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The Perfect Storm

post from American Street on 09 May 2008 02:18:00 PM. © American Street

Consider our prospects for November. In addition to an economic meltdown and an illegal and endless war, and a still-free Osama Bin Laden, there’s fresh reports that Iran’s not adding to the Iraq arsenal, the Middle East may yet explode to send oil prices into orbit, and could Republicans make matters worse?Yes, they can. They [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/05/09/the-perfect-storm/

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The McCain Folks Are Losing Their Bearings

post from All Spin Zone on 09 May 2008 02:15:00 PM. © All Spin Zone

Yesterday Barack Obama’s people responded to the McCain campaign’s repeated suggerstion that Hamas supports Barack Obama. Of course, these folks ignored the strong words Obama has used to reject everything Hamas stands for. But that’s not the funny thing here. When the Obama people noted that McCain has “lost his bearings” by making the remarks, the McCain machine shot back, SHOCKED, SHOCKED and puffed up with pretend outrage for remarks that talked about their candidate’s age. From the AP wire:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was “losing his bearings” for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president.
That brought an angry response from McCain’s campaign, which accused Obama of trying to make an issue of McCain’s age.
Age is a touchy subject for McCain, who turns 72 in August and would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president if elected.

Man, what a bunch of stupid people. When one loses one’s bearings, that means one is lost. If McCain decides to continue and continue to insist that Hamas supports Obama, then that’s ample evidence that McCain is lost. As to the age thing, I’m hoping the McCain campaign continues to whine about that subject constantly. Nobody would have mentioned his ag, indeed nobody did, until the McCain people started to whine. Maybe they should practice some gun control so they don’t shoot themselves in the foot.

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http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/05/09/the-mccain-folks-are-losing-their-bearings/

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Plame asks court to resurrect lawsuit against
Bush administration in CIA leak case.

post from Think Progress on 09 May 2008 02:14:00 PM. © Think Progress

Outed CIA operative Valerie Plame “is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity.” While a federal judge dismissed Plame’s case last year, her “lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/09/plame-asks-court-to-resurrect-lawsuit-against
-bush-administration-in-cia-leak-case/

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Poverty, Wealth, Place: What's Our Collective
Responsibility

post from Everyday Citizen on 09 May 2008 02:12:32 PM. © Everyday Citizen

At our May edition of the Urban Engagement Book Club, we looked into Paul Jargowsky's very[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/05/poverty_wealth_place_whats_our.html

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Clinton continues attacks on Democratic nominee
Obama

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 09 May 2008 02:09:00 PM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

It's still happening.

She can't help herself. Before any Clinton supporter tells anyone to back off, they should tell their candidate to stop the negative attacks on our presumptive nominee. And, all those people who thought she needed to take some time to "process" the situation (which is a very bizarre concept, by the way)....well, she's using that time to attack Obama.

By letting Hillary continue her assault on Obama, her supporters and her campaign are all aiding and abetting McCain and his quest for a third Bush term. We'd much rather be fighting the battle against McCain. But, it's the "deluded also-ran" (the AP's words, not mine) who keeps the intra-party fight going.

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Worldy Concerns

post from OutrageNation on 09 May 2008 02:08:00 PM. © OutrageNation

Perhaps you haven?t noticed with the presidential campaign dragging on but our world is still intent on going to hell in a handbasket.

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http://www.outrageradio.com/index.php?/weblog/entry/worldy_concerns/

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The Colbert Report: Oil Profiteering

post from Crooks and Liars on 09 May 2008 02:00:56 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Stephen Colbert looks at the miraculous profits realized by oil companies despite their claim of the high cost of providing the oil. Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Bill W)As you can see here, 72% goes to the price of crude oil. Another 16% is eaten up by refining, distribution and service stations, and the last [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/09/the-colbert-report-oil-profiteering/

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"Dividing" The Dems At Obamas Expense

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 09 May 2008 01:58:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

The New York Times presented more Democratic ?doom and gloom? yesterday (from here)?

All of this (re: Obama?s primary success) poses a challenge to Mr. Obama as he seeks to move the Clinton wing of the party beyond with (sic) the Clinton era without offending Mrs. Clinton?s considerable base of supporters. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina once again suggested just how cleaved the party is between young and old, white and black, lower-income and upper income.

That?s interesting, given the fact that Obama?s support among white voters equals that of John Kerry four years ago (here). Also, this tells us that Obama is better at retaining Democrats for the general election against John W. McBush than Hillary. Finally, this tells us that Obama?s support remains unchanged after the ?bitter? nonsense that played out during the PA primary and has pretty much rebounded after the manufactured media controversy surrounding a certain African American preacher here.

I don?t know how ?cleaved? the party truly is since Adam Nagourney of the Times doesn?t present any statistics to back up his charge (though I just did, of course).

But not to be undaunted, he continues...

?It?s going to be hard,? said Bob Kerrey, a former senator from Nebraska, and a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. ?Part of what I?ve seen in this campaign is how difficult it is to unite this party: To unite voters in West Virginia with Democratic voters in South Central Los Angeles. That is what he has to do and what is going to be hard.?

?He has to learn to set aside grievances; and there are going to be plenty of them,? Mr. Kerrey said. ?Can we disagree without being disagreeable? The answer is, no. We get disagreeable. And this has been a disagreeable primary.?

Concerning Bob Kerrey, I present the following quote from Wikipedia?

"Even before John Edwards was chasing ambulances in North Carolina and Barack was voting ?present? in the Illinois state senate, Senator Clinton was involved in major policy initiatives."

And as we know, Kerrey emphasized Obama?s middle name here and charged that Obama had attended ?a secular madrassa,? whatever the hell that is (he later apologized...and by the way, voting "present" in the Illinois state legislature is perfectly acceptable).

All class, that Bob Kerrey (and here's even more nonsense).

(Former Senator and presidential candidate Gary) Hart recalled that after a similarly divisive primary battle against Walter F. Mondale in 1984, he made a point of throwing all his effort into trying to get his supporters behind Mr. Mondale. In that case, Mr. Hart was more equivalent to Mr. Obama than Mrs. Clinton, having drawn new voters into the primary system.

?I went to the platform and moved his nomination by acclamation,? Mr. Hart recalled. ?And then I went out and did over 40 campaign events for him on my own. And I was not able to move the younger and independent voters, as the results made clear.?

Yeah, well, the problem in 1984 was the fact that Ronnie Baby?s popularity was starting to rebound somewhat and he suckered in the majority of those younger and independent voters. It was easy to buy into the narrative that the incumbent Reagan had found his stride and represented ?morning in America,? the ?shining city on the hill? and all of that blather, and Mondale was just some old, tired New Dealer who was able to zing the Gipper once in a debate but, otherwise, not present himself as an alternative that too many people wanted (ignoring Mondale?s vast experience in government and the fact that he would probably have proved to be highly competent at the very least).

But it fits Nagourney?s own story line to suggest that the Dems were too ?divided? between Mondale and Hart to come together once more against a highly popular Repug president who ended up wiping out Mondale anyway.

I realize that our dear corporate media cousins are going to live off what I would call the ?divided Democrats? myth at least until November, though I think it?s pretty obvious that the Repugs are hardly lined up behind ?Senator Honor and Virtue? 100 percent.

I?d rather be in our shoes than theirs. And no ?crackpot history? lesson from The Old Gray Lady will change that fact.

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http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2008/05/dividing-dems-at-obamas-expense.html

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Posting Instruction

I just posted some instructions over on the reader posting page. Check them out and let me know what you think, what I should change, if I've horribly misspelled any words, etc.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/tpmcafe-main/~3/287002118/

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The Senior Senator From Arizona Doth Protest Too
Much

It's hard to say which perception McCain fears worst: being seen as yesterday's man -- a man of the last century -- or being seen as a shameless toady who sold his "maverick" soul for a bloated, stinking elephant carcass:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was "losing his bearings" for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president.

. . .

"This is offensive, and I think it's disappointing, because John McCain always says, 'Well, I'm not going to run that kind of politics,'" Obama said. "And then to engage in that kind of smear, I think, is unfortunate, particularly since my policy toward Hamas has been no different than his."

The Illinois senator added: "For him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don't need name-calling in this debate."

McCain's campaign issued an angry response that accused Obama of trying to divert attention from a legitimate question by raising McCain's age.

"He used the words 'losing his bearings' intentionally, a not-particularly-clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue," McCain adviser Mark Salter said.

Really? Seems that the McCain campaign is stuck between a rock and a hard place here.

See, my first reaction on reading Obama's comments was to think of how McCain had sacrificed his "maverick" image -- an entirely phony persona, but a powerful one -- to win the booby prize that is the 2008 GOP nomination. Obama was observing that McCain has been "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination," in the sense that he's lost his steely, maverick moral compass. Now, Obama understands just as well as you and I that the "maverick" myth was the gossamer creation of a Michael Lewis mancrush, but he also understands that there's great value in developing a semi-tragic narrative in which the flawed hero McCain trades his virtue for a final shot at power. You can't disabuse the majority of the public of the idea that McCain was at one point a good guy, but you can certainly show them just how irrevocably corrupted he's become in pursuit of the poisoned chalice.

And I think that McCain, and his campaign, get exactly what Obama is doing here. They are deathly afraid of losing the aura of straight-shooting independence that differentiates their candidate from the depraved, cancerous body of lepers that passes for the Bush/DeLay/Fossella/Craig Republican Party. They know that McCain cannot win as a "Republican nominee" -- his only hope is to run as an independent. In short, McCain's greatest weakness is the prospect that he might be exposed as Just Another Sleazy Republican Hack. And Obama's comments, in just a few words, did a marvelous job of setting that narrative in motion in the public eye. So McCain and his minions pivoted, and attempted to divert the attention away from their greatest weakness.

Problem is, they diverted the attention onto their second greatest weakness -- the fact that John McCain is yesterday's man, a bedraggled lion decidedly incapable of prevailing over the course of six months of toe-to-toe combat with an acutely aware and prepared Obama. McCain shouldn't ever remind people of his age, of his inability to keep Sunni and Shi'a straight in his mind, of his tired demeanor. Yet when confronted with Obama's observation that McCain has abandoned his integrity in a last-ditch attempt to win the White House, McCain was so terrified that he preferred to treat the comments as an insinuation about his age. And in so doing, he raised the age issue himself -- leaving the public to consider whether McCain's problem is that he's past his time, or that he's a chameleon who'll do anything to get elected. That's the last question that McCain wants anyone pondering.

Maybe he should have just left this one alone. Because by responding as he did, McCain showed that Obama had hit home. And Obama is way too good not to sense blood in the water.