Hillary’s Voice

Hannity scores $100 million contract. (Think Progress)
The Wall Street Journal reports that Fox News host Sean Hannity has signed a $100 million contract with ABC Networks and Premiere Radio Networks to cover five more years of his radio show. The deal will allow both ABC and Clear Channel to distribute his show, starting in December. Rush Limbaugh recently signed a $400 million contract with Premiere.
Why is it that not one progressive commentator in any medium comes anywhere near making this kind of money?  Why don’t progressives support their media?

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll Monday, July 21, 2008
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Barack Obama attracting 42% of the vote while John McCain earns 41%. That’s the lowest level of support measured for Obama since he clinched the Democratic Presidential nomination on June 3… McCain is viewed favorably by 57% of voters, Obama by 53%… A growing percentage of voters also believe that most reporters are trying to help Obama win the election. [Emphasis added.] Forty-nine percent (49%) hold that view while only 14% believe reporters are trying to help McCain.

The Confluence

Sources say McCain Veep Pick to Come This Week (by Bob Novak, Evans-Novak Political Report)
Sources close to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip.
He’d BETTER do something really dramatic, if he wants to get a word in edgewise.

NY Times Refuses To Print McCain’s Op-Ed While Analysts Downgrade Them (by Uppity Woman at No Quarter)
The McCain Campaign Says NY Times Refused to Print his Op-Ed Response to Barack Obama. Apparently, John McCain didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear so they decided not to print his response. In other words, Mr. McCain is to provide a timetable for leaving Iraq, no matter what—or else. Having finally admitted publicly that they truly believe they should be running the country and telling candidates what their plans and opinions should be, the Times had this to say after sending John McCain to the Principal’s Office: “‘I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach,’ Times op-ed editor David Shipley wrote the campaign via an e-mail later distributed by McCain’s team.”
Why don’t you just write it for him, David?  When are we going to demand that the media stop choosing our candidates.  The problems with the last eight years are entirely the fault of the U.S. mainstream media, and that includes the New York Times. I personally want us out of Iraq, and the sooner the better.  But I don’t believe it’s up to the New York Times to tell candidates what they’re allowed to say, about that issue or any other.

Is media playing fair in campaign coverage? (AP)
NEW YORK - Television news’ royalty will fly in to meet Barack Obama during this week’s overseas trip: CBS chief anchor Katie Couric in Jordan on Tuesday, ABC’s Charles Gibson in Israel on Wednesday and NBC’s Brian Williams in Germany on Thursday. The anchor blessing defines the trip as a Major Event and - much like a “Saturday Night Live” skit in February that depicted a press corps fawning over Obama - raises anew the issue of fairness in campaign coverage. The news media have devoted significantly more attention to the Democrat since Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her campaign and left a two-person contest for the presidency between Obama and Republican John McCain, according to research conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Of course, the AP has been showing quite a bit of anti-Democrat bias, so take that into account.

Media Persist In Misstating Maliki’s Views (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter)
CNN corrected the record yesterday, as Uppity Woman reported in “Maliki Disputes Report That He Endorses Obama’s Withdrawal Plan“: “[A] spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks ‘were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.’” But, Politico.com’s Mike Allen, at Playbook 24/7, writes: “On MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ Andrea Mitchell calls the Maliki endorsement of Obama’s Iraq strategy (semi-retracted after a complaint from the U.S.) ‘a deliberate attempt to put pressure on George Bush and the White House.’”… Once again, the Obamedia are interpreting the news for us, rather than presenting the facts and letting us decide what’s true.
However, the New York Sun reports that not only did Maliki purposely support Obama’s timetable, the support was instigated by the Iraqi who did the most to get us into the Iraq War in the first place, Ahmad Chalabi.  Is it just a coincidence that one of Obama’s supporters was another Iraqi, a billionaire friend of convicted briber and Obama supporter Tony Rezko, named Nadhmi Auchi?

Is Obama Playing Media Favorites? (FishbowlNY, Media Bistro)
A line slipped in near the end of Mike Allen’s Politico article about the media coverage of Barack Obama’s overseas trip, is making some waves. Per Allen: “Among those for whom there was no room was Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent of The New Yorker.”… Over at Eat the Press Rachel Sklar says the decision “sends a clear — and worrisome — signal from the Obama campaign: If we don’t like it, man, will you know it.” A decision, she points out, which merely reinforces a quote made in Lizza’s (amazingly researched, though not terribly flattering) article : “[Obama] earned a reputation that “‘you’re not going to punk me, you’re not going to roll me over, you’re not going to jam me.’”
Every day, Obama reminds me more of George W. Bush.

Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself (by Andy Borowitz)
Bid to Help Late Night Comics Saying he is “sympathetic to late night comedians’ struggle to find jokes to make about me,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes. The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows.
Click through to read them and yes, this is satire.

Note To Hil’s Holdouts: It’s Time To Unify As One Democratic Party (by Donna Brazile, writing at the blog of Darryl Cagle, a conservative cartoonist—no, that is NOT a joke)
The race for the Democratic nomination has been over for a month, but some passionate Clinton supporters, who speak out or send irate emails to me and many other super delegates, are still anxious to fight. Many of them seem unable to accept that it’s over… Sen. Barack Obama is the party’s nominee. He won… Believe me, I understand the soul-wrenching ache of watching your candidate lose… I get it. It hurts. But at some point, you need to swallow your pain and look at the bigger picture and ask what’s best as we move forward… So let’s pick ourselves up and get back in the game. Respect Obama. Respect the fact that he won, and that no one does it by accident. As much as we all would have loved to see a woman in the Oval Office, it wasn’t Hillary’s time. Period.

Donna Brazile once again calls for “unity.” No, thank you. (by LSekhmet at Alegre’s Corner)
[Y]ou seem to believe, Ms. Brazile, that we’re merely angry our candidate “lost.” On the contrary… What we are angry about, Ms. Brazile, is voter fraud, vote theft and voter intimidation; we’re livid over the fact that an inexperienced candidate who did not win the popular vote and has his pledged delegate lead due to a bunch of disputed caucuses (most of them in red states, which will never vote in favor of him or any other Democrat in the fall) has been exalted over the better-qualified, better-vetted, more experienced and brilliant Hillary R. Clinton.  The one who, as you might recall, actually won the popular vote? Actually won three primaries down the stretch by two-to-one margins?…

What I’m tired of, Ms. Brazile, is the hypocritical arrogance of the Democratic Party and the DNC in particular.  You rigged the game in favor of your chosen candidate, Obama, and we know this election season smelled to high heaven; I am not about to forget that, and I will never forgive it, either… Rest assured, Ms. Brazile — we will continue to resist your call for “unity,” because there can be no “unity” when there is no honesty.

Interesting Strategy (by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville)
Everyone’s vote is their own to do with what they will. No one reflexively owes the Democrats anything… [F]or a lot of people, the last 8 years have made them more resolved to vote their principles, rather than compromising them to try to prevent the worst from happening, because we’ve seen the Democrats act as spineless enablers as or more frequently than as a vibrant and principled opposition. That effectively makes lots of progressive Democratic voters feel like tacit supporters of policies they despise—and if compromising one’s ethics buys the same result as not, why compromise? Increasingly, there is no good answer to that question.
So, how is this get in line or else treatment of Clinton supporters working out?  See below.

Huffington Post: Clinton fundraisers gave less than $20,000 to Obama in June (On Politics, USA Today)
The Huffington Post reports that “Hillraisers” — 311 big-dollar fundraisers for Hillary Clinton — personally contributed less than $20,000 to Democrat Barack Obama last month.

Monday: Save the Party. Nominate Hillary. (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
The decision to maneuver Hillary out of nomination is going to destroy the party… Every voter in the states where Clinton won decisive primary victories should be outraged by the party swindling them out of their money and their vote.  And if the party thinks we’re just going to roll over and get with the program, they’ve got another thing coming. They will either have to accept a nomination for Hillary Clinton in Denver or they will suffer the consequences in November. If Barack Obama is really the people’s choice, he has nothing to fear from the delegates putting Hillary’s name in nomination for president at the convention in Denver.

A Netroots Crossroads? (by Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft)
What the Netroots needs is some idea of what they are about. Right now, let’s face it, they are about nothing but being a mirror image of the Right blogs. Obama - right or wrong… I have long been (at one time my view was pretty universally held in the Netroots) an advocate of a politics of contrast and definition and for negative branding of the Republican Party. Obama’s Post Partisan Unity Schtick utterly rejects these approaches… I do not think it is possible to go back to arguing for a contrast approach after you have unquestioningly cheered on the candidate who stood for the exact opposite of it. The Netroots has been coopted. It is now an effective cheering section for the Democratic Party. But little else.
And they gave it up voluntarily.  For nothing in return.

BTD: Progressive Blogosphere 1.0’s Virtue Takes A Vacation (by campskunk at Alegre’s Corner)
Look at all the principled positions which had to be reversed in order to support Obama.
1) The disproportionate influence of superdelegates in the Democratic nomination…
2) The disefranchisement of FL and MI, once it became apparent that Hillary would win these states…
3) Universal coverage healthcare - once Obama came out with a half-assed, non-universal health care plan, the Obamazoids either a) claimed that it was “virtually” universal, or b) got on the individual rights bandwagon and claimed that mandates were government coercion. Obama and the Obamazoids attacked universal health care - a core Democratic value - from the right.

Obama Won’t ‘Rubber Stamp’ Military Decisions (ABC News)
After meeting with top U.S. military commanders and members of the Iraqi government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., today said his opposition to the surge and support for a firm timetable for the withdrawal of troops hasn’t changed. In an exclusive interview, Obama told “Nightline” that if elected president, “we’re going to begin to phase out our troops.” Obama is seeing a vastly different Iraq than the one he saw when he last visited more than two years ago. Violence and American casualties are way down, and the streets of Baghdad are bustling again…. Still, when asked if knowing what he knows now, he would support the surge, the senator said no.

Foreign Policy Expert McCain: “Iraq-Pakistan Border” Extremely Dangerous (by SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars)
How many more of these will it take before we finally dispense with the idea that John McCain is some sort of foreign policy genius who is uniquely qualified to be commander-in-chief? Today on “Good Morning America,” John McCain was asked whether he agreed with Barack Obama when he says the situation in Afghanistan is “precarious and urgent.” In predictable fashion, McCain downplays the significance of the deteriorating security situation there. In perhaps less predictable fashion, he magically redraws the borders of two Middle Eastern countries.

Obama and McCain Clueless on Afghanistan (by Larry Johnson, former CIA, former State Department, and a security expert, at No Quarter)
The ignorance and stupidity displayed by both aspiring presidential candidates when it comes to devising a policy for Afghanistan is shocking. Apparently, McCain has adopted the “policy” of Barack… Both come to [the] crazy prescription [of taking troops from Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan]… But is the problem in Afghanistan caused by too few troops? Not necessarily. The fundamental problem is there is no single chain of command and strategic focus… Then there is the terrain. The mountains and valleys of Afghanistan limit ground and air assets. We enjoy far less freedom of movement in Afghanistan. All of this means that any troops we deploy to Afghanistan require different training and different tactics… [N]either Obama or McCain seemed to have grasped the nuances and difficulties facing us in putting together a credible, sustainable campaign to defeat the Taleban.

Andrea Mitchell says Obama gave fake interviews in the Middle East (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
On Hardball [Monday], … Andrea Mitchell … said a very odd thing about his “message management” as some footage of Obama played in the background on MSNBC. “…Let me say something about his message management. He didn’t have reporters with him. He didn’t have a press pool. He didn’t do a press conference while he  was on the ground either on Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in, you’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questioned by the military and what some would call fake interviews because they’re not interviews with a journalist so there’s a real press issue here.”

Obama ban: What not to wear where? (Politico)
AMMAN, Jordan—An Obama campaign ban on green clothing during the candidate’s visits to Israel and Jordan has created wide puzzlement among observers of the Middle East… An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with the militant Palestinian group Hamas. But while the color does appear on Hamas banners, there is no particular symbolism to wearing green clothes, experts said… Mohamad Bazzi, a professor of journalism at New York University and former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday, called the instruction “very strange.”… Though the campaign’s other sartorial instructions – directing women to dress demurely – are fairly standard, Bazzi said he’d never heard it suggested before that journalists not wear green while traveling in the Middle East, an observation echoed by other reporters.

Bounce Max (by Pat Racimora at No Quarter)

[A]t the last minute, [Vietnam War hero Max] Cleland’s invitation [to an Obama fundraiser] was yanked from right under his wheelchair. Why? Well, it turns out that Max Cleland is a registered lobbyist. No, he has never lobbied in Washington. No, he does not represent a huge, greedy corporation. Cleland is a senior policy advisor for Tissue Regeneration Technologies, a health care company that …[sponsors] clinical trials as part of the Combat Wound Initiative at Walter Reed Army Medical center, testing the effectiveness of noninvasive technology on soft tissue and bone injuries sustained by American soldiers from blasts, penetrating fragments, and burns from IED’s….

Obama says he will not have anything to do with lobbyists. But does anyone with more than a handful of frontal cortex cells believe that dumping lobbyists will bring an end to influence peddling in Washington? Never mind that “Mr. Hope and Change” enlisted James A. Johnson, a former lobbyist now drawing scrutiny for his ties to subprime-mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corporation, as a member of his Vice Presidential vetting team. Obama has taken in huge sums of money from corporations and big business and, if you can believe Robert Novak, Obama has been holding closed meetings with undisclosed industry CEOs.

A Top Obama Fund-Raiser Had Ties to Failed Bank (Wall Street Journal)
For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire. Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family’s 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her — and perhaps to the campaign. Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. overnment investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company. Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.
See, this billionaire family wasn’t satisfied with the normal interest rates they could get in regular markets, so they decided to try to get even more.  That didn’t work out so well, did it?

McCain, Obama will appear at church forum mid-August (McClatchy)
WASHINGTON — John McCain and Barack Obama will appear back to back at a forum on religious faith at a California mega-church shortly before they accept their parties’ presidential nominations.

Obama’s record on women and on abortion in 2007 and 2008 (by Truth Partisan at Corrente)
In 2007 and 2008, Obama didn’t vote or voted present, on four of the top five bills and amendments on abortion and on women. Top bills and amendments were selected by Project Vote Smart. For voting present or not voting on four of the top four bills and amendments in 2007, Obama received a 100% positive rating in 2007 from NARAL Pro-choice America.

McCain Does Want to Drill in Your Toilet and NPR Thinks This Makes Sense (by Dean Baker)
NPR reported on the debate over increased drilling. It presented the comments of Ohio Senator George Voinovich, that the country should drill everywhere that it could find oil. Of course, it is possible that oil can be anywhere, including our toilets. However, realistically we know that the any amount of oil that might lie in our collective toilets is too trivial to have any impact on world prices. We also know that the amount of oil that could potentially lie in the offshore areas in which Senator McCain and other Republicans want to drill is too trivial to have any impact on world prices. However, NPR managed to mislead its listeners this morning by implying that increased drilling in protected areas would lead to lower prices.

Lots more really good stuff at MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com