'Gilligan's' Mary Ann caught with dope

I just had to. Read the rest of this post...

Ferraro did it AGAIN two weeks ago

Markos found a Geraldine Ferraro interview from February 27, 2008, on FOX News' John Gibson's radio show, where she said pretty much the exact same thing she said this week about Obama and race. The thing is, it's nearly verbatim the same thing. These are talking points that she rehearsed, and/or was given. The question is by whom?

FERRARO: If Barack Obama were a white man, would we be talking about this as a potential real problem for Hillary?

If he were a woman...

GIBSON: You mean if he were John Edwards?

FERRARO: If he were a woman of any color, would he be in this position that he's in, absolutely not.

GIBSON: Geraldine, are you playing the race card?

FERRARO: No, and that's the problem. Every time you say the truth - I'm the first person, John, and you know how honest I am, I am the first person who will say in 1984 if my name were Gerard instead of Geraldine, I would never have been picked as the vice presidential candidate.

Then look at what she said earlier this week:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position.

Now look at what she said earlier today:

"If in 1984 my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for VP."

In politics, those cute little zingers tend to be things you practice in advance. They're intentional, they're talking points. Ferraro planned this entire line of attack over 2 weeks ago. The question is whether Hillary's campaign planned it for her, with her. Read the rest of this post...

Ferraro in 1988: "If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race"

Great find by Ben Smith. Read the rest of this post...

Obama projected to win Mississippi

No big surprises there. Read the rest of this post...

Even more on Ferraro

Okay, I won't weigh in. Curious as to your take, however. Hillary's campaign director is now saying that Obama's outrage over Ferraro's comments is simply a political calculation on the eve of a primary.

"We reject these false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of a primary. This campaign should be about the leadership we need for a better future and these attacks serve only to divide the Democratic Party and the American people."

She means she rejects Obama's attacks on Ferraro, not that she rejects Ferraro's comments about Obama (though Hillary has said she doesn't agree with Ferraro). Then Ferraro added the following only moments ago:

Ferraro, too, pushed back in an interview on Fox News Channel's "American Election HQ" moments ago. "David Axelrod who knows me better, should not have gotten this whole campaign going," said Ferraro, accusing the Obama campaign of stoking the controversy. She added: "If in 1984 my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for VP."

Hmmm... So she's saying that in the same way that the party picked her to be on the ticket because she's a woman, they've chosen Obama to be on the ticket because he's black. I think. Your thoughts? Read the rest of this post...

Trust the market

My conservative friends are fond of telling me that the market is always right. Well let’s look how the market behaved yesterday.

According to the New York Post, after the Spitzer story broke:

"Traders were on such a high that stocks rallied for about a half-hour."

I don’t know about you, but I certainly trust a market that forgets about the mortgage crisis, lack of consumer spending, our trade deficit or any of the other economic troubles we are facing and values our nation’s companies based on the fact that Elliot Spitzer paid for sex.

/sarcasm Read the rest of this post...

Top Hillary surrogate: You're attacking me because I'm white

No, because you're an idiot.

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," [Geraldine] Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

You'll recall that Ferraro said Obama was lucky that he was black, because he wouldn't be winning if he were white, or something:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Now remember, this is not the tenth time, or so, that the Clintons have pulled the race card on Obama. It's NOT. So please don't play the race card in trying to stop their racism. It's racist against European Americans. Read the rest of this post...

Sinbad gives his version of that trip to Bosnia with Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Crow

This is hysterical. It's not quite the story of a potential Commander-in-Chief in action, which is Hillary Clinton's version. Mary Ann Akers, The Sleuth at the Washington Post, has an interview with Sinbad:

Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she's taking much grief on the campaign trail.

Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.

In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the "scariest" part of the trip was wondering where he'd eat next. "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'"

Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. "They said there might be sniper fire," Clinton said.

Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn't remember that, either.

"I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or 'Oh, God, I hope I'm going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.'"

In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady."

Say what? As Sinbad put it: "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"

And, send your fifteen year old daughter, too? Read the rest of this post...

Obama campaign: Hillary has not passed "commander in chief threshhold"

From Obama adviser Greg Craig:

When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed “the Commander- in-Chief test” is simply not supported by her record.

"There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was first lady," Craig continues. "It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue -- not at 3 AM or at any other time of day."

Read the rest of this post...

Religious right drops Ford boycott, claiming victory 2 years after they lost

The religious right activist group, American Family Association, usually claims "victory" when they need to finish a boycott that they already lost. You'll recall that two years ago we beat the AFA when they pressured Ford to back away from its support for equal rights. It took about 2 weeks. Since that time, AFA continued its boycott, issuing press releases claiming credit for the downturn in the US auto industry, etc. And now they finally had to save face and end the boycott somehow, so they're trying to say that Ford has backed away from advertising in the gay media. Uh, no. Ford said that it's had to cut back on all of its advertising and charitable giving because of the company's financial situation. Note how AP, of course, gives no mention of the fact that the boycott was a total failure two years ago. (Background on the Ford battle. Joe.My.God. also has more.) Read the rest of this post...

McCain invokes fake "mentally disabled suicide bomber" story

One of our readers writes in that McCain just had a town hall meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and talked about Al Qaeda using two mentally disabled women as suicide bombers. Only problem? The bombers weren't mentally disabled. Same old candidate, same old lies, McSame old thing all over again. Read the rest of this post...

Clinton headquarters apologizes for invoking Obama's blackness

Background from our friends at Election 08:

Geraldine Ferraro—usually a class act—made recent statements that seem to establish a pattern: the Clinton campaign using surrogates to invoke and inject race in this campaign. The Ferraro event...the leaks to Drudge...BET founder Robert L. Johnson...Bill's South Carolina non-sequitur.

But for a classic moment of a Clinton rep (in this case Mark Penn) quietly inserting loaded language, check this out (about 3:50 in).

They play dirty.

While groups such as Factcheck.org have made compelling arguments against the likelihood the Clinton camp intentionally altered Obama's image...it's an odd argument that assumes anything in campaign commercials happens by accident. Check out the debate, judge for yourself.

Read the rest of this post...

Pro-war group's association with ex gay-porn star calls into question congressional endorsements

Vets for Freedom, the pro-war group that is highlighting a former gay-porn star on its Web site home page, is now having its congressional endorsements called into question, starting with their support for Republican Steve Stivers in Ohio. Is Stivers going to reject and denounce any association with a group that includes the star of "Touched by an Anal"?



And just a wee bit gayer. Read the rest of this post...

British government deporting gays back to Iran where the punishment is death

Great reasoning from the British government on this one:

In turning down Ms Emambakhsh and Mr Kazemi's asylum applications, the Home Office has said that, provided Iranians are discreet about their homosexuality, they will not be persecuted.

Did you get that? The British government says it's the gays fault if they get executed by the Iranian government for being gay. If the gays were simply more "discrete" no one would want to execute them. (I can imagine the British Home Office circa 1943: "If European Jews would only stop acting so Jewish...") Absolutely astounding. Read the rest of this post...

KBR/Halliburton did provide dirty water to U.S. troops in Iraq

"Republicans support our troops" is going to go down as one of the biggest lies ever told in American politics. We've seen a litany of things done by Republican leadership to the men and women who serve our country: not enough equipment, faulty equipment, Walter Reed, long deployments, stop-loss, and war based on a lie without an end in sight.

The latest outrage, dirty water provided by KBR, actually made U.S. soldiers sick:

U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon's inspector general.

The inspector general said that from March 2004 to February 2006, KBR inappropriately distributed chlorinated wastewater to 5,000 U.S. troops at Camp Q-West, located at the Qayyarah West airfield about 180 miles north of Baghdad. The wastewater had been processed by a reverse-osmosis purification system and treated with chlorine before being distributed to showers and latrines on the base.

The report said that from October 2005 to June 2006, sick-call records showed 38 reported illnesses that "an attending medical official said could be attributed to water, such as skin abscesses, cellulites, skin infections and diarrhea." The report said it was impossible to definitively link the treated water to all the illnesses.

At the time, KBR was owned by Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton. Keep in mind that KBR already has a very shady history in Iraq have been accused of covering up a gang rape, of "fraud and contract abuse," and of overcharging for food back in 2003 -- to name but a few. The scandal about dirty water first appeared in January of 2006. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who has been doggedly investigating KBR, demanded the investigation that resulted in this latest confirmation of the company's atrocious behavior.

All of this happened under the watchful eyes of the Republicans who started this war. Bush let it happen. Cheney let it happen. McCain let it happen. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, who ran the Senate's Oversight Committee, let it happen. They don't support the troops. KBR didn't fear consequences because the company's friends were in power.

Thanks to Senator Dorgan for actually looking out for the troops and exposing this outrage. Someone should go to jail for this. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Mississippi has a primary today. Everyone was campaigning in the state. All the Clintons (Hillary, Bill and Chelsea) and Obama have all spent time there. By the time we get to the general election, our candidates will have spent time in almost every state. That never happens -- and has to be good for Democrats up and down the ticket.

And, that Eliot Spitzer story is stunning. Just stunning.

Okay. Start. Read the rest of this post...

The GOP plan for record oil prices

The worst of it is that it's not even a joke. Only the Republicans could possibly think that Big Oil needs a helping hand. Read the rest of this post...

McCain team lobbied for Airbus over Boeing

The McCain "Leave no Lobbyist Behind" program in action. Good work, when you can get it. In McCain's defense, define "neutral" and then let's talk.

According to lobbying records filed with the Senate, Loeffler Group lobbyists on the project included Loeffler and Susan Nelson, who left the firm and is now the campaign's finance director. Ogilvy lobbyist John Green, who was assigned the EADS work, recently took a leave of absence to volunteer for McCain as the campaign's congressional liaison.

"The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. "Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition."

McCain, a longtime critic of influence peddling and special interest politics, has come under increased scrutiny as a presidential candidate, particularly because he has surrounded himself with advisers who are veteran Washington lobbyists. He has defended his inner circle and has emphatically denied reports last month in The New York Times and The Washington Post that suggested he helped the client of a lobbyist friend nine years ago.

Read the rest of this post...