They Said It. I Repeat It.

There are many people in The White House who think that Republicans opposing a popular President and a popular spending package are effectively driving themselves off a cliff.

Richard Wolffe/Newsweek
Countdown with Keith Olbermann - 01-28-09

You Have To Be Fucking Kidding Me

...Or Look At All The Chickens Little Run.

The scale of the hand wringing and rending of garments I'm seeing over each and every one of Obama's cabinet picks is unbelievable. This is the shit we liberal/progressive/Democrat-types do every fucking single fucking time. I hate it with the force of a thousand suns.

I'm all about individuality, critical thinking and what have you. But just this once could we show the same unity, discipline and sense of purpose that's proven so effective for conservatives? Fuck no. We run around crying, "Maybe Hillary could bring in Michael O'Hanlon! The sky is falling The sky is falling!"

It's predictable. It's pointless. It's stupid. It's embarrassing. It makes the wingers rub their hands together with glee. It's well past time we ditched this chicken little act.

I'm only gonna say this once: Barack Obama just ran the smartest, most effective, most transformative political campaign in American history! Do you honestly think Obama's picking these candidates impulsively? He's not throwing darts. He's had 2 fucking years to put together his cabinet wish list. Chill the fuck out already.

Much of this angst seems focused on Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State nomination. Stupid. Stupid. And more stupid. I will genuinely miss Hillary Clinton as my Senator. Because she's done overall an exceptional job for NY, I selfishly didn't want her to win the Presidential nomination.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton puts her squarely on the world stage. Short of being President, this singularly prestigious cabinet position offers her the opportunity to make history like few before her. Do not underestimate the importance of this. It's Hillary's best and possibly last chance to silence years of muttering about the Clintons' "legacy".

We used to say in the music industry, "You're only as good as your last record." Let's face it, this could be Hillary's last go 'round in public service. At the end of Obama's first term, she'll be 64 years old.

Yes, she'll still be plenty young enough to serve her country but Obama will be running for re-election. The Senator replacing her will be running for re-election. For Secretary of State Hillary Clinton any office below Prezzie or Veep would be a serious come down.

Then there's those of you who persist in kvetching over potential ego clashes blah yak blah yak. Hillary will not fuck this up. She has demonstrated her honor of and sense duty to her country. Furthermore, Hillary and thus Bill's "legacy" is now inextricably, permanently tied to the Obama Presidency.

Her success depends on Barack's success and vice versa. There's no chance in hell that Hillary Clinton will be anything less than outstanding in her execution of Obama's foreign policy. The ego-thang is overblown. She will defer to him.

Get it? Got it? Good. Get over it.

Let's get back to the hard work of fixing our country. This includes showing great support for our and confidence in President-elect Barack Obama and his cabinet nominees.

Fer crissakes the guy hasn't even been sworn in yet.

-AF

"He Brought America New Hope"

We sell you cheesey tchotckes!

-AF

Dems Renting Joe Like Dodgers Did Manny?

Obama sez "Joe can stay." Hell, even Bill Clinton's joined the action. I've gone back and forth and back and forth all over again on this. My knee-jerk response is to disagree with this play 'cuz it smacks of weakness. But perhaps we're much closer to getting those 59 Senate seats than we thought. It's tough to get a read when the "conventional wisdom" seems to change every day twice a day. Like the Dodgers did with Manny Ramirez, the Dems may be renting Lieberman's 60th filibuster-proof vote for Obama's first term. Because barring some sorta spectacular "come to Jesus moment", Lieberman will not be re-elected.

Forgiveness puts Joe on the shortest possible leash too. He'll have to toe the line or start packing. Switching parties is not a realistic option. If his ego would let him (and it won't), it would be tantamount to political suicide (see re-election). McConnell doesn't even have a ranking position to offer Lieberman let alone a chairmanship. God knows Holy Joe's done a piss poor job as Homeland Security Chair.

Reid can give Joe Veterans Affairs and tell him to shut the fuck up.

-AF
(HTs: Digby & TPM)

It's All About The Hope Babies

Hearing the angst, hurt and racial weirdness/bigotry emanating from losing side has really jarred me. I'm not talking about the pundits or the candidates. Nothing they say could ever surprise me. I'm talking about everyday people, McCain voters, like those in my View From The Ground series, Parts 3 & 4. (I can't even begin to wrap my head around the gay marriage bans).

I confess this all left me feeling a lot less hopeful.

Cue RS's Matt Taibbi. Matt is acerbic, sharp as a whip and funny as fuck. He's also a keen observer of human behavior. Amidst the post-election pain, confusion and fear of many voters he sees...um, well...Hope:

There are still a lot of mixed-up, terrified people out there who went to bed last night in a panic about what "those people" will do now that they have one of their own in the White House. When I finally got to watch a replay of Obama's speech in my hotel room late last night, it occurred to me that it's those people who were actually the big winners in this election. Why? Because a lot of them are going to wake up a year from now and realize not a whole lot has changed. And quietly, when no one's looking, they're going to relax a little.

That will be a bigger and more beautiful day than last Tuesday. Read it here.

-AF

Views From The Ground

"L." checked in from Raleigh, NC yesterday. Her coworkers were buzzing about the election. The hot topic was how "when Obama becomes President, he will help the blacks enslave the whites."

-AF

Views From The Ground

Race wasn't nearly as big an issue in the election as the media built it up to be. Here's one indication that as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go...

"R." in rural Tennessee tells of an exchange as she left her polling station. A man a few steps ahead was approached for an exit poll. When asked "Who did you vote for?," he replied "I voted for the nigger."

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

"R." also reports being surprised months ago to learn most of her farmer-neighbors were ardent Barack Obama supporters. They put up Obama lawn signs and put Obama bumperstickers on their pickup trucks. These folks attended rallies and canvassed neighborhoods too.

Yet all throughout the campaign they referred to Obama by the same foul racial epithet.

This shit is so fucked up I'm speechless.

-AF

They Said It. I Repeat It.

"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Barack Obama
On debates
Newsweek

-AF

**Damn. That Atrios fella beat me to it.

Straight Dope Inna Campaign Stylee

Newsweek reveals both camps' inner workings:

1. McCain rarely spoke to Palin.
2. Palin spent waaaaay more than $150k on duds.
3. Before the final debate McCain advisers considered telling him he was toast.
4. McCain and Hillary are much tighter than Obama and Hillary.
5. Wingers' wet dream realized: At GOP Convention Palin met McCain advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter wrapped in a towel!
6. Obama drops an occasional F-bomb.
   

There's tons more.

-AF
(HT: Mrs. Forester)

It's About Time

-AF
(HT: Geeky)

Irony Alert: "Surge" Boosted Obama More Than McCain

Iraq "surge" success aided Obama by de-emphasizing Commander-In-Chief bona fides as a prerequisite for the next Prez. WaPo explains.

-AF

Get Out The Vote!

What are you doing today to ensure our success this Tuesday? With all the muck a-flyin', hate a-spewing and dirty tricks abounding we must leave no stone unturned.

-AF

More They Said It. I Repeat It.

"Every time Barack Obama speaks, an angel has an orgasm."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

10 Things Confirmed Tonite

1. Barack Obama has perfect pitch.
   
2. John McCain is very wrong. And out of touch. And completely fucking crazy...if he thinks he's going to win.
   
3. I could so go gay for Rachel Maddow. I'm not exactly sure what that means other than painful surgery in my immediate future.
   
4. Tweety showed multiple signs of being human.
5. As much as I hate to admit it, Pat Buchanan did too.
6. Michelles Obama and Bernard are so smart. Unbelievably hot-smart.
   
7. They're easy on the eyes too.
8. Keith Olberman is a great American.
9. Charles Babington is most certainly not.*
10. Jesse Jackson is again relevant to media types for the first time this decade.
    

*How this fool allegedly unbiased reporter can give a more vicious and patently false review of Sen. Obama's speech is beyond me. The only possible explanation is that somebody had just explained to him what those Rocky Mountain oysters were he ate earlier in the evening.

**Update: The McCain campaign's defense needs more work than my beloved New England Patriots:

"Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meager record of Barack Obama," spokesman Tucker Bounds said. "When the temple comes down, the fireworks end, and the words are over, the facts remain: Senator Obama still has no record of bipartisanship, still opposes offshore drilling, still voted to raise taxes on those making just $42,000 per year, and still voted against funds for American troops in harm's way. The fact remains: Barack Obama is still not ready to be President."

Weak. Very, very Weak.

They Also Said It. I Repeat It.

"Before he ever debates Barack Obama, Sen. McCain should finish the debate with himself."

Sen. John Kerry
2008 Democratic Convention

"It's Still Early Yet" And Other Election Ruminations

No, Hillary. It's too late for you. But early days yet for this election season. Today's Bob Herbert Op-Ed, "Party Like It's 2008", rips our clueless political establishment and punditocracy. Their antiquated pre-2000 notions have found them unable to "tell the difference between Facebook and, say, AOL." Blinded by nostalgia these dinosaurs of democracy are "too busy salivating over the Clintons’ vintage 1990s roster of fat-cat donors to hear the major earthquake rumbling underground."

These folks' state of oblivion is far-reaching and oh-so-painful to behold:

Hillary Clinton’s attempt to impersonate a Nascar-lovin’, gun-totin’, economist-bashin’ populist went bust: Asked which candidate most “shares your values,” voters in both North Carolina and Indiana exit polls opted instead for the elite and condescending arugula-eater. Bill Clinton’s small-town barnstorming tour, hailed as a revival of old-time Bubba bonhomie, proved to be yet another sabotage of his wife, whipping up false expectations for her disastrous showing in North Carolina. Barack Obama’s final, undercaffeinated debate performance, not to mention the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s attempted character assassination, failed to slow his inexorable path to the Democratic nomination.

This occurred despite the talking heads' and the (non-Obama) political strategists' best concerted efforts to ensure the exact opposite effect. What a bunch of witless bastards:

Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars. That’s why race keeps being portrayed as dooming Mr. Obama — surely Jeremiah Wright = Willie Horton! — no matter what the voters say to the contrary. It’s why the Beltway took on faith the Clinton machine’s strategic, organization and fund-raising invincibility. It’s why some prognosticators still imagine that John McCain can spin the Iraq fiasco to his political advantage as Richard Nixon miraculously did Vietnam.

The year 2008 is far more complex — and exhilarating — than the old templates would have us believe. Of course we’re in pain. More voters think the country is on the wrong track (81 percent) than at any time in the history of New York Times/CBS News polling on that question. George W. Bush is the most unpopular president that any living American has known.

Our country's political topography is changing at a rate so fast it's leaving the dinosaurs in the dust:

The demographic reshaping of the electoral map, though more widely noted, still isn’t fully understood. From Rust Belt Ohio through Tuesday’s primaries, cable bloviators have been fixated on the older, white, working-class vote. Their unspoken (and truly condescending) assumption, lately embraced by Mrs. Clinton, is that these voters are Reagan Democrats, cryogenically frozen since 1980, who come in two flavors: rubes who will be duped by a politician backing a gas-tax pander or racists who are out of Mr. Obama’s reach.

No great shock. When you put a gaggle of simpletons in a studio, the only possible result is a simplistic (and completely wrong) assumption. Adding the sum total of their misperceptions and preconceived notions to the mix creates an intellectual quicksand of sorts. To wit, the harder these know-it-alls struggle to understand this new political paradigm, the further away from the truth they drift:

But this isn’t 2004, and the fixation on that one demographic in the Clinton-Obama contest has obscured the big picture. The rise in black voters and young voters of all races in Democratic primaries is re-weighting the electorate. Look, for instance, at Ohio, the crucial swing state that Mr. Kerry lost by 119,000 votes four years ago. This year black voters accounted for 18 percent of the state’s Democratic primary voters, up from 14 percent in 2004, an increase of some 230,000 voters out of an overall turnout leap of roughly a million. Voters under 30 (up by some 245,000 voters) accounted for 16 percent, up from 9 in 2004. Those younger Ohio voters even showed up in larger numbers than the perennially reliable over-65 crowd.

It's fascinating to watch these political "experts" ignore the demographic actually driving the upcoming election. Instead they choose to concentrate on older white folks like them. Through this classic Freudian projection, these "experts" have deluded themselves into believing they, and only people they perceive to be like them (read: blue collar), will be the arbiters deciding our next President. What's worse is that, intentionally or otherwise, they're working overtime to fool the rest of us into believing it too. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Herbert has plenty o' gold today. Read the whole thing here.

-AF

I'm Back

More or less. Still having a few problems. While I get caught up, you MUST read Ken Silverstein's Ten Issues That Will Decide The McCain-Obama Election.

-AF

You Fucked Up File: ABC

Welcome to the inaugural entry to ASIAF's YFUF. What's a "YFUF"? A dear friend and former colleague in the music biz has to deal with any number of challenging, demanding artists from baby bands to international superstars based all over the globe. Years ago he instituted what he calls the "You Fucked Up File." When the band inevitably fucks something up, it's added to their YFUF. This way if there are any disputes about why a third single isn't released from a disappointing album, tour support is reduced, etc., he whips out their YFUF and sets them straight.

Last night saw the worst ever piece of election coverage by any network not named Fox. After 3,492 Democratic debates you'd think ABC could get it right. Not that I watched it. I have read and viewed much of the press coverage. Sometimes that's more important than what actually happened. Because by all accounts your average American couldn't have tolerated more than 5 minutes of it, this was one of those times.

Yes, the candidates' performance was lackluster. But ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos acted like they had participated in some perverse pre-debate Right Wing Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. WTF was up with that?

You know ABC fucked up when the crowd actually and loudly booed Gibson. You know they blew it when Obama is asked about some badass he knew when he was 8 years-old. You know it was awful when Editor & Publisher's Editor Greg Mitchell calls it "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years." You know it was bad when one of the many gotcha questions is supplied by Sean Hannity and NY right wing radio looney Steve Malzberg. You know it was terrible when Philly's Daily News' Will Bunch rips it not once but twice. You know it went well past weak when the "flag pin" kerfuffle and every other kerfuffle is resurrected. You know it was ugly when it took an absolutely unforgivable 51 fucking minutes for the motherf***ers moderators to bring up one policy issue(!?!). You know it was shameful when Keith Olbermann sez "The campaign may have seemed dirty. It had nothing on one of the moderators of the debate tonight."

Look, I know Stephanopoulos is ABC's DC bureau chief but he was Bill Clinton's senior political advisor and communications director fer chrissakes.
I don't want to say that George had a hard-on for Obama but he should have put a coat on to cover his naked bias. Fox's Hugh Hewitt would have been a more appropriate choice. Is Charles Gibson really so light that he couldn't have moderated solo?

The only good to come out of this unmitigated disaster is that every single debate henceforth will seem amaaazing.

-AF
++Update: Harper's Ken Silverstein provides one-stop shopping with Deep Throats: A Compilation of Debate Porn.

They Said It. I Repeat It.

We had two very good men, and men of faith, run for President in 2000 and 2004. But large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or frankly respect their ways of life.

Hillary Clinton

By the way I have to say I think Al Gore won.

Barack Obama

Call me Captain Obvious but it's not a very smart move by Sen. Clinton to take any shots at Al Gore right now. Come on November!

-AF

They Said It. I Repeat It.

Clearing out some memory for my DVR, I just stumbled across an interesting exchange from the February 29, 2008 edition of Real Time With Bill Maher. This wasn't a bit...

Bill Maher:

How many rednecks are there in Pennsylvania? If you had to guess a percentage, a rough ball park figure.

Hillary Clinton superdelegate/PA Governor Ed Rendell:

Less and less every year. And again, give Senator Obama, in my next sentence in the interview, I said he’s done a great job bringing new people into the fold and a great job overcoming those barriers in states which I’d have said have the same problems. But look, there are people in Pennsylvania who don’t wanna see a woman President because they don’t think a woman could be a good commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. That’s a fact. That’s a fact.

When I ran for Governor the first time, I ran for Governor as a young man in the early ‘80s, a newspaper reporter told me he was in central Pennsylvania at the time people called in and said we can’t vote for that guy he’s Jewish and from Philadelphia. So prejudice exists, again give Senator Obama tremendous credit for to a great deal overcoming that. There’s no question about it. Does it exist? Sure, but there’s prejudice against a lot of people in the political spectrum.

Is Gov. Rendell a condescending elitist or a realist? The sole difference between Gov. Rendell's comments vs. Sen. Obama's comments is that Obama actually provided a context and rationale for his perception whereas Gov. Rendell simply implies there is rampant bigotry and sexism among his constituents.

The only mistake Sen. Obama made in his "bitter people" comments is one of politesse. He should never have singled out PA before the primary lest undecided voters be offended. Those already committed to Obama are all too painfully aware that he speaks the truth.

Enough with this kerfuffle already.

-AF
+Edited ever so slightly for clarity.