New front pager Natasha Chart has a short piece up this morning regarding the AP spin on last night’s YouTube Dem debate.
AP Propaganda About Clinton Diplomacy
I started a response, and them big wheels just kept on a ‘turnin’.
Here is the result.
Read on if you are interested in a broad view of what is up here.
(You should probably read Ms. Chart’s short piece first to be able to make more sense of my opening.)
Once again…despite the mainstream media spin…Obama opens a gap between old politics and new politics here. Hillary’s symbolism of conflict and imperialism versus Obama’s signal that speaks of the end of America’s economic imperialist, dominant position in the world hierarchy and its acceptance of its possible role as the most prosperous member of the real “free world”. A black, brown and beige world that encompasses all who wish to join it. Especially the emerging countries of South/Central/Caribbean America, who are our natural allies both in terms of geography and also in terms of the coming ethnic and cultural makeup of Los Estados Unidos.
“Will not promise” and “do not want to be used for propaganda purposes” as opposed to “willing to meet with those leaders”.
The semiotics of progress.
The grammar of politics.
Bet on it.
As finely parsed as any statement ever made by Bill Clinton during his bout with the bluenoses.
By BOTH sides.
Yup.
Now…will he win? This time?
No. I do not think that he will. The corporate powers that control both parties will not allow him to win. And they may even be correct in this stance. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Ms. Clinton may be quite correct in her position, given the exigencies of real international power. She has certainly seen the big game up close and personal, from the inside, whereas Obama is still nothing but a very talented and perhaps visionary minor leaguer in matters of this sort. Dealing with nuclear powers, internationally powerful economic and ideological alliances and incredibly complex competing intelligence systems is certainly a game thousands of orders higher than getting elected Senator from the (still) ward heeler state of Illinois, if y’know what I mean. Obama continues to make mistakes with state level crooks who have names like Rezko and Blagojevich (Sounds like a classic Studs Terkel column. Smells like one. too. The Daleys live on.) while the Clintons have LONG outgrown their Little Rock/Whitewater/hustler days and are now dealing with the very highest available group of international power brokers.
This spin from the AP? I believe that the people who are trying to stop the Dems from taking over in ’08 have decided to support Obama…or at least support ANY Dem other than Clinton…in the interests of casting her in as negative a light as possible before the real electoral conflict is begun.
The Rats deal in percentage points.
A vote here, a vote there, some creative election theft, sleazy campaign tactics, a controlled Supreme Court…we have seen all of this before.
They only need to win by a hair to win totally.
I find the Drudge Report to be an INVALUABLE tool in testing the Ratpub winds. And it has been posting subtly pro-Obama/anti-Hillary stuff for MONTHS.
Right now…7:35 AM EDT, 7/24/07…it has the entire top of its right hand column dedicated to pushing Obama and dissing Clinton. Go look. A so-called “Drudge survey” has Obama winning the YouTube debate, 41% to a bunch of also-rans, with Clinton and Kucinich (!!!) tied at 13%.
Plus a video with the headline “VIDEO: OBAMA TURNS FOXNEWS ‘FOCUS GROUP’ AWAY FROM HILLARY…” and this image
followed by the headline “CLASH…
And…THIS image
with the headline “‘WASSUP?’” to illustrate what a bunch of clowns the ENTIRE flock of Dems are.
Plus its ongoing love affair with Newt Gingrich, illustrated in THIS collection of headlines.
GOP presidential field ‘pathetic’ bunch of ‘pygmies’…
Gore not ‘in touch with reality’…
Predicts McCain will drop out ‘right after he collects his FEC money’…
On Bob Novak: ‘He was once good reporter, he’s now just personality’…
Which headlines, frighteningly enough, all make sense to me except the thing about Novak, who could NEVER have been considered a good reporter unless you favor people who function as assets of the far right wing of the intelligence community being given national exposure as “reporters”.
And there y’are. The same way that the right wing starfish has successfully opened the electoral clam in the last two elections.
A little pull on this side, a little on that. Maybe some wag the dog action in the Middle east or at home (TERRORIST ALERT!!!) when the Dem nominee begins to pull ahead OR fall behind.
It’s all there, still in place.
The far right’s New Reality Machine. Getting a little…creaky now, and fighting an uphill battle given the truly horrendous record of the current regime.
But they DO keep on trying.
Gotta give ’em that.,
And Newt?
He scares me to DEATH.
He is the only Ratpub with the political chops to beat a Dem in ’08, in my opinion. Forget his “history”. Americans will. Forgetfulness is what’s for dinner here. He has been absent from the headlines for what…almost 10 years, now. For the entire CheneyBush debacle. The general run of Americans have an attention span that can be measured in minutes. He can run as a clean Ratpub. Run AGAINST CheneyBush.
Watch.
Here is what he said last week.
“If, in mid-October, it’s quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don’t need me to run,” the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. “If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there’s a radical change, then there’s space for a candidate,” he added. “So you’ll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real.”
Asked by the Examiner if he was prepared to commit to a run, Gingrich said, “I’m perfectly happy to do what I do,” he said. “Whether that leads to the presidency is the country’s problem, not mine.”
Gingrich mocked Republican presidential candidates for subjecting themselves to a May debate hosted by Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
People who read this also read:
“You’re watching an utterly irrelevant, shallow television celebrity dominate everybody who claimed they want to lead the most powerful nation in the world,” he said.
Gingrich ridiculed “the idea of 10 or 11 people standing passively at microphones,” and said he refused to “shrink to the level of 40-second answers, standing like a trained seal, waiting for someone to throw me a fish.”
He added: “These are not debates, these are auditions. By definition, the psychology of an audition reduces the person auditioning and raises the status, for example, of Chris Matthews.”
Pressed by The Examiner about whether his political baggage renders him unelectable, Gingrich compared himself to a famous French statesman. “This is like going to De Gaulle when he was at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises during the Fourth Republic and saying, ‘Don’t you want to rush in and join the pygmies?'” he said.
“I have no interest in the current political process. I have no interest in trying to figure out how I can go out and raise money under John McCain’s insane censorship rules so I can show up to do seven minutes and twenty seconds at some debate.” Still, he said he might enter the race before the deadlines to “start filing petitions.
I am telling you…this is a bad, BAD boy, politically speaking.
He is the ONLY CONCEIVABLY MAJOR CANDIDATE IN THIS COUNTRY WILLING TO APPEAR TO BUCK THE SYSTEM WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF BLOOMBERG.
A Newt/Bloomberg ticket?
An IMF wetdream.
Watch him. THAT message will resonate.
Bet on it.
Watch.
Later…
AG
P.S. Didja notice THIS little Newtism?
He’s a pro.
HE knows the fix is in on the Dem side.
Like I said…
Clinton/Obama in ’08.
It’s already a done deal if neither of them fuck up big time.
With Edwards as Minister of Poverty. Or some such important position. (I mean…he can’t even get elected in his own state. How’s he going to handle the mortgage and the haircut bills?)
I miss Edward R. Murrow. I really do.
What I TRULY wish for is a half-hour guided tour of John Boy’s new house.
I can hear it now.
Yup…
