May 2008 archive

Sunday Times Only Bill Clinton can save the Democratic party? That’s what the Obama camp is claiming, according to the Sunday Times. No wonder Obama is trying to scale back the attacks on Hillary and Bill:

If anybody can put their arms around the party and say we need to be together, it is Bill Clinton,” a senior Obama aide said.

“He’s brilliant, he has got heart and he cares deeply about the country. It’s tricky because of his position as Hillary’s spouse, but his involvement is very important to us.

“Bill Clinton will give permission to Hillary supporters to come into our camp and become one party. He is critical to this effort.”

Racially offensive Bill Clinton? I can just imagine how the Obama campaign will spin this: ‘Bill Clinton has done so much to destroy the Democratic Party over the last two decades, first as  the only two-term Dem President in memory and second for providing economic stability and growth, that Bill fucking owes Dems big!

Historic McCarthyism? One big reason I dumped Dems is succinctly detailed by a seasoned observor of US politics.

The massed ranks of male pundits gleefully pronounced that Clinton had lost the battle with Obama immediately after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, despite past precedents that strong second-place candidates (like Ronald Reagan in his first, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 1976; like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown) continue their campaigns until the end of the primary season and, in most cases, all the way to the party convention.

None of these male candidates had a premature political obituary written in the way that Hillary Clinton’s has been, or was subjected to such righteous outrage over refusing to quiesce and withdraw obediently from what, in this case, has always been a knife-edge race. Nor was any of them anything like as close to his rivals as Clinton now is to Obama.

…The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka “Hildebeast” and “Hitlery”) from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever.

Hillary Clinton: Sociopath? I’ll add the necessary qualifier that I’ve found almost all real-life supporters of Obama to be extremely civil. These same folks are also of the opinion that HRC and her husband are driven by ambition and have engaged in the worst form of politics.

The Obama campaign has succeeded in convincing many of its most ardent supporters that Bill and Hillary Clinton are destructive, divisive forces in the Democratic Party. The Sunday Times, however, claims that the Obama campaign is hailing Bill Clinton as the one individual who can bring the Democratic party together.

I’m glad to be rooting for the non-Dem. I suspect the ‘Hillary is sticking around until Obama is assassinated’ media campaign will drive all but the Obama bots and a few die-hard Dems straight into the arms of the non-Republican John McCain.

Who could have imagined?

Crossposted from ePluribus Media.

What follows is an excerpt reprinted from the piece Danse Macabre 03: The Return of Ja(a)far [Donald Rumsfeld], which was published by ePluribus Media in December 2006.

With all the back-and-forth rumbles about Iraq, Iran, peak oil, the “long war” and such, I thought a reprint of this particular section would be enlightening.  It briefly review a paper written by Rudy Jaafar regarding that author’s perspective and commentary about the US role in the determination of the social and political future of the Middle East.

I strongly urge people to read the original piece by Rudy Jaafar in its entirety, and request that people add — in comments — any additional insights or references that could help educate the public about the regions cultures and history.

Recently I was a social gathering of trendy young people. A disagreement over a particular issue came up. It was about a proposed private restaurant in Union Square Park in Manhattan.

It seems that a private “donor” has “donated” seven million dollars to the Park’s restoration fund on the condition that the private restaurant be included in the project.

I suggested to some of these activists that it would be a good idea to focus on the name of the public official who accepted this “donation” on behalf of the park’s restoration fund.

I suggested that it was probably illegal for this public official to put their name on the transaction in acceptance of the funds on behalf of the public. The reason is that this is not a donation at all, but an investment. The seven million dollars has strings attached which stipulate that there must be a private restaurant developed in Union Square Park.

That’s when the disagreements began…  

Tommy

Overture

My Aim Was True

Until It Curved

Sunday’s Headlines:  Safety Lapses Raised Risks In Trailers for Katrina Victims   Defending KSM, ‘the most hated man in the   world’   Burma seeks crucial aid donations   Tibetan exiles compete in alternative ‘Olympic Games’   Naples street battles erupt  Go-It-Alone France Shifts Military Stance   Is this the end of the Rainbow nation?   Tsvangirai returns and calls on Mugabe to ‘set the people free’   Al-Qa’ida in Iraq ‘has never been closer to defeat’  Lebanon MPs to vote in president   Mexico will spend £21m to clean up Acapulco    Argentina turns against new president as strike worsens

Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled

Grief in the Rubble

This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.

DUJIANGYAN, China – The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.

In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.

Editorial

Joe Lieberman, Would-Be Censor

The Internet is simply a means of communication, like the telephone, but that has not prevented attempts to demonize it – the latest being the ludicrous claim that the Internet promotes terrorism.

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is trying to pressure YouTube to pull down videos he does not like, and a recent Senate report and a bill pending in Congress also raise the specter of censorship. It is important for online speech to be protected against these assaults.

The Los Angeles Times has an article about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s upcoming trial at Guantánamo Bay. In the article, “Defending KSM, ‘the most hated man in the world’, Josh Meyer writes about the lawyer who is assigned to be KSM’s lead defense lawyer – Capt. Prescott L. Prince, a Navy Reserve judge advocate general. The significance of this trial, I think, cannot be understated as Capt. Prince explains:

“I think it’s the constitutional case of our time,” Prince, 53, said in a recent interview in his office, U.S. and Navy flags front and center on his desk. “Because in the 221st year of America, the question is whether the Constitution applies to the government.“

Not only is KSM on trial at Guantánamo Bay, but also the question many of us have asked over the past seven years – do we still have a Constitution?

Well it’s past midnight here, but on the West Coast it’s still Bob Dylan’s birthday.

Took a few things to nudge me into realizing this.

When I checked out meteoriot’s site, lose the label I noticed an entry, crossposted from Docudharma, lol … and it had a video whose tragedy was it was more relevant today than ever.  As meteoriot noted, Dylan was only 22 when he did Masters of War:

‘Course he wasn’t too bad at the love songs, either: