And Then There's Bill

Not to put too fine a point on my previous post about it being a really bad idea to offer Hillary the VP slot, but Bill Clinton is uncontrollable. He speaks his mind and most of what he has to say is just great, I mean that.

But he just doesn't know his place, and he shouldn't have to, really. He should be able to say any damn thing he wants and influence us all in the direction he believes is best, and he's most often spot on.

But even now, as his life-long companion begins the delicate maneuvers signaling the end of her quest for the presidency, he just lets it spew:

"This may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind."

[HT: Michael D.]

Honestly, as refreshing as this type of up front, stream-of-consciousness, brutal honesty is, how on earth would an Obama administration cope with Bill just ... out there ... upstaging the White House every time he got near a microphone.

It's just not his place to say something like that. It's not about him, but he'll never get that. Frankly, he doesn't have to. He was the gosh darn POTUS for eight years, and unlike the guy before him who was careful not to upstage Junior (when he should have taken him out back of the West wing and smacked some sense into him), Bill was never known for his prudence.

Because It Is Not Just About Winning

Gasping for breath that never comes, Hillary supporters argue for inclusion on the "Unity Ticket" that she is somehow entitled or deserves the VP slot (no sense of irony there). [Via the Usual Suspect, speaking only for himself -- and with comments closed speaking only TO himself as well.]

Have you people not been paying attention? Leaving aside the debatable notion that bringing aboard the Cleingons (both of them) does anything for to make Obama more electable or less vulnerable to the viciousness of the GOP attack squad beyond mollifying some of the inconsolable WATB reacting so spitefully to Obama's win in a pique of passive-aggressive martyrdom that would make Joan of Arc blush -- Bill Clinton is out of control and uncontrollable.

Moreover, and this is especially true for progressives. The Clinton's triangulating centrism, DLP insired Republican-Lite style is a giant step backwards at a time when we need to leap in a whole new direction.

As was true last year, even more so today: nobody unites the fractured GOP machine better than Hillary and Bill Clinton. If one Clinton is presiding over the Senate, and the other is set loose to find his own trouble amongst the Potomac Village courtiers, Obama will be lucky to get his first hundred hours of a honeymoon, let alone 100 days; and the usual 18 month legislative window before the opposition gears up its obstructionist tactics in anticipation of a rollback of the Democratic Party's projected gains this cycled will be virtually eliminated as the conservative movement's perpetual campaign united around the single battle cry of ridding the Nation's Capital of the Clintonian virus.

Obama will be a mere bystander to the tabloid spectacle, spending more time putting out fires instead of igniting the country's imagination for a new future. Hillary Clinton as Obama's Vice Presidential pick will be a clear signal that business-as-usual is still the watchword of the powerful and elite, and that he cares more about political expediency than charting a new course, breaking forever with the dismal past of the last 3 decades where a Bush or a Clinton was on the Presidential ballot one way or another.

Enough of them.

Ohio's Best Blogger Is Back

All hail the return of Jesse!

Calling Out The Conservatives On Their Crap

Finally someone besides Krugman makes the simple, plain English argument that the last two decades of GOP spin about tax policy is utter bullshit. Hard as it is to believe, there it is on the OpEd pages of the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby says,

Lowering taxes was terrifically pro-growth in Ronald Reagan's time, when the top income tax rate was slashed from 70 percent in 1980 to 50 percent in 1982, significantly changing incentives for work and risk-taking. But with the top rate at 35 percent today, a modest shift in either direction makes less difference. Given the yawning budget deficit and the coming demographic crunch, tax cuts aren't affordable anyway.

The same goes for deregulation. Getting the nanny government out of trucking and airlines yielded huge benefits in the 1970s and 1980s. But the "price-and-entry" regulations that used to cosset such industries have long since gone, and remaining regulation is harder to demonize. We are left with government rules to protect the environment, check the safety of medicines and prevent systemic financial crises. These rules are generally helpful. There's nothing "pro-growth" about bashing them.

The same is approximately true for trade.

Look, even if you feel that Ronald Reagan was divinely inspired, his policies were not commandments, his approach was not gospel. For over two decades the conservatives (and I count centrist Clinonomics in this) have taken what amounted to a correction in tax/regulation/trade policies and enshrined them as economic dogma, relentlessly calling for less, less, less as the well connected stole more, more, more.

In the last eight years, the Bushies have exploited the system for their personal benefit in ways that even Reagan would have found criminally intolerable (and unworthy of pardon), squeezing every last penny from the nearly extinct middle class as they pushed the envelope from responsible economic stewardship to a fascist/feudal hybrid of disaster capitalism.

Mallaby gets it exactly right. Obama is no economic messiah any more than Reagan was a saint. While the nation as a whole, and in particular the Democratic Party is proven it's more than ready for a black or female president -- it is not ready (and sadly may never be) amenable to a true fire-breathing progressive holding the reigns of power. If it were, Dennis Kucinich would not have been treated like a joke and along with Chris Dodd (who also stayed on the Michigan ballot) would have prevented Hillary from claiming a win out of that fake primary; and John Edwards would be interviewing prospective running mates right now.

But it is indisputable that Barack Obama represents a step in the right direction while John McCain insists on fighting battles long since won, and proposing the same tired schemes that we've done to death for decades.

Unexpected Candor From Bill Kristol

Even he knows he sucks.

Commencement speeches are hard. I gave one at a college about seven years ago. I labored over it, consulting orations from years past, writing and rewriting drafts. I ended up with remarks that struck me — even while I delivered them — as banal and platitudinous.

I always get the feeling from Kristol's beady eyed smirk that he just knows he's a hack and getting away with being paid to spew his wankerific nonsense is a joke even to him.

Oh, and Bill's point about Barack Obama not extolling the pampered student body of a private New England college to sign up for military service shows why he's so bad at giving commencement addresses himself. Communications 101: Know Your Audience! Go ahead and try to tell these upper-crust elite kids, about to be handed a sheep's skin representing unlimited possibilities, they should "be all they can be" and marvel at how quickly you get laughed off the stage, or get a pie in your face.

Besides, my guess is that our military culture would consider kids from such liberal arts schools outsiders anyway. They wouldn't want most of these bleeding-hearts any more than they would want a prissy bitch like Bill Kristol in the ranks. But let's not allow a bit of reality get in the way of a good cheap shot from a chickenhawk hack like Kristol.

Abu Ghraib, Rehabilitating Our Disgrace

This quotation jumped out at me from Alissa J. Rubin's New York Times article today.

"The Americans are better than Ministry of Interior prisons. They will torture you. Maybe you will die. With the Americans, if you enter Abu Ghraib, they will only wage psychological war on you."
MAHMOUD ABU DUMOUR, A former detainee, on the thousands of American detainees who are set to be turned over to the Iraqi government.

What's clear from the story is that we are light years away from anything resembling a Jeffersonian Democracy there, complete with quaint notions of due process and the like -- and the bar has set so dismally low by our criminal contempt for international norms (let alone our own values), we've created an incubator for extremism inside the prison system's 21,000 person population that we only now are beginning to address.

"Jihadi University" is what they call the American prison system in Iraq. Perfect. There is so much to clean up after 8 years of Bush/Cheney, we don't need a new president as much as we need a janitor.

Hillary, We Are Just Not That In To You

The weak Puerto Rico turn-out disappointed Hillary shills, (despite the shrieking) and completely undermined her specious argument that as long as you don't count caucuses and all the people in Michigan who showed up to vote against her she just squeaked out a popular vote "win." Now if she could get 90% of the outstanding superdelegates ... Feh! These people are nutz.

When's the last time you recall a presidential candidate, and her whole family, campaigning in Puerto Rico? Ever? And not just a pit stop but sticking it out with the beach-combers and sun worshipers for over a week. A territory that is the definition of voting for something that doesn't count since they have zero say in the general election.

I seem to remember something Hillary said about Michigan not counting and now her folks are upset that she didn't get all the delegates there. But they are trumpeting a win in Puerto Rico when only about a third of the voters they expected gave a damn. And after all that, Puerto Rico didn't show up.

When Hillary Clinton’s argument to the superdelegates comes down to bragging about a victor in Puerto Rico, you know her campaign is really over.

I know I'm supposed to be a grown-up about all this and make it easy for the Clinton supporters to save face and bring everybody together. But see, I was never really an Obama supporter per se. But long ago I resisted the urge to continue to undermine the probable, and now presumptive Democratic nominee, even when it looked like Hillary had as good a shot as Barack. There are bigger fish to fry, namely: the eradication of conservative domination of -- nay, even participation in American politics.

I really don't give a rats ass about alleged Democrats who would even suggest they would vote for John McCain or would sit out or vote independent come November because they feel slighted or robbed due to Hillary Clinton's failed run for President. If you're that shallow, that much of an ingrate narcissist, I really don't have much to say to you.

If you're still fighting against Obama, you're fighting the wrong guy, you're on the wrong side. If you're still following Hillary, you're not following a leader, but a loser. John Aravosis lays out the reality, and if you can't handle the reality you need medicated.

We started with half the country hating Hillary, and now she's managed to add half the Democratic party to the "hate Hillary club" as well. So, while Hillary definitely knows a thing or two about unpopularity, maybe she should clean up her own house before attacking others and doing John McCain's dirty work.

I feel no need to be magnanimous to the "other side." As far as I'm concerned I'm the other side too. I got over it. My guy didn't have what it took to get the nomination either. Neither Barack Obama nor his supporters made any grand overtures to me. Nobody needed to kiss my ass.

But I know where my loyalties lie, and more importantly where they don't. I never felt the evident sense of entitlement I'm seeing from some in Camp Clinton. Why on earth must special dispensation be made to Hillary's constituency. You're either supporting the nominee, and that means you're for Barack Obama, or you're worse than any Republican. You're a two-faced, traitorous, small-minded, selfish cry-baby with no rationality.

See, I don't think I need to "get" anything. It the Clinton supporters weren't bitching (yeah, I said it) about four meaningless delegates being "hijacked" from a meaningless beauty contest, they'd be whining about something else just as stupid. While it might be worth it to make them shut up, it probably wouldn't be enough to do the trick. It's more a commentary on how ridiculous the Clintonistas act and how pathetic they sound than any desire that justice be done on my part. There was never any way to fairly fix an unfair contest, and that's what Michigan was.

This thing is over. Get in line or get out of the way. From what I've seen in the way the Clinton campaign has comported themselves it's a very good thing she lost, and we may have dodged a bullet by not letting Bill near the White House again.

Shorter "My Tent Democrat"

Armando: If anyone knew the slightest thing about Puerto Rico's politics, they would have known my partner was full of shit when she estimated the voter turnout numbers earlier today -- but you people are too stupid to know we're both speaking only out our asses.

It's called "credibility." You two lost it long ago. Give it up already, Hillary lost you losers.

I Have So Had It With This Guy

Yeah, it's Armando again, Mr. "Big Tent Democrat," speaking only for his sanctimonious, blind partisan -- "comments closed" -- self:

I am amazed at the view expressed by Obama supporters that unifying the Democratic Party is a problem for Hillary Clinton. Like me, they all expect Barack Obama to be the nominee, but they insist that the problem of unifying the Democratic Party belongs to Hillary Clinton. This is an incredibly obtuse view. Obama is going to be the candidate who will win or lose in November. It will be HIS job to unify the Party.

Dude, YOU are the problem, and people like you. You don't listen to shit, and with your shrill blog closed to opposing views, you never will.

Seriously, are we to believe that any overtures made by Obama to the likes of Hill Shills like this will have any effect whatsoever if not green-lighted by Clinton? Obama may have his work cut out for him in winning over Hillary's supporters, but he doesn't have a hope in hell unless and until the Senator from New York says it's okay.

That means calling off Ickes and Wolfson and Wasserman-Schultz -- and the Clinton bloggers following that lead.

Because make no doubt about this, save for the boot-licking die-hards who would say that "if only" the people weren't so stupid as to nominate Obama and went with Our Lady of Inevitablility instead (who just flat-out ran a crappy campaign), we would have won in the fall; if McCain wins, Hillary's scorched-earth campaign will share a great deal of the blame.

See, it wasn't until it looked like she wouldn't win, when they became desperate, that they really tried to damage Obama. I don't think any of it was fatal, or even truly effective. But bottom line, Hillary Clinton has an enormous following, and thus an enormous responsibility to do her absolute best to deliver that support to the Democratic nominee.

Glad That Is Over

Not the silly Democratic Primary thingy. I'm talking about the Detroit Piston's season. Now I can devote my time to more important issues, like Cleveland Indian's Baseball.

Even more important, I can take that Piston's logo off my blog. It was starting to stink up the joint.

PLAY BALL!

(Sorry Ara, but it was a stupid bet, really. It ended up that we both lost.)

So, it looks like the last remaining puff of wind has gone out of the Clinton's sails. Barack Obama has taken over control of the Democratic Party. If Hillary and Harold Yechy want to take this to the convention, they still lose. It's just a matter of whether she wants to try and bring the rest of the party down with her.

Can't see that happening. If she doesn't begin the healing process now, right now, she will destroy whatever is left of her reputation. Let's just say that my previous admiration for her has been diminished, but is not beyond repair -- yet.

For the record, I can see their point about losing four delegates in Michigan not being "fair." But nothing was ever going to be "fair" when you try to count votes that weren't supposed to count. You can talk about rules and the importance of counting votes all you want. Rules are rules, you don't change rules, cheating, blah, blah, blah ... it's called compromise folks.

The thing that sticks with me was that Hillary did not behave honorably about this from the start. The day the deadline to remove her name from the Michigan ballot came and went, I knew she was gaming the system. We all did. They have a name for selecting a leader when only one candidate is on the ballot and/or there's no competitive campaigning, but that word is not election. Everything that came after was political theater, and I for one have had enough of that kind of staged point-counterpoint display.

So it's over. She'll be looking up the word graceful to make her departure seem like all is well in Democrat-ville. Unity will be the watchword for the summer.

Unity and bitter. There will be those who will never let go of Obama's church problems, even though he let go of the church. And some alleged progressives and/or Democrats will never, ever let go of the dream of Hillary in the White House and will chant "we was robbed" to the grave.