“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” Snow asked: “Anybody making over $250,000…” Biden responded: “Is gonna pay more.” Snow: “Is going to pay more.” Biden: “You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in. Time to be part of the deal. Time to help get America out of the rut.”

Conservatives predictably went ballistic with their calls of “class warfare”; Obama’s fans thought it brilliant economics.

For those of us who are Democrats, or former Democrats, Joe Biden’s statement was offensive on a different level. Although many of us agree with progressive taxation, Biden’s formulation is deeply offensive. According to Biden, greater taxation equals greater patriotism. This concept fits perfectly with the self-congratulatory world of Whole Foods Nation. Anglachel describes Biden’s target audience as the new elites:

The focus of the [Obama] Democrats is on the winners of the economic realignment, those who managed to win a place in the white collar upper-middle class … [Obama] is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.

Some will argue that Biden is simply practicing liberal class warfare; he is targeting the wealthy and not the “bitter” gun owners of greater Appalachia. I disagree. By using the framework of patriotism, Biden is challenging — to use Anglachel’s parlance — the “Bubbas” and the Archie Bunkers — to ownership of American patriotism.

Biden is telegraphing to Whole Foods Nation that it’s equally patriotic to live in Boulder, Colorado and pay on a 33% tax bracket income as it is to serve in Iraq, like Governor Palin’s son. Or, as a friend in this income bracket told me recently, she “sacrifices” by voting Democratic.

The primary campaign showed that Obama fared well with affluent voters and African Americans. Clinton crushed Obama with middle- and low-income voters. The Pennsylvania primary was a perfect example of Obama’s inability to connect with low-income voters:

The Pennsylvania Democratic primary shared many of the same vote characteristics of other primary states this season - with Clinton winning her core base of union members, less educated and lower income voters and rural voters, and Obama winning voters with more education and income, and black voters.

The attack on blue-collar voters by Obama is what precipitated the civil war now raging in the Democratic party, and Obama’s race-baiting of blue-collar whites has been one of the more depressing episodes in our history as a Party.

Low-income white Democrats are the least likely group to vote Republican, and the assault on this vulnerable group has all the markings of racial and class warfare used for electoral gain. African Americans are all too familiar with politicians playing on prejudices for electoral gain and there is nothing different in this case except for the color of the victims’ skin.

The dishwasher, the waitress at Denny’s, the auto mechanic, the grocery clerk, the nursing assistant, the soldier — all low income Americans — are equally patriotic to anyone living in San Francisco or Hyde Park or the East Village, regardless of the amount they pay in taxes.

I’ve been thinking about Biden’s notion of patriotism for several days. Last night I found a video which captures patriotism in a way still held by much of the country. It’s an old fashioned form of patriotism which is now considered uncouth and looked down upon by the liberal elites. But it’s a type of patriotism once honored by Democrats; it’s a part of what made Democrats the governing party for most of the first half of the last century.

The video is from Ken Burns’ brilliant 1990 documentary The Civil War. I think Sullivan Ballou’s love for his wife Sarah is only matched by his love of country.

Listen to Sullivan Ballou’s words carefully and think about everything he is sacrificing. You won’t hear politicians — except perhaps for John McCain — speak of our beloved country with such a degree selflessness and honor.

Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife that he was “willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government.” Ballou’s patriotism is echoed by Sarah Palin’s willingness to give her child to the service of our country: “Today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas…to fight for our country, for democracy for our freedoms.”

Whole Foods Nation hates Sarah Palin for the class she represents. She threatens the self-perception of their own moral superiority on race and their economic “sacrifices.” Giving her son to our nation is not enough to silence the voices of hate.

During the primary campaign, on TPM, billysumday suggested that Bill Clinton was a racist because of his bumpkin origins, totally ignoring that the President was educated at Georgetown, Yale, and Oxford:

Dean had this to say, “Our party has been a no-majority party for a long time. The fact is that the Democratic Party is made up of lots of different people” and “If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white — excuse me — in the Republican Party.”

And here are Dean’s words recorded for posterity’s sake:

“…Then we have a speech like Sen. Clinton’s yesterday in Florida in which she compared the controversy over seating the Florida and Michigan delegates to the Florida recount debacle and many of the great voting and civil rights battles of the 20th century….

“What she’s doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she’s gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her — a belief many won’t soon abandon….”

For months, in fact, many of us Floridians have drawn parallels between Recount 2000 and the DNC’s stripping Florida of 100% of its delegates — including some of my politically astute, Obama-supporting friends.

Hillary isn’t to blame for that sentiment — and it certainly didn’t result from a speech she made yesterday.

For the millionth time, Florida Democrats had no power to block the moving of Florida’s primary election. Thus, the DNC should not have “punished” Florida Democrats.

Our state legislature moved the primary dates, an entity on which the DNC’s rules are not legally binding. Our State House has about 77 Republicans to 43 Democrats. Republicans constitute about 60% of our State Senate.

In short, Florida Republicans can unilaterally pass or block any legislation they want. They could have moved the primary date without a single Dem vote.

Instead, they wanted Dems to go on record voting for it, so they tied the primary-date provision to a provision requiring paper trails for those touchscreen voting machines that ex-Sec. of State Katherine Harris had persuaded our big counties to buy.

For an idea of how well paperless voting has worked in Florida, see this article about paperless voting machines that reversed the results of a Medley, Florida, election in 2002 (scary stuff). Even better, the Equal Justice Foundation has a list of documented paperless voting-machine problems throughout the U.S.

The upshot: it is for very good reasons that Florida Dems wanted a paper trail, but state Republicans effortlessly blocked Dems’ efforts for years.

Last year, out of the blue, the Republicans decided to give the Dems their paper trail — but only if the provision was in the same bill that included the moving of Florida’s 2008 primary election.

Why, you may wonder, would our state Republicans do something like that? What could they possibly gain?

My guess is that they wanted the DNC to “punish” Florida Dems, which would in turn anger Florida’s Dem voters, which could in turn cause some of those Dems to stop donating money and to stay at home in November 2008 — or to vote for the party that ironically didn’t disenfranchise them this time around.

What other reason could there be, given that the Republicans had the numbers to unilaterally change the primary date and block the paper trail?

Think about it.

If that was Florida Republicans’ plan, then it obviously worked: the DNC reacted in the harshest way possible against their own voters.

Many of us Florida Dems are furious at the DNC for having done so — and would be whether Obama or Hillary were in the lead now.

Adding fuel to the fury, the DNC was not without a choice in its handling of Florida.

According to research printed at No Quarter, the DNC’s rules did not require the 100% stripping of Florida’s delegates — even if Florida Dems had intentionally moved the primary. Instead, the rules required a 50% stripping, and that’s only if Florida Dems had failed to act in good faith.

In fact, Florida Dems did act in good faith: they just didn’t have the power to bring about tangible results. This is a pitiful state of affairs with which we Floridians have lived for years (you can see evidence in our education system — one of the nation’s worst, despite our state’s relative wealth).

If you want background, Wayne Barrett published an accurate explanation at the Huffington Post of what happened in Florida — and of how the DNC reacted both irrationally and unfairly.

For reasons most of us Florida Dems don’t grasp, the DNC didn’t even listen to explanations by our state party leader, former Congresswoman Karen Thurman. Incidentally, she’s no longer in Congress, because state Republicans carved up her district during the 2000 reapportionment.

Giving credit where it’s due, our state Republicans are exceptional at strategizing.
As though there weren’t enough fuel in the fire, the DNC took the extra step of treating other states differently than Florida, showing leniency to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina after they had moved their primary dates.

Many politically aware Florida Dems have known about all this for months, which is why so many of them now refuse to give the DNC money. Some even asked for refunds of their past donations.

Many Florida Dems are also considering becoming NPAs (our way of saying “Independents”) unless Florida’s primary is counted and new DNC leadership is installed.

And there is solid cause for Florida Dems’ resentment: given the facts and events, it’s obvious that the DNC intentionally disenfranchised Florida — with ears closed and eyes wide open.

Our own U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson talked about challenging the DNC’s decision last August, and the fury of Florida Dems has been building ever since.

That DNC “leaders” have refused to fix the Florida mess that they had caused — and that they had the nerve to suggest pretend solutions, like seating our state’s delegates after the nominee is chosen — has only stoked said resentment yet again.

In short, DNC “leaders” — themselves — caused the resentment that Florida Democrats now feel toward their own party and said “leaders” have insisted on continuing to exacerbate the situation. Now they want party unity?

It’s a shame that the entire nation may have to live with the consequences of a few people’s dismal decisions — unless Florida (our nation’s fourth largest state) ends up not mattering in November’s election. I guess we’ll see.

Memeorandum has commentary.

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Related Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* DNC’s Brazile Still Misleading Public About Florida

* Florida to Lose Its Voice In Democratic Primaries?

* Democrats Do Want Change — in DNC Leadership

What she’s doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she’s gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her — a belief many won’t soon abandon. And that on the basis of rationales and arguments there’s every reason to think she doesn’t even believe in. [sic]

Because the last sentence of the passage I quote is grammatically awkward, I will not attempt to determine the rationales and arguments the writer cites. I will, however, note how he views a female candidate and her supporters as irrational and easily aroused dupes, which according to him renders them “toxic.” I guess Hillary and her supporters are a group of impure and unruly amazons who must be tamed by Democratic men in the name of Party unity. For men and only men are arbiters of truth and purveyors of knowledge, and these men want their women to be pure tabula rasas onto which they can imprint their specular image. And this, of course, will only occur if women and the men who support them shelve what we understand to be incontrovertible evidence and predicate our arguments on the same axioms the writer I cite recklessly hypostatizes in his essay. I quote:

Never mind of course [sic] that even if you [sic] count Michigan and Florida she’s still not ahead in the popular vote without resorting to tendentious methods of counting.

I’ve always assumed, as I think most people have, that once the nomination is settled the Florida and Michigan delegates will be seated. And I can see if Sen. Clinton wants to embrace this issue to claim a moral victory even while coming short of her goal of the nomination. [sic] As things currently stand, seating them would still leave Sen. Clinton behind in delegates.

One’s mathematical skills are considered tendentious if one counts verifiable votes cast in primaries for a candidate whose name appears on the ballot. One is also considered dogmatic and unyielding if one believes the states of Florida and Michigan should gain representation before the outcome of the nomination process is determined. In other words, representation is actually its antonym, nonrepresentation, and any attempt to rely on a particular word’s proper signification will be dismissed as nonsensical, for the author has decided that all words should be treated as enantiosemes, or signs that signify their opposite. After all, Clinton is behind and shall remain behind. And besides, any attempt to change that predetermined scenario will be viewed as “breathtaking in its cynicism,” for Obama dismisses those who have not mindlessly consumed his commodified politics of postpartisanship and postmodern unity as unworthy and undereducated “cynics.” Only the voracious consumers who comprise the unimaginative “creative class” are capable of formulating thoughts, I guess.

Obamabots are fond of the word “discourse,” but they fail to understand the phenomenon of intertext, which is the product of an utterance’s situation within a broader discursive field. If they understood structuralism before attempting to (mis)use its key terms, they would know that all texts are the products of other texts. Mr. Marshall’s text, for example, is the product of all the texts generated by the campaign of the candidate for whom he serves as echo chamber. But what is insidious about his repetition of the claims propounded by the Obama campaign is the uncritical reification it enacts. Indeed, he reifies them to the point of a tautology. Misinterpreting the bankrupt assumptions of a politician as so many facts to be taken as axiomatic, Marshall misleads his audience with what can only be described as political toxic waste of the second order. For the waste he generates is a mere product of the toxic information with which the Obama campaign floods his inbox.

Discursive waste, I guess, simply begets more discursive waste, especially when such waste elides the following: Harold Ickes served on the Committee that sanctioned Florida, not Hillary Clinton; Michigan and Florida Republicans in those states’ respective state legislatures ignored the rules the DNC outlined for the primary, not the Michigan and Florida Democrats who cast votes with which Marshall and Obama disagree; Obama promised to seat the delegates of Florida when he violated the pledge his campaign made with other Democrats during a press conference he held in Tampa, Florida, last September; Obama also violated the pledge when he advertised in Florida during the month of January.

Because Obama violated the pledge in Florida, he is pure. Clinton, however, is cynical and toxic, for she upheld the pledge in Florida. Moreover, she understands the rules, which stipulate that Democrats in a particular state should not be penalized if they made a concerted effort to ensure their respective state legislatures adhered to the DNC provisions when choosing a date on the primary calendar. But none of this matters at TPM, where purity is toxicity and toxicity is purity. I guess this redefinition of words is one of those “tactical necessities of the moment” Marshall describes as so much politics. And I guess this obliges us to view his failed and tendentious attempts to transvalue words, rules and events as yet more vacuous prose secreted by a warped mind suspended in a vat of politically partisan toxic waste.

As Obama loses his grip on the nomination and the momentum of his candidacy slows, his campaign is reviving its race-baiting tactics heading into North Carolina.

We’ve seen this played out before: The Obama campaign hints that whites are unwilling to vote for Obama because he’s black, an Obama surrogate claims the Clintons are using race, and the Obamablogs, Keith Olbermann, and finally the MSM pick it up as “truth.”

The day after Clinton’s surprising victory in New Hampshire, Obama supporter Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — in words which will live in infamy –said that Hillary’s tears in New Hampshire will “have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina and other things Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head toward South Carolina where 45 percent of African Americans will participate in the process.”

This was followed by Obama suggesting to mostly black audiences that the Clintons were playing them for fools by criticizing him. Obama appropriated Malcolm X’s “hoodwinked, bamboozled, okie-doke” speech and sent a clear signal that racial politics was on the table.

This narrative was given the blogger boy stamp-of-approval when Markos Moulitsas Zuniga claimed (falsely) that Team Clinton darkened a picture of Obama to make him look menacing.

Lastly, Orlando Patterson gave it legitimacy by claiming in the pages of the Times, again falsely, that there was not a black child in Hillary’s “3 a.m.” ad. Discussing Patterson, but just as accurately Obama’s racial strategy in general, Taylor Marsh said “Looking for racism in every moment of a white person’s political campaign is as bad as being racist. No, actually, it is racist.”

The Obama campaign successfully telegraphed their campaign talking points and the big blogs, Air America (Randi Rhodes said “Geraldine Ferraro is David Duke in drag”), Keith Olbermann, and many others fell in line and parroted the lie that the Clintons have been using race or are racists themselves. As others have pointed out, no one can explain why the Clintons would use race in a Democratic primary contest where African Americans have a disproportionate voice.

On the heels of another Obama defeat and the prospect that Hillary is picking up genuine momentum, members of his team are again telegraphing to their supporters in the press and the blogs that it’s time for racial politics. David Axelrod revved up the race machine when he told NPR that:

The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.

By framing the issue in terms of race, Axelrod signaled that others should do the same. Following on cue, Rep. James Clyburn told the Times:

“When he was going through his impeachment problems, it was the black community that bellied up to the bar,” Mr. Clyburn said. “I think black folks feel strongly that that this is a strange way for President Clinton to show his appreciation.”

In essence, Clyburn is telling us that Clinton owes the black community because of their support during the Lewinsky scandal and that Clinton should refrain from criticizing Obama:

Mr. Clyburn added that there appeared to be an almost “unanimous” view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were “committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”

Clyburn, of course, ignores Rev. Wright, Wiliam Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Bitter-gate, all self-inflicted wounds. In truth, all Hillary has done to hurt Obama is win big, crucial states by talking about economic issues and national security, pretty boilerplate stuff.

The Democratic Party consists of two warring factions, and the precarious coalition that forms the Party is on the verge of splitting apart. Working class whites are not naive to Obama’s shenanigans. They’ve watched as the Obama team has smeared perhaps the most racially progressive president in our history as a racist, and they’ve seen Obama ridicule their concerns, faith, and culture.

The Obama campaign would like the superdelegates to believe that African Americans will revolt if Obama is not given the nomination. The more likely outcome–and this has actually been quantified, is that working-class whites will go with McCain if Hillary is not the nominee.

This is not because working class whites are racist but because Obama represents a wing of the party which encourages the trashing of poor white people, lacks an economic focus for their needs, and excuses the racist and America-hating rants of Reverend Wright.

Obama’s cold-hearted tacticians aren’t using these tactics because they are concerned about the plight of African Americans. They are trying to scare superdelegates about racial issues and smear the Clintons.

The use of race has nothing to do with race: this is about power, pure and simple, and controlling the largess of the federal government. Although the media loves to claim that Obama has brought in new voters, Hillary has actually received more votes than Obama and has done something which has the potential to change the political landscape for a generation: She has built a new governing coalition centered around the largest part of the electorate, women, and fastest growing part of the electorate, Hispanics.

I suggest that African American politicians, comfortable senators, wealthy blogger boyz, and lobbyists like Tom Daschle fear that Hillary’s new coalition could actually complete the New Deal promise of universal health care and dominate politics for a generation. John Kerry, for example, has gone so far as to say UHC is dead on arrival in the senate but Obama is a good candidate because the color of his skin, not exactly meat and potatoes for the working class.

Obama’s losses in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania should not be underestimated. Obama is unable to win critical swing states despite having a near-monopoly on the institutional power-brokers, the media, the blogs, and the activists.

The narrative that Obama is a weak general election candidate is starting to take hold. Sensing this development, the Obama team has turned on the Wurlitzer and alerted its supporters that it’s time to smear the Clintons as racists once again. We’ve heard Axelrod and Clyburn.

Watch next for the blogger boyz, the columnists of the Times and the Post, Joe Klein, and then the mainstream media. We’ve heard this song before, and we know all the notes and lyrics by now. It means Obama is in trouble.

Sen Obama should drop out of the race. Having just seen the new attack ad that the GOP is showing in NC — condemning the state’s Democratic leadership for backing Obama, replete with Rev Wright cursing America — it is clear that Senator Obama is detrimental to the Democratic brand nationwide. As Jerome Armstrong wrote nearly one month ago, “That’s fall-out from Wright, not against just Obama, but also Clinton, and most likely against the Democratic Party in general. It’s branding of Democrats Obama, and Clinton, as anti-American.”

Obama earned his lead early on, prior to being vetted. After he lost Texas and Ohio, the Wright videos appeared, shocking the nation. Slowly, information about his relationship to Rezko, and his affiliation with William Ayers have also entered the mainstream.

He should quit while he’s ahead, so to speak, and give the Party a chance to win the General Election.

After the New York Times endorsed Senator Clinton as the choice of their editorial board, they have consistently published specious and demeaning pieces about her. With friends like these, who needs enemies? It wasn’t any specific attack by Hillary which the Times or anyone else can point to; it’s the sudden unraveling of the fantasy named Obama.

The New Yorker was so upset at debate moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson that they ran two articles this week denouncing the debate, going so far as to praise the Post’s Shales’ description of the debate as “despicable” without mentioning that it’s the same Washington Post that ran an article last year about Hillary’s cleavage.

We know who has truly been despicable: The pillars of the liberal establishment are lashing out at Hillary, at the debate moderators, and at the newest boogie man, poor white men, because Americans are finally learning the truth about their vacuous creation. It’s not the questions in the debate that are the problem; it’s the fact he cannot answer tough questions.

Barack Obama’s picture appeared on the front page of the Times the day Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary. That in itself goes a long way to explaining the lead editorial, “The Low Road to Victory.”

In fact, the Times is perpetuating the myth that Obama and the rest of the media are spinning: Clinton is negative, on the attack against Obama, and that she is more negative than Obama.

Obama demeans her character, lies about her policies, but the media says she is negative. There is not a negative trick in the book that Obama has failed to use. He unfairly attacked her health care plan. He has ridiculed her at a more personal level. He outspent her 4 to 1 or even 5 to 1 (and not 2 to 1). Still, he could not prevail. If Senator Clinton is focusing on the weaknesses of Obama’s candidacy, it’s because the media have failed to do their job. If you spend some time on the message boards of the New Progressive Sexists you’ll see where the negativity is coming from - the Obama campaign.

The Times piece was particularly bad because only days earlier they reported on Obama’s increasingly negative attacks against Hillary, “In Push Before Vote, Obama Sharpens Tone,” on April 21st. (Talk about selective memory.)

It is part of the ongoing sexism and misogyny in this primary that Hillary Clinton gets blamed for negativity. It’s the same old game: If a man makes a comment, then he’s being strong and powerful but, if a woman makes a similar statement, she’s being negative. (See Shakesville’s running list of sexist comments made about Hillary. She’s counted 75 so far).

In fact, in response to Obama’s Rovian tactics, the Clinton campaign sent around a quiz with negative statements about Hillary. All twelve came from the Obama campaign or Obama himself.

Negativity?

• Who said Hillary Clinton is “literally willing to do anything to win”
• Who said Hillary Clinton is attempting to “deceive the American people”
• Who claimed Hillary Clinton has a secret 20-year plan to become president
• Who called Hillary Clinton a calculating, poll-tested, divisive figure
• Who called Hillary Clinton “one of the most secretive politicians in America”
• Who said Hillary Clinton’s campaign is “playing politics with war”
• Who said John McCain is seen as more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton
• Who called Hillary Clinton dishonest
• Who referred to Hillary Clinton as “a monster”
• Who said Hillary Clinton is “not being straight with the American people”
• Who said of Hillary, “The American people are not going to elect a president that they do not trust”
• Who claimed Hillary Clinton “consistently” and “deliberately” misleads the American people

Obama has been shielded by his benefactors for over a year. His campaign has gotten away with these relentless attacks against Hillary, yet she is being accused of taking the low road. Americans are finally having their questions answered about Obama’s questionable friends, and Americans are turning off to this media-hyped creation.

One hopes the superdelegates are paying attention to Obama’s certain unraveling.

_____________

Special thanks to Vet4Hill for providing the video of Terry McAuliffe discussing the out-of-bounds NYT editorial on April 23, 2008.

We noticed an odd similarity in two front pages this afternoon: HUGE headlines about Hillary and guns. First, there was the Huffington Post’s front page (click to see larger image):

Then there was Talking Points Memo’s front page (click to see larger image):

By susanunpc

And then it all made sense. I opened Mark Halperin’s The Page blog for Time magazine, and saw these blaring headlines:

After remaining silent all day Sunday, Obama lashes out against Clinton in Steelton, Pennsylvania.

“She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her.”

Insists he does relate to small-town Americans, and mocks Clinton’s sudden vocal support for gun rights:

“Hillary Clinton is out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better. That’s some politics being played by Hillary Clinton.”

VIDEO UPDATE: Brother Barack on “there’s some politics goin’ on …” and “that’s some politics bein’ played by Hillary Clinton … you know … come on …” — via Ben Smith’s Politico blog.

Brother Barack was in Steelton, Pennsylvania this afternoon. And he’s still lying to the people about not taking money from big lobbyists. Check all of our stories on the big-time lobbyists he’s raking in the big dollars from.

Special thanks to Brother Patrick Henry for sending me the video link.
______________________________________

Back to the Original: This is not the first time we’ve noticed strikingly similar headlines and stories on pro-Obama sites like Huffington Post and Talking Point Memo. Halperin’s big red headlines — about Hillary Clinton “on the duck blind every Sunday” and that she’s “packing a six-shooter” — come straight from Obama’s mouth, quoted in a Fox News article.

The similarities cannot be overlooked: Have you also noticed how that the anti-Hillary and pro-Obama stories leading the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo are exactly the same?  We are not just talking a mere coincidence.  Day after day both sites appear to parrot the same “talking points”? For those who are at least 50 years old this comes across like an American version of Pravda and Izvestia.  For you youngsters, Pravda and Izvestia were the “news” outlets for the Soviet Union.  They functioned pure and simple as propaganda machine.

I think the Izvestia and Pravda comparison does not really fit either the Huffington Post or Talking Point Memo.  But their collective behavior and cheer leading does call to mind the writings of Lewis Carroll and the antics of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Here are some more questions:

• Although both websites have different editors, how close are they to David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s media message manipulator?
• How do they receive the Obama campaign talking points–via email or on a phone conference or both?
• And why do both sites so cavalierly dismiss Barack’s claim that “folks in Pennsylvania, frustrated by the economies of Bill Clinton and George Bush’ are bitter and seek solace in religion, guns or bigotry?”  Why do both find it so easy to excuse words like this that, if uttered by Hillary, would in their view justify a political lynching?

Could it be the money? Consider the possibility that a big Obama money bundler, Ken Lehrer, also happens to be a major investor in Huffington Post.  Hmmm.  Coincidence? Would you be shocked to learn that another big Obama bundler, Reed Hundt — we hear in whispered discussions — is a close confidant of Josh Marshall?

I do not challenge the right of either Arianna Huffington or Josh Marshall to put up what they want.  That’s the beauty of having their own blog.  But I do think it is important to disclose any close political contacts with the Obama or Clinton campaign if you are shilling for them.  Here at No Quarter, we do monitor pro-Hillary blogs.  But we have no connection whatsoever to the campaign.  And this blog’s owner, Larry Johnson, has made it quite clear that he is not seeking nor will he accept a position in a Clinton Administration if Hillary is elected.

Perhaps we should give Obama’s campaign credit for having a better machine for manipulating the blogosphere and the press.  What bothers me is the depth of political manipulation directed against Hillary and the willingness of the media to participate in the print equivalent of mob violence.  Even someone like Mark Halperin appears to have snagged a cup of kool aid today.  He links to The Page byFox News, which quotes Barack Obama’s outburst today:

Clinton called Obama’s claim that economically depressed Pennsylvania voters cling to God and guns “elitist” and “demeaning,” and talked about her duck-hunting experience in Arkansas. Obama sounded skeptical. “She’s running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen. How she’s, she’s valuing the second amendment,” he said mockingly. “She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley. Hillary Clinton’s out there in a duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six shooter. Come on!”

Now where did I hear that before?

::::::::::::::::

By the way, I do not get guidance from top Clinton campaign staffers. However, a few weeks ago, I finally got around to calling the Clinton press office, and they kindly signed me up to receive their press releases. Anyone can sign up to get their releases to the media. Here is tonight’s:

Response to Sen. Obama’s Outburst

Phil Singer, Deputy Communications Director, issued the following statement tonight:

For months, Barack Obama and his campaign have relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton’s character and integrity by using Republican talking points from the 1990s. The shame is his.

Sen. Clinton does know better — she knows better than to condescend and talk down to voters like Senator Obama did. Senator Obama’s outburst won’t change the fact that he has embraced his characterization of the millions of Americans who live in small towns.

###

The Clinton-Bosnia-Sniper story seems to be peaking. And there have been a lot of snippets of video swirling around YouTube with this or that part of the story. But most of them are incomplete or rapid-fire-cut or edited to make Sen. Clinton look as foolish as possible. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld used to say. We do those kinds of videos too. But since you’ve probably seen a lot of those, we wanted to go back and put together all the key moments in roughly chronological order — what Sen. Clinton said on different occasions, the key video from the trip, what other eyewitnesses say, what her spokespersons and aides say, etc.

Obama’s economic speech was surprisingly given zero front page coverage. The indictment of the Puerto Rico governor was also ignored. Clinton’s call for Democratic unity was also ignored.

You won’t believe what TPM did earlier in the month of March:

Veteran political writer Linda Hirshman says she was cut as a TPM Cafe contributor for “not making the case for Obama.” Their reason: “We’re focusing on getting our long-standing regulars and folks covering things we don’t on the blog.”

Covering things like, YouTube mashups of the Bosnia visit?