I Don't Like You Either.

No Quarter Compiles a Little List of Obama's NAFTA-gate Statements

I couldn't love No Quarter any more than I do----first, for providing expert information on intelligence and national security issues without requiring me to believe that torture and acts outside the limit of the executive branch's authority are essential to the job; second, for its work on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Here's the list, courtesy of the indispensable SusanUnPC:

1. 2/27/08 – ‘No conversations have taken place’ with the Canadian government on NAFTA. “Earlier Thursday, the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations have taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government on the NAFTA issue.” [CTV, 2/29/08]

2. 2/27/08 – Obama advisor just said ‘hello.’ “Goolsbee: Canada’s consul general in Chicago contacted him ‘at one point to say ‘hello’ because their office is around the corner.” [ABC, 2/29/08]

Spitzer: “I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong." Another Pol Remembers His Moral Values After Being Caught on Tape

Good news for Republicans:  It's not only their guys who are hypocrites, as well as venal. 

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

An affidavit in the federal investigation into a prostitution ring said that a wiretap recording captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

Mr. Spitzer today made a brief public appearance during which he apologized for his behavior, and described it as a “private matter.”  (NYT)

Yeah, he wishes.  Sadly for him, the you'd-think-by-now-obsolete Mann Act makes it a federal crime to transport a woman across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.(NYT)   I guess women still aren't seen as having any volition in the matter.   "The four defendants charged in the case unsealed last week were all charged with that crime, along with several others."(NYT) 

Like certain Republicans I could mention but won't, Mr. Spitzer can be charged with the---to my mind---far more serious moral transgression of hypocrisy.

The Crybabies: Yet Another Democrat Picks Up His Marbles and Runs Off In Tears

Check out this piece by Seth Grahame-Smith in Huff Post: The Monster: A Loyal Clinton Soldier Turns in His Badge. Poor little thing.  He evidently didn't know that politics is a game, and a fight, and a struggle for dominance.  And he didn't know Hillary was so....mean!  So mean!  She's a monster!  She should just lie down and let Obama take the nomination, even if she thinks he's probably not qualified!

She certainly shouldn't point it out .  That's just mean!

Some 'soldier.'  Also:  some loyal. 

In other words, here's yet another nail in the coffin of my respect for certain of my fellow Democrats----or at least the crybabies and whingers who just can't stand to see Hillary trying to knock the faux halo off Obama's saintly head.  What are they, five?  Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo, Hillary's not a nice mommy who is willing to be a doormat.

You know what's really weird?  I will tell you a secret:  While I don't want Obama as the presidential candidate, I sort of love him----I sort of have a secret crush on him for being beautiful and speaking well.   I really, really want him as VP.  But Obama---in the grip of the massive hubris that his misguided supporters have wished on him---has 'responded with scorn,' reports The Politico, so he and I will just have to agree to disagree.  But I still like him. 

It's just the adolescent contingent of the party (never mind their actual age)  I can't stand.

The State of Play Between the Dems

As expected, Obama won the Wyoming caucuses.  No comment.  Read about it here.

Michael Barone on the state of play between the Dems. Hmmm.

Hillary Clinton appeared confident and vibrant on primary night, while Obama's graceful cadences sounded a little emptier than before. The storyline is changing, too. For the first time in a long campaign cycle, mainstream media have been pursuing stories that reflect badly on Obama: his close ties and property purchase with Chicago political operator Tony Rezko, now on trial in federal court; his chief economic adviser's purported assurance to a Canadian diplomat that Obama doesn't really mean he'll ditch NAFTA, as he was suggesting in trade-wary Ohio; Obama's pastor's recent award to the man Obama refers to as "Minister Farrakhan."...

Another Thought on Obama and his Advisers

D Cupples, my colleague at BN-Politics, said "All I had to know was Chicago School of Economics."  I probably should have been more on the alert after the article in the WSJ, but those were the days when I was a centrist.

And I found this snippet at No Quarter that is highly relevant to Samantha Power:

The New York Times reported, “Obama has implored voters to consider his judgment in foreign policy…that judgment, he said, would be carried over to selecting people to fill his administration. He said his views were shaped by his foreign policy advisers.” [New York Times, 11/2/07]  (No Quarter)

So was Power misrepresenting his view or did he just not understand hers?  Weird.

 

Which Candidate Would YOU Want to Get Out of Bed at 3 AM?

Apparently a lot of people who were polled by Rasmussen say that if anyone is going to be getting up to answer the phone at 3 a.m it needs to be John McCain. I don't know why.  He'd just yell at whoever it was for calling past his bedtime. 

The Democrats and the Cult of Personality

After Bush, you'd think people would be more cynical.  Sadly, no.  I am shocked that it's happening within my own party. 

Speaking of Sadly, No!, HTML Mencken writes:

It’s not the support or supporters I object to, it’s the enthusiasm and the fanatics. For any politician. But especially for such mediocre ones. After all, it’s not as if either Clinton or Obama are exactly FDR incarnate; they are both fairly average “liberal” politicians who are thoroughly schooled in the arts of serial triangulation. They ain’t radical; nor are they idealist; they are simply better than any Republican alternative. They’re good enough for a vote (with or without one’s nose tightly held) but that’s it. It just won’t do to mask this homely reality with fawning, drooling praise of either politician....

Samantha Power, ex-Guru

Meanwhile, before resigning, Samantha Power revealed that Obama's Iraq policy is merely the roughest of rough outlines.  Obama supporters who are gnashing their teeth over the Hillary camp's indecent demands that she resign for calling Hillary a monster really should think again.  Could the real reason have been her revelation that Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan is just a "best case scenario"? 

At TPM, Greg Sargent wrote:

As David Kurtz says, it's worth noting that Power is a very significant player in the Obama universe -- his leading foreign policy guru and someone who's been close to him for some time. So this isn't like the resignation of that Hillary county volunteer who spread the Obama Muslim smear email or the stepping-down of that Obama precinct captain who spread the anti-Hillary lit.

Rather, Obama is losing a key adviser and very visible advocate on foreign policy at a time when national security is front and center in the Dem primary -- an outcome that helps explain why the Hillary camp pushed so hard for her ouster. (TPM)

Yes, that was very stupid of the Clinton campaign.  Why push for the resignation of a foreign policy adviser who on the record claims that the candidate doesn't really mean what he says and on the record causes the opposition a "monster"?

Meanwhile, both sides are increasingly losing perspective.  Take my former hero Bill Maher---please.  I don't think I can watch another weak of him shilling for Obama.  He has a perfect right to be for Obama, of course, but I don't need to listen to it.

Power made a very nice apology.

“With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an advisor the Obama campaign effective today. Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."(TPM)

Better resign for a departure from her off-stated admiration etc. than because her candidate had to publicly repudiate her explanation of 'his' intended Iraq policy. 

Obama: Least Progressive Dem?; Will Congress Block the Sale of Arms to Saudi Arabia?; Amending the Constitution to God's and Mike Huckabee's Standards

Some days I say to myself that I just can't bear to go on writing political blogs.  Some days it's like pulling teeth.  Thank God for D Cupples', who can write three posts of laser-like focus and lethality to my one wambly, watered down one. 

So what about Obama?  Paul Krugman thinks he is the least progressive Dem, which is only a bad thing if you want a progressive president.  If he's the most conservative or "conservative" of the front runners, this may up his bipartisan appeal and his appeal to independents, yeah? 

In other news, Congress has only a limited time to block the proposed sale of arms to the Saudis.  But why, you may ask, should they want to block it?  Are they just being obstructionist again?  D Cupples explains their concerns.

Finally, should Mike Huckabee be promoting a plan to amend the Constitution to conform with "the word of the living God"?  Not if I have anything to say about it; my interpretation of those words is very, very different from his.  Does Romney's win prove that God believes in separation of church and state or does it show that God has switched allegiance from the Baptist to the Mormon?  We'll just have to see.  He moves in a mysterious way, they tell me.  This article, published here at BN Politics, was also cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.

Buck Naked Politics: Richardson Fizzles Out; Ron Paul's (Alleged) Racism) & Those Wacky Polls; MORE from Blackwater; and a Somewhat Different Version of the Confrontation between Iran and the US

(CROSS-POSTED FROM THE FLATLAND ALMANACK)  AT BUCK NAKED POLITICS: 

I liked Bill Richardson a lot and I'm sorry he's gone, but it's a fact he just never caught on with voters.  Why?  Partly because of some early stumbles, but also because he had so much competition.  With three candidates people think they know (emphasis on "think"), most just aren't going to look into the alternatives.   But of course there were those early stumbles such as his less than impressive "Meet the Press" interview.  See, e.g., Slate,  Richardson's Runaround:  The New Mexico Governor Self-Destructs on Meet the Press) .  Anyway:  good-bye, Bill Richardson, and I hope you won't be a stranger!  ["He looked good on paper."  Richardson's Campaign Ends with a Fizzle"].