So Much for Hillary Clinton's Word

Today's the day for the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting that will attempt to disenfranchize all of the voters who believed what the DNC (and the candidates including Hillary said) and stayed home because they were told the election wouldn't count.



Hillary Clinton, 10-11-07:

"I signed the DNC pledge not to campaign, not to spend money in any of the states that did not comply with the rules established by the DNC.... It's clear this election they're having is not going to count for anything."

Josh Marshall makes the same point I did above ...

If the DNC were now to turn around and decide to make these contests count after all, these non-participating voters would be disenfranchised no less than the people who did turn out would be if the DNC sticks to the rules and doesn't seat any of the delegates. The simple fact is that large numbers of people, acting on accurate knowledge and in good faith, decided that there wasn't a real primary being held in their state on the day in question and on that basis decided not to participate.

Now, the question is how can we really know how many people didn't show up because they were told it wasn't a real election? There is of course no way to arrive at a direct answer, at least no practical one. But this post by Eric Kleefeld, which on a statistical analysis by Gregory P. Nini and Glenn Hurowitz, makes a very strong statistical case that as many as one million voters in Florida and probably more than a half million voters in Michigan did not vote who otherwise would have if they had not believed that the results would not be counted. Take a look.

Fox News Jokes About Killing Obama

First it was Huckabee, then Hillary, and now it's just a big joke.

This is someone named Liz Trotta from earlier today who first referred to Obama as "Osama" and then laughed that they should both be killed. Here's a longer clip for more context. H/T Scarce.

Update: Liz Trotta apologizes:

That's exactly what needed to be said. Good for her. The Clinton campaign would do well to watch this. Words like "I am so sorry" and "I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I've offended." go a long way to diffuse this kind of thing.

Hillary's Asinine-ation Comment and Her Non-Apology Still Burns

I've resisted weighing in on Hillary Clinton's outrageous comment on Friday for several reasons. I was really angry about it and didn't want to say anything brash. Now, after two nights of sleeping on it, I have to say I'm even more pissed about it.

Here's her outrageous comment that started it all:

Here's what the NYT Editorial Board (the same one that endoesed her) calls her "tedious non-apology" apology for it:

And here's Keith Olbermann's must-see response.

Although I do think K.O. went a little overboard, I must say I do agree with almost every word, except for the pretense that it is "unforgivable." If she would have just apologized for it to all those that she so offended instead of offering excuses it would have made the world of difference to me, and I'm sure many others. She owed Obama and his family an apology just as much or more than the Kennedy family, and she needed to actually use the words "I'm sorry" or at least an "I apologize" without any excuses, not an "I regret if ..." That was just simply pathetic, and made me even more offended than before.

I'm not even going to get into the ramifications of her invoking "assassination" into this race except to say that since she had repeated the "assassination" comment more than a month earlier, her excuse that she said it this time because the "Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy" is yet another lie from her. She was saying it long before. That and I'll say that THE most important context that Hillary and her supporters obviously fail to grasp is the fact that Barack Obama is the most popular black leader this country has ever had who has not (I'm tempted to add a 'yet.' ugh.) been assassinated, and on that matter Keith Olbermann totally speaks for me. Please watch it if you already haven't.

I still have plenty to say about it though. I think it was hands down the most damaging campaign gaffe ever in our country's history, not just to her campaign but to the entire Democratic Party. It's her macaca moment only worse. Just her using 1968, the year of the riots in Chicago as an example for staying in, is telling.

Hillary Clinton was still a Goldwater Republican in 1968. Her own campaign website says she was "a Goldwater Girl." She interned for the war-hawk Republican congressman Melvin Laird that year and attended the Republican National Convention in Miami. She also claims to have been present in Chicago during the Democratic convention that year, saw the riots and 'smelled the teargas.' She wasn't inside the convention (back then even party officials couldn't necessarily get inside the convention, thus why they created the superdelegates, not to overturn the will of the voters, but to get party officials and Dem insiders into the convention), but somehow watching the riots helped turn her from a Republican into a Democrat.

So, no doubt she remembers full well the affect all that had on party unity. Of course, that year the Dems lost.

If she takes this all the way to the convention I seriously doubt there will be any unity, and that will be all her fault, not mine and everyone else who doesn't support her's. It will be the fault of Hillary Clinton and her doomsday-cult of supporters that seem hellbent on following her all the way to Jonestown Denver instead of doing what every other remotely sensible Democrat like I had to do when my candidate, John Edwards, had the decency to bow out as soon as it became apparent he couldn't win.

I can't wait to see what, if anything, the Sunday morning talkingheads have to say about it.

Update: Jake Tapper has more: The Fallacy of Clinton's 1968 Analogy

Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

Matt points to this site that provides answers to whether or not Barack Obama is a Muslim.

On that thought, here's another site that answers questions regarding a collection of quotes from two books written by Senator Barack Obama that have been circulating the internets.

HUGE Obama Campaign Turnout in Portland OR - 50 to 75,000

75,000 ATTEND OBAMA RALLY IN PORTLAND

Here's the dispatch from NBC/NJ's Athena Jones... Some 75,000 people flocked to Portland’s waterfront Sunday to watch Barack Obama speak, making it the biggest rally the campaign has held to date. Thousands stood on the lawn, dozens watched from boats and from the bridge stretching across the Willamette River. A few kayakers held their paddles and tried to keep their kayaks straight as they watched the candidate, who stood on a makeshift platform. ...(more)

YES, WE CAN!

Oliver North, Fox News' Appeasing & Emboldening Revisionistorian

After lauding Oliver North for his new book that apparently has more pictures than it does pages (No doubt North’s picture-book tells a much different story than the truth-laid-bare photos and accounts from an award-winning unembedded photojournalist like Dahr Jamail, but I digress), Sean Hannity asks North for his opinion on whether the President was right to compare the want to hold diplomatic talks with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis in the 1930’s.

Oliver North: "As you know, I’m the history guy at Fox News Channel, right? I’ve done this WWII series – 52 of our episodes about WWII. Had it not been for Chamberlain going to sit down with Adolf Hitler and try to cut a deal in Munich, WWII might never have happened, but it emboldened the dictator. That’s what the President said yesterday in Jerusalem. And a little reminder today, a shot across the bow here at the NRA, when John McCain got up and said, ‘You cannot have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions, with despots and dictators’ - dead on the mark."

For someone who should have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates for 35¢ a day, it's astounding he would dare touch this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn’t just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.

Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News’ “history guy” is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool.

Negotiation is not appeasement and there are zero parallels between simply opening up a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and the capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the Munich Agreement. It’s a ridiculous assertion, especially considering that the Bush administration itself has negotiated with Libya and North Korea, yet Iran’s previous offers to put everything, including its nuclear program, on the table and peacefully negotiate have been completely ignored even after Iran had been important ally of the coalition against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Oliver North, just like John McCain and other conservatives, don’t even have a clue what they are talking about. Apparently no one in this administration ever thought to ask Bush’s own Sec. of Defense, Neville Chamberlain Robert Gates, for his opinion:

We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them. If there’s going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander with them not feeling that they need anything from us.

Exactly.

The Arizona Republic: "McCain Not a Maverick"

McCain's home state paper:

In Tight Senate Votes, McCain Not a Maverick
When it matters the most, he seldom bucks his own party

Over the years, Sen. John McCain has publicly condemned Republican Party leaders and occasionally voted against the GOP on selected issues.

But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

The numbers are based on a review of Senate roll-call votes since 1999 that ended in a tie or were settled by one vote. The closest votes in that period included momentous, partisan-charged legislation, such as President Bush's tax cuts. More often, they were procedural votes on deal-breaking amendments to bills that would otherwise pass.

They partly reflect how rarely Senate votes come down to a single person, even though the chamber has been narrowly divided on party lines most of the past decade. But the votes also suggest that when McCain broke from Republicans, others often joined him, keeping the votes from being so close.

And his chronic absence in the Senate has seldom come in the most divided debates, the records show. ...(more)

Toast

I guess this is Hillary's reward for buddying up with Rupert Murdoch.

Why Rev Wright is No Big Deal To Obama Campaign

Lest we forget 1992.

Excerpts from "The War Room" documentary of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Well worth your time to check out the entire thing if you haven't seen it before.

Compared to what Bill Clinton faced - allegations, with incriminating tapes, of extramarital affairs and leaked DOD documents re: draft dodging - Wright is nothing.

Add to that this from Kos:

43 percent of respondents are concerned about the 71-year-old John McCain's close ties to George Bush.

36 percent have concerns about Clinton's political opportunism, and 27 percent are concerned about Bill Clinton being back in the White House.

34 percent have problems with Obama's "bitter" remarks and 32 percent give a damn about Jeremiah Wright.

As good as Bill Clinton's 92/96 team was/is, and they were/(are?), they are getting their asses handed to them by the Obama camp by every metric. Obama's campaign is the Clinton 92 team 2.0 + the Dean Machine 2.0.

I know I've never seen anything like it.

The Vast Clinton Wing Conspiracy

I took a haitus from posting here lately for a variety of reasons like a job change, but mostly just because the extended primary season has been sucking the life right out of me. Anywho, this news really pisses me off. Sidney Blumenthal, current Hillary Clinton campaign advisor and former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton, has been utilizing the VRWC for his sources to spread smears of Barack Obama.

Peter Dreier breaks the story at HuffPo:

Sidney Blumenthal Uses Former Right-Wing Foes To Attack Obama

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era....(read on)

So now we have proof (and read it. There's proof) that the Clinton machine is behind the smear attacks on Obama, from Wright to Ayers and on and on.

Still, I'm not worried. I firmly believe there is no possible way Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic nomination without fracturing the party, and if she does manage to steal it I hope for a schism. Let Rush's dreams come true for all I care if that happens. Perhaps we'll get a viable third party out of the deal in the long run and honestly I'm starting to think a one term McCain Presidency saddled by solid Dem majorities in both houses looks good compared to her.

It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.