April 13, 2008
Obama: tastes great, less filling
Kos is steering people to this wonderful Obama speech from yesterday, and it’s garnered more than 100,000 hits in less than 24 hours:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc9PepjyDow
I posted a YouTube comment, but got a message “pending approval.” Uh-oh…sure enough, the account name turns out to be “BarackObamadotcom” and I need hardly tell you my comment never got “approved.” So the Great Obama Chill has pinched another bud from my garden. Here’s what I tried to say:
—That’s a good speech. I like Obama. If he’s the nominee, I’ll vote for him in November. But it’s still unclear to me what Obama can do for the people he’s addressing. How will he rejuvenate those mill towns? Can the rich be shook down for the redistribution this would require? I don’t think so. They won’t be as easy to handle now as they were during FDR’s time. I feel less bitter than resigned. If Obama can’t deliver on his lofty prose — and that’s a tall order — bitterness will come later.—
The Obama phenomenon remains a faith-based investment. I’m hungry for specifics.
rhetor
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Hillary the Gun Lover?
The Huffington Post, April 13, 2008
CNN reported Saturday that Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton touted her experience with guns and hunting to a crowd in Indiana:
Hillary Clinton appealed to Second Amendment supporters on Saturday by hinting that she has some experience of her own pulling triggers.
“I disagree with Sen. Obama’s assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about trade and immigration simply out of frustration,” she began, referring to the Obama comments on small-town Americans that set off a political tumult on Friday.
She then introduced a fond memory from her youth.
“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how to shoot when I was a little girl,” she said.
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Frank Rich: The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook
Frank Rich, The New York Times, April 13, 2008
The night before last week’s Senate hearings on our “progress” in Iraq, a goodly chunk of New York’s media and cultural establishment assembled in the vast lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. There were cocktails; there were waiters wielding platters of hors d’oeuvres; there was a light sprinkling of paparazzi. Then there was a screening. We trooped like schoolchildren to the auditorium to watch a grueling movie about the torture at Abu Ghraib.
Not just any movie, but “Standard Operating Procedure,” the new investigatory documentary by Errol Morris, one of our most original filmmakers. It asks the audience not just to revisit the crimes in graphic detail but to confront in tight close-up those who both perpetrated and photographed them. Because Mr. Morris has a complex view of human nature, he arouses a certain sympathy for his subjects, much as he did at times for Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary, in his Vietnam film, “Fog of War.”
More sympathy, actually. Only a few bad apples at the bottom of the chain of command took the fall for Abu Ghraib. No one above the level of staff sergeant went to jail, and no one remotely in proximity to a secretary of defense has been held officially accountable. John Yoo, the author of the notorious 2003 Justice Department memo rationalizing torture, has happily returned to his tenured position as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So when Mr. Morris brings you face to face with Lynndie England — now a worn, dead-eyed semblance of the exuberant, almost pixie-ish miscreant in the Abu Ghraib snapshots — you’re torn.
Ms. England, who is now on parole, concedes that what she and her cohort did was “unusual and weird and wrong,” but adds that “when we first got there, the example was already set.” That reflection doesn’t absolve her of moral responsibility, but, like much in this film, it forces you to look beyond the fixed images of one of the most documented horror stories of our time.
April 11, 2008
Asked About the Deficit, McCain Cites Reagan
Michael Cooper, The New York Times, April 9, 2008
WESTPORT, Conn. – When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan.
There was one thing he did not mention during his response: the deficit nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency, partly due to tax cuts and increases in military spending.
The exchange occurred at a town-hall-style meeting held in a tent outside Bridgewater Associates, an investment firm. A member of the audience stood up and asked Mr. McCain, who has called for balanced budgets, how he plans to do it.
“Basically, which is it?” the man asked Mr. McCain. “Straight talk: Do you want to raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending, or have a deficit?”
Mr. McCain did not explain how he plans to balance the budget, but spoke generally about hoping to stimulate the economy – and cited President Reagan.
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April 10, 2008
Newest House Member Goes After Bush’s Iraq Policy On Her First Day
Salon, Kartarine Mieszkowski, April 10, 2008
Thursday, the day Rep. Jackie Speier, 57, was sworn into Congress, she wasted no time in pissing off Republicans, by blasting President Bush and Sen. John McCain in a speech about the war in Iraq.
“The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately,” Speier, a Democrat from Hillsbourgh, Calif., told members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The president wants to stay the course and a man who wants to replace him suggests we could be in Iraq for 100 years. But Madam Speaker, history will not judge us kindly if we sacrifice four generations of Americans because of the folly of one.”
While Democrats applauded, some Republicans booed, and a few walked out in protest, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Speier’s 13-year-old daughter, who was watching from the House Gallery, asked, “Why are they booing my mom?”
Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Interesting, But Rejected, Campaign Jokes, Songs and Slogans
And now, Ye Olde Scribe Fly On the Wall Productions Somewhat Proudly Presents…
Interesting, But Rejected, Campaign Slogans
Scribe’s cloned flies on the wall have been busy bouncing from campaign to campaign to collect these. John McCain seems to have a fly fetish so his headquarters has had to have an extra dose of clone infestation. They’ve been cloned so many times their getting almost as dull as John. Here is what they reported back as slogans and jokes for speeches that have been considered, but rejected…
Slogans
Hillary…
“Vote for the babe with less tact and a whole lot more, “Ack! Ack!”
Barack…
“Our nation: out of the red, into the Black.”
McCain…
“Bringing the Hanoi Hilton experience out of Iraq and into America.”
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Florida Lawmakers Pass “Take your guns to work” Law
Reuters, April 10, 2008
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Most Florida residents would be allowed to take guns to work under a measure passed by Florida lawmakers on Wednesday.
The bill, allowing workers to keep guns in their cars for self-protection, was approved by the Florida Senate by a vote of 26-13. It now goes to Republican Gov. Charlie Crist to sign into law.
Backed by the National Rifle Association and some labor unions, the so-called “take-your-guns-to-work” measure would prohibit business owners from banning guns kept locked in motor vehicles on their private property.
The measure applies to employees, customers and those invited to the business establishment as long as they have a permit to carry the weapon.
Backers say the measure upholds the vision of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, who made the right to bear arms part of the Bill of Rights.
Alec Baldwin: Who Can Beat McCain?
Alec Baldwin, The Huffington Post, April 13, 2008
Lotta folks on this site hating Hillary because she’s a woman. Lotta folks on this site loving Hillary because she’s a woman. Makes me think that, in some quarters, men have been uncomfortable with women a lot longer than whites have been uncomfortable with blacks.
Sometimes I honestly believe that a racist white guy would vote for Obama over anyone like his wife or mother. A woman as Commander-and-Chief? Uh-uh, they say.
How sad.
Lotta folks worried about Obama’s level of experience. Whatever you do, don’t buy into that Republican bullshit. Obama is FDR compared to this Bush. The GOP committed every possible sin in order to get Bush elected. They forged a whole set of new ones to get him reelected. Everyone around the world recognizes that America is in real trouble. Most Americans do, too.
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