The Pelosi-Clinton Chasm

(I split this off from the preceding post)

Jim VandeHei of The Politico wrote this piece about The Clinton-Pelosi Fault . Apparently, the source of the rift is the war and Clinton’s “hawkish” positioning. I don’t think Clinton is a hawk. I think she made a bad decision about the IWR but probably had fewer options than many senators. And the Liberman-Kyl resolution never had any teeth. Besides, she has co-sponsored other legislation requiring the WH to get approval from Congress before launching bombs as Iran.

But I *do* think that VandeHei is on to something of the real cause of the rift between Clinton and Pelosi. It’s just that if Pelosi is going to take a stand and hold Clinton accountable, she picked the wrong candidate to do it. And where was Pelosi 4 years ago when Kerry was running and said he’d vote for it again? There’s just no consistency here. What else is at work here? Does Pelosi know something about Hillary that we don’t? It doesn’t look like it or wouldn’t she tell us? If we are about to make a giant mistake, wouldn’t it be her duty to tell us why? So, I have to assume this is just attitudinal. Pelosi has picked a tribe and Clinton is not in it. That looks to be the extent of it. If anyone has any other information on the Pelosi-Clinton divide, please share with the class.

Another theory: If Pelosi is backing Obama, and there seems to be quite a few links out there where she CLEARLY doesn’t like Clinton, could it be something as simple as getting credit for ending the war? If she backs the winning candidate, he can always come back and work with her to get the right legislation passed to end it. But if she backs Obama and *Clinton* wins, it’s Hillary that gets the glory, not Pelosi. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Obama is more than just tofu for the voters. He’s tofu to the frustrated party leaders who will have a person they can strongly influence. With Hillary, they won’t have that opportunity. Hillary has a strong political personality but Obama is still a tabula rasa who acquired his connections and coalitions as a gift. He didn’t make them on his own so he is beholden to them. They will threaten to abandon him the minute he doesn’t toe the line. Ahhhhh, it’s all starting to make sense now.

Late Afternoon Developments- Holding Pattern

My curiosity has been piqued by the following interesting developments:

• Admiral “Fox” Fallon is retiring. Yep, the guy who referred to General Petraeus as “an @$$-kissing, little chicken$hit” is calling it quits. Fallon was the last surviving top military honcho to stand between Dick Cheney and his Iran bombing Viagra. As Jane at FDL points out, retiring means he is free to spill the beans.
• Eliot Spitzer is not resigning today. He may not resign tomorrow. It is unknown when he will resign. Except that the Republicans in the NY State legislature printed the Articles of Impeachment sometime back in January and it would be a shame to waste them. So, it appears that he may be trying to work out a deal to avoid indictment on some of the charges before he beats a hasty retreat. Oh, and apparently, his NY cheesecake was not cool with Silda.
• John Boehner is threatening to close up the House if the president and the telecomms don’t get their way with FISA. There is a deal in the works to not give them blanket immunity but instead bring each infraction before a federal judge to determine whether there is a state secret involved. BUT we forget that Republicans have been in charge of nominating federal judges for the past 28 out of 40 years so what are the chances?
• Pelosi scuttles any chance of a joint Clinton-Obama, Obam-Clinton ticket. Whew! That’s a relief. I guess she knows firsthand what it’s like to be the first female leader in her organization who has a male second in command forced on her who ignores her every word. Well, we’ll see, Nancy. It’s likely you won’t have any say in *this* matter either.

Guys, I don’t have to remind you that 3 out of the 4 items up above are a direct result of Republican skullduggery. They are nasty pieces of work who will scheme right up to the last minute when they are escorted off the premises and just before they leave, someone will give the signal to type “rm *” at the sys admin console while logged in as root at /. (I’ll bet the unix geeks just got a shivver from that)

In the meantime, item 4 shows how much we have let our guard down with respect to the Bushies while Obama has accused Clinton of being the Grand Master of the Chapaqua Branch of the KKK and the Obamaphiles are flipping out over the fact that Hillary says McCain has more national security creds than Barry. And what about the FL and MI delegates, guys? Could you please wrap it up so we can get onto keeping the barbarians from making any further incursions until we can send reinforcements?

Priorities, people!

Josh Moved his Obama Ads

They’re now on the TPMCafe section. There are two of them. One in the banner at the top and one in the body. They probably move around. Here’s a pic (in case they disappear again) of the banner ad:

I’m sure that the presence of the ad, the purging of Linda Hirshman from TPM Cafe and the overtly negative Clinton sidepanel articles are purely coincidental.

(Ladies, do not date this blog)

One more thing: DisenfranchisedVoter pointed me to this Orlando Patterson parody of a breathless, delusional, anti-Clinton Kossack rant in the NYTimes: The Red Phone in Black and White.

Oh, it’s not satire? My mistake. Carry on. Wait until Wolcott gets hold of it.  🙂

(Note to self: Brook cannot major in sociology at Harvard or I will cut her off)

We all knew this was coming

When the US Attorney scandal broke last year, we knew what the Republicans were planning. They were going to try to catch every prominent Democrat at anything and literally make a federal case out of it in this very important election year. Spitzer should have known better but in a way, it’s a good thing that all of this is coming to light now. It might not save Spitzer’s career but it may expose to the public what the impact of the Justice Department shenanigans has been and *will* be until the Bushies are out of office. (And what about FISA? Should Democrats everywhere assume that all of  their phone, email, internet connections are compromised?  It’s a safe bet.)

Jane Hamsher, at FireDogLake, has some very good, “Hey, wait a minute” questions that are probably just the tip of a very dirty iceberg. As for Spitzer, I understand urges and needs and everything. And maybe your wife was cool with it. Not my business. But this year, you should have made an extra effort to keep your pants on.

Tuesday Follow-up

We left a few things hanging recently, so here’s a little more to chew on:

• Regarding Linda Hirshman’s pink slip from TalkingPointsMemo, I don’t think it is a coincidence that there are at least two Obama ads on the frontpage at TPM at all times. They swap places, sometimes showing up in the banner, the sidepanel or body. Now, what does it say about TPM that it would deliberately smother any discussion of female voting patterns? And better yet, what does it say about the Obama campaign that it would associate itself with a blog that takes an action that appears to further drown out women’s voices in the left blogosphere? Hmmm, if I were an ambitious internet director for an up and coming post-racial, post-gender transcendent candidate and I wanted to make my voice LOUDER, what would be the harm of trying to purge my opponent’s supporters off the biggest billboards. So, I have a few conference calls with my blogger boyz, (let’s call them Bos and Posh) throw some big ad money around and indirectly suggest that if they are going to be included in future calls and ad revenue, they *might* want to be a little more proactive about my candidate. When does a little pruning turns into a gender cleansing? So, they got a little carried away, irrationally exuberant, so what. It’s not like there are “any women out there”. (“But *why* can’t women go to a stonin’, Mum? ” “It is WRITTEN!”) We really need to address the Obama campaign about this. Either he stops his people from encouraging the anti-female pogrom or he perpetuates the idea that women have no place or power in the public sphere. Shouldn’t the rest of the primary state voters know where he stands on the matter?  Update: Interesting, Josh has pulled the Obama ads from his site.  They were all over the frontpage yesterday but today?  Nada.  Curiouser and Curiouser.
• How conveeeeenient. So, Senator Chris Dodd, now a fervent Obama supporter, thinks it would be all ticketyboo to just split the Florida and Michigan delegates 50/50 and then they wouldn’t have to have a redo! That would be like giving Obama unearned delegates! Isn’t that cool?? JAYsus, how much of a handicap do we need to give Obama for him to actually win this thing?! (Whoo-boy, you REALLY don’t want to go there, Chris. When the GOP 527’s get through with the whole notion of a quota and affirmative action, Obama will be the least electable pol on the planet. And I’m not being racist here. I’m being *clairvoyant* based on experience.) And what about the Floridians who voted in overwhelming numbers for Clinton? Don’t they count, Chris? You guys just don’t get it. Anything less than self-determination on Florida’s part is going to earn you their unending ire. Now, Jennifer Granholm might want to contemplate just giving all the “uncommitted” votes to Obama but first your guy has to be willing to accept the outcome and seat both delegations as is or be willing to do the whole thing over. And I haven’t heard it.
• Taylor Marsh has an excellent piece about why powerful men turn to prostitution. She’s done her research. Don’t miss it.
• Little Hillary Rodham was a cutey in a video dug up by the NYTimes. She looks to be about three and is running around in the film on the day of her brother Hugh’s christening. Hillary’s grandparents lived in Scranton, PA in the upper northeast corner of Pennsylvania. Check it out.
• I’ve always been fascinated by Scandinavian culture. Some of my favorite books on the oddly emotional yet stoic warlike Norwegians are by Nobel prize winning author Sigrid Undset. Her book, The Axe, from the Master of Hestviken series, brought me to tears. And the Kristen Lavransdatter series is one that women of any age and time can relate to. The Norwegians, Swedes and Danes have been hashing it out for centuries and even though they are virtually indistinguishable to us, they seem inscrutable to one another. (Rent Kitchen Stories for a an example of what happens when you take a Swedish statistician and put him in a high chair to observe the kitchen patterns of a Norwegian bachelor farmer. LOL! Ok, it’s funnier than it sounds, trust me.) But it turns out that they are not done yet. No, they are still fighting over some ill-gotten booty that the Swedes swiped from the Danes 350 years ago and the Danish are still sensitive over it. The line about the doormat names at Ikea is hillarious. Ok, sorry guys, just give the stuff back and there will be no raiding parties.

Not done yet but publishing anyway…