Wednesday’s Mini-Report

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Market watching these days is enough to give someone whiplash: “Wall Street swung between steep losses and large gains Wednesday, as investors wrestled with fears that a recession in the United States is inevitable. Each of the major indexes at times were down more than 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which fell more than 320 points before rebounding. Some investors seeking safety turned to Treasury bonds, often a haven as the stock market plunges.”

* I suspect it will surprise no one to hear that the war in Iraq is costing a lot of money: “The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government’s credit card. ‘Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007,’ the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.” By the CBO’s estimate, Iraq is costing $11 billion a month.

* On a related note, the CBO also concluded that the U.S. budget deficit for the current year would increase to a quarter-trillion dollars. This does not include the cost of a likely economic stimulus package, which will likely add an additional $100 billion to the nation’s charge card. I vaguely recall hearing Bush bragging about cutting his record-high budget deficits “in half” before leaving office. Just another presidential assurance Bush didn’t mean and couldn’t keep.

* There’s no better time than a recession for Republicans to block healthcare for low-income kids: “The House Democratic leadership again failed to win over enough Republicans to undo President Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance bill Wednesday. The 260-152 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto on the measure, which would have added $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and, Democrats assert, provided health benefits to 10 million children.” A group of 42 Republicans broke party ranks, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

* In an unusually inane report, ABC News told viewers that Barack Obama had a confrontational and “testy” exchange with a reporter on the campaign trail yesterday. ABC’s report was almost comically misleading.

* Dems still want to know if Michael Mukasey can now explain whether he believes waterboarding constitutes torture. The cat still has the AG’s tongue.

* Hillary Clinton’s Senate predecessor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, also described modern Republicans as the “party of ideas.” One assumes her campaign won’t mention this in its misleading radio ads.

* AP: “Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah. The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed last week by Israel.”

* Oh dear: “Senior Democrats have decided that holding a controversial vote on the contempt citations, which have already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, would ‘step on their message’ of bipartisan unity in the midst of the stimulus package talks.” Here’s a tip: the Bush White House will continue to treat Congress and its subpoenas as an easily-ignored annoyance until they think there may be consequences.

* No matter who’s using them, loyalty oaths make me uncomfortable: “Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich asked the Supreme Court Thursday to block the Texas Democratic Party from using a loyalty oath to keep him off the presidential primary ballot. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned down a similar request earlier Thursday. Kucinich and singer-supporter Willie Nelson are pressing the case, objecting to the Texas Democratic Party’s oath that a presidential candidate must ‘fully support’ the party’s eventual nominee. Kucinich crossed out the oath when he filed for a spot on the primary ballot. A federal judge in Austin ruled against Kucinich last week. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled the state party has the right to require the oath.” (thanks to JJF for the tip)

* The New Hampshire recount doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect.

* And finally, in the wake of Heath Ledger’s death, Fox News personality John Gibson mocked the deceased actor on the air today: “Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, ‘I wish I knew how to quit you’ from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, ‘Well, he found out how to quit you.’ Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, ‘We’re dead,’ followed by his own, mocking ‘We’re dead’ before playing the clip again.” It’s the kind of class and decency we’ve come to expect from Fox News employees.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Wow. Stay classy, Fox.

  • What is it again that makes Kucinich unviable?

    Was it his Impeachment of Cheney? His support of a working, single-payer health care system?

    We can argue all day until our fingers turn blue from typing about Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, but Kucinich is the only true progressive running for the office.

  • Damn. I thought I was pretty imaginative, but I never would have imagined Fox going that low.

    As for the loyalty oath, that is foolish and counterproductive of the Texas Dem Party, but Kucinich has to know his suit is a loser. Every case – Florida v DNC, Nev. Educations Assn re the casino caucus sites – comes out the same: party nomination contests are private matters and the party can do what it wants. The rules that the courts enforce apply only to general elections.

  • I heard about the breach in the Gaza wall as I woke up this morning. I smiled.

    It’s easy for me to sympathize with Israel’s frustration at the constant barrage of rockets coming from withing Gaza. It’s even easier for me to sympathize with the ordinary residents of Gaza, whom Israel is subjecting to mass punishment with its blockades.

    I wish that the government of the United States of America would recognize the democratically elected government of Gaza, even though Hamas is not who they wanted to win. Free elections are like that, Mr. Bush. Sometimes your people win, sometimes the creeps win. You are proof of that

  • Some investors seeking safety turned to Treasury bonds, often a haven as the stock market plunges.

    Wait, the same Treasury Bonds that won’t be paid when all the baby boomers start claiming their Social Security??? What are they thinking?

  • By the CBO’s estimate, Iraq is costing $11 billion a month.

    And worth every penny, right?

    The Republican party just spent 7 years fucking this country in the ass and killing over 3,900 Americans in Iraq, and Barack Obama calls them the party of ideas. That’s pretty worthless, and it’s pretty misleading to say there is something redeeming about Barack’s words. Fess up, Barack.

  • Hey, here’s an idea: let’s start a worthless war that costs $11 billion dollars a month and needlessly gets at least 3,992 Americans killed!

    What a great idea!

    Shame on Hillary for criticizing this kind of priceless wisdom!

  • @6: That’s pretty worthless, and it’s pretty misleading to say there is something redeeming about Barack’s words.

    (Roll eyes.)

    The misrepresentations just a-keep on coming, don’t they?

  • Shame on Hillary for criticizing this kind of priceless wisdom!

    She voted for it. She has refused to apologize for that vote. She says that she was misled by the Bush administration. How stupid does someone need to be to be misled by the Bush administration?

  • Hillary Clinton’s Senate predecessor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, also described modern Republicans as the “party of ideas.” One assumes her campaign won’t mention this in its misleading radio ads.

    The fact that Moynihan used the phrase doesn’t make it any less deplorably inaccurate. The Republican Party’s storehouse of “Ideas” contains two items: Fear and Selfishness.

  • I wonder with a number of people on this blog that can see the shortcomings of Obama and Clinton. Who is voting for them in the caucus? (rhetorical).

    I agree with many of the other posters — Kucinich and Dodd are the progressives.

  • Holy Mary, Mother of God, did you see this 527? I’m not a Hillary supporter, but it’s crap like this, and the stuff with Tweety during New Hampshire that might just make me vote for her. Going back to an earlier post, one has to wonder if this is part of the reverse Rovian feint to get Dems to vote for the candidate they most want to run against. But sheesh, tick off 54% of the electorate…. you reap what you sew……….

    http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005124.php

  • The party of ideas! Come on, do any of you really believe Barack is the voice of change, when he takes a line from the Republicans and calls them “the party of ideas”?

    Well let’s look at a few of those ideas:

    -Naming bills that take the tax burden away from the rich, so proportionately more of it falls on the shoulders of the working class, things like “The Middle-Class Economic Relief Act” and bills that make polluting the environment easier things like “The Clean Skies Bill”

    -Doing all sorts of vote fraud and vote-caging to lose, under-count, or just plain steal African American votes

    -Ruining the lives of whistle-blowers and political rivals by falsely accusing them of things like child-molestation and sodomy

    -Sexually harassing co-workers, sexually assaulting wives, soliciting prostitutes, and stalking 16 year-old pages for congress

    Yep, Republicans all over America are ruining peoples lives every day!! They’re complaining about what people like the Clintons “do to America” and then they betray America themselves the first chance they get, every chance they get!

    It’s easy to see why Democrats with heads on their shoulders don’t call Republicans “the party of ideas,” only pandering Obama. The only people who support him on this must be closet Republicans, or getting Rove-style leaned on by Republicans, themselves.

    Dennis wrote:

    She voted for it. She has refused to apologize for that vote. She says that she was misled by the Bush administration.

    Hey, it was Bush’s idea, not het idea. Bush is the one who lied to all of us. Americans don’t have their own intelligence on WMD in foreign countries- they’re supposed to be able to trust what the president says. The president’s staff leaned on their subordinates to make up a rationale to go to war with Iraq, and this is documented. It’s pretty nuts that you follow that sentence with How stupid does someone need to be to be misled by the Bush administration? because after all, loads of Americans trusted that Bush was telling the truth before the war, and maybe were just a little skeptical. What else were people supposed to do? You’re supposed to be able to trust the president about something like this, but all you Republlican jackasses voted this jerkoff into office.

  • It seems to me that funding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, to the tune of $35 million, while providing health benefits to 10 million uninsured children, would be a great way to immediately stimulate a sector of our economy.

  • Bee Thousand, what’s misleading about it? Barack called them “the party of ideas” and he didn’t even follow that up with “But the ideas have mostly been terrible” or anything like that. He was obviously trying to praise them and make people with conservative leanings like them better. He didn’t mean anything but to be interpreted as praising the Republicans ideas.

    It’s those who say different who are playing fast and loose with the truth.

  • I agree with many of the other posters — Kucinich and Dodd are the progressives.

    Kucinich, Dodd and Edwards were eliminated the second that the media decided that The Narrative was “The First Black President® or the First Woman President®?” Any of the other three candidates could come up with The Cure for Cancer and they’d get one line in three page story about Clinton and Obama.

    The reason that we have Bush and the reason that he was a “Popular Wartime President” long after he wasn’t was that the Republicans understood that the media loves itself a narrative and that it is too lazy and inner-directed to report anything that digresses therefrom. Present the media with a narrative and they’re on it like a twenty dollar whore who’s just been offered a Benjamin.

  • From today’s Dumber-than-Dirt file…(excerpt from ThinkProgress)

    In today’s press briefing, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino about the new CBO estimate on the skyrocketing deficit. Perino didn’t have much of an answer, however, and simply replied, “Well, I don’t know how they come to all of their numbers at CBO. It’s a little bit — math is not my strong suit.”

    If you can stand it, there’s even a video.

  • What else were people supposed to do?

    She could have asked some of Bill’s friends in the intelligence community what the real story was before she made a vote that would directly result in people dying. She could have asked Joe Wilson, and she damn sure could have asked Madeleine Albright. Instead, she triangulated her way into supporting the worst foreign policy blunder in decades. She didn’t even read the NIE before casting her vote. Guess she was too busy working on her bill to outlaw flag burning.

  • Shame on Hillary for criticizing this kind of priceless wisdom!

    I love it! Swan was calling other commenters trolls earlier today, then comes in with nugglets of wisdom like this.

    I’m afraid, dear Swan, you are guilty of being the south end of a north facing horse.

    All of you Hillary supporters sure you want to be on the same side as this joker?

  • Dennis, I think you know and we all know that the real truth was something that was hidden only in the inner offices of the Bush White House, and people who didn’t have access there couldn’t really get it (just the way it’s continued to be up til now).

    Sounds like you have an anti-Hillary agenda.

    And while we may not need a law against flag-burning, that issue is a lot less important than 3,992 Americans dying, which was Bush’s and the stupid Republican voters’ fault, and outlawing flag-burning honestly might bring the country closer together and finally stop a lot of the right-wing bigots from not being able to see liberals’ humanity, so long as it was a liberal like Hillary who sponsored the law.

  • Swan – Please don’t do this. Barack was not saying they were good ideas. Let’s replay the clip “The Republican approach I think has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10 or 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies, when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. Well, we’ve done that, we’ve tried it.

    Where in that does he sound like he’s praising their ideas? I think the words “played itself out,” and “we’ve tried it” clearly show he was being derisive. I think the problem is that when Republicans used those words, they clearly had a positive connotation. But Barack was trying to turn that meme on its head, by granting that they had ideas, but they didn’t go anywhere. It was “all tax cuts,” and we need something new.

    I don’t know why we have to have this slash-and-burn attack on Obama but if he gets the nomination, you are only helping conservatives. But again, I’m really afraid when I read you saying this stuff, because it’s just not true. He is using a wise strategy of using his opponent’s words to his own advantage, like when a liberal agrees that he supports “tax and spend” policies to contrast themselves with conservatives who advocate “spend and spend” policies. It’s using a conservative catchphrase to denounce conservatives. But in no case was he praising Republican ideas. I don’t mind a fair disagreement, but this really isn’t the way to go.

  • When you hear someone say that Republicans “have been the party of ideas” what’s implied here? It’s implied that the ideas are good or you wouldn’t be praising them for being the party of ideas. Don’t pretend that’s not what he meant when 90% of people who saw that know he was praising the Republicans. Afterwards he might have backtracked and tried to put it in context but, on it’s face, he was praising the Republicans for being the party of ideas.

    Obama and his minions distorted (and thus played the race card) Hillary’s comments on MLK. Plain as day she said that MLK had a dream and LBJ signed the law that made it a reality. In no way did she diminish MLK.

    Btw, can anyone answer me why voting for Obama because he’s black isn’t racist but not voting for him for the same reason is racist? Just curious if anyone has a good answer.

  • Doubtful wrote:

    I love it! Swan was calling other commenters trolls earlier today, then comes in with nugglets of wisdom like this.

    It’s doubtful you’ve thought this issue through.

    Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were doing the right thing by saying Obama said the Republicans had all the good ideas. They weren’t letting him get away with the clear import of what he said. He was trying to praise Republicans in general, and to get away with it, too.

    It’s enough to make you question whether he really gets it, or whether he would “get had” by the Republicans, even if he won the Oval Office.

    The idea that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama can win the presidency even in this day and age is a fantasy. The most he could get is 48 or 49% of the popular vote and slimly lose in electoral college votes. Americans just hate black people so much that enough Americans to make him the winner are not going to vote to put a black man named Barack Hussein Obama in the Oval Office. He should try again someday, but right now he is threatening our chances to put a Democrat in the Oval Office if he is the eventual nominee. I don’t think he even realizes it, but rather he is just so ambitious he doesn’t want to admit it.

  • Dennis, I think you know and we all know that the real truth was something that was hidden only in the inner offices of the Bush White House, and people who didn’t have access there couldn’t really get it (just the way it’s continued to be up til now).

    Swan, we believed there were no WMD’s and that we didn’t need to go war even if there were. Remember, Iraq had WMD’s in the 90’s, yet war wasn’t necessary back then. And 9/11 and our war on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan made war in Iraq a worse idea, not a better one. And did you trust Bush on WMD’s? I didn’t. And even at the time, Hillary and other Dems were denounced for signing that authorization.

    War was a horrible idea and it’s simply wrong to pretend that Hillary was too dumb to know better. She made a political calculation that clearly backfired. She assumed Dems would be punished for opposing it, like they were after the first Gulf War, and decided to go with the establishment on this one. You can forgive her for that, but please don’t pretend we’re dumb. It wasn’t that long ago and I opposed the war long before she helped authorize it, and I based that on what I read in The New Republic and other non-Whitehouse sources.

  • Okay Swan, ya’ got me. Except that I don’t have an anti-Hillary agenda, I have a pro-Democratic party agenda. For what it’s worth, I’m voting for Edwards in California’s Feb. 5th Primary. I do however, have a strong aversion to anyone who talks like a Democrat and walks like a Republican.

    As for the real truth being hidden in only in the inner offices of the Bush White House, there were plenty of credible, informed people who were speaking out against the rush to war before the AUMF vote was taken. Again, Hillary could have asked anyone from her husband’s foreign policy establishment for their take on it. That she didn’t even read the NIE suggests to me that she based her vote on political calculations.

  • I don’t know why we have to have this slash-and-burn attack on Obama but if he gets the nomination, you are only helping conservatives.

    Far be it from me to defend Swan – it makes me rethink me support of HRC every time Swan posts – but Doctor Biobrain, I trust you’ll be even handed and give this same adminition to all of the slash-and-burn attacks we see on Hillary here from ROTF and his ilk?

  • Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were doing the right thing by saying Obama said the Republicans had all the good ideas. -Buddha Blaze Champion

    You continue to misconstrue Obama’s quote, but I don’t even care to try to explain it to anyone anymore. Either you’re willing to understand it or you’re okay with willful ignorance, that’s fine. I’m not of the opinion that Obama is some sort of saint, but let’s please keep our criticisms realistic and stop using the same slimy tactics of the Clinton campaign.

    How many times will I have to post that Clinton lists Reagan among her favorite Presidents? Given that, it makes her criticism of Obama’s praise highly suspect.

    http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14333.html#comment-370738

    Her list of favorite presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan – demonstrates how she thinks.

    http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4674

    You’re wearing Clinton blinders, plain and simple.

  • or whether he would “get had” by the Republicans
    See: AUMF vote, Kyl-Lieberman vote…

    It really is unseemly to complain about Obama’s speech and then use GOP talking points to attack him/defend Hillary. As for him threatening the chances of a Dem getting in the WH, isn’t that the correllary of the “people dislike Hillary” meme? Ambitious? Karl Rove, is that you?

  • Hell, even in a Democratic presidential primary, there has been sort of a Bradley effect where polls very close to the race showed Barack as the winner, except for a poll done the day of the race or the day before that wasn’t even completed to have a representative sample size, and showed Hillary as the winner. It turned out Hillary won. These were people who vote in Democratic primaries, and a bunch of them chickened out on Barack somewhere between a week or two before the primary and the day-before / day-of.

    It stands to reason that that kind of effect could show up in national polls showing head-to-head match-ups, inaccurately attributing to Barack how many percentage points he wouldn’t really have once the election rolled around.

  • Strangely Enough at 30, loads of good liberals voted for the AUMF, and Hillary’s vote on Kyl-Lieberman was right. Liberals who tell us voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment is a no-no are wrong.

    Lieberman is a slimy bastard, but all the Kyl-Lieberman amendment does is acnowledge Iranian terrorism against U.S. troops in Iraq, and say we should do something about it. Putting yourself on the wrong side of that, for a politician, makes you a liberal stereotype, and is a bad idea if you’re trying to get elected president. A lot of liberals have been worrying about a war with Iran for a long time, but for as long as they’ve been worrying it hasn’t happened, and it may never happen. Probably without the Iranians doing some kind of big provocation, it would be too unpopular for the Republicans, so the threat of war is really not that close. Kyl-Lieberman will have therefore counted for nothing. The talk about Kyl-Liebrman being a no-no is a bad idea, and trying to use it as a political death knell for a Democratic candidate is a terrible litmus test.

  • Strangely Enough at 30, loads of good liberals voted for the AUMF, and Hillary’s vote on Kyl-Lieberman was right. Liberals who tell us voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment is a no-no are wrong. -Buddha Blaze Champion

    Well, that’s your opinion, but I’m of the opinion that it is wreckless to label foreign armies as terrorist organizations, especially when Bush is driving the bus. I guess the incidents in the Straight of Hormuz and the war drums beating don’t mean anything to you.

    To me, it’s 2002 all over again.

    Did the Kyl-Lieberman amendment include any evidence that the Iranian Revolutionary Gaurd was complicit in committing attacks against our truth? Don’t we need, you know, evidence of this kind of stuff?

    Congress has given Bush the green light to attack any terrorist organization and then they go throwing the terrorist label around without grounds, and now ‘liberals’ are rationalizing the AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman because they support a candidate who voted poorly?

    And now we’re stuck between one cadidate who voted wrecklessly and another who didn’t make a stand at all?

    I’m sorry, but just because a bunch of ‘good liberals’ made horribly assinine mistakes while following Bush like lemmings doesn’t mean I can absolve them for it, shrug my shoulders, and just accept it because you say they are ‘good liberals.’

    Honestly, get real.

  • Yo! Reality-based community!
    You can make a cool $1000 for Hillary!
    Here’s how:

    All you have to is find Hillary’s promised quote:

    The facts are that [Obama] said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote.

    Send it to this dumb, sub-180 IQ, Obama-supporting muppet:
    http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/01/in_search_of_the_exact_quote.php

    You go reality-based community!
    You go!

  • Bill Clinton today:

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_el_pr/obama

    “As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender. They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender — that’s why people tell me Hillary doesn’t have a chance of winning here,” Clinton said. “But that’s understandable because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time.”

    Like I said a week or so ago when I called the nomination for the Clintons:

    The idea was to get the race card played early so that when Obama trounced her in South Carolina he’d get no momentum from it heading into Super Tuesday.
    Why?
    Because… to paraphrase Big Dog up above:

    “it is just a bunch of blacks proudly voting for their own.”

    Well-played.

  • Sure, lots of good liberals voted for the AUMF – only two of them are asking us to trust their judgment enough to elect them president. Of those two, only one has apologized for his vote.

    As for Kyl-Lieberman, I guess that Hillary couldn’t hand a loaded gun to an idiot just once.

  • Hold your nose and close your ears if you are easily offended : fuck bipartisan unity, “We’re all in this together”, reaching across the isle, and all the rest of the kumbayah bullshit! The Democratic party has willingly been the fascist’s bitch as long as I can remember. “Oh, no, we don’t want to be seen as weak on terror, defence, drugs, crime, sodomy, illegal aliens, aliens from space, sodomy, grocery stores, black males of high school age (shit, anything brownish), church and state seperatists, secular humanists and all the rest of the animal loving, tree hugging, Heath Ledger mourning sodomites!” Soooo, in order to appear tough, the Dems get on thier knees and do whatever the fascists want.

  • Okay – let’s settle the “Reagan was one of Hillary’s favorite presidents” alleged quotes, shall we?

    From MediaMatters.org (emphasis is mine):

    On the January 20 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asserted: “[T]he Salmon Press in New Hampshire, which endorsed Hillary Clinton, cited as one of the reasons, that when they talked to her in the interview, she listed Ronald Reagan as one of her favorite presidents.” Russert was referring to a December 12, 2007, Salmon Press editorial, which stated that Clinton’s “list of favorite presidents — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan — demonstrates how she thinks. As expected, Bill Clinton was also included on the aforementioned list.” However, neither Russert nor his guests — former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, and National Public Radio host Michele Norris — noted a January 18 statement from David Cutler, the co-owner of Salmon Press Newspapers, that Clinton “did not say Reagan was her favorite President. She didn’t say anything close to that.”

    From Cutler’s statement, featured on Clinton’s website:

    The question posed was originally what portraits would you hang in the White House if you were President and as the dialogue progressed, who are the presidents you admire most?

    She [Sen. Clinton] listed several presidents that she admired and mentioned she liked Reagan’s communication skills. She did not say Reagan was her favorite President. She didn’t say anything close to that.

    So, Cutler denies that she said Reagan was one of her favorite presidents – is that enough to convince people that she never said it?

    Millions of people saw, heard or read what Obama said about Reagan and the Republican party of that period: they were the party of ideas. Actually, they were the party that ran hard against liberalism – you know, those excesses of the 60’s and 70’s. And it offended them.

    Now, think about what was happening: it’s pre-Nevada caucus time, and he’s looking to get the endorsement of the conservative Reno newspaper – one that I understand liberals and Democrats in Nevada would only consider fit for the litter box – and he doesn’t say that Reagan was to be admired because he managed to get the entire country behind a collection of ideas that sent the country in the wrong direction – no. He says just enough to advance the myth of Reagan and pique the interest of the conservative editorial board, and convince them to endorse him. Duh. Why do people not get that?

    It is this aspect of Obama that bugs the crap out of me – his pattern of too-clever-by-half comments that end up coming across as him being so much smarter than the rest of us that we can be fobbed off with a glib “oh, no – I didn’t mean that. And maybe he didn’t – but he tried to have it both ways – get the conservative endorsement AND keep the prone-to-hysteria liberals solidly in his camp. And it’s his need to be all things to all people that is going to end up leaving very few people as happy as they think they’re going to be.

  • Green Leaf said:
    Bee Thousand, what’s misleading about it? Barack called them “the party of ideas” …

    I think the Dr. Biobrain did a fine, fine job of completely refuting this Rovian talking point at #23.

    Thanks, Biobrain.

  • Z:

    I trust you’ll be even handed and give this same adminition to all of the slash-and-burn attacks we see on Hillary here from ROTF and his ilk?

    See #35 for why I slash and burn.

    I understand what the Clintons are about.
    The game of divide and conquer. The oh-so-subtle demeaning of black folk…
    They may be Democrats, they may even be “better” than your ordinary rank and file Republicans…
    But the bottom line is they simply do not pass my sniff test as decent human beings.
    Once upon a time they had ideals…
    Once upon a time they did good work…
    But they have been corrupted by the very power they seek again.
    How could they not be?

    The way they are running their campaign this year is proof enough.
    It is ugly. Especially vile to the black community. Really sinful stuff.

    Nevertheless I will tone down my slash and burn attacks.
    I’ll put my “objective” hat on for the next week or so…

  • It is this aspect of Obama that bugs the crap out of me – his pattern of too-clever-by-half comments that end up coming across as him being so much smarter than the rest of us that we can be fobbed off with a glib “oh, no – I didn’t mean that.

    Golly, that sounds a lot more like a certain smug, self-entitled, always-triangulating husband and wife team I’ve seen on my TV once or twice.

  • The oh-so-subtle demeaning of black folk…

    If indeed that is what Bill was doing, that would seem to be a double-edged sword: wouldn’t he be saying the same of the women in NH and NV who turned out in large proportions, presumably at least some of them for identity-based reasons?

    It seems unlikely he would do that, which is why I find it unlikely he meant it the way you suggest. You may be reading too much into his comments. I know I should never, ever say this of Bill, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  • Okay – let’s settle the “Reagan was one of Hillary’s favorite presidents” alleged quotes, shall we? -Anne

    No, we shan’t.

    It’s on Hillary Clinton’s website.

    http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4674

    If it’s on her website, she owns it. I never said it was a quote of hers; I said exactly what the article said.

    But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that. Her list of favorite presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan – demonstrates how she thinks. As expected, Bill Clinton was also included on the aforementioned list.

    Right there below that it says:

    Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President

    So, Cutler denies that she said Reagan was one of her favorite presidents – is that enough to convince people that she never said it? -Anne

    If she doesn’t agree with it, why post is? I think the response was a bit of CYA, frankly, so no, I’m not convinced. Are we really at the point where candidates can have contradictory information on their website that allows them to attack their opponents from both sides? Would you tolerate that from Obama? I don’t think you would.

    From your rebuttal cite:

    She [Sen. Clinton] listed several presidents that she admired and mentioned she liked Reagan’s communication skills.

    How is that any better or worse than saying Reagan was transformative?

    For an espoused Edwards supporter, you’re vehemently anti-Obama and fanatically pro-Clinton; more so than most of the Clinton supporters. I hate to say something like that, especially given that I’m leaning Obama (since it’s obviously him or Clinton, and I’m obviously opposed to a Clinton candidacy), but it’s becoming clearer with every post. You have to admit, she’s a close second for you behind a candidate who simply doesn’t have a chance anymore.

    I believe Clinton said she admired Reagan and all the other Presidents on that list and that it is disingenuous for her to slam Obama for saying Reagan was a tranformative figure in American politics. She thought she had a gotcha on Obama and she got gotcha’d back.

  • Okay, I think what we have to remember is some of these commenters think they’re so super-smart that, once they realize they’re wrong and want to change their opinions on something, they are still not going to openly do it for like a week or so, so they can feint having come to their decision on their own, as a result of their own independent genius insights and genius process, and are going to avoid at all costs looking like they were persuaded by anybody, save for Lords, members of Parliament, vacuous celebrities, super-rich private school kids, Phd holders, really hot people, famous Internet political writers, or those who are arrogant enough to make up for a lack of other prestige.

    As for the remarks in the last few comments about the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment:

    Dennis: As for Kyl-Lieberman, I guess that Hillary couldn’t hand a loaded gun to an idiot just once.

    If it’s handing a loaded gun to non-idiot military personnel so they can defend other military personnel against terrorist attack while they are still in Iraq, what’s wrong with it?

    Doubtful: Did the Kyl-Lieberman amendment include any evidence that the Iranian Revolutionary Gaurd was complicit in committing attacks against our truth? Don’t we need, you know, evidence of this kind of stuff?

    The text of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment contains, up to bullet 15, a lot of very specific statements by a variety of sources. These specific statements were approved by members of congress sufficient to pass the amendment. As far as I can remember, the veracity of none of these allegations have been made an issue of by anybody (unlike Bush’s claims about WMD in Iraq, which were disputed from the get go and continued to be disputed by a variety of renowned experts). Instead, the debate over the Kyl-Lieberman amendment focused on the propriety of using increasingly angry rhetoric towards Iran. Basically, it looks like people didn’t want congress to document attacks by Iranians against Americans, because it could bolster any military action Bush might decide to take against Iran.

    I’ve pasted the text of thes 15 bullets at the bottom of this comment.

    Doubtful: Congress has given Bush the green light to attack any terrorist organization and then they go throwing the terrorist label around without grounds, and now ‘liberals’ are rationalizing the AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman because they support a candidate who voted poorly?

    This kind of criticism comes from dogmatic and reactionary activists who are too hot-headed to think through each of the pieces of legislation a Senator is faced with the way a Senator is. Forming your opinions by snap-accepting the position of every mass e-mail you get from every special-interest pressure-groups each weak is not the way to think about a problem of national public policy, or to think about how a big-time politician has to intelligently respond to challenges to advance the political position of our party as a whole.

    Kyl-Lieberman amendment:

    SEC. 1535. SENSE OF SENATE ON IRAN.
    (a) Findings.–The Senate makes the following findings:
    (1) General David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, stated in testimony before a joint session of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on September 10, 2007, that “[i]t is increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps Qods Force, seeks to turn the Shi’a militia extremists into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq”.
    (2) Ambassador Ryan Crocker, United States Ambassador to Iraq, stated in testimony before a joint session of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on September 10, 2007, that “Iran plays a harmful role in Iraq. While claiming to support Iraq in its transition, Iran has actively undermined it by providing lethal capabilities to the enemies of the Iraqi state”.
    (3) The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, published in August 2007, states that “Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants, particularly the JAM [Jaysh al-Mahdi], since at least the beginning of 2006. Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically”.
    (4) The Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, released on September 6, 2007, states that “[t]he Commission concludes that the evidence of Iran’s increasing activism in the southeastern part of the country, including Basra and Diyala provinces, is compelling. . . It is an accepted fact that most of the sophisticated weapons being used to `defeat’ our armor protection comes across the border from Iran with relative impunity”.
    (5) General (Ret.) James Jones, chairman of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, stated in testimony before the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate on September 6, 2007, that “[w]e judge that the goings-on across the Iranian border in particular are of extreme severity and have the potential of at least delaying our efforts inside the country. Many of the arms and weapons that kill and maim our soldiers are coming from across the Iranian border”.
    (6) General Petraeus said of Iranian support for extremist activity in Iraq on April 26, 2007, that “[w]e know that it goes as high as [Brig. Gen. Qassem] Suleimani, who is the head of the Qods Force. . . We believe that he works directly for the supreme leader of the country”.
    (7) Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the president of Iran, stated on August 28, 2007, with respect to the United States presence in Iraq, that “[t]he political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly. Soon we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course we are prepared to fill the gap”.
    (8) Ambassador Crocker testified to Congress, with respect to President Ahmedinejad’s statement, on September 11, 2007, that “[t]he Iranian involvement in Iraq–its support for extremist militias, training, connections to Lebanese Hezbollah, provision of munitions that are used against our force as well as the Iraqis–are all, in my view, a pretty clear demonstration that Ahmedinejad means what he says, and is already trying to implement it to the best of his ability”.
    (9) General Petraeus stated on September 12, 2007, with respect to evidence of the complicity of Iran in the murder of members of the Armed Forces of the United States in Iraq, that “[t]e evidence is very, very clear. We captured it when we captured Qais Khazali, the Lebanese Hezbollah deputy commander, and others, and it’s in black and white. . . We interrogated these individuals. We have on tape. . . Qais Khazali himself. When asked, could you have done what you have done without Iranian support, he literally throws up his hands and laughs and says, of course not. . . So they told us about the amounts of money that they have received. They told us about the training that they received. They told us about the ammunition and sophisticated weaponry and all of that that they received”.
    (10) General Petraeus further stated on September 14, 2007, that “[w]hat we have got is evidence. This is not intelligence. This is evidence, off computers that we captured, documents and so forth. . . In one case, a 22-page document that lays out the planning, reconnaissance, rehearsal, conduct, and aftermath of the operation conducted that resulted in the death of five of our soldiers in Karbala back in January”.
    (11) The Department of Defense report to Congress entitled “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” and released on September 18, 2007, consistent with section 9010 of Public Law 109-289, states that “[t]here has been no decrease in Iranian training and funding of illegal Shi’a militias in Iraq that attack Iraqi and Coalition forces and civilians. . . Tehran’s support for these groups is one of the greatest impediments to progress on reconciliation”.
    (12) The Department of Defense report further states, with respect to Iranian support for Shi’a extremist groups in Iraq, that “[m]ost of the explosives and ammunition used by these groups are provided by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. . . For the period of June through the end of August, [explosively formed penetrator] events are projected to rise by 39 percent over the period of March through May”.
    (13) Since May 2007, Ambassador Crocker has held three rounds of talks in Baghdad on Iraq security with representatives of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
    (14) Ambassador Crocker testified before Congress on September 10, 2007, with respect to these talks, stating that “I laid out the concerns we had over Iranian activity that was damaging to Iraq’s security, but found no readiness on Iranians’ side at all to engage seriously on these issues. The impression I came with after a couple rounds is that the Iranians were interested simply in the appearance of discussions, of being seen to be at the table with the U.S. as an arbiter of Iraq’s present and future, rather than actually doing serious business…Right now, I haven’t seen any sign of earnest or seriousness on the Iranian side”.
    (15) Ambassador Crocker testified before Congress on September 11, 2007, stating that “[w]e have seen nothing on the ground that would suggest that the Iranians are altering what they’re doing in support of extremist elements that are going after our forces as well as the Iraqis”.
    (b) Sense of Senate.–It is the sense of the Senate–
    (1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
    (2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi’a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
    (3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
    (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
    (5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and
    (6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.

  • I fault myself for not being enough of a political junkie to have formed an opinion in the “Hillary / Barack” version of All’s Fair in Love and War and Politics. I find this back and forth exhausting, and it is making me think less of both candidates.

    I have “issues” with both these candidates. While uplifted by Obama’s skills as an orator, I feel that I am constantly looking to him for some substance and finding him wanting. An example of this is his health care plan (letting people opt out is not a good idea, IMO).

    My personal take on his comments about Republicans being the “party of ideas” was that these comments were a calculation. I am still offended when I read them. Others here do not react to his words as I do, and have commented to try to “explain” what Obama really was driving at. In my view, Obama should know that language matters. He used the language that Republicans choose to describe themselves in a favorable light (and frequently use to belittle liberals by comparison). His challenge of this meme was – in my view – tepid. He also spoke of “excesses” of the 60’s and 70’s, which I found to be mildly condescending. I have to ask myself why Obama chose to make these comments at all? I think he was angling for an audience of a particular persuasion and he said some things that are not appreciated some people who normally might support him. He got busted. I think this was a gaffe, and while I probably will not forget it, I am willing to keep looking for the substance. As time passes, I do not feel more confident that I will find it. However, I have not yet abandoned “hope.”

    I hear a lot about disenchanted “moderate” Republicans looking for a place to hang their ’08 voting hats outside their thoroughly discredited party. I am not a believer that winning them over in the Presidential race is going to matter when it comes to the Congress. They are so tired of the division and the strife. I find myself wanting to ask them: “Have you called your Republican rep or Senator and demanded that they play nice? Or are you sitting by wringing your hands and feeling powerless and unaccountable for what goes on in our national government? Will you ask your representatives to support universal health care this time around, or do you still write it off as socialized medicine and doomed to failure? What part of the progressive agenda are you prepared to support if you give your vote to Obama?” I believe we are divided on substantial policy matters, and I am skeptical that those divisions evaporate through the power of the personality of a single individual. I would welcome being proven wrong.

    My issues with Hillary have been articulated by many other people. I do not like the dynastic turn our Presidency seems to have taken. I find her uninspiring. I know many people on both the left and the right who have declared they will not vote for her. I worry she will have to fight the Big Dog for control of the bully pulpit. I think she is too prone to secrecy. I find her argument for supporting Kyl – Leiberman specious – Dennis @ 36 speaks for me: As for Kyl-Lieberman, I guess that Hillary couldn’t hand a loaded gun to an idiot just once.. I am put off by some of her hard-ball tactics. For example I think she shows lousy judgement by overplaying Obama’s “Party of Ideas” comments. She could have stung him with the actual words. But, she distorts. I disagree with the flag burning amendment.

    I could go on, but the rant has run out of steam.

  • The text of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment contains, up to bullet 15, a lot of very specific statements by a variety of sources. BBC

    Petraeus, Crocker, and the Department of Defense count as evidence now? Didn’t you just read the recent study on all of the misinformation leading to the Iraq war? But now you trust Bush Administration lackeys?

    No, I want real evidence, not testimony from back scratching cronies.

    Okay, I think what we have to remember is some of these commenters think they’re so super-smart that, once they realize they’re wrong and want to change their opinions on something, they are still not going to openly do it for like a week or so… -BBC

    That’s quite possibly one of the vainest things I’ve ever read. You really are full of yourself. Don’t expect me to come around to your twisted ‘liberalism’ where AUMFI is okay and Kyl-Lieberman is okay.

    I never thought I’d see the day when a ‘liberal’ would rationalize such awful pieces of legislation to settle the cognitive dissonance generated by supporting someone who wrongly voted yea on them.

    This kind of criticism comes from dogmatic and reactionary activists who are too hot-headed to think through each of the pieces of legislation a Senator is faced with the way a Senator is. -BBC

    Or people who are opposed to starting another war and watching another hundred thousand or so people die.

    If it’s handing a loaded gun to non-idiot military personnel so they can defend other military personnel against terrorist attack while they are still in Iraq, what’s wrong with it? -BBC

    Are you so foolish you think they need Kyl-Lieberman to defend themselves from attack? What do we do sir, they’re shooting at us. Nothing yet, soldier, gotta wait for the sense of the Senate to pass! Sigh. Delusional.

    I do appreciate all of your digs, though; that I can’t form my own opinion and that I have to rely on ‘mass e-mailings’ and that I will come around to your correct way of thinking in a week or so.

    I’ve read Kyl-Lieberman many times, and each time I hear the war drums beating. Our ships are taunting theirs in the Strait of Hormuz; Our President’s warlike bullshit about World war III; and a declaration that Iran’s soldiers are terrorists, and you’re a-ok with it.

    Where the hell have you been the last six years?

  • BBC (or whoever you are) @ 45:
    Doubtful: Congress has given Bush the green light to attack any terrorist organization and then they go throwing the terrorist label around without grounds, and now ‘liberals’ are rationalizing the AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman because they support a candidate who voted poorly?

    This kind of criticism comes from dogmatic and reactionary activists who are too hot-headed to think through each of the pieces of legislation a Senator is faced with the way a Senator is. Forming your opinions by snap-accepting the position of every mass e-mail you get from every special-interest pressure-groups each weak is not the way to think about a problem of national public policy, or to think about how a big-time politician has to intelligently respond to challenges to advance the political position of our party as a whole.

    Take the chip off your shoulder and your head out of your ass. I think that “big time politician,” Senator Webb must be reading the same mass emails that I read.

  • doubtful – I’m not going to argue with you about the Cutler statement – it is what it is, and you can either believe it or not. Clinton ran the paper’s editorial in full, and whether she made the decision to put it on her website, whether anyone read the whole thing before posting it – I just couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know. I knew I had read somewhere that there had been a clarification to the paper’s interview and thought it might prove useful to the discussion. While you are right that she apparently said she admired Reagan’s communication skills, the claim was that she had said he was among her most admired presidents – and the Cutler clarification made it clear that she did not say that.

    And, not to be nit-picky, but had Obama said that Reagan was a great communicator – period – that would have put the two of them on a level field – but he took it much farther than that, and you know it.

    I won’t apologize for my take on Obama’s comments about Reagan – I’m old enough to have lived through the Reagan years, and whether Obama intended to offend people who are proud to be liberal Democrats or not, that’s how it affected me; apparently, I was not alone, and I doubt that this has as much to do with who said it, but that it was said at all, and at such length.

    I am not as pro-Clinton as you seem to think I am, but I am not going to just accept that it’s okay to slam her every time she raises an eyebrow, and at the same time be expected to accept that whatever Obama says or does comes pre-approved. This is a time for people to assess the contenders, he has put himself out there, and he is not exempt from scrutiny just because he is the latest new thing. If anything, his newness should make him subject to even closer scrutiny, but it’s just not there. The absence of meaningful scrutiny could prove to be the two-by-four that slams us in the back of the head in November, and when it happens, it will be too late for the do-over.

    I accept that come November, I will be voting for one of these Democrats. If it’s Clinton or Obama, I will be doing it while holding my nose, but also knowing that he or she will still be better than any Republican running.

  • I am not as pro-Clinton as you seem to think I am, but I am not going to just accept that it’s okay to slam her every time she raises an eyebrow, and at the same time be expected to accept that whatever Obama says or does comes pre-approved. -Anne

    Fair enough, I overstepped, my apologies.

    In my defense, as well, I never made any comment one way or another on the content of Obama’s statement, only that many Clinton supporters were manipulating it to attack him. I also believe that Clinton does or has admired Reagan, so attacking him on that point was hypocritical.

    Again, I apologize for my tone. I was caught up in a passionate moment trying to explain to Buddha Blaze Champion why Kyl-Lieberman was a dangerous piece of legislation. I believe I would have better luck playing tennis with a brick wall.

  • To direct everyone’s attention to someone everyone can feel really good about completely and utterly hating … everyones favorite *sshole Fred Phelps wants to picket Heath Ledger’s memorial service because the late actor played a gay man in a movie. He and Fox are birds of a feather.

    As for the Kucinich flap in Texas, whether you agree with his politics or not, you must give him credit for taking the time to read documents before he signs them. That’s a good habit for legislators to get into.

  • Just the way the Republicans like it: Progressives, liberals and democrats – as usual – forming the habitual circular firing squad and start the character assassination of their very own candidates.

    If all the anger turned on the Democratic field – be it Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich – were appropriately directed towards the Bush Administration and the Republican Party who enables them, the country would a better place.

    the quality of ALL Democratic candidates, is far superior than any on the Republican side; yet Progressives, liberals, and democrats demand perfection in their candidates, when Republicans only require cowering to Das Base of their candidates, regardless of their faults.

    Shame on all the people posting here, claiming to wanting a better America, when they keep whining about every word uttered by decent candidates (with a few faults)

    None of the so called faults, and insulting behaviors seen by some of you in the Democratic candidates would EVER amount to costing OUR country 11 billion dollars a month.

    Speak your mind during the primaries, but if you end up voting Republican during the general election, just because you don’t like the Democratic candidate, I hope something terrible happens to you sooner, rather than later. This comes from someone who usually doesn’t wish ill on other people.

  • ***ANNE***excellent post on 38 and 50. Thanks for posting. I agree totally with your take on Obama the innocent. The Clintons did use words other than what Obama actually said but Obama first sentence was all the right needed to say Obama recognized the greatness of the party of ideas and his mere mentioning of Reagan in a positive context was more than enough for the right to herald Obama’s idealism of Reagan. It was just enough to pander to the republican leaning independents etc. I don’t support either one of them but it gets ridiculous when people refuse to see Obama in a clear light and are so quick to bash Hillary. You just have to ignore everything RTFMLO? (or whatever) posts on this sight he is so hatefilled toward Clinton.
    Another thing that seldom gets mentioned is when Clinton worked on the board of Wal-Mart Sam Walton was alive and she lived in Arkansas where he lived and was head quartered, and during the time period when Wal-Mart logo was “Made In America”. Yet Obama used it to make her seem like a corporatist when Obama is more of a corporatist than she is. Then this ridiculous claim that she voted for war when she voted, like many others, for an authorization to use military force which Bush claimed would only be used after all other tactics and diplomatic attempts had been tried first. She didn’t vote for war.

    Check this out: I will vote for which ever dem wins the nomination because they are all better than any repub. and because it is time for the dem party to take control of the agenda. So because of this I find it disturbing to name call and belittle any of the candidates. It’s the issues I care about and not the identity politics used to build popular support. We are electing reps of the party not dictators and I want progressive leaders to help further the progressive agenda. I’ve learned since Reagan to be leary of smooth talking actor politicians because people fall for the messenger rather than the message. To quote Rush Limbaugh: “Reagan is DEAD. His policies may live on but we are in the process of doing something about that now”. And to quote Reagan…”the nine sweetest words a Katrina victim or a tornado victim or handicapped person can hear is…’I’m from your government and I’m here to help'”. Don’t you just love government efficiency?

  • to follow up on Bruno @ 53, I have long believed (and have occasionally commented) that we here seem to be unrepresentative, fortunately — that beyond this blog most people I know like all three among Clinton, Obama and Edwards regardless of who there first choice is. They do not share this online community’s internecine warfare approach to the primaries.

    A new LAT poll seems to provide some evidence to support my suspicion, and give me hope we may yet avoid the usual phenomenon of Dems eating their own:

    “Three out of five supporters of each candidate say they would like Clinton or Obama, if nominated, to choose the other as a running mate.”

    (per politicalwire.com)

  • ROTFLMLiberalAO @ 34. I couldn’t help noticing that no one has met the challenge to provide the Obama quote HRC claimed to have the other evening. Given the number of people who have vilified him for saying it, I’m shocked — a cool grand is nothing to sneeze at.

    “The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote.” — HRC

    “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere… No, no weapons over there…Maybe under here?” — GWB

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