, you said no.

OBAMA: What I said is that she has not been truthful and clear about this point that I just made...

Wouldn’t you know it? Obama completely avoided Tim’s question—but Tim was back to Clinton being untruthful by the time his answer was done! In that answer, by the way, Obama embarrassed his party again with this hopeless statement...

Read Somerby for the whole enchilada and the omitted snips.

The press, our wonderful liberal bloggers, and Democratic colleagues have bashed Clinton's credibility ad infinitum, but now that frontrunner Obama has been getting a taste of the sauce he's helped serve to the goose, oh, the squealing and the shrieking--Waah! Waah! Oh, the horror!--that's coming from the allegedly enlightened blogosphere. GMAFB. (via)

UPDATE: Bob Somerby today on our "hopeless" media: "In the real world, some questions are more equal than others. And some questions reflect the broken-souled culture of a broken, multimillionaire press corps. A press corps which our liberal journals have accepted, without a peep of complaint, for a good many years."

I've given up on expecting the media to behave un-assholish. Sure, we must protest and fight. But I have been extraordinarily surprised by the behavior of liberal bloggers toward Hillary Clinton. As far as the debates go, my gawd! Can we get the League of Women Voters to take over? The media can't be trusted.

Smell the Obama hypocrisy

Via Donna Darko, Roseanne:

Obama's presidential campaign has received nearly $5 million dollars from securities and investment firms and $866,000 from commercial banks through October of 2007. Obama's top contributor so far is Goldman Sachs (provider of $369,078 to Obama), identified by Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) investigators as "a major proponent of privatizing Social Security as well as legislation that would essentially deregulate the investment banking/securities industry."

Eight of Obama's top twenty election investors are securities and investment firms: Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros. (number 2 at $229,090), J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. (# 4 at $216,759), Citadel Investment Group (#7 at 4166,608), UBS AG ($146,150), UBS-America ($106,680), Morgan Stanley ($104,421), and Credit Suisse Group ($92,300). The last two firms are also known to be leading privatization advocates (Center for Responsive Politics 2007a).

Senator Obama has made the following statement," I don't take money from oil and gas companies and I don't take money from lobbyists." From the Center for Responsive Politics he accepted $160,000.00 from major oil companies, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP and others. Two of his top bundlers George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar are CEO's for major oil companies. Last month, Obama accepted another $8400.00 from ExxonMobile, $12,370.00 from Chevron and $6500.00 from British Petroleum.. These are the funds and contributors for 2008 Finance/Insurance $15,087,469.00, $7,035,249 Communications, $6,715,680.00 Securities, $5,069,186.00 $10,261,541.00 Education there is a little more than $8,000,000.00 undisclosed. . .

From Donna Darko:

Rosanne wasn’t kidding. Popular progressive website, opensecrets.org, confirms it. According to Rosanne, Obama’s top contributor is Goldman Sachs ($523,478), a major proponent of privatizing Social Security and legislation that would deregulate the investment banking/securities industry (Center for Responsive Politics). Eight of Obama’s top twenty investors are securities and investment firms and one is a leading privatization advocate (Center for Responsive Politics 2007a).

When Obama parroted GOP talking points about the crisis of Social Security, liberals who fought Bush's privatization scam were taken aback. Of course, some of 'em were soothed by BO's baritone explanation. Others more qualified, Paul Krugman, recognized it's a sucker's game. Like Krugman, I don't believe Obama supports the privatization of Social Security. Barry declares as much on his website. And we can trust him, can't we? *cough*

But something is afoot with such sizable donations from Wall Street and Big Oil donors. Maybe his automatic workplace pension plan and savings incentives are the reason for the investment and banking moolah. M'yeah, that's it. What else could it be? Factoring in how he's hectored Hillary for accepting money from lobbyists as if he doesn't cozy up to K Street... whassup?

To outspend Clinton 3-to-1, sometimes 4-to-1, in advertising requires some major cha-ching. And he's got a new ad attacking Hillary Clinton for taking lobbyist money in contradiction to his own lobbyist network.

Can't you smell it?

Irresponsible journalism at work

The headline reads, McCain even with Obama, leads Clinton: Reuters poll.

The article reports on the latest poll release from Reuters/Zogby.

What the article doesn't say: In the four-way match-ups of Obama vs. McCain and Clinton vs. McCain, no where in the reporting is the percent of "Other/Not sure" mentioned.

Screen grabs from Zogby below

In the two-way match-ups, just try and find the cohort that's "Other/Not sure" at the Zogby link. At least the article designated the margin of error: 3.1% among likely voters and 4.3% among likely Democratic voters.

IOW, take the poll with a big shaker of salt.

Makes the headline and the report a wee bit misleading, doncha think? Now Reuters wouldn't have a bias, would it?

November surprise

Hillary's Bloggers:

I have a feeling Dean et al, will get a real eye opener in November if they continue to piss women off and force Hillary out of this race and do not count Florida and Michigan.

We may feel helpless in June July or August or September or October, but when November rolls around, women will get even and they won't even know what hit them.

P.S Love to all my male Hillary supporting friends! You guys are what makes this bearable!

Hillary keeps me hanging in with the Democratic Party that appears to have decided on self-destruction by favoring Obama.

Watching the primaries more intensely than I ever have previously has opened my eyes. Can a political party be more out of touch by employing an antiquated caucus system that disenfranchises the working class? There are so many things wrong with caucuses: peer group pressure, an inconvenient schedule, fear of retaliation of publicly siding against someone who affects livelihood or home. These are only a few examples. The Democratic primary system needs a major overhaul, that is, if the party wishes to live up to its name.

If Clinton is shut out of the nomination, I'm done with decades of sacrificing my vote for the good of everyone else. We voted the Democrats into the majority in 2006 but have they stopped the war by refusing to fund it? Have they impeached Cheney or Bush?

The sexism that's reared its ugly head in this campaign season has reawakened me to never again settle for second-class status or enable it by rewarding a political system that has stood silent against misogyny. I'm done with supporting the party's candidate. I'm voting for the person who best represents progressive policies. There are real progressive alternatives for a self-respecting lesbian feminist to chose on the ballot in November. Obama is not one of them.

Hillary Clinton and a feminist awakening

TalkLeft's BTD posted, "Finally Someone Worries About Alienating Women Voters," referring to Kevin Drum who remarked "that an awful lot of liberal women are appalled at how Hillary has been treated during this campaign and that some of them might stay home as well if she doesn't win." Sweetie darling, what do you mean might?

Guaranteed, women in mass will either stay home, vote for an independent or McCain if Barry is on the frigging November ballot. But that iffy-ness is what one can expect of Drum's wishy-washy, OTOH and OTOH blogging. When he finally sees the big picture, it's after it's too late... like he did with the Iraq War.

Thanks to BTD, a link to an incredible article in New York Magazine by Amanda Fortini, The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the fourth wave.

When Hillary declared, "I'm in to win," Fortini recounts, "the sexism in America, long lying dormant, like some feral, tranquilized animal, yawned and revealed itself. Even those of us who didn’t usually concern ourselves with gender-centric matters began to realize that when it comes to women, we are not post-anything."

The egregious and by now familiar potshots are too numerous (and tiresome) to recount. A greatest-hits selection provides a measure of the misogyny: There’s Republican axman Roger Stone’s anti-Hillary 527 organization, Citizens United Not Timid, or CUNT. And the Facebook group Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich, which has 44,000-plus members. And the “Hillary Nutcracker” with its “stainless-steel thighs.” And Clinton’s Wikipedia page, which, according to The New Republic, is regularly vandalized with bathroom-stall slurs like “slut” and “cuntbag.” And the truly horrible YouTube video of a KFC bucket that reads HILLARY MEAL DEAL: 2 FAT THIGHS, 2 SMALL BREASTS, AND A BUNCH OF LEFT WINGS. And Rush Limbaugh worrying whether the country is ready to watch a woman age in the White House (as though nearly every male politician has not emerged portly, wearied, and a grandfatherly shade of gray). And those two boors who shouted, “Iron my shirts!” from the sidelines in New Hampshire. “Ah, the remnants of sexism,” Clinton replied, “alive and well.” With that, she blithely shrugged off the heckling.

It was hardly a revelation to learn that sexism lived in the minds and hearts of right-wing crackpots and Internet nut-jobs, but it was something of a surprise to discover it flourished among members of the news media. The frat boys at MSNBC portrayed Clinton as a castrating scold, with Tucker Carlson commenting, “Every time I hear Hillary Clinton speak, I involuntarily cross my legs,” and Chris Matthews calling her male endorsers “castratos in the eunuch chorus.” Matthews also dubbed Clinton “the grieving widow of absurdity,” saying, of her presidential candidacy and senatorial seat, “She didn’t win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humiliation.’ ” While that may be partly true—Hillary’s approval ratings soared in the wake of l’affaire Lewinsky—Matthews’s take reduced her universally recognized political successes to rewards for public sympathy, as though Clinton’s intelligence and long record of public service count for nothing. Would a male candidate be viewed so reductively? Many have argued that the media don’t like Clinton simply because they don’t like Clinton—even her devotees will admit she arrives with a complete set of overstuffed baggage—much in the same way they made up their mind about Al Gore back in 2000 and ganged up on him as a prissy, uptight know-it-all. But whatever is behind the vitriol, it has taken crudely sexist forms.

Even when the media did attempt to address the emergent sexism, the efforts were tepid, at best. After the laundry incident, USA Today ran the extenuating headline, “Clinton Responds to Seemingly Sexist Shouts.” A handful of journalists pointed out the absurdity of the adverb. “If these comments were only ‘seemingly’ sexist, I wonder what, exactly, indubitably sexist remarks would sound like?” Meghan O’Rourke wrote on The XX Factor, a blog written by Slate’s female staffers. Many women, whatever their particular feelings about Hillary Clinton (love her, loathe her, voting for her regardless), began to feel a general sense of unease at what they were witnessing. The mask had been pulled off—or, perhaps more apt, the makeup wiped off—and the old gender wounds and scars and blemishes, rather than having healed in the past three decades, had, to the surprise of many of us, been festering all along.

And that's just Fortini's warm-up.

Hillary's presidential run galvanized "a kind of conversion experience brought about by Clinton’s candidacy" from women of varied age groups:

Women who had never thought much about sexual politics were forwarding Gloria Steinem’s now-infamous op-ed around, reiterating her claim that “gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.” In other cases, it had re-politicized them: A few women told me they were thinking about issues they hadn’t considered in any serious way since college, where women’s-studies courses and gender theory were mainstays of their liberal-arts curricula. “That whole cynical part of me that has been coming to this conclusion all along was like, I knew it! We’ve come—not nowhere, but not as far as we thought,” one said. A not insignificant number of women mentioned arguments they’d had with male friends and colleagues, who disagreed that Clinton was being treated with any bias. A high-powered film executive for a company based in New York and Los Angeles recounted a heated debate she engaged in with two of her closest male friends; she finally capitulated when they teamed up and began to shout her down. Nearly all of the women I interviewed, with the exception of those who write on gender issues professionally, refused to be named for fear of offending the male bosses and colleagues and friends they’d tangled with.

In particular, the campaign has divided women and the men they know on the subject of race. Indelicate as it seems to bring up, the oft-repeated question is, why do overtly sexist remarks slip by almost without comment, while any racially motivated insult would be widely censured? A few women told me that when they raised this issue with men, the discussion broke down, with the men arguing that racism was far more pernicious than sexism. “If you say anything about the specificity of Hillary being a woman, you’re just doing the knee-jerk feminist stuff, that’s the reaction,” said one woman who asked not to be identified in any way. “Thinking about race is a serious issue, whereas sexism is just something for dumb feminists to think about.” The point is not to determine whether it is harder to be a white woman or a black man in America today, nor which candidate would have more symbolic value. At issue is the fact that race is, as it should be, taboo grounds for criticism, but gender remains open territory.

What a shame. And this in America?! Feh! On Sunday, while channel surfing on the teevee, within 30 minutes I heard the B-word from two different cable shows. Like it's normal.

Fortini asks the ultimate question, "Why doesn’t our culture take sexism seriously?"

Gloria Steinem has suggested that “anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects ‘only’ the female half of the human race.” If that’s true, and I’m not convinced it is, then women are also culpable. Sexism is often so subtle, threading its insidious way through many aspects of our existence, that anyone who talks about it risks sounding like an overzealous lunatic at worst—scrutinizing every interaction for gender-specific offenses, dichotomizing the world into victim and oppressor—or trivial at best. . . And so, in our reluctance to appear nagging, scolding, hectoring, or petty, many of us have made a practice of enduring minor affronts, not realizing that a failure to decry the smaller indignities can foster blindness to the larger ones. We then find ourselves shocked when one of the smartest, most qualified women ever to run for public office is called “fishwife-y” by a female pundit on national television.

Remember this? When Obama responded, "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." That's the language of insidious misogyny in action. Egalia at TGW interpreted for the dolts who missed the inherent sexist message, "She's PMS-ing." How many women have heard that accusation, raise your hand? Hmmm, that many, eh? And the better question, to show the gender disparity, "Can you imagine Obama pulling this crap on John Edwards? Or John McCain?"

No, I can't. And shame on Barry. And his co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr. for his despicable mockery of Hillary's tears. And the shrieking McPeak, who had to retract his assertion that "Obama 'doesn't go on television and have crying fits.' " They all crossed a line that never should have traversed by a Democratic presidential candidacy, flanked by the Blog Boyz cheering their Precious onward, demeaning Hillary just like the appalling anti-liberal press corps we've come to mistrust and despise. Now it's liberal male bloggers that many of us--women and men who love women--have started to associate with the tactics of Tweety, Inc.

Fortini's article goes on for pages. One graf that speaks to the OFB intimidation factor:

But, according to my anecdotal research, it isn’t just “the hot-flash cohort,” to borrow another phrase from Tina Brown, that broke for Clinton. Women in their thirties and forties—at once discomfited and galvanized by the sexist tenor of the media coverage, by the nastiness of the watercooler talk in the office, by the realization that the once-foregone conclusion of Clinton-as-president might never come to be—did, too. We haven’t heard much about these women, perhaps because in this demographic, there is peer pressure to vote for Obama. A woman I interviewed described the atmosphere of Obama-Fascism in her office: “I really object to the assumption that everyone is voting for Obama in our cohort, but that’s the assumption these guys talk under,” she says. “They feel only idiots would vote for Hillary. There’s this kind of total assumption that of course any thinking person is voting for Obama.”

Go read and see if you can keep your head from exploding.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking this crap from any political party anymore. I'm ready to revolt. The Democratic Party has treated gays and lesbians like two-headed stepchildren. Now they ignore the debasement of women, and for extra bonus points, they're screwing MI and FL voters to shut Hillary out of the nomination.

I say UYATUPYRIO! What say you?

Obama: better, not bitter

Two sides of Obama and religion

With taxes off the "to do" list, and catching up on the political scene, I checked further into Obama's foot-in-mouth disease, a condition I attribute to his arrogance and pride. I believe Barry suffers from over-confidence with a touch of hubris, character flaws that embolden him with an air of superiority, blinding him from connecting with the heartland of America. More about that at another time but notice his contradiction regarding religion.

On one side at the SFO fundraiser that's been in the news, he said:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. . . And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

On the other side, at Messiah College in Grantham, PA:

Obama said that to him, "religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things aren't going well. That's true in my own life, through trials and tribulations. ..." [via]

Did Barry adopt the old Kronenbourg beer slogan? When he clings to religion during tough times I guess it's because he's, "Better, not bitter."

Of course, I'm offering sarcastic fare because what's primary about Mr. Audacity's remark was not the "bitterness" but the bigotry ascribed to middle-class Americans and especially to Hillary supporters. Anglachel wrote about this subject at length on Sunday.

No Quarter posted a video of a Florida C-SPAN call-in, a woman who articulated Barry's offense succinctly:

I am exceptionally offended by him, by his comments, and I think the media's coverage of it is kind of funny because you guys are focusing on the word, bitter, when it's not the bitterness comment that is so offensive. It's the fact that he claims that middle America cling to God and guns, and that they don't like people that don't look like them. What he's telling me, and you know, my friends in middle-class America, is that they're bigots. And I find it exceptionally offensive and I think it's going to do long-term damage to him.

The C-SPAN host then read a WashTimes article to get the caller's response to Obama's mea culpa:

"I didn't say it as well as I should have," the Illinois senator said at a campaign rally at Ball State University in Indiana while dismissing it as "a typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

"Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," he told the Winston-Salem Journal, but "the underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so."

The Florida caller didn't buy Obama's explanation:

My response is that it's not an apology. It's a typical political statement. He said what he said and he can spin it as much as he wants, and the media will help him spin it as much as he wants, but he said bitter people cling to God and guns and don't like people that [don't] look like them. That is what he said, and he said it in an environment where he was seeking money, and he meant what he said when he said it. And I do not accept his apology or his explanation.

Neither do I. Obama may think he can buffalo many of us but we aren't falling for his silver-tongued spiel. We know BS when we hear it.

Distortions and mocking Clinton

Katiebird at The Confluence applied a fact check to Obama's distortion of the truth about jobs during the Clinton presidency specific to Pennsylvania. Nice job. M'yeah, Obama twisted reality. Funny how his eloquence failed him. Or did it? Maybe his economic expertise goes awry because... well... does he have much?

For a national perspective, Krugman supplied a graphic on the ratio of employment to population in a tale of two administrations, Clinton vs. Bush. But to hear Obama's tall tale, "[Jobs] fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration..." Oh, really?


Lambert offered another chart.

And there's more mockery from Obama of Hillary (video). A "man of deep faith" plays politics by accusing Hillary of playing politics.

Click the links and look above at the job numbers. After watching the video, check Obama's contributors, his ties to lobbyists, and his lobbyist advisors. What about his oil company donations and his wealthy donors and bundlers? Don't they count? Or do they fall under Obama Rules.

Methinks he doth protest too much about who's out of touch and playing politics.

SUPSDD (same unity pony sh*t, different day).

Go read Lambert

Tax time. Too busy to give adequate attention to The RealSpiel.

So go read Lambert on the latest contrived attack on Hillary Clinton related to Obama's gaffe from the hack who kidnapped Josh Marshall.

And then from the ultimate CDS sufferer, the King of the Orange Sippy Cup, "too funny":

The Clintons have no compunction about ripping the Democratic party apart and destroying the career of Barack Obama if it means they might yet win.

Oh, the drama of angry pissypants. Someone order a giant-sized bottle of smelling salts for the Kid. Keep digging through the horse dung, Orange Boyz. Maybe there's a Unity Pony in there somewhere. But I doubt it. And that stink... won't wash off.

Power rift

Obama is standing on the "shoulders of giants." But does that qualify him to lead?

My friend Rev. Irene Monroe (bio) posted a column last week on Obama's absence at the 40th anniversary commemoration of MLK's assassination. Clinton and McCain attended. But where was Obama?

One of Obama's political advisors, Princeton University professor and author of Race Matters, Cornel West criticized Barry at HuffPo:

“I want to say that I’m deeply disappointed that my dear brother Barack Obama decided not to go pay tribute and lay his wreath for the great Martin Luther King, Jr. That brother Martin’s profound love and deep sacrifice for black people, America and humanity is in no way reducible to political calculations, even for the campaign for presidency. That Martin Luther King Jr.’s deep commitment to unarmed truth and unconditional love can in no way be subject to strategies for access to political power.”

Rev. Irene pondered:

Was this a public backhand slap from West signaling to the public, as well as to Obama, his concerns about Obama’s calculated ambitions to the White House?

Or, as many Obama supporters in the African American community are now speculating, is there both a personal and ideological rift between West and Obama?

Given West’s prominence and respect in the African American community nationwide, the Obama campaign knows if West breaks publicly from the campaign he’ll take a substantial portion of black voters away from Obama come November (if Obama wins the Democratic nomination).

Having won the majority of African American voters in the Tennessee primary, Obama may have felt he did not need to come back to the state to do face time.

But black talk show radios were abuzz with listeners calling in expressing their disappointment.

Tavis Smiley, one of America’s most celebrated and respected media personalities and author of the bestseller Covenant With Black America, called into the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Smiley asked listeners if Obama’s absence was another signal of Obama only courting the African American vote when it is political advantageous for him to do so.

When the State of the Black Union hosted in NOLA convened, an "event [that] gathers a 'Who’s Who' of black intellectuals, pundits, activists, entertainers and politicians to discuss and brainstorm where black America is and where it is headed," Barry was absent again. He offered his wife Michele as his surrogate, but Obama, too busy on the campaign trail to attend this most auspicious summit, caused African Americans to question if his ambitions were most important to Obama. Rev. Irene pointed to criticism from Darryl Fears:

As the first black person to have a legitimate shot at a presidential nomination, defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton's rich campaign juggernaut, Obama is virtually a third civil rights movement, the manifestation of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. His candidacy has produced a fervor in black America born of centuries of wanting. Nearly every black vote that Clinton thought was hers at the beginning of the race has been siphoned by Obama.

Each of the presidential candidates were invited to speak [at the State of the Black Union], but only Sen. Hillary Clinton accepted. Clinton is desperate to bolster her flagging campaign with a larger share of the black vote after losing all but a small percent to Obama.

Rev. Irene concluded in her column:

And in Obama winning our votes, he must also hear and heed to the moral imperative and hurt expressed by West:

“I have a very deep disagreement with my dear brother, Barack Obama — in this case, commitment to truth is in tension with the quest for power.”

Otherwise, we must wonder, if Obama can diss King, what manner of man do we have here?

According to Emil Jones, Jr., Obama is a man who seeks pow-er. That's what the president of the Illinois Senate said Obama wanted of him in 2003.

"And [Obama] said to me. . .‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’ ” Jones stretched out the word, as if savoring the pleasure of it, and his voice became very quiet as he continued: “And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of pow-er now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of pow-er.’ And I said, ‘What kind of pow-er do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the pow-er to make a United States sen-a-tor!’ ” Jones let out a soft, smoky laugh. “I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ ”

Jones let the words hang for a moment, and then went on. “The most interesting conversation. And so I said to him, ‘Let me think about this.’ ” Obama knew that Jones’s support could single-handedly freeze the discretion of other powerful politicians in the state, and put endorsements of possible rivals on ice. “We met a little later that day, and I said, ‘That sounds good. Let’s go for it.’ ”

The rest is history.

Seeking power isn't bad or wrong if one's intentions to use it once acquired hastens the good of everyone. Those who share power, serve it justly with '"unarmed truth and unconditional love." Think of great people of history who have done just that: Dr. King, JFK, Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Susan B. Anthony, and so forth.

I didn't personally like LBJ, but in the political arena, he exercised presidential power to push civil rights legislation responding to Dr. King's righteous appeals for justice, signed it into law, and did so at the detriment to his party. Truman exhibited his power when he ended racial segregation of the military by executive order at the expense of his party, a decision that initially precipitated the exodus of Dixiecrat segregationists to the GOP that eventually transformed the South into a Republican bastion. These were not perfect men. I vehemently disagreed with their use of military force. However, these examples were acts of sacrifice to answer the call of courage grasping the levers of power embodied in the Constitution that we are all created equal.

As Maya Angelou so beautifully explained, "Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency." And what is power without virtue?

Consider Obama's opposition to a revote in Michigan and Florida. Is this a positive applications of his pow-er? Or is he more interested in winning? Rewind Donnie McClurkin. Was his using his pow-er to denounce homophobia? Or was he pandering to homophobic voters? What manner of pow-er did he display to billionaires at a fundraiser in associating the Clinton Administration's job growth with Bush's abysmal record and in belittling small town folks by characterizing them as "bitter" and clingy?

Obama's silence against misogyny and sexism--attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton's emotions, and in so doing, those of women in general--tells me all I need to know about the nature of the pow-er he seeks.

No health insurance death toll

Via Susie Madrak, "Death by Lack of Health Insurance." The reality:

In 2002, a groundbreaking national study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated the direct link between a lack of health coverage and deaths from health-related causes. Drawing on that study, Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers, has today made available reports for all 50 states that show how many people are expected to die in each state each week because they don’t have health coverage. A separate report is also available for the District of Columbia.

The individual reports, available on the Families USA Web site, provide eye-opening numbers for every state. Among the figures cited is the fact that more than seven working-age Texans die each day due to a lack of health insurance. Other reports reveal that, on average, approximately 960 people in Illinois died in 2006 because they had no health coverage, and nearly 9,900 uninsured New Yorkers between the ages of 25 and 64 died in the years 2000 to 2006.

“Our report highlights how our inadequate system of health coverage condemns a great number of people to an early death simply because they don’t have the same access to health care as their insured neighbors,” Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said today. “The conclusions are sadly clear—a lack of health coverage is a matter of life and death for many people. [Emphasis added.]

People criticize Hillary Clinton's insistence on universal health care with mandates but there's more to her proposal--the chance to live longer--than the economics. Props to John Edwards for his lead on this issue as well.

Someone make Obama stop

And his little sycophants, too. Hillary hate has gotten out of control and turned formerly intelligent people into numbskulls irresponsibly throwing around the race card. First off, why does Obama and his minions ignore the misogyny underpinning their attacks on Clinton? And second, the Magnificent One's mythical Unity Pony doesn't exist. He can't unify the country when he's insulting the working class of the big states.

Must read. Start with Obama's latest condescension:

• BDBlue at Corrente on "Barack Obama at his recent billionaire fundraiser in San Francisco talking about those struggling folks in Pennsylvania." A real class ass!
  

• Move on to Anglachel to understand how "The Precious has gone and stuck his foot in his mouth again, dissing working class Democrats and the Clintons." With Barry, he's a victim of racism despite polling to the contrary.
  

• And shame on Brad Delong! Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft explained why Delong's goofball--"white reluctance to vote for an African-American candidate"--is acting like CDS-sufferer Josh Marshall's propaganda apparatchik.

A campaign that's more about politics than policies doesn't fathom that Hillary Clinton has more credibility than Obama on jobs and the economy because she came from the working class, can relate to them, and is fighting for them with actual policy proposals.

Obama? He criticized them. . . "they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Whoa! Winning hearts and minds, Barry?

Obama and his OFB spin narratives packaged in purdy-sounding yet dubious claims to protect the hero's self-inflicted wounds. They chide Hillary supporters as racists. Do they really want to further this argument? Because it doesn't endear Hillary voters to support BO if he wins the nomination. And where's his Unity Pony? MIA?

Lionesses for Hillary

Two Lionesses for Hillary are enjoying a springtime Zen moment before a rally starts. They're ferocious about fundraising to help Hillary Clinton win. So keep 'em purring.

I know. It's not Friday, the typical cat blogging day, but I don't have a cat, let alone two, and I'm partial to big kitty cats as you can see. Why not have a little fun? It's Saturday. Woo hoo!