Clipmarks | CrazyRedHead's 'politics' clips

Optimism Grows in Iraq as Daily Life Improves

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:01:06 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: German media - Spiegel online

There is an unexpected air of normalcy prevailing in Baghdad these days, with consumption flourishing and confidence in the government growing. The progress is astonishing, but can it last?

Is the situation truly improving in Iraq? Is it possible to rely on these changes in everyday life or are they merely an illusion? According to the quarterly report that the Pentagon issued in mid-June, the number of armed incidents has declined by 70 percent since last summer

King Abdullah II of Jordan, who was opposed to the US invasion and then voiced his fears of a "Shiite Crescent" developing in Iraq, recently said something astonishing in an interview with the US magazine Newsweek: "I am actually optimistic for the first time on Iraq. It's the first time that I have felt that Iraqis have, as much as they can, bound themselves together into a unity."

It is a deep irony that moderate Sunnis now refer to Maliki, a Shiite, as "batal" -- "a hero."

Tags: war, iraq, politics

Obama's Hypocrisy

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:57:02 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: www.cnsnews.com

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.

That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.

On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007.

The average pay for the 33 men

was $59,207.

The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff

was $48,729

the average pay for the 30 women on McCain's staff was $59,104

The 16 non-intern males in McCain's office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628

The Obama campaign did not respond to written questions submitted on the matter

Tags: obama, politics, election, idiots

Why Clinton Lost

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:13:36 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: "...The goal is to assemble the broadest coalition possible -- by saying nothing that could possibly offend anyone. The premise is to appeal to "independents", and "centrists", and most of all the "undecided", that group of people so uninterested in politics that they cannot fathom the difference between the parties, but who allegedly can be mobilized into action if only you do absolutely nothing that will get them the slightest bit worked up. It is a cynical, wretched excuse for leadership..."

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

How, though, did Hillary Clinton go from presumptive frontrunner to a pummeled second choice?

The most obvious answer: people started voting, instead of just talking about voting, and that right there is when things went off the rails.

For such a close campaign, it was a plodding affair. From Super Tuesday to now, the ground simply did not change much.

We saw two defining modes, in the Clinton campaign: Clinton ahead, in which case it maintained a facade of monolithic, do-nothing stasis, lest anything go wrong, and Clinton behind, in which case negative campaigning was called for, and plotted, and executed.

It was not a narrative, but a meta-narrative. She was electable because she was electable, and anything that disproved that theory was dismissed as an exception. It was the campaign equivalent of Intelligent Design.

It was, in short, a terrible, mind-bendingly awful strategy.

In the end, it was not an argument that could convince.

Tags: politics, election, clinton

Obamaniac Behavior Cycle Explained

Sun, 18 May 2008 01:29:44 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: news.lavenderliberal.com

The Obama thugs have fanned out over the blogosphere to try to sway Clinton supporters over to the dark side

Notice the way their comments on various blogs start out sounding somewhat peaceful and then BAM!, they hit you with an insult like, “I’m hoping that you guys will come to your senses.”

Nearly any person who supports Hillary Clinton has dealt with this bullying from the Obama thugs in one way or another.

Below are just a few of the many good folks who aren’t buying the latest transparent suck-up attempt

What’s Democracy Got to Do With It?
Liberal Rapture

Let Me Explain to Obamazoids Why We Don’t Care To Hear From You
No Quarter

Why I will not vote for Obama even if he’s the nominee — and why you shouldn’t either
Reclusive Leftist

What is going on with the “party?”
Angry for a Reason

Why Clinton supporters are turned off by Obama
1st Republic 14th Star

Tags: obama, politics, election

What Obama wishes he could say

Fri, 02 May 2008 04:21:38 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: "Politically, he correctly believes that he would be called out as a hypocrite if he practiced the conventional art of attack politics after preaching against it.

And, to view his motives in the best light — a benefit of the doubt extended by his own team — he believes this campaign would also undermine his governing strategy if elected. He has told associates it would be impossible to win support for a progressive agenda unless he assumes the presidency as a uniting figure who can transcend the personality-obsessed brand of combat that has dominated Washington for the past generation. "

Clip Source: www.politico.com

Thrown off his game by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright uproar, Barack Obama’s strongest answer to Hillary Rodham Clinton is one he won’t give: Senator, do you really want to get in a contest with me over who has more unsavory personal associations?

The Clintons, to hear associates tell it, are more contemptuous than they ever acknowledge publicly about what they believe is Obama’s breathtaking arrogance — the way he blithely dismisses the ideological showdowns and policy achievements of the 1990s as “old politics,” the way he thinks his thin résumé leaves him qualified to lead the country. Lately, the contempt level on the Obama side toward his rivals likewise has been soaring.

All manner of Clinton controversies, Obama partisans argue, have not been fully ventilated.

In the fantasies of some of his high-level supporters, Obama would peel off the tape to say something like this:

You want to talk hypocrisy?

Webb Hubbell

Frank Giustra

Clip Source: www.politico.com

Marc Rich

Hugh and Tony Rodham

Tags: politics, election, obama, clinton

Blind Faith

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:03:44 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: Christopher Hitchens: "Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come."

Clip Source: www.slate.com

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily.

Looking for a moral equivalent to a professional demagogue who thinks that AIDS and drugs are the result of a conspiracy by the white man, Obama settled on an 85-year-old lady named Madelyn Dunham, who spent a good deal of her youth helping to raise him and who now lives alone and unwell in a condo in Honolulu.

It would be interesting to know whether her charismatic grandson made her aware that he was about to touch her with his grace and make her famous in this way.

This flabbergasting process, made up of glibness and ruthlessness in equal proportions, rolls on unstoppably with a phalanx of reporters and men of the cloth as its accomplices.

Tags: christopher hitchens, obama, politics

Obama, History and Hate

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:54:05 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: " In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright's problem is exactly the opposite: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.

King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. ... Hate distorts the personality. ... The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."

Barack Obama is not a man who hates -- but he chose to walk with a man who does."

Clip Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

Barack Obama has run a campaign based on a simple premise: that words of unity and hope matter to America. Now he has been forced by his charismatic, angry pastor to argue that words of hatred and division don't really matter as much as we thought.

The problem with Obama's argument is that Wright is not a symbol of the strengths and weaknesses of the African-American community. He is a political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans

Take an issue that Obama did not specifically confront in Philadelphia. In a 2003 sermon, Wright claimed, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."

This accusation does not make Wright, as Obama would have it, an "occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." It makes Wright a dangerous man. He has casually accused America of one of the most monstrous crimes in history

Wright's accusation is batty, reflecting a sputtering, incoherent hatred for America.

Tags: politics, obama, election

Words Matter

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:24:39 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: "Sen. Obama, meanwhile, had picked the slightly less banal and more cryptic mantra "Change We Can Believe In," which I call cryptic only because at least it makes one ask what it can conceivably be intended to mean."

Clip Source: www.slate.com

It is cliché, not plagiarism, that is the problem with our stilted, room-temperature political discourse.

It used to be that thinking people would say, with at least a shred of pride, that their own convictions would not shrink to fit on a label or on a bumper sticker.

But now it seems that the more vapid and vacuous the logo, the more charm (or should that be "charisma"?) it exerts.

Take "Yes We Can," for example. It's the sort of thing parents might chant encouragingly to a child slow on the potty-training uptake.

Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together.

"We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America"

the prevailing drivel assumes that every adult in the country is a completely illiterate jerk who would rather feel than think

Tags: politics, obama, ideas, idiots

Michelle Obama: America 'Just Downright Mean'

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:39:56 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: Sarcastic comment from the article: "Such optimism, not to mention hypocrisy."

Clip Source: jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com

Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,”

“The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!”

Perhaps there's a premature cockiness seeping through. Might want to wait until your husbands clinches the nomination, girlfriend

The Obamas’ financial standing has risen sharply in the past three years

In 2005, their income was $1.67 million

Might have to go on food stamps at this rate.

Tags: politics, democrats, obama

Hillary has 'reverse Michael Jackson'

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:19:13 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: newsbiscuit.com

Hillary Clinton has taken the drastic step of undergoing cosmetic surgery to change her race so she can better compete against Barack Obama

The skin pigmentation treatment was carried out over the weekend in a last ditch attempt to get the former First Lady the extra votes she believes she needs

‘We had hoped that Hillary being a woman might be enough to get her elected’ said an aide. ‘Then when Obama came and trumped her by going for the whole ‘black candidate’ angle we didn’t know what to do.’

Friends of Hillary Clinton are insisting that her transformation into an African-American is the conclusion to a long and carefully considered journey. ‘She always liked Motown. She loves jerk chicken. This is just the logical next step…’

Many African Americans have expressed distaste at the latest development in the Democratic race

‘Frankly Mrs Clinton would sound a lot less ridiculous

if she stopped hinting that she has an enormous penis.’

Tags: satire, humour, humor, politics, clinton

George Bush: a good man in Africa

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:40:56 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

They may not be George Bush's natural constituency but Rwanda's prostitutes have good things to say about him. So do poor South Africans abandoned by their quixotic government

As Bush arrives in Africa today at the start of a five-country tour he will be welcomed chiefly for an initiative which has gone largely unnoticed outside the continent but which has saved the lives of more than a million people with HIV.

The $15bn (£7.6bn) President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) is in its fifth year and has been hailed as a "revolution" that is transforming healthcare in Africa

In a busy Kigali bar, Linda, a 24-year-old HIV-positive prostitute, explained that she had been afraid to be tested because she didn't want to know that she might soon die. "Then they said they could make us well, they have these drugs. So I got tested and I have the drugs," she said.

So whom does she thank? "The Americans. George Bush has helped us live."

Tags: aids, africa, bush, politics, health

McCain and the Talk-Show Hosts

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:44:09 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

What a kerfuffle! Half a dozen talk-radio hosts whose major talent is that, like hairdressers, they can talk all day long to one client after another as they snip, have decided that the presumptive Republican nominee does not hew sufficiently close to their gospel.

As anyone who has listened to them knows, the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like.

It doesn't matter that Mitt Romney, suddenly their Reagan, became a conservative in a flash of light sometime last year, or that their other champion, a populist theocrat, is in many ways as conservative as Vladimir Lenin. The task is to stop the devil McCain.

If those who are in a hissy fit about Sen. McCain would rather have Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton

they will wake up to a great regret, as if in their drunkenness they had taken Shrek to bed.

a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent

Tags: politics, election, mccain

Enough Clinton Incorporated

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:25:25 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: A U. K. view of the U. S. election

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

when the upstart young black senator from Illinois attempted to lead something of a shareholders' revolt

he met the full force of the Clintons' wrath

Bill Clinton has been unleashed on the Obama candidacy like an ageing but still ferocious pitbull let loose on an elegant but slightly diffident Great Dane.

the former President has sunk his teeth into the Obama hide and never let go

accusing Mr Obama of the mortal Democratic sin of saying nice things about Ronald Reagan

The spectacle has been unprecedented

Bill Clinton's behaviour these past couple of weeks ought by now to be flashing warning signs for American voters

It is not just that his egregious interventions in the campaign have revived the near certain prospect of a demoralising replay of the stomach-churning bitterness and vicious partisanship of the 1990s - not all of which was the Clintons' fault.

the Clintons are offering an extra-constitutional detour around

limit presidents to two terms

Tags: politics, clinton, obama

The Case Against Hillary Clinton

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:53:30 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.

Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose.

And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done.

In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part.

Tags: hillary clinton, christopher hitchens, politics

Angry White Man - Ron Paul

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:55:33 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

Since at least 1978, Ron Paul has attached his name to a series of newsletters

that frequently made outrageous statements:

This newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as "a world-class adulterer" who "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and a "flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate."

A February 1991 newsletter attacks "The X-Rated Martin Luther King."

An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" would be better alternatives--and says, "Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

Tags: elections, politics, ron paul, race, racism