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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
And where does Hitchens get off any way? He was wrong about the war and still justifies his ridiculous, sadly ill informed position with ahistorical claims of a Bathist-Al Queada link, one that in fact existed only temporarily after the war and only because of the US invasion. Really I do like the Brits but let's not give undue credit to an egocentric sack of gas with a British accent who pretends to know more than UN advisors, CIA and countless journalists who've actually spent time in Iraq combined.
She basically voted with Bush on domestic spying, torture, authorization to use force in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Patriot Acts I and II. Along with Joe Lieberman she introduced the Family Entertainment protection act (saving us all from dirty video games.) She voted in favor of naming the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "terrorist organization," when Bush was spoiling for a fight with them. She might as well have been a Republican for the last 7 years.
She abdicated her responsibility to put the wars up for a healthy debate, she abdicated her responsibility to be a check on the over reaching power of the Executive branch. She is not the right choice.
I was an English major and learned how to deconstruct prose and your post has so many sexual metaphors in it that it strikes me as quite strange. Obama isn't trying to rape Senator Clinton. He is merely offering her the Sec. of State position. I have little doubt that during the debates he came to admire her sheer competence and knowledge. She defeated him everytime on that issue, whereas, I wouldn't say the same was necessarily true of domestic issues. In fact, the only one who ever gave her a run for her money was Biden -- it certainly wasn't Richardson.
She can take the position or not. Don't you trust her to make her own best judgment.
Why do you think that Obama hates Bill Clinton and vise versa?
Why are you so certain that Obama and Hillary cannot actually be friends and have a good working relationship?
Why do you think Obama is out to wreck CGI? Why would he want to do such a thing?
One doesn't have to see Obama as either a snake in the grass -- carrying forward your metaphor -- or as Obambi. Both Obama and the Clintons are politicians. They are clever ones.
Why do you think you know their best interests better than they do?
They are hardly powerless. Bill Clinton just made a speech for which he was paid over $400,000. Do you think he is going to lose the deftness with which he speaks or the charisma that has been with him all his life merely because his wife accepts SoS?
It is her turn, you know. All her life she has supported him, even when I thought she shouldn't. I think it should be her call. She is a woman with choices to make. This time, no man should get to make them for her.
I wish you wouldn't see her as some helpless victim. I see her as more empowered than she was when she began her presidential race. Why so gloomy? It almost seems as if this is a personal thing for you.
WHAT??
Haven't we just finished 8 years of "If my guy does it, it must be right by definition"? Haven't we been through a phase where decisions aren't to be weighed on their merits, but on who makes them? Of unquestioning loyalty?
Joan, what the fuck? I thought we were supposed to stand against the sort of party hackery that literally defined the past 8 years.
But at least it sets you up for excuses down the line. "He didn't close Guantanamo? I'm sure he has a reason. He has continued the spying program? Well, he's got our best interests at heart. He didn't even begin to pull out of Iraq? Hey, he knows better than I do."
It's been 2 weeks and we're already seeing a Bush redux. Holy shit.
Thank you Joan for this - and for thinking independently and more objectively than many of your media peers. You are a much welcomed breath of sanity and intelligence.
About Hillary: It started towards the end of the primaries, was moved by the concession and DNC speeches, but when Barack really met Hillary and they campaigned and pow-wowed together in Florida - it further improved his growing approval, appreciation, and respect for her. He knows she deserves more respect than they gave her during the primaries. They were harder and more unjust to her than to McCain.
They recycled the worst, most vicious Republican attacks against Hillary. Not Barack directly so much - but the campaign. Oh, yes they did.
Barack knows it.
This is something I sent to some in the media in frustration over the smear treatment the Clintons almost always get:
Soap Opera Blindness
I am so sick of the attitudes of those in the media who insist on entertaining themselves with viewing the Clintons as a soap opera. It's adolescent. Get over it. Bill and Hillary Clinton are both tremendously intelligent and talented. They are much more virtuous though imperfect, human beings, and public servants than most of you give them credit for. The have worked so much harder, and sacrificed so much more, than most of you. All so many of you focus on is shallow, B.S. and gossip, that you insistently try to convince yourselves is justifiable by your own versions of "cleverness," and "superiority." Bah. It's the same crappy characterizations over and over. You don't know them. You don't know what they really think. Their motivations are far more virtuous than you ever give them credit for. You are far from "above" them. You totally have the wrong priorities. You are not being part of the solution, but part of the problem. It's like inflated tabloid journalism. Please write about important issues, and not personal character assaults. So much of the negativity about the Clintons has been the direct result of etched-in Republican and media smears. Please grow up, and move on.
It true, it's not the Clintons who make such a big drama - it's the press. I'm sure the Clintons would rather the press just let them alone to do their work with respect.
Our country can't afford the press continuing to get our priorities so wrong.
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
