then run this little gem...
January 26, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Questions for the Clintons
By BOB HERBERT
Charleston, S.C.
Joseph P. Riley Jr. has been mayor of this historic and often tense city since the mid-1970s. He’s a Democrat, highly respected and has worked diligently to heal racial wounds that have festered in some cases for hundreds of years.
He has endorsed Barack Obama in today’s Democratic primary. But what struck me during an interview in his quiet office in an exquisitely restored City Hall was not the fact of the endorsement, but the manner in which the mayor expressed it.
He went out of his way to praise the Democratic field, including some of the candidates who have dropped out, like Senators Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd. He talked about his fondness for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said: “It’s tough when you have to choose between friends.”
The mayor’s thoughtful, respectful, generous assessment of the field echoed the tone that had prevailed until recently in the Democratic primary campaign. That welcome tone has been lost, undermined by a deliberate injection of ugliness, and it would be very difficult to make the case that the Clintons have not been primarily to blame.
Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.
Andrew Young, for instance.
This week, while making the remarkable accusation that the Obama camp was responsible for raising the race issue, Mr. Clinton mentioned Andrew Young as someone who would bear that out. It was an extremely unfortunate reference.
Here’s what Mr. Young, who is black and a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an interview posted online: “Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack.”
He then went on to make disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president’s womanizing. That’s coming from the Clinton camp!
And then there was Bob Kerrey, the former senator and another Clinton supporter, who slimed up the campaign with the following comments:
“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”
Pressing the point, Mr. Kerrey told CNN’s John King: “I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite.”
Get it?
Let’s start with the fact that Mr. Obama never attended a madrassa, and that there is no such thing as a secular madrassa. A madrassa is a religious school. Beyond that, the idea is to not-so-slyly feed the current frenzy, on the Internet and elsewhere, that Senator Obama is a Muslim, and thus potentially (in the eyes of many voters) an enemy of the United States.
Mr. Obama is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. And if he were a Muslim, it would not be a legitimate reason for attacking his candidacy.
The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.
Consider, for example, the following Web posting (misspellings and all) from a mainstream news blog on Jan. 13:
“omg people get a grip. Can you imagine calling our president barak hussien obama ... I cant, I pray no one would be disrespectful enough to put this man in our whitehouse.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign was always going to be difficult, and the climb is even steeper now. There is no reason to feel sorry for him. He’s a politician out of Chicago who must have known that campaigns often degenerate into demolition derbies.
Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.
It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.
What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?
These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
if it's between Hillary and anyone else (i.e. Romney or Huckabee), I would vote for....ack....Hillary. But if it's between Hillary and McCain, in spite of some questionable and unsavory things he has done in the last year, I would THINK about voting for him. He's a good person. I would be miserable with another staunch conservative at the helm, but I don't get the same slimeball vibe from him that I do from Romney. That guy just creeps me out
Yay Palm Beach Post! So Florida isn't *all* bad. ;)
Yeah, honestly I think the NY Times endorsement actually means less than the PBP endorsement. Mainly because I think the vast majority of regular NYT readers are intellectuals who have already made up their minds. Where as the PBP is a local paper and has more variety in it's readers. So the more regional and local papers that support Obama, the better.
I agree, the Clintons are TOTALLY playing dirty. And as a WOMAN who likes to see the cup half full, I would have preferred it if the first real woman contender played the game on a different field. There is a way to be equally competitive in a more positive, respectful manner. I mean, seriously, her politics may be liberal, but her campaign strategies have Carl Rove written all over them.
You're going to shoot me for this, but here it goes: if it's between Hillary and McCain, I'm voting McCain. And this is why: I think that despite the fact that he says we will have a presence in Iraq for 100 years, he will actually end the war.
There is an accute difference between fighting a war and manning a military post. We've been manning Germany since WW2 and it has become an important post to the US and I think the international community at large. I'm ok if that happens in Iraq. Military personel would be rotated in and out on 1 and 2 year assignments. As the region settles down they may be able to take their families with them the way soliders stationed in Germany and Japan do. It could possibly help us build a better reputation in the Muslim world if we are in Iraq in a way that is respectful, rather than forceful. I think that of all the Republicans, McCain is the only one who can do that.
Also, McCain does support environmental issues. Perhaps not as much as the Democrats do, but MUCH more than the Bush administration. I wish McCain were a little better on women's rights and such, but if all I get is the war and the environment, well, that's a vote I can live with, rather than lowering myself to vote for a backstabbing bitch. I tried to get away from those girls when I graduated high school.
Yeah, honestly I think the NY Times endorsement actually means less than the PBP endorsement. Mainly because I think the vast majority of regular NYT readers are intellectuals who have already made up their minds. Where as the PBP is a local paper and has more variety in it's readers. So the more regional and local papers that support Obama, the better.
I agree, the Clintons are TOTALLY playing dirty. And as a WOMAN who likes to see the cup half full, I would have preferred it if the first real woman contender played the game on a different field. There is a way to be equally competitive in a more positive, respectful manner. I mean, seriously, her politics may be liberal, but her campaign strategies have Carl Rove written all over them.
You're going to shoot me for this, but here it goes: if it's between Hillary and McCain, I'm voting McCain. And this is why: I think that despite the fact that he says we will have a presence in Iraq for 100 years, he will actually end the war.
There is an accute difference between fighting a war and manning a military post. We've been manning Germany since WW2 and it has become an important post to the US and I think the international community at large. I'm ok if that happens in Iraq. Military personel would be rotated in and out on 1 and 2 year assignments. As the region settles down they may be able to take their families with them the way soliders stationed in Germany and Japan do. It could possibly help us build a better reputation in the Muslim world if we are in Iraq in a way that is respectful, rather than forceful. I think that of all the Republicans, McCain is the only one who can do that.
Also, McCain does support environmental issues. Perhaps not as much as the Democrats do, but MUCH more than the Bush administration. I wish McCain were a little better on women's rights and such, but if all I get is the war and the environment, well, that's a vote I can live with, rather than lowering myself to vote for a backstabbing bitch. I tried to get away from those girls when I graduated high school.
sigh. It really bothers me when people tout her experience. Ugh. I think they endorsed her because of the new york thing. Bill's offices are also located in NYC. The Clintons are pretty much heavy hitters in that state, and I can see a newspaper editor bowing under that pressure. It still sucks, though. I used to like Bill, but I think he is playing VERY dirty and they are both showing their true colors as ruthless, power-hungry politicians in the worst sense of the word. What really REALLY bothers me is that WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE, and they are just backstabbing Obama left and right.
I really don't know what I'm going to do if Hillary gets the nomination. I refuse to vote for her, yet the thought of another Republican in office for ANOTHER four years just sends me into a tailspin. The environment can't take another four years of this shit. Another four years of war. Another four years of massive tax cuts for corporations. Another four years of just not giving a shit about anyone who makes less than $500,000 a year. It makes me sick. But I can't stand Hillary.
I don't know. It's not over yet, but the NY Times is a pretty big endorsement. I don't even know what good endorsements do, though. Who the hell cares? I wouldn't vote for someone based on a newspaper endorsement. The PB Post endorsed Obama, though, yay.
A
I really don't know what I'm going to do if Hillary gets the nomination. I refuse to vote for her, yet the thought of another Republican in office for ANOTHER four years just sends me into a tailspin. The environment can't take another four years of this shit. Another four years of war. Another four years of massive tax cuts for corporations. Another four years of just not giving a shit about anyone who makes less than $500,000 a year. It makes me sick. But I can't stand Hillary.
I don't know. It's not over yet, but the NY Times is a pretty big endorsement. I don't even know what good endorsements do, though. Who the hell cares? I wouldn't vote for someone based on a newspaper endorsement. The PB Post endorsed Obama, though, yay.
A
Freakin' New York Times
So this morning the NY Times endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
McCain I was not surprised about one whit. Over the last two years or so I thought he would be an excellent candidate and I was really hoping Guiliani's celebrity wouldn't knock him out. (It's starting to look like I don't have much to worry about there.)
But this Clinton endorsement. Ok, they aren't terribly critical of Obama, certainly not the way they were with Edwards and most of the Republicans, but I feel like they are looking at Hillary through rose-colored glasses.
What she was able to accomplish in NY may not hold on a national scale. And Bill is annoying the ever loving shit out of me. He needs to just SHUT UP and let his wife run HER race.
But anyway, their main contention is that there is more to Hillary than what you see on the surface (duh, though that is true of ALL the candidates) and that she has shown a great amount of intellect and a willingness to learn in order to achieve the best results. (As has Obama and Huckabee.) Ok, that's great. But I just think it is unrealistic. And quite honestly, I think it is a little unrealistic for me to think that Barack can win in the deep south and the midwest, but then, what democrat can?
Anyway... I can't help but wonder if part of the reason they endorsed Hillary is that she is the senator from New York. Because when it comes down to the differences between her and Barack as candidates, they admit that the major differences between them are years in Washington. And to that point, all I have to say is this: RICHARD NIXON.
You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
--E
McCain I was not surprised about one whit. Over the last two years or so I thought he would be an excellent candidate and I was really hoping Guiliani's celebrity wouldn't knock him out. (It's starting to look like I don't have much to worry about there.)
But this Clinton endorsement. Ok, they aren't terribly critical of Obama, certainly not the way they were with Edwards and most of the Republicans, but I feel like they are looking at Hillary through rose-colored glasses.
What she was able to accomplish in NY may not hold on a national scale. And Bill is annoying the ever loving shit out of me. He needs to just SHUT UP and let his wife run HER race.
But anyway, their main contention is that there is more to Hillary than what you see on the surface (duh, though that is true of ALL the candidates) and that she has shown a great amount of intellect and a willingness to learn in order to achieve the best results. (As has Obama and Huckabee.) Ok, that's great. But I just think it is unrealistic. And quite honestly, I think it is a little unrealistic for me to think that Barack can win in the deep south and the midwest, but then, what democrat can?
Anyway... I can't help but wonder if part of the reason they endorsed Hillary is that she is the senator from New York. Because when it comes down to the differences between her and Barack as candidates, they admit that the major differences between them are years in Washington. And to that point, all I have to say is this: RICHARD NIXON.
You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
--E
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