Jan 18 2008
Taibbi on the Election
Don’t construe my posting of this as letting Taibbi off the hook for crossing the picket line. He’s still a great writer.
He’s recently posted over at Alternet his experiences out on the road witnessing the circus known as the election, more specifically on reporting on the election. On Clinton:
In a vacuum, of course, this is the most meaningless kind of computer-generated horseshit, the type of thing you would expect to hear coming out of the mouth of a $200-an-hour inspirational speaker at a suburban sales conference. But in this tightest of presidential races, Hillary attacking “hope” amounts to a major rhetorical offensive. “Hope,” after all, is Barack Obama’s own personal spoonful of oatmeal, and by disparaging it, Hillary has given this gym full of political hacks tomorrow’s sports headline.
He does a fantastic job at pointing out the ridiculousness of this constant reality-show horeserace narrative:
When Obama responded with a series of parries at Hillary, the press applauded. OBAMA: BYE-BYE MR. NICE GUY? gushed the Chicago Tribune. OBAMA IN IOWA: GLOVES OFF! roared ABC.com. Shit, even Rollingstone.com got into the act (OBAMA TAKES THE GLOVES OFF).
The hilarious thing is that while Obama and Huckabee were blasted for not providing the press with enough boxing-metaphor material, Clinton was getting the business for being too feisty. IS SEN. CLINTON WARM ENOUGH TO WIN? wondered Slate. Just like the others, Hillary quickly proved her willingness to eat as many worms as we could dish out, hilariously releasing a whole Web site where Friends of Hillary lined up to swear on a stack of Bibles, that despite what you might think, the candidate isn’t a crabby old battle-ax in private.
The line that really sums up for me how the media has made the election into a farce of sorts,”We did this. The press. America tried to give us a real race, and we turned it into a bag of shit, just in the nick of time.” It’s a great read.
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What I really hated about some of the nonsense coming from Obama himself a while back was the notion that people (like Clinton) were saying things like, "We can’t go to the moon." Screw him…no one was saying that, and he’s not posed to take us to the (rhetorical?) moon anyways. I’ve seen more disingenuous stuff come from Obama’s wife too. I saw her speaking on C-SPAN to a bunch of Iowa voters about how the naysayers in IL were saying of her husband, "He can’t win downstate" (where I guess a lot of white voters lived?), during his Senatorial campaign. His opponent in that race ended up being Alan Keyes for God’s sake. Another black man, from out of state, who anyone that I know could beat. One of the best things about that IL Senate campaign was that no matter what IL voters did, they were going to send a black man to the Senate.
But, of course, I’m biased. :) Hillary Clinton ‘08. Because just about everyone wants her to lose.
They’re all full of shit in different ways. I can’t wait for this to be over.
Oh, and did I say I want Hillary to lose real badly?
"70% of the country wants to withdraw from Iraq and we get two pro-war candidates (winning in NH). If that doesn’t tell you how fucked up the system is, I don’t know what else does." Matt Taibbi on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher"
Come now…Hillary is "pro-war"? She wants to get out of Iraq just like Obama and Edwards…even Obama called Edwards out at the NV debate that everyone’s positions on Iraq were basically the same. And don’t give me that nonsense about that silly Senate vote about Iran’s military…we’re NOT going to war with Iran…there’s nobody left to fight it!
BTW…rack up another win (NV) for Hillary! Even I’m getting annoyed at my gloating…
Well, we all know how Hillary voted in the lead to the war in Iraq. I think the Kyl-"Likud Joe" Lieberman Bill speaks for itself too. Don’t be so sure we won’t go to war with Iran, especially since the Bushies tried to make that stand off in the Persian Gulf look like the Iranians did it.As for Clinton’s policy in Iraq, it’s no different than George W’s.http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/70416/?page=entire
Here’s the link to the story I listed above. It will show you that Clinton’s policy in Iraq is no different that Bush’s.http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/70416/?page=entire
Baloney…I don’t remember Bushy Boy being for withdrawing from Iraq. Did we go to war with Iraq during the Clinton administration? No. I get that some of you would rather that Hillary be more liberal in her public positions on things, and that is where this kind of nonsense is coming from. That article that you mention is most crying over milk that’s already been spilt IMO.
We sure can bomb Iran, since the Air Force and Navy don’t have a whole lot to do right now, but there will be no land war in Iran. Under a Democratic administration, we will negotiate with Iran. Bush has lost all credibility in this country and abroad at this point. Look at how the Gulf states treated his saber-rattling at Iran recently when he was there. Stick a fork in him…
> Did we go to war with Iraq during the Clinton administration?You’re right. Bush wasn’t for pulling out of Iraq. I also don’t think that Clinton will follow suit. Shifting gears, keep in mind the Clinton Administration dropped more bombs on Iraq than the Bush Administration for a long long time. Not sure what it’s like now, but there are facts that support this assertion. While it’s true the US never invaded Iraq during the Clintons but they bombed persistently and killed many innocents through economic sanctions. While there was no official declaration of war Iraqis were terrorized by U.S. policy That’s war to me.
MG: "I get that some of you would rather that Hillary be more liberal in her public positions on things…"
No, it’s more that we’d like Hillary to stand up and actually have principles that don’t shift with the wind. It’s even more annoying than Obama’s relentless pandering. Oh, and did I mention that most of us are sick to death of DLC Dems?
Thanks for duking it out, guys. It’s been lonely around here until recently.
OK, so you don’t believe the Clintons…that’s fine with me. I think she has to withdraw because that’s what the American people want and that’s going to be a key difference between the Dems and the GOP this fall (a winning one too IMO).
More bombs under Clinton…come on…Iraq was contained under Clinton, and we bombed Iraq whenever they targeted our planes that were flying in the "No Fly Zone", which was a lot. Did a lot of people die under those sanctions? Yes, but the embargo of Iraq kept them from rebuilding their military IMO. It sucked I agree, but anyone that knows anything about war knows that innocent civilians are the poeple that get killed the most during modern conflict. I was opposed to the First Gulf War for cripes sake…it was a huge setup IMO.
Anything to help out JD.