Spank You Very Much, Hillary

Yours Truly,
North Carolina

Now get out, already!

Obama Points the Way

obamapoint0339, originally uploaded by Watts4.

Fellow North Carolinians, the time has come to place your vote, and I'm expecting better results from us than those smarty-pants folks in CA, NY, PA, OH, etc.
Yesterday after church, an older man came up to me and said he had seen me on Monday. At first, I thought he must have seen me driving around town or something.
But this gentleman had seen me at the Obama rally. He had waited in those long lines because he thinks Obama is the best chance we've ever had to make a difference. He thinks Obama is the one person who can best deal with the folks in the Middle East. He thinks Obama can make America great again. And I couldn't agree with him more.
I gave him some 3D glasses and some pictures from the rally, and implored him to go vote on Tuesday. His response: "I already have".
So fellow North Carolinians, I implore you, go vote tomorrow, and vote for a real change.

Update: Not soon after I posted this, that older gentleman just stopped by our house and dropped off a big bucket of fresh strawberries, from his farm. Found out he took his grandson (who I've played ball with) to the rally. Gotta love NC!

Hillary's Curse

Eight Belles, the only filly in the Kentucky Derby, had to be euthanized on the track.
Thank Hillary. From ABC News :

"Tragedy struck the first filly in the Kentucky Derby since 1999, as Eight Belles went down on the track after her second-place finish today, broke two ankles, and was euthanized.

Showing a sisterhood with the female horse, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., during a trip to Louisville this week had said she was going to bet on Eight Belles to win, place, and show....

... Eight Belles' trainer, Larry Jones, returned the love. "It looks like it could be the year for the girls," he said. "Eight Belles I’m sure would want to endorse.""

Mike Easley, Wanker

He looks scared to me.

Maybe he endorsed Hillary out of fear. Maybe, just maybe, Hillary promised him something for his endorsement. Ambassador Easley has a nice ring to it.

The Guv is on his way out, hope he enjoys clinging to Hillary and Bill while they fold.

Hillary fo VP (Republican Ticket)

Had Barry taken my advice, he could now withdraw his VP offer to Hillary. He could say that Hillary has made a good case for being VP, she certainly seems "ready to go". Unfortunately, it seems like Hillary is making the case to be McCain's VP. Frankly, she's off her rocker if you ask me: power hungry at any cost, even if it hurts the Dems and the country.

"Have you noticed the pattern?" Clinton wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "Every time our campaign demonstrates its strength and resilience, people start to suggest we should end our pursuit of the Democratic nomination. Those anxious to force us to the sidelines aren't doing it because they think we're going to lose the upcoming primaries. The fact is, they're reading the same polls we are, and they know we are in a position to win."

This is simply not true. Obama is up 60/40 in the polls here in North Carolina. Even if she did win 'em all....it's too late. Too late for a graceful exit, and too late to get the VP nod, unless McCain picks you.

Judas, My Man!

Were You There?

When Jeremiah Wright was a White House guest? Hillary was. Let's all think back to the wonderful events of the Clinton administration back on September 11, 1998:

"According to an account by James Bennet, former White House correspondent who has since left The Times:

With tears in his eyes, President Clinton told a roomful of clerics this morning that he had sinned, speaking just hours before the world was presented a painstaking account by prosecutors of when, where and how.

Addressing an annual prayer breakfast at the White House, Mr. Clinton drew on the New Testament, the Yom Kippur liturgy and Ernest Hemingway as he made his most abject confession yet of personal failure, while declaring that he would defend and redeem his Presidency.

‘’I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,'’ he admitted softly, saying that after resisting expressions of contrition he had reached ‘’the rock-bottom truth of where I am.'’
For the first time, Mr. Clinton also asked for forgiveness from Monica S. Lewinsky, on the day that the details of their intimate relationship — details that he had denied and struggled to suppress — poured out through the Internet, whose wonders as a tool of communication he has so often extolled."

Oddly enough, Hillary's schedule on 9/11/98 shows her going to a "Bombing Victims Memorial" after the prayer breakfast. I think the important thing here is not to smear Hillary with Wright's presence in the White House, but to remind us of what was going on in the Clinton administration at the time.
Whatever good came from the Clintons' time in office, and there were a lot of good things, in the end he/they were not honorable, and even those of us who defended the Clintons against the right wing attack machine, were glad to see them finally leave the White House. After all the money for pardons and money for the library, I figured they were done. We know these people, all too well, we know better.

Clinton Library Builder Missing

I'm not all that into right-wing conspiracies, or the Clinton ones either, but here's another story from Little Rock about a man who "showed up missing":

AP: "John Glasgow was the chief financial officer of CDI Contractors LLC of Little Rock, owned by department-store chain Dillard's Inc. and the estate of co-founder Bill Clark. It has built or remodeled many of Dillard's 300-plus department stores and put up some of Arkansas' signature projects, including Bill Clinton's presidential library,...

...John Glasgow had a healthy salary, with an opportunity to pick up stock in the construction company where he worked. He was the kind of guy who paid back a $500 bonus he got for completing an anti-smoking program because he started to light up again.

But now Glasgow has been missing since Jan. 28, with his car found abandoned the next day, and family and police say it's impossible to tell whether he killed himself, was abducted or left to start a new life elsewhere.

His family said the easygoing 45-year-old felt overwhelmed and anxious about a company audit, but the company says no money is missing.

Police say there is no evidence of foul play, and no clues to his whereabouts.

"He may be under some kind of compulsion ... some kind of blackmail, that's a scenario you could dream up," said his brother, Roger Glasgow. "We're not suggesting any of these scenarios because we just don't know. But it does open up a Pandora's box of possibilities."

Hmmmm. Makes me wonder about those tax returns the Clinton's haven't released, and the names and dollar donations for the Clinton Library. Just who gave them their fortune? Hillary used $5 million of it for her campaign already, and I think we deserve to know where it came from. I'm not drawing any conclusions....

Camille Slams Clinton

Camille Paglia is all over the place in this article on Salon, but I just had to point out what she is saying about Hillary these days:

"Media misogyny has reached an all-time high," screeched the National Organization for Women in a press release titled "Ignorance and Venom: The Media's Deeply Ingrained Sexism." Groan. If women are going to play in the geopolitical big league, they'd better toughen up and learn how to deal with all the curveballs. Never has the soppy emotionalism of old-guard feminist reasoning been on such open and embarrassing display. How has Hillary, who rode her husband's coattails to the top and who trashed every woman he seduced or assaulted, become such a feminist heroine? What has she ever achieved on her own -- aside from the fiasco of healthcare reform?

And if the media is treating Hillary in a gendered way, hasn't she herself constantly and cynically dramatized her embattled womanhood? It began with her snappish defense of her hangdog husband during the Gennifer Flowers imbroglio of 1992. Blame tail-chasing Bill, from Little Rock on, for sexualizing the popular perception of the Clintons. Nubile, exploited Monica Lewinsky will always hover around Hillary like ghostly baggage. Bill's serial abuses betray a profound ambivalence about and deep-seated hostility to women -- something the Clintons' giddy feminist flacks just don't see. Why was Hillary flying around the world to those 80 countries anyhow -- building her résumé while leaving her randy hubby unleashed? Anyone who thinks Bill's exploits are going to stop after Hillary is president has, well, a screw loose. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's entrapment in a sex scandal is coming at a particularly inopportune moment for the Clintons, since it simply reminds everyone again of tawdry, furtive, high-placed adultery.

It's time to go, Hillary.

Hillary: Face Reality

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in President Bill's administration, and longtime friend of the Clintons, has this to say about Hillary's continuing campaign:

"This is the first time in my memory that a major candidate in a primary has said that the other party's nominee would be a better president than his or her own primary opponent. We also had the outpouring of negative advertising from her campaign that both candidates had largely managed to avoid up to this point.

... the reality is that she can only win by convincing large numbers of superdelegates to join her and re-engineering the Michigan and Florida primaries to her advantage, and then taking the fight all the way to the convention in August -- which if she gets that far, will be one of the most divisive in forty years.

I suppose I should not be surprised. If Hillary Clinton has experience in anything, it's in fighting when cornered. When Bill Clinton lost his governorship, it was Hillary Clinton who commissioned Dick Morris to advise the Clintons on a no-holds-barred campaign to retake the governor's mansion. At the start of 1995, when Newt Gingrich and company took over Congress and the Clinton administration looked in danger of becoming irrelevant, it was Hillary Clinton who installed Dick Morris in the White House, along with his sidekick Mark Penn, to "triangulate" by distancing Bill Clinton from the Democratic Party and moving the Administration rightward. (When Morris was subsequently discovered to have a penchant for the toes of prostitutes the White House dumped him but kept Penn on.) And now Mark Penn is the "chief strategist" of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The sad news is that whether the Clinton scorched-earth strategy ultimately succeeds or fails, it will have caused great harm."

So, Hillary, please take it from one of your close friends, and get out now before more damage is done.

Dick Morris Ad for Obama

Dick Morris has a suggestion for Obama:

"The next time Hillary uses the recycled red phone ad, counter with one of your own. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, have a woman’s voice, with a flat Midwestern accent, answer it and say, “Hold on” into the receiver. Then she should shout, “Bill! It’s for you!”

Because with Hillary’s complete lack of any meaningful experience in foreign affairs, and her lack of the “testing” that she boldly claims, she’ll be yelling for Bill."

That, and it would imply Bill has another woman calling at 3am. Morris, who has as much to gain from Hillary winning as anyone, says she's done:

"The race is over.

The results are already clear. Obama will go to the Democratic Convention with a lead of between 100 and 200 elected delegates.
...
Will Hillary win Pennsylvania? Who cares? Even if she were to sweep the remaining primaries and caucuses by 10 points, she would move just 60 votes closer to Obama’s total of elected delegates. And she won’t sweep them all. Even if Hillary wins Pennsylvania, the largest prize up for grabs, Obama will probably win North Carolina, which is almost as large.

I reassert my submission that Obama go ahead and offer Hillary the #2 spot now. If she agrees, well, fine. If she does not, then you're more free to paint her as the spoiler who's out of touch, etc, etc. The people have spoken.

Make Her an Offer....

....You know she will refuse.
President Bill has opened the door for you, Barry:

"she believes that if you can unite the energy and the new people that he's brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she's carried overwhelmingly, if you had those two things together she thinks it'd be hard to beat."

He added that, in his view, Obama would win the "urban areas and the upscale voters" while Clinton claims "the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put those two things together, you'd have an almost unstoppable force."

I submit that Obama should now publicly offer the Vice President spot to Hillary. He should say that in order to unite the party and avoid a prolonged battle, we should do as your husband President Bill suggested, and unite to make the 'unstoppable force'.

By all estimates (do the math yourself), Hillary, you cannot catch up in delegates and can only win under circumstances that would be a detriment to the party's chances in November. So, Hillary, for the good of the party and the country, please accept this offer.

After she refuses, she will appear to be (and well, actually be) the one tearing apart the party.

Thanks, President Bill!

Pour Water on Her Already

Rory O'Connor at Alternet explains her Ohio and Texas performances like this:

Hillary won this week by working the refs.

By constantly complaining about coverage, and relentlessly focusing on charges that the news media has favored Barack Obama and treated him far more gently than herself, Hillary was finally able to staunch the bleeding and stage a desperately needed, last minute comeback that will keep her in the game. By mocking the media, quoting Saturday Night Live, and "practically browbeating reporters," her campaign lived to fight another day.

And fight is the operative word. Going negative against the media, as well as her opponent, saved the day for the Clintons.

I've noticed this effect as well. Dan Abrams springs to mind, doing his best to 'even out' MSNBC coverage from supposed Obama cheerleaders like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. But the plain truth is, Chris Matthews was right when he suggested that we would not be voting for Hillary Clinton if her husband had not been president. Just sayin'...it's true.

She's also getting help from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, so there you go...

Funniest line last night was about Obama's phone call to congratulate Hillary on Texas. Rachel Maddow proclaimed:

"I'm surprised he didn't wait until 3:oo in the morning to call her".

You know who wins my vote with that 3:00 AM ad, Hillary? John McCain. Dude....

I thought we had avoided it, but it really looks like those Florida and Michigan delegates are going to be pivotal for the convention. The North Carolina primary might even mean something this time around. With the Clintons involved, I expect this could get ugly.

To the voters of Texas and Ohio: Thanks for bringing me back to my senses. The Democratic party is as dumb as I feared.

Vote Obama on Super Tuesday

The American Way.

She's a neo-con/communist.

She wants to freeze interest rates for five years. At least that's what I heard in the debate. I wonder what her economist friends think of such an idea....I mean, isn't that abandoning market economics for socialism? What, are we China here? Let's just print more money to give to people while we're at it....they're going to need it if we elect someone who thinks it would be a good idea to freeze interest rates for five years. She also talks about putting caps on this and that.....please, please!

Capitalism won already.




Don't fall for her spells, do the right thing! Ladies, it's up to you.

Update: California, Tenn, New Jersey, Mass, etc.: a pox on you all. Get with it already for cryin' out loud.

PJ Bowls Hillary on CATO

P.J. O'Rourke just came out with a goodie on Hillary posted at CATO:

"Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is "America's ex-wife."

A man can be a Democrat to the core, going into the voting booth to pull the lever with the donkey label no matter what. Then he sees Hillary's name on the ballot. And it all comes back to him … the first marriage … the time he came home a little late, it wasn't even midnight, and he'd only had four or five beers, and she threw his bowling ball down the storm sewer .The Republicans will have a hard time coming up with someone who can't beat Hillary Clinton. But I don't put it past them. "

He goes on to castigate all the candidates in an effort to explain the process to our European friends. Worth a read no matter who you like (except maybe Hillary).

South Carolina, I Salute You

From an author at The Nation:

"When I was growing up in North Carolina, our neighbor South Carolina played an important role in our lives--giving us something to look down on. We fell for too many racist demagogues through the years (y'all remember Jesse Helms?), but we weren't always run by them. We didn't have no rebel flag flying over our statehouse. We elected a racially moderate governor at the height of the civil-rights backlash in 1960. It was something to say for ourselves, and we appreciated South Carolina's making us look relatively all right.

After Saturday's primary, this Tar Heel can do nothing but offer a big, deep bow to the Democrats of South Carolina. Not because I was particularly rooting for Barack Obama over John Edwards--but because of these fine folks' rejection of the Clintons' gutter politics."

Thank you South Carolina. I think it's the first time I've said that!

No Putative President

Bill Clinton's boorish behavior acting as Hillary's pit bull, using divisive politics, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, etc. ....he's really showing his a** again. Do we want him back in the White House (didn't they leave in disgrace)?

Beyond that, do we want anyone like George W. Bush who is dependant on Dick Cheney, just as Hillary is dependant on Bill? I think not! On Aug. 29, 2007, I wrote:

"Lastly, a point I have not seen elsewhere... I believe Hillary's run is against the spirit of the 22nd Amendment. That's the one about a two term limit. Sure, Hillary was not president, but she was part of the team. When they ran, Bill claimed that we'd be getting "two for the price of one". I suggest that Hillary has already served two term in the White House, and her attempt to regain control runs counter to the spirit of the 22nd Amendment. She's flaunting our Constitution, folks! "

Today, Gary Wills backs me up and runs with it:

Gary Wills at The New York Times writes:

"One problem with the George W. Bush administration is that it has brought a kind of plural presidency in through the back door. Vice President Dick Cheney has run his own executive department, with its own intelligence and military operations, not open to scrutiny, as he hides behind the putative president.

No other vice president in our history has taken on so many presidential prerogatives, with so few checks. He is an example of the very thing James Wilson was trying to prevent by having one locus of authority in the executive. The attempt to escape single responsibility was perfectly exemplified when his counsel argued that Mr. Cheney was not subject to executive rules because he was also part of the legislature.

We have seen in this campaign how former President Clinton rushes to the defense of presidential candidate Clinton. Will that pattern of protection be continued into the new presidency, with not only his defending her but also her defending whatever he might do in his energetic way while she’s in office? It seems likely. And at a time when we should be trying to return to the single-executive system the Constitution prescribes, it does not seem to be a good idea to put another co-president in the White House."

NYT Endorses:

Billary! Rejoice. The endorsement was made by

The New York Times Editorial Board

Click the link to see who these, a-hem, folks, are. Two of them used to work for, you guessed it, the Clinton administration.

Maybe these folks want to share their votes with us? Defend themselves? No, they'd rather give a blanket endorsement, an establishment endorsement, if you will. This is the same NY Times that helped lead us into Iraq. Luckily, The Times is, at times, a good paper, and runs columns by some folks who will stand in public behind their endorsements.

Frank Rich has an excellent article out about Billary, a must-read.

And Caroline Kennedy has a stirring Obama endorsement in the NYT today:
A President Like My Father
(Kennedy compatriot Ted Sorensen has endorsed Obama already)

This Billary endorsement is just another kick in the pants from a once great paper in decline.

Clintonian Toofer

Two-for-one. Great deal, right? I don't think so...

From David Boaz at Cato:

"To a Southerner of a certain age, Bill Clinton's vigorous campaign to elect his wife to the office he once held brings back memories of George Wallace's 1966 campaign to elect his wife, Lurleen, governor of Alabama and of their ensuing co-governorship.

Like Clinton, Wallace could not run again because of term limits. Early in Lurleen Wallace's term, it was reported that when people called the governor's office and asked to speak to "the governor," the receptionists would cheerfully ask, "Gov. George or Gov. Lurleen?"...

..."The problem facing the Clintons in 2008 is that those old rules no longer apply. Today, "two presidents for the price of one" sounds like a recipe for confusion. Do we really want White House callers being asked, "President Bill or President Hillary?""

I didn't think Bill should have been impeached, what a waste of time and resources. But, I don't want him back in the White House with lots of time on his hands either, if you know what I'm talking about (I'm not going to say anything, but you can read about it in his book....hers, too!)

Drunk Driving for Hillary

Sidney Blumenthal, known advisor to Hillary Clinton, got caught driving drunk for Hillary:

"...Blumenthal himself faces charges of driving drunk. Blumenthal, an unpaid senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was arrested in Nashua on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and charged with aggravated DWI, according two members of the Nashua police force.

Sgt. Mike Masella, one of the arresting officers, said the movements of a Buick caught his eye. “I observed all his erratic driving,” Masella said. “When I first noticed him it was at an intersection. He abruptly stopped. That caught my eye … He was drifting in his lane.” Masella followed the car, a rental, for a mile and a half, and clocked its speed at 70mph in a 30mph zone--more than twice the legal limit. Masella pulled the car over at 12:30 a.m. Monday morning."