From today’s postings 4/22/08
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I guess they couldn’t get the audio of a scream.
Feministe
A list is taking shape of those political bloggers who are either pro-Hillary or at least fair in their coverage of the candidates — in other words, bloggers who aren’t raving Clinton-hating Obamabots. Versions of this emerging blogroll are popping up here and there… Why does this list matter? It’s not merely a question of knowing where to go for misogyny-free political commentary. These are the seeds of a new progressive blogosphere in the making. The Obamabots are poisoning the original netroots, transforming what used to be an arena for progressive politics into nothing more than a rabid, mindless He-Man Woman-Haters club.
Click through for a list of
Cutting Through the Nonsense: 10 Reasons to Vote for Hillary (by D. Cupples at Buck Naked Politics)
This morning, I thought again about why I support Hillary — reasons beyond the intelligence, warmth and wit that would make her a great Happy Hour partner. I thought about what she will bring to the White House and how our nation will benefit in practical ways from her knowledge, skills and perspective. Ten of my reasons are below.
1. Hillary grasps economic concepts: knowledge a president will need in January — given our nation’s debt, job loss, credit crunch, recession….
2. Hillary has a plan to get us out of
3. Hillary has a health care plan that offers broad coverage for Americans.
4. Hillary’s Senate committee assignments encompass a wide array of issues — including veterans affairs, education, military issues, labor, health, and the environment — which give her a solid foundation from which to help shape public policy.
5. Hillary understands foreign policy and has dealt with officials from dozens of other nations…
6. Hillary has broad support among American voters… Hillary’s in a good position to compete with John McCain.
7. Hillary has demonstrated concern for fellow Americans — starting with her civil rights activities during college and her work during the seven years after college, which she devoted to public service (instead of taking her Yale law degree straight to lucrative arenas).
8. Hillary has broad life experience…
9. Hillary has learned how to get things done in
10. Hillary is strong, resilient, and tenacious. She has faced more scrutiny and ugly attacks than most politicians, yet she’s still standing. Better than that, she’s still fighting. That’s the spirit a president needs in order to solve the many grave problems our nation faces.
She Changes - People’s - Lives (by alegre at MyDD)
After finishing law school at Yale, she could have written her own ticket - gone to work for any big name law firm in the nation but instead she chose to go to work with Marion Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). She knocked on doors to find out why children weren’t enrolled in our public schools and she found that kids with disabilities the blind, the deaf or even kids with a mild learning disability weren’t being taught in our schools. There weren’t even teachers who could help kids with mild dyslexia back then. So she took her findings to Congress and they passed a nationwide law that required our public schools to accommodate kids with special needs. Kids like my sweet son… Hillary didn’t stop there guys - she went on to help pass other laws too.
RonK to Goldy’s Sister: If that’s not betrayal, what is? (by ronkseattle at The Confluence)
[To an Obama supporter:] You are endorsing “I’m Barack Obama, running for President and I approve this message. … Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected.”
You are endorsing the candidate who claims the middle class lost ground during the
You are endorsing the candidate who successfully framed the
You are endorsing the candidate who later claimed in passive voice that racial tensions just “bubbled up” between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries … and who preposterously asserted that America can’t make any progress on jobs, health or education without his admittedly incremental contribution to America’s admittedly residual racial divide … who frames his campaign in grossly counterfeit histories of the civil rights movement of the 60’s, the Reagan years of the 80’s and the Clinton/Gingrich years of the 90’s … who inspired you with a speech that claims a Clinton presidency would leave us in racial “stalemate” analogous to the slave state versus free state stalemate at the Constitutional Convention.
You are endorsing the candidate who gave Hillary the finger last week in
Click through for more.
Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate (UCLA)
The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain’s reward circuitry. “We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward,” said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.
And conversely, unfairness makes us uneasy and unhappy. Which explains my disgust for the Obama campaign and all its acolytes.
Zogby Poll: Clinton Pushes Into Clear Lead in Pennylvania (Political Wire)
The last Zogby tracking poll before the
Well, that PROVES she’s a racist.
For Clinton: A victory, is a victory is a victory (by John: south of
Obama is up to something in PA. The Obamites and MSM (surrogate Obamites) are setting up an expectation game that
Justice Dept. to monitor Pa. primary
Our thoroughly POLITICIZED Justice Department? It’s a relief that THEY’ll be on the job.
Obama avoids media in final days of PA
BLUE BELL, Pennsylvania (CNN) – It’s now been ten days since Democrat Barack Obama has made himself available for questions from his traveling press corps, and it appears as though that number could rise even higher… And at a diner Thursday morning, a reporter slipped in a question about former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas, but Obama responded by saying he just wanted to eat his waffle. Later that afternoon while taping an interview for “The Daily Show,” a reporter tried to ask Obama about a new
Periodically, Senator Obama gets testy. Oh, and how does he stay so thin if he’s eating waffles for breakfast?
No debate for Couric (Politico)
The North Carolina Democratic Party has dropped plans for an April 27 debate, which would have been moderated by CBS’s Katie Couric.
I still say that Obama has no idea what he’ll face if he’s the Democratic nominee.
Scared Of An Image Of bin Laden? (by Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft)
I am with Kevin Drum on the Obama campaign’s overwrought reaction to the latest
See No Evil, Hear No Evil (by myiq2xu at Corrente)
It does appear that his history of community organizing is central to Obama’s identity, seemingly even more important to him than his work as a legislator. The mystery is how with all this community activity, Obama managed to remain ignorant of the fact that his benefactor, Antoin Rezko, wasn’t paying utility bills for his tenents, many of whom lived in Obama’s IL state senate district… Obama claims he knew nothing. His close relationship with Rezko continued until after Obama was elected to the US Senate. In fact, the deal with Rezko involving Obama’s home took place after Obama was a Senator, as did the alleged meeting with Nadhmi Auchi. Obama says he never heard any of Rev. Wright’s controversial statements either, despite attending Trinity UCC for 20 years. See a pattern?
Part III: Obama Adviser David L. Boren re: Foreign (inc. Energy) Policy (by GRL at InsightAnalytical)
In Part I I provided extensive information courtesy of Sourcewatch.org, A Project of the Center for Media and Democacy, on former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee David L. Boren’s right wing ties, and his close relationship to Robert Gates, former CIA director and current Secretary of Defense. In this post I will add a few more bits of information, including a rather surprising story about how Boren was involved in the outing of a CIA agent, and discuss some of Boren’s books and legislation involving foreign policy… and energy policy.
Two Years Too Late (by Larry Johnson at No Quarter)
The Pentagon did not control all military analysts. Some of us were offering an analysis at odds with the Administration’s happy talk and sunny scenarios. I don’t blame the Pentagon for trying to get away with these shenanigans. That’s like blaming a dog for sniffing another dog’s ass. But I do fault the media for not doing their job. They surrendered their critical thinking skills. And as we have seen in the Barack Obama campaign, they are doing the same thing again. So if Barack Obama manages to nab the nomination and get elected, don’t be surprised to find the New York Times reporting in three years that the failed Presidency of Barack could have been anticipated but that the media was “scammed”.
Obama’s good friend Deval Patrick, whose words of hope and change he supposedly borrowed, is having a tough time delivering on those promises of hope and change as governor of
‘Bittergate’ storm shows how blogs have spread panic in US journalism (by Edward Helmore, The Guardian,
If Obama is beaten in Pennsylvania’s primary vote on Tuesday then his comment that small-town voters bitter over their economic circumstances ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them’ may come to be seen as pivotal to his campaign. For the media, the episode shows how the internet is changing the reporting of politics. The event was closed to journalists; [event recorder and reporter Mayhill] Fowler was only invited because she had given generously to Obama. ‘We had a fundamental misunderstanding of my priorities,’ she told the New York Times. ‘Mine were as a reporter, not as a supporter. They thought I would put the role of supporter first.’… Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair media columnist, says this question is moot. ‘It doesn’t matter whose employ she was in or what function she was fulfilling. He said something and was duly recorded. [That’s] the new reality [it’s] useless to ignore. Everybody is going to know what you say. We’re going through a transformation process. There is no privacy. You cannot hide.’
In Politics, the Gaffe Goes Viral
Political gaffes have now entered a supercharged ecosystem of cable, bloggers and digitally enabled mainstream media outlets. Indeed nothing is more viral than a screw-up.
Lots more really good stuff at MakeThemAccountable.com.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Just posted–
Hillary Rediscovered
Posted on April 22, 2008 by GRL
In the fall of 1992 I was a school media specialist and my best buddy was a Social Studies teacher. We were around the same age and utterly sick and tired of the Reagan-Bush I era. I was particularly angered and depressed by the constant anti-abortion message being shoved down our throats and had marched on Washington twice over abortion rights during these years. It felt like women were under constant attack.
So when Bill Clinton hit the scene, Kathy and I became big fans. We weren’t policy wonks at that point–we were just looking for some oxygen and Bill Clinton was it. One of my favorite expressions at the time was that Clinton “had a PULSE” and after years of ossification at the hands of Reagan-Bush I, that meant a great deal to us!
Around the time the fall was still warm and sunny, Hillary Clinton came to the Rutgers University campus on College Avenue, in New Brunswick, NJ. Kathy and I decided we simply HAD to go!
It was a beautiful day and a platform was set up as one entered the quad. I don’t recall the crowd being exceptionally large, nor do I remember a word that was said. But I do remember Hillary. She was wearing a bright purple skirt suit and her hair was fairly long. After she spoke, she came down the rope line and I shook her hand. What struck me was that she was very petite. And her skin–very fair and almost translucent. She looked almost fragile.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore started with great plans which were thwarted, particularly the 1993 energy proposal detailed in an earlier post. Hillary made mistakes with healthcare. The Telecommunications Act was a huge mistake. But, I understood the political climate was toxic and Clinton probably did the best anyone in that situation could have done, overall. Of course, like many liberals, I was mad at Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair.
I was particularly frustrated, however, by his playing footsies with the Bushes and the corporate ties. So, like many Democrats, I was ready for a new face this time around. I was adamantly against a Hillary run and decided John Edwards was delivering the message that appealed the most to me; he seemed to be the only candidate willing to address the issue of corporate power and its pervasive role in all aspects of American life. The media refused to report on him and apparently, Democratic voters were quite content to go with Obama and Hillary and their corporate ties, which was a major disappointment for me.
In the meantime, Obama devotees continue to be blind to Obama’s relationships and corporate ties and are buying into the “image” of change and at the same time have become virulently hateful toward the Clintons. It seems to be irrational hatred because their own favorite is proving to have clay feet, although they refuse to acknowledge this fact.
As the primary season has worn on, it’s become clearer to me that the media and Democratic Party are hell-bent on destroying the Clintons, specifically Hillary, for once and for all. Never mind that he’s been our only two-term Democratic president in decades and that he really did fix up the huge deficit mess left by Reagan-Bush I. Never mind he left the country poised to move forward. Suddenly, he and Hillary are the devils incarnate. And who is supposed to take up the party’s torch? A man who is arrogant and has advisers and endorsers who are the party elite! A man who will carry on the Democrats’ march toward becoming no different than Republicans. Big change…not at all. So getting rid of the Clintons seems more personal than a matter of political differences.
So, here I am, a woman slightly younger than Hillary watching as the hate and misogyny spews. I watch the Democratic party and “progressive” bloggers actually willing to disenfranchise voters in two states in order to fix the nominee. I watch Hillary Clinton being insulted and derided for positions that are no worse than Obama’s.
Over the years, of course, she hA proved how resilient she really was and today she is robust, feisty older woman taking this stuff and dealing with it.
All this begins to make me angry, since I am one of those “older, under-valued women” who is of no interest, apparently to the party. The final straw comes a couple of months ago when a progressive site to which I had contributed columns every week since 2001 finally spews enough garbage that I no longer wanted my name associated with it. And then I watch a competent, well-spoken, woman well-versed on the issues being gestured at to “F*ck off” by the oh so “cool” guy being given a soft ride and I wonder, “What the hell is going on?” I feel like Obama is aiming his “coded” finger at me, too! My “misogyny radar” now has been re-activated as I listen to the media and the sly words Obama.
At this point I’m coming from a place which many of us who lived through the 60’s are now at and I am reflecting on all we’ve lived through. Over the last couple of years, I’ve shed my youth and have accepted the fact that I am middle-aged. As I’ve done that, I’ve noticed that like many women, I’ve become increasingly feisty and unwilling to put up with bullshit. My own language has become saltier and I do not suffer fools gladly.
In the last few months I’ve begun using a phrase “Don’t complain, DO” as I work to keep control of my life and continue to resist being pigeon-holed by marketers, doctors, and “youth.” Life needs to be addressed head on now and I’ve decided to “dig in” –I’m not leaving without a fight.
All these personal feelings are now dovetailed into the political season. After my guy Edwards was shoved out by the media and Democratic party voters, I tuned out for awhile. But Clinton hate, particularly Hillary-hate, has reawakened me and a lot of memories of past fights on women’s issues and current battles that need to be fought, especially the ongoing battle to be respected and taken seriously.
So, on Monday night, I actually tuned into to watch the Clinton rally in Philly. I listened to Bill Clinton and smiled as I heard him describe a “phalanx” of women mobilized if Hillary became President. I took note as he ticked off some the things she has accomplished over the years that have actually CHANGED people’s lives, such as the micro-bank funding, adoption law changes, and so many other things.
Then I watched Hillary and saw a real fighter. While I’m not a blind devotee, I really appreciated her energy and guts and passion as she spoke. Heck, she reminded me of…ME!
Later, I watched the video Keith Olbermann’s interview with Hillary and noted how he tried to insinuate that by meeting with Scaife, Hillary was a sell-out. She came right back at him and said it sure showed how she could work with almost anybody!! I hope Keith didn’t wet himself on that one. As a fellow Cornellian, I was once proud of Keith, but his anti-Hillary bias has become unbearable. He should be ashamed of himself because HE is the real sell-out and has lost his objectivity.
By the end of the night I felt as if I had been on a real journey of “rediscovery.” I had rediscovered how much I valued a lot of what Hillary had accomplished under trying circumstances and I wondered if Hillary was finding this campaign a journey of rediscovery as well. Because the woman I saw last night seemed to be on fire. The petite, almost fragile looking woman I saw in 1992 was transformed into a real force of nature.
I have to say I’ve become fired up as well. Does the Democratic Party really think that I’ll vote for just anybody they shove at me? After all this? No, they’re wrong. Because this “older, under-valued woman” has seen another woman of “a certain age” taking the hits and hitting back.
You know something? I’m proud of Hillary, just for that. I may not agree with her on everything she’s done or plans to do…but it seems she’s tapping into an energy that I recognize…it’s that I’m here, now, and it’s MY time! And maybe it’s HER TIME, too…