Clipmarks | oscarrob's clips

Kennedy

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:30:18 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob

Clip Source: aplagueonbothyourhouses.typepad.com

Ted Kennedy

He was human, he had his failings like all humans have. Like a long line of old style Irish politicians from Massachusetts those failings and that humanity defined him and made him truly superb at the business of legislation and politics.

So many are not able to make compromises because they do not see people as people. They only see them as competitors, opponents, and ultimately enemies.

His life as a public servant was not defined by high principal and lofty ideals, although he certainly espoused and fought for them. In the end his public service and his life was defined, as ultimately all of ours are defined, by his accomplishments.

our politicians and pundits and bloggers and all the ranters and ravers about principal and ideals should take a step back and say to themselves, “With all of my anger and vitriol and animosity, what am I accomplishing?” What they will find is that they are no Ted Kennedy.

Tags: kennedy, politics, democrats, liberals

Bush is doing very well in the Transition

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:38:50 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: Whatever you think about him and however much you may dislike him and disagree with his handling of his presidency, he is handling this transition in a very classy manner. He's doing better than the Clintons did to him and he is to be commended, at this historic time for stepping up.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – No matter how people remember President Bush's time in office, let there be no doubt about how he wants to end it: gracefully.

Never mind that Democrat Barack Obama spent all that time deriding Bush for "failed policies," or mocking him for hiding in an "undisclosed location" because he was too unpopular to show up with his party's own candidate, John McCain. This is transition time. Outgoing presidents support the new guy.

And on that front, Bush is going well beyond the minimum. He has embraced the role of statesman with such gusto that it has been hard to miss.

The result is that Bush's last image at the White House will be one of a magnanimous leader. Whether it will improve his legacy is another matter.

"This has been a very good moment late in his presidency, and, I think it's fair to say, much appreciated by the nation," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, the home of Bush's planned presidential library.

Tags: politics, bush, obama, transition

Reaction To Rahm

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:11:18 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob

Clip Source: aplagueonbothyourhouses.typepad.com

Lindsey Graham puts out a statement stepping on the GOP message:

This is a wise choice by President-elect Obama.

"Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills. He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together. He is well-suited for the position of White House Chief of Staff.

Ben Smith's Blog: Reacting to Rahm - Politico.com.

This got me thinking about the election and what it means.

Extremists beware. Vitriol is no longer in vogue. Inability and unwillingness to compromise are passe.

The politics of the extremes rely upon and thrive only upon the apathy of the middle.

Those who believe in moderation and compromise must be apathetic for the extreme right or left to rule and even to be powerful in their own party. This was the meaning of Obama’s victory and the failure of McCain’s strategy

Obama gained a majority and a landslide electoral college by capturing and revitalizing the middle.

Tags: politics, rahm, transition, white house, obama

Rahm Emanuel - Good Choice

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:38:27 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: Totally agree

Clip Source: www.politico.com

Jeff Shesol, Speechwriter, presidential historian:

During my time in the Clinton White House, two of the most powerful words you could utter were "Rahm says." (If you valued your life, you didn't dare utter these words unless they were true.) Rahm set the rules, defined the message, and cleared away the clutter. He has a head for policy, strategy and tactics; he knows how the White House and Capitol Hill work, and how they can work together. His brusqueness is well known, but few people know how much loyalty, even affection, Rahm has engendered among those who've worked with him -- even some of those who've been chewed out by him. He's an outstanding choice.

His selection makes clear, once again, that Barack Obama refuses to buy into the false dichotomy, the phony binary choice, of Old Hands vs. New Blood. He will have both. And his presidency will be the stronger for it.

Tags: politics, transition, obama, white house

The Don't Appoint List

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:13:43 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: I totally agree about Richardson. Big hat, no cattle. Pure politician and nothing else.

Clip Source: www.slate.com

State Department. Do not appoint Bill Richardson, who by some accounts is the front-runner.

As energy secretary, Richardson rashly accused Los Alamos official Wen Ho Lee of espionage—a charge later proved false. As U.N. ambassador, Richardson didn't do anything anyone can remember except offer Monica Lewinsky a job three months before the story of her affair

"He has no great beliefs," observed Slate's David Plotz

Also, do not appoint John Kerry. The 2004 election demonstrated that nobody likes him. That isn't disqualifying for a senator, but it is for a diplomat.

Treasury Department. Do not appoint former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. I explained why last week. (See "Robert Rubin's Free Ride.") Rubin has said he doesn't want the job anyway. Lawrence Summers, who succeeded Rubin, is said to be interested, but he's too closely linked to Rubin

Energy Department. Do not appoint Arnold Schwarzenegger. T

Tags: politics, transition, obama, cabinet

Even racists need help in this Economy

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:30:35 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: Wow.

Clip Source: www.salon.com

Nov. 3, 2008 | Sean Quinn, of the polling site FiveThirtyEight, respected for its obsessiveness and eerie prescience, recently posted a hair-raising story about a pair of Barack Obama supporters. Quinn seems ready to verify its source, but only after the election. At any rate, it goes like this: A man canvassing for Obama in western Pennsylvania asks a housewife which candidate she intends to vote for. She yells to her husband to find out. From the interior of the house, he calls back, "We're voting for the nigger!" At which point the housewife turns to the canvasser and calmly repeats her husband's declaration.

Ah, racism. It's always a step ahead of us.

The Pennsylvania couple's intended vote also suggests that we base our impression of what it means to be racist on a number of false assumptions

Clip Source: www.salon.com

The number of racists who aren't voting for Obama isn't as interesting as the number of racists who are

racism can wait, at least until the crisis is over

Tags: politics, campaign, election, obama

Guilt By Association in North Carolina

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:05:15 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: First its the McCain campaign. Now its Elizabeth Dole. How shameful and how shameless. These tactics are wrong, they degrade the so-called "conservative" movement. In this case they debase Christians and God fearing people generally. Kay Hagan is a Sunday School teacher. This kind of campaigning is disgusting. Do they not know how damaging this is to themselves and to the political process? How can they look themselves in the mirror? These people are destroying American values so much they might as well be terrorists themselves. Joe McCarthy is hootin an hollerin in his grave.

Clip Source: www.politico.com

"It's a deeply offensive ad. It is an untruthful ad. It's a slanderous ad," Price said in an interview on MSNBC. "I think it's pathetic and it's a sign of desperation."

The ad is centered on Hagan's attendance at a Boston fundraiser where some of other guests were members of the atheist group Godless Americans.

The narrator of the ad suggests that Hagan, a Christian, is aligned with the group

"Godless Americans and Kay Hagan. She hid from cameras. Took Godless money. What did Hagan promise in return?" the narrator asks. As the ad ends Hagan's photo is shown as a voice cries "there is no god."

campaign manager Marty Ryall defended the ad in an earlier appearance on MSNBC, claiming the ad has "nothing to do with [Hagan's] faith."

"It's never been an attack on her faith. It's all about who she went up and associated with, and now she's trying to deny it,"

"It has everything to do about associating with a group that wants to take 'under God' out of the Pledge of Allegiance

Tags: politics, campaigns, dole

Palins latest Slur

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:35:57 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: No shame. No sense of decency. Joe McCarthy meet your protege.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

(CNN) -- Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said Sen. Barack Obama has ties to a Columbia University professor who she said is "a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."

The Obama campaign said on its Web site that "ugly insinuations about Barack Obama's relationship with a former neighbor and university colleague ... are completely false." The professor has denied he was a PLO spokesman.

Palin said her assertion "is not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record."

"It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years," Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.

"This is important because his associate, Rashid Khalidi ... in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he's a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."

The Obama campaign called Palin's remarks "another recycled, manufactured controversy

Tags: palin, obama, mccain, campaign, mccarthy

Federal Voter Registration

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:09:02 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: There is no reason that this "power" should be retained by the states. There should be a standard, universal process.

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Like our financial system, our voter registration system needs a federal government bailout. Before the election, while the public and press are still paying attention, we should get both presidential candidates to commit to a more sensible, secure, and universal voter registration process.

Tags: vote, politics, election

Moderation in all things

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:06:21 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: Interesting. I wonder if the plethora of information and access breeds moderation?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A new generation of voters, consuming political information in different ways than their forebears, is “very action-oriented, very issue-driven, very solutions-oriented,” Ms. Budde said. “It would be very foolhardy for either political party to think they could dominate the age politically.”

But Western Democrats acknowledge that enduring success will depend on the nomination of candidates with credibility among moderate voters, whom Republicans have lost in some recent elections while emphasizing social issues and opposition to government spending on education and infrastructure.

“There’s no brand loyalty here,” said Laura Chapin, a Democratic strategist in Colorado.

book, “Grand New Party,” Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam identif

“Some combination of the populist left and the neoliberal center is likely to emerge as America’s next political majority,” they write, “if the conservative movement can’t find innovative ways to address the anxieties of working-class America.”

Tags: politics, republicans, democrats, conservatives, liberals

Obama - Damned Socialist

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:18:47 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: If he's a socialist, Karl Marx is rolling over in his grave.

But wait words don't count....no wait, they do count...no wait they only count when he says them...no,no, I mean when I say them..., I'm confused.

Clip Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

Now, I don't believe that government can or should try to solve all our problems. I know you don't either. But I do believe that government should do that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide a decent education for our children; invest in new roads and new science and technology. It should reward drive and innovation and growth in the free market, but it should also make sure businesses live up to their responsibility to create American jobs, and look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road. It should ensure a shot at success not only for those with money and power and influence, but for every single American who's willing to work. That's how we create not just more millionaires, but more middle-class families. That's how we make sure businesses have customers that can afford their products and services. That's how we've always grown the American economy - from the bottom-up. John McCain calls this socialism. I call it opportunity

Tags: politics, obama, campaign, mccain

How has McCain been "tested?"

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:06:17 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: And so, the point is even more clear-cut than it might seem at first glance: Just because "John McCain sat in a cockpit on a flight deck during the tensest five days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, that doesn't mean he absorbed the slightest bit of wisdom about how to handle a crisis from the top."

Just being a fighter pilot or a POW doesn't mean you are ready to be president. Nobody really is and this whole experience thing, on both sides, is an enormous red herring.

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Sitting on an aircraft-carrier deck in 1962 didn't prepare John McCain for the presidency.

I mean no disrespect for carrier pilots, especially those poised for combat.

t is not at all clear how this experience tested McCai

Here's what the president at the time, John F. Kennedy, did during the crisis.

Kennedy assembled all his top advisers in the Cabinet Room to discuss how to respond. (Lucky for historians, he secretly tape-recorded all these deliberations

All of Kennedy's advisers

urged Kennedy to bomb the missile sites

On the tapes, they sound hysterical

Kennedy remained preternaturally cool

end of the day, without telling more than a handful of his advisers

Kennedy ordered his brother to tell the Soviet ambassador that he accepted Khrushchev's deal—as long as it was kept a total secret, as indeed it was until the tapes came out 20 years later

Kennedy himself contrived the cover story

that he'd stared the Russians dow

Tags: politics, campaign, mccain, obama, election, president

Palin's Hair and Makeup

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:55:38 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: They need to figure out how to make this less embarassing. Do they have a clue?

Clip Source: thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

Updated | 12:20 p.m. Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staffer. It was Amy Strozzi, who was identified by the Washington Post this week as Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “Personnel Svc/Equipment.”

In addition, Angela Lew, who is Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, got $10,000 for “Communications Consulting” in the first half of October.

Tags: politics, mccain, palin, campaign

McCain Backed into a Corner

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:23:57 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: John McCain has become so disingenuous it almost hurts. He has gone against everything in which we thought he believed.

Clip Source: www.nypost.com

Ever since Obama told "Joe the Plumber" that we should "spread the wealth," John McCain and Sarah Palin have taken to blasting Obama's tax plan as a socialist plot.

Nothing Obama has proposed comes close to that. (Instead, the Bush administration is virtually nationalizing the banks.)

What McCain calls socialism is actually just old-fashioned progressive taxation

so mainstream that one of its biggest defenders has been . . . John McCain.

during the 2000 primaries

McCain said on "Meet the Press": "Many studies have indicated that . . . the people who need . . . the relief most are working middle-income Americans and that's what I want to give to them.

"There's one big difference between me and the others - I won't take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy." Socialist!

McCain is such a socialist that he voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, complaining that they unfairly favored the rich

Could the taunt of "communist" be far behind?

Tags: politics, mccain, palin, campaign, obama, election

Tired of Divisive Whining - Not John

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:42:33 GMT

clipped by: oscarrob
clipper's remarks: Do these guys have anything to say? Even republicans I know who are voting for them think this is divisive and bad for the country. What really disturbs me is the continued mantra - "the full extent of the relationship with Senator Obama is not known." In his mind no explanation will be good enough. It is the most despicable, divisive and detestable kind of attempted smear. Forget that Obama, the campaign, FactCheck.org, and many media outlets have said that the relationship consisted of participation on the charitable

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

GREEN, Ohio - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has failed to tell “the complete truth to the American people” about his relationship with a violent 1960s antiwar activist, Republican nominee John McCain said in an interview airing Thursday.

In the NBC interview, parts of which the network is airing over three days ending Friday, McCain went out of his way to tie Ayers to Obama, a senator from Illinois. At one point, he changed the subject back to Ayers when Williams asked him about an unrelated issue.

Independent political watchdogs have also challenged the McCain campaign’s assertions. FactCheck.org, the widely cited nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Foundation

Palin said “elite” was a state of mind — “just people who think that they’re better than anyone else.” It cannot be identified by geography, income or level of education, she said.

“I know where a lot of ’em live,” he said, laughing. The out-of-touch elites are “in our nation’s capital and New York City.”

Tags: politcs, campaign, election, mccain, palin