Recently in 2008 Category

The Reality-Based Community

Still, this has to remind you of a political rival's remark when a tumor on Lord Randoph Churchill's lung proved benign: that the doctors had "found the one bit of Randolph that wasn't malignant and cut it out."

McCain's skin biopsy: benign. It's only the rest of him that's malignant.

Star Tribune

The sharp drop in energy prices since the beginning of the month is turning into a rare bright spot in a bleak economic landscape.

For the moment, at least, fears of a prolonged energy shock seem to have subsided a bit.

Oil has fallen more than $23 a barrel, or 16 percent, since peaking July 3. Gasoline has slipped below $4 a gallon and is dropping fast as Americans drive less. Natural gas prices, which had risen the fastest this year as traders anticipated a hot summer, have shed 33 percent since the beginning of the month.

New York Times

The cheap populism is really rich coming from Karl Rove. When was the last time he kicked back with a corncob pipe to watch professional wrestling?

Rove is trying to spin his myths, as he used to do with such devastating effect, but it won't work this time. The absurd spectacle of rich white conservatives trying to paint Obama as a watercress sandwich with the crust cut off seems ugly and fake.

Obama can be aloof and dismissive at times, and he's certainly self-regarding, carrying the aura of the Ivy faculty club. But isn't that better than the aura of the country clubs that tried to keep out blacks? It's ironic, and maybe inevitable, that the first African-American nominee comes across as a prince of privilege. He is, as Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic wrote, not the seed but the flower of the civil rights movement.

Unlike W., Obama doesn't have a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't make a lot of snarky remarks. He tries to stay on a positive keel and see things from the other person's point of view.

He's not Richie Rich, saved time and again by Daddy's influence and Daddy's friends, the one who got waved into Yale and Harvard and cushy business deals, who drank too much and snickered at the intellectuals and gave them snide nicknames.

This is probably propogating a sexual stereotype, but damn, she sure did castrate Rove. Well, she would have, if he actually had any balls to begin with.

Washington Post

Democrat Donna F. Edwards was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by voters in Montgomery and Prince George's counties yesterday, becoming the first black woman selected to serve Maryland in Congress.

Bark Bark Woof Woof

Friday Blogaround
Did anything happen this week? Ask the Liberal Coalition.

- A Blog Around The Clock: honeybees dancing
- archy: passive aggressive resistance, or just laziness?
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: that morning forty years ago.
- Bloggg: had enough?
- Dohiyi Mir: adventures in babysitting.
- Echidne Of The Snakes: Apparently Granny Clampett is Cal Thomas's ideal woman president.
- Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: If not Hillary, who's the next woman to run for president?
- Left Is Right is asking for your predictions of Republican shenanigans.
- Lefty Side of the Dial: Lefty doesn't like Chris Matthews.
- Musing's musings: Make up and get to work, Dems.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web reviews a new movie by Neil Innes.
- Rook's Rant: Rook is sorry to see Hillary go.
- rubber hose: permanently in Iraq?
- Scrutiny Hooligans: not a bargaining chip.
- SoonerThought: Senate rebukes Bush and Cheny; they lied about Iraq.
- Speedkill: Deceptions.
- Steve Bates, The Yellow Doggerel Democrat: Get well, Tabitha.
- Stupid Enough Unexplanation: Rush Limbaugh explains why it's not his fault the GOP will lose.
- The Invisible Library: face reality, people.
- WTF Is It Now?? No, Sen. McCain, you did not.

Have a good weekend. I still have 2,759 boxes to unpack...

Washington Post

With a split decision in the final two primaries and a flurry of superdelegate endorsements, Sen. Barack Obama sealed the Democratic presidential nomination last night after a grueling and history-making campaign against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that will make him the first African American to head a major-party ticket.

MN Publius

Our congratulations go out to Steve Sarvi who was endorsed by acclimation after the first ballot......

To me, this primary is actually a good thing for the fall. All this hand wringing strikes me as typical Democratic nervous nellie-ism. A huge increase in Democratic voter registration, building of strong ground operations in most states, new technologies being beta tested, lots of media coverage and battle testing for the nominee are of benefit to the nominee in the fall. Meanwhile, the Democrats stay at center stage while McCain wanders around in obscurity, failing to raise money and leaving a trail of gaffes in his wake. As long as they don't know at whom to aim their fire the Republicans can't cement their narrative. In the end, I remain convinced that we are going into an election that is so fundamentally seismic that either of them can win it, even if more closely than we might want, due to the breakthrough nature of their campaigns. The primary continuing on is not going to change that.

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton sought a convincing win to keep her flickering White House hopes alive on Tuesday as Pennsylvania Democrats chose between her and Barack Obama in their presidential nominating contest.

Star Tribune

JONESVILLE, S.C. - A South Carolina pastor says he wasn't trying to be political when he posted a sign in front of his church linking Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Pastor Roger Byrd said he just wanted to make people think when he put up a sign reading "Obama, Osama — humm, are they brothers" in front of the Jonesville Church of God on Thursday.

The pastor is lying. Wasn't trying to be political my ass. He put up a damn sign about a person running for President. That's political.

The New Republic

Rife with big egos and competing centers of influence--veterans of Hillary's First Lady days, relative newbies from her Senate office, Bill's '92 people, Bill's '96 people--Team Hillary has never been a comfortably cohesive group. In happier times, discipline was easier to maintain. But, as this race has grown longer and rougher, the staff's nerves and relations have been badly strained by persistent financial troubles and constant turf wars, not to mention one increasingly unmanageable ex-president. Some days, it's hard to remember that, just six months ago, the campaign was regarded as a highly disciplined machine. More and more, it resembles an unruly rock band plagued by dysfunction and public infighting. From Williams's arrival to Solis Doyle's demise to Penn's ascent, fall, and return, the ebb and flow of power in Hillaryland over the past few months has left multiple people acting like they are in charge--and no one really in control.

Washington Post

John McCain cupped a fist and began pumping it, up and down, along the side of his body. It was a gesture familiar to a participant in the closed-door meeting of the Senate committee who hoped that it merely signaled, as it sometimes had in the past, McCain's mounting frustration with one of his colleagues.

But when McCain leaned toward Charles E. Grassley and slowly said, "My friend . . ." it seemed clear that ugliness was looming: While the plural "my friends" was usually a warm salutation from McCain, "my friend" was often a prelude to his most caustic attacks. Grassley, an Iowa Republican with a reputation as an unwavering legislator, calmly held his ground. McCain became angrier, his fist pumping even faster.

It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."

McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.

Grassley said recently that "it was a very long period of time" before he and McCain spoke to each other again, though he declined, through a spokesman, to discuss the specifics of the incident.

I am not concerned about a man's temper. Hell, I've got a temper that rivals McCain's. However, what I am concerned about is his manner towards people when he is in his temper. Mocking another person, personally attacking them verbally, is simply an act of an insecure person lacking confidence. That is not what I want from a person sitting in the Oval Office.

A lot happens in this world. Much of that makes me angry. Yes, I accept that even the President of the United States can, and will, get angry. But I expect them to use that anger to energize them into constructive action. What I don't want is another childish, insecure reactionary in the office, making decisions based on misguided personal feelings of honor and dignity.

When the next person steps into the Oval Office, they damn well better understand it is not about them, but about the country. The current occupant never figured that out.

Bark Bark Woof Woof

In other words, the Republicans, who can't run on their record or rely on the sharp memory of their candidate (Shia? Sunni? Iran? Al-qaeda?) or his plans for revitalizing the economy (ready for more cake?), will do precisely what they're best at: attack their opponent and try to scare the crap out of the electorate without offering anything more than platitudes, nostrums, and the firm assertion that John McCain is most assuredly not George W. Bush; he just plans to do the exact same things he did but without the fake Texas drawl.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the Republicans will do exactly what Mr. Kristol predicts; that's a given, since it's worked so well the last couple of times. But Mr. Kristol's record for predicting the future is also well-known. He's one of the bunch that said that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, that the war would last a couple of weeks or months, that it would pay for itself with the oil revenues that we'd get, and that our influence and model of democracy would turn Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia into the Iowas of the Middle East with freedom and McDonald's springing up on every street corner from Riyad to Damascus. With that kind of record, it really makes you wonder why anyone gives serious attention to anything he says other than to hold it up for mockery and derision.