6 posts tagged “hillary clinton”

Roger Simon wrote a piece dripping with sarcasm for Politico today.  And I love it.

Focusing on the outcry over the media coverage Sarah Palin has been receiving since the announcement about her taking the Republican VP slot last week, Simon perfectly enunciates what I never could in my severely limited attempts at voicing my opinions:

…On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.   We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.  We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

…We should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.  Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

…Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.  Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.  Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

On the other hand, I think that a portion of the coverage Palin has received is unfair.  And, apparently, some of Hillary Clinton’s aides agree with me:

Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen, who has written best-selling books on gender differences, said she agrees with complaints that Palin skeptics — including prominent voices in the news media — have crossed a line by speculating about whether the Alaska governor is neglecting her family in pursuit of national office.

“What we’re dealing with now, there’s nothing subtle about it,” said Tannen. “We’re dealing with the assumption that child-rearing is the job of women and not men. Is it sexist? Yes.”

“There’s no way those questions would be asked of a male candidate,” said Howard Wolfson a former top strategist for Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Ultimately, I like Palin.  A lot.

But there’s still no way in hell that I’d ever attached my vote to a McCain campaign.  The fact that they managed to find someone to run in the VP position who would do much better headlining the ticket doesn’t change the fact that McCain is a slimeball with nothing better to do than sell Americans out at the domestic level while playing up his foreign policy credentials.  If we’re going to have four more years of mismanaged policy at home, why not put it all in the lap of someone as easy to write-off as Barack Obama?

Barring the possibility of McCain dropping out of the race in the next two months for age-related reasons, I will continue to throw my vote in for a post-Obamalyptic dystopian future where Americans are finally shaken back to reality.

Yeah, it sounds bad, but we have a nasty tendency of finding order only after chaos.  Just look at Carter and his inspiration for Reagan.

I don't know if you're the type of person who would rush home from work early, weaving dangerously in and out of traffic as your rust-bucket car whines beneath the crushing weight of your foot on the accelerator, risking life and limb just to catch the first Democratic Presidential Primary debate on MSNBC yesterday.
I know that I certainly am.

Just in case you missed it, I have to say that you might want to take a trip over to YouTube to try and snag a few clips.  Particularly of former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel.  He is, essentially, a much older, much more outspoken Howard Dean - if you can imagine that.  When asked about whether or not he thought the US was 'woefully behind' in our use of nuclear energy, he somehow managed to produce a meandering answer about how we are mischaracterizing terrorism.

And then there was Kucinich, who we all got to see in action during the last Democratic primary.  When asked about why he didn't believe that there was such a thing as a global war on terror he had the following to say:

Because the fact of the matter is that the global war on terror has been a pretext for aggressive war. As president of the United States, I intend to take America in a different direction, rejecting war as an instrument of policy, reconnecting with the nations of the world, so that we can address the real issues that affect security all over the globe and affect our security at home: getting rid of all nuclear weapons, the United States participating in the chemical weapons convention, the biological weapons convention, the small arms treaty, the landmine treaty, joining the International Criminal Court, signing the Kyoto climate change treaty.

The world is waiting for an American president who reaches out in a hand of friendship; who understands this is a complex world, but doesn't see the world in terms of enemies.

Does anyone else find it slightly troublesome that the American public has grown so anesthetized in the last fifty years that there are actual adults out there who suffer from the delusion the world will find peace only when everyone joins hands and plays fair with each other?
You can't hug the world with nuclear arms, you know.

Kucinich and Gravel don't stand a chance, though.  And I think it's safe to say that Obama walked off of that stage as the clear victor last night.  Things should get plenty interesting when Clinton starts to dig herself in, though.

Anyway, with my political cynicism back in gear, I think I'm actually looking forward to the 2008 elections - despite the fact that they're still so far in the future.  More than the election process itself, though, I can't wait for the first Republican debates, where we're all guaranteed to find even more lecture-rhetoric about morality and patriotism.

Ever since I decided to add the Power Line blog to my ever-growing list of RSS feeds, I can't say that I've been disappointed in the least.  I have come to learn that I can always expect intelligent news analysis there, whether I agree with the point of their articles or not.

To that end, as I'm trying to avoid delving into the still-developing political ramifications of the Virginia Tech shooting, I'd like to point to a Power Line article from a couple of days ago that really caught my attention.

While I openly reject the belief that the mainstream media is actively campaigning to get a Democrat into office, I don't think it's a stretch to recognize that the majority of our press is composed of left-leaning writers.  So it goes.  However, the Barack Obama quote from the cited AP article, when placed so closely to the photograph of he and Ludacris together, did raise my eyebrows.

Quintessentially, this is a prime example of why I don't think Obama is going to be able to squeak through as the Democratic nominee for President.  Most of his political power is drawn from the fact that he's relatively unknown and, thus, doesn't have the same sort of baggage that most of his opposition is going to have (i.e. Hillary).  Unfortunately, his lack of baggage will also happen to be his greatest weakness, magnifying any slight hypocrisies he may find himself stumbling into on the campaign trail.

Then again, I've been wrong before.
I did, after all, actually think that Bush was going to grow some teeth during his second term in office.  What a joke that turned out to be.

"I do not believe Washington can be transformed from within by lifetime politicians...there have been too many deals, too many favors, too many entanglements - and too little real world experience managing, guiding, leading."

Thank you, Mitt Romney.

In an ideal world, where Americans trade in their nightly dosage of 'American Idol' and 'Lost' episodes for a happy helping of political involvement, the 2008 Presidential Election might find you and Barak Obama as the headliners at the final debate events.  Unfortunately, while I agree with you on the above statement, I can't say that you're the strongest possible candidate on the Republican side.  Of course, when you've got someone like Guiliani or McCain at the top of the dogpile, you might actually stand a chance.
Meanwhile, while looking at the calendar the other day, I was struck by the fact that the Iowa caucus isn't for almost another year.  And I think that Karl Rove has a valid point when he says 'I think it is going to mean that people develop a persona earlier and wear out their welcome earlier than they would...I think there's going to come some point this year where people are going to basically be saying: 'I'm largely disinterested in the contest.'

Who knows?  Maybe McCain will slip up and call someone a 'gook' on national television or Hillary will throw a hissy fit and have her bodyguards beat up Cindy Sheehan before then.  Maybe Guiliani will be caught in another affair.
Maybe Obama and Romney can somehow manage to keep themselves clean throughout this whole process.

I had an MRI done on my knee today, as per my rhuematologist's request - despite the fact that I was a full hour late in arriving for my appointment.
Only in Southern California could you be an hour late for an appointment you leave half an hour early for that's only ten miles away.

In sadder news, John Kerry won't be running for President this time around.  The man knows a tough woman when he sees one, and my guess is that he doesn't have the stomach for any more smear campaigns - the likes of which Hillary Clinton is (supposedly) already indirectly launching against Obama.

Tonight Bush is going to take his place at the podium in the capitol and deliver his State of the Union address.  And I'm still sorting out whether or not I'm going to waste my time to catch it live - it hardly seems worth it.  We're going hear all of the promises of bipartisan unity and the need to stand strong against anyone who hates freedom.
Don't get me wrong, these things all sound real nice as soundbites, but after having lived through enough of these with President Bush it's become apparent that the man either isn't able to deliver consistently on his promises or simply isn't interested.

So, instead of offering up any criticism of this otherwise useless State of the Union speech, I'd like to throw out some more information, beyond my previous post on the subject, on the numerous reasons why Schwarzenegger's health care plan in California is going to be a terrible failure.
The frightening thing is that Hillary Clinton - front runner for the Democratic Presidential candidacy in 2008 - has a strikingly similar health care plan on her agenda.  God help us all.