FORMER OBAMA SUPPORTERS REPUDIATE THEIR PRIMARY VOTE

Interesting new blog -- Former Obama Supporters speak out about their disillusionment.

More than one pundit has asked incredulously, "What did you think you were voting for? He told you who he was, you just weren't listening ..." as if all those who bought into the "new kind of politics" and the hope/change/unity shtick are just credulous morons.

I disagree. I think they're idealistic, that they're yearning for a more responsive government and a better way of getting there. I'm tired of people blaming voters for their votes instead of pointing the finger where it belongs -- at cynical, lying politicians who betray the trust of the people who believed they meant what they said. I don't like it when the Blogger Boyz, the media and pundits whine about Clinton supporters who won't fall in line, and I don't like it when the same people roll their eyes at Obamacrats who are distressed about their candidate's about-face on issues that matter to them and regret their primary vote.

Get this straight, you REAL cretins of the media and the punditry -- voters aren't the problem. YOU ARE, for not doing your duty in vetting the candidates on issues and ideology, on their track record and statements rather than handicapping the horserace and concentrating on the petty "character" dialogues and narratives you all love so much to invent.

TOO LATE THE INDIGNATION

Digby is miffed because McCain tells a story wrong and the press doesn't blow it up into a big story.

Sorry, Digby, but it's hard to work up a good mad-on, when Obama has gotten away with the same kind of thing over and over -- from his talking about being conceived after the Selma march (it happened after he was born) to the Auschwitz thing, to the Kennedys bringing his father to the USA to study, the errors and misrememberings and embellishments in his two books, the list is long. He's a kind of Forrest Gump, who loves to associate himself with great historic moments, only he makes the sh*t up. In the case you cite, the only McCain falsity was in the identity of the NFL team.

But yes, you're right, if Hillary had made a comparable mistake she'd have been pilloried (maybe we should change that word to Hilloried?) by the media and her political opposition. Since Obama's gotten pretty much the same pass from them as McCain in this regard, your indignation, at this point anyway, is IMHO misplaced.

As much as I have loved Digby since Hullaballoo began, I sure wish she'd aired a little more of her righteous anger while HRC was being belittled in the primaries. It's a little late for me to work up any heat against the media for their treatment of Obama now when he was so obviously the beneficiary of their regard and favoritism during the primary -- and none of the Obamacrats were crying foul then.

WILL THE REAL MEDIA DARLING PLEASE STAND UP

The TimesOnline takes a realistic look at the American media's worship of Obama:

it's fairly clear now that, with the near-certain nomination by the Democrats of Barack Obama everything is in place for the media to indulge in one of the greatest, orgiastic media fiestas of hero-worship since Elvis Presley.

You will not see a finer example of the genre than the cover story of this week's Newsweek, which was entitled “The O Team”. This rhapsodic inside account of Senator Obama's campaign reads a little like a cross between Father Alban Butler's Life of St Francis and the sort of authorised biography of Kim Jong Il you can pick up in any good bookshop in Pyongyang.
...
The idolatry of Mr Obama is a shame, really. The Illinois senator is indeed, an unusually talented, inspiring and charismatic figure. His very ethnicity offers an exciting departure. But he is not a saint. He is a smart and eloquent man with a personal history that is startlingly shallow set against the scale of the office he seeks to hold. It is not only legitimate, but necessary, to scrutinise his past and infer what it might tell us about his beliefs, in the absence of the normal record of achievement expected in a presidential nominee.

If the past 40 years have taught us anything they have surely taught that premature canonisation is an almost certain guarantee of subsequent deep disappointment.

The only real disagreement I have with this story is its speculation that the media will forsake John McCain for Obama when the GE gets going. I'll have to see that to believe it. Obama is the new crush, but I can't believe they'd turn on The Straight-Talking MaverickTM so easily. It seems more probable to me that they've been championing Obama because they think he's The One to finally and forever rid us of the pesky Hillary Clinton, but most of the male media actually want to BE John McCain. He's more their kind of guy, the one they want to have barbecue and beer with, swap football and war stories with.

I expect the media will be flummoxed and discomfited when their dream candidates go mano e mano. That's about the only pleasure that such a matchup will bring me.

NOT ONE CENT FOR TRIBUTE

Finally. A major columnist has gone public with the sexism and misogyny exposed by Hillary's run for the presidency.

Marie Cocco calls them out.

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Yes, Marie, that clarion silence has pushed this formerly loyal Democrat to questioning not only the leading candidate (who has also been silent, that husband and father of two daughters) but the leaders of the party and other prominent Democrats. How can Caroline Kennedy justify it? How can George McGovern, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi?

I'm still struggling with what to do with my vote if Hillary doesn't win the nomination. But it's supremely easy to determine that the DNC will not win even one of my contribution dollars, which will to a cent be disbursed to candidates who have endorsed HRC.

Thank you, Al Gore

It's something of an irony that I just finished listening to the audio book, Al Gore's Assault On Reason, the day before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It's been an amazing couple of weeks as my daily commute has been enriched by the words of our once-and-future president.

For many months I had a "draft Al Gore" picture and link up on this web site, which I deleted a few months back, having concluded that the man just wasn't interested. And why should he be? He's accomplishing great things for all mankind, and what similarly gifted and rational man would want to tackle cleaning up the toxic waste that these past years of the Bush-Cheney administration have created for the Murrican people? And why on earth should he believe that the media would be any more reasonable, responsible or fairer to him in 2007 or 2008 than they were in 2000? Al, I've realized (and especially after finishing his latest work), will be more clearly heard and heeded by Americans and the international community outside of political office than inside it. The press simply has no intention of every acknowledging or bemoaning their wrongheadedness-about-everything, and would turn once again into slavering beasts eager to rip his throat out simply to prove that they were right in the first place to despise and disparage this exceptional man. He's just no fun at a barbecue, and he's no good at nicknames.

No, despite my fantasies about a Gore presidency, my inclination is just to say thank you, Al, for your valiant attempts at saving our democracy and the future of humanity. I supported you in 1988, in 1992, and in 2000, and you've proven me to be wise, perspicacious, and just plain bloody brilliant for recognizing your potential for greatness.

UPDATE: Two great, similar commentaries by Jeffrey Feldman and the "boring" Bob Herbert.

A MOSAIC OF CORRUPTION

Frank Rich reflects on Bush administration-related scandals (Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, Bernie Kerik, et al) and concludes that they are part of the same mosaic that has led to the debacle in Iraq:

What’s being lost in the Beltway uproar is the extent to which the lying, cronyism and arrogance showcased by the current scandals are of a piece with the lying, cronyism and arrogance that led to all the military funerals that Mr. Bush dares not attend. Having slept through the fraudulent selling of the war, Washington is still having trouble confronting the big picture of the Bush White House. Its dense web of deceit is the deliberate product of its amoral culture, not a haphazard potpourri of individual blunders.
...
Had Iraqi reconstruction, like the training of Iraqi police, not been betrayed by politics and cronyism, the Iraq story might have a different ending. But maybe not all that different. The cancer on the Bush White House connects and contaminates all its organs. It’s no surprise that one United States attorney fired without plausible cause by the Gonzales Justice Department, Carol Lam, was in hot pursuit of defense contractors with administration connections. Or that another crony brought by Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank was caught asking the Air Force secretary to secure a job for her brother at a defense contractor while she was overseeing aspects of the Air Force budget at the White House. A government with values this sleazy couldn’t possibly win a war.

Like the C.I.A. leak case, each new scandal is filling in a different piece of the elaborate White House scheme to cover up the lies that took us into Iraq and the failures that keep us mired there. As the cover-up unravels and Congress steps up its confrontation over the war’s endgame, our desperate president is reverting to his old fear-mongering habit of invoking 9/11 incessantly in every speech. The more we learn, the more it’s clear that he’s the one with reason to be afraid.

I don't expect the White House to be bipartisan. But I do expect it to seek to promote the best interests of the nation rather than the personal interests of its cronies. They're paid to do just that. The evil triumvirate of Bush-Cheney-Rove has corrupted almost everything and everyone it touches.

Rich is right in pointing out that the media still doesn't know how to confront or address the administration's record of lies and deceit. I would suggest that it's largely because they're unable to face their own complicity in the situation the nation now faces. Their active cheerleading for the administration and the war, their cozy, insider relationships with Republican power brokers, and their awe of their corporate masters didn't start with 9/11. They actively despised and challenged the Clintons and Gores at every opportunity. I don't care if a sizable majority of the so-called mainstream media acknowledge, as individuals, positions that classify them as "liberals." They are not politicians pursuing those policies; they are employees, people trying to make a lucrative living, and that living depends to a great extent on their access to power. With a few exceptions, the so-called "liberal media" have sold themselves and their "liberal" souls for a fat paycheck and the chance to rub shoulders with the powerful. And that, by definition, is prostitution.

PELOSI SAVAGED BY BUSH, MEDIA

Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus has been making wingnut heads explode. Michael Medved was truly unglued yesterday, arguing that she should spend time in jail for violating the Logan Act.

Sean Hannity was just as incensed and excited. Holy smoke! He's now convinced that the Republicans are going to do just fine in the 2008 elections because the Dems have blown it so badly in just a few months, and Nancy Pelosi "is a clear example of what happens when a woman gets in a position of power." Oops, Sean, I think you just insulted more than half the voting public, including a few prominent Republican women politicos (not excluding such conservative icons as Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, Condi Rice and Liddy Dole). You just bared your true misogynistic, female-repressing macho male soul.

But I'm angrier after listening to what are supposed to be genuine journalists repeatedly condemning Pelosi's trip and speculating as to the "damage" it's going to do the Democrats without once informing their audience that not only have numerous Republican Congressmen recently made the same trek to Syria and Assad, Pelosi's group included a Republican Congressman, and each member of her delegation explicitly stated that they affirmed Bush's own message. The hypocrisy evident in the Bush administration's and the media's attack upon Pelosi is appalling.

Yet the White House had no criticism of the trip to Syria by three Republican House members before Pelosi's delegation arrived there this week nor of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), who visited Syria after Pelosi, Lantos and their colleagues had left. Pelosi's group included Republican Rep. David Hobson of Ohio and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the House.

Issa, who is Lebanese American, criticized Bush for failing to engage in the dialogue necessary to overcome the United States' differences with Syria.

The attention given to Pelosi since her ascension to the Speakership, and the attacks upon her, make me very, very susceptible to the notion that Sean Hannity's attitude is shared by a large portion of influencers. And that the nation -- or at least the media -- is "ready" for a female president only in that it is prepared to savage her for presuming to usurp a man's "power."

UPDATE: More here.

The real story here is 180 degrees from what the pundits have been preaching. While Speaker Pelosi has been in the Middle East letting Assad and others know that Americans are united in their support for human rights and opposition to terrorism, the right has been sitting on their couches, lobbing messages of division. While Bush was attacking her at home, she was supporting him abroad.

Just who should be embarrassed?