2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

Inside The Desperate Race To Stop The Next Attack

http://www.ronaldkessler.com/

It's a pretty clumsy attempt to portray a bombastic preacher and local community figure into some sort of black Rasputin (i.e. Obama got his book's title from him, he's been Obama's mentor, Obama prayed with him before he announced his candidacy).

The closing graph that says "it raises legitimate questions" is the partisan newsroom equivalent of "hey, i'm not sayin', i'm just sayin'"

Wait, so he ISN'T a muslim after all?

NYTimes has a much more interesting piece on Obama's momma:

Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html

ObamaMama ought to inspire feminists x1000000 more than HRC does.

I have to admit I didn't know his mom's name was Stanley Ann.

suzy8080

Mr. Kessler, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter, is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com

No relation!

Boston Globe examines Clinton's claim of credit for SCHIP, discovers that the drafting legislators say that the Clinton White House initially opposed the measure:

In campaign speeches, Clinton describes the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, as an initiative "I helped to start." Addressing Iowa voters in November, Clinton said, "in 1997, I joined forces with members of Congress and we passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program." Clinton regularly cites the number of children in each state who are covered by the program, and mothers of sick children have appeared at Clinton campaign rallies to thank her.

But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996.

"The White House wasn't for it. We really roughed them up" in trying to get it approved over the Clinton administration's objections, Hatch said in an interview. "She may have done some advocacy (privately) over at the White House, but I'm not aware of it."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/14/clinton_role_in_health_program_disputed/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTGRL0OJWQ

(Sean Hannity is an idiot - Colmes & Rev Wright OTM)

No relation!

-- Nicole, Friday, March 14, 2008 9:32 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

lol how many ppl still on ilx would even know this? like 3?

incl you, fatboy

I'm just paranoid, I guess. Sorry.

The closing graph that says "it raises legitimate questions" is the partisan newsroom equivalent of "hey, i'm not sayin', i'm just sayin'"

Should've said raises new and troubling questions.

Nicole, are you related to

a) the guitarist for Interpol?
b) a guy I went to college with (I think he was from Traverse City?) who currently does improv in Portland?

Nope and nope.

I keep checking the detroit newspaper sites to see if there's any word on a new Michigan primary, but they still just have stories about Kwame and the dead stripper.

are you related to the person I work for who runs the big credit card affinity consulting company in b0st0n?

Kwame and the dead stripper

For reasons probably related to crapulence and hypocaffeination, this sounds like an ill-conceived children's book title.

actually it sounds like a hot97 news item

http://www.njs4ever.com/images/kme.jpg

i demand that the next administration somehow make itself 'featuring twista'
-- trife (...), September 10th, 2003 11:15 PM. (simon_tr)

:)

Obama aide and Bill Clinton's former senior foreign policy advisor reiterates the argument (previously released in an Obama campaign memo) that Hillary is overstating her foreign policy experience in her White House days:

The point that I am making is that her claims of the nature of that experience are overstated. The fact is she did not sit in on national security meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the situation room. She conducted no negotiations. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy. She did not have her own national security staff. That's the fact.

http://nationaljournal.com/onair/transcripts/080314_craig_greg.htm

But she was married to someone who did! And Obama wasn't! So there! Ner ner ner ner!

and she's white!

and unmale!

And it's really hard to be white, especially with an Ivy League education and your own security team.

Just like Jesse Jackson before her, she wouldn't be where she is now if she wasn't a politician. Just stating the facts.

is there an anti-excelsior thread?

sorry :-(

If Obama were white and didn't have a funny name, he'd be where he is now only with less crazy e-mail forwards going around about him.

obviously farrero's a racist dumbass but i do thank that there's something to the notion that his being the first african-american takes some of the shine from her potential to be the first woman ... why feel the obligation of history when you can pick the superior candidate

its still a retarded argument tho, because obviously there are lots of other, more significant reasons why he is where he is

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/031408DailyUpdateGraph1.gif

hurrah!

aw, I'm sorry! I was just being a dick.

this weekend's Stupid Controversy will be the Wright nonsense. Limbaugh and The Corner can't shut up about it. Chris Matthews was on "The Today Show" defending Obama today.

Hooray it's looking a bit less Crick & Watson, that poll graf.

this is getting into primary fanfic territory, but i really want Obama to deliver a message that puts the victim-politics, anti-patriotism, AND funny-name memes to bed: that he <3 America like a son of a bitch because a life like his could not have occurred in any other country

it seems clear to me that his candidacy could be and should be a reminder not just of Selma and the triangle trade, but also of Ellis Island, even back to Plymouth Rock -- you know, "we were all slaves, or chance laborers, or refugees, or fortune hunters, or outcast pilgrims" etc. but then, i'm not a racist.

i've been thinking a lot about the identity game in this race, esp concerning older women's identification with HRC. i don't have any clear thought, but i liked both these pieces, about the old/young split w/in feminism:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michelle_goldberg/2008/03/hell_hath_no_fury.html

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/valenti

Dang, a real now-I-feel-old moment: I'm reading the New Yorker profile of Michelle Obama and just realized we graduated high school the same year.

^^^ obv that line of rhetoric i've sketched out is touchy to say the least, and kind of glib w/r/t to the real state of race in this country. but the idea that the extent to which he is not white = the extent to which he is not a 'real american' needs to be taken on.

xp

that Goldberg piece is really good - the "feminist = Hillary supporter" axiom reminds me of the similarly flawed "Jew = Israel supporter" fallacy. The presumption involved in both cases irritates the hell out of me.

If bill is first spouse then presumably as a former president he will be security cleared. I can't get the image out of my head of him wandering into the Situation room in his boxers t-shirt and dressing gown to dispense helpful advice.

possibly at 3am.

Somewhere a phone is rining at the white house, will Bill or Hillary get there first?

Bill's . . . preoccupied.

There's a video game in there somewhere.

Bill could be the Billy Carter of the Clinton II administration, with his own beer and everything.

obviously I am extrapolating here from an image of him lolling around the east wing eating a lot of pork rinds.

Bubba Beer

one of TPM's readers, on its home page:

The Wright time bomb appears to be detonating, now that the horse race narrative has stalled and the media needs new material. The inadequacy of Obama's response is deeply discouraging. I was very excited about Obama, but I suddenly think Wright is going to deal a death blow to him on the "electibility" front. Michelle Obama's comments and now the man who lead him to Jesus is saying "God Damn America", and all BO can say is "I disagree"? He has to thow him under the bus and then back up over him again, but it does not appear that he will. Not clear it would even help that much, given the depth and length of their relationship. Sad to say, but it's best this happen now rather than in October. As distasteful as her tactics have been, I suddenly think we may be better off in November with Hillary. Wright is cancer.