Filed under: politics
Wow. We knew they were lying. But did we know how much they were lying? The Center for Public Integrity counted 935 false statements about the situation in Iraq.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
I am excited that we’re under a heavy snow warning in Eastern Mass. But I have some serious concerns about my street! Normally, plowing on Orchard Street is not outstanding, considering we’re a residential, one-way street.
Friday, the city made some repairs to something under our street and left a hole and MHD sign in the middle of the street. The hole takes up at least half the street. Plus, someone has brilliantly parked directly next to the hole, making circumventing it excessively difficult. My small car barely fits between the hole and the car. The hole has sharp edges and is a couple inches deep. It could certainly damage a wheel at any sort of speed.
I doubt the city will fill the hole before the snow starts in four hours–how will the plows get by the sign? If they move it, and we can’t see the hold under the snow, whose wheel gets dented? Will the snow fill it in and provide enough support for passing cars? Will a plow blade get caught on the lip? Quite the drama could unfold tonight and tomorrow.
I feel that it is of critical importance that liberals, progressives, registered Democrats and (like me) independents (in states that allow their voting, like here in Massachusetts) need to seriously take something into account. They need to make sure that the Democratic party nominates someone with broad cross-aisle appeal. Hillary Clinton is not that person. She would be a competent President. But the problem is that should would not draw enough independent and Republican voters to get elected. Too many people (rightly or wrongly) really, really dislike her.
She makes the opposite case: that she is the only viable Democrat who could get elected, due to her “35 years of experience.” She criticizes Edwards’s and Obama’s resumes for being only a one-term Senator. Yet, she is only a two-termer. From the way she speaks about it, you’d think she’s spent 35 years in government. In my book, while a plus, simply being First Lady doesn’t qualify someone to be President. She did more to set back the cause of Universal Care in this country more than any Democrat I can name. The Republicans call it Hillary Care! That isn’t a compliment! Being First Lady of Arkansas doesn’t count as a qualification, either.
So when you break it down, her experience is more-or-less the same (commendable) as John Edwards: a lawyer who fought for (in her case) children. Then she moved to Washington and was a lawyer on a team for the House Judiciary Committee, assigned to look into impeachment for Richard Nixon. Then she was a lawyer for a federal nonprofit program that funds legal assistance for the poor. All of this is public service, yes. But none of it is significantly different from John Edwards’s attorney background, or that Barak Obama’s background of being an inner-city community organizer prior to deciding to get into politics. This lead him to Harvard Law School, then to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law in Chicago prior to running for, and serving eight years in the Illinois State Senate, then in 2004, gaining election to the U.S. Senate.
If you look at the top three Democrats, based on time served to elected office, Barack Obama actually has the most years served as an elected official.
So then if they’re backgrounds are all similar, then how should we differentiate? I propose we choose the person who is most inspirational to the largest number of people, regardless of political background. We need healing now more than policies. I’ll speak in more specifics to this topic in a future post.
Today’s political reading: The witch ain’t dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong with the subtitle, “The glee with which Matthews and other angry male pundits prematurely danced on Hillary’s grave made me—for one night only—a Clinton supporter.” By Rebecca Traister, published on Salon.com today.
My wife and I have been watching MSNBC’s coverage pretty much every night since before the Iowa caucus. We think it had been, in general, above average for TV news. We are nightly viewers of Hardball and Countdown. Here’s my take.
These guys were out of control when the Iowa count came in. Matthews couldn’t praise Obama enough. The networks got overly swept up in the polls and the excitement. We’ve been watching Matthews and Olbermann since Olbermann started standing up to the administration, switching from analyst to pundit a few years back. Shortly after, as MSNBC was in the midst of discovering that someone could be very successful at professionally calling “Bullshit” on FOX News, Matthews snapped out of the newsman-trance that the Bush administration had used patriotism, et al, to inflict on the country. He began trying to make up for not asking the hard questions leading up to Iraq, or hard-enough questions during the plethora of scandals which have become the hallmark of these last seven years.
During this spinal-repair, Matthews aimed at anyone who as a politician was wishy-washy on anything, but especially those who supported the war blindly. Hillary Clinton was someone who theoretically should have called “Bullshit” on the President. Instead, she fell in line. In fact, she pushed her way to the front of the line. Matthews noted this and her days of free passes were over. He was going to expose her as a wishy-washy, so-called liberal, who in reality is way to the right of her party.
Thus, when the chance came to tear down a leading Democrat who gave up the liberal line when this country needed it most, Matthews jumped. It has been clear in the last two months or so that Matthews, although friendly with all of the Washington elite, himself realized that the old guard of Washington had to go if this country was going to get back on track. Ms. Clinton was the leading example of a pro-Washington Democrat that is part of the partisan problem. Thus, she is the leading target. It has nothing to do with her being a woman.
Any progressive or liberal who is true to themselves would positively jump at the chance of a woman, or a black man, or a black woman, or an atheist or a Jew or a Buddhist for President. Matthews would be downright giddy. For two reasons: he’s liberal, and it would be “history” to report upon (see Obama praise).
Matthews sees that Clinton is a symbol: a symbol of the DLC, a symbol of Democrats past, and of angry, divisive partisanship. A politician first, since she believes the best way to serve her country is to to advance her beliefs by winning at politics, at any cost.
I believe Clinton truly is a patriot and wants to see major changes, that I would generally agree with, in this country. I don’t approve of how she goes about that change. I agree just enough with her that should she be the candidate in November that I would vote for her. Gulp. But she’s not my first (or 7th) choice. Being a woman actually pushes her ahead on my list, and as I said, like most progressives and liberals I know.
I see, and I believe Chris and Keith see, that America’s best chance at going Democratic once again in November is by not having the number one lightning rod in the Democratic party running for president.
They are letting that cloud their duties as journalists (which I use here, probably improperly). They should stick more to “report” and less to “interpret.” Clearly, their focus on the crying incident was overkill. Much like the focus on the “Dean Scream” it very well could have taken down a candidate. But in 2008, the stupidity of the media was answered by the electorate of New Hampshire the same way Rebecca Traister answered:
I really am not a Hillary Clinton supporter. A feminist by trade, I have wished that I could get behind Clinton, a woman I admired when she first arrived in the White House 15 years ago. But there has been nothing in her steady, ineluctable move to the center that I could embrace; I understood why she did it, but it cost her my support.[…] I can’t believe I’m saying this, but had I been a New Hampshire voter on Tuesday, I would have pulled a lever for the former first lady with a song in my heart and a bird flipped at MSNBC’s Chris Matthews
Filed under: politics
I didn’t know Andy, but he joined the Army and I have a lot of respect for that. I’ve seen a number of mentions across the interwebs over the last few days about an Army blogger who had been killed in action and for whom a friend had posted his “If I die” post. I had been avoiding it, just knowing it would depress me. Tonight I read it:
Major Andrew olmsted’s Final Blog Post
You should read it. It’s not terribly depressing. It’s a fitting final statement. Maj. olmsted also wound up blogging at Rocky Mountain News. The described his mission as “his mission is to teach members of the Iraqi Army how to defend their country and provide security for their people.”
His friends in his unit described his untimely demise as thus:
“They were pursuing some insurgents,” Casey’s brother, Jeffrey, said. “Major Olmsted got out of his vehicle and was pleading with these three individuals to stop and surrender so that the team would not have to fire upon them and kill them.”
“Unfortunately, there were snipers in the area, and apparently that’s when Major Olmsted was hit,” Jeffrey Casey added. “He didn’t want to kill these individuals. He was trying to save their lives.”After the gunfire erupted, Thomas Casey went to help Olmsted, thinking that the three suspected insurgents were responsible for the shooting, his brother said.
“That’s when he took his bullet,” Jeffrey Casey said. “The fact that a sniper round caught him in the neck . . . that’s just one of those fluke one-in-a-million shots.”
That’s how I would expect a blogging soldier would go out: trying to do the right thing in a tough situation.
PS-if you haven’t read the post yet and your wife is named Amanda, it may be a little tough to read the part where he says goodbye to his wife Amanda.
Filed under: politics
“The real gamble in this election is to do the same things, with the same folks, playing the same games over and over and over again and somehow expect a different result,” he said. “That is a gamble we cannot afford, that is a risk we cannot take. Not this time. Not now. It is time to turn the page.”
Senator Barak H. Obama, D. Ill., January 6, 2008. (source, AP)
