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5/4/08
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Media & Politics
SPECIAL SUNDAY EDITION
Permanent link to MTA daily media news
Hillary Clinton on This Week today: [If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee,] “both Senator Obama and I have made it very clear that we will have a unified Democratic Party, going into the fall elections. I have said that I will work my heart out for him”. (via Jeralyn)
Barack Obama on Meet the Press today: Obama seems to indicate he will not support Hillary if she is the nominee. When asked by Russert how he would react if she gets the nomination he said he will "support Democrats." That was his answer. He did NOT say he would support the democratic nominee for President. He did NOT say he would campaign for her. Sure he'll campaign for other Democrats but it sounds to me like he is playing a game by signaling he will not campaign for her. (via email from woodco_2)
Stay classy, Obamaites! (by vastleft at Corrente)
Hillary and Obama appeared at a Democratic Party event in
North Carolina. Guess whose
supporters turned out to be dicks? ”Clinton,
attempting to show that there will be party unity, said, 'If Sen. Obama is the
nominee, you better believe I’ll work my heart out for him.' The crowd erupted
into a chant for Obama, leaving Clinton speechless for a few seconds while she
waited for them to finish. During her speech, Clinton also mentioned Gov. Mike
Easley, who has endorsed her candidacy, and she was momentarily rendered
speechless while the crowd booed him.” Hillary is plainly wrong. There will be
no unity in the party, given the juvenile divisiveness that has become a
trademark of the Obama camp. Sad to see how little difference there is between
so many Democrats and the ”iron my shirt” crowd.
Did he really say that? (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
I haven’t seen Obama;s appearance on Meet the Press but some commenters at MyDD
have started to document the atrocities. Before I interrupt my cleaning to go
watch it on the DVR, can someone confirm whether he actually said the following
things? No one is this cocky, arrogant and narcissistic.
“My father is from Africa. It’s in my DNA to bring people together.”
“It’s one of my faults, being concerned with others’ feelings.”
“”I don’t think the race is over until Sen. Clinton decides she is getting out”
Obama wins Guam by 7 votes (Politico)
Obama finishes with 2,264 votes to
Clinton’s 2,257.
But the four
delegates will be split evenly. Recount imminent, because
500 ballots were “spoiled”—I kid you not. That would be almost 10%.
I used to live in Dededo (by Violet Socks at Hillary’s Voice blog)
Dededo is a village in
Guam. It’s in the news today because of Hillary’s astonishing
almost-win in a territory that Obama had expected to take by 11%: “Even the
Kentucky Derby wasn’t this close. In the strangest of circumstances that could
only bring about the closest of races, Hillary Rodham Clinton finished with
49.9% of the vote of the Guam Democratic Caucus, just 7 votes shy of Barack
Obama’s total of 50.1%. While Obama led for the vast majority of the night’s
tallying, Clinton needed a strong finish in the
municipality of Dededo, Guam’s
most populous village. And she did - gaining 61% of the 822 votes counted by the
Democratic Party of Guam.”
Hillary Clinton clings on as ‘white flight’ begins to harm Barack Obama (London Times)
On the eve of two crucial primary election contests, Hillary Clinton is pinning her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination on a collapse in the white vote for Barack Obama… Jerome Segovia, a superdelegate who has yet to endorse a candidate, told The Sunday Times that if Clinton could narrow the delegate gap to below 100 in the remaining eight contests, superdelegates would feel free to vote with their conscience and back her. Segovia, a member of the Democratic party’s powerful rules committee, which could play a key role at the convention in the event of a near-tie, is leaning towards Clinton after initially favouring the Illinois senator.
It's No Mystery
(by eriposte at The Left Coaster)
I don't think I know anyone who maintains the kind of extraordinarily grueling
schedule that Sen. Clinton does - and keeps going like an Energizer bunny
despite that. People much younger than her would probably collapse if they tried
to do what she has been doing in this campaign… I also believe she is often
forced to do this. Not necessarily because of this particular campaign but
because when you are a public figure that an important chunk of the traditional
media and "progressive" blogosphere hates irrationally and lies pathologically
about, often the only way to bypass the filter - the distortions, the lies and
the lying liars that tell them - is to go meet voters where they live and give
them a chance to see/hear you directly and make up their mind independently.
When average people, fed on the Limbaugh or Olbermann or Americablog or [...]
diet, see the real Hillary Clinton it is often so diametrically opposite to the
hateful, fraudulent or frivolous caricature of her that they have been exposed
to, that it can and does surprise many people - and usually in a positive way.
Bill, too. See
below.
Adored in small towns, Bill Clinton stumps for his wife
(Apex, NC) People who suggest Bill Clinton might be hurting his wife's
presidential bid more than helping it haven't spent much time in the small towns
where he draws adoring crowds of Democrats who wish he could serve a third term.
Clinton
routinely draws adoring crowds of Democrats who stand attentively to hear his
detailed, rapid-fire case for his wife's election - often after waiting hours
for him to arrive.
It’s
a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Hillary Clinton Car! (High Country Press,
NC)
Bisbee, Arizona’s
Gretchen Baer is a driving force behind the Hillary Clinton presidential
campaign. Literally. Baer is the driver of the HillCar: a painted, decorated
vehicle that serves as a mobile monument to Clinton. Baer and the HillCar
arrived in Boone late Monday night and spent much of Tuesday cruising the High
Country, drumming up support for
Clinton.
In addition to creating and driving the HillCar, Baer started the Hillary
Clinton Army, a group of Clinton supporter nearly 1,000 strong across the
country who are dedicated to putting the New York senator in the White House
through grassroots efforts… “I’ve never been political in the slightest in my
life,” Baer said. “She’s a brilliant, smart, incredible woman. I said to myself
back in the early ‘90s, ‘If Hillary Clinton runs for president, I’ll do anything
I can to help.’”
Here’s
a link to the HillCar website.
Are you a Hillary Hater? (That’s Me on the Left)
They have been around for a very long time, those Hillary Haters. All you had to
do was look to the right and boy could you find them. These days all you have to
do is look to the left---the far left. Yep, that's where the new Hillary Haters
are and boy have they taken this Hillary Hating game to all knew level… Last
month I wrote about a 5th grader who happened to say he liked Hillary. He said
this to his friends who had just announced they liked Obama. The boy who liked
Hillary was called a racist and ostracized from the group until he told them he
liked Obama. Where does that attitude come from? Is that how we want our
children to be with one another?
I know it’s crazy
to ask, but when does the unity part start?
A CONTEST....
(by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly)
Let's have a contest. As we all know, Hillary Clinton chose filly Eight Belles
to win the Kentucky Derby today. Instead, EB came in second and then had to be
euthanized after breaking both ankles right after crossing the finish line. So
here's the contest: Who do you think will be the first pundit/columnist/talking
head to use this as an idiotically extended metaphor for the state of Hillary
Clinton's campaign? Matthews? Dowd? Jonah Goldberg? Or has someone already done
it?
I guess YOU have,
Kevin. You win the prize. And what a very clever way to make the association
with complete deniability, too.
Infamous YouTube - BingoFrogger - Identities revealed
(by SluggoJD at MyDD)
I believe I've done it - discovered the persons responsible for the very first
"people from Indiana are shit" hoax video, posted online by BingoFrogger on
Thursday, 5/1/08 around 3 PM. [The] video spawned later reposts all over the
internets by a notorious hitman known as Politikewl - who is friends with
JedReport at You Tube, and others, and then mutated into an even uglier hoax
video, when someone decided to try to make others believe that Mickey Kantor
used the term "white ni---rs" to describe people in Indiana… I'm sorry to say
these people are, at the very least, Obama supporters, and not right wing trolls
trying to cause trouble.
Click through for
the details and for the name.
The Whiteness of the Whale (by Anglachel)
The assault on the Clintons
has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white
trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling
elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for
their common connections. The only thing I can compare to the single-minded
determination of the liberal elite to destroy the
Clintons
regardless of the collateral damage to party and nation is George W. Bush’s
obsession with talking out Saddam Hussein, though lacking even the level of
justification collected for that vendetta.
Reading the increasingly unhinged and incoherent ravings of the elite against
Hillary Clinton, the calls for her murder, the fabricated videos “proving” the
racism of her campaign and associates, the hysterical screams that she must get
out now before she inflicts more damage on the party, and the assertions that
anyone who votes for this candidate is nothing but a racist, I am reminded of
one of the great descriptions of obsession ever set down [, Ahab’s obsession
with Moby Dick.] … And we all remember how that story ended.
While the left
indulges its obsessive hatred for the Clintons, the right has developed a
newfound respect for her fighting spirit. See below.
An Exceedingly Strange New Respect (by Noemie Emery at The Weekly Standard)
After March 4, [Hillary Clinton] suddenly seemed to look and sound different:
She began to seem real. The shrillness was gone, and so was The Cackle, and so
were the forced southern accents that once caused so many so much merriment.
Hillary!--whoever that was--never really cohered as a character…, but in her new
role--the scrapper, forced to the wall, and hanging in there with ferocious and
grim resolution--she is suddenly all of a piece. Along with her inner JFK, she
has channeled her inner Robert F. Kennedy (going back to the days when he was
still "ruthless"), along with her inner Margaret Thatcher--"No time to go
wobbly"…
It is no accident that it
was just at this juncture that she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once
was her base… She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers
now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and
lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the
Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all
pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools
who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her… And what caused this display
of intense irritation? She's running a right-wing campaign. She's running the
classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and
use-of-force issues.
Didn’t I tell you
that Republicans admire a fighter? We internet activists used to say that’s
what we want in our Democratic elected officials, too. But many in the
so-called progressive media have shown that they really don’t. If they wanted a
fighter, they wouldn’t be backing Obama, who is now so tired that he’s
forgetting the name of the town he’s in. I disagree with a lot of this
editorial, but it’s always good to know what the opposition is thinking. In
contrast, the opposition isn’t thinking much of Senator Obama these days. See
the next two excerpts.
UNDER THE BUS (by PatRacimora at No Quarter—click through to read the details of each betrayal)
To Obama, 'we' means 'me' (by Mark Steyn, Orange County Register)
[The “race” speech in
Philadelphia]
was never a great speech. It was a simulacrum of a great speech written to
flatter gullible pundits into hailing it as the real deal. It should be
"required reading in classrooms," said Bob Herbert in the New York Times; it was
"extraordinary" and "rhetorical magic," said Joe Klein in Time – which gets
closer to the truth: As with most "magic," it was merely a trick of redirection.
Obama appeared to have made Jeremiah Wright vanish into thin air, but it turned
out he was just under the heavily draped table waiting to pop up again. The
speech was designed to take a very specific problem – the fact that Barack
Obama, the Great Uniter, had sat in the pews of a neo-segregationist huckster
for 20 years – and generalize it into some grand meditation on race in America.
Sen. Obama looked America in the face and said: Who ya gonna believe? My
"rhetorical magic" or your lyin' eyes?
That's an easy choice for the swooning bobbysoxers of the media. With less impressionable types, such as voters, Sen. Obama is having a tougher time. The Philly speech is emblematic of his most pressing problem: the gap – indeed, full-sized canyon – that's opening up between the rhetorical magic and the reality. That's the difference between a simulacrum and a genuinely great speech. The gaseous platitudes of hope and change and unity no longer seem to fit the choices of Obama's adult life. Oddly enough, the shrewdest appraisal of the senator's speechifying "magic" came from Jeremiah Wright himself. "He's a politician," said the reverend. "He says what he has to say as a politician. … He does what politicians do."…
The magician has lost control of the show.
The 'Race' Speech Revisited (by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)
This 20-year association with [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright calls into question
everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of
what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor
and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and
the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics,"
rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It's hard to think of an act
more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from
the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as
something whites could not understand and only Obama could explain in all its
complexity. Turns out the Wright show was not that complex after all. Everyone
understands it now. Even Obama.
Obama's Great Lake
(by Pagan Power at MyDD)
After [Friday’s] revelations of Barack Obama's plans to fix the Great Lakes of
Oregon and take care of
Oregon's
Veterans of Pennsylvania his campaign did what they do best. They scrubbed the
information, made it disappear and then acted like it never existed. But like
all things on the internet, it is impossible to fully erase something. And
wouldn't you know it, a friend known as crimsonhaz3 found this today and sent it
to me. So now everyone can see that Obama was serious about his stated plans to
begin with. What fools we were to doubt him. Don't believe me? See for yourself!
Classism (by Lin Farley at Savage Politics)
Since he began running for public office the challenge Obama faces in
working-class, white ethnic neighborhoods is well known. Richard Dorsch, a
53-year-old paramedic Fire Chief from
Chicago’s Edison Park told
Przybyla he supported Clinton in the Illinois primary, but he will vote for John
McCain if Obama wins the nomination. This is why: “When he talks to you, it’s
like he’s talking down to you. He doesn’t have the experience to talk like
that.” This is not racism, which is the popular reason asserted for Obama’s poor
showing with white working class voters. It is class. And class is the elephant
in the room that some pundits reference but always pejoratively. One can almost
hear them saying, ‘don’t you get it? these ignorant racist stumblebums are the
clods keeping Obama from sweeping to victory.’ Unfortunately, this demonstrates
how little pundits do their homework. The issue of these voters raises a huge,
and perhaps insurmountable problem for the Democrats in November with Obama as
their standard bearer.
Stomp on This?
(by Larry Johnson at No Quarter)
Barack Obama may have been eight years old when William “Billy” Ayers was
planting bombs at the State Department and the U.S. Capitol, but the Senator was
a grown man working in the employ of Mr. Ayers when this picture appeared in
August 2001.
Bill Ayers was busy promoting his book and this was one of the promotional photos. Two of the money quotes from a book published in 2003, “Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left” (by Susan Braudy on p. 352) states: “my second proudest achievement was living underground for ten years without getting arrested.” and “guilty as hell, free as a bird, it’s a great country.” And then a month later told a New York Times reporter his only regret was that he did not plant more bombs… Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist with wealthy family connections, had co-founded the Chicago Foundation and named Obama as the Chairman of said entity…
The only doubt is whether the Democrats will insist on finding out the truth first or will [they] let the Republicans serve them a steaming pile of crap come the fall. And while the image of Bill Ayers gleefully stomping the American flag makes the rounds, Obama’s vain attempt to portray himself as a new kind of non-politician will be stomped into oblivion.
Movement (video by Flineo)
A thought exercise about today and past lessons. Footage from the 2008 election
and the acclaimed PBS documentary "The Weather Underground".
Victim of Ayers and Dohrn Appears on National Television, Describes His Entire
Family's Near Murder (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter)
The story was based on the devastating memories of Mr. Murtagh, described in his
op-ed, “Barack Obama pal is an enemy, too,” in yesterday’s New York Daily News.
In 1970, [John M.] Murtagh’s entire family was targeted for murder by the
Weather Underground because his father was a New York State Supreme Court
justice who was presiding over the trial of the so-called “‘Panther 21′, members
of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb
New York landmarks and
department stores.” (The Weather Underground and Black Panthers were allies in
their dedication to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.)
Below is a short excerpt from Mr. Murtagh’s April 30 op-ed in the New York Daily News — which is an abbreviated version of his full op-ed at CityJournal.org, titled “Fire in the Night: The Weathermen tried to kill my family.”
“I still recall, as though
it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the
explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother pulling me from the tangle
of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large
windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames
below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting
outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two
military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed
three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: Free the Panther 21; The
Viet Cong have won; Kill the pigs.”
Click through for
links to the videos of Greta van Sustern’s interview with Murtagh and to
Murtagh’s op-ed.
Something Wasn’t Wright
(Newsweek)
[Oprah] Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she
continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But then she
stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright. According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of
Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her
standing as America's
favorite daytime talk-show host. "Oprah is a businesswoman, first and foremost,"
said one longtime friend, who requested anonymity when discussing Winfrey's
personal sentiments. "She's always been aware that her audience is very
mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn't be smart…”
Friends of Sen. Barack
Obama, whose relationship with Wright has rocked his bid for the White House,
insist that it would be unfair to compare Winfrey's decision to leave Trinity
United with his own decision to stay. "[His] reasons for attending Trinity were
totally different,'' said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named
discussing the Illinois
senator's sentiments. "Early on, he was in search of his identity as an
African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man. Reverend
Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in helping him
understand the black experience in
America.
Winfrey wasn't going for that. She's secure in her blackness, so that didn't
have a hold on her.''
Two things: A man
planning to run for national office, and that has been Obama’s plan for many
years, should have had the same sense as Oprah. And as I’ve said before, Obama
is more white than black, at least in his upbringing. His routine of putting on
the black has always seemed forced to me.
Legitimate questions of judgment, experience
(by former ambassador Joseph Wilson)
SANTA FE, N.M. - In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of
outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah
Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical
preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama’s judgment
and naivete. Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States…
Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned
through experience. Obama’s long and close relationship with the anti-American
hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that
he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those
lessons to be learned in the White House.
5 black leaders who want Barack Obama to lose
(African American Pundit)
Some time ago I wrote a post about Black Leadership Self Hatred and The Obama
Campaign. Since the Rev. Wright I have decided to take a look backwards at a few
of the black folks who have worked non stop to destroy Barack Obama's
opportunity of being President of the United States. Check out the list and let
me know if I'm right? Is there any that should not be on this list? Are there
any that should be included? if so why? Here is my list of 5 Blacks in
leadership who have attempted to destroy Barack Obama's attempts to be
President.
# 1 Rev. Wright
# 2 Bob Johnson
# 3 Andrew Young
# 4 Tavis Smiley
# 5 Maya Angelou
Maybe it's
because Obama has never done one "goddamn" thing for the African American
community? Why would they think he'd start now?
So why is it that we still aren't talking about race?
(by white_n_az at Corrente)
[Why aren’t] the media or the candidates actually talking about the racial
issues that are being danced around here by Bob Herbert or for that matter,
everyone else? The answer lies with the Obama campaign…they have systematically
attacked anyone who wants to talk about these issues… Likewise, the media can
talk about Wright and the things that he says but they consider the racial
issues that the candidates won’t talk about as off limits. I suppose as long as
we don’t actually talk about these issues, they go away. As long as we consider
the things Reverend Wright talks about as distracting and not the ’real’ issues
facing Americans today, they don’t exist. I wish someone would explain to me how
a Barack Obama presidency would help race relations in this country because I’m
not seeing it.
A Blacklash? (by
Charles M. Blow, New York Times)
Since January, the Clintons
have pummeled Barack Obama with racially tinged comments and questions about his
character.
Here’s Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz, who proves this statement
to be an absolute lie. The New York Times has hired another certifiably insane
columnist. You know what to do, friends:
letters@nytimes.com.
Obama-Clinton, a hate-filled dream ticket (by Andrew Sullivan, writing at the London Times)
It is for many in the Obama camp an unthinkable thought. But politics is
sometimes the art of adjusting today to what seemed inconceivable yesterday. I'm
talking about the possibility — and the powerful logic — of a unity
Obama-Clinton ticket for the Democrats.
Oh yes, the Obama
supporters are SERIOUSLY worried, now.
