“OBAMA SUPPORTERS” DAILY NEWS Thursday May 22 2008

WELCOME TO “OBAMA SUPPORTERS” DAILY NEWS

Thursday May 22 2008


US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally
in Tampa, Florida. Obama declared he was already on the cusp of the nomination,
as he traded blows in the latest foreign policy flare-up of an evolving general election
battle with Republican John McCain. (AFP/Getty Images/Robert Browman)

All members welcome and encouraged to participate in the Obama Daily News

You can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web. :think:
2. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread :applause:
3. Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page :thumbsup:
4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

* Clinton supporters or “anti Obama posters please start your own “Clinton Daily News Thread”.

Get your DU-o-matic codificator (to format your posts) here
Read the Daily News Archives here

(Graph by DemConWatch.)

The Field’s “No Chicken Little Left Behind” program has detected various expressions of disappointment from some Obama supporters that “only” two superdelegates declared for Senator Obama today (also with an Ohio add-on delegate going to Clinton, as expected). Such worrying takes “instant gratification” needs to an unhealthy extreme. An indigenous elder once told a writer that the four attributes of a warrior are “ruthlessness, cunning, patience and sweetness.” Bend over, Chicken Littles: I’ve got a hypodermic needle full of that cocktail to cure this particular Avian Flu. Har, har: This won’t hurt a bit!

...Much of the unease has to do with a completely unknown factor: What will the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee decide on May 31 about possible Florida and Michigan delegates? And how might that move the goal posts?

...I am now going to demonstrate to you what would happen if - either at the urging of the Obama campaign (since Axelrod telegraphed an olive branch today), or simply to pull the rug out from under a loose cannon (formerly known as Senator Clinton) that’s been rolling around the Sunshine State deck all day - suddenly the Florida and Michigan delegations were fully seated, gasp, including their superdelegates!

That scenario, however unlikely, seems to be something that gives some Obama supporters the willies. Yet, if they would only do the math, they would cease to worry about that....

.... read more at the link

BillyT
...WHY CAN'T HILLARY WIN AMONG EDUCATED VOTERS??

michigandemocrat08

Her next argument will be I'm the choice of women in pantsuits! They vote overwhelmingly for me.

WarScribe May. 21, 2008 - 12:32 AM EST updated
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I generally turn off my BS meter when Hillary Clinton begins speaking about leading Barack Obama in the popular vote count. I’m afraid the gauges might fly right off the machine when she suggests that — if you add two states where the votes weren’t supposed to count and ignore four states which haven’t yet released their figures but where the votes did count and then, of course, conveniently forget the fact that in one of the states that she wants you to count, no one else was on the ballot — she is one-third of one percent ahead. And so my meter was firmly set in the off position during Clinton’s Kentucky victory speech, where she very predictably made the same convoluted argument (which doesn’t seem to have had any sway with the two dozen superdelegates who have swung Obama’s way in the past two weeks.) Which I think is significant — because I still had to scratch my chin when she suggested “it’s often been said, ‘as Kentucky goes, so goes the nation.’ ” Really? That’s often been said?

Hillary made the comment at approximately 8:28 EST. At 8:30 EST — hoping to beat the dozens of transcripts and news reports of her speech online — I checked Google for the term “as Kentucky goes, so goes the nation.” So I checked — Google. I got 16 hits. Including one that referred not the presidential nomination but to the Kentucky Derby. Another was a quote from Clinton herself, the day before the Kentucky primary. Sixteen hits on Google is the zeitgeistian equivalent to nothing. The term “hamburger pants” nets 552 hits. The randomly selected letters “sdfv” produce 22,200 hits (betcha didn’t know there was a Scuba Diving Federation of America.) And the term “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation” nets 9,530 hits. That latter fact I find particularly interesting, because Ohio has correctly picked the president every year since 1964 — the exact same record as neighboring Kentucky. So the spirit of what Clinton said was, in fact, true. Which makes me wonder, why couldn’t she simply say that? Why not say, “Kentucky — you’ve picked the correct president every four years since I was in grade school! Thank you for voting so overwhelmingly for me tonight!”? Why make up a lie — even a little white one — about something that people often say when, very clearly, they don’t often say it?

Which brings me back to Clinton’s stories about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, (which also clearly wasn’t true — not even remotely so,) and helping to secure peace in Ireland, (which was nearly as big of a lie, but didn’t get quite as much play, because it’s harder to make a funny YouTube video about Clinton pretending to have played a role in Ireland.) In all of these cases, the simple truth would have sufficed. It might even have been impressive. But something made her fib, if only just a bit. But politicians lie, right? That’s just what they do, isn’t it? Yes and no. The reality of the nation we live in makes spin a political imperative — so much so that the media now routinely plays “gotcha” with politicians who fail to spin. But the finest of spin artists craft their messages so that they are NOT lying. That’s why Clinton’s message about getting more votes than Obama — while intellectually dishonest and, quite frankly, complete and total BS — is so politically compelling. Because Obama can’t say it’s not true. Instead he has to craft a message that is equally confounding to explain why it’s not true.

The fact that Clinton lies when she clearly does not need to do so represents a fundamental misconception about the world we live in — the world she purportedly is “prepared from day one” to lead. By 12 a.m. EST, Google was registering 179 hits for “as Kentucky goes, so goes the nation.” As I suspected, most were simply transcripts or reports from Clinton’s speech. But a number were Netizens identifying the “it’s often been said” part of Clinton’s speech for what it was — a little extra BS slapped on top of a campaign that has spent no small amount of time digging out of BS.

LOS ANGELES, CA- Viewers have endured months of auditions, pithy critiques, and endless commercial breaks, but on Wednesday night the 2008 edition of American Idol ended with neither of the final two competitors reaching the predetermined threshold of votes needed to clinch victory.

Finalists David Archuleta and David Cook stood numbly on stage as host Ryan Seacrest recited the results: out of 97 million phone and text votes, each one netted roughly 49 percent with the remaining two percent spread among a variety of fictional characters and random nouns. Apparently, this was due to a system glitch that offered some viewers more than two singers from which to choose and others only one. Regardless of the how's and why's, viewers must now find a way to cope with the terrible consequence of Wednesday's ill-fated broadcast: for the first time in seven years, America has no Idol.

The judges all agreed that the title should probably go to Cook who, at the conclusion of the program, held a small lead in the voting. However, Archuleta was not ready to give up so easily, and now it seems as though the matter of this season's American Idol winner could be tied up in the courts for months or even years.

..."I refuse to leave this stage until all the votes are counted," insisted Archuleta, at which point a pair of security guards picked him up by the armpits and calmly carried him backstage.

FULL STORY

A reader writes:

Instead of Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Blvd.,"
I'm beginning to think like Sissy Spacek in "Carrie."

And the Democratic Convention will be her High School Prom,
where she can get her revenge on the delegates who laughed at her.

UPDATE: Hillary also compared her attempt to steal the election to the fight against slavery.
Oh yes she did. Apparently, sometimes you have to steal the election from a black man in order to save the black man.
__________

Funny, but I don't remember, at the time, Hillary caring too much about the GOP stealing Florida. (She also didn't care when the Democrats punished Floria and Michigan last fall - in fact, she supported it.) Rather shameless how the Clintons can turn on a dime on any issue when it suits them. But remember what David Geffen said about the Clintons last year:

"Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling."

...more at the link

Jonathan Chait explains why not supporting Clinton isn't an attack on feminism:

Typical politicians only stay in a campaign if they have a realistic prospect of winning. A majority of pledged delegates are now in Obama's camp, and with his total delegate lead nearly as large as the number of still-undecided superdelegates, Clinton's chances are essentially nil. But like the Japanese military in World War II, Clinton die-hards have a culture of perseverance. They see surrender as worse than defeat and fighting as a worthy end that need not have any real prospect of victory. In Tuesday's New York Times, a full-page ad from a group called WomenCount PAC announced, "Hillary's voice is OUR voice, and she's speaking for all of us."

It looks pretty crazy to those of us not old enough to fight in the second-wave feminist wars. If I spent years being disrespected and discriminated against in my household chores and my workplace, though, maybe I'd see it differently.

But Clinton's candidacy, unlike those of so many other women, is not and could never be a triumph for feminism. It's a triumph of nepotism and dynasticism.

“We are open to comprise. We are willing to go more than half way.
We’re willing to work to make sure that we can achieve a compromise.

And I guess the question is: is Senator Clinton’s campaign willing to do the same?”
- David Axelrod, to NPR's All Things Considered, to be broadcast tonight.

The Clintons know no respect for rules or propriety or restraint in the pursuit of power. But Clinton's latest speech in Florida should cause even veteran Clinton-hating jaws to drop some more:

Now, I know that Senator Obama chose to remove his name from the ballot in Michigan, and that was his right. But his choice does not negate the votes of all those who turned out to cast their ballots, and we should not let our process rob them and all of you of your voices. To do so would undermine the very purpose of the nominating process. To ensure that as many Democrats as possible can cast their votes. To ensure that the party selects a nominee who truly represents the will of the voters and to ensure that the Democrats take back the White House to rebuild America.

Now, I’ve heard some say that counting Florida and Michigan would be changing the rules.

...more at the link

....sexism is not what cost Hillary Clinton this campaign: Iraq was, and what's more, she knows it -- or at least she should know, because her staff does. On February 17, 2007 she told people who disagreed with her vote on Iraq to choose from the other candidates:



Her decision not to apologize is regarded so seriously within her campaign that some advisers believe it will be remembered as a turning point in the race: either ultimately galvanizing voters against her (if she loses the nomination), or highlighting her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom (if she wins).

...more at the link

Haven't we done this before? The Ice Queen wins yet another Bubba state by huge margins and yet she gets no closer to winning the dumbocratic nomination. In fact, this time the "O" man actually won a state to officially clinch the pledged delegate count of the dumbocratic party.

Historic times indeed. Imagine, a black man will be representing one of the major parties to become President of these divided states. So why am I not enjoying it? I guess the fact that the Ice Queen is still in the race and racking up huge victories among a certain ahem, ahem, demographic, just takes some of the shine from the "O" man. At a time when the party should be rallying around their potential candidate, the Ice Queen is saying on to Puerto Rico and yet another ass kicking for the chosen one.

This doesn't seem right, someone, anyone, should tell her to stop. Last night I saw her begging those poor folks for money so that her campaign could go on. Talk about chutzpah. Those poor people should have been begging her for money. One hundred million in five years, and she is begging for money? If she wants to stay in the race she should be loaning the campaign money out of her own pocket. She should see folks like Michael Bloomberg, and Mitt Romney to learn how this is done.

...more at the link

I was all set. I had the basic theme, I was in the right frame of mind. I was going to try to cool things down a bit, take the high road, pick your metaphorical cliche . . . But she had to go and give a speech like this.

It is one thing for a group of loons like the Hillaryis44.com crowd, or for a formerly-respected Democratic blogger like Jerome "Crack: It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore" Armstrong to make asinine arguments like the one I'm going to quote below. Campaign surrogates have a roll to play in making the loony claims that the candidate herself (or himself) would be hesitant to make (as in, should be too ashamed to make in public). But when the Big-Bang-scale stupidity is actually coming from the candidate, you simply cannot write it off to over-enthusiasm or Deranged Blogger Syndrome.

Now, I know that Senator Obama chose to remove his name from the ballot in Michigan, and that was his right. But his choice does not negate the votes of all those who turned out to cast their ballots, and we should not let our process rob them and all of you of your voices. To do so would undermine the very purpose of the nominating process. To ensure that as many Democrats as possible can cast their votes. To ensure that the party selects a nominee who truly represents the will of the voters and to ensure that the Democrats take back the White House to rebuild America.

Ye Gods, people. The entire Clinton campaign has effectively reduced itself to a Perpetual Bullshit Machine, a close cousin of the perpetual motion machine, except this one actually, you know, exists.

...more at the link

And I'm not talking about that great Common album.

Nah, I'm talking about that latest news that the Queen of Darkness,
also known as Hillary Rodham Clinton, is roughly $20 million in debt.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I'm pretty sure that I don't want
another president who doesn't understand the difference between red and black.
As in, they don't understand the difference between being in debt and running a profit.

Hillary has consistently pointed to her husband's ability to balance the federal budget
as proof of her fiscal acumen, but considering the way she has run her campaign that claim is looking shaky.

Unless she's going to let Billy Boy hold the checkbook from now on.