Meltdown

By now you've probably seen the Bill O'Reilly tantrum video, but you haven't been able to fully enjoy it without the proper context...



UPDATE: The "never-before-seen" footage shows he other side of the argument...

Special Comment Asskicking

I was going to write a post about Bush's interview, particularly about the "golf sacrifice," but anything I'd come up with would seem penned by Mr Sunny Patch compared with this. I'll just hand it over to the master...

Barack Sends His Regards

When I heard this morning that Obama was here in Michigan I was sure it was part of some massive 40th Birthday Surprise...alas, is seems he is double-booked—he is bypassing Ann Arbor and heading straight to Grand Rapids—to accept the endorsement of John Edwards!

I wonder what happened between this week and last week to cement the endorsement? I mean, besides John Edwards reading my blog...

UPDATE: Video.

Quote of the Day

John Scalzi:

Poor, rural, working-class white folks in Appalachia didn’t vote for the rich urban former law professor senator from Chicago. They went for the rich urban former law professor senator born in Chicago instead. But since the vote went so overwhelmingly in one direction rather than the other, and rich urban former law professor senators with Chicago ties are otherwise largely interchangeable, there has to be another controlling factor here. I can’t think what it might be, though. Maybe it will come to me if I think about it.

[h/t Sullivan]

Old...

...but still not nearly as old as John McCain

All or Nothing

"I respect Hillary supporters because they haven't had the chance to get to know her like I have. She does not have the political skills of her husband. Or Barack. You need somebody who can bring people together. She criticized my health care bill because it wouldn't achieve universal coverage until 1998. Well, today we'd be celebrating the 10th anniversary of having every American with insurance." - Congressman Jim Cooper, of Tennessee

Everybody knows Hillary Clinton tried and failed to get universal health care implemented in the 90s. What not everybody knows is that she took a Dubya-esque "My way or the highway" approach and derided the plans of everyone—Democrats included—who failed to reach her unattainable goals at the time. She stacked her Commission with insiders and yes-men and refused input from anyone who wouldn't meet her on her terms. The fact that this is still a campaign issue fourteen years later is on her as much as anyone who opposed her—her approach probably set the movement back years.

That she continues to do the same thing to Obama's more measured, but probably more attainable, plan doesn't indicate, to me, she's changed or that she'd have any more luck getting things done now.

[h/t Sullivan]

A Cup for Paul Krugman

Professor, I really didn't want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice... I understand that you support Hillary Clinton. That's fine. But you are still pretending you are neutral, and that you offer sober analysis, yet you have been little more than a campaign mouthpiece and now seem to be completely through the looking glass and even exceeding the rhetoric of the campaign itself.

The day after Hillary Clinton shoves her foot all the way down her throat regarding the work habits of white people*—with no clear extrication procedure available—you decide to take pen in hand and write a column about a candidate, and a campaign, that has a "problem" with race, and you write it about Barack Obama?!? Are you fucking serious?

Fellow academician Mark Kleiman said it perfectly:

If you actually wanted to help Barack Obama (who is, as you note the presumptive Democratic nominee) you would give him advice in private and praise him in public. Telling him that he shouldn't disrespect white people is neither necessary nor helpful. You might at least pretend to believe that some of the people who voted for your preferred candidate were voting for her, rather than against him.

Take a fucking sabbatical until this race is over, Professor, and join us on the other side. You are embarrassing yourself.

* In defense of HRC, I think she made a horrible mistake when she spoke, and NOT a dogwhistle remark. I could be wrong of course, but I'm hoping not.

Hitlery*

* I know, I know, but what else am I gonna come up with? Are you more comfortable with "Hitlarity?"

Bad Idea

I don't like this, and I hope it's not true, or at most a trial balloon...

Obama plans to declare victory May 20

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton's campaign plans to dispute it...

[...] The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates--a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination--a tally that includes Florida and Michigan...

[...] Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold--1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included.

"On May 20 we're going to declare victory," said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be "the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes."

Don't do it. In fact, I am astonished to even read this.

Behind the Music

This is pretty damn funny.



I know there are a lot of Haters out there, but I actually have no problem with John Mayer. I think his radio stuff is pretty banal, but his live John Mayer Trio blues album TRY! is "the shit" and "fucking awesome."

Worst. Strategist. Ever.

From TIME's "The Five Mistakes Clinton Made":

2. She didn't master the rules
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.

Karen Tumulty must have stayed up all night thinking of four other mistakes not directly attributable to Penn. That guy is a $10 million moron. The only person more incompetent than Mark Penn is the person who hired him...and then continued to stick with him...

Get Out of Our Way

It's long. Twenty minutes long. But if you haven't watched an Obama speech yet, do yourself a favor. If you don't have twenty minutes, watch half now, and half later. But make sure you watch it. Especially the second half.

It is happening.

"I submit that you are illogical"

Alas, Evil Spock Krugman still lives...

Today on his NY Times blog, the once-good Professor weighs in on the issue of the gas tax. He's an economist...he's a Clinton supporter...could this be interesting? Will he be the first economist with a pulse to support it? Or will he go off the reservation and hammer Clinton for this idiocy?

Gas Tax Hysterics

OK, this has gone overboard.

Hillary Clinton’s proposed gas tax holiday is not, in my view, a good idea. [...]

Whoa! Krugman's gonna join the reality-based chorus? He's gonna call this out as the politics, rather than policy, that it is?...

Not exactly.

Krugman instead uses this column to hammer other economists for making a big deal out of what he deems a really unimportant little issue.

But the furor over what is, when all is said and done, a small and temporary policy proposal is entirely disproportionate... [economists] place excessive weight on issues where professional judgment differs from lay opinion...So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

Um, Professor? I don't really think it's the economists that are making this the biggest fucking issue facing the planet—it's your candidate! Have you been in a cave the last two weeks? Hillary is putting on a demagoguery clinic! The reason responsible economists are weighing in is that for once the media is doing it's job (slightly) and asking them.

What's that? You can explain that too?

Part of it, clearly, is the fact that many people in the media really, really want Obama to win and Clinton to lose...and have seized on the gas tax as their latest proof that she is ee-ee-vil.

Ho-lee fuck. Now it's the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy...

Of course, the Gas Tax Holiday IS a stupid little issue. Not only stupid, but actually irrelevant to this race as it won't actually happen this summer no matter what HRC promises to the contrary. But the reason this has become such a BIG deal is because Hillary Clinton has made it the centerpiece of her revamped populist approach, AND as her main weapon against Obama—declaring him "elite" and uncaring" for disagreeing with her (and McCain). She has made it a big deal, and the fact that she is presenting the whole thing dishonestly and disingenuously requires responsible economists speak out.

Perhaps one day, you will once again join them Mr. Krugman.

UPDATE: That column is from May 6, before results from that days primaries. Here is Krugman today:

Talleyrand and the gas tax holiday

I’m on record as saying that Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a gas-tax holiday, while it wasn’t good policy, didn’t rise to the level of a crime.

Judging from last night’s results, however, it was worse than a crime: it was a mistake.

Wrong. It was a crime against decency and integrity—it was fraud and it was perjury. The public showed her (and you apparently) that we've had enough of that shit.

Prediction

Why not? Everybody else is doing it...

INDIANA: Clinton wins by 5 or less.

NORTH CAROLINA: Obama by at least 10.

That will increase his delegate lead by another half dozen or more while taking half the remaining delegates off the table. Hillary's math only gets worse.

UPDATE: I'm happy to be wrong if this is the result: Obama by a wider than predicted 15 in N.C. and a narrower than expected 2-point loss in Indiana. He gains 15 delegates and 200,000 in the popular vote at the end of the day.

Not Just a Maverick...

John McCain's also an action hero...


McCain Declines Secret Service, Dares Assassins To Try Something

Hilarious. "The Onion" and "The Daily Show" continue to lead the world in journalism.

Speaking of dropped in a jungle, check out Fridge's fisking of Bear Grylls.

Profiles in Courage. Or Not.

[TPM link] John and Elizabeth Edwards have finally made their endorsement plans -- or lack of them -- official.

On the eve of potentially decisive voting in Indiana and North Carolina, with political tensions at white-hot levels, John and Elizabeth revealed all in an interview with People magazine, of all outlets.

The news in the interview is that they confirmed they will not endorse either candidate in the presidential race, because they are "saving their political capital for their own causes -- his, fighting poverty; hers, fighting for universal health care," reports, um, People mag.

Thanks guys! There is no moment I can imagine when your "political capital" will be worth a fraction of what it is worth at this moment. Good luck with that. Keep that powder dry.

Seriously. I never had the Edwards love that many on the Left had. Not this time, and not in 2004. I always had the impression he was a bit of a charlatan. He reinvented himself as a populist this last time around, and certainly had moments when he was making a valuable contribution to the race, but once his window closed he took his ball and went home.

Now faced with a decision that requires risk and has unclear implications, Edwards punts. Maybe he didn't get what he wanted from either candidate? Maybe he's afraid to pick the wrong horse? Maybe he wants to endorse Clinton but is afraid of the Obama blowback?

I don't know, but this does NOT impress me a bit. There are thousands of his supporters looking for a little leadership here and he offers none. This isn't MArch when one could say with a straight face that the choices were pretty close. After the last two months, if John Edwards is unable to discern a difference between Obama and Clinton, then he is a fucking moron. One of these candidates embodies everything he was running against, and the other—while not perfectly aligned—is fighting for the same things he supposedly was. Has he not been paying attention to Hillary's non-stop pander-fest in his home state over the last week? Literally saying anything to peel off votes?

I was disappointed in Edwards the day he rolled over for Dick Cheney in the 2004 VP debate, this is far worse.

UPDATE: The TPM link above seems to be hinky, here is the PEOPLE teaser interview.

Whose Votes Matter

Cutting Through the Bullshit

While in North Carolina, I had the pleasure of seeing Hillary Clinton's preposterous Gas Tax Holiday pander-thon all over the tv... Here's Obama calling that shit what it is...

Is This a Real Question?

From NPR:

Politics & Society
If Your Neighbor Poses as Your Husband, Is it Rape?

Day to Day, May 5, 2008 · Massachusetts is the latest state to consider putting a new crime on the books: rape by fraud. Currently, a sex act only qualifies as rape if physical force is used. We talk to a woman who was tricked into having sex with her boyfriend's brother, who pretended to be her boyfriend — and unable to convict him of rape because of this limited definition.

Yes, that's fucking rape. It's not about physical force, it's about consent. What the fuck is wrong with Massachusetts? A woman who consents to have sex with her husband, and then when the lights come on finds out it's an impostor, was just raped by any common sense interpretation of the term I can fathom. I cannot even believe this is a law.

--

Oh, and do you know what else is rape? THIS. And the fucking assholes in Oklahoma just wrote this into law...

Births and Resurrections

TWINS!
First of all, congratulations are in order to the Smittys who welcomed two more to the clan late last week. Mrs F gave me the news while I was out of town and unable to go online. I'm out-femaled 3-1 around here, but with new twins boys, Smitty Jr, and a giant boy-at-heart and in-deed (Smitty himself), Mrs Smitty is in a whole other world...

Get your ass off the computer, Smitty, and change a diaper or two! Or ten.

NACHOS!
Earlier today I got a comment from beyond the grave from Otto Man. Actually, I knew OM was still alive from his participation in the comments at KSK, but I was laid low when I saw that Thrillhous and all the boys at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Nachos are back in action. I went over there expecting the same dead site that expired near two years ago just to poach a link, and just about shit my pants when I saw they're back posting and have been for at least a week or so.

Promptly reinstalled in the blogroll where you belong my friends. Welcome back.

What he said...

Yesterday, while stuck in an airport I watched the most inane conversation and "analysis" between Wolf Blitzer and his panel of expert morons, and just shook my head at the garbage they treat as important and the shallowness of the treatment of issues.

It's fucking awful, and if (when?) Obama loses at either stage of this election it will be due less to his abuse at the hands of Hillary Clinton than to the disservice of what poses for the press.

In six minutes, Bill Moyers speaks more truth and explains more fully the complexity of Rev Wright and the whole tempest surrounding him and Obama than the entire 24-hour cable and internet news media could manage in six weeks.

If only we could have more coverage and analysis like this:

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the unannounced departure...I was out of town and had so many loose ends to tie up before I left, I neglected to mention I'd be gone from blogging...

Not that anyone missed me.

Anyway, my unscientific survey based entirely on yard signs indicates an absolute thumping of Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama in North Carolina. Western North Carolina. As in Asheville and surrounding towns. Which is to say, these results in no way reflect the potential statewide outcome, yet this analysis is every bit as valuable as the bullshit I saw on Sunday morning.

Obama's Catholic Problem

A statistic the Clinton camp (or at least her boosters) keep pointing to regarding electability is her dominance among Catholics over Obama. There are different theories floating around why this is the case, but I think they are all looking too hard, and past the big reason staring them in the face. Here's Sullivan [emphasis added]...

Is the lack of support a function of many Catholics' distance from African-Americans? Or is it Obama's problem, as Deal Hudson counters? Deal says abortion is the issue, but against Clinton? On this, I feel as distant from my fellow Catholics as I do from my fellow gays. It may be that I have long been fascinated by black Catholics in America, their remarkable journey, and have attended a black Catholic church in Washington. Obama's reasoned faith seems to me very compatible with a Catholic sensibility. So I lean with the racial and cultural divide as an explanation.

It's race. As someone who grew up Catholic in Connecticut with my father's family being Irish Catholic from Boston, and my mother's family Polish Catholic from New York, plus my ten years living in and around NYC among the Italian Catholic community, there is no shortage of, nor subtlety to, the racism among Catholics.

Deal Hudson is full of shit (big surprise, right?) and is pretending his church doesn't have a problem with race by blaming regionalism and issues like abortion.

Not even counting the supposed reluctance of Latinos (overwhelmingly Catholic) to support black candidates, there is more than enough old-school racism in these tradional Catholic cities, communities and neighborhoods. Abortion need not enter the discussion...

All of that said, I think this issue diminishes in the general election. Those Catholics supporting Clinton now are in many cases staunch enough Democrats that they'll vote for Obama when the other Democratic option is unavailable.

I hope.

Full Court Press Conference

I am watching it now. Obama is kicking some serious ass. I hope there is video or transcript soon. [UPDATE: Added.]

He is hitting MANY of the things I said below. He is not just "distancing himself" or "throwing Wright under the bus"—he is repudiating what is wrong about Wright and his remarks, and he is doing it gracefully—but he is leaving NO DOUBT that Wright's remarks are antithetical to Obama and everything he stands for.

I don't know how you could parse anything differently out of that, though many will try. It is an issue that Obama surely did not need to deal with, but he made the most out of the opportunity.

Barack Obama did what he needed to do. Will the media and will his opponents?

UPDATE: Sullivan agrees.

Right on Wright?

I haven't watched the the Moyers interview, the Press Club Address OR the NAACP speech, or read the transcripts yet, but from what I have seen and read, this conclusion doesn't seem too far off...

It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is. I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what's best for him, which is clearly all he's interested in, what's best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it's easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn't want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America." It would certainly fuel Reverend Wright's future and continue to help him raise money and keep people whipped up into a frenzy. He's not helpful. Whatever he thinks he's doing, it is not helpful to Barack Obama.

Now, you tell me if you think that this is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright trying to help Barack Obama. "The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by 'coming after' Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he is elected president. The pastor also insisted Obama 'didn't denounce' him and 'didn't distance himself' from Wright's controversial remarks, but 'did what politicians do.' Wright implied Obama still agrees with him by saying: 'He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American. I said to Barack Obama last year, "If you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people."'"

Is this helpful to Barack Obama? Once again, he has just destroyed the entire reason for Obama's success, and that is...he's a new kind of politician; he's a politician we haven't seen before; ...and here comes Reverend Wright, (paraphrasing) "Eh, just your average run-of-the-mill politician. He had to say what he said," meaning there's nothing new, nothing unique, nothing distinct about Barack Obama. He's just a politician.

[...] These are not just a little couple of comments taken out of context with Reverend Wright. This is one angry, livid, enraged individual, and Obama's got a serious problem with him now. You may not want to admit it and the Democrats and the superdelegates may not want to admit it publicly, but they've got serious problems here. This guy is undermining the Obama candidacy...

My theory is that it would be far better for Jeremiah Wright for Obama to lose because that will give him a whole new launch pad for his America-is-racist-and-hates-black-people comment, that America is run by "rich white people" who couldn't handle the prospect of a black man being president; and Barack was beaten down by the same forces that have kept blacks down since slavery, blah, blah, blah. The bilge and the drivel that he argues. In all seriousness, folks; if the Democrat Party and if Barack Obama had any say-so whatsoever, this guy would be hibernating. He'd be on a permanent vacation until November. Nobody would be able to find him. He certainly wouldn't be speaking publicly. But he's out there doing it. Now, last week I thought this was a rehabilitation tour to make Reverend Wright a teddy bear and to show the American people that the man in these sermons -- the snippets of sermons that we've seen -- is not who he really is, but that's off the boards now. That's not possible now because he's only exacerbating the problem that he has with the American people. He is a radical. He is anti-American. He is an extremist. He's doing nothing to mollify that and he's not helping Obama in the process.

Rush Limbaugh Show, April 28, 2008

Reverend Wright DID accomplish some unifying with his latest remarks...he has me, Andrew Sullivan and Rush Fucking Limbaugh on the same page.

I need to read and watch more, and flesh out a better conclusion, because god knows I'd love to be wrong—but it sure seems like Wright is a proud, vain man who was hurt by Obama, and is also perhaps threatened by being surpassed by Obama and becoming irrelevant.

Obama again stuck up for Wright this past weekend and said in his FOX News interview (another thing I need to get to) that Wright is a good man misepresented by the events of the last weeks and Wright deserves a chance to defend himself and clear his name.

I don't imagine what Wright is doing is at all what Obama had in mind. Wright is not willing to go quietly, he adding all the wrong context to the infamous snippets, and seems not only willing to, but actually relishing hanging Obama out to dry in the process.

This is not just a headache, it's a fucking nightmare for Obama.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum thinks Hillary should do the right thing and help bail Obama out on this. I want some of what he's smoking...

UPDATE 2: Sullivan tries to see past this...

Fighting Despair

So many readers seem to be feeling it. I have too. But remember what we're dealing with here: last fall, no one gave Obama a chance. It was always a very long shot. When I wrote that Obama piece, Clinton was ahead by at least 20 points and it wasn't budging a jot. Every pundit also expected the classic Clinton-Giuliani set-up for 2008: the perfect boomer red-blue battle. It didn't happen. The Republicans, from a smaller and demoralized base, gave us McCain. And the Clintons have lost the mathematical chance of winning the nomination by any fair means. The change has already happened.

Obama is a freshman senator; he is 46 years old; he is African-American; he is a liberal - even if he is very gifted in talking to conservatives. He has taken on the biggest brand and machine in American politics, the Clintons, and won. If you didn't think this would be an uphill struggle, you've been deluded. Of course, race will not go away; it will come back again and again and again. Of course, generational resistance will not go away: Obama is a big leap for the over 50s for all sorts of reasons. Of course, the usual Rovian tactics will be used against him - brutally. He does represent real change - culturally, politically, and in terms of global politics. Politicians who represent real change do not win easily; they usually require a real crisis to rise. That's how RFK and MLK emerged - in crisis, after being smeared (sometimes with a grain of truth) and finally assassinated. That's how Reagan and Thatcher emerged. We forget how their chances were considered flimsy for so long.

Obama is still in this; and the Wright fiasco gives him a chance to remove this cloud and address it again. He has the most votes, the most states, the most money, the most new voters and the most delegates and the most Senators on his side. This is no time for a failure of nerve - on the part of the Obama team or his supporters.

The only way past this is through it. And it's not just up to Obama; it's up to those of us who see him as a vehicle for real change.

Obama has scheduled a press conference, let's see what happens.

In a fucking serious world with a legitimate press and informed voters, he'd be able to say, simply:

"This guy doesn't speak for me, my campaign or what I believe in. I have stated my disagreement with his comments in the past, and I disagree with what he said again yesterday. Reverend Wright is wrong. His comments are wrong, and they are divisive. It's not helpful to white OR black America, or trying to create ONE America. Reverend Wright and his beliefs represent just another example of the divisiveness of the past, and it is what I am trying to move us past."

"I attended the fantastic ministry and community that Reverend Wright and thousdands of Chicagoans helped to build, and I will not abandon my church. Nor will I throw the Reverend to the wolves. HE is a man that has done good things in his life and his work, and those will not be undone by this, but he seems content to take the dialogue on race in a different, and destructive, direction.

I am hoping to reach a crossroads and to bring this country together on a journey to something better. It appears Reverend Wright is searching for the fork in the road. He is on a different path and it will not cross mine again. Thank you. Period. The end.

Now, how can you dumb motherfuckers ignore what I just said, and how many different ways can you all ask the same stupid-ass questions."