Category: Presidential Campaign

More Obama Asshattery

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This time, he appears to be going after Gore and Kerry.

In a speech this afternoon in central Iowa, Barack Obama seems to have widened his criticism of the politics of the past to encompass not only Hillary Clinton but John Kerry and Nobel Laureate Al Gore. Making an argument for his electability, Obama said, “I don’t want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats — we’ve done that in 2004, 2000,” according to a person at the event.

The first comment to the post says it very well, “His arrogance and sense of entitlement are not just inaccurate, his remarks are insulting and stupid.”(emphasis mine)

I would add that Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, and the problem with both campaigns is that they were unwilling to call out George W. Bush specifically, and the Republicans generally for their incompetence and corruption.

You also have Barack Obama going after Labor Unions political involvement:

And top union officials who support Obama’s rivals are in turn accusing the Illinois Democrat, who once sought their endorsements, of trying to damage labor’s political role. “I’m taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent,” Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s behalf, said, referring to the television host’s high-profile support for Obama. “It’s sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make.”

It appears that there is no Democratic constituency that he is unwilling to “Sistah Soljah”.

The Definitive Word on Partisan “Gridlock”

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Greg Seargant nails it when he says, “The way to reduce “Partisan Gridlock” is to further weaken the GOP.

….

These questions are kind of relevant. Partisan gridlock happens because people — and by extension, political parties — disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That’s where “partisan gridlock” comes from — underlying disagreement on issues — and in our current case, the fault for our “partisan gridlock” isn’t equally distributed between the two parties. Rather, it’s almost exclusively the fault of the Republicans.

You aren’t allowed to say this, but it’s true. If you don’t believe me, ask the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. They proposed a bunch of solutions to Iraq. The Democrats largely embraced these solutions. The Republicans, by contrast, didn’t. ….

In fact, I would argue that over the past 30 years, the Republican party has lost any interest in governing. Instead, what we have is a desire for power and wealth.

I went to school at UMass with former Tom Delay Deputy Chief of Staff, and now a convicted member of Abrahmoff’s “entourage”, Tony Rudy.

I served in the SGA Senate with him with him, and we were both nominally “Conservatives” in that body*, and we got along fairly well, he was the first to shake my hand when Nummo News†, the Black Student newspaper, condemned me on its front page for calling for their sanctions as a result of illegal electioneering in the SGA presidential race. We got along, and we sometimes traded private snarky comments during debates.

This has given me some insight into Tony’s feelings on governance, and considering the positions that he has held since UMass, it is not unreasonable to extend those views to a significant portion of the Republican party.

Republicans, with the qualifiers listed above, believe government to be evil. If a government program exists, it is a bad thing™. If it is successful it is even more evil, because it weakens our morality‡ and compromises out strength.

When you come to government service with this philosophy, there are only two reasons for that service, money and power.

This makes Republican obstructionism fairly easy. There is no other goal to be accomplished.

It’s why, at least for now, reaching across the aisle is a waste of time. There are no Everett Dirksens in the current Republican Party leadership.

*It’s not that I had an epiphany and became a liberal. It’s that the left wing of the SGA Senate were all the “US Out of North America” crowd.
†Seriously, I think that half the Senate shook my hands before someone told me why….Strange political experience.
‡Yes, it does seem like General Jack D. Ripper’s “Purity of Essence” from Dr. Strangelove.

More Proof that Obams Will Be Disasterous Down Ticket

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Yes, once again, Barack Obama is doing his best to validate Republican talking points. This time, he’s going after Edwards for being a “trial lawyer” while he did community activism.

There is a lot of talk about how Hillary mightt be a problem for people running for lower office, but having a presidential candidate who is running on Republican talking points is far, far worse.

Obama is the wanker of the day.

Edwards response is this tape from one of his clients, the mother of the little girl whose guts were literally sucked out by a faulty wading pool drain.

Not only is he going after a lawyer who has done heroic things, he is going after the whole concept of people protecting themselve from greedy corporations with these heroic lawyers.

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Barak Obama can kiss my shiny metal ass.

FWIW, Molly Ivors comes to the same conclusion.

My Predictions On Iowa

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Republicans:

  1. Huckabee
  2. Romney
  3. Everyone else

I think that Huckabee and Romney are the only two who will break the double digits, and Huckabee’s supporters are more than enthusiastic. What the heck are the Romney supporters going for anyway, that hair?

Democrats

  1. Edwards
  2. Clinton
  3. Obama
  4. Dodd
  5. Everyone else.

I’m much less sure of these, but here goes:

Edwards and Clinton will be very close, with the fact that Edwards is the 2nd choice of almost all the minor candidates giving him more than a boost than Hillary’s supporters being more politically tied in.

The fact that Edwards has spent the past 3 years building a network will help too.

Obama will come in firmly in 3rd. He’s gots “lots of young new voters”, all of whom will get completly owned in the complex Iowa Democratic Caucus Structure.

Dodd, with his filibuster in the senate floor, will, I think, end up a firm 4th place, though there is a possibility of him taking 3rd.

Given my record, I think trhat I’m something like 0 for 23 on everything, not just politics, I’d love to hear your predictions.

Add more details.

Developments in Pakistan, and A Possible Real Effect in Iowa

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It looks like Pakistan will be delaying elections for a few weeks in the wake of the Bhutto assassination.

Considering the unrest, it’s probably a good idea, though considering the iron grip that Musharraf has of the electoral process, I also think that it is not unlikely that the accusation of Bhutto’s PPP, that this is an attempt to game the system is true, but with at least 11 elections offices torched, there is not much of an option.

However, the effect on the US presidential campaign might be more than people have believed.

Specifically, with the appointment of Bilalwal Bhutto as the PPP party head, albeit in a purely ceremonial manner, with the acting head being the phenomenally corrupt (even by Pakistani standards!!!) Asif “Mr 10%” Ali Zedari, it raises dynastic issues, and might make people wonder as to whether the electoral process in the United states is more like Pakistan than we would like to think.

The entire Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton thing may very well bite Hillary, though the effect is likely

Why Obama’s Talking of Reconciliation is Both Naive and Dangerous

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Lambert of Corrente makes the point that Barack Obama’s speeches on reconciliation are dangerously naive, and I’d tend to agree.

He makes the point that much of the “flying wing-nut monkey” aspects of American conservatism have been the result of very people, primarily those got their money from dead ancestors as opposed to working for a living, have had a direct economic interest in the “flying wing-nut monkey” policies. It’s more than ideology, it is a deliberate and effective accumulation of both additional wealth and power.

If he is right, and my recent dust-up with the readers of The National Review over a comment about a writing gig for Ramesh Ponnuru*, whose career has largely been bankrolled by these interests, is evidence of the nature of the structures put in place by wealthy heirs for their own benefit.

To quote Lambert, who also got a nod from Krugman:

For these billionaires, the ROI of the Conservative Movement is absolutely spectacular. At the micro level, for example, if you want to create an aristocracy, then you want to eliminate any taxes on inherited wealth, despite what Warren Buffet or Bill Gates might say about the values entailed by that project. So, the Conservative Movement goes to work, develops and successfully propagates the term “death tax” — which they may even believe in, as if sincerity were the point — and voila! Whoever thought that “family values” would translate to “feudal values” and dynastic wealth? At the macro level, their ROI has been spectacular as well. Real wages have been flat for a generation; unions have been disempowered; the powers of corporations greatly increased; government has become an agent for the corporations, rather than a protector of the people; the safety net has been shredded; and so on and on and on.

Ponnuru is where he is because the right wing infrastructure recognizes him as an asset that offers a very good return on investment.‡

What the supporters of Obama maintain, at least the ones that I deal with in my Pinko Commie circles, is that this is largely a campaign tactic, and that he recognizes it as the reality of the situation, or to quote “Amadan” a poster on the (by invitation only) Stellar Parthenon BBS,

But let’s face it, Obama has to dance around in a tutu and fairy wings or he goes from “friendly magical Negro who just might be electable” to “Angry Scary Black Man.

Personally, I’m not inclined to believe this. Even if was the intent, behavior becomes internalized through habit. Eventually, you become what you are pretending to be.

*No, I’m not picking a fight, or implying a lack of intellect, but according to the NRO’s bio of him, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton’s history department, Wiki says with a BA degree.

The BA is not the professional degree in History, the PhD. is, hence the jokes about history majors delivering pizzas, so normally the career path would involve an MA, JD (law degree), or PhD in something more specific.

As a result of his work on The Sentinel, a now-defunct conservative campus magazine at Princeton† and other venues, he was recognized, and recruited, as a writer/editor/fellow at various right wing institutions.

†I love “the Google” as a research tool.

‡I actually mean this as a compliment. Seriously.

I Love it When Conservatives Go Hammer and Tongs After Each Other

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In the left corner, wearing the bible print trunks, Michael Dale “The Gastric Bypass” Huckabee, and in the left corner, wearing currency print trunks with the corporate sponsorship, the Club for Growth.

It appears that the CfG is taking out bunch of nasty ads against Huckabee.

Four years ago, they called me a, “tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show”, so I’m experiencing no small amount of schadenfruede.

While Obama and Hillary Try to Make Hay, Edwards Takes High Road on Assassination

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We’ve got them sniping back and forth here, and to his credit John Edwards is not saying that it’s all about him:

Benazir Bhutto was a brave and historic leader for Pakistan. Her assassination is a sad and solemn event, and our hearts go out to her family and to the Pakistani people. But we will not let this contemptible, cowardly act delay the march of progress in Pakistan for a single second.

I have seen firsthand in Pakistan, and in meetings with Prime Minister Bhutto and President Musharraf, the instability of the country and the complexity of the challenges they face. At this critical moment, America must convey both strength and principle. We should do everything in our power to help bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice and to ensure that Bhutto’s movement toward democracy continues.

Compares favorably to the posturing by Clinton, Obama, Romney, Giuliani, etc. where they all basically say, “this is why you should vote for me“

It compares even more favorably to Mike Huckabee’s statement, where he says, “There’s a country called Pakistan? Really? Are you sure??“

I would note that my assessment of Bhutto is far less charitable than his, but he’s not making hay of the assassination, which is a good thing.

It’s Official, Politicians Becoming Drooling Idiots: Barack Obama Believes His Own PR

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I understand his politics of hope. I understand how he thinks that this is the best way to go. I also understand how this is a central tenet of his campaign.

Still, in looking at his speech intended to close the deal in Iowa, it’s clear that he’s jumped the shark:

It’s change that won’t just come from more anger at Washington or turning up the heat on Republicans….

OK, I differ, but it’s consistent with his message.

Then, unfortunately, he goes on with his examples of how hope has won.

But I also know this. I know that hope has been the guiding force behind the most improbable changes this country has ever made. In the face of tyranny, it’s what led a band of colonists to rise up against an Empire.

Let’s run the numbers: 25,000 American casualties, 8000 in battle, 17,000 from disease including about 8000 who died as prisoners of war, and a slightly smaller number of British casualties. This isn’t hope, this is Bismark’s, “Blood and Iron”, at a cost of somewhere north of 1% of the population of the 13 colonies.

No one bowed before hope.

In the face of slavery, it’s what fueled the resistance of the slave and the abolitionist, and what allowed a President to chart a treacherous course to ensure that the nation would not continue half slave and half free.

In justification of what the slave owners considered their property, we have 110,000 Americans killed in action, with 360,000 total dead in US service, and 93,000 Confederate KIAs and 258,000 dead in CSA service, a number amounting to about 1 in 30 people living in the United States.

This was a battle against selfishness, and the costs were enormous, not a battle over “hope”.

In the face of war and Depression, it’s what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation.

World War II, huh? We have 73 Million dead.

Again, about 3% of the world population.

In the face of oppression, it’s what led young men and women to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause.

Which ignores the bombings of school girls, tens of thousands of lynchings in Jim Crow land, resulting an ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans from the South to the North.

That’s the power of hope – to imagine, and then work for, what had seemed impossible before.

The people were not swayed by a desire for change and hope, they were forced kicking and screaming, and the sons of Jim Crow, in their heart of hearts still believe, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever“. Trust me, I’m white, and I’ve lived in the south, and I heard the “white to white” discussions during things like the OJ trial and following Katerina.

They believe it to this day, and they vote consistently Republican.

I understand the need to show “The Audacity of Hope“. It’s what you think will resonate, and you really believe it, but I’d be hard pressed to find one more counter factual example than all four that have been given here.

In his speach, he has not only rode his motorcycle over a tankful of selachians, but he has done so wearing a tutu and fairy wings.

He has left the realm of Matthew Yglesias’s Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics*, and gone straight to something I am calling the Tinkerbell Theory of Everything, wherein the noble tinkerbell (typically played by a follow spotlight) is saved by all the children in the audience clapping just as hard as they can.

If there is a problem with the Neocons, and other descendants of the Trotskyite intellectual tradition, it is the consistent denial of reality in order to confirm their theories, but Barack Obama makes them look like hard eyed realists.

H/t to Chris Bowers for the initial catch on the speach.

*To quote the other Matthew:

The ring is a bit goofy. Basically, it lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user’s combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of “overcoming fear” which allows you to unleash the ring’s full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn’t function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the “Parallax fear anomaly” which, along with all the ring’s other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

What’s more, this theory can’t be empirically demonstrated to be wrong. Things that you or I might take as demonstrating the limited utility of military power to accomplish certain kinds of things are, instead, taken as evidence of lack of will. Thus we see that problems in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t reasons to avoid new military ventures, but reasons why we must embark upon them: “Add a failure in Iran to a failure in Iraq to a failure in Afghanistan, and we could supercharge Islamic radicalism in a way never before seen. The widespread and lethal impression of American weakness under the Clinton administration, which did so much to energize bin Ladenism in the 1990s, could look like the glory years of American power compared to what the Bush administration may leave in its wake.“

Democrats Try Fiscal Sanity in Campaigns

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The Democratic Presidential candidates are finally moving toward a flat fee structure with their consultants, as opposed to paying a percentage of the media buy.

The Republicans have been doing this for years, and it removes a perverse incentive for the consultants to recommend large media buys, since it pads their fees.

Of interest is this statement:

In interviews, aides said Ms. Clinton, of New York, and Mr. Edwards, of North Carolina, had negotiated flat fees with their top consultants. And Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has capped what his consultants can earn, which will convert their more traditional percentage deal into a flat fee once his ad spending passes a certain threshold, his aides say.

As on healthcare, the putative “candidate of change” is taking the more timid and status quo route.

Hopefully, this is a first step in putting a better leash on Democratic political consultants who frequently spend too much time as the face of the campaign to the press.

Political consultants should neither be seen nor heard until after the general election.

Obama Looking at Appointing Schwartzenegger to Cabinet

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This is, I think, a good illustration of the problems that I have with Obama.

Arnold is not a bipartisan figure, he is a self serving one, and only after getting his clock cleaned did he make any real effort toward “bipartisan” action. Furthermore, he’s doing his best to undermine those so called bipartisan initiatives through executive orders and inaction.

Ahnuld is not even suitable as head of the physical fitness council, as he is a former steroid user.

This is a dangerous level of naivety, and until adults run the Republican party again, reaching across the party aisle is simply an exercise in futility.

Kerik, the Gift That Keeps on Giving

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Well, it appears that there are still more depths to plumb in l’affaire Kerik.

Laurence Ray, one of Kerik’s closest associates, he was best man at Kerik’s 1998 wedding and he was convicted of mob-related securities fraud, appears to be singing like a bird:

This spring, Ray’s friend Sidney Baumgarten, a New York lawyer, told former deputy mayor and longtime Giuliani ally Ninfa Segarra that Ray was embroiled in a bitter divorce and an even worse custody dispute over his two daughters. Baumgarten said he told Segarra that Ray possessed “damaging” information about Giuliani but that he would not go public with his allegations if he could receive help with the mounting legal troubles.

“That was the implied quid pro quo,” Baumgarten recalled in an interview with The Post, saying the conversation stemmed solely from his desire to help Ray’s children in the custody case.

The following day, Baumgarten received an e-mail from Segarra advising Ray to call an acquaintance of hers, a “political heavyweight” lawyer who could assist Ray in the custody dispute in New Jersey. “For now I would ask not to identify me as the referral,” Segarra wrote in the March 5 e-mail obtained by The Post.

I am so hoping that the Republicans nominate Giuliani.

Obama Selling Out On Healthcare in Illinois

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Paul Krugman looks at Obama’s tepid venture into healthcare reform during his days as an Illinois state senator, as reported by this Boston Globe article, and he concludes that Obama is not ready for prime time:

My thoughts: being president isn’t at all like being a state legislator, Illinois Republicans aren’t like the national Republican party, 2009 won’t be 2003, and the insurance industry’s opposition to national health reform — which must, if it is to mean anything, strike deep at the industry’s fundamental business — will be much harsher than its opposition to a basically quite mild state-level reform effort.

The point is that if national health reform is going to happen, it will be as the result of a no-holds-barred fight of an entirely different order from what Obama saw in Illinois. The president’s role will have to be far more confrontational, involve far more twisting of arms and rallying of the public against the special interests, than Obama’s role as a state legislator in the Illinois case. And it will take place against a backdrop of fierce attacks not just from the industry but from Republicans who fear, rightly, that any kind of reform will move the country in a more liberal direction.

My thoughts are much less charitable, because of one paragraph in the Globe article:

The bill originally called for a “Bipartisan Health Care Reform Commission” to implement a program reaching all 12.4 million Illinois residents. The legislation would have made it official state policy to ensure that all residents could access “quality healthcare at costs that are reasonable.” Insurers feared that language would result in a government takeover of healthcare, even though the bill did not explicitly say that.

By the time the legislation passed the Senate, in May 2004, Obama had written three successful amendments, at least one of which made key changes favorable to insurers.

Most significant, universal healthcare became merely a policy goal instead of state policy – the proposed commission, renamed the Adequate Health Care Task Force, was charged only with studying how to expand healthcare access. In the same amendment, Obama also sought to give insurers a voice in how the task force developed its plan.

(Emphasis mine)

Let’s be clear on this: This is not just the “big table” that Obama is so fond of talking about. This is the wholesale abandonment of a core value, and he didn’t just vote for it, he proposed the amendment to abandon it.

Truth be told, I’m sick of his “Red Sea will part before my awsomness” schtick. This was just selling out.

Read Krugman’s blog post, but you may find the Globe article more interesting. He appeared to be joined at the hip with the insurance companies.

Obama as a Do Nothing?

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Steve Clemons compares what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have done in the senate, and the difference is striking. While neither of them chair a full committee, pretty much every senator gets a subcommittee.

Clinton has the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health, and Obama has the Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on Europe.

The Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health last held a hearing on October 17, the Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on Europe has had no meetings.

None…Zip…Nada…

Let’s be clear, it is a chair of committees that senators get executive experience. What’s more, it where a senator who wants to be president learns how to deal with Congress.

Clemens excuses saying that he’s, “not trying to find a minor, nuanced difference between Obama and Clinton and inflate that to inappropriate levels.” I agree. This is not minor.