We know who Bush’s handlers are and it got us into the war in Iraq and allowing private corporations to mine and log on public lands. His wanting to privatize Soc. Sec., etc.

By the way, if you haven’t already seen Silver City, please. do.

finally, cee … your comments reflect what i have read on pro obama cites today … the outrage of having him questioned is rather comical if it werent what i believe to be prophetic about this race. if obama gets the nod, and it looks like he might, how are y’all going to react when the real slime machine starts on him. when the republicans start their attacks will the obama followers, with starry eyes, continue to embrace the politics of change … you know when their man says we have to transcend partisanship. i dont know cee … i think obama needs to rethink this meme and his followers had better grow up, politically speaking, damn fast.

But do I need a long book with Hillary’s name on it to decide how to cast her in what remains of my history? No. To tell you why not, however, I do need another writer who will express articulately what I do not have the time to express myself. In this case, that author is Berkeley economist and former Clinton Treasury official Brad DeLong. He writes:

My two cents’ worth—and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994—is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly….

Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch—the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.
My ghostly thanks to Ms. Moore, Mr. Easterbrook, and Prof. DeLong. Wonder what they make of the new Potter book?

http://www.reason.com/news/show/33624.html

Again, Hillary Clinton missed the opportunity to really make that the charge against him today, rather than this ridiculous plagiarism

Load of shit.

The plagiarism tells me the man is incapable of critical thinking, independent thinking, he’s a tool.

And we have one of those as President, perhaps it’s indicative of the republican strategists that they don’t get it either.

Not very smart people, shouldn’t be anywhere NEAR the white house, now should they?

When did American government start settling for such mediocre intellects, the Sara Taylors and Karl Roves of the world?

Did you see my link above, and quote from, the Pajamas Media NYC editor? And that’s just one of many quotes we’ve brought up from the conservative / winger community. And DO SEE DCMediaGirl’s newest piece in which she reports on the disillusionment growing among the punditocracy.

Do you know what Clinton said to AIPAC about Iran and what we needed to do?

“IT’S ALL ABOUT AUTHENTICITY
By now, you’ve probably heard of the new attack line from the Hillary campaign, accusing Obama of plagiarism because an ad-libbed portion of his stump speech mimicked the language and rhythm of a two-year-old speech by his friend and supporter, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Patrick told the New York Times that he and Obama freely exchange speech ideas and that he didn’t feel like a citation was needed.

The Clinton campaign held a conference call this morning to continue pushing this line of attack. TPM Election Central asked campaign adviser Howard Wolfson about Patrick’s remarks:

Wolfson said the plagiarism charge still holds because listeners go in with the assumption that Obama’s speeches are original, unless credit is given. “So I think it’s fine that Deval Patrick said that,” Wolfson said. “But what I’m concerned about is that the public has an expectation that Sen. Obama’s words are his own.”

Wolfson’s concern for the public’s fragile expectations would be quaint if it wasn’t so transparently self-serving. Obviously, this isn’t plagiarism.

But like the flip-flop line of attack Hillary is pressing on Obama’s public financing pledge, the attack speaks to her campaign’s effort to undermine the very thing that has been the centerpiece of Obama’s candidacy: his authenticity.

Sure he gives better speeches than I do, the Hillary line goes, but the words aren’t even his own. He may talk a good game about public financing, she asserts, but when push comes to shove his position is the same as mine.

The attacks are intended to bring down Obama’s positives, to knock him off his pedestal. But it’s hard to see how they raise Hillary’s. Her argument, boiled down, is: “He’s no better than me.” (Or perhaps, less charitably, “He’s just as bad as me.”)

Judged as political rhetoric, it strikes me as equally ineffective as her earlier charge that Obama was “raising false hopes.”

Late Update: Jake Tapper reports on the same conference call I referenced above:

I asked Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, if they could assure the public that neither Clinton nor McGovern has ever done what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, did when he used the rhetoric of Gov. Deval Patrick without footnoting him.
They would not.

In fact, Wolfson seemed to say it wouldn’t be as big a deal if it were discovered that Clinton had “lifted” such language.

“Sen. Clinton is not running on the strength of her rhetoric,” Wolfson said.

–David Kurtz”

Ain’t nothin’ good for the Palestinians in that question being part of the debate. If we expect either Dem to talk about it, conventional wisdom, in all it’s tut-tut glory, will be deployed to force both candidates to the right of the issue. If you want eitheer candidate to be able to move left on this issue, you better hope it stays out of the campaign. Just stop and think about what the press is going to do in it’s oh-so-important-and-isn’t-this-just-shocking mode.

The press is the primary political opponent any Democrat faces. And the press will automatically go farther right than the American people are on this topic.

And why do you leave out Obama, who voted consistently to fund the war, and failed to join the separate efforts of Sens. Feingold and Kerry to try to begin to bring the troops home? He gave them both his hind end. (Sorry, a single speech safe in the tony, left-wing environs near the University of Chicago — and before he had to sit in the U.S. Senate — does NOT count as courageous war opposition. Further, he never spoke out again to HELP any of those opposed to the war. Just one little speech.)

Further, Obama voted to confirm Gen. Casey which Hillary Clinton refused to do, particularly after questioninig him during his confirmation hearings before the Armed Services Committee.

Obama apparently felt he could get a little more mileage if it happened every time he showed up. To me this is like Rudy’s wife calling him on the cell phone at every speech; it wears thin pretty fast.

Obama is acting like a rock star and this notion that people actually SWOON over him is just ludicrous. It is comical for them to stoop to this.