The first thing we do, let’s kill all the economists

Great minds think alike. George Bush, Friday: “And I’m -- if you believe these economists, if they had three hands they’d say, on the one hand, on the other hand, and then on the third hand.” Hillary Clinton, today, asked to name even one economist who supports the idea of a gas-tax holiday: “Well I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”

Stoopid economists.

Headline of the day, emailed in by an Alert Reader: “Qatar Rulers Pay £26m for Bacon.” In fact, a painting by Francis Bacon (that the headline doesn’t also mention a £10m Damien Hirst sculpture – the Qataris are way, way over-paying – strongly suggests that the bacon mislead in the headline was intentional.)

Speaking of intentionally misleading, to fill up a slow Sunday, here are some more London Review of Books personals. (More of my LRB faves here.)

The low-resolution personal ad. When viewed from a distance it looks amazing, but up close it’s pretty poor. Man, 35, Gwent. Box no. 07/03

Women to 35 – you’re all invited to the party in my pants. It’s bring a bottle and, please, remember to remove your shoes before you step on the carpet – mum’s just had it cleaned. Stupid man, 33. Box no. 07/05

In France, it’s just a kiss. In England it’s just a muffin. In Belgium it’s just a waffle. In Germany it’s just a shepherd. You know what I’m saying. Man, 41. Box no. 07/06

Part biopic, part utopian vision, all epic of redemption amidst the trials of mankind. This personal ad has everything. Woman, 38. Only one conviction for nuisance calling. Box no. 07/07

England’s best hope for Olympic gold if ever there was an Olympic event for wearing plaid and brogues. Man, 56. Not a snappy dresser but extremely well-endowed. Box no. 07/10

As it happens, 11.34 am two weeks next Friday is the first day of the rest of my life. Nuclear physicist (M, 40) on the brink of time-travelling break-through. Write now to box no 07/11 but be aware that by the time I reply you will be 98 whereas I will have aged just twelve hours. You may have a good-looking grand-daughter by then though. Give her my number and tell her to look me up. Box no. 07/11

I’m still Jenny from the block. Which is odd because yesterday I was Keith from the allotment. Keith from the allotment, 49. You can call me Jenny.

Some men can only be loved by their own mother. Not me, I’ve got Mr Snuggley Panda. Male, 36, and Mr Snuggley Panda, also 36

I hope you’re sitting down while reading because this advert might just excite your socks off! Man, 37.

Don’t look back in anger, try condescension instead. Look sideways with schadenfreude and upward in revulsion. Serial divorcee (F, 53) has you in her sights next with a raft of sarcastic barbs and derisive statements, but a photo sent to box no. 09/02 along with a list of trite achievements that I’ll remain aloof and casually disdainful about should make the whole process slightly less painful by confronting the inevitable head on. Box no. 09/02

Newly divorced man, 46, looking for a woman to 50 who doesn’t conclude sexual intercourse with Queen Elizabeth I’s rebuke to Cardinal Wolsley. Box no. 09/03

Man, 41. Not the sharpest sandwich at the picnic. Box no. 07/01

Pansy-gate

He turned on, he tuned in, and he has finally dropped out: Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who invented LSD, and experienced the first “bad trip,” in 1943, has died at the age of 102. That’s 873 in freak-out years.

On McNeil-Lehrer, I saw the governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley, introduce Hillary Clinton, saying “this lady...” (I think he almost said “this little lady”) “...right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.” But did she reject and denounce Easley for using an epithet offensive to members of the Pansy-American community? She did not. Will anyone in the media ask her about his Archie Bunkerism? They will not.

(I am only able to grab that moral high ground so beloved of bloggers because I decided yesterday not to make a joke about Obama and Rev. Wright only fighting because the make-up sex is so good.)

Before I get myself into any more trouble: baby rhino blogging! Yay!

Hillary and Jeanette

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Montana and made an ill-informed mention of Jeanette Rankin, who Montana elected as the first woman member of Congress in 1916. Hillary said it just goes to show that men really will vote for a woman, since women didn’t have the vote in 1916. Except that women had in fact won the vote in Montana in a referendum (of male voters, natch) two years before. This is not just a minor gaffe about Montanan history but a gap in Clinton’s knowledge which illuminates a few things about her.


First, Clinton is a female senator, and an aspirant to be the first female president, who evidently in all these years has never been curious enough about the first woman in Congress to learn more than a tiny bit about her. Hillary doesn’t really consider herself part of a feminist history, doesn’t recognize that she stands on the shoulders of those who came before. She thinks she got where she is entirely by her own efforts.

Clinton evidently thinks, wrongly, that women in the US received the vote in one fell swoop with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In the same way as she remarked that while the civil rights movement may have organized and agitated, the real victories for African-Americans only came when Lyndon Johnson decided to push for them, so the decades of hard struggle by women to achieve political rights, including state-by-state (and territory by territory) suffrage campaigns like the one that Rankin helped lead to victory in Montana but many more which did not succeed, are completely disregarded and unacknowledged by Hillary, if she even knows about them. She does not understand how much organized, grass-roots effort over many many years it really takes to effect any sort of change in this hide-bound country; the only lesson she really learned from the failure of her health-care plan in the 1990s was that she, Hillary Clinton, did not have enough power. Her comments last week (this week?) denigrating party activists suggest that, like Bush, who remarked that “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections,” she too has an impoverished view of the day-to-day role of the citizenry in democratic governance. Not that Obama is much better in this regard: when he leads chants of YES WE CAN, he does not mean to empower his supporters to do anything beyond getting him into the White House and then dispersing to their respective homes to quietly await the flow of manna and all things good from his capable hands.

Considering that Rankin is also known for her principled pacifism, having cast one of the few votes against American entry into World War I – which was also her first vote in Congress, and therefore the first vote cast by a woman in Congress – and the only vote against war with Japan in 1941 (she only served two terms in Congress: she was not re-elected in 1918, though mostly for reasons other than her position on the war, and not elected again until 1940; crappy timing, really), had Hillary known more about her, she might never have brought up her name in the first place.

Political calculus

After Hillary released another scare-tactic ad yesterday, Obama put out his own ad, which asks the question, “Who in times of challenge will unite us, not use fear and calculation to divide us?”

With words like “calculation” and “divide,” Obama is clearly playing on Americans’ fear of math in general and long division in particular. Have you no shame, sir, have you no shame?

Democratic debate: The bitter, bitter debate

Transcript.

One more debate after we were promised we were done with debates. I don’t know about the poor people in Pennsylvania, but I’m sure feeling bitter right about now.

Hillary notes that they are debating in Philadelphia where the founding documents of America were written – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the recipe for cream cheese. But “Neither of us were included in those original documents.” However, John McCain was included in those original documents. By name.

Neither of them will commit to a “Dream Ticket.”


Obama is bitter about having to explain again why he said people are bitter. Although the word he is using now for voters’ feelings is “frustration.”

Hillary defended people clinging to religion and “their traditions, like hunting and guns”.

Speaking of clinging to religion, they then talked interminably about Rev. Wright yet again. Little George Stephanopoulos asked Obama a couple of times if Wright is as patriotic as he is. Hillary said the whole Wright thing “deserves further exploration.” Oh yes, we so needed to have another debate.

Then it’s another re-airing of the Bosnia story. Hillary says she’s embarrassed about, you know, lying, but that it was “a very dangerous area” and the American soldiers in Bosnia “were totally in battle gear.”


Then someone on tape asks Obama why he doesn’t wear a flag pin: “I want to know if you believe in the American flag.” Charlie Gibson adds that not wearing one is a “major liability” for him (according to Clinton and McCain’s advisers). Then Little George asked about some English professor Obama has met who used to be in the Weather Underground. Hillary chimed in with some concern trolling, saying “this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.” Obama responded that Bill Clinton pardoned a couple of Weather Undergroundlings, so there.


Gibson asks both candidates how they can possibly withdraw from Iraq when Petraeus says they shouldn’t; “Are you essentially saying, ‘I know better than the military commanders here’?” Hillary pretends that the only problem in Iraq is that the Maliki government “will not accept responsibility for its own future” as long as the US is giving it a blank check. Obama reminds Gibson that the president is actually above Col. Combover in the chain of command. He says that the military has had a “bad mission” but has performed that bad mission “brilliantly.”

Would they extend the nuclear umbrella over Israel? Obama: an attack on Israel would be “unacceptable.” Hillary: let’s extend the “umbrella of deterrence” to the entire region! She would “begin diplomatic engagement” with Iran by not talking with its president, ever. “But I would have a diplomatic process that would engage him.”


Stephanopoulous: “Let me turn to the economy. That is the number one issue on Americans’ minds right now.” Which must be why he’s getting to it a full half an hour after the exhaustive discussion of the flag lapel pin issue.

I’m going to be hypocritical here and skip the boring economic stuff myself. They would both raise taxes on the rich, and maybe raise the capital gains tax, despite Charlie Gibson’s earnest but completely fallacious insistence that cutting the capital gains tax always increases revenue from it.

What will you do about high gas prices? Hillary: I’d investigate them.


Gibson: This has been “a fascinating debate.” Could not be more wrong.

Clinton, Obama and the clingers to religion

Yesterday Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a non-debate, responding to questions one after the other at a “Compassion Forum,” at some place called Messiah College, which I guess is a trade school for messiahs. McCain didn’t show.

Hillary again accused Obama of “mak[ing] comments that do seem elitist, out of touch and, frankly, patronizing,” even going out of her way to include the information that he made the comments in... gasp... San Francisco. Obama, of course, backpedaled furiously; some of his best friends are God-botherers.


Hillary said that in the past, Gore and Kerry were falsely portrayed as disdainful of the proles, therefore bringing this up is “a legitimate political issue.” That is, because people mischaracterized Gore and Kerry, it’s legitimate for her to mischaracterize Obama. Or something like that.

DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT SHIT IN THE WOODS? “I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the holy spirit was there with me as I made a journey. It didn’t have to be a hard time. You know, it could be taking a walk in the woods. It could be watching a sunset.”


Asked if life begins at conception, Obama said he had no idea. Hillary made the completely meaningless statement that “I believe that the potential for life begins at conception.” (Update: I phrased that badly. I meant that she gave an anodyne statement that the most ardent pro-choice or anti-abortion supporter could agree with. The question was designed to get at the philosophy underlying her views on abortion, and she gave them a basic biological fact.)

The questioners represented different religions:

Q: As-Salamu Alaykum, Senator Clinton.

CLINTON: Thank you.

That just strikes me as kind of funny. Just me? Okay.

Asked why God lets the innocent suffer, she said she “can’t wait” to ask him. Yeah, do that and report back to us, wouldja?


On abortion, Obama insisted that there is “common ground.” Just keep thinking that, Barack, and see where it gets you. He said finding that common ground “requires us to acknowledge that there is a moral dimension to abortion.” I presume that means acknowledging that abortion is morally icky and at least a little shameful, which I for one do not intend to “acknowledge.” He said “in this difficult situation it is a woman’s responsibility and choice to make in consultation with her doctor and her pastor and her family.” No, choice is a right which inheres in the woman and the woman alone. She can make it in consultation with a Magic Eight Ball if she wants, that’s what being a right means.

He brought up the fact that he believes in evolution without even being asked.


He also believes that Al Gore won the 2000 election (not that that has anything to do with evolution; quite the reverse, actually). I think he’s said that before, but isn’t it remarkable that the possible next president is willing to say that his predecessor was not legitimately elected? And it’s not even a blip.

Wherein is revealed what shows that Hillary Clinton is human

In Idaho, a man running for US Senate changed his name to “Pro-Life” (I guess it’s one of those hyphenated last names like Courtney Cox-Arquette), and the state legislature reacted with emergency legislation to require that his “traditional name” be included on the ballot as well. Reminds me of when a drag queen named Sister Mary Boom Boom ran for, I believe, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in 1980 I think, and a bill to force candidates to use normal names was put forward by Supervisor Quentin Kopp.

Hillary Clinton about her “mis-statement” about having flown into Bosnia under fire: “So I made a mistake. That happens. It shows I’m human - which for some people is a revelation.” True: robots never remember being shot at when they have not actually been shot at, but humans make that “mistake” all the time. For example, I remember being disappointed by something last night, but was it finding out that The Daily Show was a repeat, or was there a mortar attack on my living room? I just can’t be sure.

What I find amusing is her attempt to turn this back on the people bringing it up, as if people pointing out her lies is an illegitimate, under-handed attack, like Samantha Powers calling her a monster. Political jiu-jitsu at its lamest.

She also claims it was the first time she “mis-spoke” in 12 or so years.

Five down, 100 to go

Patrick Cockburn has an overview of the Iraq War, five years young this week! Sample: “The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated.”

McCain says the American military will not only be occupying Iraq for 100 years, but Afghanistan as well. So pack a couple of changes of underwear.

Caption contest, Hillary at a St Patrick’s Day parade in Pittsburgh:

Hillary the monster

Obama aide Samantha Power has been fired for saying that Hillary Clinton is a “monster.”

Of course Hillary is not a monster....

But if she were a monster,

more at twiigs.com...

You may vote for another form of monster, or explain your answer, in comments.

Democratic Debate: There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. No there isn’t. Yes there is.

Condi was in Beijing yesterday, and had a press conference with China’s foreign minister. A China Central Television reporter asked her a question using the phrase “Taiwan’s so-called referendum” three times. She didn’t take the hint and use that phrase in her reply, but did say that “this referendum is not going to help anyone and, in fact, it shouldn’t be held.”

Okay, I thought I had more from that presser, but I guess I don’t.

So it’s on to the last, one can but hope, primary debate of 2008, in which Tim Russert made that Chinese reporter look good by comparison.

Transcript.

Pictures below illustrate the many hand gestures of the Democratic Party and of Paraguayan presidential candidates Pedro Fadul and Blanca Ovelar, who also debated last night, just because my news photo search also turned up pictures from that debate.

The first part was devoted to health insurance, sixteen full minutes as Bryan Williams pointed out aggrievedly, sounding as if he’d been forced to sit through a four-hour speech by Fidel Castro.

Both candidates said “health care” when they actually meant private health insurance. Only a public employee who doesn’t have to deal with a private insurance company would consider the two to be synonymous. (That reminds me that I never finished writing a post I started a couple of weeks ago on Clinton and Obama’s insurance plans; it wasn’t as intellectually coherent as I liked, and every other sentence was “Fucking Blue Cross just raised my fucking premiums twenty-five fucking percent!”) Hillary: “You know, for example, it’s been unfortunate that Senator Obama has consistently said that I would force people to have health care whether they could afford it or not.” So you’re not planning to make people have appendectomies against their will? Good to know. Obama: “Every expert has said that anybody who wants health care under my plan will be able to obtain it.”


Side-pointy

Hillary insisted that many of the uninsured can afford it, they’re just “young people who think they’re immortal.” I guess she just lost the young-people-who-think-they’re-immortal vote, although I suspect Obama already had a lock on that.

Obama: “With respect to the young people, my plan specifically says that up until the age of 25 you will be able to be covered under your parents’ insurance plan, so that cohort that Senator Clinton is talking about will, in fact, have coverage.” Except for the poor, forgotten orphans.


Side-pointy, up-pointy

Hillary complained that she was being picked on while Obama was being coddled: “Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time.”

Obama said the Clinton campaign has “constantly sent out negative attacks on us, e-mail, robocalls, flyers, television ads, radio calls” (radio calls?) (Update: oh, I get it, he means call-ins to talk radio), but “we haven’t whined about it”. Unless you count what he just, you know, said.



Clinton: “I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning. I didn’t have a public position on it, because I was part of the administration, but when I started running for the Senate, I have been a critic”. So we’ll just have to take her word about having been a critic from the very beginning? No, wait: “I think David Gergen was on TV today remembering that I was very skeptical about it.” So that settles that to our perfect satisfaction.

Obama: “we can’t shy away from globalization.”


Double pointy

Clinton says it’s unfair to compare Obama’s 2002 speech against the forthcoming Iraq war with her record in the Senate voting to authorize it because “Many people gave speeches against the war then... And when he came to the Senate, he and I have voted exactly the same. We have voted for the money to fund the war until relatively recently. So the fair comparison was when we both had responsibility, when it wasn’t just a speech but it was actually action, where is the difference?” Yah, his principles are just as compromised as mine! We’re both sell-outs! Vote for me!

Obama’s response: “Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is, who’s making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?” See, that metaphor totally explains away his votes for Iraq war funding.


Me and my loud tie are crushing your head!

Russert asked Obama about Farrakhan’s announcement that he supported Obama for president. Obama said that he hadn’t asked for that support, could hardly stop the man supporting him, and added, “You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible.” Which was funny, because nobody had said anything yet about Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. Russert then proceeded to repeat every single anti-Semitic comment Minister Farrakhan has ever made in his entire life, as though Obama hadn’t just said he denounced them, then accusingly asked him, “What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?” This forced Obama to go on at length about how Jews in Chicago love him and about his unwavering, unequivocal, unthinking support of Israel, whose “security is sacrosanct”, and “the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.” However, I don’t believe he assured Jewish-Americans that he was not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness. Let the attack ads commence.


Side handy, shrug handy

Hillary, who also loves her some Jews, informed Obama that “there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting.” Also between disavowing and rebuffing, objurgating and spurning, condemning and repudiating, excoriating and abjuring.

Obama rejected (and denounced) this lexicological specificity: “I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. ... But if the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce,’ then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.”


Boob-covery, pointy

Obama also rejected and denounced the National Journal’s rating of him as the most liberal senator. Then he crossed over into that monomaniacal place every politician reaches sooner or later, and started speaking of himself in the third person: “And part of the reason I think a lot of people have been puzzled, why is it that Senator Obama’s campaign, the supposed liberal, is attracting more Independent votes than any other candidate in the Democratic primary, and Republican votes as well, and then people are scratching their head? It’s because people don’t want to go back to those old categories of what’s liberal and what’s conservative.” Really?

more at twiigs.com...

Russert asked Hillary, “What can you tell me about the man who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor?” Dude, do your own research. Google, Wikipedia.

Inherent in the words “who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor” is the (absolutely correct) assumption that the actual Russian elections do not matter, an assumption Hillary failed to remark upon. It will be interesting to see if there is a reaction from Russia.

After she went on for a bit about the man who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor, the state of the Russian polity, etc, Russert asked the question I was wondering, “Do you know his name?” She fumbled through several attempts to pronounce Medvedev, finally saying, “whatever.” We’ll never know if Obama knew his name.

(Incidentally, I didn’t actually watch most of the debate, so I’m not sure if it’s a transcript error that has Obama saying he was getting “filibuttered.” But filibuttered is my new favorite word.)

Obama said that if Russian troops join Serbs in attacking Kosovo (this was Russert’s scenario), he’d get NATO to do something or other. He added that “We have recognized the country of Kosovo as an independent, sovereign nation... And I think that that carries with it, then, certain obligations to ensure that they are not invaded.” Recognizing a country requires that, Barry? Because we’ve recognized 150, 180 of the suckers.

Hillary: “Well, obviously, I’ve said many times that, although my vote on the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq was a sincere vote, I would not have voted that way again.” So after 2002 you gave up the whole “sincerity” thing because it just wasn’t working out for you, is that what you’re saying, Hills?

Democratic debate: Change you can xerox

Transcript.

Obama: “The problem we have is that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die.” Yes, but on the other hand, it’s a place where crappy ideas go to live.

Hillary wants a “trade time-out.”

Pointy

As with her vote for the Iraq war authorization, Hillary says she was totally snookered when she voted for the border fence: “I think when both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense, it would be considered. But as with so much, the Bush administration has gone off the deep end”. What she wants now: “smart fencing.”

Obama responded well to the line Clinton has recently been directing at his supporters, “Let’s get real.” “The implication,” he said, “is that the people who’ve been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional.” Actually, the implication is that they’re naive, don’t know how things are done in the real world, and are easily distracted by shiny objects. Which, admittedly, a lot of them are. The thing is, the people she’s insulting are not just Obama supporters, they are American citizens who exercised their constitutional rights in the manner they saw fit. That’s the basis of representative democracy, so politicians are kind of expected to pretend to have a bit more respect it.

It’s also not good as a form of persuasion. She’s not going to win over people who are leaning towards Obama by telling them “Let’s get real” with all the disdain of a parent addressing a son who has just informed them he wants to major in dance.

Pointy

Obama does pretend to respect the voters. He pretends the crap out of it. Indeed, he pretends that he is leading some sort of movement, through the power of his pretty, pretty oratory, which will “inspire the American people to get involved in their government and ... inspire them to go beyond the racial divisions and the religious divisions and the regional divisions that have plagued our politics for so long”. He never says anything about how the American people will get involved in their government after they vote for him in November. In the words of Stephen Colbert in the first episode of The Colbert Report, “Your voice will be heard, in the form of my voice.”

Pointy pointy

Clinton pushed the charge of plagiarism, a charge so thin that it will convince many people that he must be practically perfect because there is nothing more substantial that she can say against him: “Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. And, you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.” You can see that her candidacy isn’t going to be about words, because the phrase “change you can Xerox” doesn’t actually mean anything.

Asked if her claim that “One of us is ready to be commander in chief” implied in a, you know, subtle way, that Obama isn’t, she refused to repeat it in front of him. “Well, I believe that I am ready and I am prepared. And I will leave that to the voters to decide.” Will you? We have your permission? How fucking gracious.

How is she ready and prepared? “What I mean is that, you know, for more than 15 years, I’ve been honored to represent our country in more than 80 countries”. In the same way that Laura Bush just represented the US in five African countries?

As you can tell, it’s been too many debates for me, and I am just sick of the both of them. I am tired with the little bits of debate theatrics, as when Barack pretends to be jotting something down when Hillary is speaking. Once, she turned her head a little bit towards him at a moment when he was looking at her; he jerked his head away abruptly as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and started writing. What do you think he writes? He’s left-handed, by the way. I seem to remember that an unusual number of presidents have been left-handed.


He also has this aristocratic looking-down-his-nose thing. Just saying.

Democratic Debate: Hillary would be on anyone’s shortlist

Transcript.

Sitting next to each other, Barack and Hillary look like the anchors of the local 11:00 news.

Audience members included Meathead, Josh Lyman, Annie Hall, Ugly Betty, Stevie Wonder, Pierce Brosnan, Leonardo diCaprio....

Obama says he was friends with Hillary before the campaign, and will be after the campaign. But now, I believe that implies, he’s gonna eviscerate her.


Hillary: “Just by looking at us, you can tell we are not more of the same.” And then we open our mouths... (Later: actually, this was the dullest debate yet, and seriously deficient as blog fodder. Some of that in a good way, as when they were genuinely discussing differences in their health insurance plans, but mostly they know that neither of them is changing many minds before Tuesday, and are looking beyond it to the general election.)


Obama says he brings up Hillary’s flip–flopping on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses only to show how difficult the issue is.

Hillary on her Iraq war vote: “coercive diplomacy” is cool, she likes “coercive diplomacy,” uses it on Bill all the time, but “what no one could have fully appreciated...” Who is she, all of a sudden, Condi? “...is how obsessed this president was with this particular mission”. Blitzer asks if she’s saying that she was naive in trusting Bush and the crowd, possibly led by Diane Keaton, boos loudly.


Speaking of presidents on a mission, Hillary, when asked how she’d “control” Bill when they were back in the White House when she sure can’t do it on the campaign trail, gave out one of those guffaws, possibly at the thought of Bill, naked, tied up, with a hood over his head, thinking he’s in for some kinky sex, but actually on his way to Guantanamo. Or maybe to that “Lost” island. Then says she doesn’t want the campaign to be about Bill but the issues.


Barack, would you make Hillary your running mate? Astonishingly, he refuses to answer the inane question. He does say that Hillary would be “on anyone’s short list”. Isn’t that cute, it’s nine months before the election and he’s already drawing up death lists.

Yes, we can

I’m perfectly content with Obama’s wanting to run as a “candidate who happens to be black” rather than as a “black candidate,” but... the crowds at his victory rally were evidently chanting “Race doesn’t matter!” Er, guys, hello? It kinda does. Still. Sorry.

They were also chanting “Yes, we can!” a rather perfectly emblematic motto for Obama because it is a message of optimism and hope that we can do, er, something that it never quite gets around to specifying.


The Clinton people, who do think that race matters, if only because so few African-Americans in SC voted for her, are quietly briefing reporters that Obama only won because there was such a high turnout among black voters, as if that were some sort of dirty trick.

Democratic Debate: I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes

I didn’t watch, just read the transcript (part 1, 2, 3), but I thought Obama came off whiny when he complained that Hillary and Bill were both attacking him and it wasn’t fair. “Well, I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes.” Barry: Hillary’s the one with the pearls.


Later, he is asked if Bill Clinton was the first black president. Says he would “have to, you know, investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilities.” Hillary says that could be arranged. At least then Obama would probably be able to tell them apart.

Hillary later says, “I believe that this campaign is not about our spouses.” Yeah, but only because CNN didn’t allow the short guy with the hot spouse into the debate.

Obama notes that Hillary was a corporate lawyer on Wal-Mart’s board, she notes that he was lawyer for a slumlord.


Edwards rather neatly skewers Obama’s explanation for voting against a 30% limit on credit card interest:

EDWARDS: You voted against it because the limit was too high, is that what you just said?

OBAMA: That is exactly what I just said, John, because...

EDWARDS: So there’s no limit at all.

Obama explains that he voted “present” 130 times in the Illinois state senate because that’s how they do things in the Illinois state senate.

Hillary notes, “It is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.” She kinda has a point, but she was taking quite a risk that he wouldn’t bring up her circumlocutions about her vote authorizing the Iraq war. Which he didn’t.


I think I’m actually with Obama on not making it mandatory to get for-profit health insurance, but his explanation kind of sucks: “every expert that’s looked at this has said there is not a single person out there who’s going to want health care who will not get it under my plan.”

Favorite exchange:

EDWARD: Let me be really clear about that. It’s amazing now that being the white male...

OBAMA: You’re feeling all defensive about it, John. It’s all right, man.

EDWARDS: ... is different.

Obama says he is a proud Christian. He says D’s should go after the evangelical vote: “And when you don’t show up, if you’re not going to church, then you’re not talking to church folk.” I’m pretty sure they’re allowed out of the church from time to time. Also: folk?

I had a line about “carny folk,” but I thought better of it.

Edwards asks Hillary to take a pledge not to employ any corporate lobbyists in the White House. She says she doesn’t know. But “I’m independent and tough enough to be able to deal with anybody.” Isn’t that a well-expressed answer? The wrong answer, of course, but well-expressed.

Edwards responds that “When somebody gives you millions and millions of dollars, I think they expect something. I don’t think they’re doing it for nothing.” She says that trial lawyers are giving him lots of money. He says, “And what they expect from me is they expect me to stand up for democracy, for the right to jury trial, for the right for little people to be heard in the courtroom.” Rarely has the moral high ground been lost so fast and so ludicrously. Also: little people?


Final question: who would Martin Luther King endorse? On this, everyone is in agreement: Fred Thompson. Obviously.

Democratic debate: Is America ready for a president with a messy desk?

Democratic debate, in Nevada, with poor Dennis Kucinich losing a court case to force MSNBC to let him in, not 90 minutes before the start time.

Transcript.

Our pictures today illustrate the many hand gestures of the Democratic Party (except the last picture, which I couldn’t resist).

Obama is asked if what happened in New Hampshire was that people in the privacy of the voting booth were unwilling to vote for a black person. He said no, “you know, at any given moment, people are going to be making judgments based on who they think is best speaking to them about the urgent problems that they’re facing in this country.” I can understand his unwillingness to look like he’s whining about being victimized, but to deny the continuing salience of race in America is going rather too far in the other direction.


Later, Brian Williams asks him about those “Obama is a secret Muslim” emails. Obama says, “the American people are I think smarter than folks give them credit for.” Sure they are, Barry, sure they are.

Obama says that when he said Hillary was “likeable enough” during the last debate, he really meant to say that she was plenty likeable. Sorry, Barack, there’s no way to call Hillary likeable without sounding like it’s meant ironically. Can’t be done.


Edwards says he’s a fighter, that growing up in mill towns he had to literally fight to survive. Literally, huh?


Edwards says that his chief weakness is his powerful emotional response to the pain he sees around him.

Hillary says her chief weakness is that sometimes she gets impatient when people don’t understand what we can do to help each other, and this can come across as pushy.

Obama’s chief weakness is that he tends to lose papers and has a messy desk.


Questions for each other. Edwards: what do insurance and pharmaceutical companies expect for their donations? Obama: they’re inspired by my message. Wait, let me get the exact quote: “What happens is, is that you’ve got - if you’ve got a mid-level executive at a drug company or an insurance company who is inspired by my message of change, and they send me money, then that’s recorded as money from the drug or the insurance industry, even though it’s not organized, coordinated or in any way subject to the problems that you see when lobbyists are given money.” Okay, that’s less believable than when he said that no one voted against him on racial grounds or that Hillary is likeable.


Hillary will continue the Bush policy of punishing colleges that exclude military recruiters and ROTC. Those darn schools “disrespect” people who want to serve. Obama and Edwards would also punish them (Obama goes on about the disproportionate burden on poor and rural types, while Edwards is a little embarrassed and skips quickly to talking about veterans).


Everyone is weak to point of pathetic about guns, although Hillary is against “illegal guns.” Even Obama says “it is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot.” Er, why are blood sports so very important?


Obama says that we should make sure No Child Left Behind “is not a tool to punish people”. The very center of NCLB is high-stakes testing, which literally does not work if it is not a tool to punish people.


Edwards opposes building new nuclear power plants. I didn’t know that.


Plenty likeable:

I sure hope it’s not about race

In my last post, I should probably have mentioned that Bush’s speech in the UAE also included a fierce attack on Iran, which he called “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.” He went on, “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.” Everywhere? He said the US is “rallying our friends around the world” against Iran “to confront this danger before it is too late.” Too late? Define “too late.” After January 20, 2009, presumably.

He also said that democracy in the Middle East is perfectly compatible with hereditary leaders such as the sheik-president of the UAE and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who he is visiting next, just like Japan has an emperor and the US has the Bush dynasty.

On Meet the Press this morning, Hillary Clinton accused Barack Obama of playing the race card: “I don’t think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it’s not about race.” So neither gender nor race are relevant to American politics anymore, Hillary?

Asked about her judgment in voting for the Iraq war (which she still says was not a vote for preemptive war, although when Bush used that vote to start a preemptive war, I don’t recall her complaining), she snapped, “Judgment is not a single snapshot. Judgment is what you do across the course of your life.” Wow, that’s really the best you can do?

British political comedian Armando Iannucci finds himself less than impressed with Obama’s speeches (and with presidential campaign rhetoric in general): “Maybe it’s because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere. It declares that together we can do anything, but doesn’t mention any of the things we can do. It’s a perpetual tickle in the nose that never turns into a sneeze.”

The British government is thinking about putting organ donation on an “assumed consent” basis (opt-out rather than opt-in). What’s the most alarming headline you could put on that story? From the Indy: “PM Backs Removal of Body Parts Without Consent.”

Republican debate: If you tell a half-truth as if it is the full truth, then it can become an untruth

Hillary’s new theme is the contrast between talkers (Obama) and doers. This seems a little dangerous, since Bill Clinton was very much a talker and very much (ahem) a doer. Sometimes both at once, if I remember the Starr Report correctly.

Another day, another presidential debate (at least it was just one today), this time without Ron Paul, kept out by Fox. Missed the little guy. He and Dennis Kucinich, who was excluded from the ABC debate yesterday, should have held their own debate.


Romney explained that one of “the great lessons of Ronald Reagan” is that cutting taxes grows the economy.

Romney seriously got in Huckabee’s face, demanding to know if Arkansas’s taxes went up while he was governor. Huckabee dodged (rather ineptly) four times before admitting that they indeed went up, blaming a court order forcing the state to improve education. “You know, education is a good thing for kids,” he informed Romney. Also roads. “People want roads,” he informed Romney. Especially roads leading the hell out of Arkansas. Later, when Romney tried to question him again, the Huckster refused to talk to him any more, and looking rigidly straight ahead, said, “I believe I’ll let Chris [Wallace] be the moderator here.”


Romney finds it “kind of offensive” that D’s are attacking corporations which are creating jobs (in yesterday’s debate, he demanded of McCain, “Don’t turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys”).

Giuliani said that R’s are better than D’s at getting people out of poverty, and that they just need to tell poor people that, and to do so in as condescending a way as possible. For example, as mayor, “I would go into the neighborhoods where I was being castigated for work fair and I would say to them, ‘I’m doing workfare because I love you more. I care about you more.’” He says that the proof of his effectiveness in getting people out of poverty was that when he left office, a lot fewer people were receiving welfare. Quod erat demonstrandum.

McCain on Bin Laden: “I know how to get him, and I will get him.” Asked later to elaborate on how he’d “get him,” Mickey C said he’d do it by expanding intelligence capabilities and by making it the top priority. That’s so crazy it just might work!


Huckabee wants the border fence built “with American labor and American materials.”

Huckabee commits heresy: “Even Ronald Reagan can make mistakes” (on giving amnesty to illegal aliens).

There was a lot of talk about the relative merits of a senator or a governor becoming president, especially in foreign policy. Giuliani, who was neither, cited his experience in, oh, what was that event again? And that “a Saudi prince handed me a $10 million check and wanted me to use it as a criticism of American foreign policy, I handed that check back to him and told him what to do with it”. See? a born diplomat. Also, he threw Castro and Arafat out of the UN’s 50th anniversary celebration, so don’t say he has no foreign policy experience.


McCain said he never heard Romney criticizing Rumsfeld. That’s because I was a governor, replied Romney, adding that he thought there were intelligence failures in Iraq. For example, not realizing that Iraqis didn’t want to be invaded. “There were some who said there would be dancing in the streets when we came into Baghdad, and there was, but for a short period of time.” He added that “We were understaffed by a dramatic amount.” “Understaffed”? I believe the military have their own term, Mr. CEO. The Trader Joe’s I went to a couple of days ago, that was understaffed.

The Huck repeated that Guantanamo is “too darn good,” so he wants to shut it down, and it’s not because of what the world thinks, “I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.”

The Huckster’s “vertical leadership” thing is really beginning to irritate me. “[P]eople are looking for a positive
president who leads not so much horizontally — left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican — but vertically, up, not down.” What? WHAT??

Huckabee on Romney’s attack ads: “if you tell a half-truth as if it is the full truth, then it can become an untruth.”

Ain’t it the, uh, truth.