Today's Moment of Zen

The End

. . . (?)

We Said “No”

A year and a half ago I was sitting at my desk at work when I stumbled across an article on Slate.com which gave me serious pause. In it William Saletan thoroughly described why, at a time when the nomination of Hillary Clinton, one of my state’s senators, was universally appreciated as “inevitable”, she was sure to lose, complete with segmented bullet points. He also repeated a quote from a then-recent New York Times article in which Hillary Clinton said "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote [for the war] or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from."

That article, and my agreeing response, has now become materialized in history. In that arrogant dismissal she invited millions of citizens to ask “Why not somebody other than her?” By that simple comment she mobilized millions of people to do things they had never done before (and which were often quite against their everyday nature) and bring forth a most unusual turn of events:

So, Hillary, in February of 2007 (and as an ongoing process, witness to your campaign tactics) a large number of tuned-in people decided that, yes, we will take you up on it. We will choose from the rest. You don’t get to be President. Step aside.

Political Ouroboros pt 3: Sharpton to H.Clinton: "Watch What You Say"

Sharpton said he spoke to Hillary Clinton Saturday morning about her recent reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy - "and she understands my feelings firmly."
[...]
"I don't believe either candidate meant it when they said it, but I do believe if you strike a match in a flammable environment, you run the danger of something catching fire," Sharpton said. "I'm asking them to be careful how they handle their matchbook."

Yes, well, thank god The Good Reverend is there to hand out advice that he is the most appropriate person to give. Far be it for me to defend Ms. Clinton (can you tell I'm not impartial?) but I just can't resist linking back to that story I wrote last year of what he said in my presence.

put them together...

+

=?

Say What?

"It's almost like she's the Al Sharpton of white people."
-- Chris Matthews on Hillary Clinton

I Bet You Are

My favorite part of the final (we can only hope) debate between Clinton & Obama which I watched at a bar in midtown...

[...]In a debate that moved swiftly between politics and policy, Clinton issued a first-ever public apology for having claimed erroneously that she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire in 1996 as first lady.

"I may be a lot of things but I am not dumb," she said, adding that she had written in her book that there had been no gunfire during the episode. She said she was embarrassed by her error. "I'm sorry I said it," she added.[...]

(So, let's analyze this for a second... She's basically saying (in that imperious "what the hell is wrong with you" tone she likes to use) "What I stated is a clear contradiction of what I have previously put down in writing, thus what I said was not true, and you know that, so stop bugging me".)

Let's just put this one under "May I please be in the room the next time Maureen Dowd does an across-the-room spit take?"

Asked about an accusation on the Drudge Report that Clinton staffers had circulated a photo of Barack Obama wearing Somali tribal dress, Singer let 'er rip.

"I find it interesting that in a room of such esteemed journalists that Mr. Drudge has become your respected assignment editor," he lectured. "I find it to be a reflection of one of the problems that's gone on with the overall coverage of this campaign." He went on to chide the journalists for their "woefully inadequate" coverage of Obama, "a point that has been certainly backed up by the 'Saturday Night Live' skit that opened the show this past Saturday evening, which I would refer you all to."

-- Phil Singer, Clinton campaign PowerPointer, somehow managing to give a presentation to elite Washington opinion makers with his head entirely ensconced in his Klein-bottle-shaped GI tract.

"Only Hillary Has My Number"

First, the headline "Bill Pulls a Rudy" is really (*gag swallow*) inexcusable.

Second... Really? Chelsea doesn't have it? I mean, unlike Rudy, he *does* talk to his children, no?


How lame.

To answer your question....

"...apparently not".

(the ad may change if you click into the page, but the coincidence was too sweet not to share)

"I decided 'No' "

(clicky for video)

No candidate should be so stupid.

In the spirit of injecting a little variety into this sequence of musings I have tried not to create consecutive entries having to do with politics. However, this week it seems a bit hard not to. The recent news that the Clinton campaign has been making use of the practice of "plants" (putting their own people in the audience pretending to be part of the general public, asking softball questions) has been a practice perfected to a perverse art by the Bush campaigns (and the administration itself). This seems to me the proof in the pudding (whatever that means) that my fears of a Clinton administration being a natural extension of the previous one, with all its character and process flaws, have become true even before the primary election is started. (It also in my mind raises an issue of competency and experience; let's see her try to use those two words again without making me think of this)

a plant (clicky for article)

My favorite linear equation of the day

A report-with-analysis released by Gallup in the last week shows a direct and "sturdy" correlation between favorable ratings of Barack Obama and the level of education of the respondent.

In other words, the more (formally) educated the person is (feel free to translate that to "smarter" or not as you see fit) the likelier they are to think the guy is OK.

I used the word "sturdy" because the Gallup people were smart enough to also present the data controlling for the fact that

(a) higher-educated people are more likely to be Democrat, across the board (also a surprise that wasn't a surprise but it's nice to see it written down), and (and this is the real surprise)

(b) among Republican respondents Obama is the only candidate for which the favorable numbers go up significantly as a function of education(*).

(*) Conversely, the other consistent finding in this survey/study is that Hillary Clinton is the only major Democratic candidate for which the favorable numbers drop significantly as a function of educational level -- both on the Democratic and Republican side although strangely not for independents (added 8/17: most likely a taxonomy issue; "independent" often being a catch-all term for "don't know / don't care / hung up").

If only there were more smart people than non-smart people this would be a lot easier.

Hillary Clinton: Compassionate Misanthrope

“Since Xmas vacation, I’ve gone through three and a half metamorphoses and am beginning to feel as though there is a smorgasbord of personalities spread before me, [...] So far, I’ve used alienated academic, involved pseudo-hippie, educational and social reformer and one-half of withdrawn simplicity.”

Hillary Clinton's letters to a former high school classmate during her college years have been released. They make the self-lamenting sighings of Lisa Simpson seem like the mouth-breathings of a soccer hooligan by comparison. They are peppered with.. oh how should one who would never release his high-school writings if the world depended on it put it.... an unfortunate use of flowery constructs and unnecessary $10 words. These were days before the Kaplan Review and paranoid cramming for the SAT were commonplace so one can only assume that young Ms. Rodham's logorrhea were a result of too much of the wrong kind of reading.

It is well fitting the observed life to note this karmapimple: that the person who used to be Hillary Rodham, college student and expert on all things ennui, will spend the next 16 months trying to impress crowds at BBQs, turkey weighing contests, county fairs, simple-minded special-interest rallies, and generally speaking into TV cameras using short sentences composed entirely of short words for the benefit of those she used to dismiss as “[knowing] a lot about ‘self’ and nothing about ‘man’ ”.

I'm not being sarcastic.. it's just a little speech impediment...

oBAMTAKETHATSMACKa !

(sorry for the slow news cycle; I'm on vacation but this is the news I've been waiting for months and I had to share) Obama gains on Clinton in US presidential race

Apr 30 05:33 PM US/Eastern

View larger image

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's popularity has grown among likely voters, according to a poll released Monday which suggested he was gaining on rival frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The poll by the Rasmussen Institute predicted Obama would get 32 percent of the vote in February's primary, compared to 30 percent for Clinton, who until now has been the consistent favorite for the Democratic party. (full story behind the link)

First Democratic Primary debate watched on TV

(All photos link to something because I'm compulsive.)

The first Democratic Party primary debate was held last night in South Carolina. There was a gathering of Obama supporters at Sputnik, a swanky Soviet-themed lounge in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

There were about 20 people there as the broadcast began at 7pm and by the end there were easily 40. I hope that is representative of the overall TV audience (in the sense that people don't usually gather in bars to watch political primary debates like it's a football game).

Richardson looked a bit nervous and stumbled verbally but weirdly that wasn't until the 4th or 5th question asked of him. Clinton is a total screecher (seriously; there's a mic right there and she can't seem to get out of outdoor-rally-voice mode; apparently, and ironically, Chris Matthews agrees with me). That ugly thing called The Consensus says Obama won, but overall I thought all the candidates did quite well and they were all strong and knowledgeable and electable.

(of course, the bar having been
lowered to the level of a municipal
sewer over the last six years,
that was of little surprise).

Well, maybe not all the candidates. These two guys
probably deserve the presidency more than the
rest of the candidates combined; will they get it? No....

...unfortunately...	... and unfortunately.
click here and here to make dennis speak	and here to hear mike

This is Jordan, our main Brooklyn organizer.

He runs a grass-roots pol org called Brooklyn4Barack.

We were also joined by a news crew from the CBS Evening News who interviewed a few of us afterwards (myself included). I was told that if they use it it will be on tonight's (Friday) broadcast. Set your Tivo's to "stun".

There was also a leprechaun, helping to elect the second Irish-American to the Presidency.

(that's a four-leaf clover in place of the apostrophe; very cute)

they also had these great lamps there
that took me exactly 15 seconds to
find in the ikea web site

I was there - Obama speaks at Sharpton's National Action Network convention

"I've said to Rev. Sharpton and I'll say it today, if there is somebody - I don't care whether they are white or black or they are male or female - if there is somebody who has been more on the forefront on behalf of the issues you care about and has more concrete accomplishments on behalf of the things you're concerned about, I'm happy to see you endorse them. But I am absolutely confident you will not find that."

I was at the National Action Network (presided by Al Sharpton) meeting where Barack Obama spoke yesterday (midtown Manhattan Sheraton, 12 noon). It wasn't a huge crowd but I'm sure that's because it wasn't widely publicized that he would be speaking there that day (I only got an email from a fellow pro-Obama person less than 36 hours before). Hillary had been invited to speak the day before and apparently she did quite well.

His remarks, often addressed directly to Sharpton himself, were actually more pointed than the linked-to article depicts; he told Sharpton almost in as many words (and right in front of "his people") that he is wrong in his unofficial endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Also, the article doesn't really do justice to the incident with the cell phone. It wasn't quite as quick and by compressing it they make it sound like the intent of his joke was something other than how it was meant.

What happened, in order, is that a buzzing sound was heard for about 5 seconds while he was speaking. He paused and said "What's that buzzing sound? You hear a buzzing sound?" (pause) "I think it's Sharpton's Blackberry." (quiet general laughter).

Sharpton takes out his phone to turn it off.

Obama: It IS Sharpton's phone. (laughter) Is that Hillary calling?

(the implication, as far as I took it, was that Hillary and Sharpton are in constant contact, perhaps several times a day, in order to coordinate their efforts; a natural thing since they both have region-specific complementary interests).

Sharpton: No, it's your wife.

(Consider what plausible scenarios would explain such a thing happening.) At this point I'm covering my face with my hands from embarrassment; what an awful, stupid, positively Don Imus-like thing to say. I was actually expecting the crowd to go "oooohhhh..." (pronounced: "I can't believe he went there"). Instead there was raucous laughter and clapping so the moment was saved. Perhaps the subtler implication of the joke was lost on them, or they chose to ignore it in order not to damage either of the two men on stage.

Obama: (Obviously also trying to defuse it) Tell her I'll pick up the groceries on my way home. (or something like that; I'm doing this from memory).

In any case, I'll try to go out of my way to go see him whenever he comes to town; it's fun to get these things live and then see them reported nationally.


There are photos I took of the event here:
http://public.fotki.com/juanolator/obama-08/

And random video clips (unfortunately not of any of the above-described moments) I shot here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tpvCgEdrI

Also, my new favorite Harry Chapin song; photo taken at the event yesterday:

lyrics (for the lazy)

a fundraising letter i received yesterday

vive la différence

caption contest

My winner:

"...and then we're going to Washington DC to

take back the white house! WHOOOAHH!"

Howard at April 7, 2007 7:52 PM

(link goes to hundreds other submissions,
most of them very good)