Obama has won the nomination

[TheMercenary]

Choice Just Got Harder
OK, Obama’s all about hope, and Hillary’s all about experience. I’ve got that. But Obama’s got a crazy pastor. And Hillary just lied about her war record. Now, it turns out, Obama’s related to Brad Pitt, and Hillary’s related to Angelina Jolie.

Make the Olsons their love twins and you’ve got a supermarket tabloid cover. Hill’s also related to Madonna and Celine Dion and Alanis Morrisette, because she’s part French-Canadian. Hey, I thought you can’t be president unless you’re American. What’s with that? And what kind of name is “Alanis” anyway? Or “Celine” and “Madonna,” for that matter. Must run in the family. That explains “Chelsea.” But Obama’s related to both George Bushes and Dick Cheney. That can’t be good. And Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman, James Madison, Winston Churchill and Robert E. Lee. Starts to sound like Obama’s got the experience thing after all, sitting around that dinner table. All Hill did was marry a president. The New England Historic Genealogy Society forgot to mention Obama’s also related to some supposedly genocidal wackjob in Kenya, but who cares, because judging by recent history, just about everyone who’s anyone in Africa is related to some genocidal wackjob. The point is, this is turning into a really difficult race. I don’t know how people are supposed to make up their minds.

Another pressing question: Who will this tired old geezer who’s been playing the same song with different titles since 1978 endorse? Adoring fans hang on for the endorsement of the eminence grease.

Gotta decide, gotta decide. The Hero of Tuzla or the United Trinity Crackpot churchgoer? When will the bleeding stop? Sage physicians weigh in: Bleed the patient. Leeches and scalpel, please!

Meanwhile, what’s with this other old geezer who just acts normal?

If you want to escape all of this, there’s only one place to go. The North Pole. With gin and tonics.

http://www.julescrittenden.com/2008/...st-got-harder/

[lookout123]

Here is Carl Bernstein's article on Hillary's truthiness.

Hillary Clinton: Truth or Consequences
Posted: 10:14 AM ET
Hillary Clinton has many admirable qualities, but candor and openness and transparency and a commitment to well-established fact have not been notable among them. The indisputable elements of her Bosnian adventure affirm (again) the reluctant conclusion I reached in the final chapter of A Woman In Charge, my biography of her published last June:


“Since her Arkansas years [I wrote], Hillary Rodham Clinton has always had a difficult relationship with the truth… [J]udged against the facts, she has often chosen to obfuscate, omit, and avoid. It is an understatement by now that she has been known to apprehend truths about herself and the events of her life that others do not exactly share. ” [italics added]

As I noted:

“Almost always, something holds her back from telling the whole story, as if she doesn’t trust the reader, listener, friend, interviewer, constituent—or perhaps herself—to understand the true significance of events…”

The Bosnian episode is a watershed event, because it indelibly brings to mind so many examples of this tendency– from the White House years and, worse, from Hillary Clinton’s take-no-prisoners presidential campaign. Her record as a public person is replete with “misstatements” and elisions and retracted and redacted and revoked assertions…


When the facts surrounding such characteristic episodes finally get sorted out — usually long after they have been challenged — the mysteries and contradictions are often dealt with by Hillary Clinton and her apparat in a blizzard of footnotes, addenda, revision, and disingenuous re-explanation: as occurred in regard to the draconian secrecy she imposed on her health-care task force (and its failed efforts in 1993-94); explanations of what could have been dutifully acknowledged, and deserved to be dismissed as a minor conflict of interest — once and for all — in Whitewater; or her recent Michigan-Florida migration from acceptance of the DNC’s refusal to recognize those states’ convention delegations (when it looked like she had the nomination sewn up) to her re-evaluation of the matter as a grave denial of basic human rights, after she fell impossibly behind in the delegate count.

The latest episode — the sniper fire she so vividly remembered and described in chilling detail to buttress her claims of foreign policy “experience” — like the peace she didn’t bring to Northern Ireland, recalls another famous instance of faulty recollection during a crucial period in her odyssey.

On January 15, 1995, she had just published her book, It Takes a Village, intended to herald a redemptive “come back” after the ravages of health care; Whitewater; the Travel Office firings she had ordered (but denied ordering); the disastrous staffing of the White House by the First Lady, not the President — all among the egregious errors that had led to the election of the Newt Gingrich Congress in 1994.

On her book tour, she was asked on National Public Radio about the re-emergence of dormant Whitewater questions that week, when the so-called “missing billing records” had been found. Hillary stated with unequivocal certainty that she had consistently made public all the relevant documents related to Whitewater, including “every document we had,” to the editors of the New York Times before the newspaper’s original Whitewater story ran during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Even her closest aides — as in the case of the Bosnian episode18 years later — could not imagine what possessed her to say such a thing. It was simply not true, as her lawyers and the editors of the Times (like CBS in the latest instance) recognized, leading to huge stories about her latest twisting of the facts. “Oh my God, we didn’t,” said Susan Thomasas, Hillary’s great friend, who was left to explain to the White House lawyers exactly how Hillary’s aides had carefully cherry-picked documents accessed for the Times in the presidential campaign. The White House was forced — once again — to acknowledge the first lady had been ‘mistaken;” her book tour was overwhelmed by the matter, and Times’ columnist Bill Safire that month coined the memorable characterization of Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

“Hillary values context; she does see the big picture. Hers, in fact, is not the mind of a conventional politician,” I wrote in A Woman In Charge. “But when it comes to herself, she sees with something less than candor and lucidity. She sees, like so many others, what she wants to see.”

The book concludes with this paragraph:

“As Hillary has continued to speak from the protective shell of her own making, and packaged herself for the widest possible consumption, she has misrepresented not just facts but often her essential self. Great politicians have always been marked by the consistency of their core beliefs, their strength of character in advocacy, and the self-knowledge that informs bold leadership. Almost always, Hillary has stood for good things. Yet there is a disconnect between her convictions and her words and actions. This is where Hillary disappoints. But the jury remains out. She still has time to prove her case, to effectuate those things that make her special, not fear them or camouflage them. We would all be the better for it, because what lies within may have the potential to change the world, if only a little.”

The jury — armed with definitive evidence like the CBS tape of Hillary Clinton’s Bosnian adventure — seems on the verge of returning a negative verdict on her candidacy.

- Carl Bernstein, 360° Contributor


Filed under: Carl Bernstein • Election 2008

The Article

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

If you want to escape all of this, there’s only one place to go. The North Pole. With gin and tonics.

What was once ice to play war games under has now become ice cubes. One cannot escape change even at the North Pole.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Being the North Pole is so cold, shrinkage is inevitable.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Being the North Pole is so cold, shrinkage is inevitable.

So what kind of thinking does not occur up there?

[TheMercenary]

"Almost always, Hillary has stood for good things. Yet there is a disconnect between her convictions and her words and actions."

Her legacy to date, for sure.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Truth? You can't handle the truth!

[deadbeater]

The truth has a well-known liberal bias.

[TheMercenary]

PA Gov endorses Obama.

[Undertoad]

Senator and son of an ex-Governor Bob Casey Jr., that is -- not the current Gov. Rendell, who is firmly in the Hill camp.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Senator and son of an ex-Governor Bob Casey Jr., that is -- not the current Gov. Rendell, who is firmly in the Hill camp.

Opps... my bad, I typed that incorrectly. Thanks for the correction.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey endorsed Democrat Barack Obama on Friday, a move that could help the presidential candidate make inroads with white working-class voters dubbed "Casey Democrats" in the Keystone State.
Appearing on stage beside the Illinois senator, Casey told a boisterous rally, "I believe in my heart that there is one person who's uniquely qualified to lead us in that new direction and that is Barack Obama."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...cle=1&catnum=3

[Radar]

I made a bet with my Vietnamese friends this last weekend. The Vietnamese all love McCain. I bet them 4 bottles of Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac (roughly $100 each) that Obama would win not only the Democratic nomination, but the presidency.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, if she's the candidate, it will be good to finally cast a vote -- against Washington's Least Convincing Blonde. Face it: the Clintons, husband and wife, are incompetently evil. Of the many things they're not good at, they are among the worst at being bad, and do it remarkably poorly. You vote for that, you're voting for a schmuck.

I recommend sixteen Bushes in the Oval Office over one more self-destructive Clinton. Seventeen might be too much of an antifascist good thing, though -- on the grounds that new blood would be wanted by then.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Well, if she's the candidate, it will be good to finally cast a vote -- against Washington's Least Convincing Blonde. Face it: the Clintons, husband and wife, are incompetently evil. Of the many things they're not good at, they are among the worst at being bad, and do it remarkably poorly. You vote for that, you're voting for a schmuck.

I recommend sixteen Bushes in the Oval Office over one more self-destructive Clinton. Seventeen might be too much of an antifascist good thing, though -- on the grounds that new blood would be wanted by then.

Actually, most people would consider the Clinton presidency pretty competent. Of course, you could make the case that some of the bad decisions made then came to roost in the next administration, but you could also make that argument about the Reagan administration.

As for the multi-Bush option. Outside of a lesbian nightclub, this is not a good idea. While H was a competent president, the $1-3 trillion dollar quagmire that GW put us in will probably take an entire generation to pay off, when the bill finally comes due. Rumor has it that GWB is the stupid one in the family and that Jeb would probably have been and might be better at the job, but considering the monumental cost at this point, writing off the entire clan seems like a good idea.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Well, if she's the candidate, it will be good to finally cast a vote -- against Washington's Least Convincing Blonde. Face it: the Clintons, husband and wife, are incompetently evil. Of the many things they're not good at, they are among the worst at being bad, and do it remarkably poorly. You vote for that, you're voting for a schmuck.

I recommend sixteen Bushes in the Oval Office over one more self-destructive Clinton. Seventeen might be too much of an antifascist good thing, though -- on the grounds that new blood would be wanted by then.

I'd rather have someone who is incompetently evil than someone who is an expert at being evil like Bush or Cheney.

It doesn't matter who the Democratic candidate happens to be, they will roll over McCain effortlessly. I'd personally prefer if it wasn't Clinton, but I'd take an illiterate crack whore over any Republican.