Webby Goodness

Some stuff from around the web:

• It’s not OK to say anything that might even tangentially be distantly connected to a remark that might be deliberately misconstrued as racist. But apparently it is all ticketyboo to make women seem like childlike simpletons and airheads. From the Indianapolis Star, Deroy Murdock (any relation? Probably not) pens this ridiculous piece of faux journalism:
  

  Like a little girl whose Chief Executive Barbie is falling from her fingertips into the sea, Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions are slipping tragically from her gasp. This may explain her increasingly unhinged behavior, which would be bad enough were she winning. To lose the Democratic nomination this way, however, is particularly pathetic….
  “Shame on you, Barack Obama!” Clinton snapped. Like a diesel-powered dental drill, she squealed: “Enough with the speeches, and the big rallies, and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’Shame on you, Barack Obama!” …Polls show Texas and Ohio voters cooling toward Clinton. They clearly see what now is beyond disguise: The big ideas fueling Hillary Clinton’s candidacy are blonde ambition, an unbecoming sense of entitlement, and a thirst for power that all the Gatorade in Gainesville could not quench.

  My, my, MY, my. Well, there’s no way you could misconstrue THAT column. Don’t these guys have editors? (Ladies, do not date this man)

• TalkLeft is reporting that Hillary will be on the Daily Show on Monday. Hmm, well that should be interesting. I haven’t watched it since the WGA strike but I had heard that Jon had gone to the dark side. (Er, it’s just an expression and it predates Obama’s political career. Jeez) Here is the press release. I have trouble viewing it but you may have better luck.
• Hillary signs onto a bill that may be the best way to end the war in Iraq. It was sponsored by Bernie Sanders in Vermont and it proposes to ban private contractors like Blackwater from operating in Iraq. Barry is still dithering on this one.

Hillary says: Take Responsibility for Your Actions

Here is her response to Obama and his minions who are freaking out about the 3am ad:

Isn’t it nice to be able to go second for a change? 🙂

One more thing: Tucsonlynn is on her way to Texas this weekend to lend a hand to Hillary’s campaign.  Send her positive thoughts and maybe she will be nice enough to update us on what she is seeing.

Know Your Predators: Aboma or Obama?

Above: The deadly South American ABOMA
(a.k.a. Boa aboma) engulfs an unfortunate old croc.
Below: The deadly North American OBAMA
(a.k.a. Barry Obama) engulfs an unfortunate old croc.

Keep it up Obamaphiles!

Oooo, Clinton is FEARMONGERING!

And Obama is running around saying this is about Iraq and his excellent judgment (that he was not expected to verify with a vote).

No, this is not about Iraq. This is about dealing with fear rationally. Bush captured the market on fearmongering but the terrorism problem hasn’t gone away. In fact Bush has made the problem worse and likely more explosive. And as Clinton has correctly pointed out before, acts of terrorism frequently occur during transitions in government. Just before or right after elections.

Now, if you feel comfortable putting a complete neophyte in the driver’s seat during a period of time when we haven’t gotten a handle on terrorism, then by all means, vote for Obama. But if you are the kind of person who keeps a fire extinguisher in your kitchen, smoke detectors in you ceilings, double locks on your doors, drives within the speed limit and has no need to panic in the event of a natural disaster because you’ve made preparations in advance, then this should be a no-brainer. Go with the person who has seen it from the inside and who has access to the best mentor in the world.

Obama has it wrong here. There are still plenty of people who are justifiably concerned about terrorism and they are not going to be comfortable with someone who doesn’t understand their concerns about the ongoing threat we face. I still get a little unnerved by the sudden and persistent whomp-whomp of low flying helicopters over my roof (it happened a lot after 9/11 so now I pay attention to the noise). I get concerned about terrorism, probably because of my location in the NYC megalopolis. But I am not panicking. And I know I will rest much easier if Hillary is in the White House because I know she’s not going to trivialize the advice of her counterterrorism experts and tell them there’s nothing to worry about.

In any case, when McCain runs scarier ads in the general, Hillary will have much better bona fides on national security than Obama. McCain will make him look like a nonchalant weakling.  Now THAT’S scary.

Confluence Fingers BO’s Canadian Connection — and CTV Confirms

Obama hit an icy patch in Ohio Wednesday when Canadian TV reported leaks of diplomatic-level assurances from his campaign to Canadian government on NAFTA (that Obama will make populist noise about NAFTA in the campaign, but they needn’t worry that he’ll rock the boat once in office).

While his campaign leapt and spun through its compulsory series of non-denial denials, we pointedly pointed to the identity of the “senior member” on the Obama side of these backchannel conversations.

CTV now confirms our read with an in-your-face response to Obama08’s fatuous denials. Yes, fans, it’s dogwhistle prodigy Austan Goolsbee — rabid free-trader, DLC Senior Economist, Krugman nemesis, and Barack Obama’s chief domestic policy advisor.

“Oooohhh! Looks like Obama08 caught a bad edge on that last double-Axelrod, Scott. Will it erase the lead he had built up over the previous events? And can he make it up in the freestyle? … Let’s see what the judges have to say!”

Updates below the fold.

Tin foil antenna twitching

There’s always been something a little disturbing about the flood of Obamaphiles to the caucuses in the red states. It’s unsettling on so many levels. I have no doubt that Axlerod and his team have been very good at mobilizing their supporters but for some reason he does *less* well motivating them in primary states. Take NJ for instance. Why wasn’t Axlerod able to swing a victory here? Was it because there were too many asians? Not enough african-americans? Because this state has the densest population (in more ways than one)? He poured massive amounts of money into NJ. He also wasn’t able to swing Florida despite a flood of cash ($1.4 Million by some reports).

But predominantly red states like Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Utah and Colorado he wins easily. The Obamaphiles turn out in record numbers where in other caucus states like New Mexico and Nevada, he and Clinton run about even.

Others have pointed out the high number of crossover votes in some states and that may be part of it. But there is something aggressive in this that feels reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot in Florida in 2000. As we now know, that was a completely manufactured incident composed not of regular Floridians but Republican congressional staffers and people like John Bolton. It reminded me of a Haka. The opposing team is so fierce and intimidating that it catches regular Democrats off guard. In general, Democrats are not like that. We’ve been rightly accused of being too collaborative and nice. To have the kind of supporters that Obama has had in the caucus states seems weirdly un-Democratic.

A lot of this can be chalked up to the exuberant insolence of young college aged Democrats and the recent numbers on the IA poll out of Texas shows that the 18-30 category is where Obama wins in overwhelming numbers. In every other age category, Clinton beats Obama by small margins with Clinton edging him out significantly among older voters but not nearly at the same margin as he beats her with the young and stupid.

So, how many of these young voters would have been Republicans 8 years ago? Or is a Rovian behind the massive turnout of rowdy Obamaphiles at caucuses. These voters don’t stick around long. They rush in, do the dirty deed and split as soon as they can. Who ARE they and are we seeing another Brooks Brothers Riot? Or should I say an Abercrombie and Fitch riot? Since they are a lot of first time voters, how do we know that college Republicans aren’t behind it, specifically recruiting students from Republican families to register as Democrats for the caucuses? It would explain how Clinton’s campaign was caught offguard. They really did think that SuperTuesday would be decisive. Indeed, in any other year, it would have been. They made a lot of mistakes but what if the Republicans manufactured some the Obamaphiles?

Ok, I’ll go increase my meds now.

Friday Morning- FINALLY!

Jeez, I have something like 5 different things to do again today. *sigh*

Anyway, here are some interesting things from around the web:

• I picked this up from FireDogLake and it is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. Only Obamaphiles would misinterpret it as a pro-Obama video.

• Digby defines Cokie’s Law and in a round about way demonstrates why Hillary is kind of immune to it at this point. Whatever is out there about her is already out there and she’s still hanging on. I can’t imagine things will get much worse for her. Obama is going to get pummeled. ghost2 found a letter at the NYTimes (see the one from Donna Lawlor about 2/3 down the page) that perfectly demonstrates what is going to happen to him. All you need to do is assign all the good adjectives to McCain and all of the bad ones to Obama and then add some like “inexperienced”, “naive”, “awkward”, “fragile”. Maureen Dowd has already tested her prototype of her Obama column. All they need now is the signal to roll out what they have in inventory. Swopa at FDL finds a similar theme from Michael Kinsley. It is herd mentality. They don’t even know why they hate Clinton or why “Obama totally makes them cry”. It’s just that someone throws a switch. That is some powerful manipulation of Jungian arcetypes going on there.
• The NYTimes has a piece this morning on the coming storm for Obama and makes the following observation:
  

  For much of this year, Mr. Obama has been handled with relative care by Mrs. Clinton and, before they dropped out, the other Democratic candidates. They generally do not have huge policy differences with him, and they have been wary of making a particularly harsh attack that winds up in a Republican television advertisement this fall.

  Yes, for the most part, Hillary has run a positive campaign. Her jabs at Obama have been gentle. She still manages to go toe to toe with him and is in a virtual tie in the primaries. She trails by a mere 105 delegates. So, what does this tell us? It says that you don’t have to run an overtly negative campaign to be a competitive politician. And if people are really looking for that kind of change in politics, she’s the one. There’s one other thing that is worth noting: David Axelrod seems supremely confident that he can parry the behemoth GOP attack machine because he knows what they’ll be up to but that only works if the media doesn’t interfere in the fight. And we have seen time and time again that the media puts its nonfavorite candidates on mute while it allows the favorite to go hammer and tongs on its rival. Plus, most people are not internet addicts.

• Hillary will be attending the funeral of Victor Lozada, the officer in her motorcade who was thrown from his motorcycle last week. Not a campaign appearance, just a thoughtful gesture at the request of the officer’s mother. Too sad.
• I don’t know what to make of the Hagee endorsement of John McCain.  I have Hagee lovers in my family and they hate John McCain.  My mom, in particular, is voting for Hillary provided she doesn’t suspend before Pennsylvania.  Of course, in the end, they may do whatever their church tells them is correct for the general but I don’t think this helps McCain in the primaries at all.