Shameful, just shameful.

From Bloomberg:

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Dubya's war. Dubya's shame.

Monday Morning Rebound

If only Jack Kelly had waited a few days.

Yesterday I wrote about his weekend column - the column in which he wrote:

Support for Sen. Barack Obama has plunged nationally and (more importantly) in North Carolina since Rev. Wright confirmed at his National Press Club appearance Monday that he does indeed hold racist, lunatic, anti-American views, and implied that Sen. Obama has been insincere in separating himself from them. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician," Rev. Wright said.

Well, there's a new poll out. Here's the story from CBS:

Democrat Barack Obama appears to have rebounded from some of the damage caused by the controversy surrounding his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

On one key measure, Obama has seen a big reversal since his denunciation of Wright’s remarks on Tuesday. He now leads presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the hypothetical fall contest by eleven points, 51 percent to 40 percent.

If Jack had only waited a few days, he wouldn't look like such an idiot now.

Some other findings of the poll. Among registered voters who'd heard of Wright, 60% approved of the way Senator Obama handled the situation (23% opposed.). When asked the question:

Have Wright's statements made your personal view of Obama...?

2% said "more favorable", 22% said "less favorable" and a whopping 75% said "not changed".

Indeed, there's been a bit of an uptick in the Obama's support in the last few days (Kelly said it had "plunged"). On April 30, his favorable/unfavorable numbers were 39/34 percent. As of this poll, they're 44/30 percent.

Going back to bed: IT'S EARLY!

Jack Kelly Sunday

Last week, it was the Clinton/Obama race.

This week it's Obama/Wright.

How much you wanna bet next week's column will be on Reverend Hagee's characterization of the Roman Catholic Church as the "Whore of Babylon"? Or on Senator McCain's denounciation of Rod Parsely for claiming that the United States was "founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed"?

Yea, you're right. There's next to no chance that either will happen. It's ok if you're a Republican. At least Senator Obama never called his wife the "c-word."

Anyway, back to Jack. It's an odd little column - meandering, almost non-committal in a way. He characterizes the Obama campaign as a "sinking ship", Senator Obama's poll numbers as "plunging" and says that the Reverend Wright could torpedo the campaign with one interview, (whether or not he speaks the truth) about his relationship with Senator Obama.

However Jack Kelly ends the column with this:

The pundits say Mrs. Clinton faces a must-win primary in Indiana Tuesday. That's true. But the more important primary that day may be in North Carolina, which -- because of the state's large black population -- was to have been Sen. Obama's firewall. All polls taken since Monday show the race there has narrowed dramatically. One showed Mrs. Clinton with a slight lead. If she were to win in North Carolina, it would be clear the bloom is off the Obama rose.

If Mr. Obama wins, however narrowly, in North Carolina Tuesday and, two weeks later, in Oregon, he can limp to the nomination because super delegates are more afraid of offending blacks than they are of losing in November.

That's probably what will happen ... unless Jeremiah Wright opens his mouth again.

So at the end of it all, Senator Obama will "probably" "limp to the nomination" in November.

Let's take a closer look at the meat of Jack's column, though. Jack writes:

Support for Sen. Barack Obama has plunged nationally and (more importantly) in North Carolina since Rev. Wright confirmed at his National Press Club appearance Monday that he does indeed hold racist, lunatic, anti-American views, and implied that Sen. Obama has been insincere in separating himself from them. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician," Rev. Wright said.

Note the word "plunged". Note, also, that he doesn't give any examples. Here are some:

Gallup Poll daily tracking. Three-day rolling average. N=approx. 1,200 Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters nationwide. MoE ± 3. Preference for Democratic Nominee:

May 2, 2008
Clinton 47%
Obama 47%

May 1, 2008
Clinton 48%
Obama 46%

April 30, 2008
Clinton 49%
Obama 45%

April 29, 2008
Clinton 47%
Obama 46%

April 28, 2008
Clinton 47%
Obama 46%

Jeremiah Wright spoke at the National Press Club on April 28 so going back any farther doesn't make much sense.

By the way, where's the "plunge"?

Here's a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll that does show a drop. When asked the question:

"Who would you MOST like to see win the Democratic nomination for president: Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?" (Names rotated)

The numbers from 3/14-16/08 are:

Obama 52%
Clinton 45%

From 4/28-30/08:

Obama 45%
Clinton 45%

Note first that with these two polls, there's a drop of seven points for Senator Obama. No rise for Senator Clinton. And also, note the second poll was taken the day of Wright's appearance at the National Press Club as well as two days later. Senator Obama's response did not occur until the 29th. So Kelly's "plunge" may just be a temporary drop. No way to tell until more time has elapsed.

Sinking ship? Where?

Defending Olbermann

For those who've just read Maria's latest, here's the actual segment actually played on Olbermann's actual show.

There should be an offical MSNBC transcript by Monday afternoon.

Maria wrote:

This is about the program's #4 segment. On this Friday's show, the topic was how Sen. Hillary Clinton had appeared on FOX (Bill O'Reilly), had met with Richard Mellon Scaife (actually the full editorial board of one of Pittsburgh's two daily papers during the PA primary) and how Bill Clinton had gone on Rush Limbough's radio show (when Limbough was not hosting it). Olbermann pointed out how cruel the Right Wing media had been to the Clintons, but he went further. He spoke about how going on FOX was wallowing in filth, how it proves that She'll Do Anything to WinTM, and that (horrors of horrors!) demonstrates that she's trying to reach Reagan Democrats (you know, the folks that any presidential candidate will have to reach to actually win the White House).

He left out one thing:

Barack Obama was on FOX News less than a week ago.

But if you go back and actually watch the segment, you'll see what my friend Maria left out: the point.

Here it is - Clinton campaign advisor Sydney Blumenthal is now smearing the Obama campaign with some of the same tactics right wing media once employed to damage the Clinton administration.

Keith even mentions the source of the story calling it "the news of the day." It's by Peter Dreier and posted at the HuffingtonPost. In it Dreier says:

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.

Some of the stories Dreier says Blumenthal's been spreading. This one from the Scaife-funded Accuracy in Media about Obama's communist mentor in high school. It begins like this:

In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit." But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

A little fact-checking here. Senator Obama was born in 1961. So we're talking about the time between when he was 10 to 18. Davis was in his mid-60s, having been born in 1905. He died in 1987 - about a year before Obama even entered Harvard Law. That's the foundation of this "connection" between Obama and Communism. That's how AIM connects Obama to the Communist Party and there for the Soviet Union. And that's the story that Blumenthal is pushing.

It should make us all uncomfortable that Sydney Blumenthal, a senior Clinton Campaign advisor, is now trying to take some mud scraped from the "vast right wing conspiracy" (a term that he himself coined, by the way) and inject it into the mainstream media. That's how the right wing echo chamber worked a decade or so ago.

Remember?

Vince Foster was murdered by the Clintons for learning too much about Whitewater during his affair with the Hillary, they said. It's been published by the American Spectator (or the Washington Times or the Tribune Review or the Drudge Report), they said. The only reason the mainstream media won't publish it is because the media is liberal, they said. The mainstream media wanting to make sure it wasn't seen as liberal any more then wrote about "the controversy found in the rightwing media" and BAM! the story's found on the pages of the New York Times.

Remember how that worked?

It was a shameful episode in our nation's political life and it should not be resurrected by either party. That it's being resurrected by one of those victimized is beyond sad. It's pathetic.

That was the point of Olbermann's segment.

Keith Olbermann: WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD!

Does anyone recall the last time when MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann's #5 segment was about something other than slamming Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton? Longtime viewers might remember when this was the slot reserved for broadsides at the Bush Administration.

But that's not what this post is about. This is about the program's #4 segment. On this Friday's show, the topic was how Sen. Hillary Clinton had appeared on FOX (Bill O'Reilly), had met with Richard Mellon Scaife (actually the full editorial board of one of Pittsburgh's two daily papers during the PA primary) and how Bill Clinton had gone on Rush Limbough's radio show (when Limbough was not hosting it). Olbermann pointed out how cruel the Right Wing media had been to the Clintons, but he went further. He spoke about how going on FOX was wallowing in filth, how it proves that She'll Do Anything to Win^TM, and that (horrors of horrors!) demonstrates that she's trying to reach Reagan Democrats (you know, the folks that any presidential candidate will have to reach to actually win the White House).

He left out one thing:

Barack Obama was on FOX News less than a week ago.
Ohmygod!

That must mean that Obama was wallowing in filth, proves that he'll do anything to win, and that (horrors of horrors!) demonstrates that he's trying to reach Reagan Democrats (you know, the folks that any presidential candidate will have to reach to actually win the White House).

No, no. that can't be right. More importantly, you'd never know that Obama had just gone on FOX or that it wasn't even his first time on that channel by watching Olbermann. It was never even mentioned in passing.

During segment 5, Olbermann had complained that Clinton was "cherry-picking" the poll numbers that she talked about. I defy anyone to find anytime in the past month when Olbermann has presented a single poll number favorable to Clinton. He simply does not do it.

Moreover, one of his guests in segment five bitched that Clinton had wrongly tried to say that Obama had been positive towards Reagan and that it was actually Hillary who was a fan of Republicans. This is what Obama said in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal:

I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times...I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

Sorry folks, argue all you like, that was a big, wet, puckering kiss to Reagan and Republicans.

Moreover, this is what Obama said on FOX News Sunday less than a week ago:

WALLACE: As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you know what, Republicans have a better idea here.

OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.

WALLACE: Such as.

OBAMA: Well, on issues of regulation, I think that back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a lot of the way we regulated industry was top down command and control. We’re going to tell businesses exactly how to do things.

And I think that the Republican party and people who thought about the margins (ph) came with the notion that you know what, if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they’re going to for example reduce pollution. And a cap and trade system, for example, is a smarter way of doing it, controlling pollution, than dictating every single rule that a company has to abide by, which creates a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and oftentimes is less efficient.

I think that on issues of education, I have been very clear about the fact, and sometimes I have gotten in trouble with the teachers union on this, that we should be experimenting with charter schools.

[snip]

OBAMA: No, look, I think this is fair. I would point out, though, for example, that when I voted for a tort reform measure that was fiercely opposed by the trial lawyers, I got attacked pretty hard from the left.

[snip]

WALLACE: John Roberts, Supreme Court.
OBAMA: John Roberts nomination, although I voted against him, I strongly defended some of my colleagues who had voted for him on the Daily Kos, and was fiercely attacked as somebody who is, you know, caving in to Republicans on these fights.

[snip]

OBAMA: On partial birth abortion, I strongly believe that the state can properly restrict late-term abortions. I have said so repeatedly. All I’ve said is we should have a provision to protect the health of the mother. And many of the bills that came before me didn’t have that.

{snip]

OBAMA: And I do not consider Democrats to have a monopoly on wisdom. And my goal is to get us out of this polarizing debate where we are always trying to score cheap political points and actually get things done.

[snip]

WALLACE: And we are back for one final segment with Senator Barack Obama. Senator, this week President Bush named David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to be the head of Central Command, which controls overseas military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia. Will you vote to confirm his nomination?
OBAMA: Yes. I think Petraeus has done a good tactical job in Iraq.

[snip]

WALLACE: Senator Obama, thank you so much for talking with us
OBAMA: I enjoyed it.
WALLACE: Don’t be a stranger.
OBAMA: I won’t.

Pander much? Anything he doesn't like about Republicans? Anyway Olbermann could have missed all this? Anyway Olbermann would not have crucified Hillary Clinton if these statements had come out of her mouth on FOX?

Can anyone justify a segment designed to blast one Democratic candidate for "embracing" the Right Wing media that would never mention even once that her opponent has done the exact same thing?

Well, we know that Olbermann thinks he can.

Keith Olbermann: WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD!
.

How Much Time Left?

As of this writing, by the clock on the right there are only about 260 more days left to this administration (barring some unconstitutional shenanigans, of course).

Bad news for John McCain from CNN. His republican president, the man whose policies he wants to continue, is not doing too well.

A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

While dubya's low low low approval rating (28%) is still higher than the all time lows for Truman (22%) and Nixon (24%), but neither Truman or Nixon ever had disapproval ratings so high.

He's more unpopular than Nixon was just before Tricky Dick resigned.

Mission Accomplished!

That was five years ago.

Look closely. Isn't it just a delicious coincidence that the photographer just happened to be the right place to put dubya's head in line with something curved? Gives our Commander-in-Chief a wonderful, well, halo, does it not?

Just a coincidence, I am sure.

To be sure, much has happened in five years. From CBS:

Five years after that speech, after the meaning of the phrase "mission accomplished" and when is a job truly "done" has been endlessly parsed, and after responsibility for creating and hanging the sign was first denied and later accepted, the White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the banner, with its affirmative message becoming a target of mockery and a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war - a war in which major combat operations are still being waged.

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing their 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

"Shifting explanations" I like that. They first lied about where the banner came from and then had to admit it that the White House staff did the deed. From Time:

The perfect photo-op has flopped. Engineered by the most image-conscious White House in history, the carrier landing portrayed Bush as master and commander, an ideal bookend to his spontaneous performance with a bullhorn in the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11. Instead, the hothouse tableau already sharply at odds with the reality in Iraq did even more damage to White House credibility last week. Asked at a news conference whether the "Mission Accomplished" banner had been prematurely boastful, the president backed away from it, saying it had been put up by the sailors and airmen of the Lincoln to celebrate their homecoming after toppling Saddam's regime.

Not long afterwards, the White House had to amend its account. The soldiers hadn't put up the sign; the White House had done the hoisting. It had also produced the banner — contrary to what senior White House officials had said for months. In the end, the White House conceded on those details, but declared them mere quibbles. The point was, they said, that the whole thing had been done at the request of the crewmembers. Even that explanation didn't sit well with some long-time Bush aides. "They (the White House) put up banners at every event that look just like that and we're supposed to believe that at this one it was the Navy that requested one?" asked a senior administration official. Others remember staffers boasting about how the president had been specifically positioned during his speech so that the banner would be captured in footage of his speech.

But the real tragedy, of course, is what's happened since dubya declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

There were 140 American casualties between the invasion in March and dubya's declaration on the 1st of May. There have been (as of this writing) 4,056 confirmed casualties so far.

By my count, that means that 3,956 American deaths since dubya stood, halo enhanced, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. As CBS continues:

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed (the true number may never be known, since the Iraqi government does not record tallies of the dead), and millions have been displaced from their homes. And there are currently more U.S. troops in Iraq than there were when the U.S. invaded with a contingent of other coalition forces.

True to form, of course, was Dana Perino's complaint that the media would "play this up" as they do every year.

Hmm, let's see. A horrific blunder by an arrogant administration that leads to the deaths of thousands of American servicemen and women and the White House doesn't want any of the embarrassing stuff to be covered by the media.

Sorry.

Rules, Rules, Rules...

The Politico on Senator Clinton's current situation. First the story she's been pushing:

Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama in the popular vote, and this is her path to victory.

She will ultimately win the Democratic nomination by convincing the superdelegates that her popular vote lead makes it legitimate for them to support her. It gives them the cover they need to deny Obama a nomination that he otherwise would have won.

Then the reality:

First, Clinton does not lead Obama in the popular vote. It is a fantasy.

Second, the people she most needs to convince that this fantasy is true are the people least likely to believe it.

Is she really leading the popular vote?

No. Not really. Not unless you throw out the existing rules of the Democratic Party and invent a new set of Hillary Rules.

Under Hillary Rules, Clinton counts the popular vote in Michigan, where she was the only major candidate on the ballot. The Democratic Party does not recognize those votes.

Under Hillary Rules, Clinton also counts the popular vote in Florida, where candidates were forbidden to campaign. The Democratic Party does not recognize the results of the Florida primary, either.

Under Hillary Rules, Clinton throws out the “votes by the people who have voted” in the states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, because those were caucus states, where popular vote tallies were not officially kept and where, by the way, Obama won three out of the four contests.

Under Hillary Rules, Clinton gets to choose the contests that help her, throw out the contests that do not and declare herself the winner.

And then there's the little problem of the superdelegates. So even if she were ahead in the popular vote (and that, as this article states, is a fantasy), the article points out that 56% of all superdelegates are members of the DNC. The rules that Senator Clinton wants to ignore come directly from the DNC. If they wanted a national convention they would have set one up.

The finale:

Lastly, there is the big picture: Will the DNC really overturn the choice of the pledged delegates and substitute Clinton as the nominee over Obama?

I doubt it. First and foremost, DNC members care about the party and its future. So ask yourself: Is the DNC going to shatter the party by telling black voters and young voters that their votes in legitimate primaries and caucuses do not count?

Clinton can try to make up her own set of rules, but that doesn’t mean they are going to rule the DNC or the day.

Rules. Sometimes they're important.

The DNC *IS* Wrong!

St. John McCain does not think it's fine that we would be in Iraq for 100 years -- it's more like A MILLION YEARS:


Hey McSame, here's a clue:

American presence = American casualties
.

The Trib's Odd Little Editorial

This morning, The Clinton-loving Editorail Board at DickieCougarMellonScaife's Tribune-Review took on the the editorial board of the New York Times.

The result was an odd editorial that left out more than it included. The issue at hand is the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Indiana's Voter ID law. Here's The Trib:

Leave it to liberals to declare that protecting the integrity of the franchise somehow is a threat to our democratic republic.

Yet that's exactly how The New York Times characterized the U.S. Supreme Court's commonsense ruling upholding the constitutionality of requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are at the polls.

"Democracy was the big loser" in Monday's 6-3 decision upholding an Indiana law, The Times opines. Fraud prevention, these whacked-out liberals contend, is an "interference." The ruling "solves a nearly nonexistent problem," it notes.

Which is true, by the way. According to this study, voter fraud is nearly non-existent. Take a look:

At the national level, a major new project at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative (BAVII) has resulted in only a handful of convictions. according to the Attorney General, since the inception of the program in 2002, "we’ve made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority." The result? Government records show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. This includes 19 people who were ineligible to vote, five because they were still under state supervision for felony convictions, and 14 who were not u.s. citizens; and five people who voted twice in the same election, once in kansas and again in Missouri.

In addition, the BAVII uncovered several vote buying schemes that have resulted in the convictions or guilty pleas of about 30 people, though most of those convicted were party and election officials, candidates for public office and elected officials, and in one case, the commander of a local VfW post. The vote buying cases involved a handful of elections in the appalachia regions of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, East St. Louis, Illinois and Caldwell County, North Carolina.

So between 2002 and 2005 there were a few dozen of convictions during which time millions upon millions of people voted. Yet the Trib board counters that with a stunningly placed non sequitur:

Like the atrocious, political-speech restricting campaign finance laws that those of The Times' ilk support?

I don't know if I need to remind anyone, but the trendy thing for conservatives to oppose in campaign finance laws is "McCain-Feingold" also known as "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002." It too passed Supreme Court muster. In 2003.

If an OK by the Supreme Court is enough to placate the Trib's editorial board, then how do they explain their reaction to the "atrocious, political-speech restricting" laws that the Supremes have already OKed?

I wonder.

Anyway, the Trib ends things this way:

The coup de grace of the high court's voter-identification ruling is that the lead opinion was written by dedicated liberal John Paul Stevens. Which makes the liberals' protestations all the more laughable and all the more suspect.

Democrat-sponsored voter fraud certainly must be pervasive.

Again, no it isn't. But it's certainly interesting to point out what the Trib doesn't complain about in the Times editorial. The Times goes through a discussion of the issue:

In 2005, Indiana passed one of the nation’s toughest voter ID laws. It requires voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls. Private college IDs, employee ID cards and utility bills are unacceptable. For people without a driver’s license — who are disproportionately poor and minority — the burden is considerable. To get acceptable ID, many people would be forced to pay fees for underlying documents, such as birth certificates.

This should not have been a hard case. The court has long recognized that the right to vote is so fundamental that a state cannot restrict it unless it can show that the harm it is seeking to prevent outweighs the harm it imposes on voters.

The Indiana law does not meet this test. The harm it imposes on voters, some of whom will no doubt be discouraged from casting ballots, is considerable. The state’s interest in the law, on the other hand, is minimal. It was supposedly passed to prevent people from impersonating others at the polls, but there is no evidence that this has ever happened in Indiana. It seems far more likely that the goal of the law’s Republican sponsors was to disenfranchise groups that lean Democratic.

Here's the curious part. At the tail end of the editorial we find:

Hovering over Monday’s decision was a case that was not mentioned: Bush v. Gore. In 2000, the Supreme Court took seriously the claims of one individual — George W. Bush — that his equal protection rights were being denied by a state election system, and the court had no hestitation about telling the state what to do.

On “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Justice Scalia yet again told the public to “get over” that ruling. There are many good reasons to remember Bush v. Gore, and Monday’s ruling was a reminder of one of them. Seven years after it invoked the Constitution to vindicate what it saw as Mr. Bush’s right to fair election procedures, we are still waiting for the court to extend this guarantee with equal vigilance to every American.

The Trib pounces on the first paragraph of the Times editorial but leaves this unmentioned?? What, didn't they bother to read the whole thing?

Questions! I have questions!

1) While in a completely uncharacteristic move, Keith Olbermann made NPR’s Ken Rudin his Worst Person in the World last night for comparing Hillary Clinton to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, did he miss Eugene Robinson comparing Hillary to a "homicidal cyborg from the future" for her "sheer relentlessness" or is Robinson given a pass because he's a frequent guest on Countdown?

2) Is it more "all-consuming"ly ambitious for a man to start running for president after only being in the US Senate for a year or for a woman to refuse to drop out of a presidential race when her opponent cannot win the pledged delegates needed to put him over the top? Would the media be asking a male candidate -- say if Edwards was in Hillary's exact position now -- to drop out or even call him "ambitious" in a bad way? How often is the word "ambitious" used in a positive way when being an attribute assigned to a man and in a negative way when being attributed to a woman? When these guys see or even think of Hillary is there an actual physical occurrence of, uh, shrinkage?


3) Now that Barack Obama has gone on Fox News and even Kos himself and MoveOn are, um, "testy" about it, does that mean some of the folks who comment here will start lamenting that Barack is a tool of Murdoch like they say about Hillary? (Relax! That one was rhetorical.)

4) Will all the folks who got pissed off at Hillary here for saying she would have left Rev. Wright's church get pissed at Obama if it turns out that he has to throw Wright under the bus now that Wright has thrown him under the bus? (Again, rhetorical!)

5) Did the media (CNN, MSNBC, FOX) broadcast an hour of Rev. Wright LIVE! yesterday morning because they actually believed it was actual news or were they playing GOTCHA! with Obama -- and, are they playing GOTCHA! with Obama now merely because they are momentarily bored with playing GOTCHA! with Hillary Clinton?


.

McCain: He was against it before he was for it and was for it before he was against it!

As Dayvoe notes here, St. John McCain of the “Straight Talk Express” was against a German/Japan-style US occupation of Iraq before he was for it. Hey, everyone can change their minds once in a while. It's not like there's a pattern, or anything: McCain flip-flops on TORTURE McCain flip-flops on the RECESSION McCain flip-flops on the ECONOMY McCain flip-flops on READ MY LIPS: NO NEW TAXES McCain flip-flops on OVERTURNING ROE V. WADE McCain flip-flops on PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING

McCain: Flip-Flopper on Iraq

Who'da thunk it??

From the Huffingtonpost:

When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it.

Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.

In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan -- something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign -- the senator offered nothing short of a categorical "no."

And so we can add "Iraq war" to the list of McCain's flip-flops. I wonder if someone in the so-called liberal media will ever call McCain on his advocating for surrender all those years ago.

New DNC Ad

As they point out at Crooks And Liars:

The media rushed to McCain’s side to shower him with love and affection after he told an audience that he’d be happy to stay in Iraq for 100 years. He’s tried to say that American casulties are his bench mark. Well sir, how many Americans do you consider expendable in Iraq? And how many Iraqi’s should die in the process too. Not that they seem to matter in his mind. Heck, it’s only their country.

And John McCain says it would be "fine" with him for US troops to stay in Iraq for maybe 100 years.

Too bad a majority of Americans believe otherwise. According to some recent ABC/Washington Post polling data:

• 63% believe that it was a mistake to sent troops to Iraq.
• 64% don't believe the war was worth fighting for.
• 57% don't believe the US is making significant progress in Iraq.
• 56% believe that we should withdraw our military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further US casualties, even if it means civil order is not restored there.

All majorities. All Americans. All against continuing the slaughter of American troops in Iraq.

John McCain wants it to continue.

Jack Kelly Sunday

This week (surprise, surprise) Jack Kelly spins the Republican talking points on the Clinton/Obama race.

Surprise, surprise.

He begins with a dig (again surprise, surprise) at the New York Times:

No sooner had Sen. Hillary Clinton won a near landslide victory in the Pennsylvania primary than major media figures were renewing their calls for her to drop out of the race. But there is a whiff of panic about them now.

In an editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called Mrs. Clinton's 9.2-percentage-point victory in the nation's sixth largest state "inconclusive," and described the campaign that preceded it as "even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it."

Hmm. Interesting context for Jack to use. Let's take a look at the editorial and at where that word "inconclusive" is found. Luckily for Jack, it's found only once. In the first sentence:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Same thing with that "mean, vacuous..." stuff. By the way, he missed this part:

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

Now back to the editorial. Why would The Times use the word inconclusive?

Perhaps because before the primary Senator Obama had (according to CBS news) 1,645 delegates to Senator Clinton's 1,503. At that point, 3,148 delegates had been decided. Obama had 52.26% of the delegates and Clinton 47.74%.

As a result of the primary, Senator Clinton won 83 new delegates to Obama's 73. She chipped away 10 delegates from Obama's lead. (Note: It's not the 9 that I reported here. My apologies, I was using the numbers available to me at the time.) . So what do the percentages look like now?

Senator Obama still has the lead with 1,718 delegates to Clinton's 1,586 and that means that 3,304 delegates have been decided.

So Senator Obama now has 51.99% of the delegates to Senator Clinton's 48%. She gained 10 delegates and jumped about 1/4 of 1% in her percentage of the total number of delegates. His lead is now 10 delegates smaller and he lost about the same percentage-wise.

Since, as they say, it's all about the delegates, I'd have to say that narrowing the difference by either 10 delegates out of about 33oo, or 1/2 of 1% if we're talking percentages, is pretty, (dare I say it?) inconclusive.

His next paragraph:

Mrs. Clinton is mostly responsible for the negative tone of the campaign, according to the Times, which had endorsed her in the New York primary. She should stop criticizing Sen. Barack Obama: "If she is ever to have a hope of persuading [superdelegates] to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs," the Times said.

To read that alone, you'd think that it was just the editorialists at the Times who concluded that she is "mostly responsible for the negative tone of the campaign." But that's not exactly true.

Here's ABC:

The tough tone of the Pennsylvania Democratic campaign tarnished both candidates -- more so Hillary Clinton, with 67 percent of voters saying she attacked Barack Obama unfairly.

That puts Jack's next paragraph in a different light:

Hmm. Fifty-five percent seems like "the larger body of voters." The Clinton campaign reported she raked in nearly $10 million in contributions over the Internet in the 24 hours following her Pennsylvania win. That suggests some Democrats aren't put off by her criticisms of Mr. Obama.

Take a look at the entire paragraph that "larger body of voters" phrase comes from:

It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.

Note what Jack did. The Times was talking about voters nationwide and he countered with the percentage of voters who voted for Clinton in Pennsylvania. But he's right. "Some" voters aren't put off by her attacks on Obama. But if the ABC poll is correct, they're out numbered by 2-to-1 by those who are.

She's behind in the delegate count, she's way behind (by about a half million) in the popular vote. I know that recently Senator Clinton has been boasting that she, in fact, is in the lead with the popular vote:

"I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anyone else," Clinton said Wednesday, one day after her decisive win in Pennsylvania.

But how is that possible?

Only by, uh, disregarding the rules (to put it nicely) and adding the vote totals for Florida and Michigan - two states that broke the rules that everyone agreed to for the primaries. The only way for her to win this thins is for her to convince the super delegates to disregard the will of the majority of the Democratic voters and the majority of the delegates.

And to do that, she has to, uh, disregard the rules she'd already agreed to.

No one wants to see that more than the Republicans. The more she fights the cause she can't win, the better their chances.

More Support For Our Troops.

From The Fayetteville Observer:

A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole said Dole’s staff is contacting Fort Bragg and Pentagon officials today in response to a just-posted YouTube video that depicts soldiers living in deplorable conditions in a base barracks.

And:

The YouTube video shows paint peeling and falling from exposed pipes in the barracks, mildewed ceilings and showers, a toilet seat torn in half and a soldier standing on a sink trying to unplug a bathroom drain. Sewage appears to cover the bathroom floor.

The video was made by Edward Frawley, the father of a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division who returned from Afghanistan on April 13 and is among the soldiers now living in the barracks.

“This is unbelievable,” Frawley says in the video. “It’s disgusting. It makes me mad as hell. If these buildings were in any city in America and were called apartments, dormitories, they would be condemned.”

Here's a screen capture of that soldier (who, according to the narrator of the tape, was stationed in Afghanistan only days before) trying to unclog that drain:

Note the brown water. Anyguess what that is? And remember that guy was in a war zone only hours before. This is safety, this is home for him.

See the whole disgusting thing for yourself:

More evidence of how well dubya supports the troops.

And if you're thinking that I'm being too partisan in that previous sentence, just imagine if these photos were taken during a Democratic administration. What would the Republicans' reaction be? The media's?

Do you really think this helps your candidate?

And, since when is it a progressive value to ridicule blue collar workers?

From the comments section to this post:

Anonymous said...

Maria,

I feel so sorry for you. We elitist urban and inter-suburban dwellers have understood neither you nor your much victimized candidate.

To think that Hillary--Ms. Inevitability and advocate for all the racist, Bible-thumping, deer gutting, Islamo-fascist, wanna obliterate Iran, NRA card-carrying hicks--has had to suffer through the sophomoric efforts of Mr. Outa Touch Obama and us bamboozled minions of his must sadden and outrage you deeply.

We are now beginning to understand. You and Hillary know what America stands for. You and your candidate love America. You two will not let any self-loathing liberal snobs get in the way of the defense of American exceptionalism; Freedom on the March; an overcoming of the sissified wing of the Demokrat party; and a new lovefest with the Rupert Murdochs, Richard Mellon Scaifes and Rush Limbaughs of the world.

You are the new unifiers, the transcenders of unnecesarry differences and conflicts.

We progressives are passe, the real culprits, and political has beens who never really were.

I commend you for your courage and new patriotic vision. Please lead us on.

7:37 PM

Maria said...

Here's a clue:

The Hillary supporters who you viciously stereotype and ridicule are the very same people who your candidate will need to count on should he win the nomination.

Way to support your candidate!

2:41 AM

.

Missy Hart Goes Negative Early!

Many thanks to Bob Mayo for letting us know. Here's what he wrote:

Republicans are spotlighting Melissa Hart's anti-Barack Obama web-only ad for the national media, but Hart is not calling media attention to it locally.

Then there's this quote from the Washington Post:

Republican party committees and candidates have launched a series of ads this week linking Democratic candidates for lower offices to controversies surrounding Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, signaling that a racially tinged campaign may lie ahead, should the senator from Illinois secure the Democratic nomination.

And then:

In western Pennsylvania, a GOP challenger unveiled an ad on the campaign web site accusing freshman Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) of defending Obama after he told donors in San Francisco that white working class voters "cling to" gun rights and religion because they are "bitter".

"Barack Obama said our bitterness makes us cling to our religion, and our guns. This was simply an insult. But maybe the biggest insult of all is how Jason Altmire continues to defend Barack Obama," says Melissa Hart, the former representative who was ousted by Altmire in 2006 and faces a rematch this fall.

Here's the ad in all it's tinged racial-ness:

And the transcript:

HART: I'm Melissa Hart and I approve this message.

ANNC: Barack Obama described small town, hardworking, God fearing, Second Amendment-respecting families of western Pennsylvania as bitter. Barack Obama said our bitterness makes us cling to our religion, and our guns. This was simply an insult. But maybe the biggest insult of all is how Jason Altmire continues to defend Barack Obama. Jason Altmire. Just how much of the liberal Kool-Aid did he drink?

For someone voted out of office for (among other things) voting too closely with dubya, I don't think Missy Hart should be accusing anyone else of "drinking the cool-aid."

The Trib and the P-G

The Trib's editorial board (oh, bless their hearts) chimed in today, not on the election results but on the P-G's reaction to those election results. Note: they're being snarky by calling the P-G the "Toledo, Ohio Block Bugler." The P-G is owned by the Block Family and that family also owns the Toledo Blade. Hence the snark. Here's what they have to say:

An amusement: The Toledo, Ohio, Block Bugler endorsed Barack Obama for the Democrats' presidential nomination. Outside of Philadelphia, Sen. Obama was trounced by Sen. Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Pennsylvania Primary. A day late and a brain short in commenting on the results on Thursday, The Bugler turned its sour grapes of wrath on the electorate. "(V)oters were not inclined to think their votes through," it said, then chided Pennsylvania as an "old commonwealth" with "older voters" voting the "old way." There's nothing quite as amusing as a gaggle of self-styled "progressives," their entreaties rejected, throwing a hissy fit.

Here's the P-G's editorial they're chiding. It says alot more than what the Trib describes. For instance:

The Democratic nomination has come to resemble Iraq. A war that seemed to be over has flared up anew with a startling viciousness. At the end of the Pennsylvania campaign, both sides were trading blows as if their opponent were a Republican, but Mrs. Clinton stooped lower, even genuflecting to Karl Rove's politics of fear with an ad that summoned the bogeyman, Osama bin Laden, to make her case.

And:

If Mrs. Clinton somehow manages to capture the nomination, she will seem less the bold fighter than someone who has pushed her all-consuming ambition beyond the best interests of her party. In her negativity, she will have reminded Americans across the country of the seamier side of the Clinton years.

Worst of all, she will have rebuffed the grass-roots army that is Mr. Obama's fresh and vital contribution to the campaign -- young people, independents, former Republicans, the great hope of a Democratic Party revival.

And finally:

No, the real winner in Pennsylvania was not Hillary Clinton but John McCain, waiting patiently in the wings to pick up the shattered pieces of the Democratic idols. He of all people has to love that the Democratic nominating process has turned into its own Iraq.

In that light, it's interesting that a Wall Street Journal columnist, Daniel Henninger, calls it for Senator Obama. Go read the column - Henninger's hardly a progressive, self-styled or otherwise.

How Dubya Supports The Troops

By covering up the rates of attempted suicides among the troops.

CBS reports:

In San Francisco federal court Monday, attorneys for veterans' rights groups accused the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs of nothing less than a cover-up - deliberately concealing the real risk of suicide among veterans.

"The system is in crisis and unfortunately the VA is in denial," said veterans rights attorney Gordon Erspamer.

The charges were backed by internal e-mails written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health.

In the past, Katz has repeatedly insisted while the risk of suicide among veterans is serious, it's not outside the norm.

"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told Keteyian in November.

But in this e-mail to his top media adviser, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities."

That's 12,000 per year.

Katz's e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 - a fraction of Katz's estimate.

By the way, 790 is only about 6.6% of 12,000.

More Bush Administration respect for the troops:

Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report.

"Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.

But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later.

He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."

That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."

This is how Dubya supports the troops.