So I finally broke down a week and a half ago and benched my broken Blackberry (charger port loose again, only this time they wanted to charge me $100 on top of the monthly insurance I've been paying), and bought my first iPhone, an iPhone 4. As advertised, it changes everything, really a whole different way to think about the hand-held device.
On a Blackberry, email is king. Email and calls. On the iPhone 4, they're just another form of media. Still pretty easy to use, if with a less tactile keyboard and missing some arrow keys for highlighting and moving through text, but not the worst trade-off in the world. But the most notably thing is that the iPhone, often called a hand-held computer, is actually the greatest hand-held media machine I've ever seen.
The iPad, in it's current incarnation, is nothing but a media consumption device. At least the iPhone manages contacts and makes calls. But what's striking is how everything on it is media. You can do Facetime videochat over Wi-Fi, take a picture of it, go into your Camera Roll and send it, post it, whatever. Take it into another app and edit it. You can take a picture anywhere and tweak it into Instagram, which you can immediately share on Facebook and Twitter etc etc with just a few checkboxes.
Email is treated not as "email" but each one as just another piece of media, with other media sent inside of it that can be played, click-linked to, taken out and resent elsewhere.
If it's been said that we're all just data, then data is the molecules and media are the differentiated cells. They all function in the same system, the same body, but they have different purposes, generally built around the speed of apprehension. Video is perhaps the highest form of media, an instantly playable YouTube video as a result of a Shazam music search, or the deepest point in a museum app exhibition module. Now you can shoot your own video and edit it in the iMovie app, then download to your Mac for the full iMovie menu of commands, finish and send back to your phone, other phones, etc.
Now the camera does more than just shoot video. It's a search tool as well -- for the first time in planetary history. The Google app contains a camera icon for "Google Goggles," where you take a picture of a label or object or book cover or whatever piece of commercial or trademarkable product or iconography and Google does an image match that results, after just a few seconds, with links to learning more and, of course, buying.
It's got camera's front and back (front for video chat, back for higher resolution) and HDR for still photography, providing two options with each snap, different lighting values. Unlike with my Blackberry, I can actually blog from it.
I'm sure Blackberry is catching up with an improved browser experience (I hope for their sake) and larger screen, and I'll be Android sweeps the world next year with Microsoft possibly elbowing to #3. But the iPhone leads the way by making it all easy-peasy media accessing and sending off.
At first, having Bristol Palin participate in 'Dancing With The Stars' seemed like a brilliant idea. Just like Kate Gosselin before her, casting an admittedly bad dancer who was shrouded in controversy has raked in big ratings and tons of press. But now the joke is on the show's producers, as they fear Bristol is actually going to win this thing.
"This will be a disaster for the show if Bristol wins," one TV insider tells me. "Any creditability the show had will be over. It will go from being a dancing competition to a popularity competition where whoever has the most rabid fan base will always win no matter how little talent they have."
Plus:
"Another problem the producers foresee is that after Bristol wins no one in Hollywood will ever want to be on the show again," a well-placed ABC source tells me. "Why would a real star want to compete and lose against someone like [former U.S. Senate candidate] Christine O'Donnell or Levi Johnston."
Bonus:
A friend of one of the judges tells me Bristol has made a fool out of all of them. It's now painfully obvious that the judge's scores and opinions mean nothing.
I'm sick of hearing people say that Palin is winning because people identify with her failings. This is the exact opposite of what Conservatives claim to believe, that it's all a meritocracy and we shouldn't be dumbing down classrooms to make it nicey-nice for the less talented. No, this is massive Tea Party drone voting, making their political point, whether or not they're using computerized means to generate "legitimate" email addresses and flood they system. Does anyone, anywhere, honestly doubt this is all about Sarah?
I'm starting to think that Palin's world and that of her drones is an even more self-aggrieved subset of the Glenn Beck audience, your true talent is, ostensibly, your adherence to the Sarah-approved ideology, no matter have provisional or acausal the selection. Because the apparatchik reason isn't even what it's all about; the only ideology that matters is that which reinforces the vanity production of Sarah Palin that is her politelebrity career.
And this is where Sarah Palin is, for once, a true pioneer. Her grifter roots are clearly Amy Semple McPherson, Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy but no one has ever done what she's doing before in world political history, mainly because there wasn't a mass media quite like this one before. With so many outlets, so much hunger for content, this rapacious time of widening rich-poor gaps as our corporate feudalistic solidifies for what may be centuries, with so many buyers out there, mass media networks of books, cable, digital, social, Sarah Palin has engineered the very first political campaign where the networks have paid candidate for the honor of creating their long-form campaign commercials and giving them huge hours of airtime, frosted with dominating amounts of free publicity
TLC has given Palin her biggest TV deal, paying her production company to make the shows, with their staged scenes and obvious cutaways, semiotics gone haywire in the ultimately lumpen service or reinforcing Palin's brand messaging and image, endlessly tiresome, endlessly smug, endlessly mean high school girl in the big leagues.
The Obama Family and the Democratic Party had better start adapting immediately. If you think this is polarized nation now, just wait until we're watching entirely separate television shows.
Wait, we already are:
I don't care how serious a candidate, politician or statesman you are. You have to at least acknowledge that this new evolution of bullshit is the most significant since Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy bested Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon in the first nationally televised Presidential debate.
One can only hope that, thanks to some combination of narcissistic ambition and aggrieved venality, just as Nixon ultimately lost control of his brand image Palin and her family will lose control of theirs. I mean, even the type of vile use of "gay" and "faggot" as a vicious insult by a teenager, the type of language parents are generally held responsible for teaching their children is wrong, hasn't led to a single admonition of Sarah Palin's mothering skills. Is this the kind of language Mama Grizzlies teach their little grizzlies? Grrr.
The fact is that Palin is media ascendant. There's a rule in Hollywood that you're only a superstar for three years, then the public moves on. You can still be in the firmament, even at your peak earning, but the audience for and against you is already formed, and you're not dominating their fantasy lives anymore.
So can we date Palin's superstardom from when she spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention? I think maybe from when her book came out last year, her first purely commercial endeavor (and a huge success -- her big step-up that caused her to ditch her elected office about halfway into her commitment). If that's the case, she'll peak next year, and start fading in 2012, just in time for the GOP Primaries.
But is the answer more ominous. Is the TLC show where she really starts, taking over the airwaves? Even on Fox, she's not in control, and you can see the short-circuits behind her eyes, her hard little smile growing tight or tipping downwards when O'Reilly catches her out as is his sport.
This is the playing field now. The killing field. The battleground. This is where political war is now being waged. Politicians on the Left may develop a different flavor, maybe one that doesn't seem so constructed, really candid and unedited as Obama can be in ways she never will. The key is to leverage your celebrity as a brand that attracts curious, interested and engagement-starved viewers. If you're not already a politelebrity you need to become one, and if you already are then you need to exploit it with speed and savvy to get control of your image and blast away with your messaging.
This will also become a new discipline in political consulting. I recommend the talent agencies getting their Blue and Red political teams on and integrated with production and network sales. I even mean Below the Line crew. Control everything.
It's post-1984. 1984 has nothing on this. Orwell meets McLuhan. Makes you want to burn the whole mother****ing thing down.
I thought the Rand Paul story would have subsided but he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos and had even more of a meltdown than with Rachel Maddow last night. As one of our readers has commented, when pure Libertarian ideas are brought to light and the proponents forced to explain them outside of their own self-supporting echo chamber, the carefully constructed ideological house of cards collapses -- and in this case with it, the candidate and the man:
Starting with the victimized whining about not getting a honeymoon -- because he actually had to explain his views the day after calling out President Obama like a hot young punk -- through his complaint that it is somehow un-American to blame BP (i.e. British Petroleum) for the largest environmental disaster in U.S.A. history, he comes off like a not ready for primetime l-o-s-e-r. Sure, Rand, "accidents happen." Especially when you skip all the safety procedures and testing put in place to keep them from happening.
The upshot is that someone has pulling Rand Paul back inside for re-grooving -- he's now become only the third guest in Meet the Press history to cancel on an appearance (sharing the honor with -- ah the irony -- Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia. I expect that the GOP establishment is sending in some of their top consultants to teach Rand how to be exactly the kind of politician he and his partiers abhor.
Media attention is already starting to turn to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway who's appeared of sound mind and body on Wolf Blitzer tonight, a clear responsible alternative to the loony loose cannon who can no longer be relied upon to know where he stands on any real world issue. He even accepted Wolf's on-the-spot debate request -- Conway said he'd be happy to come back on the show to debate Paul. Not shying away.
Here's my prediction: The teabagger movement has peaked. Or Tea Party, if that's what you prefer.
There will be some noise in November, but it's going to fade as the Obama tax cuts for the Middle Class -- the lowest rates in 60 years -- kick in as refunds, the notion of repealing healthcare reform comes to seem more and more self-destructive, their more moronic "stars" like the hideously untalented and now just plain hideous Victoria Jackson deglamorize the movement, as Fox News becomes more obvious in how they are using and abusing them -- like pulling Hannity from a Cincinnati rally today because the execs in NYC realized the local baggers were going to be charging admission for his appearance!
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
...and they'll come to feel that way about their healthcare rights as well, albeit cherry-picking at first. And maybe some will even break away from Fox News enough to learn that much of what they say they support, like buying health insurance across state lines, is represented in reform (in this case by exchanges).
The politicization of whatever are the core grassroots sentiments amongst this 18% of the population will become an increasing problem for both the Tea Partiers (overwhelmingly disgruntled Republicans, just 8 years too late to their tea party) and GOP. If Chief Justice Roberts is so incensed about Obama "politicizing" the Supreme Court when he called them out for their highly political (i.e. classic GOP corporatist) Citizens United decision during the State of the Union, what leg does he have to stand on when a member of his own wing, Justice Clarence Thomas, is used to promote the baggers and their political agenda -- thanks to his wife's involvement with the Washington astroturfing efforts to earn off the movement?
In speaking with a conservative colleague in DC recently I learned that there's a growing division between the grassroots purists and those who are earning bank off the movement, i.e. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. To the credit of the purist faction, they don't want to be co-opted, which may be tough considering that was the central force behind their p.r. breakthroughs.
The fact is that there are only two political parties of any heft in American right now, the Democratic Party and Fox News. The Republicans are now a satellite of the earners at Fox -- as best evidenced by psychostar Sarah Palin, former half-term Governor of Alaska turned $12 million woman. The Republican Party was simply her stepping stone to the conservative media money machine, perhaps the first or at least the most clear-cut example of this new phenomenon.
There may develop a Tea Party as some sort of rump down-ballot presence, although my guess is that it will end up being too scattered for the consistency a true national party needs to grow. It smacks of the Ross Perot party or John Anderson, simply not enough. Back in my childhood these would have been the Right-to-Life Party, maybe crossing over to the Conservative Party, although more often than not the Republican and Conservative candidates were the same, ipso the Democratic and Liberal, although there were interesting exceptions in New York State, i.e. Sen. Jacob Javits and other line-blurrers.
As long as the main opposition party to President Obama is Fox News, the system will be out of whack. If they manage to succeed in unseating him at re-election time, that's pretty much the end of democracy in America -- and since the Roberts Court has legalized unlimited corporate spending on campaigns, there's all new ways for them to spend their profits tearing down the nation's leadership and cycling back to greater profits as a result -- including getting their candidate in the White House and opening the floodgates to Berlusconi-style media/political cross domination.
Should that happen, we'll see if any Tea Partiers start to wake up...and become real patriots.
It's closer and closer to being revealed, hence the panicky Cheney gambit of playing the memo game, as if some Cheney-ordered memos to post-justify the criminal torture he ordered will grant him exoneration for the emerging story, per Josh Marshall:
At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?
Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
All the Cheney-Bush gang was concerned with at the time was pushing through the attack on Iraq they had planned before taking office, before 9/11, going all the way back to the father's decision not to press Desert Storm into Baghdad. Imagine Dick Cheney fuming ever since then, a decade of building resentment, his moment having arrived.
From this base sin, if it is proven to be true, all other evil grew including everything covered by Laura Rozen here. It's why they're going after Jane Harman who wanted evidence preserved. It's why they're trying to foist the hot potato on Nancy Pelosi, who never instituted a policy of torture and claims she was lied to by the CIA. It's why Porter Goss, hack GOP Representative turned hack CIA Director, is looking ripe for questioning. And possibly indictment with his co-conspirators, led by Richard Bruce Cheney himself.
There's a big week coming up, the last time for the candidates to dominate the news cycle before the two weeks of Olympic coverage. Bets are on for either Obama or McCain or both to announce VP running mates. Meanwhile, there's the wreckage of last week's "celebrity" attacks by McCain on Obama to deal with. Per Joe Trippi:
Ever since McCain’s NAACP speech that seemed to me to be directed at white swing voters and not at African Americans I have believed that the McCain campaign is adept at understanding how to raise race as an issue and use it to its advantage.
Is a pattern emerging?
With white voters, the attacks appear to be working -- so far. Per David Gergen:
Will there be long-term damage to the McCain campaign? Is John McCain actually the very thing he ridicules? Mark Kleiman says yes:
Something about the Britney/Paris video has been nagging at the back of my mind, and I finally figured out what it was. Comparing Obama to them is wrong because they're fading stars and he's a rising star. The Britney/Paris analogue in the race is McCain: he, like they, got rather far on extremely limited talent and huge amounts of marketing, and is now desperately trying to cling to celebrity with more and more extreme antics that get him ink but offend and sadden his fans.
And that explains the raw hatred that McCain and his handlers display towards Obama: it's the hatred of the has-been (especially a has-been who never was much in the first place, a mere celebrity, like Britney rather than an actual star, like Madonna) for the person (especially the person of egregiously superior talent) she passes on the rising escalator as she herself takes the long, long ride down to well-deserved obscurity and mall openings.
I've been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.
So stripping all the well-planned Rovian distraction away, the circus that may or may not decide the future leader of the free world, who is this John McCain in who's name this ad was run?
This guy:
Yep, Joe Lieberman may condescend to Obama as "a good young man" (tell me and my wife that we're young at roughly Obama's age and we'll dance in the streets), but his candidate is, at best, a "once-good old man."
It's not often that I run the opposition's dirty work, the smear material devoid of issues but filled instead with malignant innuendo, but here you go:
Yep, if ever there was a whiny petulant campaign ad in a Presidential race, this is it. Imagine -- Obama's popular, hence he must be wrong for America. But what's really wrong, per Chris Bowers:
Let's do a quick rundown of the identity politics at work in such a comparison:
Obama is a girly-man. The ad only compares Obama to female celebrities, which is a direct shot at Obama's "manliness."
Obama will sleep with your white daughters: Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears are known for their sexuality as much as anything else. That must go for Barack Obama, too. And the history of attacking African-Americans in association with white women is such a positive one.
Obama is too young: For a campaign that is hyper-sensitive to attacks on McCain's age, they certainly have no problem attacking Obama's age. Which is what comparing Obama to Spears and Hilton is.
Obama is a Hollywood liberal: This is also a run of the mill attack on Obama as a Hollywood, liberal elite, in line with decades of conservative backlash narratives.
This is really atrocious stuff, and trying to bring out all of the worst aspects of America in order to win an election. At this point, the McCain campaign is just hitting Obama with whatever it can think of, and seeing if Obama will respond.
Obama's response? Brilliantly flips McCain's tactics around and uses them to reinforce Obama's core message...:
..which can't help but leave you thinking as well about McCain's age. What makes it fair game is that McCain's low road strategy -- or that of the Bush campaign vets like Karl Rove running his media campaign -- is to make Obama "other" whether black or foreign or uppity. In response, Obama is essentially painting McCain as "other" -- someone we don't really know as well as we thought, someone from a dark past from which we're all straining to break free, come November 4th.
If McCain can't run on the issues and won't bow out, if his only chance is to make this election a referendum not on eight years of failed Republican policies but on Obama, and if he can successfully muddy his image, he'll lose for sure. Hillary Clinton tried some similar tactics and ended up losing anyway, behind where it counted from early in the race, just like McCain.
Obama is exponentially better organized than McCain -- finalizing plans to use his stadium speech as the world's largest phone bank at the Democratic National Convention, reaching out to Republicans currently in the shadows, and for the first time breaking 50% in a national poll. And McCain, who's shredding his clean campaigning pledge with his media attacks being labeled "childish" and self-reductive by his former confidante and ally, he's desperately trying to define Obama as out of touch?
Obama noted McCain had stepped up his attacks against him and questioned his approach.
"I don't pay attention to John McCain's ads, although I do notice he doesn't seem to have anything very positive to say about himself," Obama told reporters after visiting a diner in Lebanon, Missouri.
"He seems to only be talking about me," Obama said. "You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against."
That's right. Everyone knows what Obama is running on: Change. That We. Can Believe In.
Political cartoonists are the first ones targeted by dictators when they want to shut down free speech. They're the ones threatened with fatwas when they draw Muhammad. So as a lover of cartoons, comics and political satire, I can't condemn Barry Blitt, even if I think The New Yorker, of which I am a subscriber, wanted to sell magazines more than it understood the difference between effective satire and Blitt's cartoon which they are running as their cover this week.
(BAGnewsNotes does a nice job of explaining the discrepancies here.)
In the spirit of open discussion, I've posted my latest video microblog segment in the little Zannel widget to the right of this post. Some folks have commented already. You can click on the Z and then on the link that's revealed to go and comment yourself.
Whether Wes Clark's comment on the lack of Commander-in-Chief justification inherent in John McCain's military service hurts the Obama campaign or helps undermine that side of the McCain candidacy, we do not yet know. However, it has surely disqualified him from the Vice President slot, recalling to mind Sen. Jim Webb's reaction when a reporter asked, a month ago, about Clark as a choice. Webb seemed surprised, saying that it would seem like an unlikely move to pick someone who had never won elective office.
Here's Clark saying something very true, in a very tone-deaf way:
For the Web-video challenged, it goes:
After saying, "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war," he added that these experiences in no way qualify McCain to be president in his view:
"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron," Clark said.
"I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."
What's interesting here is the response, with the Mainstream Media calling it an attack on McCain's service record (which it clearly wasn't), McCain himself unleashing his "Truth Squad" lead by one of the same Swiftboaters who smeared his supposed buddy John Kerry's record, and several notable military men coming to Clark's defense.
There are two main reasons the right is going hard after Clark, and why he needs some wingmen to back him up. For one, if McCain is running on anything, it's his service and sacrifice to country. Being buddies with Joe Lieberman sure as hell ain't bipartisanship, not in 2008, and he sure can't run on his judgment. The other reason is that Wes Clark is phenomenally popular as a Democratic foreign policy and military affairs spokesperson:
No one in the entire country is more important to Democratic credibility on foreign policy than Wesley Clark. No one. And this isn't just my opinion, it is the opinion of Democratic congressional candidates who requested him...
Imagine if the top issue in the mind of the electorate was energy and global warming. Imagine if, as a result, Al Gore become the most requested surrogate in the country by Democratic congressional candidates. Then, imagine if the right-wing began attacking Gore in an unfair manner for a benign, true statement. And then, imagine if the Democratic nominee condemned Gore for that statement. Now, you tell me, would dumping Al Gore for the rest of the campaign season be strategic in that case?
Taking out the leading Democratic surrogate on national security would be a huge victory for Republicans.
To his credit, even though Obama has had to (justifiably, in my mind, to keep his campaign consistent) distance himself from Clark's comment, Clark isn't backing down. And good for him because, as noted above, McCain's judgment is lousy now, was lousy on Iraq, and was -- admittedly, by McCain himself -- lousy back then:
On my last mission in Vietnam, having survived several mishaps that could have but did not cost me my life, I wasn't as acutely aware of the danger to my own well-being that the mission entailed. Instead of interpreting my previous experiences as evidence that things can and often will go wrong when flying, particularly in dangerous and stressful conditions--an awareness that should have made me more heedful of the danger--I had developed a false sense of my own invulnerability. And that characteristic of my ego, which I felt no need to check, discounted the danger I personally faced. I placed too much faith on what was beyond my knowledge or control: luck. And my luck ran out that day. When I heard the warning tone that an enemy SAM battery had locked onto me, I was moments away from dropping my bombs on target. I thought I had enough time to do my job and still evade a missile I knew would probably be coming my way.
Click on that link above for a fully explanation of how this plays into McCain's overall recklessness, including his attempt to drop Secret Service protection. If Obama is able to stick his good judgment theme, if he's able to keep consistent on not attacking his opponent's character but rather his policies, I believe he will be our next President.
So thank you, Gen. Wes Clark, for speaking the truth.
Sorry it had to come at the cost of proving Sen. Jim Webb right.
Here's a McCain ad that seems to actually sell Obama's energy positions quite well:
Is it true that McCain is essentially, per Simon Rosenberg:
...by any historic measure, a weak and bumbling candidate, ill-suited for a presidential race, and is still struggling to bring his party together -- a party which has never liked him very much anyway.
Did Hillary Clinton just disqualify herself for the Democratic Presidential nomination:
"I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.
"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.
I woke up this morning feeling that Clinton has somehow gotten over the hump, that she's going to win Pennsylvania and maybe even a surprise caucus here or there, and maybe Obama wouldn't fight back hard enough, and maybe she'd somehow end up, to the glum chagrin of all, the nominee after all. Math vs. Story: wouldn't story win?
But something changed.
Back in the bad old days when the Cheney-Bush-Rove-Rumsfeld Administration was pushing America into the most ill-advised war in our nation's history (yes, worse than Vietnam because we should have known better by now, and worse than the Civil War because at least that one had a purpose, to unite the States once and for all), and Hillary Clinton was enabling them, along for the ride, the one character trait that I identified as having the potential to bring them down was actually the most obvious: They lie.
The truth is always defensible, no matter how unpleasant that truth may be.
Lies, eventually, will out. Just this week they caught a guy in California who broke out of prison in Michigan 35 years ago. Just last August they caught a woman in East Texas who skipped out of jail in Georgia 33 years ago.
When Mister Bush lied in his State of the Union address about weapons of mass destruction, it was the hangnail that has now torn open the hand -- we all know he lies, Cheney lies, Rove lied, Scooter Libby was convicted of lying and sentenced before liar Bush semi-pardoned him, and that's why Bushie has a 19% approval rating. It just took too long for the rest of America, the "low-information voters" that Karl Rove and now Hillary Clinton choose to manipulate for power to catch on, and he got re-elected.
Has Sen. Clinton overreached again? Holding a "Cabinet-style" press conference with old military guys in uniform on either side of her, like Mussolini? Like George Bush atop a U.S. naval carrier?
Like someone with horrifically bad judgment?
If she loses the nomination to Sen. Obama, will a majority of the Democratic Party is so turned off by her disloyalty, by that which proves everything any Republican has ever said to me about the Clintonian lust for power, and how they'll toss anyone overboard for themselves, will the party decide that she doesn't even deserve the Vice Presidential slot she seems to have legitimately won a claim to this past week?
This, on top of her campaign's lie about Obama, the Canadians and NAFTA?
The fact is that she doesn't have some sort of "threshold" foreign policy and military experience as she somehow defines it (and actually compares poorly to McCain, who served long and though enemy incarceration):
His aides repeatedly argued that Hillary's criticism of Obama is virtually identical to McCain's arguments, and Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice made what sounded to our ears like the most elaborate case against her claim to experience yet.
As first lady, Rice argued, "you are not the person asked by the U.S. government to deliver tough messages or apply pressure. You're not the person who's responsible for the loss of life. You're not the person who has to make the sometimes recalcitrant bureaucracy deliver in the national interest."
The fact is that she and her husband are unwilling to release their tax returns or fully disclose the donors to his Presidential library with any timeliness or willingness, and with their Whitewater reputation, deserved or otherwise, plus Travelgate, stock gains and home purchase deals, there's a whole other cudgel lying in wait for the Republicans to wield -- of her own making. Per former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ):
"I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library.
And the reason that is important -- you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed.
These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain."
As Matt Yglesias writes:
We do know that "Denise Rich. Ms. Rich gave the foundation $450,000 while her fugitive ex-husband, Marc Rich, was seeking a pardon on tax-evasion and racketeering charges" and that other donors as of 2004 include various Wal-Mart-linked individuals and foundations, Haim Saban, Qatar, Kuwait, the Saudi Royal family, etc.
Time-bomb, anyone?
Is she on the verge of developing a reputation, compared to Sen. Obama's consistently cool temperament, as insane?
Here's some more facts.
Fact: The Obama Campaign broke every record known to humankind and raised $55,000,000 in February. And I'll bet her actions today just earned him another healthy round.
Fact: A corrected count in Los Angeles (so called "double-bubble" votes caused by a Florida-esque ballot flaw) just netted Barack Obama eight (8) more pledged California delegates.
Fact: For all the media-generated hoopla about a Hillary Clinton comeback this past Tuesday, she seems to have picked up a net total of only four (4) additional pledged delegates.
Olbermann has more, all over the McClinton and NAFTAgate boomerang stories.
Seems the NAFTAgate leak started with -- surprise, surprise -- the Chief of Staff to Canada's conservative PM Stephen Harper. Only the first hint wasn't about stuff the Canadians had heard from the Obama camp. It was about reassurances the Canadians got from the Clinton campaign. According to a reporter who heard the original conversation, Brodie said "someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."
Only somehow this evolved into a story about the Obama campaign giving such reassurances.
So was Hillary bashing Obama for what her own campaign had done? Did they both do it? Was it all a set up? I think the overarching story here is that friendly governments should not interfere in our elections.
It's almost admirable, isn't it? Hillary Clinton and her gang have no compunction about turning a story around, serpent-like, with little regard for the truth except as they can manufacture it in the media.
Is that what we want in a President? Is the best choice to lead America one who blatantly lie, smear and bully to win?
There's suddenly a flurry of action at the end of 2008. I can't hope to cover or even tie together on short notice all that's happening in our political America just this week -- two days.
The FISA vote -- Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) has been staunch and articulate on protecting the U.S. Constitution, threatening to filibuster and forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to pull the bill from the floor. Dodd has been a total hero, and while I don't know if it will significantly improve his Presidential bid, it makes him the #1 pick for a new, progressive Majority Leader.
Dodd made Orrin Hatch break down into sad nonsense. The bottom line as Ted Kennedy said:
The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.
Not so fun to remember that they are still President, even if the Primary Season sometimes makes us forget.
But the really huge decision affecting us all, the one designed by Rupert Murdoch et al with this Republican Administration to control all of the news we receive by television, radio and print all in one market. And if the market, like most, has only one newspaper, guess who's going to control the agenda?
Free Press: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is ignoring the public will and defying the U.S. Senate. His decision to gut longstanding ownership rules shows once again how the largest media companies — with their campaign contributions and high-powered lobbyists — are corrupting the policymaking process at the expense of local news coverage and independent voices.
“Martin’s FCC relied on slanted research and a rigged process to reach today’s preordained outcome — local media wrapped in a bow for Tribune, News Corp., Gannett and all the rest.
John Kerry's talking about freezing FCC funding in retaliation, not sure how much that will do with the horse already over the gate.
It's clear to me that the only candidate who's just all out declaring themselves the people's warrior to beat back our almost medieval global corporations, get our Constitutional rights and help America save itself. There's things I like about the others, but Edwards is starting to do in Iowa what he's known for doing best: making the strongest closing argument.
Think about it, three lawyers. Can Obama or Hillary do what Edwards did in courtrooms for huge verdicts?
Meanwhile, Blackwater, no joke, shot to death the The New York Times' dog in Iraq, and Ron Paul reveals exquisite literary taste when he calls a spade a spade.
The whole series, spearheaded somehow by director George Hickenlooper and featuring famous actors in black & white shorts supporting the Writers Guild of America in its strike for a fair contract, is awesome, and today's is the most fun, a compilation of actors set to music as they go and scrawl "Speechless".
Here's the list of actors in the video and participating whole-heartedly with their biggest business asset, their images, in the pro-union activism:
David Schwimmer, Kate Beckinsale, Chic Eglee, Susan Sarandon, Benito Martinez, Walton Goggins, Sean Penn, Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Paula Garces, Garry Marshall, Lizzy Caplan, Holly Hunter, John Amos, Gary Dourdan, Matthew Perry, Bill Hader, Robert Patrick, James Lemar, Joshua Jackson, Matthew Modine, Bill Macy, Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000), Rosanna Arquette, Jill Kushner, Chazz Palminteri, Cch Pounder, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Christine Lahti, Eva Longoria, Patricia Clarkson, Amy Ryan, Frances Fisher, Justine Bateman, Jason Bateman, Ed Asner, Nicolette Sheridan, Felicity Huffman, America Ferrera, Judith Light, Rebecca Romijn, Ana Ortiz, Ashley Jensen, Mark Indelicato, Tony Plana, Freddy Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, Christopher Gorham, Michael Urie, Laura Linney, Alan Cumming, Michael Weatherly, Michael Jace
Love seeing my faves from The Shield in there! It's all very iconic and sharp and strong. The writers strike has produced much better agitprop than anyone must have expected. I guess the writers can control the means of their own production. After all, the most successful of them in TV become executive producers.
You can find all of the videos on emerging Internet doyenne Nikki Fink's Deadline Hollywood Daily blog. They're all interesting -- Laura Linney, Felicity Huffman & Bill Macy, Sean Penn, Holly Hunter etc etc. Personal faves have to include Jeff Garlin (#4) because's he's so darned cute at the end, and elder statesmen Hollywoodians Richard Benjamin & Paula Prentiss (#2) -- she's particularly adorable, even as she seems to have a cast on her right arm. He & She, anyone? And Andre Benjamin (#7) is great to look at as he speaks Martian.
Here's to a speedy, quality deal between the writers and the production entities. Everyone knows there is money enough for all.
It was four years ago Tuesday that our El Presidente made a choreographed landing on the U.S.S. Lincoln, took off his flight suit like a regular James Bond and, with a huge banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" behind him, declared the Iraq War over.
Just today there is more than a hint by former C.I.A. Analyst Ray McGovern that Vice President Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney was actually behind the forging of fake evidence that led us to the War. McGovern says he has proof but is waiting to release it -- one can only hope he is not just playing a hunch. He posits a "Watergate plumber" type scenario where Cheney authorized or directed the dirty work, leaving the execution to the type of scum that has been doing GOP dirty work since well before Nixon. Bay of Pigs, anyone?
Imagining that this is the case makes the motivation for Cheney to have personally directed the smear against Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in which his wife was outed and for lying about which Scooter Libby was convicted. What perfect sense it all makes -- this was Cheney's baby all along.
Defrauding the American people to lead us into a disastrously ill-advised war that benefits only the Halliburton Corporation in which he owns massive amounts of stock, and those of his syndicated buddies...would that not be grounds for impeachment, if not charges of treason?
Maybe McGovern is stretching the proof. Maybe that appearance on Tucker Carlson's show is where it all ends.
