Mad, crazy stuff here this week in the Village. They’re writing political epitaphs for everybody this week, Clinton, Obama, and McCain, Rick Renzi, and of course, epitaphs for Americans soon to be killed by a lack of telecom immunity.
First came news of the Sins of Saint McCain, a shall we say “iffy” article in the NY Times about Mister Campaign Finance Reform and his supposed affair with a lobbyist. It wasn’t a very well sourced article and in fact seemed to be mostly a load of hooey.
There was much sturm und drang about the article, but in the end it seemed that it accomplished two things: one, it made the Times look silly, and two it united the GOP behind McCain in righteous indignation.
I still stand by the theory that the entire Iseman article was designed to solidify McCain as “our boy” over on the GOP side. In that endeavor, that article accomplished more for McCain’s camp then any of his stump speeches or his voting record as a maverick. He had been attacked by those god-awful America-hating liberals at the New York Times and the rally for McCain’s innocence began. The right blogosphere launched into action in order to go after its most hated foe, the liberal mainstream press.
Hell, even the liberal mainstream press thought it was a load of crap. Basically, nobody defended the article on its journalistic merits. And in the end it was good for McCain.
Conservative leaders often portray their political mission in moralistic terms: right vs. wrong. But their reaction to a news report that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) might have had an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist shows the activist right is often animated by a different impulse: us against them.
The right-wing response to the New York Times article was in some ways as stunning, and as revealing, as the salacious story itself.
Some of the loudest voices of the modern conservative movement — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Gary Bauer, CBN.org — flogged the Times while hardly pausing to consider the underlying facts of the story. Immediately, almost reflexively, these commentators assumed the worst motives and behavior by The Times and accepted McCain’s bland yet broad denials.
Personally, I smell a sandbag job here. The only way this weak article gets printed is if the whole point of the exercise was to rally the GOP behind McCain. Somebody understands the GOP mindset very well and gave them exactly what they wanted, a milquetoast attack on Saint McCain that even the wingnuts could beat back. The Times bit on this article and got pulled in, hook, line, and stinker. Bonus points for McCain possibly getting it on with a woman half his age, too. He’s a manly man.
Not like Obama, apparently. His epitaph continues to be written using the same old stuff they’ve been using: “He’s an insane cult leader, and on yeah, he’s X too.”
Normally, X is “a closet Muslim” but in a refreshing change of pace this week X is “a bit light in the loafers.”
A lawsuit filed in the United States District Court of Minnesota February 11, 2008 alleges democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama engaged in illegal drug use and sexual activity with another man in 1999.
The suit, brought by Larry Sinclair, alleges three named defendants have actively engaged in internet intimidation and have illegally investigated his personal life. The suit names Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and Democratic political consultant David Axelrod, as defendants.
The suit claims the defendant’s actions are in violation of Sinclair’s First Amendment freedom of speech. Sinclair goes on to claim he attempted on numerous occasions to contact Obama through his campaign headquarters to come forward regarding the allegations.
And then of course there’s the literal epitaph of Obama, wherein the death of the man would usher in President McCain.
One of the most disturbing questions that Barack Obama’s candidacy raises is this: What if he were murdered? If Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and was gunned down before November, what effect would this have on the presidential race? In this uncomfortable op-ed from Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper, Francisco Martín Moreno outlines what he sees as the danger to the United States and the rest of the world if this were to occur. He writes in part, `A violent dispatching of Obama would leave the road to the White House paved for McCain, with Mexico and the rest of the world having to deal with four more years of Republican nightmare … If Obama wins, he can lose his life … Shouldn’t Hillary, just in case, accept the vice presidential ticket?’
That’s some pretty sobering stuff there in the usual Village Idiocy department, but then again it’s worth thinking about the idiocy in that article being that in 2008 a major presidential candidate could be assassinated because he’s mixed-race. Like myself.
Meanwhile, the epitaphs for Hillary are getting pretty thick on the ground here. There’s a lot of forks being stuck in her campaign this week, a lot of past tense words being used, a lot of when we look back on her campaign…
WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.
It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.
The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.
That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.
Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.
But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.
Ouch.
Oh, and no Idiocy wrap-up for the week would be complete without Putting on the Red Light’s dim bulb.
If this is truly the Decline and Fall of the Clinton Empire, it is marked by one freaky stroke of bad luck and one striking historical irony.
How likely is it that a woman who finally unfetters herself from one superstar then finds herself eclipsed by another?
And when historians trace how her inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival.
The bullying and bellicosity of the Bush administration have left many Americans exhausted and yearning for a more nurturing and inclusive style.
Sixteen years of politicians in Washington clashing in epic if not always essential battle through culture wars, the right-wing war against the Clintons, the war-without-end on terror, and the war-with-no-end-in-sight in Iraq have spawned a desire for peace and pragmatism.
Hillary was so busy trying to prove she could be one of the boys — getting on the Armed Services Committee, voting to let W. go to war in Iraq, strong-arming supporters and donors, and trying to out-macho Obama — that she only belatedly realized that many Democratic and independent voters, especially women, were eager to move from hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach.
Less towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity.
Hillary’s a bull dyke, Obama’s a closet case, and the Dems are just so terribly sensitive as a whole, this coming from Missus Oh My Stars And Garters I Do Believe I Have The Vapors herself.
You can always count on MoDo.
Oh, and let’s not forget you and me! We’re going to DIE because the Protect America Act expired. We’re going to get killed and the Democrats have doomed us all to getting blown up at the mall. Our schools are possibly crawling with Islamonazifascists and we’re BLIND to them and it’s all Nancy Pelosi’s fault.
On February 16, last year’s bipartisan legislation governing the collection of foreign intelligence and protecting from liability all persons who comply with federal directives to assist in such collection–the law otherwise known as the “Protect America Act of 2007”–expired, having exhausted its six-month, 15-day statutory lifespan. At which time the federal government’s ability to pursue suspected terrorists and emerging threats was dealt a serious blow. You can thank House Democrats for the whole sorry mess.
The Democratic leadership denies this, of course, having adopted an Alfred E. Neuman “What, Me Worry?” approach to national security. The lack of a new statute “does not, in reality, threaten the safety of Americans,” protests Senate majority leader Harry Reid. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 still applies. Says Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, “The FISA law–even if we do not change it–gives ample authority to this president to continue to monitor the conversations of those who endanger the United States.” Says House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes: “We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution.” Democratic national-security-adviser-in-waiting Richard Clarke writes that “FISA has and still works as the most valuable mechanism for monitoring our enemies.”
It is true that the wiretaps granted under the Protect America Act may be continued for a year from their date of issue. If a wiretap was approved on December 5, 2007, for example, it legally can remain in place until December 5, 2008. But any new wiretaps the government seeks will have to go through stringent
FISA procedures, which require the government to show “probable cause” that a “U.S. person” is a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power” before a search warrant targeting him can be issued. And this is troubling because–pace Richard Clarke–the old FISA didn’t and doesn’t work.
You fools! Probable cause is meaningless when the entirety of two billion Muslims are out to kill your family with suicide vests! Only telecom immunity can save us now!
If only the House had more strong Republicans in it…Republicans like Rick Renzi!
U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner urged Rep. Rick Renzi to resign following the Arizona Republican’s indictment for fraud, extortion and conspiracy.
“I have made it clear that I will hold our members to the highest standards of ethical conduct,” the Ohio Republican said in a statement. “The charges contained in this indictment are completely unacceptable for a member of Congress, and I strongly urge Rep. Renzi to seriously consider whether he can continue to effectively represent his constituents under these circumstances.”
He said he would meet with Renzi to discuss the matter, The Hill reported.
Renzi Friday was named in a 35-count federal indictment along with James Sandlin of Sherman, Texas, and Andrew Beardall of Rockville, Md., the Justice Department said.
They were charged with wire fraud, extortion, money laundering, violating insurance laws and conspiracy based on Renzi’s involvement in the sale of Sandlin’s property in Arizona to a participant in a federal land exchange proposal.
And of course, let’s not forget how one Democrat under indictment means that the GOP’s half-dozen current and half-dozen pending criminals mean they are the party of moral superiority!
This came a day after the indictments were published by the grand jury. Across the aisle, however, William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson remains in the House Democratic Caucus despite having been indicted on 16 counts of corruption-related felonies in June 2007. His trial just got delayed while he appeals the overruling of his attempt to hide his corruption behind the speech and debate clause of the Constitution.
Has Pelosi demanded that he resign his seat since his indictment? Has any Democrat in the House demanded that Jefferson step down after this indictment? No; the only action Pelosi took was to strip Jefferson of his seat on the Small Business Committee. Earlier, she had tried to put him on the Homeland Security Committee, only backing down when Republicans threatened to block it and debate all committee assignments on the House floor.
Now, which party acts more responsibly to clean up its own house, as well as the House?
Lots of people burying people this week in the Village Idiocy column this week…but the real problem is how once again we’re all getting buried in bullshit from the Village.
