Last night at DNC in two graphics

Late nights watching DNC, (I'm such a goober I had to watch the whole roll call vote), lead to late starts blogging this week. Although there is much more that can be said about last night, these two graphics found on the twitter sum up the internets today.

Big Dog growled, long and deep:

Dog on roof guy still cowering in the corner:

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

When memes come true

And so, it's over. The Tumblr Texts from Hillary ends its run. The Texts from Hillary site will remain on the internets, but they're not going to add any new ones.

Can't blame them for wanting to go out on top. And really, after they were invited to meet with Secretary of State Clinton herself and she submitted a genuine text to the site anything else would be a bit anti-climatic. Besides, ending it this way, will only ensure its legendary status as one of the best internet memes ever.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Texts from Hillary

I resisted as long as I could, but I finally checked Texts from Hillary. It's good. Almost Hillarious.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Random Triptych

So Hillary was officially nominated as Obama's SoS today and her spokesman indicates she intends to remain in office through the confirmation process. Makes sense to me. She can still got a lot done as a Senator until then and it gives Governor Paterson plenty of time to find her replacement. Also considering we are talking about a Clinton here, there's no guarantee the confirmation process will go smoothly. There's an outside chance she might not get confirmed so why shouldn't she hedge her bets?

Meanwhile, as I said in my post at DetNews on this, I've been widely criticized for using the term too soon, but NBER finally makes official what the hoi poloi of the working class have known through experience for some time. Yes Virigina, we are in a recession and have been since 2007. And while we're on the subject of my prescience, I can't fail to notice that some experts have now adopted my phraseology for the old Bush boom -- the world's biggest Ponzi scam.

In other news, Tina Brown is wondering why it's taking so long to replace Tim Russert on Meet the Press. In a long post at The Daily Beast that's worth reading in full, she endorses our favorite liberal for the slot.

I say give Meet the Press to Rachel Maddow. She’s smart. She’s quick. She’s witty. She does her homework. And she listens to what the person she’s talking to is saying. She doesn't just go to the next question on her list.

Tina also suggests a few other possibilities but I've thought Rachel would be exactly what that program needed since the day Russert died. If they gave it to her, I might start watching it again instead of getting the translated bobblespeak from Culture of Truth.

Well okay, I'm always going to get the transcript from CoT because he translates so succinctly, but I would watch the program as well, something I haven't bothered to do in many years now.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Kissimmee Baby

Our last real president appears with our next real leader in Kissimmee, FL, speaking to an estimated crowd of 35,000 at 11:00pm on a Wednesday night.

"We paid down the debt, they doubled the national debt, so don’t tell me about redistribution. What Senator Obama has is a plan that works from the bottom up." ~Bill Clinton

Meanwhile, George Will takes another step further off the reservation.

"Palin may be an inveterate simplifier; McCain has a history of reducing controversies to cartoons."

That's the choice. A real president again or a caricature of Wile E. Coyote. I've made mine. The rest of you get out there and Barack the vote.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Obama brings out the crowds in Florida

(photo credit)
Obama is on a campaign swing through Florida this week. He held a rally that drew 50,000 in Orlando, appearing with Hillary Clinton.

(photo BarackObama)
He's scheduled for a big event tonight with his wife in Miami that is likely to draw an even bigger crowd. Meanwhile, the latest PEW report shows Obama widening his lead in the polling.

The top-line numbers: Obama leads McCain by 14 points, 53%-39%, among likely voters, compared to a 49%-42% result a week ago and a 46%-46% tie back in early September.

On issues, Obama has vastly expanded his lead on the economy since the early September numbers. Back then Obama had an 11-point advantage, 47%-38%, but since then -- with the financial crisis and the presidential debates intervening -- Obama now leads by 21 points, 53%-32%, on the issue.

McCain's all out negative campaign tactics seem to be working -- for Obama. The more McCain slimes, the higher the poll numbers climb.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Hillary takes a swing at corporate corruption

By Libby

Hillary Clinton had a great op-ed in WSJ today. I wish she was talking like this during the primaries. It could have changed the whole tenor of the narrative.

If we're going to get serious about putting our nation's fiscal house in order, let's talk about putting an end to billions in no-bid contract awards to unaccountable contractors. Let's talk about the number of lucrative contracts and bonuses being paid for duties never performed, promises never fulfilled, and contracts falsely described as complete. And let's talk about reforming the federal contracting system so that we can take on the real waste, fraud and abuse in our federal government.

She's proposing a complete overhaul of the federal contracting system that includes:

- Instead of rewarding companies that exploit tax shelters and incorporate in tax havens, let's ban the federal government from contracting with companies that hide profits offshore.

- Let's put a stop to the disgraceful practice of giving bonuses to contractors for work never performed, which has been allowed to happen in Iraq and throughout the federal government according to the GAO and inspectors general.

The jaded souls on my listserv rightly observe that she could have been doing something about this over the last five years, but I'll take this kind of talk anytime I can get it from inside the Beltway. Let's hope it turns out to be more than just empty election year rhetoric.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Reunited and it feels so good...

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
By Libby

I didn't watch the live video of the Clinton-Obama Unity event, but it appears from the overview coverage that it was a smashing success. It was a well scripted, veritable lovefest and visually appealing right down to Obama's tie that perfectly matched Hilary's outfit.

If there is any remaining tension between the two, you couldn't see in Unity, NH. Obama proclaimed, "Hillary rocks!" Hillary urged her supporters to join the team and put Obama into the Oval Office. Any remaining bitterness on the part of Obama supporters over Hillary's campaign style should have been put to rest today. She kept her promise. She looked more shining and genuine than she ever has in the last year and a half.

The Caucus offered up a more intimate view of the proceedings both from the plane and on the field where they found a couple of die-hard Hillary holdouts. One supporter, a Denver delegate "came all the way from Colorado for the event, even though she didn’t believe in it, because she wanted to convey her support to Mrs. Clinton."

“As a politician, she’s got to try to bring the party together,” Ms. Lewis said. “But I have a gut feeling that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.” She said she would not vote for Mr. Obama and that when he spoke, she stuffed her ears with tissue.

Her friend, Freda Smith, 79, a former state representative from Salem, N.H., said Mr. Obama was “not qualified” to be president. “We don’t know anything about him,” she said. “He talks about change, but he never says exactly what he means.”

I guess old dreams die hard but I'm betting in the end, even these recalcitrant Democrats will realize that allowing McCain to win would be a grievous mistake. Certainly, for the many couples interviewed that had split their votes between the two, acceptance has already arrived and most seem to be glad to embrace the message.

I have to admit, although I mostly kept it to myself, I nursed some serious doubts that Hillary would put her heart into uniting behind Obama. It feels really good to have been so wrong and to have my respect for her restored.

Quote of the day

By Libby

Via Avedon, it comes from Gary.

People have feelings. Let them have them.

Read the rest of the post too. He says a lot of stuff about Hillary's last speech that's worth thinking about.

Everybody says something stupid sometimes

By Libby

Occassionally I find myself in disagreement with my co-bloggers and this is one of those times. In fact, I appear to be in disagreement with all but a handful of bloggers who aren't supporting Clinton. I'm of course, talking about Hillary's unfortunate remark about Bobby Kennedy. Having in my long life made some truly awful, tone deaf remarks that I wished I could have taken back immediately, as I said in my Newshoggers post, I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. I don't think she really meant that the potential assassination of Obama was a reason to stay in the race and this post in the NYT seems to support that theory.

That's the trouble with the 24/7 newscycle and a lazy media that simply repeat each other's memes. If you buy the spin when it's about the candidate you don't like, it leaves them free to create fake narratives about the one you do. Taken in context, it was still a stupid remark, but not really one of evil intent. I'm more irritated by her comparisons on MI-FL, her campaign's ridiculous math calculations and her continued reliance on negative campaigning. My theory, as detailed at the NH post, is that she's simply generating controversy in order to get back into the news cycle after being ignored for a couple of weeks.

For those who are truly angered, I suggest the best punishment is to ignore her rather than rake her over the coals. She'll be out of the race soon enough and a couple of months from now, none of this will seem all that important.

Update: For the record, while I'm willing to give her a pass on the gaffe, her "apology" really sucked. She should have just owned the mistake and said she was sorry, not try to excuse or explain it away. Furthermore her justifications for using negative tactics against her opponent are still weak to the point of nonsenical. That's not to say I think she shouldn't finish the contests but rather that she should have used these remaining races to make the case on her own merits as opposed to McCain, not Obama.

Shell game

By Capt. Fogg

Hillary Clinton and John McCain agree, at least to the extent that they support a gasoline tax holiday this Summer. John is pandering to families with children, saying this will help them buy school supplies. Hillary is pandering to anti-corporate sentiments by saying this will take money from the deep pockets of the Oil oligarchy. Both seem to be pandering to the " not thinking too clearly."

Alison Fitzgerald at Bloomberg.com says that economists in general aren't buying it. A projected savings of $35, spread over the tax holiday isn't going to be very useful, and particularly when acquired a buck or two at a time. The retailers aren't likely to reduce prices very much and the overall ten billion dollar tax revenue will be directed back to the refiners and must of course, reduce the general revenue; a loss that will have to be made up elsewhere. All in all, it looks like a shell game to me and an Exxon Mobil game and a BP game and even a Citgo game.

Clinton is pushing the estimate of a $70 savings to consumers, but Ethan Harris, chief U.S. economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., said families would save only about $18 a month. Burman estimated the total savings from Memorial Day to Labor Day at $28. Even if the savings actually materialized "it would be chump change," he said. An extra beer here and there, a couple of packs of cigarettes and there won't be much left for Johnies new backpack.

But to a nation of chumps, conditioned to slobber like Pavlov's dogs at the phrase "tax cut," it may seem like a good deal. We usually do sit up and beg when a candidate offers to put a dollar in our pocket while sending us a bill for five bucks plus interest and fees. We'll take the nickels and dimes while the roads and bridges continue to crumble and our transportation system, already about the worst in the first world, gets worse and the war grinds on and on.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Hillary hates us

By Libby

I'm not inclined to get that offended at Hillary's remarks berating the progressive activists. The false representations of MoveOn's position are troubling but I'd bet there's not a living politician who hasn't privately expressed those same sentiments.

Of course they hate us. We've disrupted their cozy little lifestyle. Before the internets, activists were a nuisance but it took time to spread a message and the pols still had their private smoke filled rooms to retreat to, where they could express their honest views unnoticed and conduct the real business of "their people." Now the technology has allowed their every word to be instantly broadcast around the world and they have nowhere left to relax into their true personas.

The internet changed everything. Everyone knows it's the price you pay for holding public office, but living life in a fishbowl has a whole new meaning now that the older politicians are just beginning to grasp. I'm not surprised that it makes them cranky. Most people are creatures of habit and are discomfited by change.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Drinking and thinking

By Libby

I have to agree with Jazz on this point. It seems Hillary threw back a few beers with the small town folks at a local pub but when she was offered a shooter, she chose Crown Royal. Bad choice if you're going for the ordinary Jake persona.

I've slung a lot of cocktails in my lifetime and I can count on one hand the number of regulars that ordered Crown Royal. All but one were prissy guys that nobody really liked much. If it comes up again, the safe choice is a Jim Beam or if she wants to go a little upscale, BlackJack. Much more proletariat.

Hillary just lost me

By Libby

I have to agree with John Cole. I'm not sure why it's news that Mark Penn opened up his big mouth and said Obama wasn't electable. The Clinton campaign has been pounding that theme since the day it became clear that Obama was beating them. That's just campaign spin, although it's mildly notable that Penn was on the TV. Last rumor I read said he was going to be banished from the public eye.

The real news should be this interview with Hillary on NPR. It's jawdroppingly Bushesque. Seriously, it was like a Bush presser without the twang. She's creating her own reality right from the beginning when she denies, oh excuse me, doesn't recall, saying McCain was more prepared to lead than Obama.

I mean, for the love of God, she said it four times in the last two weeks. If she really doesn't remember, why should I have any confidence in her ability to lead? And if she does and she's just lying in order to win, how on earth can I support that? It's becoming increasingly difficult to remain neutral.

Obama winning in Wyoming

By Libby Spencer

Jeralyn says it's a closed caucus. Clinton's people tell me that closed primaries are the only fair way to pick a nominee.

CNN's latest numbers showed Obama winning by 19 points with 78% reporting, down from 21 points when I first checked just before Blogger glitched out for a few hours.

The first Clinton partisan I just read says the system is still unfair to his candidate. Can't disagree with that. It's always been unfair for every candidate that's not handpicked by the party machine. Too bad no one complians until it's their candidate that's losing because of it.

As far as I'm concerned, we all lose in this process but it's been around for a long time. Maybe this year somebody will do something about changing it after the election, so we can a new system next time that doesn't hinge on winning just a handful of states.

In the meantime we need to play the game under the established rules. Oddly, in a way I think this contest has been the most fair in decades because at least every vote still counts for something. It's just not clear for what.

When the spin stinks

By Libby

As I mull over my reaction to the latest twist on the campaign trail, I find myself thinking about my old friend Acidman. Rob's style of blogging, as he described it himself when he was alive, was to throw up a bunch of shit and see what sticks. I see a lot of similarities between that approach and Hillary's latest tactics that Steve Benen politely terms kitchen sink attacks. He comes up with a long list from just the last couple of weeks.

Both were ultimately successful but for different reasons. Rob was probably the most painfully honest blogger I've ever known. He threw his own shit on the wall and didn't pretend it didn't stink. Hillary on the other hand, seems to me, is scooping her ammo out of random toilets and is flinging it so wildly that we all end up slimed while she pretends her bathroom always smells like roses. In the end, it's not that she went negative that bothers me. It's that she used the GOP's shit to smear a fellow party member.

If she has some real provable dirt on Obama, I'm the first one that wants to know it. I still have to vote and it looks like even my vote in May will matter. But if her formula for change is to reach deep into the GOP's cesspool of rumors and innuendos in order to win -- well -- that's just not the solution I'm looking for. That's exactly the kind of shit I'm hoping will get flushed out of the process this time around.

Clinton campaign flailing

By Libby

If you're old enough to have lived through the Nixon years, you'll probably also find the HuffPo's description of Hillary's latest messaging as over the top theatrics, a bit overstated. I've seen worse, but there was nothing subtle about that mockery. I leave it to you to judge for yourself whether it was offensive.

For myself, I was put off by it on a couple of levels. I'm really tired of negative campaigning and I found it rude. Plus, she came off like a candidate who is still struggling to find a central message which rather conflicts with the whole ready on day one theme. I don't find that reassuring.

I don't understand the strategy or the timing behind it at all. I imagine it was designed to counter the impression that she was conceding at the debate, but the inconsistency between that event and the last two days is dizzying. She went from nice Hillary, to angry Hillary to mean Hillary in the space of three days. And as skippy points out, it's an odd choice to mock faith on a Sunday.

However, Joe Gandelman asks the money question. Will it change any minds? It may have worked a few months ago, but now? I imagine it will encourage her supporters who will see a fighting spirit in the taunting but I don't see it winning any converts.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

You've come a long way, baby

By Libby

Following up on a cranky post I did at Newshoggers yesterday, the title of this post was once a slogan for a cigarette targeted at women, Virginia Slims. It was an ad campaign created at a time when the battle for women's rights was peaking and we were just breaking the chains of prescribed expectations. It looks pretty sexist today but it was kind of a breaktrough then. At that time women were still expected to go to college to 'catch' a good husband and then settle down and become good little homemakers who produced the requisite 2.5 children. 'Good girls' didn't use their education to pursue careers and if they worked, it was with few exceptions, only in subordinate roles within a male dominated hierarchy.

As the slogan said, we've come a long way since we burned our bras and stopped hiding our sexuality and our smarts, but we haven't exactly shattered the glass ceiling yet. So I'm sympathetic to the argument that electing a woman president might help blast that thing into smithereens. However, I don't think complaining about it is useful anymore.

BTD posted a long letter from some very prominent feminists in support of Clinton today. It was really well written but I think they should have cut this graf.

How many of us have heard brilliant and resourceful women in the workplace dismissed or devalued for “detail-orientation” in contrast to a man’s supposed “big picture” scope? How many of us have seen what, in a man, would be called “peerless mastery,” get called, in a woman’s case, “narrowness”? How many women have we known—truly gifted workers, professionals, and administrators—who have been criticized for their reserve and down-to-earth way of speaking? Whose commanding style, seriousness, and get-to-work style are criticized as “cold” and insufficiently “likable”? These prejudices have been scandalously present in this campaign.

Yes, these prejudices still exist but electing Hillary isn't going to magically make them go away in the ordinary workplaces of America and it strikes me that making the case women should vote for Hillary because she's a woman who has suffered from discrimination, is in its own way kind of sexist because it makes gender bias the issue instead of competency. Also, it frames her as a victim instead of a leader.

I would think it more effective to stop complaining and find some way to frame Hill within the context of other strong women who were pioneers in their fields. Something like Hillary -- the Marie Curie of politics. It would certainly be more inspiring than listening to a laundry list of greivances.

Catching up to the news cycle

By Libby

Geez, the day slipped by me somehow. First of all, thanks to everyone who sent emails of encouragement, or even just sent a hopeful thought this way. My little crisis appears to have resolved in a good outcome and all that positive energy helped. Meanwhile, I've been catching up on my reading this afternoon and have a few things I want to talk about, but in the interim, Avedon has a good roundup post on the sellout by the snakes in the Senate on the FISA bill. Here's the beef.

Democrats voting for treason were: Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. One Senator didn't vote: Hillary Clinton.

On a somewhat related note, I have an unusally long post up at Newshoggers on what is bothering me about Hillary these days.

Pimp this post - Updated

By Libby

I wasn't going to blog about David Shuster's remarkably thoughtless off the cuff remark about Chelsea Clinton but in reading over the reactions, a couple of points come to mind. First of all, as AttyTood aptly points out, this is not the worst thing that has ever been said about Chelsea. I remember some rather awful things being said about her as a teenager in the White House and Will unearths a particularly loathsome remark made by John McCain himself.

Secondly, the connation of pimping has changed and the word is routinely used in ways that have nothing to do with prostitution, at least in the plying of the oldest profession sense of the word. I mean isn't there a TV program called something like Pimp my Ride? It's a hip expression now, not a dirty word. Shuster's real offense was in suggesting that there was something wrong or unusual in having a candidate's family member do some politicking. That point I think is being lost in the obsessing over the language he used to convey a false point.

Furthermore, by rights, guys like Chris Matthews should have been kicked off the airwaves long ago for much more egregiously sexist remarks that were couched in more polite language. Making Shuster the scapegoat draws the line in the wrong place and provides cover for the Matthews of the pundit class. It implies a simple grudging apology will do as long as street talk isn't used to ply their misogyny.

Lastly, I think the furor over this will cause more harm than good and I wonder if the rapid removal of Shuster isn't really a subtle plot to discredit progressives. It fuels the whole meme on the redmeat side of the fence that paints the PC/feminist crowd as overly sensitive nannies who want to outlaw free expression in order to protect themselves from every mild offense. It's difficult to argue otherwise when the term "blogwhoring" is an acceptable use of language widely employed in Leftopia. The furor then begins to take on a air of "it's okay when a leftie does it."

I guess it's too late now, since the tempest has already blown through the news cycle, but I fear we'll live to regret making an issue of this.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Update: My colleague at The Reaction, J. Thomas Duffy posts the full transcript of the segment to put the damning quote in context and notes that Jane Hamsher is also pretty much on the same page as we are about this little brouhaha.