Don't let the haters drive you away. You had to expect some lingering bitterness. It's how we Dems do. We can even win without whinin'.

It's interesting to me, NYNY, that actually I agree with you about a lot of things, including:

a) Al-Quaeda invoking Uncle Tom is hilarious

b) Obama's victory *is* a victory for immigrants

c) HRC can only keep her own power base by staying out of the Obama administration

d) Obama is a tough politician who is more pragmatist than idealist ...

The difference is I think b, c, and d are good things! Yay victory for immigrants! Yay pragmatism over idealism! Yay Hillary having to chose between serving herself and serving the country! All around Yay!

And a) is funny not because Al-Quaeda is so perceptive about Obama, but because it shows how effing desperate they are! They know he makes a much weaker Great Satan Poster Boy than McCain or Bush ... or either Clinton for that matter!

Please stay!

I'll put on some Torchwood for you.

You sound like you have a great deal of personal animus that you're bringing to this discussion. Perhaps you missed the wild scenes of celebration throughout the world when Obama won while you had your head up your butt feeling estranged, but I hardly think the vast majority of the world sees Obama as an "Uncle Tom". Perhaps Nader, Al-Qaida, and you, but not most people.

If we're going to deem every Black person who's ever dated/married someone white as not legitimate spokespeople, we're gonna run out of spokespeople really quickly. That's a rather useless criterion, my view. I am not unsympathetic to the negative reinforcement that sisters receive in this world, but that doesnt make anyone who marries/dates outside the race "not Black". Besides, if you have that attitude about Belafonte and Poitier, you should, at the very least, revel in the fact that someone like Michelle Obama will soon be our First Lady.

As far as Mandela's freedom goes, no, I dont think every positive event that occurs for our people has to have a direct impact upon incarceration rates, reduction of violent crime, etc. I'm not that naive. I do believe that there are events of great symbolic significance which can lead to the development of the positive sense of self that will lead to behavior that will contribute to all of those factors.

Good points; I hadnt looked at things in that way. One of my friends just IMed me how hilarious he thought that Al-Qaida thing was for the same reason. I was about to be overquick with the cussout :-)

How's about Veterinarian General?

What's up, man? Long time, no "talk". What about the announcement of Daschle as head of HHS?

As was pointed out on Daily Kos, note that with Holder and Daschle, position was extended and accepted. No drama. No post about whether or not we should question Barack's motives, or if there was an intent to "publicly vet" anyone. I'm actually not against Hillary being SOS (unlike you), but we're seeing the negatives that come with her: drama, drama, drama. And whenever she resurfaces, as we're seeing today, here come the haters from out of their holes.

I say "yay immigrants!" too. I think it is a good thing that they have something to point to, especially since immigrants from Africa or Haiti (poorer nations where people of African descent live) are given a poor reception and the INS are much quicker to ship them home. They are victims of racism because immigrants from eastern Europe, Central and South America, and the Indian Sub-Continent are privilleged over them. It is good that they have a beacon of hope and perhaps the US government will not be so quick to toss immigrants from those countries out on their asses.

By the way, al-Zawahiri called Obama a "house negro," not an Uncle Tom. There is a subtle distinction, but the concept is pretty close. Yes, I find comedic value in it (not for the same reason you do) and, in all seriousness, I can see how they would see it that way.

The thing is that Obama is only different from McCain and Bush in that he says he wants to withdraw from Iraq. However, he still wants to invade another Muslim nation (Pakistan is a Muslim nation and launching air strikes into that country counts as an invasion), he wants to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan, and he pledges unwaivering support for Israel no matter what it does and shows no interest in punishing it for being an apartheid state. There is almost no daylight between those guys and their positions. I know that HRC believes the same things and I do not like her for it, but let's be honest.

We will have to agree to disagree on the rest.

I have no doubt Hillary Clinton is conflicted about the SoS job! She can't take it and run against him in four years.

Hillary knows well all the things that can go wrong in four years. If he is a dismal failure early on, not only can she resign SoS and run against him in four years, I would say she has a duty to do so.

However, let us hope that that doesn't happen. I hope Obama's presidency will be a great sucess -- even though he faces some of the most difficult circumstances of our time.

She may be too old to run in eight years.

Or not. She will be only 68 -- which is younger for women than it is for men. If she is in vigorously good mental and physical health and has done good service, she will emerge with undeniable foreign policy experience. If Obama has two terms of great success and she has done well, he may even endorse a run by her.

She certainly can't sit around in the senate being obstructionist.

Well, she could, but I don't think she would be good at this. She is essentially a team player.

They're both neutralized. They get on board or they get out of national politics.

Has Hillary shown any recent indication of not being on board. The worst Hillary-hater (Crumbs entire archive here is Hillary hate) cannot deny the vigorous campaigning that Hillary and Bill have done for Obama. Also, she is hardly neutralized -- if by that you mean without her own power -- for other reasons.

1. The Clintons are political powers in their own right. They have position, history, money, and connections.

2. Those 18 million voters. Go to The Daily Beast and read their little survey about how angry women still are about sexism in the media. If Clinton decides to run in 2016, there will be enormous pent-up feelings about "Now it's our turn." If the media continues to treat women candidates as they have, they could actually contribute to an enormous women's backlash.

But never forget who the boss man is. The boss man is *in charge*.

Well ... not always. For instance, it would be fairly easy to argue that in Bush's first term, Cheney was in charge.

I think its hilarious that people (right, left and, er, Clintonista) think that because he is a nice, polite, well spoken and articulate man, everyone assumes Obama is not a bare-knuckled politician.

Oh, I think Obama can be bare-knuckled ugly -- or at least he can get people to do this on his behalf, but four to eight years and even the most blushing and innocent bride (the public) realizes that her man can be sort of farty and stinky in the morning.

Most Clintonistas -- as you call them -- complained that Obama lacked national-level experience and did not complain that he was nice, full of integrity, or below using scurrilous charges spread by others to advance his own agenda. In other words, unlike most of the idealistic left, we never had any idealism about him to lose.

I was disgusted by the way he deserted his integrity to support the bad FISA bill and to voted diametrically opposed to his previous promise on telecom immunity. Obama voted for telecom immunity. Senator Clinton voted against it.

Obama has used, cleverly, the tendency of people to actually see him as Obambi and to rush to protect the poor little deer. He won't have that anymore. Few people believe he is Bambi anymore. He's a grown up now. He's that stag on the bluff. Everyone (the media and competitors beyond Clinton) will be eager to knock him off of it.

And the drama goes on. The mistake is assuming that the drama is created by the Clintons. The drama -- as we should have been able to glean this last week -- is created by the media. You can read may conflicting accounts from so-called reliable sources from multiple sides on the SoS drama. Neither the Obama camp or the Clinton camp needed to create it.

We did. We, the people, created it and we keep feeding it. Moreover, we like it when we are treated to near-imaginary sources. We gobble outright lies. We ignore the political intentions and the corporate backing of the media. We have eagerly enjoyed the celebrification of our politicians. It is we, the people, who continue to make possible the salivating pronouncemnts of people like Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly.

Such is our yearning to believe.

"There's a sucker born every minute." -- P.T. Barnum