And he used to work for Bill

NYT via DKos

“The way the loser loses,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who is close to both candidates but has made no endorsement, “will determine whether the winner wins in November.”

As Markos noted, guess who he's talking about. Read More......

The top ten list of undisputed facts about Lanny Davis, top Clinton/Lieberman defender, "good friend" of George Bush

The reviews are in. Lanny Davis is the undisputed winner of the worst spinner of the year. Tough competition, but he pulled it out with his latest screed at Huffington.Davis put together his top ten list about Obama. We put one together about him. Considering the outspoken role Davis has had in the Lieberman campaign and the Clinton campaign, it wasn't hard. The hard part was limiting the list to the top ten:

Davis' post had "laughable assertion" by Jake Tapper

Either a "Hack" or "an utter moron" says Christopher Orr at The Plank.

Davis is Joe Lieberman's BFF and treasurer of a pro-Lieberman PAC.

Liberal blog basher, in his own words to the Wall Street Journal.

Ned Lamont basher, again, in his own words to the Hartford Courant.

"Good friend" of George Bush, he wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

Like so many other Clinton's inner circle, he's a lobbyist for foreign governments -- Pakistan.

He plays "gotcha" politics against Obama, but wrote a book decrying "gotcha" politics.

Launched another unwarranted, ridiculous attack on Howard Dean. (Clinton surrogates spend a lot of time attacking Howard Dean.)

Clearly in the running for most loathsome character -- and the biggest caricature of a Clinton supporter in the 2008 campaign. Read More......

Pop Up DoubleTalk: McCain in New Orleans

McCain's words don't match McCain's words. So, the actions need to be applied to the words. Today, McCain actually had the audacity to create some distance between himself and Bush over the Katrina debacle. See for yourself:

Read More......

Are pollsters asking the wrong question about who voters will support in the fall?

Lots of attention was paid to this finding from Pennsylvania's exit poll:

But more Obama supporters said they would be satisfied if Clinton won than vice versa. The animosity between the two camps led 16 percent of Obama supporters to say they would vote for Republican John McCain if Clinton were the nominee. Even more Clinton supporters, 26 percent, said they would defect.

The punditry obsessed over the finding -- and its implications for the fall. But, my friend, John S., an astute observer of politics and pop culture, thinks, that given the political reality, the right question has to be asked of Obama supporters. Here's how he would frame it:

"If Barack Obama were to win the most pledged delegates, the popular vote, and most states after over 50 primaries over the past 6 months, and the democratic super-delegates awarded the nomination to Hillary Clinton anyway, will you vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election in November, John McCain in November, or not cast a vote at all?"

I think John is onto something here. Chances are, the results would be quite different than what the exit poll found on Tuesday. Maybe superdelegates should do their own straw polls to find out. Read More......

NY Senator Clinton "didn't know anything" about Pres. Clinton's clemency for two convicts fought by widows of two dead NY police officers

Remember at the tragic debate last week when Hillary Clinton was in a lather over Obama's relationship with William Ayers -- and he pointed out that Bill Clinton had his own ties to two members of that organization, to whom the President provided clemency in 2001? Given that Hillary was using this as an attack, Obama's retort would be a pretty big point to miss.

But, apparently Hillary did because -- get this -- she doesn't know anything about it.

To believe Hillary Clinton, you'd have to believe she ignored what Obama said during the debate. But, that's just for starters. The case was in New York State and the leading opponent of the pardons was Chuck Schumer. From Newsday:

You can watch the video below. If it's true, it means that she got the worst briefings in the world when she was running for Senate in 2000 and the clemency issue was hot in Rockland County, and it means that Chuck Schumer didn't even bother to mention the issue to his fellow NY senator-elect/ First Lady after promising the widows of two dead cops to fight against one of the clemencies.

Here's the video.

Who thinks Hillary wasn't briefed? Who thinks she is telling the truth? Bill Clinton's pardons caused a lot of problems back in 2001. No doubt, the GOP has a stack of oppo research on all of them. And, Hillary Clinton's pretending she didn't know won't cut it.

Also, remember her words: "From my perspective, everything is fair game." Reporters should remind the crack Clinton staffers about that standard every time they freak out over a tough question. Read More......

Beijing sensitive to social unrest, slashes stock taxes

This is a government who has major problems across the board. It's no wonder the leadership likes the Tibet situation, because it helps stir up nationalism and divert attention from even larger problems. While the communist government has done a commendable job raising the living standards for millions of people, they have also left millions behind. When an economy grows, so do expectations. Overall it's a good problem to have provided a government is reaching out to everyone. (In the US, we can also relate since the broad majority of Americans have been left behind for the last three decades.)

Since the Shanghai market has lost half of its value since last October, Beijing has delivered a typically knee jerk response - much like our GOP - and lowered taxes on stock. Just like in the US the tax cuts are going to a slim minority at the top and so far this has been well received. Will the good times last? Probably about as long as the GOP good times lasted though the end result in China will be more ground shaking than the meek response we tend to see in the US. Leaving tens or hundreds of millions behind in a country that has never had a peaceful transition from one system to the next should be a real reason for concern within the communist leadership. Bubbles burst, it's just a fact of life. How a country bounces back is the difference maker. Read More......

The human costs, over there

There are, of course, human costs to Americans from the war in Iraq, and we don't hear enough about them. We hear even less, though, about the human costs to Iraqis in Iraq. The brilliant and talented Ann Friedman helps to fill that vast void with a piece highlighting the importance of hearing about what it's like on the ground -- that is, not just from a political perspective, but from a personal one. As she says:

The news outlets that still report from Iraq rarely publish accounts of daily life there. Rarer still are narratives from outside the confines of the Green Zone. Sure, we get snippets of information from Iraqi reporters working with Western journalists, but most of the time, Iraqis' voices come to us in the form of react-quotes after a marketplace bombing or sectarian uprising. We don't see what it's like for Iraqis to walk home from the scene of the violence, then make dinner, then put their kids to bed. We lack the humanizing power of detail.

Democracy is founded on the will of the people, and for that will to be true and just, it must be informed. People have the right and the responsibility to know the facts about the actions of our nation and its leadership, and the realities of Iraq are a critical -- and too often overlooked -- element of who and what we are and want to be as a nation. Not to mention, y'know, a huge part of the day to day story. Read More......

John's McCain reverend says God destroyed New Orleans to punish it for planning a gay parade

He said this two days ago. This is the man who, just last Sunday, John McCain said he was "glad to have" his endorsement. If the media is going to destroy Obama over his pastor's comments, then John McCain deserves equal time for continuing to embrace a man who is clearly a bigoted nut. It's time to ask McCain is Rev. Hagee loves the flag, or simply hates the fag. Read More......

There oughta be a law

I'm assuming most blog readers are already familiar with Godwin's Law. But in case you're not, the official definition:

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Further explained:

As a Usenet discussion gets longer it tends to get more heated; as more heat enters the discussion, tensions get higher and people start to insult each other over anything they can think of. Godwin's Law merely notes that, eventually, those tensions eventually cause someone to find the worst insults that come to mind - which will almost always include a Nazi comparison.

But wait, there's more:

When it happens, the thread is going to start either degenerating into a long flamewar over Nazi Germany or about Godwin's Law. Either way, the thread is effectively over, and you can safely killfile the thread and move on.

How about we initiate a Godwin's Law of Campaigns?

"As a primary campaign grows longer, the probability of invoking imagery involving Osama bin Laden or 9/11 approaches one."

Then by old school online community rules, the campaign that goes there first loses; we get to declare the contest effectively over; and - best of all - we can finally move on. Read More......

"Why Hillary makes my wife scream"

A devastating analysis of Hillary from The Nation. This is a snippet, read the entire thing online:

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.

It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle....

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are....

[D]oesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?...

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

Read More......

Meanwhile, in more foreign policy debacle news

John Boonstra over at UN Dispatch writes about the still overlooked and under-reported continuing catastrophe in Darfur. President Bush's recent statements continue the administration's pattern of cynicism and misdirection on Darfur, and the detrimental effects are real and they are horrifying.

The alternative to a slow-deploying UN force was never sending U.S. troops into Darfur; this option was simply never on the table. [...] No, the alternative to U.S. troops in Darfur was, is, and will continue to be putting an effective UN peacekeeping force on the ground there, which the U.S. has been in the most opportunistic position to ensure. By failing to provide more robust support for UN peackeeping, to invest a deeper commitment in Sudan's tortured peace processes, and to exert more concerted pressure on Sudan and its enablers, the U.S. has consistently watched opportunities for peace and protection in Darfur sail by.

As John says, the false dichotomy presented by the administration on Darfur is simply misdirection. The US could use its considerable ability -- which, despite repeated foreign policy screwups, remains -- to make things better, but instead there's a lot of foot-dragging and blaming all sorts of other factors and elements. History will not be kind. Read More......

Numbers don't lie, but candidates do

I know it's probably too early to be this annoyed, but how is this acceptable?

"I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anybody else, and I am proud of that," Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis. "It's a very close race, but if you count, as I count, the 2.3 million people who voted in Michigan and Florida, then we are going to build on that."

If you count as I count? How about not? How about we don't because those were the agreed upon terms. No backsies.

I am truly convinced that if the results were reversed and Obama was down and tried to loop in the popular vote from states where all candidates agreed not to campaign (especially any state where Clinton's name wasn't even on the ballot!), her camp would be crying foul so fast it would make your head spin. Read More......

Charlie Cook: For Clinton, "the war is pretty much lost"

Okay, read one more analysis of the current state of play in the Democratic nomination process. This one is from Charlie Cook, who is pretty much the sage for conventional wisdom -- in more of a measured, thoughtful, research-driven and fact-based way than say, Mark Halperin or the other hysterical pundits. When Charlie Cook speaks, a lot of people listen and learn:

The good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she’s winning a lot of battles. The bad news is that the war is pretty much lost. Sure, she won Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary by a strong 9 points in the face of being outspent on television ads by Barack Obama 2-to-1. She also won Ohio, Rhode Island, and at least the primary part of the bizarre “Texas two-step” primary-and-caucus combination on March 4. But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway.

If this contest were still at the point where momentum, symbolism, and reading tea leaves mattered, Clinton would be in pretty good shape. Everything she has needed to happen is happening now. Obama is getting tougher press coverage and critical examination. He’s also getting rattled a bit, and he didn’t perform well in the recent debate in Philadelphia. Clinton is winning in big, important places, but it’s happening about three months too late.

At the end of the day, the popular vote for the Democratic nomination means nothing. I doubt that having won the popular vote in the 2000 general election is of much solace to Al Gore. Many a football team gains more yards than its opponent in a game yet loses on that important technicality called points.

Also, this paragraph says so much:

But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.

Yes. So, let's end this discussion. Read More......

NYTimes: 1) State primary results don't relate to general election results and 2) Obama has better chance to win states Dems. don't usually win

If you're going to read any analysis of the state of play for Democrats, today's NY Times piece is actually pretty good. It has substance -- something you will find sorely lacking from most of the breathlessly panting pundits on any of the cable shows (with the exception of Chuck Todd). Anyone paying attention has heard this made up spin from the Clinton operation:

In recent weeks, Clinton advisers have been challenging Mr. Obama’s electability in a general election, and her victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania are perhaps her best evidence yet to argue that she is better suited to build a coalition across income, education and racial lines in closely contested states.

If that's her "best evidence," the Clinton campaign is in big trouble. Because, like so much of what comes out of the Clinton operation, it's just not true:

But the Pennsylvania exit polls, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for five television networks and The Associated Press, underscore a point that political analysts made on Wednesday: that state primary results do not necessarily translate into general election victories.

“I think it differs state to state, and I think either Democrat will have a good chance of appealing to many Democrats who didn’t vote for them the first time,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster not affiliated with either campaign. “Take Michigan. It has a Democratic governor, two Democratic senators, and many Democratic congressmen, so it’s probably going to be a pretty good state for the Democrats in a recession year.”

Mr. Hart, as well as Obama advisers, also say that Mr. Obama appears better poised than Mrs. Clinton to pick up states that Democrats struggle to carry, or rarely do, in a general election, like Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Virginia, all of which he carried in the primaries. Obama advisers say their polling indicates he is more popular with independents, and far less divisive than Mrs. Clinton, in those states.

“Hillary goes deeper and stronger in the Democratic base than Obama, but her challenge is that she doesn’t go as wide,” Mr. Hart said. “Obama goes much further reaching into the independent and Republican vote, and has a greater chance of creating a new electoral map for the Democrats.”

Indeed, if Mr. Obama does become the first African-American nominee of a major party, the electoral landscape of the South could be transformed with the likelihood of strong turnout of black voters in Republican-leaning states like Georgia and Louisiana, which Mr. Obama carried this winter. (Mrs. Clinton has also argued that, given the Clinton roots, she could put at least Arkansas in play in the fall.)

So, that talking point from Team Clinton has pretty much been proven false. Won't stop them from pushing it, but any pundit or superdelegate with a modicum of sense, will know they're being played on this one. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's another lovely day here in your nation's capitol. D.C. really is beautiful in the spring when the azaleas are blooming. It doesn't last long -- and it also means intense allergies.

What's the latest Clinton drama? It's always something with those people. They really could have their own reality show. Think of the cast: Hillary, Bill, Chelsea, Mark Penn, Terry McAuliffe, Lanny Davis, Wolfson...put them in front of a camera and you can imagine the shenanigans that would ensue. Wait. Actually, we don't have to imagine it, we are living it.

What do you know? Read More......

Third trial for 'Liberty 6'

So are their limits to how many times someone can be prosecuted? You might recall this dangerous bunch was rounded up during the infamous terror-scare that coincidentally occurred during the Bush 2004 re-election campaign. The 'Liberty 6' all were equipped with sporty terrorist uniforms, like any good terrorist so we can spot 'em on the street, and then talked about going after the Sears Tower, though it was never entirely clear if they even knew where it was located or how to go about such an attack. For that matter, it was never really clear if this was their intention or if they were just looking for new uniforms.

Never mind the details, the Bush folks had their terrorists in the run up to November 2004, facts be damned. The more terrified the public became, the better the odds of winning the election. Throw in a bit of gay bashing to take it over the top and victory! Ain't democracy great? Hooray for freedom and democracy! U-S-A Number 1! We're the best! We're the best! You know the world all wishes they were this free. You know it. Read More......

Abstinence only programs do not work

How many times do we need to read it and how many times are we going to continue funding these ridiculous programs. If Christian conservatives want to experiment with their own kids, go for it and live with the consequences but no need to subject everyone else to this rubbish. What makes it worse is that the US is exporting these half-baked ideas across Africa and the rest of the world.

"Vast sums of federal monies continue to be directed toward these programs. And, in fact, there is evidence to suggest that some of these programs are even harmful and have negative consequences by not providing adequate information for those teens who do become sexually active," Dr. Margaret Blythe of the American Academy of Pediatrics told the committee.

These programs, backed by many social conservatives who oppose the teaching of contraception methods to teenagers in schools, have received about $1.3 billion in federal funds since the late 1990s. Currently, 17 of the 50 U.S. states refuse to accept federal funds for such programs.

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