Hillary Derangement Syndrome

The near-total participation in the smearing and bashing of Hillary Clinton by the U.S. media in this election cycle has been compared to the complicity of the press in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Objectivity is just a word. Hillary has been relentlessly bombarded, with every MSM pundit and many progressive internet sites gleefully participating in the blood-letting.

From CorrenteWire.com:

U.K.'s New Statesman: America is experiencing McCarthyism-like derangement
Submitted by BoGardiner on Thu, 2008-05-22 22:06.

Andrew Stephen, U.S. Editor of the U.K.’s venerable left-wing magazine, New Statesman, wrote today:

“Hating Hillary”

History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins. The chief victim has been Senator Hillary Clinton, but the ramifications could be hugely harmful for America and the world.

…Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.

…Obama and Axelrod have achieved their objectives: to belittle Hillary Clinton and to manoeuvre the ever-pliant media into depicting every political criticism she makes against Obama as racist in intent.

…the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever…

Disenfranchising Florida, Again

Confused about the Florida problem? Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Here's the most lucid explanation I have found thus far, from Florida voter, Deb Cupples.

From Buck Naked Politics:

...For months, in fact, many of us Floridians have drawn parallels between Recount 2000 and the DNC's stripping Florida of 100% of its delegates -- including some of my politically astute, Obama-supporting friends.

Hillary isn't to blame for that sentiment -- and it certainly didn't result from a speech she made yesterday.

For the millionth time, Florida Democrats had no power to block the moving of Florida's primary election. Thus, the DNC should not have "punished" Florida Democrats.

Our state legislature moved the primary dates, an entity on which the DNC's rules are not legally binding. Our State House has about 77 Republicans to 43 Democrats. Republicans constitute about 60% of our State Senate.

In short, Florida Republicans can unilaterally pass or block any legislation they want. They could have moved the primary date without a single Dem vote.

Instead, they wanted Dems to go on record voting for it, so they tied the primary-date provision to a provision requiring paper trails for those touchscreen voting machines that ex-Sec. of State Katherine Harris had persuaded our big counties to buy.

For an idea of how well paperless voting has worked in Florida, see this article about paperless voting machines that reversed the results of a Medley, Florida election in 2002 (scary stuff). Even better, the Equal Justice Foundation has a list of documented paperless voting-machine problems throughout the U.S.

The upshot: it is for very good reasons that Florida Dems wanted a paper trail, but state Republicans effortlessly blocked Dems' efforts for years.

Last year, out of the blue, the Republicans decided to give the Dems their paper trail -- but only if the provision was in the same bill that included the moving of Florida's 2008 primary election.
Why, you may wonder, would our state Republicans do something like that? What could they possibly gain?

My guess is that they wanted the DNC to "punish" Florida Dems, which would in turn anger Florida's Dem voters, which could in turn cause some of those Dems to stop donating money and to stay at home in November 2008 -- or to vote for the party that ironically didn't disenfranchise them this time around.

What other reason could there be, given that the Republicans had the numbers to unilaterally change the primary date and block the paper trail?

Think about it.

If that was Florida Republicans' plan, then it obviously worked: the DNC reacted in the harshest way possible against their own voters.

Many of us Florida Dems are furious at the DNC for having done so -- and would be whether Obama or Hillary were in the lead now.

Adding fuel to the fury, the DNC was not without a choice in its handling of Florida.
According to research printed at No Quarter, the DNC's rules did not require the 100% stripping of Florida's delegates -- even if Florida Dems had intentionally moved the primary. Instead, the rules required a 50% stripping, and that's only if Florida Dems had failed to act in good faith.

In fact, Florida Dems did act in good faith: they just didn't have the power to bring about tangible results. This is a pitiful state of affairs with which we Floridians have lived for years (you can see evidence in our education system -- one of the nation's worst, despite our state's relative wealth)...

99 Problems, Sweetie

Obama dismisses a question from a woman reporter yesterday, calling her "sweetie." As pointed out by Shakespeare's Sister, it's not the first time.

Elizabeth Edwards is notably absent from her husband's endorsement of Obama, having gone on record recently endorsing Hillary's health plan as superior. John made a point to state that his wife was not a part of his link-up with Obama.

Obama is riding high on a wave of support from Hillary-haters, most of whom do not criticize her platform, but instead resort to misogynist slurs ranging from Chris Matthews' "She-Devil" to Randi Rhodes' "fucking whore" comment. And then there's Olbermann who suggests that a super delegate should take Hillary into a room "and only he comes out," as a part of the ongoing Why Won't The Stupid Bitch Quit saga. Even Charlie Rose has chimed in on that one several times.

Shakespeare's Sister has an ongoing Hillary Sexism Watch which is now up to post #90.

Marie Cocco weighs in at the Washinton Post today:

Misogyny I Won't Miss

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan “Bros before Hos.” The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker

I won’t miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a “big [expletive] whore”…

I won’t miss [nice use of anaphora!] Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

I won’t miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie “Fatal Attraction.”

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a “she-devil” (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she’s “looking like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court” (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it’s mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like “a scolding mother, talking down to a child” (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: “White women are a problem, that’s — you know, we all live with that” (William Kristol of Fox News).

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven’t publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Obama has played into this theme with his mime of the rapper Jay-Z's 99 Problems(but a bitch ain't one) during one of his campaign speeches, to the delight of his supporters.

I guess there are at least 99 reasons why my vote for Obama will be half-hearted in the fall, if it comes down to that.

The Obama Movement

When I visited the Obama '08 campaign website recently, the home page had an invitation to "join the movement". Ugh, I thought, I don't want to join a movement, I just want to elect a Democrat to the presidency.

Then, a couple of days ago, I received a letter from Senator Obama that said:


"Betty, I'm asking you to join more than a campaign. I'm asking you to join a movement -- a calling, one that is committed to changing politics itself. Please help today..."

From Hullabaloo:

The Obama Party

by dday

On Saturday, in over 100 locations across the country, the Obama Vote for Change campaign will roll out with kickoff events all over the country designed to register and mobilize voters. At the event I'll be attending in South Los Angeles, the goal is to register 2,000 new voters in one afternoon. Multiply that out and you have 200,000 voters registered by one campaign in a single day. And that's only the beginning...

... it's an extension of what the Obama campaign has been doing since he entered the race. He's building a new Democratic infrastructure, regimenting it under his brand, and enlisting new technologies and more sophisticated voter contacting techniques to turn it from a normal GOTV effort into a lasting movement. The short-term goal is to increase voter turnout by such a degree that Republicans will wither inNovember, not just from a swamp of cash but a flood of numbers. The long-term goal is to subvert the traditional structures of the Democratic Party since the early 1990s, subvert the nascent structures that the progressive movement has been building since the late 1990s, and build a parallel structure, under his brand, that will become the new power center in American politics.

But blogger dday says, "There's nothing shadowy about this. This is tremendous news," and quotes from Matt Stoler at openleft.com:

MyBarackObama.com is the cornerstone of the campaign, and it will have between 10-15 million opt-in members by election day. This group can be used for lobbying on legislation, GOTV, and donations. It's a cross between Moveon.org and the DNC, and with the White House, it can transform progressive politics and further amplify the power of the Presidency. As coordinated campaigns pick up, and the top of the ticket brings coattails, organizing power is going to further flow to the Obama campaign.

I'm also told, though I can't confirm, that Obama campaign has also subtly encouraged donors to not fund groups like VoteVets and Progressive Media. These groups fall under the 'same old Washington politics' which he wants to avoid, a partisan gunslinging contest he explicitly advocates against.

This scenario makes me queasy and more than uneasy. I have donated to VoteVets and Emily's List, among others and feel they make valid contributions to electing progressive candidates.

With Obama driving the bus, it looks like we may have a runaway on our hands. And, if he is successful in remaking the Democratic Party in his own image, several million of us may be looking for a new home.

Clinton Has Forty Point Lead In West Virginia

The media has put down that big ballbat they have been gleefully bashing Hillary Clinton with for several months. All hands are in the air rejoicing about the pending coronation of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, voters in West Virginia don't seem to realize that the Democratic nominee has been decided by a select few who have control of the airwaves and print media.

From Taegan Goddard:


ARG Poll: Clinton Holds Huge Lead in West Virginia

A new American Research Group poll in West Virginia finds Sen. Hillary Clinton way ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, 66% to 23%.

Key findings: Clinton leads among men, 57% to 27%, and she leads among women, 72% to 20%. Clinton leads among white voters, 70% to 19%, and Obama leads among African American voters, 91% to 3%. African Americans voters, however, only account for 5% of likely Democratic primary voters in the state.

It's also interesting that "someone else" received 5% of the vote on the ballot question. John Edwards is still on the ballot in West Virginia, but his name was not mentioned in the survey.

Is Obama Lying About Ties To Terrorist William Ayers?

The Weathermen, also called the Weather Underground, is a notorious gang of terrorists who were responsible for scores of bombings protesting the Viet Nam war in the 60's and 70's. William (Bill) Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dorhn were ringleaders of the Weathermen. Today, they are influential members of the Chicago political scene.

A picture of an unrepentant Bill Ayers stomping on the American flag is featured in this post by Larry Johnson--Stomp On This.

From My DD:

Obama served on the Woods Fund board alongside Ayers (who is still on the board). Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has written about his involvement with the Weather Underground's bombing of U.S. governmental buildings including the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

Although charges against him were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct, Ayers told a newspaper reporter several years ago that he had no second thoughts about his violent past. "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told The New York Times in an interview published, ironically, on Sept. 11, 2001.

In his memoir, Fugitive Days, Ayers wrote: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon" - though he continued with a disclaimer that he didn't personally set the bombs but his group placed the explosives and planned the attack.

During the much criticized ABC debate, George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his connection to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers:

Obama told Stephanopoulos it was wrong to see his connection to Ayers as significant “regardless of how flimsy the relationship is.” He said it was false to suggest Ayers’s ideas “could be attributed to me.”

However, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together on the boards of the Woods Foundation which has been criticized for giving grants to individuals with ties to terrorist organizations.

Obama was also the chairman of the prestigious Annenberg Challenge, the brain child of Ayers who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers co-wrote the grant in securing $50 million to innovate programs for the woefully inadequate Chicago schools. Obama served as the chairman of the Annenberg Challenge, a fact that he has conveniently erased from his resume since beginning his bid for the Presidency.

A quick google search turned up this from USA Today 3/18/04:

THE OBAMA FILE

AGE: 42, born Aug. 4, 1961, in Hawaii

EDUCATION: Columbia University, 1983. Harvard Law School, 1991. First African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

CAREER: Civil rights attorney with the firm Miner, Barnhill and Galland; lecturer on civil rights law, University of Chicago; chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a $50 million philanthropic effort to reform the city's public schools; community organizer in Harlem and Chicago, 1983-88. His memoir, Dreams From My Father, was published by Random House in August 1995.

POLITICS: Democrat. Illinois state senator since 1996, representing the Hyde Park area on Chicago's South Side. Illinois director of Project Vote!, a 1992 effort that registered 100,000 voters.

So, to sum it up, Bill Ayers and his wife were present at the anti-war rally where Obama gave his much touted speech against the Iraq war. Ayers and Dorhn kicked off Obama's Senate campaign in 1995, by hosting a fundraiser at their home. Ayers and Obama served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and Obama was the chairman of Ayers pet project, the $50 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge, for eight years from 1995-2003.

This doesn't seem like a flimsy relationship to me. No wonder Obama is on the defensive about this. The real question seems to be why has the mainstream press not connected the dots on this relationship? Your guess is as good as mine.

A Pig In A Poke

I've been lately accused of hating Senator Obama, and let me say nothing could be further from the truth. If asking questions about his past associations are off the table, then I would have to reply, that I don't want to buy a pig in a poke. That's an old expression used by my grandfather that means: " pig in a poke: something bought without inspection; goods accepted and paid for blindly."

If I'm going to vote for Obama, I want to know more about him. Since he is of mixed race, married to a black woman, some of his close associates are black, some are white and all need to be examined. If we can't even ask questions about Obama, his record or his past associations without being accused of being racist or, god forbid, a Republican, then it just strikes me that his supporters are afraid of what will be revealed upon taking a closer look.

Hillary Clinton is the most closely examined politician on the stage today. I expect to know the same detail about her opponent. From what I see and read, she is by far the most knowledgeable and capable of the two.

I'm disheartened by the number of people who have some irrational "Clinton hatred". With Hillary this is now coupled with woman-hating, which is also a big part of what turned me toward her. I've been a supporter of equality for women, equal pay, reproductive rights and women's health care issues for all of my voting life. When I see a woman candidate smeared with a misogynist brush by her opponents, while giving her opponent a pass, then I start to take a closer look.

Now, about that Unity Pony that Obama talks about. If Obama's recent vote for the disastrous Cheney Energy Bill is an example of unity, (which Hillary wisely voted against) then maybe we should question whether he is actually a Democrat or Republican. That is not the kind of unity I'm interested in. I'm not interested in making the Democratic party more "Republican". I don't think Obama is tuned in to environmental issues, but is more geared to pandering to business interests versus the long-term goals that a steward of the environment should have.

I will support the Democratic candidate in the fall, based on the incompetent and criminal performance of the Republicans over the last two terms. I could not in good conscience do otherwise.

Rev. Wright is Obama's "Dean Scream"

Yes, Rev. Wright is Obama's "Dean Scream".

Too bad for the Democrats downticket, as Wright is already being used against those who endorsed Obama.

And I note that Hillary is now polling ahead in North Carolina, where Obama was previously up by 20 points.

Obama will sink the Democrats like the Titanic, once the press decides that his negatives are ratings gold, and the Republicans realize his negatives are electoral gold.

If it were just Rev. Wright that would be bad enough. But, the Ayres bomber connection, the Rezco-Auchi connection, that bonedheaded 1.65 million dollar mansion purchase, bitter remark, typical white grandmother remark, Killerspin tabletennis flap, are just a few of the negatives that will be used against Obama.

This adds up to big trouble for Democrats everywhere this fall if Obama is the nominee.