I agree, Blitzer has been…strange. I haven’t watched him a lot, but I sure don’t see him as a Hillary basher. More like a pimp for the conventional wisdom which WAS that Hillary would sweep all before her and enter Denver like some new-age Caesar, to receive the adoring plaudits of the democrats. Now, he’s like a pimp who’s lost his string. :o)

Since that notion has gone a-gleying, we have the much-despised (by some people) horse race. And we have no small number of people, especially, her supporters, telling us that there really isn’t much difference between she and Obama.

It’s nonsense. I throw out the “electability” word. If anyone thinks that Barack Obama, even in the residual bogs of racism which are happily drying up in the deep south, will engender the kind of visceral reaction to his candidacy, as will Clinton, they are badly, badly, mistaken.

Racism has been branded. It’s not gone yet, but it’s been named, and vilified, to the point that very few rednecks want to have the word slung at them.

But; despising Hillary Clinton, with the heat of an Oxy-Acetylene torch?

For a TON of us, that, by God, is as american as apple pie. High School drop-outs with room temperature I.Q.’s share it with university professors; shade-tree mechanics eking out a living by turning wrenches out behind their double-wide, could have a brotherly conversation with CEO’s, about how unGodly it would be if Clinton were elected.

And it is anything but regional. Brothers and sisters, that song is sung across the fruited plane.

It’s patently unfair. Bill made an utter fool of her, in front of the world, and she handled it with about as much class and dignity as was possible. She is a bright, articulate, human being. i LIKED her. A lot!

I was elated when she won that Senate seat. I, too, was thinking:

“Springboard to the presidency!” And if she had fought the good fight; if she had joined the 21 democratic Senators who had the intelligence and the courage to vote against bush’s lunatic crusade, and if she had stayed the course in opposing it, I would be singing her praises.

If she had only, as I saw John Edwards do, 3 months ago in Georgetown, S.C., stood up and with some skein of shame in her voice, said flatly: “I was wrong and it’s something I’ll take to my grave with me.”…made some uneqivocal mea culpa for her part in the carnage, instead of farting and tap-dancing…I could have forgiven her, as I forgave Edwards.

But she was already in full triangulation mode, and diligently, and idiotically, moving to the right. Time and again, when she could have taken a chance to speak what she had to know was the truth, by then, that the best that could be said of Iraq, was that it was a hideous miscalculation; and at worst a cloth of greed, lies, hubris, and chicanery unrivalled in american politics, she either kept silent, or put out the GOP shitspeak about “It was a good idea, but tactical mistakes were made.”

She lost me; made an enemy of me, when I read about, and then found, that clip of her speech to the “Take back America” conference, in which she had the horrible misjudgement to say to a progressive crowd, that “the Iraqi government isn’t doing enough” to make Iraq stable, or words very close to that.

The crowd was momentarily stunned, and then a lot of them started booing, and her supporters began clapping and cheering for her, and the moment dissolved into a mish-mash of sound, except, she tried to salvage something out of it…

This came at a time when our casualties in Iraq were high, and bush and his house liars were frantically and systematically

trying to shift the blame to the “Iraqi Government”.

Of course, the Iraqi Government was hiding under it’s desks in the green zone, trying to escape the hell-on-earth that the invasion had made of their country.

I was enraged, and I use the word accurately. It was an obscenity, for her to parrot that line of exculpatory bullshit for bush, and a huge brainfart, to do it in front of a progressive group.

Now, nothing she can say or do, will make me respect her. Someone posted another link, on The GroupNewsBlog, of her sucking up to Sun Myung Moon, and praising his organization. If Obama has done that, please, someone post it, and let’s take a few points from him, for doing it.

I’m glad Obama’s young. (He’s older than Clinton was in his first run for president, I’ve read) I expect the term “Kennedyesque” will be used at him a few times. I think that it will be good to get away from middle-aged men who are too much enamored of the status quo, and who are afraid to change it, even when it’s obviously harmful to so many americans.

I think Obama represents a chance to do that. He’s made some shit votes, too, just like Edwards, as CinnamonApe fairly pointed out, but his conscience, and his hands, are one hell of a lot cleaner than Hillary Clinton’s, and he’s a hell of a lot more electable.

I just hope that Edwards and Gore have the courage to turn their backs on the business-as-usual, and to ask…help…Obama to do the same. If they’ll come out for Obama, I think the republicans won’t know what hit them, the tide will be so strong and pervasive.

I LUST to see, 6 months from now, John McCain raking Obama for not supporting Operation Endless Clusterfuck.

Obama can quote one of the best friends the american military has ever had in congress; John Murtha:

“Why should we listen to you?”

The ‘tards will fight frantically at first, but after that, I believe it’ll be a cakewalk; a “war” that will pay for itself. :o)

One quibble: there can’t be enough scolding for Blitzer ;-)

It was Dan White who did the shootings and used the twinkie defense.

Because the Senate gives power based on seniority, CA is better off with Feinstein.

Uh…DiFi is among those pushing the plan to give a few hundred wealthy Central Valley families 15% of all the Federally subidized water in California.

The families can turn around and sell the subsidized irrigation water on the open market – pocketing 40 Billion dollars

Better off than what?

DiFi serves corporatists, not Californians.

I am wont to say that if I, knowing nothing about the subject, could figure it out in advance, why couldn’t everyone else?

The context I put Hillary’s vote into is that she knew she might run for prez. If she voted no, she could be labelled weak on defense, an unforgiveable sin for the first woman running for prez. So downside of a no vote was huge. Downside of an up vote very small, because she had so much company. At least that’s my projection of her thinking at the time.

She’s never been able to come up with a plausible story since. (She can’t tell the real story.)

That name ring a bell for anyone?

I only ask because, as all of her supporters and defenders on here are risking arm injury patting themselves on the back for our having two such “FINE candidates to choose from”, I’m going to point out that two bombings in Iraq killed at least 78 people earlier today, and Hillary Clinton is up to her elbows in the responsibility for this, AND the rest of the mayhem that george bush has inflicted on Iraq, for her unapologetic vote for the invasion, and for the nearly unstinting support that she has given bush and the republicans in sustaining the misery.

I challenge any of her defenders on here to put up links to where she has spoken with outrage at what is going on in Iraq. She has never risked one atom of political capital to name this bloody, greed-and-lie-based-abomination for what it is. Not a micron.
Now, as Obama is, pardon the expression, surging, we are once again hearing the “unity” cry, and seeing Wolf Blitzer scolded for asking questions that might point up some of the serious differences between she and Obama.

As it was in the beginning of the primary season, “unity” is that same old dog-whistle for “Lay off Hillary!” I don’t think so. I am, now, a backer of Barack Obama, and i LIKE the idea of a thorough scrutinizing of their respective warts. We don’t need to be surprised.

Wolf Blitzer has been accused of trying to start a “pie-fight”. Well, folks, it’s the democratic primaries, and we’re down to two candidates, and while I condone neither racism or sexism, with what’s at stake in this election, I would prefer hammers and chisels to pies. It won’t hurt us. We’re going to unite, in the general, but what it will do is let us know which candidate was, and is, really against the bloody debacle in Iraq. And which one is most likely to take the painful and controversial steps to end it, or at least, our part in it.

In a way, her refusal to unequivocally apologize for her part in creating the shitmire, has a perverse honesty to it. Of course, the motivation for her “honesty” is that she is fearful of alienating all those republicans and conservatives who (as she so savvily understands) are breathlessly waiting for the chance to vote and help the democrats put her in the white house. So; we get the Kaye Bailey Hutchinson/GOP exculpatory “I would vote differently today”.

Excuse me for saying so, but in light of a million dead Iraqis, and another million and a half refugees, that is piss-thin gruel, and I don’t give a shit whether it’s coming from a democrat or a republican.

Lincoln Chaffee said it best: it should have been “a career-ending vote.”

Instead, we have this phalanx of deniers for whom, evidently, the sight of Clinton giving speeches in a Hitler Jugend dirndl would not be a point against her.

Nothing has changed. Nothing. If she were that male Senator named “Smith”, with HER track record, they would generously be sending money to “his” opponent in any election in which “he” was running. And they would be right.

Also, there has been a lot of talk from Edwards voters about voting for John, despite his withdrawal. I guess it’s doing the touch-screen equivalent of a write-in, in some of the primaries on Tuesday.

Speaking as a loyal and disappointed Edwards supporter, I would ask them to re-think that alternative, and to remember that there is only one politician who can save the republican party in this election, and her name is Hillary Clinton.

And while we can parse the meaning of “suspend” until the cows come home, the sad fact is, that John Edwards is no longer in the race for the democratic nomination. It’s down to two, and only one of them has blood up to her elbows.

And if we Edwards supporters go into a pout, and waste our votes on the chance that we can give John more delegates, I’d remind us all, that if Hillary wins big on Tuesday, she can use Edward’s delegates as a footwipe as she enters the Convention Center in Denver this summer.

And if that happens, we will hear republican assholes like Rove, who will be positively ECSTATIC at seeing the democrats pick a candidate who simply cannot make Iraq an issue, and who doesn’t even have the desire to do it,
praising her as a “formidable” candidate, and talking UTTER shit about how great it is that american voters have a clear choice in the election between McCain (who looks to be the GOP nominee) and Clinton.

Hillary’s worst fears are coming true. She couldn’t promenade to the nomination. Edwards and Obama made her get out of the Beltway Limo and get her hands dirty. Bill can’t do it for her. she has to do it.

But we Edwards supporters have a chance to help put “paid” to the candidacy of the only candidate left who supported the invasion; who has, and still IS, supporting the surge, and who is trying to hide under the “moderate-progressive” tent.

We need to get her out of the tent, once and for all. She doesn’t belong there, and she damn sure hasn’t earned residence, for the better part of the past five years.

Don’t waste your vote. At this point, a vote for John is a vote for Hillary.

I only just found out that story about 2 months ago but that was known long before we attacked Iraq

it does not make any sense the democrats let this team pull that crap

I think that’s where Obama stood as a State Senator. Clinton wanted to know more, and what type of materials existed…but unfortunately DID make an error of judgement (political pressure from the drum-beating on the public).

I’m still not sure how this helps the Republicans in any way except peeling off people from the Democrats who would foolishly be voting against their interests in eventually ending the war?

By raising the argument they make themselves appear even more culpable, still embedded in a meme of “there were WMD’s…the war was RIGHT” and willing to fight the never ending battle because of “past sacrifices” justify even more deaths “in their name.” The fact is they died for a lie…so why should more people be sent to continue to die for those lies?

Yet another job for the lefty blogs. Actually Jaun Cole & antiwar.com have done some good work on the lack of nukes in Iran.