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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

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Scorched Earth is Nothing New for Obama

By on 09 August 2011

It’s panic at 1600. The daily Gallup is depressing by itself, but amidst the economic carnage and America losing our AAA status under Obama’s watch, which will make for a snappy negative GOP ad, everyone is girding their loins for the battle.

But really, folks, have people forgotten Alice Palmer? Remember Obama hinting Hillary was “Bush-Cheney lite”? ..and who can forget that South Carolina memo? If it takes scorched earth that’s what Obama will deliver, because he’s done it many times before.

Did people really believe Obama could get by this time on hope and change, the sequel?

I can’t believe people are shocked by the latest news, which comes in a politically titillating article at Politico:

In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”

[...] The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession — a sort of political Gordon Gekko.

I’ve always believed that Obama would have to go hard and go dirty, whether the GOP nominee is Mitt Romney or some other guy. Romney, however, is their worst nightmare, even give his innumerable flaws. The only difficulty for Obama would be if a woman rose to the top, which isn’t going to happen now that Rick Perry and his maleness is in the on-deck circle.

Let’s also not kid ourselves that Obama and Romney are all that different. Neither are ideologues. Both believe in nothing but their own fortunes and futures. Either would sell their soul to make a deal that makes them look good. And both are willing to do anything to get to live in the White House. They’re craven egotists who believe in their own persona and the preciousness of their own man self.

As an insider Dem told me months and months ago, Obama’s never run against a competent Republican, so Mitt Romney scares the crap out of them. But now that people have seen Barack Obama in action, revealing he isn’t all his marketing says he was (as I warned), well, they’re up against it now, because the old Axelrod-Plouffe bs won’t fly this time.

Besides the fact that the entire Politico piece is a gift to Mitt Romney and assumes he’s the nominee, let’s just accept that in 2012 these two unprincipled political chameleons, no insult meant to chameleons, are perfect for the times. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and they’ll tear themselves apart, making way for something novel in 2016: an independent progressive candidate who actually stands for something, but more importantly, is willing to go down fighting for it.

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Republicans Fake Pres. Obama Out of his Shorts

By on 01 August 2011

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. [...] Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels. It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will. – The President Surrenders, by Paul Krugman


Waking up naked on Monday morning in front of the world is embarrassing. It’s even worse when people looking at you are laughing.

It left Obama loyalists in disarray, grasping for a way to handle the onslaught of outrage. TPM had an interesting way to go at it, providing headlines with question marks, emails from outraged readers, while Obama fell off a pedestal he’d never earned in the first place.

But regurgitating puma-esque headlines? It was not just sad, but disgraceful.

Buyer’s remorse?

Pres. Obama is our president and no matter your political party we all needed him to stand up to the Tea Party extortionists, who in the end proved the only principled people, however crazy their politics, in this mess. That they provided Mitch McConnell with the weapons he needed should go without saying at this point. That they unmasked progressives in Congress as not having half their courage does as well.

What was needed from the President’s loyalists was someone to do political analysis that pointed the blame where it belongs: Pres. Barack Obama, who not only surrendered, but set up a situation where we all get to revisit his cowardice until 2012, while Republicans now know beyond a reason of a doubt he hasn’t the character for his job.

Hillary Clinton is not only irrelevant in this discussion, she doesn’t deserve to be mentioned, because she’s so far out of Obama’s disastrous political “surrender,” to use Krugman’s words, that it’s unfair to drag her back in. Unfortunately, at the height of Pres. Obama’s collapse, some loyalists had nothing else to offer but Clinton redux.

Sen. Mitch McConnell used Barack Obama like a cat plays with an insect. Not quite wiping him out with the first swipe, just when you think it’s safe, your adversary closes in for the final assault. The only thing Obama had left at the end of the weekend was the whine and last gasp of a presidency that will continue, but doesn’t mean anything anymore, because he’s left the United States economically crippled for the foreseeable future.

The New York Times editorial page eviscerated the deal:

There is little to like about the tentative agreement between Congressional leaders and the White House except that it happened at all. The deal would avert a catastrophic government default, immediately and probably through the end of 2012. The rest of it is a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists. It will hurt programs for the middle class and poor, and hinder an economic recovery.

Politics isn’t Hollywood, but until people quit playing it as a reality show or a casting call, picking their favorite celebrity and thinking personality is the answer, relying on celebrity talk show hosts who pronounce politicians as “The One,” we’ll get bad endings and short stories about people who leave carnage in their wake, without ever caring what happens when they’re gone.

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Bachmann’s Big Beauty Budget

By on 26 July 2011

It’s the Hillary effect again, this time on what it takes for a female candidate to run for president, including expenses a man doesn’t have to consider.

I’ve been following Michele Bachmann’s makeover, which was unveiled at one point in 2010 when Sarah Palin came to campaign for her in Minnesota. I did a piece on it at the time, because it was a signal Bachmann was gaming up for something.

But the Mother Jones piece by Andy Kroll has already made it to Minneapolis. Here’s one graph of Kroll’s story:

According to Bachmann’s latest campaign finance filings, her campaign spent nearly $4,700 on hair and makeup in the weeks after she entered the presidential race on June 13. Records show her campaign made three payments of $1,715, $250, and $2,704 to a Maryland-based stylist named Tamara Robertson. Robertson’s LinkedIn profile says she works as a makeup artist at Fox News in the DC area. She’s also listed in the “Make-up” section of the credits for the Citizens United-produced film A City Upon a Hill, hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich—a pair who’ve raised eyebrows with their own spending.

No journalistic outfit should send a man to do a piece on a female candidate’s salon expenses, because they haven’t a flippin’ clue what’s required to maintain an image for the public or the media, let alone all day long.

Remember Hillary? The wrinkle effect blasted by Drudge, then picked up by Rush Limbaugh? Remember Hillary’s fabulous hairstyle during the campaign, the highlights within highlights? She’s never looked better than when she was running for president, but it was a lot of effort, which she quickly dropped once she became Pres. Obama’s secretary of state.

Women have a much higher bar on looks and appearance than men do, including in politics. So, there are a couple of ways to handle the challenge. Proclaim it’s your money and you’ll spend it however you want. Bachmann could also find a more modest stylist, take the pictures of appearances to this person and then ask he or she to replicate them.

Tamara Robertson obviously is incredibly talented and has done a formidable job turning the latest Tea Party star into a sensational knock out. But Bachmann looks fantastic in the video here from 2010 either, when she made Sarah Palin look dowdy. Bachmann now has a beauty road map to follow, which can be done on a budget (I do it all the time), though it will never be cheap.

The days of dowdy Phyllis Schlafly conservatism are over.

Like it or not, Bachmann’s makeover has been important to her image and profile rise. Crazy doesn’t seem so unappealing when a good looking broad is selling it.

Take Rick Perry, who’s nothin’ without his hair.

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The Sunday Early-Bird News Round-Up

By on 17 July 2011

Good morning and welcome to Sunday!

On this day in history, July 17th, 1918, Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks.

Some news for you on a fine Sunday morning:

~President Obama has decided not to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

~This week Jeremy Scahill of the Nation did a fine bit of investigative journalism and revealed that the CIA is running secret prisons in Somalia, which if true, means that we still basically have a rendition program. And how did the fawning corporate media respond to the revelation? Well, two ways- 1. they largely ignored it and 2. when they didn’t, they dutifully jotted down administration talking points denying the allegations in the article. Naturally, they gave administration officials total anonymity to do this, lest said officials be held accountable at some future date. You know, for lying. Glenn Greenwald wrote a must-read article about how the administration uses the MSM to attack real investigative journalism that it finds inconvenient. For my part, I stalked followed David Gregory around Twitter on Friday asking him repeatedly if he would cover the story on MTP today. Naturally, that wasn’t on his agenda. Because foreign policy is hard.

~Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s maiden voyage to Iraq and Afghanistan was, shall we say, less than spectacular. Les Gelb has more here. Just what the White House needs, another wishy-washy consensus-builder.

~Sobering statistics: The Minimum number of people killed by CIA drone attacks in Pakistan last year was 607. Number of those who appeared on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists- 2. Hearts and minds people, hearts and minds…

~Did Obama lie about his dying mother’s battle with health insurance coverage? It appears he did. Does it matter? Probably. Why do politicians always do this and think that they can get away with it? As someone who did have a mother who was denied insurance coverage for potentially life-saving cancer treatment, I find his “misstatements” crass, politically expedient and insensitive.

~The GOP plan for the economy? Blow it up and blame it on Obama. This Red State article has been boomeranging all over the right-wing blogosphere and was apparently passed around at the House GOP caucus meeting. The fact that the Democrats, and the WH in particular, can’t use this to their advantage shows that after almost three years, their political messaging still sucks.

~Rupert Murdoch is very sorry that his media empire is an unethical, corrupt wasteland.

~The White House and State Department deflected questions all last week about whether President Obama or Secretary Clinton would meet with the Dalai Lama, who has been in Washington for over a week. Then, Friday evening, the WH released a statement saying Obama would meet with him- on Saturday (yesterday), and no photographers or press would be present. In response, China said that Obama’s meeting with him harmed Sino-U.S. relations and get this…”hurt the feelings of the Chinese people…”

~Good God, Michelle Obama eats a burger and fries for lunch while attending the opening of a eatery called “Shake Shack” and the self-righteous food nazis go nuts!

~Michelle Bachmann left her controversial Church not long before announcing her Presidential run. Coincidence? Does it matter?

Cats crash Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s interview in Istanbul:

~Thank goodness the GOP is keeping track of the important issues, like ensuring that the energy-draining incandescent light bulb sticks around for a while longer.

~The U.S. has formally recognized the Libyan rebels as the government of Libya. That sounds messy.

~Think Progress interviews the former head of the American Jewish Congress about the Mideast peace process and the Palestinians’ UN bid for statehood. He says the U.S.-sponsored peace process is a fraud and one of the main obstacles to peace is actually the United States itself. It’s a great interview, check it out here.

~Doctors Without Borders has formally spoken out against the CIA’s use of a fake vaccination program for children in Afghanistan, which they used to obtain information on Osama Bin Laden. DWB says it harms public health efforts undertaken by NGO’s in the region. Our MSM is not covering this issue at all.

~Sebastian Junger writes a powerful opinion piece for the NYT about the psychology of war.

~Meet the pay for play conservative nonprofit that writes a LOT of pro-energy industry laws around the country- The American Legislative Exchange Council. Democracy for the highest bidder.

~Remember the people who sold us all the lies about Iraq’s WMD’s? They are like bad pennies, they keep turning up. Only in Washington could such losers keep failing upward. Doug Feith, the man who Gen. Franks referred to as the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” is now a foreign policy adviser to Rick Perry.

The End.

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My $0.02/Saturday: Sheroes don’t hold their finger to the wind, they ARE the wind

By on 09 July 2011

Morning, news junkies.

This week’s Hillary pic(s) are actually from last Saturday, but came out after I wrote up my July 2nd post, so enjoy: Click here to see the great slideshow of Hillary and Trini pics at Still4Hill’s place.

Before I go on, a moment of silence for First Lady Betty Ford who died yesterday at age 93. Carl Anthony has an appropriate tribute to Betty up… The Revolutionary Moment of First Lady Betty Ford : Her October 1975 Speech still Makes History:

In this excerpt of that now largely-forgotten speech, Mrs. Ford delivered her crisp yet eloquent case for equal rights. As an example of the increasingly political and social importance of First Ladies to the nation, it ranks with two other revolutionary speeches – those of Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations in outlining the Declaration of Human Rights, a document she helped draft, and of Hillary Clinton in Beijing at the U.N. Conference on Women.

If you click on one link from this post today, make it the following one… Anna Sale/WNYC: Gillibrand’s Bipartisan Partisan Pitch to Women. It’s a very extensive and informative piece, and while there’s a whole bunch I could excerpt and tease, you really ought to just read the entire thing. I do love these Gloria Steinem quotes on Gillibrand from the article though:

Gloria Steinem herself called Gillibrand “our senator and our future” at the May dinner honoring Gillibrand for her defense of abortion rights.

“Like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisolm, she doesn’t hold her finger to the wind. She is the wind,” Steinem said.

Since NASA launched its last space shuttle mission yesterday, I wanted to link to a few items about the contribution made by women to the shuttle program:

  • about.com’s Linda Lowen: Many Firsts for Women in NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. As always, I recommend clicking over to give the piece a read for yourself, but here’s one part I wanted to draw your attention to in particular (in part because it reminds me of Hillary’s famous line that “if we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House”):

Even women who’d hit the glass ceiling again and again, like astrophysicist and space scientist Candy Torres, kept their eyes on the prize. As one of the first women to work in aerospace, Torres’ story as told to CNN reminds us of the institutionalized sexism that once prvailed and how inroads made Ride and others enabled women to walk an easier path in their pursuit of a career in space science.

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Fan Politics

By on 08 July 2011

Despite rising public concern about the federal budget deficit, Americans favor keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are rather than taking steps to reduce the budget deficit (by 60% vs. 32%). – Public Wants Changes in Entitlements, Not Changes in Benefits

This is starting early, so it’s time to revisit the facts.

When I came out for Hillary Clinton in July 2007, I was told by Obama loyalists I’d never recover from the investigative coverage I gave candidate Barack Obama, while others of that ilk tried everything to discredit me through lies.

On the day Clinton conceded, I immediately backed Obama. This infuriated many of Hillary’s fans, which resulted in the same thing Obama’s fan boys did in reverse, add in the oh, so cruel de-linking from dozens of blogs where I was considered a “traitor,” which I still hear to this day.

Many of these same people became “pumas,” a group I disavowed and fought against from the start, including in every media forum where I was asked, on cable networks across the spectrum. It was obvious “puma” was going to try to hurt Barack Obama’s candidacy, which also meant hurting Hillary, so I twisted the arm of a blogger to guest post here until the Democratic convention, with a few of her posts here, here, here, here.

Liberalism means something to me and anyone trying to ignore it or destroy it deserves what he or she gets. That my analysis is solid infuriates many Obama loyalists, but the foundation of my criticisms directed toward Pres. Obama is that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Democratic principles, priorities or policies. The noise from fan boys and girls in my direction is because they can’t take the truth.

The other day I began a column with the following sentence: “If you want one reason why Pres. Obama doesn’t deserve reelection this is it.”

That was before the Washington Post broke the story that had been floating for weeks and weeks, which is that Obama was going to serve up the New Deal for real, something I’d warned about in November 2007. I could broaden the economic criticism to include matters of war and more war, because our Nobel Prize-winning President has created no peace, with his Bushesque stubbornness on Afghanistan proving the point, along with his illegal military action in Libya.

On the other side, after the post went up, more than one person suggested that Sarah Palin is the alternative! It’s puma, circa 2012, and just as delusional. Palin’s fans are the bookend on the Right to Obama fans, both sides infatuated with their One, with “pumas” part of this problem as well.

The notion that I’d ever vote for anyone like Palin who believes freedom is just for men is ludicrous, though it would be great fun to see Sarah freak out the current Republican field by running. But with Michele Bachmann tearing up Iowa, what’s the point of Palin? Her fans will provide an answer for that question, I’m sure.

What’s ensued under Pres. Obama’s watch has been deplorable, but nothing surprising to me, which amounts to a sell out of Democratic Party ideals for one man and his administration. What he’s done to the Democratic brand is incalculable, starting with moving the debate far right, which has set up Republicans in a dream scenario.

That is, if the American people didn’t have their say, too. Read the latest in the Pew Poll to see just how badly Pres. Obama has handled the public’s trust, which he no longer deserves.

Anyone who thinks I am obligated to aid Pres. Obama’s reelection because I’m a liberal is sadly mistaken. I’m under one obligation and that is to tell the truth as I see it and provide political analysis that, at its best, hopefully helps you get clarity on your own thoughts.

Barack Obama came into office with the people, the press and the world at his feet. What he’s done with the power he had in 2008 is nothing short of political malpractice, with his lack of leadership on the debt ceiling debate not only a travesty, but an embarrassment for Democrats and a horror for voters who put their trust in Obama’s hands.

There’s no way in hell Hillary would have been humiliated by Republicans as Obama has been in economic negotiations and there’s no flipping way she’d have served up entitlements. I don’t say this as a “fan,” but as someone who knew the record and the philosophical underpinnings of the politician I supported.

Obama loyalists can’t say that about him, because he hasn’t any.

Liberalism is the shining philosophical star that can change the world, set women free, marginalize misogynistic religious zealots and stabilize countries and regions around the world, equalize injustice and open doors to a wondrous future. We need more of it, not less.

There is no reason to support Barack Obama for the sake of it or because he’s not as bad as whoever is on the Right, because there’s no evidence that’s true. There’s not a Republican around who could force Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts down Democratic throats and likely wouldn’t try.

Pres. Obama is not our friend. If you think he is, you’re part of the problem, too.

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The Sunday Early-Bird News Round-Up: The Red, White and Blue Addition

By on 03 July 2011

Good morning and welcome to Sunday. Happy July 3rd, pre-Independence Day!

I’ve even managed to find a red, white and blue bird, the Crimson Rosella (at left)

On this day in history, July 3, 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended in a major victory for the North.

For those of you who are not off doing something amazing on this long holiday weekend, I’ve rounded up some news for you to peruse:

~Of course we are!: The U.S. says we are willing to keep troops in Iraq if Iraq would like us to stay! I mean, it’s only been what? Eight years?

~Don’t even get me started on the U.S., Israeli and Greek bullying of the U.S. Boat to Gaza, aka the Freedom Flotilla. Whether or not one agrees with their mission or their tactics, the U.S. and Israel just look like a bunch of bullies. Interestingly, Haaretz was reporting yesterday that Greece agreed to prevent the boats from leaving Greek ports in due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s lobbying the EU to toss Greece another huge bailout.

~Thirty Afghan civilians have been killed in 48 hours as a result of IED’s.

~The battle over raising the debt ceiling has been totally mismanaged by the White House. That the GOP can basically sell the idea that cutting services and programs for the working class is acceptable in order to continue lining the pockets of wealthy special interests, is a damning indictment of this administration’s policies and political messaging.

~The governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, signed a controversial bill legalizing gay civil unions. It’s controversial because the tide has clearly turned- after New York, many want the states to go further with a full recognition of gay marriage, not just civil unions. Governor Chafee, for his part, supports gay marriage and says that the bill will get them one step closer to legalizing gay marriage. Perhaps, but it’s debatable.

~Ok, this YouTube ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee really just wrote itself:

~This opinion piece by Leonard Pitts Jr. caught my eye. He calls out Obama for his disingenuous word games in refusing to throw his support behind gay marriage. But what struck me is how honest Pitts is- he describes how he used to support civil unions while opposing gay marriage. He goes on to say that he finally realized that doing so was illogical and based on the presumption that the relationships of gays and lesbians were somehow less worthy than those of heterosexuals.

~I know Taylor covered this last night but it’s so annoying I just have to chime in. Is Ben Smith serious? One of the most biased pieces of non-Journalism I’ve seen in a long time. Seriously, it just screams “I’m a planted story!” The reason it’s so annoying is that Politico has been beating this drum for about 3 years now. I could write an article that reaches the exact OPPOSITE conclusion by selectively interviewing Jewish people that I know support Obama’s Mideast policies. Oh, and granting them total anonymity. But would it be newsworthy? No, it wouldn’t be. It would just be selective, agenda-driven drivel.

~Tim Pawlenty isn’t raising much money. Goodbye Tim, we hardly knew ye.

~Secretary Clinton has called on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to step down.

~Another Republican nobody has ever heard of is entering the Presidential race. But at least he has a catchy name.

~Justin Elliot does some follow-up journalism and asks Jeffrey Goldberg what happened with his prediction that Israel would go to war with Iran? Naturally, Goldberg dances and weaves. Predicting and promoting the next neocon war is sort of a part time job for Goldberg.

~Pinkwashing has been in the news a lot and it’s in the news again! This time in relation to bad Israeli PR about the Flotilla and false accusations that the Flotilla participants are homophobic. Never mind that quite a few are openly gay. If you aren’t familiar with the whole Pinkwashing phenomena, that article I linked-to is a good run-down of recent events.

~If you didn’t read this Greenwald piece about the ridiculous show State Dept. legal adviser Harold Koh put on in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, go read it. Basically, defending Obama’s Executive power grabs with respect to Libya is getting more difficult, even for those in his own administration. This is actually embarrassing- it’s a short video of Sen. Risch reading a quote from Senator Obama about war powers and Koh responding.

~Mental illness and gun rights.

~Contrary to popular perception, the repeal of DADT has not taken place and GLBT soldiers continue to be booted out of the military and some are even requesting to be discharged as a result of ongoing harassment and discrimination.

~The son of actor Rob Lowe will be interning for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

~An ExxonMobile oil pipe burst in Montana releasing oil into the pristine Yellowstone River.

~The Strauss-Kahn case is one big mess but alleged rape/sexual assault cases often are. I don’t know what happened in that hotel room, obviously, and so I can’t speak to that, but I will say this- people who are sometimes dishonest and lack credibility in the usual sense can still be sexually assaulted. Yes, someone could make up an allegation, but the credibility of the victim is a very thorny issue. It’s important to note in this story that as of right now, that prosecutors have not dropped the rape charges.

~The deterioration in U.S.-Pakistan relations is resulting in the U.S. having to use costlier supply routes to Afghanistan due to fears that Pakistan may decide to block more direct routes that wind through their country.

The End. Have a nice weekend and safe holiday!

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Let’s Play ‘Who’s More Pro-Israel?’

By on 03 July 2011



Let’s see, Gaza or gossip, which shall it be? For almost every news outlet this week it was the latter, while the former is where the action is. From James Zogby writing over at Huffington Post:

When it comes to issues involving Israel, politicians in Washington can become quite hysterical, making the dumbest remarks or doing the most illogical things. Evidence of such bizarre behavior abounds, and this week provided several examples.

Taking top prize would be newly-elected Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. Kirk wants the U.S. to use military assets to stop the humanitarian flotilla on its way to Gaza. He wrote that the United States should “make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk”.

[...] … All this might just be dismissed as “political pandering” or more “harmless hot air” from politicians who specialize in both. But it is dangerous and has consequences. In the first place, actions and statements like these send absolutely horrible messages overseas about the inability of American politics to deal fairly with any Middle East issue that involves Israel. And so these behaviors end up undercutting U.S. diplomacy. Secondly, these actions, and the bizarrely skewed, one-sided politics they reflect, tie the hands (or, at times, force the hands) of Administrations, negatively impacting the ability of policymakers to act. And finally, in the end, these comments and actions embolden hardliners in Israel and the Arab World, who both come to believe that there are no restraints on Israeli behavior and no way that Arab concerns will be heard or respected in U.S. policy debates.

However, it’s just not on the radar of the American media. Too dangerous. Controversial. Inflammatory. It makes network heads uncomfortable.

Instead it’s all about Who’s more pro Israel?, one of the most dangerous political games we play in this country. But at every presidential election, play it we do. Stacy has an “In the News” diary up about Sec. Clinton announcing administration talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, which on cue is freaking out the Right.

There’s nothing more serious than Middle East politics and it shouldn’t be treated as a political parlor game, but that’s exactly what Politico did this week. In a long, gossipy piece, Ben Smith traded on 2008 canard that Obama is an iffy friend of Israel by mining staunchly pro Clinton Jewish quarters to stir the currents of discontent. It’s a continuation of the conservative campaign to discredit Pres. Obama and portray him as soft on Israel, which is a falsehood, but some media outlets just can’t resist.

Smith has written about this before. Here’s an example of the well from which Smith drew his alleged proof:

“I’m hearing a tremendous amount of skittishness from pro-Israel voters who voted for Obama and now are questioning whether they did the right thing or not,” said Betsy Sheerr, the former head of an abortion-rights-supporting, pro-Israel PAC in Philadelphia, who said she continues to support Obama, with only mild reservations. “I’m hearing a lot of ‘Oh, if we’d only elected Hillary instead.’”

Even Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who spoke to POLITICO to combat the story line of Jewish defections, said she’d detected a level of anxiety in a recent visit to a senior center in her South Florida district.

[...] The qualms that many Jewish Democrats express about Obama date back to his emergence onto the national scene in 2007. Though he had warm relations with Chicago’s Jewish community, he had also been friends with leading Palestinian activists, unusual in the Democratic establishment. And though he seemed to be trying to take a conventionally pro-Israel stand, he was a novice at the complicated politics of the America-Israel relationship, and his sheer inexperience showed at times.

Why does being “friends with leading Palestinian activists” make Obama less pro-Israel?

It takes a friend to tell you the truth sometimes, with Obama’s stance on Israeli settlements something that most experts agree must be dealt with by PM Netanyahu, though on the denial goes.

All of this precipitated by anxieties from a very small but vocal minority, with all hell breaking loose again when Pres. Obama stated, then defended, that Israelis and Palestinians should begin with the 1967 borders, with land swaps.

Now it appears Obama’s supporters are readying to hit back at this continuing media meme. From Greg Sargent:

A group of well-known figures in the Jewish community has been in discussions with senior Obama adviser David Axelrod about how to respond to the criticism, which is expected to intensify as the campaign heats up. Among them: Alan Solow, the former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; former Congressmen Mel Levine and Robert Wexler; and executive Penny Pritzker.

“We will have highly credible spokespeople and surrogates speak out in a general manner in support of what this administration has done, and articulate it in a way that we think will resonate with voters who care about this issue,” Solow said in an interview. “We will meet with supporters who have expressed concerns or want to be briefed on these issues on a one-on-one basis.”

“We got close to 80 percent of the vote among Jewish Americans in 2008, but we had to aggressively bat down efforts to divide the community and to inflame,” David Axelrod told me. “Plainly we have to be at least as assiduous about it this time. If we’re passive in response it would be a mistake.”

Politico’s Smith got in the usual comments, with divisions quickly revealed or satisfied when the name of Dennis Ross is invoked:

The qualms that many Jewish Democrats express about Obama date back to his emergence onto the national scene in 2007. Though he had warm relations with Chicago’s Jewish community, he had also been friends with leading Palestinian activists, unusual in the Democratic establishment. And though he seemed to be trying to take a conventionally pro-Israel stand, he was a novice at the complicated politics of the America-Israel relationship, and his sheer inexperience showed at times.

A Philadelphia Democrat and pro-Israel activist, Joe Wolfson, recalled a similar progression.

“What got me past Obama in the recent election was Dennis Ross — I heard him speak in Philadelphia and I had many of my concerns allayed,” Wolfson said. “Now, I think I’m like many pro-Israel Democrats now who are looking to see whether we can vote Republican.”

Pres. Obama has deep challenges for 2012, but “pro-Israel Democrats” voting Republican isn’t a main one.

Our media is incredibly juvenile when it comes to covering the Middle East. Intramural political gossip substituting for serious mining of the challenges in the region continue to be the norm.

James Zogby noted what’s said around here a lot.

And so, far from being harmless hysteria or just plain dumb, all this posturing can be damaging and dangerous. It is a good part of the reason why we are in the mess we are in the Middle East and why a just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict appears to be so intractable.

Every time the media chooses gossip over big stories like what’s happening surrounding the Gaza flotilla, solving problems in the Middle East gets a little further away, which doesn’t help anyone, especially Israel.

That President Barack Obama would have popularized the phrase “audacity of hope,” after which we named our boat, now seems a cruel hoax, particularly as many of us recalled the high hopes we had once harbored for Obama the candidate. Instead of an “audacity of hope,” Obama the president has often displayed a “paucity of courage.” – Ray McGovern

The politics of “Israel versus the Palestinians,” which is the way the U.S. media reports on this region, as well as how our politicians play it, puts Pres. Obama in an untenable position.

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Bachmann Carves New Path on Feminism for Conservative Women

By on 29 June 2011

Bachmann told me in an interview Tuesday that she wouldn’t call herself a feminist—instead, she simply described herself as “pro-woman and pro-man.” When I pressed her on the matter, the Minnesota congresswoman said she sees herself as an “empowered American.” – Kirsten Powers

I’ve been waiting for this particular moment for a long time. The Hillary effect continues to produce political opportunities for women to break out, regardless of whether Michele Bachmann can rival Clinton’s 18 million cracks, though she’s on a course to be the first Republican female to win the caucus state of Iowa, much to T-Paw’s chagrin.

Political moments like this don’t come along often. This has the potential of being a seminal moment for the conservative movement and their outreach to women, though it remains to be seen whether the macho misogynists who run the Republican Party will see this for the historic opportunity it is.

Kirsten Powers gets the story, for which she deserves credit, with her Fox News channel access proving the perfect channel for Bachmann to broadcast the message. That it happens to be the most important breakthrough for the Right where women are concerned is undeniable, though we’ll have to wait to see if they understand what Michele Bachmann has done. I doubt she even knows the importance of what she said, because it takes a feminist to see it.

I’ve written about this for quite some time, wondering what woman on the Right would go beyond contorted conservative feminist-esque rhetoric by offering a positive alternative vision for Republican femmes that left their lame and divisive selective “pro life” mantra behind.

Then along comes a so-called gafferiffic “flake” named Michele Bachmann, the first politically competent conservative female to run for the presidency, offering a free at last path. That she did so in an off the cuff comment to a Democratic feminist is precious.

After watching Palin’s tortured conservative feminist cry when she spoke at the Susan B. Anthony event last year, I wondered when, if ever, conservative females would finally give up the ghost on feminism, a model that can never fit or worked for them, which history has proven. Asking continually why conservatives don’t disavow feminism, with the only answer from the Right sniping derision, which came off as petulant defensiveness.

Since Phyllis Schlafly ruined the Right’s coolness, the Republican Party has been struggling to break out of their past restraints and go beyond their abortion rights opponent stance and selective “pro life” mantra. That Bachmann’s comment comes when modern women are now primarily focused on economic issues makes the timing perfect.

Mrs. Bachmann could potentially change the conservative playing field, going well beyond Schlafly, as well as Sarah Palin’s unimaginative verbal femme contortions, while mining a seminal Republican talking point that is actually modern. Bachman’s premise is that women no longer need a separate activist wing to get what’s due them. Nothing fits the Supreme Court Wal-Mart decision era more perfectly than Bachmann’s “empowered American” mantra, coming in an age of austerity and amidst the Obama era’s diminished capacity for fighting for Democratic Party principles.

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has also added to her authenticity while giving Republican female conservatives a genuine path to rhetorical relevancy.

The opening for them came in the 2010 midterms, with women breaking evenly for Republicans and Democrats.

For four decades, the Republican struggle among female voters has been tortured, with the last conservative star Sarah Palin adding to the pretzel logic by declaring an “emerging conservative feminist identity,” a ludicrous pronouncement, because there can be no such thing as “conservative feminism.”

You simply cannot be a feminist if you do not support women’s full freedoms, which the Right clearly does not. Their war against women, which is being waged through their Planned Parenthood assault, but also demeaning women’s personhood through state government ultrasound pregnancy tests, “heartbeat” bills and other invasive laws directed only at pregnant women, proves it conclusively, even as these onerous legislative laws make a mockery of “small government conservatism,” which now only aims to control women’s lives on the wings of extreme ideology.

Into this Michele Bachmann steps, not only declaring the Right’s separate status on the political playing field by rejecting the feminist label outright, but she instead simply offers another label saying she’s an “empowered American.”

Shorter Bachmann: Modern conservative women don’t need your stickin’ feminism. This is the 21st century and I’m an “empowered American.” It’s brilliant, for her purposes and for the agenda of the Republican Party.

It ends the Right’s feminist problem by refusing to play in that ballpark, which has always been the road to set Republicans free.

Most importantly for consevatives, it disavows a concept that’s weakened Republicans and made them seem anti-women, which they are, though with this rebranding they jump beyond the ’70s to a time when new generations have no loyalty to feminism or the times that forged the laws that aid women across the board, no matter a woman’s politics.

Feminism did the work, now Bachmann is trying to lead conservative women beyond the movement that hamstrung Republicans with women for 40 years, while also allowing Bachmann to run for president in a party that doesn’t respect women’s freedoms. Feminism made Bachmann’s “empowered American” possible, because of gains made through this movement. Hey, but who cares, right? Certainly anything that attempts to wash away feminism is good for the Republican Right.

Bachmann affirms equality unequivocally, with no separate status of “feminist” required for her. She is daring Republicans and the conservative Right to break with the divisive and retro “feminazi” Rush ranting and bashing once and for all.

With “empowered American,” Michele Bachmann looks modern, dare I say it, even post-feminism, a term Republicans have tried to use but no one bought, because they couldn’t sell it. But as women now turn to economics as their primary concern the moment is ripe.

This is potentially a phenomenal political moment for Republicans.

However, Republicans and conservatives like Michele Bachmann still can’t effectively answer the most important question of all: Is freedom just for men?

But they don’t care, because for conservatives, invoking God is the answer for everything else.

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Queer Talk: ‘Human Rights’ (Hillary), ‘States’ Rights’ (Obama)

By on 28 June 2011

Joyce Arnold is a liberal Independent activist whose weekly column “Queer Talk” appears on Saturday.

Two events on Monday of this week added to the conversations about marriage equality. One was from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who talked about international LGBT rights as “human rights.” And one from White House press secretary Jay Carney – responding to questions about marriage between same-gender couples from The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler and Bill Press from The Bill Press Show – who talked about “states’ right”. It’s worth noting, as does Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner, that Meckler and Press are not among the “Five writers with LGBT outlets or known for their LGBT writing” who were at the briefing, but not called on by Carney.

The context for both are the unhappy sounds from Queerdom and allies regarding the Obama administration’s spins on LGBT rights, at this moment, particularly marriage equality. To be clear, Clinton’s speech was not a response to the New York vote or a direct challenge to Obama, in whose cabinet she serves. But the contrast between LGBT equality framed as “human rights” and “states’ rights” is still relevant.

On Monday, Clinton spoke at an event co-hosted by the Department of State, and Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies. The scheduled event was in celebration of LGBT Pride Month, and included a panel discussion lead by Under Sec. Maria Otero regarding the status of LGBT people around the world.

You can read the transcript of Clinton’s remarks here. Video here.

She began:

… this is an especially momentous and extraordinary time for us to meet for the State Department’s annual Pride celebration, the third event we’ve had here at State since I became Secretary, and the first following the historic vote in New York, which I think gives such visibility and credibility to everything that so many of you have done over so many years …

Later in the speech, she added this:

If you followed closely … the debate in New York, one of the key votes that was switched at the end was a Republican senator from the Buffalo area who became convinced that it was just not any longer fair for him to see one group of his constituents as different from another. Senators stood up and talked about nieces and nephews and grandchildren and others who are very dear to them, and they don’t want them being objectified or discriminated against. And from their own personal connections and relationships, they began to make the larger connection with somebody else’s niece or nephew or grandchild and what that family must feel like.

No, she doesn’t say, “I support marriage equality,” and yes, I wish she would. Of course, as long as she’s Sec. of State, it’s highly unlikely she will. We’ll see about later. But I think it’s worth noting who she singles out: “a Republican senator from Buffalo.” Obviously the focus should be at the state level, not DC. But I, at least, find it significant that there is no mention of the Obama administration’s position on marriage equality. The only way she could have done that, of course, would have been to follow the same strange story line coming out of the WH, which among other things, emphasizes the right of states to make such decisions.

As AmericaBlog’s Sudbay writes about the WH “sticking with the ‘it’s for the states to decide’ talking point”:

This is when we realize that the White House really is very insular. The people who work there must have no concept of how ridiculous their talking points on same-sex marriage sound in the real world … .

I’d just add, Insider and Access individuals and organizations who continue indefinite support of the administration which is using such “talking points” also appear “very insular.”

Clinton goes on to highlight some of the successful efforts toward LGBT human rights on the international scene, from Honduras to Slovakia, as well as steps taken in the UN, including by the Human Rights Council, two weeks ago, which passed “the first ever UN resolution recognizing the human rights of LGBT people worldwide.” She notes, however, that “all this progress is worth celebrating, but we cannot forget how much work lies ahead. Because let’s just face the facts: LGBT people in many places continue to endure threats, harassment, violence … in public and private.”

As for that Carey “states’ rights” press briefing, an excerpt, via Metro Weekly:

Meckler asked, ‘[L]ast week the President spoke about gay marriage when he
was in New York and … talked about how this has been the province of the state … referring to what was happening in the debate in New York, he said that’s the power of democracy at work. Does that mean that he also respects the outcome of democracy at work in California where voters rejected the idea of gay marriage?’ …

MR. CARNEY: Well, I think as you saw in the decision we announced that we would no longer – this administration would no longer be participants defending the Defense of Marriage Act because we do not believe it’s constitutional, that it’s precisely because of his belief that this was a matter that needs to be decided by the states. So without commenting on a particular other state, I think he was making that clear with regard to the action in New York

Carney’s responses to follow-up questions from Meckler, and then from Press, didn’t get any better.

In addition to Clinton’s speech providing some comparison and context, Carey’s remarks also came as not only LGBTs and “progressives,” but mainstream media and conservatives, question Obama’s stance on marriage equality. From a column by Maureen Dowd in which she writes “Our president likes to be on both sides at once,” and an NY Times editorial, “Gay Marriage: Where’s Mr. Obama?,” to comments from former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum in which he says, “I was wrong about same-sex marriage,” and the reports that, among other Republicans, Ken Melhman, former head of the RNC, “played a key role in the NY marriage victory” – it’s clear that a “states’ rights” framing isn’t working.

I’m not sure which is worse: If the WH doesn’t realize that, or if it does and continues with the spin anyway. Whatever, it’s certainly not an example of leading. Or even of very good politics.

(An earlier, “In the News” version of this piece has additional quotes from Secretary of State Clinton’s “The Human Rights of LGBT People and U.S. Foreign Policy” speech.)

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Michele Bachmann: ‘I am running for the president of the United States’

By on 27 June 2011

Forget political pedigree, executive experience or ties to deep-pocketed donors. No Republican presidential candidate is better positioned to capitalize on the recent tide of conservative anger toward President Barack Obama than Michele Bachmann. Her charisma and crossover appeal to both social and fiscal conservatives have the three-term Minnesota congresswoman rising in the polls and primed to make a serious impact on the GOP nomination fight. – Bachmann well-positioned for Iowa, and maybe beyond

So, the Hillary effect continues to pave the way for women, bringing forth the first serious right-wing conservative candidate with a worthy resume, Michele Bachmann, who has just announced her candidacy in Iowa.

photo via Jon Karl on Twitter

CNN’s Peter Hamby’s “charisma and crossover appeal to both social and fiscal conservatives” narrative gets it right.

Coming off her Fox News interview clash with Chris Wallace, today Michele Bachmann continues to gain traction with Republicans. But as Karl Rove said several weeks ago with Bill O’Reilly, the path to the presidency via the House is arduous, dismal and unsuccessful.

The National Journal has an interesting piece on Bachmann:

Bachmann goes out of her way to portray herself as a different kind of Republican. In an interview with National Journal last month, she talked about her teenage years as a Democrat (she worked on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign), her post-doctorate degree in tax law, and the business she started with her husband, Marcus. As she has in other forums, Bachmann also spoke about the 23 foster kids the couple raised in addition to their own five biological children. “People don’t necessarily think of a Republican, especially a conservative Republican, as having a heart, much less compassion,” she said.

[...] All the while professing great admiration for Sarah Palin, Bachmann appears irked by the seemingly inevitable association between her and the 2008 vice presidential nominee. Both are polarizing figures who appeal to—and turn off—the same constituencies. But there is at least one striking difference between the two: While Palin remains at war with what she calls “the lame-stream media,” granting her only extended recent interviews to Fox News (where she’s employed as a commentator), Bachmann has opened her office and her life to the press. She’s also showing she has a lower gear: In an interview Sunday on CBS News’s Face the Nation, Bachmann more narrowly focused her criticism of Obama on his stewardship of the economy and suggested she regretted calling him “anti-American” in 2008.

Bachmann is understandably “irked” by the Palin association. While Sarah readies for her close-up in Iowa over a movie meant to reinvent her, Bachmann’s running for president with her stock going up on the Right every day, but not because of some publicity stunt. It’s because as she goes into the “lamestream” media’s sights she seems to have learned from her innumerable gaffes, with the pros on her team schooling her on being a disciplined candidate, with Bachmann humble and willing enough to listen, which is paying off.

Sarah Palin’s refusal to listen to Roger Ailes after the Loughner tragedy in Arizona is a prime example of why Sarah’s seen as frivolously silly in comparison.

Oh, how the flop sweat inside team Timmy Pawlenty’s campaign headquarters must by pungent about now.

There is no right-wing Republican candidate that can take it to Pres. Obama better than Bachmann. It’s early, but she’s making a case that she’d be a formidable vice presidential candidate on the GOP ticket, especially if Romney continues to soar with the establishment, if Republicans can get over their Sarah Palin veep disaster nighmares. Unlike Palin, in a debate with Joe Biden, Michele Bachmann wouldn’t be forced to ignore questions because she couldn’t answer them or rely on tricks to remember Biden’s name.

Bachmann won’t get the credit, but right-wing politics aside, she’s the first credible conservative female candidate in modern Republican Party history.

And though I don’t expect a nomination fight to rival 18 million cracks in the presidential glass ceiling, it’s always a good day when competent, serious females vie for the highest office in the land and in the modern world. It’s just alarming that women like Bachmann are doing it on a platform that includes taking freedoms away from women.

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The Great Equivocator

By on 26 June 2011

With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is. – Maureen Dowd


In a dead on devastating piece, I still have to say… Come come, Ms. Dowd, surely you jest.

Barack Obama is The Great Equivocator. It’s who he is.

Nate Silver provides important perspective:

But the type of leadership that Mr. Cuomo exercised — setting a lofty goal, refusing to take no for an answer and using every tool at his disposal to achieve it — is reminiscent of the stories sometimes told about with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had perhaps the most impressive record of legislative accomplishment of any recent president.

It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.

This screen capture of the White House homepage, which has been live until recently, is representative of Barack Obama. When I visited the White House site and this image came up I found it jarring. Just why did Obama reelect pick this photo of Obama looking upward (an image they’ve used before), making it appear he’s got his head in the clouds and his nose in the air? It’s the oddest, most out of touch photo possible, aloof, but it does have a regal air to it reflecting the hubris of the man and his presidency. Someone who doesn’t so much care about people’s concerns as he does about projecting an image he finds presidential, even if it makes him look unreachable, out of touch, which it remains, with his “leadership” more in the minds of his speechwriters than in evidence through his actions.

As for Dowd invoking Catholic clergy, because of his two-faced political marketing he’s actually worse than New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan she mentions in her column, who as a representative of the Catholic Church is predictably reprehensible on marriage equality. Remember that the Catholic Church won’t give women power either and they actually might have been able to save these corrupt men from raping and pillaging the youth of the young boys under their charge.

More from Dowd:

The man who was able to beat the Clintons in 2008 because the country wanted a break from Clintonian euphemism and casuistry is now breaking creative new ground in euphemism and casuistry.

Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.

Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.

While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.

I don’t know what people like Ms. Dowd have to see in order to understand that Pres. Obama is taking the stance on gay marriage equality, because he’s trying to protect the part of his base, including people beyond the Democratic Party, that he cannot survive 2012 without, including African American and Hispanic churchgoers, a serious segment of the Dem base, but whom he feels cannot be lobbied or convinced to change their minds.

Andrew Cuomo is a corporate Democrat in the great tradition of our two-party duopoly, but he made Pres. Obama look like a mouse.

It’s not about Obama’s own religious beliefs. This is about Obama’s craven political opportunism, which mimics most every other ordinary politicians seeking reelection. His problem is he now is to the Right of New York Republicans.

It’s completely understandable that people don’t want to believe Barack Obama is who he is. I gladly voted for the man in ’08 and don’t regret it at all given the alternative. John Aravosis wants to believe the best, which I appreciate.

However, I’m not in the business of partisan fan politics anymore. I simply say it as I see it.

Pres. Obama is voting “present” on marriage equality.

While taking the LGBT’s money, he proves this community is too trusting and refuses to understand he’s only your friend when he’s got cover (see DADT). Like any president who wants a second term he’s thinking of himself and Obama reelect simply believes marriage equality will cost him the 2012 election, so they won’t fight for it, because he rarely fights for anything but Bushesque wars, proving Barack Obama is an old style mediocre politician from our 20th century past, contrary to his herculean marketing hype.

Perhaps it’s time for the LGBT community to take a lesson from Richard Trumka. Sure, he will likely land in Obama’s court come 2012, but he’s not going to play the sucker for nothing.

The Great Equivocator has spoken. “Evolving” is simply a word to keep people hanging on and it’s working, as Obama reelect knew it would.

But now that Republican New Yorkers have broken the LGBT community’s way, isn’t it time this community decoupled itself from Pres. Obama to see what can be accomplished beyond him, especially since Pres. Obama’s clearly not an ally on marriage equality?

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It’s Sunday. It’s the Early-Bird News Round-Up

By on 26 June 2011

Good morning and welcome to Sunday.

On this day in history, June 26, 1973, former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an “enemies list” kept by the Nixon White House.

Some links to go with your morning coffee, tea, or Mimosa:

~Well, I’m glad to report that heterosexual marriage has survived the NY vote legalizing gay marriage.

~Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are heading to Iowa on Tuesday.

~I think it’s fair to say Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda is, well, not really an agenda. It’s hard to know where to start: the adoption of the Bush administration’s paternalistic rhetoric on the Libya/War Powers issue, the totally dead Mideast Peace process, the coming September vote at the UN for Palestinian statehood, the continuing crackdown in Syria, our schizophrenic behavior towards Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the never-ending Afghanistan War…can anyone articulate for me what the Obama administration stands for in the Middle East?

~On a similar note, this embarrassment could have been avoided had Obama complied with the legal niceties of going to war and getting Congressional approval. Listening to the WH and State Dept. talk about the conflict that they say doesn’t involve “hostilities” is like a bad acid trip back to the Bush years.

~And it doesn’t help Obama that Admiral Sam Locklear confirmed to GOP Rep. Mike Turner that the scope of the war in Libya includes taking out Qaddafi and he also stated that he anticipates needing boots on the ground. Does that mean Obama lied to us about the mission, given he said this in March during his speech to the nation: “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake…”?

Ok, this is an ACTUAL commercial airing in Europe and when I first watched it I thought it was going to be some sort of ad for a gay resort. Turns out, it’s about the importance of keeping your HEALTH INSURANCE information with you at all times.

Why doesn’t Harvard Pilgrim or Blue Cross Blue Shield do an add campaign like that? :)

~Oh my goodness, this is not good.

~The U.S. and Israeli govt have been doing everything in their considerable power to prevent the U.S. boat that is taking part in the Flotilla2 to Gaza, from leaving port in Greece. A complaint has now been launched against the boat saying it’s not seaworthy. All week long the State Dept. blasted the Flotilla participants as needlessly provoking Israel and made a thinly-veiled threat on Friday that they could be in violation of the law prohibiting giving material aid to terrorists. I have been following the Flotilla2 issue very closely on Twitter and I can tell you that many are interpreting Secretary Clinton’s statements as being a green light for Israel to attack the Flotilla.

~The side effect of the Arab Spring- a huge refugee crisis.

~Governor Rick Perry’s potential death penalty problem.

~The ghost of Lee Atwater.

Ok, lets take a break:

Now this Squirrel is just taunting this cat!

~Newsweek’s resident neocon Niall Ferguson fear-mongers about the rise of Turkey.

~A great article about how and why one of the world’s great economists, Joe Stiglitz, has been virtually ignored by the White House (which tells you a little bit about Obama’s view of economics- and it’s not good.)

~Obama, the GLBT community and the enthusiasm gap. Kerry Eleveld reminds the Obama administration that there is more to winning the hearts and minds of the gay community (and elections!) than simply assuming we have no one else to vote for.

~Former Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller has to reimburse the state of Alaska
for over $17,000 in costs associated with his bid to overturn Lisa Murkowski’s write-in victory.

~Fox is helping the GOP promote it’s anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric. That may not be the best long-term political strategy.

~Speaking of Fox, check out this link, it’s too funny. It shows actual news headlines vs. Fox News headlines.

~Sheila Bair, the outgoing head of the FDIC and a proponent of much-needed reforms, warns that legislators and banks (and the WH?) seem to be in danger of forgetting the lessons learned from the 2008 global financial crisis. Lessons, what lessons? Who in the GOP learned anything from the crisis? Who at the Chamber of Commerce and who at the Treasury Department?

~The NYT bemoans the phony “tough on terror crowd.” Uh, wasn’t the NYT a member of that club back in 2001 through about 2004?

~The Washington Post has an article that raises questions about the motives behind President Obama’s promotion of clean technology. You be the judge.

~Washington Post hack Dana Milbank once again portrays the progressive base’s complaints as mere squawking but of course, when conservatives complain about their politicians, well, that’s just principled disagreement, right? Honestly, I sometimes find it hard to believe that Milbank gets paid to write this stuff.

~The oil industry has formed a new astroturfing group that is bird-dogging GOP candidates on the campaign trail.

The End.

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Obama Loses Dems as Reports of Gadhafi Assassination Plan Surface **UPDATED**

By on 24 June 2011

From Josh Rogin, a statement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce (update, 6.25.11):

The Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce call on Congress and the President to immediately end our war in Libya. The US has been engaged in hostilities for over 90 days without congressional approval, which undermines not only the powers of the legislative branch but also the legal checks and balances put in place nearly 40 years ago to avoid abuse by any single branch of government.

We call on our colleagues in Congress to exercise their legitimate authority and oversight and immediately block any funding for this war. Before the Executive branch further weakens the War Powers Resolution, and before we attack another country in the name of our “responsibility to protect,” we must recommit ourselves to our Constitutional duty and obligation to hold the purse strings and the right to declare war. For decades, the House recognized the need for appropriate checks and balances before another war was waged. We must do the same. We call on Congress to exhibit similar foresight by promptly ending this war and pledging to uphold the laws that characterize America’s commitment to democratic governance.

This statement makes a mockery of the obsequiese White House stenography in the Politico piece entitled “Libya vote a rebuke the White House can live with.”

____________original column below____________

Congress proved its ineptitude, with David Dayen having a perfect description of Speaker Boehner’s incompetence, which cost him the votes of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann. Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi, but she wouldn’t bring up such a critical vote if she didn’t have the numbers.

To sum up House preferences on Libya: we don’t like POTUS not asking us for permission, but we don’t want any responsibility either. – Daniel Drezner

Politico has the rundown on the arm twisting, with three dozen Dems voting to rebuke Pres. Obama, ignoring Sec. Clinton’s campaign for him, while stopping shy of using their power of the purse:

It appears that a last-minute White House lobbying effort to stave off Democratic defections worked — at least on the spending-limitation bill. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked House Democrats to back their president in a closed-door meeting in the Capitol Thursday, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon summoned a small group of liberals to the Situation Room at 7 a..m. Friday morning for a classified briefing that may have influenced a handful of votes.

Still, the House rejection of a one-year authorization of the use of force in Libya earlier on Friday represented the most serious congressional challenge to the president’s war-making authority in more than a decade. It was a symbolic vote, but one that was felt on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now comes Josh Rogin with an “exclusive” confirming what was said on the audio here by “Buck” McKeon (h/t BF), with Rogin naming the man making the assassination allegations.

So, regardless of the Obama administration saying they are not trying to assassinate Libya’s Gadhafi that’s exactly what’s going on, to no one’s surprise. From Rogin:

House Armed Services Committee member Mike Turner (R-OH) told The Cable that U.S. Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the NATO Joint Operations Command in Naples, Italy, told him last month that NATO forces are actively targeting and trying to kill Qaddafi, despite the fact that the Obama administration continues to insist that “regime change” is not the goal and is not authorized by the U.N. mandate authorizing the war.

“The U.N. authorization had three components: blockade, no fly zone, and civil protection. And Admiral Locklear explained that the scope of civil protection was being interpreted to permit the removal of the chain of command of Qaddafi’s military, which includes Qaddafi,” Turner said. “He said that currently is the mission as NATO has defined.”

“I believed that we were [targeting Qaddafi] but that confirmed it,” Turner said. “I believe the scope that NATO is pursuing is beyond what is contemplated in civil protection, so they’re exceeding the mission.”

Now, I’m not squeamish in the least about killing Gadhafi in a declared war where our vital interests are at stake, providing Congress weighs in to approve the funding and the action.

But Pres. Obama waging a “kinetic military action” with NATO as a fig leaf for an assassination plot to effect regime change is something else, especially when the President is doing it on the fly, without oversight and by lying to the American people about what he’s doing.

Pres. Obama has chosen a path that pretends we’re not at war or that “hostilities” don’t exist, as he tries to dance around the War Powers Act. The Pentagon blew this out of the water by giving “imminent danger” pay to “service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores,” as reported by the Washington Post.

All of this kabuki while NATO targets Gadhafi for assassination, because Pres. Obama waved his commander in chief wand.

There goes the republic.

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‘American Dream Movement’ Intends to Rival Tea Party from the Left

By on 24 June 2011



From Chris Cilliza, who doesn’t believe Van Jones can replicate on the Left what the Tea Party did on the Right. Of course, Cilizza says it’s “unlikely,” which in traditional journo speak means not a chance in hell.

“We think we can do what the tea party did,” Jones said in an interview with The Fix. “They stepped forward under a common banner, and everybody took them seriously. Polls suggest there are more people out there who have a different view of the economy, but who have not stepped forward yet under a common banner.”

Cilizza gets points from me for using “liberal” in the title of his post. I’ve never called myself a progressive, though I support most of what movement progressives are doing and admire them greatly. I just don’t have much use for congressional progressives and their caucus who caved on health care, causing more grief for Democrats than if they’d stood up and fought.

Unlike One Nation, in which long-standing liberal groups agreed to collaborate, Jones’ movement is hoping to attract people who are ideologically aligned but not politically active. Those people will define their own goals. But Jones is also in conversations with many of the labor and civil-rights groups that were involved in the One Nation effort. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recorded a web video for the campaign.

Institutional involvement does not go against the tea-party model. The tea-party movement has its own benefactors — Americans for Prosperity, Our Country Deserves Better PAC, and other groups backed by longtime Republican donors and strategists. Those groups capitalized on disparate protest movements around the country, many of whom say they have no connection to the political battles fought in their name.

Still, it will likely be hard to get liberals and supporters of more progressive economic policy to rally in the same way. Tea-party activists tend to be wealthy and well-educated; Jones is hoping to reach unemployed veterans, struggling homeowners, and other groups who likely have less time to organize and grow more politically active…

I’m skeptical for one reason. If you’re going to stand up to feckless Democratic “leadership” the place to start would have been to primary Pres. Obama, no matter the outcome or the inevitable race-baiting that would occur. But because the inevitable would have manifested in a loss it wasn’t attempted. There is simply no evidence that today’s progressive Democrats have the taste for the jugular you have to have to become a Left version of the Tea Party, a group that takes no political prisoners.

A debate on Pres. Obama adopting Bush foreign policy tactics, as well as adopting Republican economics, would have been worthy of the effort. Because no one person is more important than the liberal policies that have allowed generations of Americans to maintain middle class lifestyles in the midst of herculean efforts to stack the deck for the richest against the working class who made American the great country it’s been since founded.

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Hillary Clinton & McConnell Illustrate the Worst Side of Foreign Policy Politics

By on 24 June 2011

When Sec. Clinton was first chosen for her job at State some were skeptical she’d have Pres. Obama’s back when it was needed. There was never a doubt in my mind, however, that she would not only be a team player, but one of Pres. Obama’s strongest advocates. It’s who she is, because she knows what a president needs and expects from those inside his administration, especially when he gets himself in trouble.

The rhetorical tactic Clinton uses to make her case on Libya while in Jamaica during a question and answer period, which the State Dept. chose to highlight in a video clip that can’t be embedded, is unbefitting a person of her stature, as she suggests those in Congress questioning Obama on Libya check his or her loyalties.

So I know we live in a hyper-information-centric world right now, and March seems like it’s a decade ago, but by my calendar, it’s only months. And in those months, we have seen an international coalition come together unprecedented between not only NATO, but Arab nations, the Arab League, and the United Nations. This is something that I don’t think anyone could have predicted, but it is a very strong signal as to what the world expects to have happen, and I say with all respect that the Congress is certainly free to raise any questions or objections, and I’m sure I will hear that tomorrow when I testify.

But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

This is the type of reprehensible rhetoric that Sen. Clinton abhorred when she was criticizing Pres. George W. Bush. But now that it’s a Democratic president, she hypocritically chooses the cowards way out by challenging critics in a way that she wouldn’t if Obama was a Republican.

It’s always been clear to me that Libya could come back to haunt Pres. Obama and those who helped him make this disastrous decision, which includes Sec. Hillary Clinton, along with Samantha Power and U.N. ambassador Dr. Susan Rice, among others. So, it’s circle the wagons time. People are obviously getting nervous, with TIME magazine showing the dangers as the Libya misadventure drags on.

Even if NATO can accomplish its objective or drives Gadhaffi out, it still doesn’t make Pres. Obama’s decision right or legal.

More from John Burns in the New York Times from earlier this week:

Originally envisaged as lasting a matter of weeks, the air campaign is now into its fourth month. It has seen NATO conduct nearly 12,000 air missions over Libya, about one-third of them involving strikes by bombs or missiles, some of them seemingly intended to kill the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The airstrikes have virtually obliterated Colonel Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya command compound in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and reduced the fighting capacity of the Libyan forces by about 50 percent, according to Pentagon estimates. But there has been no sign that the Qaddafi government is at risk of crumbling under the pressure, at least not soon.

Much of the pressure NATO is facing over the Libyan operation comes from the dissent within NATO itself, with some member nations saying the campaign has gone beyond the mandate given by a United Nations Security Council resolution in mid-March that approved NATO action to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to undertake other missions to protect the country’s civilian population from the Qaddafi forces.

As Clinton’s bookend and to illustrate the political gamesmanship going on from all quarters, let’s also look at Sen. Mitch McConnell’s remarks:

MCCONNELL: The only thing I can tell you at this point is that there are differences. I’m not sure that these kind of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president. But I do think there is more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side. So I think some of these views were probably held by some of my members even in the previous administration, but party loyalty tended to mute them. So yeah, I think there are clearly differences and I think a lot of our members, not having a Republican in the White House, feel more free to express their reservations which might have been somewhat muted during the previous administration.

Now you know why Congress and the Executive Branch don’t work like the founders intended, which is why this country is so profoundly screwed up. It’s all petty politics depending on if your side is being hit and is in power or not. Sec. Clinton and Sen. McConnell openly representing the worst of this example in their comments, proving the juvenile leadership being affllicted on foreign policy decisions, among others.

Sec. Clinton is obliged to make her case for Libya however she wants, but diplomatically it’s sheer amateurism to set your sights on critics who expect the Executive Branch to inform Congress when embroiling this country in a military misadventure that isn’t of strategic importance to the United States.

This is what cost her the nomination, as she deferred to George W. Bush, then tried to make up for her vote on Iraq by criticizing him.

Whose side are you on? Sec. Clinton’s got a lot of nerve asking this question to Americans who expect more transparency from the Executive Branch.

To put a finer point on it, Sec. Clinton is wrong.

If Condoleezza Rice had tried this tactic she’d have been flayed in the media and deservedly so.

Sec. Clinton is too smart not to know how this sounds as she sits in Jamaica pontificating about congressional loyalties. Suggesting critics are on the side of Gadhaffi if we believe Pres. Obama operated in an unwise and possibly illegal manner in his decision on Libya is a low for Sec. Clinton.

I’m sure the boss appreciates it and her critics can finally see what I said from the start, which is when Clinton joins a team she’ll defend it against all manner of wrong and embarrassment, even if it costs her credibility. She’s as loyal as they come, sometimes to her own detriment, which is certainly the case here.

Foreign policy became a political football a long time ago. It’s wrong no matter who’s doing it and dangerous to U.S. interests, with both Clinton and McConnell offering examples of amateur statesmanship from the Democratic and Republican benches.

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Kerry & McCain’s Fig Leaf for Libya

By on 21 June 2011

Allowing the trivialization of the War Powers Act to stand will open the way for even more blatant acts of presidential war-making in the decades ahead. Congress must confront the increasingly politicized methods White House lawyers are using to circumvent established law and stop them from transforming it into an infinitely malleable instrument of presidential power. – Bruce Ackerman

As an audition for Sec. Clinton’s job, this isn’t a bad way to go for Sen. John Kerry.

From Politico:

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced a resolution Tuesday that would give President Barack Obama the green light to continue limited military operations in Libya. The language of the proposal has more teeth than the sense of the Senate resolution McCain and Kerry rolled out last month, which was merely a symbolic gesture backing the Libya effort. The latest plan would authorize U.S. operations in Libya but expire after one year, and would make clear that the Senate agrees there is no need or desire to put boots on the ground in the North African nation.

It’s a cinch Pres. Obama isn’t standing on solid ground with his humanitarian excuse. If that really meant anything we wouldn’t be turning our heads at the carnage happening beyond the eyes of press and the world in Assad’s Syria.

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Grudge Match Anti-Obama Hillary Voter Stories Begin

By on 20 June 2011

This is as ridiculous as it is predictable. Sure, there are those who hold a grudge over 2008, but the numbers couldn’t elect the mayor in your local town. However, there are plenty of disgruntled Barack Obama voters who think his Republican policies, especially on economics and foreign policy, is not worth voting for again, though these same people are still likely to hold their nose to vote Democratic if right wing politics is the only other choice.

But grudge match articles remain the fall back fighting position of the Right. But it’s a very narrow story, even if Tucker Carlson and others won’t tell that side. Of course, it comes from Daily Caller, though it could have been from Drudge:

“After 2008 [Clinton voters] were basically told get over it, and they haven’t gotten over it,” Amy Siskind, president of the feminist advocacy group The New Agenda, told The Daily Caller.

Women, however, did vote for Obama in droves with the hope that he would tackle the issues important to them once in office. This has not been the case according to many Hillary Clinton supporters.

“Barack Obama wasn’t the women’s candidate in 2008 and he is not the women’s president midway through 2011,” Diane Mantouvalos, a 2008 Clinton supporter and co-founder of HireHeels.com (“a forum of power chics for Hillary”) noted.

According to Manatouvalos — who pointed to a March 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics report that showed 90 percent of recovery jobs had gone to men in the prior 12 months as proof — Obama has hardly been the women-friendly executive so many thought he could be.

Indeed, while women did vote for Obama by a margin of 13 percentage points over the GOP in 2008, Democrats lost the women’s vote to Republicans by 1 percentage point during the 2010 elections, based on exit polling.

Pres. Obama wasn’t on the ballot in 2010, but the disastrously marketed health care bill was. So, the 2010 numbers were real, including that women split evenly, as did seniors. You’d think with the war on women the GOP is waging across this country there would be less of a worry in 2012. But today, economics trumps abortion rights advocate issues, with the feeling people have about the economy a lot more troublesome for Obama than the numbers.

From the comments I received after my summer newsletter went out yesterday, one comment in particular represented those I’ve received lately, revealing that some Hillary voters, of which I have a newsletter list of thousands from 2008, are wondering a lot about what might have been.

“after skimming the entries about netroots nation, just wanted to ask if you could comment–regularly–on how Hillary would have/might have been different on various issues. people must learn from their mistake in 2008. there isn’t enough–any–conversation on how it happened. I was an Edwards supporter but I switched to Hillary and appreciated your fierce partisanship. On some issues, I’m convinced she’d have been better, others, I wonder. would love to hear what you and others think.” – Lauren

Two questions from my newsletter were, one, if Obama’s base will come out for him; two, what’s the most pressing political issue on your mind? Part of Lauren’s response was “grief that we have no one speaking nationally for us.”

That last item in bold is the most common thing I hear. That the Democratic Party no longer speaks for many people who voted for Obama in 2008. Richard Trumka leads this pack, which is powerful. In California, Trumka is working with liberal Republicans, though it will be interesting to see if he can replicate it eleswhere.

Now, again, rank and file election centric Democrats don’t really care what the Democratic Party stands for and doesn’t fight for political principles. These people are zombie voters on which the party leadership depends, which includes some of your favorite political writers who always push party over political principle. It’s the lesser of two evils strategy that gets us Democrats like Obama who were against the Bush tax cuts as a candidate, then for them as president, then against them when reelect is on the horizon. Still, the evidence that Pres. Obama has the loyal support of At Least He’s Not Republican Democratic voters is overwhelming.

The issue oriented progressives and Democrats, as well as those who gave Obama a chance only to see him mimic George W. Bush, well, not so much, but they’re a minority. However, we are living through an era where close presidential elections can be swayed by the fickle, the fallen away, and the fed up.

It all depends who the Republican nominee is.

As for so called “Hillary voters,” in Pennsylvania right now, a state that loves both Clintons, but not so much Barack Obama, there is little evidence that with the current choices Republicans can beat Obama yet. From Quinnipiac, June 15:

In possible presidential election matchups, President Obama tops Romney 47 – 40 percent and leads Santorum 49 – 38 percent. Independent voters back Obama, 41 – 37 percent over Romney and 46 – 35 percent over Santorum.

But that won’t keep sites like Daily Caller from running the anti Obama Hillary voters story. Rehashing mythic tales is the stuff of election seasons.

As for Lauren’s “what might have been” question, if you have thoughts she wants to hear them.

Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, with Pres. Obama walking around Buckingham Palace, circa May 2011.

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My $0.02/Saturday: Strictly Hillary

By on 18 June 2011

h/t Still4Hill

Morning, news junkies. My link dump this weekend is almost all Hillary. Enjoy.

I’ll start you off with this op-ed Hillary penned in the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday–it’s called “There Is No Going Back in Syria”:

The Syrian people will not cease their demands for dignity and a future free from intimidation and fear. They deserve a government that respects its people, works to build a more stable and prosperous country, and doesn’t have to rely on repression at home and antagonism abroad to maintain its grip on power. They deserve a nation that is unified, democratic and a force for stability and progress. That would be good for Syria, good for the region and good for the world.

Also from Reuters… Clinton and Lavrov discuss Syria U.N. resolution.

What Did Hillary Whisper? (Insert your caption here!)

Next up, a nice and frothy link… “What Hillary Whispered“ — this is a fun Hillary-themed tumblr that’s been making the rounds (see The Atlantic, NY Mag, and Glittarazzi….Team Glittarazzi calls What Hillary Whispered their new favorite work distraction.)

Now for a series of more weighty links… if you missed it this past Sunday, here’s NPR’s take on Hillary’s trip to Africa: “Clinton’s Africa Tour Underscores The Power Of Women.” For more info, see:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks to Julia Dolly Joiner, Commissioner, Political Affairs, African Union Commission, at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, June 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Hillary also made a speech at the African Union where she talked about empowering the women of Africa:

And finally, when it comes to economic opportunity and development, we must empower the continent’s women. The women of Africa are the hardest working women in the world. And so often – (applause) – so often what they do is not included in the formal economy, it is not measured in the GDP. And yet, if all the women in Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, decided they would stop working for a week, the economies of Africa would collapse. (Applause.)

So let’s include half the population. Let’s treat them with dignity. Let’s give them the right and responsibility to make a contribution to the 21st century of African growth and progress. And the United States will be your partner, because we have seen what a difference it makes when women are educated, when they have access to health care, when they can start businesses, when they can get credit, when they can help support their families. So let us make sure that that remains front and center in the work we do together.

My $0.02: Unfortuntately, the US model is coming undone since women’s access to health care (and economic security) are under attack. See:

An op-ed, unsurprisingly published in the NY Post, criticized Hillary for not visiting the Congo and not delivering on a special envoy yet. Hillary did bring up the Congo in her remarks to the African Union though:

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we remain concerned about the continued violence against women and girls and the activities of armed groups in the eastern region of the country. Every effort by the AU and UN will be necessary to help the DRC respond to these continuing security crises.

My $0.02: True, it’s words and not actions per se, but to act as if Hillary has forgotten the Congo just because she visited other areas this time is a stretch. I’m sure she’ll never forget the Congolese survivors she has met after all the outreach she has done. Not to mention the fact that Hillary’s Africa trip was cut short by all that volcanic ash this time anyway, so it’s not like she even got to say and do all that she was planning on anyway.

At least the cover art looks like Hillary.

Getting back to the power of women, but in more political terms… The UK Telegraph: “Hillary Clinton must be on the rise – she’s got her own comic.”

My $0.02: Tim Martin’s art blogging at the link isn’t really about Hillary per se, though it does give some interesting background on the maker of the Hillary comic and about socio-political cartoons in general. Nice to see Martin mention the graphic novel Persepolis. I have to say, from the glimpses I’ve gotten of Bluewater’s Hillary comic book so far, I’m not terribly impressed. Still, I take Martin’s point that “if the grinning, policy-spouting simulacra in Female Force and Political Power point even one reader in the direction of these inspiring and adventurous pieces of contemporary writing, their efforts won’t have been in vain.”

Another one about the comic — ABC News reports that the book portrays Hillary and O as friends before the primaries:

The unauthorized, full-color comic book, released last week, describes how in 2003, then-New York Sen. Clinton sat on a tarmac in a private plane, waiting impatiently for a thunderstorm to pass before taking off for Chicago, where she hoped to attend a fundraiser for Illinois state senator and Senate-hopeful Obama. After eventually making it to Chicago, she was blown away by the young politician, according to the book.

“He’s young, brainy, African-American and a terrific speaker,” the book shows Clinton telling an aide. “Just the kind of candidate that we need more of, that Bill and I have spent our lives promoting. There’s a superstar in Chicago.”

“At one point,” Maida writes, “Obama gave her a gift: a photograph of him, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Sasha and Malia. From then until she left the Senate in 2009 … even during their rivalry amid the contentious 2008 campaign … Hillary displayed it prominently in her office.”

My $0.02: Funny how that kind of material made the cut and the three pages where the Bill Clinton caricature got to express his point of view on South Carolina, etc. did not.

On a similar note… Did anyone else catch Mr. Fish lumping Hillary together with every Tom and Dick in DC?

My $0.02: It’s one thing to argue as Taylor Marsh has, that women leaders have not proven to be less hawkish than men, which is a conversation worth having, but it takes a real dick–figurative, literal, whatever–to make the Weiner scandal about Hillary needing to be afraid of people running her out of power, as Mr. Fish’s comic does.

The Clintons in Bermuda, summer of 2009. I'd say this is as good a glimpse as we've gotten of "Hillary's future."

On the neverending DC parlor game called “Hillary’s future”…. More Hillary-should-replace-Biden noise, this time on Huffpo. That is one persistent internet urban legend, Lol. And, over at wowowow, Liz Smith asks this question about Hillary: “Would she do the ‘unthinkable’ and challenge her own party’s sitting president, the man who elevated her to the position of Secretary of State?”

My $0.02: As I asked of Jonathan Alter’s profile on Hillary in the June issue of Vanity Fair, what part of Beaches and Speeches do people not understand? 1600 PA Avenue just isn’t big enough for Hillary anymore.

Incidentally, Stacy at SecyClintonBlog recently spotlighted a Guardian piece from the beginning of this year that I guess popped up again last weekend–it’s called “Clinton is proving that a feminist foreign policy is possible – and works.”

My $0.02: Hillary’s feminist foreign policy is precisely why she’s transcended the White House and has much bigger horizons ahead of her. (Be sure to click over to Stacy’s post–she chose two great photos to go along with the piece.)

Excerpt from the Guardian link:

Back in the heady days of 1970s feminism there was an argument that once women achieved political power, there would be no more war. Margaret Thatcher and her Falklands war exploded that myth, and along with it any residual notion that women might do foreign policy differently from men. Indeed, it became a credibility requirement for any women with a senior foreign or defence brief to give a wide berth to anything with a whiff of being a woman’s issue. Women had to work extra hard to look tough on the world stage. Meanwhile, women’s issues were parked in the softer brief of international development.

It is these unspoken rules that Hillary Clinton has been dismantling since becoming US secretary of state two years ago. She is the most powerful politician to advance an explicitly feminist agenda. Even in that most delicate and crucial relationship with China – on which the world’s attention will be fixed this week for the Chinese president’s visit to the US – Clinton has gone out of her way to press feminist issues. In China’s case, she has highlighted the country’s growing gender imbalance caused by the high abortion rate of female foetuses.

My extra $0.02: I’m glad the author of the article drew attention to this. Even though I was born and raised in the US, I grew up acutely aware of the Indian practice of sex selective abortions–it has always been just as important an angle of the abortion debate to me as a woman’s right to choose. That’s one of the reasons why Hillary earned my support. Her pro-choice view is grounded in a complex understanding of gender politics and iniquity around the world.

In other human rights developments on the global stage…

Yes she did...and she keeps on!

Ever the Fierce Advocate her current boss will never be, yesterday Madam Secretary put out a statement on “the first ever UN resolution on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.” From the link:

This resolution will commission the first ever UN report on the challenges that LGBT persons face around the globe and will open a broader international discussion on how to best promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.

All over the world, people face human rights abuses and violations because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, including torture, rape, criminal sanctions, and killing. Today’s landmark resolution affirms that human rights are universal. People cannot be excluded from protection simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The United States will continue to stand up for human rights wherever there is inequality and we will seek more commitments from countries to join this important resolution.

My $0.02: It would help if America’s domestic leaders would stand up for the human rights of people here at home, too. Just sayin’.

Also from the fact sheet the State Department put out on “U.S. Accomplishments at the UN Human Rights Council’s 17th Session,” (the session concluded Friday):

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The United States continues to join UN members to call attention to violence against women and girls around the world and improve international efforts to eliminate and prevent that violence. The United States strongly supported a Canadian-led resolution addressing Violence Against Women, took part in annual day discussion on addressing sexual violence against women in conflict, and responded to the report of Violence Against Women Special Rapporteur Rashida Manjoo on the United States.

My $0.02: The fact sheet also has bullet points on the LGBT resolution, internet freedom, business and human rights, and country-specific resolutions. As usual Saudi Arabia is absent from the list.

We’re about halfway-through, so if you’re not bored yet, click to read the rest: Continue Reading →

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Wanted: Pictures of David Vitter in Diapers in the House Gym

By on 16 June 2011

Senior Democrats have privately worried that the three-week-long scandal has taken the focus off the party’s message, which had been trained on criticism of House Republicans’ plans to overhaul Medicare. – House Democrats could strip Anthony Weiner of key committee seat

Somewhere in his Fox bunker Roger Ailes is laughing.

As for the Clintons being “livid,” oh, spare me. On this one they should both just shut up.

David Vitter - D.C. Madam

But at least Mr. Weiner’s stupidity didn’t end like David Vitter’s prostitution and rumored diaper fetish did, with the suicide of the woman who helped Vitter get his kicks. Flashback:

Local police responding to a call late Thursday morning discovered the woman’s body in a storage shed to the side of the home, according to a statement released by the Tarpon Springs, Fla. Police. Hand-written notes were found nearby which “describes the victim’s intention to take her life,” according to the statement.

I don’t have any sympathy at all for Anthony Weiner, never have, even though I thought this whole exercise was ridiculous, because the only ones who have been hurt is Weiner and his wife.

NBC’s cub reporter Luke Russert opined on MSNBC that lying to your leadership is what did him in. If that doesn’t encapsulate this stupidity nothing does.

Anthony Weiner deserved to lose his committee seat and be shamed to congressional hell for his legendary stupidity. Where he finds himself is all his fault. But let’s not pretend he wouldn’t have survived this whole thing if he hadn’t sullied the sanctified setting of the House gym. That was just too much for the D.C. establishment to take.

But if Democrats can’t get out a platform to beat Ryan’s Medicare scheme, blaming Weiner for their message incompetence, they don’t deserve to win a single seat or the presidency in 2012.

It’s hard to root for the Democratic Party these days, who once again reveal their deep-seated self-loathing.

A classic from Artur Davis Former congressman (D-Ala.):

Weiner learned a brutal set of lessons about the chemistry of Washington politics. First, rank-and-file House members are expendable: the House is not the club that is the Senate, where personal relationships are more durable and there is an institutional aversion to pushing a member out. Second, unlike Charlie Rangel, Weiner had no race card to play. Finally, the Bill Clinton rule of survival applies best to second-term presidents with 65 percent approval ratings and a track record of 7.5 percent GDP growth.

And of course, Weiner got caught not only lying but doing it with gusto and indignation. False allegations do happen in politics, and it does not take much for baseless rumors to spread. Weiner has just complicated the task of any public figure who denies an allegation and for that reason alone, this saga has contributed to the cynicism around political life.

Finally, there is no long-term consequence. The informal caucus of congressmen and senators who cheat, flirt or make inappropriate comments to women of any age has not been dented by Weiner’s fall. The exposure rate will continue to turn on arbitrary and unwritten rules, and the sin rate will remain thoroughly bipartisan.

Only the Democrats could jettison one of their strongest voices where no actual sex occurred. But at least the leadership won’t have the thorn of Anthony Weiner in their side anymore and neither will Pres. Obama.

The next conservative who talks about the liberal media deserves a pie in the face.

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