BartBlog

Maureen Dowd, New York Times, January 9, 2008

When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.

A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”

Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”

Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.

She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, January 7, 2008

The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal — and its highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in employment.

It’s the latest piece of bad news about an economy in which the employment situation has actually been deteriorating for the past year. It’s no longer possible to hope that the effects of the housing slump will remain “contained,” as one of 2007′s buzzwords had it. The levees have been breached, and the repercussions of the housing crisis are spreading across the economy as a whole.

It’s not certain, even now, that we’ll have a formal recession, although given the news on Friday you have to say that the odds are that we will. But what is clear is that 2008 will be a troubled year for the U.S. economy — and that as a result, the overall economic record of the Bush years will have been dreary at best: two and a half years of slumping employment, three and a half years of good but not great growth, and two more years of renewed economic distress.

The November election will take place against that background of economic distress, which ought to be good news for candidates running on a platform of change.

But the opponents of change, those who want to keep the Bush legacy intact, are not without resources. In fact, they’ve already made their standard pivot when things turn bad — the pivot from hype to fear. And in case you haven’t noticed, they’re very, very good at the fear thing.

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Robert Parry, Consortium News, January 8, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton is telling Democrats that they shouldn’t let their hearts run away with their heads by embracing the lightly experienced Sen. Barack Obama for President. She says she is the battle-tested one who can best carry the Democratic banner.

“Some of us are ready and some of us are not,” she said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Jan. 7 as tears welled in her eyes. “Some of us know what we will do on day one and some of us haven’t thought it through enough.”

Yet, despite Sen. Clinton’s insistence that she’s the responsible choice, there is logic to “Obama-mania.” Indeed, he may be the only Democrat in the race who can transcend the expected dirty politics of the Right and achieve a victory that can transform American politics for the better.

While Sen. Clinton says she knows how to combat the right-wing attack machine, the truth is that she and her husband most often ended up on the losing end of those fights.

Under fire from the Right, they botched the best chance in decades to enact universal health care; they oversaw devastating Democratic congressional defeats starting in 1994; Bill Clinton became the first President since Andrew Johnson to be impeached by the House though he managed to survive after the spectacle of a Senate trial; and their missteps set the stage for the restoration of the Bush Dynasty in 2000.

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I must admit, Mr. Spiegelman did an excellent writing job, the prose flows naturally and it’s a very easy read. The book might be too inside for the average reader and not enough for the political junkie, yet is amusing, light, marginally interesting and an interesting biographical account of the phone jamming incident in New Hampshire in the 2002 elections. But let’s back up. What is this book really about?

Wah, Wah, Wah, I have not read such oh woe is me bullshit in a long time. Other than some interesting stories about minor campaigns in NJ that only locals would know about, it is a confession, a cry for pity, and a hoodwink to the book buyer. It is interesting to note that Mr. Raymond takes one of his political tactics, basically distorting the truth, and applies it to the title of his book to mislead the consumer to buy it. The book is not about rigging elections at all. It is about a rich scion, heir of the Underwood Typewriter fortune, without any moral compass, playing the media: telemarketing, direct mail, print, radio and TV, to manipulate voters to elect his candidate without any consideration of the circumstances.

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Bill Boyarsky, TruthDig, January 4, 2008

MANCHESTER, N.H.- I beat it out of Iowa just ahead of the more than 2,500 journalists arriving for Thursday’s caucuses.

“You’re going the wrong way,” said an Iowa-bound media friend I ran into at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.

He had a point. Why was I leaving the racetrack before the horses crossed the finish line? Why not stick around to report the results?

To boil it down to its simplest terms, flight from Iowa was a rebellion against the unchanging, old-fashioned way politics are covered. As a colleague once told me, “If there are a hundred people covering a story, I don’t want to cover it.”

Like much of the career advice I’ve been given, this tip has its limitations. Reporters following it would miss untold numbers of wars, World Series and assassinations, but the man had a point. The greatest challenge for a reporter, and the most interesting experience, is to find a good story alone, away from the pack.

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Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker, January 7, 2008

Mormons Out in Iowa, with the bell at last ringing and the combatants charging out of their corners, the Republican card has come down to the Maulin’ Mormon versus the Battlin’ Baptist. Would the Framers be pleased? Doesn’t seem likely, somehow. The deists, freethinkers, and assorted Protestants (plus two Catholics) who drafted the Constitution sternly forbade theological sucker punches-”No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” was how they put it-but today’s Republicans make their own rules. Marquess of Queensberry? Not for the new Grand Old Party. (Meanwhile, those groovy Democrats are reprising “The Mod Squad,” with the white guy, the black guy, and the blonde scrambling to see who gets to make the collar.)

The tale of the tape suggests that Mike Huckabee has to be given the edge, religion-wise. He trained at Ouachita Baptist University and turned pro early, pastoring his own church at twenty-four. A mere nine years later, he was president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention-half a million strong, a fifth of the state’s population at the time. He may not be a heavyweight these days (he shed a hundred and ten pounds as governor), but if he no longer has the belly he certainly has the fire.

The fire, yes-but, affable fellow that he is, minus the brimstone. Huckabee’s sensational rise has been made possible by his success, so far, at speaking in tongues that evangelicals and non-evangelicals understand differently. “I always tell the story of a lady who asked me, was I a narrow-minded Baptist who thinks only Baptists go to Heaven?” he likes to say. “And I told her, ‘No, ma’am, I’m more narrow than that. I don’t think all the Baptists are going to make it, either.’” Does he mean “Let’s not take this eternal damnation stuff so darn seriously”? Or is it “Everybody roasts in Hell except selected evangelicals”? And then there was his instantly famous sound bite at the November 28th YouTube debate, when he was asked where history’s most revered victim of the death penalty would stand on that issue. “Jesus,” Huckabee replied with a rueful smile, “was too smart to ever run for public office.” This was a clever sally, allowing moderates to infer that he, Huckabee, realizes that capital punishment is moally dubious but (like his gubernatorial predecessor Bill Clinton) supports it for prudential political reasons, while assuring his co-religionists that he, Huckabee, is a humble sinner, albeit one on easy terms with the Lord-who will forgive His flock the minor sin of clamoring for the modern equivalent of crucifixion.

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George McGovern, The Washington Post, January 6, 2008

Nixon was bad. These guys are worse.

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But what are the facts?

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Well what can I say? I almost grew up reading Christopher Hitchens. Unfortunately we are not that far apart in age, or vices, but he is a little older, wiser and incredibly talented and I guess I should add, perceptive and smart. SOB, I hate him.

OK, not true, I admired him for many years reading his stuff in “The Nation Magazine,” then something happened. He went wacky with 9/11 and his obvious hateful campaign against the Muslims. It’s as if I saw a person I recognized and admired and then with the mention of Iraq, another person presented itself.

Well, after searching a little because I normally buy my books at Costco, yes I confess that much, I finally bit the bullet and bought 5 or 6 of Christopher’s books from Amazon, I really only wanted “God is not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything” but let’s face it, he has an impressive number of books with very suggestive titles. I am not sorry I bought more books.

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