May 06 2008
Just to let you know, it’ll probably be a bit light here at FBC over the next week or two. Lots of construction projects to finish, firewood to be harvested, and I started grad school this week. So bear with me and keep stopping by. In the meantime, have a look at this great Olbermann piece on Clinton’s continual moving of the goalposts. Here’s to hoping that today puts the nail in her coffin, although I’m not too optimistic on that account.
Apr 25 2008
Fridays at FBC usually mean laziness, in that a lotta YouTube action ends up happening. Just couldn’t pass up this silly video that all three candidates played on the WWE wrestling show. Hiilary called herself “Hillrod”, possibly an allusion to the fact that she’s screwing/giving the rod to the Democratic Party. Obama said something about a smell… But McCain’s is undoubtedly the funniest, in that he sounds like such a crotchety old man that I was expecting him to wave a cane and yell, “Get off my lawn, you gawdamn kids!”, and then immediately fall out of his rocking chair.
Friday Nite Funk… with Muppets! coming up later tonight. Alan Keyes is stopping by tomorrow.
Apr 17 2008
It’s so comforting to know that one of the most important issues facing the country isn’t Iraq, or the economy, or global warming, it’s whether Obama thinks his minister loves America. Oh, and flag pins. We will just feed poor American kids lots of flag pins and everything will be okay after that. Send some to the dead Iraqi kids too, while yer at it. I will indeed sleep well tonight.
Overheard in one of the many blogs taking about the substance-free “debate” tonight:
“How much does it cost for engineer brain?”
“Three dollars an ounce.”
“How much does it cost for programmer brain?”
“Four dollars an ounce.”
“How much for journalist brain?”
“$1,000 an ounce.”
“Why is journalist brain so much more?”
“Do you know how many journalists we had to kill to get one ounce of brain?”
Apr 11 2008
These extraordinarily chaotic times we live in make whomever’s going to be the next president’s job a difficult one, not to be envied; global warming, Iraq, the imploding economy and cleaning up the endless pile of all the other shit Bushco’s done. So of course there’s no shortage of issues for them to be talking about (which, ultimately, even though Obama’s got it all but wrapped up, makes a lot more sense than constantly trying to attack each other).
The latest outrage, about Cheney an other top-level people micromanaging torture in the White House basement (chronicled here by Froomkin at the WaPo) is yet another biggie that will probably go unpunished, when we really should be putting together a good old-fashioned firing squad at this point (note to Secret Service - I’m not going to be on the firing squad or put it together, so move along).
It is so apparent that so much has been going on and this hard-on for torture permeates the administration so deeply, that what I want to hear from the Dem candidates is some reassurance that they’re going to not only purge the cloud of torture from the White House/CIA/DOJ, but they’re going to hold those people accountable, even if it means charging them with crimes and putting them on trial. And it should be one of the first things they do, too. This issue is just as important as the economy or any of the other big ticket items out there, it’s just that the WH and the more-than-obliging MSM have somehow managed to numb the country from any sort of outrage. It’s time for someone to fill that leadership vacuum ASAP, but I’m not holding my breath.
Mar 28 2008
Mar 28 2008
Hillary Clinton is a sleazy thug. Ah, now I feel better.
My Clinton fatigue is only rivaled by my Bush fatigue, and to be honest, it’s made blogging, both here and at GMD, quite difficult for me lately. Whether it be the playing the race card, Bill Clinton’s arrogant and asinine statements, praising John McCain, or blackmailing Pelosi and th DCCC, no politician, save Bush, enrages me on an almost daily basis.
Part of that frustration in undoubtedly rooted in a frustration with the media and Clinton’s “inevitability” narrative; they’ve been fed this line of crap for years and seem reluctant to really talk about the real “inevitability: - that Hillary will not win the nomination. Thankfully, the morning lede from Reuters gave me a bit of hope…
Somebody forgot to tell Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential race is over and Barack Obama won…
The article goes on to explain the many reasons why this is the case, along with the obliviousness still shown by the Clinton campaign. She really doesn’t seem to give a rat’s patoot about how this will affect the party, reinforcing that “will do anything to win” meme. But as Stoller aptly pointed out, there’s not a lot of truth to that meme (emphasis mine):
I‘ve never liked the line ‘the Clinton’s will do anything to win’. Hillary Clinton won’t, for instance, renounce her support of the Iraq war or get rid of an obviously incompetent Mark Penn as the captain of her campaign. And many politicians face a similar incentive structure to the Clinton’s and are just as ruthless. More accurately the line should be ‘the Clinton’s will turn their back on you for short-term political gain’.
I still don’t think this is going to go all the way to the convention. As Clinton acts more and more desperate, I really think more and more superdelegates are going to come out and do what they can to end this circus. And it won’t be a moment too soon for me.
Mar 25 2008
Well, it seems like the MSM picked up on Hillary’s Bosnian “embellishment”. Good. It’s apparently not an isolated incident. A few weeks ago, she also boasted to CNN that she “helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland”, as well as “drove out the snakes”. Well, I made that second part up, but she made up the first one. According to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province, who was directly involved in the negotiatons, Hillary’s claim is “a wee bit silly”, and, according to the Telegraph:
I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around,” he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely “the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets” during elections. “She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.“
Hmm. Cheerleader. She certainly does like to “enhance” her accomplishments, no? And once again, just like everything else in that clusterfuck of a campaign of hers, it doesn’t appear that they really thought these things out in the beginning. They were probably drunk on the “inevitability” narrative, figured they just had to throw out a few talking points on her so-called “experience” (which, in the realm of foreign policy is wafer-thin), and hope nobody would notice, instead of focusing on her real experiences and accomplishments, which aren’t nearly as broad as she’s making them out to be.
Seems like the Irish are not too thrilled about this. In the Irish version of the Independent, Kevin Myers has a satirical look at some of Hillary’s other “accomplishments” (h/t to Mike Eldred):
Before this interview formally began,” I said, after I had recovered, “you mentioned something about bringing down the Berlin Wall: what was that?”
She smiled again, and I leapt back 30 yards. She was well into her story by the time I had recovered my seat. “So, having told Mother Teresa just how to cope with the starving children of Calcutta, I returned to the Vatican, in my one-woman yacht. For the purposes of this trip, I was named Ellen MacArthur in honour of my mother, who took the Japanese surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri. In the Vatican, I could tell that the Pope was clearly worried. ‘What is it, Norman?’ I asked him. ‘You look kinda stressed.’
“The Pope shook his head sadly. He knew he could hide nothing from me. He often said I was J3 — a cross between Joan of Arc, Jane Austen, and Jane Fonda. The reason for his concern? World communism: it was about to triumph.
“Well, I’m the kind of woman who never ducks a challenge. So I told the Pope never to worry his little old head, and so I left Italy and set out for Europe. I went to the shipyard town of Denmark, where I spoke to the union leader, a tribal chief known to his people as ‘Luck Will Answer’, and told him that the Pope’s homeland of Hungary would light the fire of world freedom. I guess the Solubility Movement began there and then: I got the name from thinking how we should kind of dissolve communism, rather than confront it. The next year, I got the Nobel Prize for Peace: but for political reasons, I went by the name ‘Nelson Mandela.’”
Please,sombody, make her go away. Far away.
Mar 24 2008
Someone should have told Hillary Clinton that if you’re going to have your “experience” be the major theme of your campaign, you should at least make sure that those so-called “experiences” actually happened, and if they didn’t, at least don’t tout ones that can be instantly refuted by news footage:
At least when this stuff happened with Al Gore, it was the media making stuff up, not the actual candidate himself. Makes me wonder if Hillary even knows where that 3am phone even is. Does it even exist?
At the WaPo, Michael Dobbs’ Factchecker has a rather in-depth analysis of the latest HRC embellishment.
Mar 13 2008
I was trying to go all week without commenting on the election, but it’s like a fungus that just keeps on growing. Anyways, Chris at Open Left has a good quickie today about the stupidest statements from the campaigns. The big three:
Yeah, there’s a lot more than that. The Obama one has been my number one criticism from the get-go. It shows an incredible naivite, I really hope it’s just something to not scare away moderate voters, because he’s gonna get his ass handed to him if he really thinks that. Something else worth noting is that if the GOP loses as many seats as speculated, he might not even have to give them the time of day, at least the hardliners.
The biggest running joke for me is from the Democrats touting the ‘end of business as usual’ line. Sure, things are gonna be different, mostly for the better, but nobody seems to want to stop the milk from the corporate teat, or do anything really earth-shattering and drastic, which is what we really need to fix things right now. I’m not sure who has the most dumb things. McCain’s not in the spotlight as much, and Clinton seems to be saying something stupid that stretches the bounds of credulity just about every day now. What y’all think?
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