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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Please substantiate why it would not be good for men for Senator Clinton to be president?
is exactly what you just said: no one remembers what he said.
I mean, boyfriend, your lips are moving but you ain't saying nothin'!
It isn't a trick - the guy just isn't saying nothing; no policy ideas, nothing. He isn't saying anything. Let me repeat this just in case the media have not yet heard: Obama isn't saying anything.
How far do we travel with this guy who says nothing - and yet he has somehow managed to fool people into thinking that he is actually saying something.
Obama isn't going to change politics-as-we-know-it in 4 years. Does anyone think the GOP is going to lay down at this guys' feet because he "wants to change politics as we know it?" Are we nominating a "cause freak" or a President?
The United Stateis is in big trouble - the world is totally screwed up and this guy is lecturing us on playing nice with one another? Bitch, please! I am sick of platitudes - I want ACTION not pretty words. Keep voting for Obama, Democrats, and you can kiss another presidential election goodbye.
Hillary Clinton was, initially, my lead horse in the Democratic race and the idea that we'd have a woman president was immensely attractive. I did have reservations: ex. invoking before an audience of southern African-Americans the trope that she identified with the Civil Rights movement, and doing so in the cadence of Southern Blackspeak when, in reality and when things were really hot on that front in 1964, she avidly worked as a pampered, upper-class teenage volunteer for Mr. "States Rights," Barry Goldwater, a man who may have been personally on the right side of the equality issue but who publicly threw that to the curb for political expediency. There was no doubt about what Goldwater the politician stood for or that it was diametrically opposed to the national fight for civil rights.
Despite that I saw her as an attractive, hard-working, competent and realistic alternative to the malicious weirdness that had taken hold of the Party of Lincoln and that attitude about her remained until she hit that debate speed-bump in Iowa and, in its aftermath, acted like so many adults who've come from a position of privilege...like someone who's never had true adversity in their formative years, who's never had anything to test them, to let them know what they're made of. When adversity slaps them in the kisser, no matter how transitory the whap upside the head is, they throw a tantrum and lose their bearings. Hillary and her advisors fit that profile, right now, and she and they had better get their bearings [last night wasn't it] or they'll be huzzahing an Obama [or] Edwards candidacy in the general election.
Obama says substantive things in debates -- when he has to. His website and his speeches are too platitudinous. His hope-schlock is working for him and he is sticking to it, at least for now. I think he may be rather hung up on his own oratory and charisma. You are right that, much of the time, there is no there there.
I still think he is a good person and would be an effective president (as would Edwards or Clinton) but my fear is that, should he win the nomination, he would face a Republican opponent who does not pull his punches as the Democrats thus far have done. They have been pretty easy on Obama. I think the time has passed when a candidate can win on inspirational oratory alone, but I could be wrong.
To Juneausmog,
There is nothing disingenuous about Edwards' charge that Hillary represents the status quo. It's actually disingenuous of Hillary to suggest that just because she wants to uproot Bush and change much of what he's done suffices to be a 'change' candidate and not part of the status quo. There are plenty of cases of upheavals in governance, anywhere, which lead to "change" that is more like shifting chairs on the Titanic.
Edwards' campaign has signaled from the start that this is about once and for all, finally finally, ending the stranglehold that Big Money has on our government. If we can finally cut the knot that has our politics endebted to special interests, THAT would be change. Then we could finally and consistently get matters through legislation and signed into law which are not hamstrung by Big Money (Big Oil, Big Media, Big Auto, Big Whoever - the corporations who play Washington like a puppeteer).
And Hillary long ago made her choice -- and has defended it in this campaign -- to accept the fruits of Big Money herself, to take lobbyist money and to defend lobbyists, the very people who by profession seek to put a stranglehold on meaningful legislation and manipulate executive actions to favor themselves and disfavor the average consumer and voter. It was in that context - one which has played out throughout this campaign -- that Edwards drew upon in calling Hillary part of the status quo. The status quo is far bigger than just George Bush. It is anyone who would come into office and still bring with them a beholdenness to the money that got them there.
She defended herself last night and the Clinton Presidency as having been 'change agents' because of how they stood against big interests to change the tax structure and right the economy. True enough. But in just as many ways, Bill Clinton also caved to those Big Money interests and in ways Hillary seems immersed in repeating, alas. For me, the most classic example was his signing of the Telecommunications Act, which literally gave away public airwaves to Big Media for free, when there was never a riper moment for demanding that the Big Media in exchange for such new airwaves available would provide free campaign time to candidates, eliminating 90% of all the outrageous costs of campaigning which in fact lead to the dependence on Big Money. Something in him then -- and in her now -- wants to still keep that beholdenness to aspects of the status quo which make money's inroads in Washington keep on strangleholding.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
