Hillary's Blames Us, Hillary's Right Wing Connections, Hillary's ill Use of Chelsea, GOP Switch for Obama, Iraq Still a Mess & General Deceit.

I've honestly wanted to avoid the internecine warfare going on right now in the Democrat party.

I picked my candidate quite awhile ago and by all indications he's going to win. So I decided, why add to the rancor.

But here I am adding to it.

It's not because Hillary's blaming MoveOn.org and the activist base of what is supposed to be her own party for her poor performance in the primaries.

Which in itself is an incredibly stupid move for such an incredibly intelligent woman.

The calls for her resignation will treble by the end of this weekend. With
every new sign of her contempt for the very voters she wants to step on in her
ascent to the presidency, it ought to be clear that these voters are voting for
their own silencing and negation when they vote for Clinton. It ought to be
clear that they are voting against the very beliefs that make the Democratic
Party the greatest party in the world. If Clinton isn’t proud of that tradition,
then she shouldn’t be running as a Democrat. If Clinton isn’t proud of the
Democratic base, then the Democratic base in Pennsylvania ought to leave it up
to the Republicans to win Clinton the primary nomination.

Clinton ought to know that the Democratic base doesn’t
split...not these days. In the last several years, the Democratic base has grown
strong together, united by the disparagements of the right wing, which for too
long and too often mocked and taunted “Northeast liberals.” We grew stronger
together, and we stood strongly together when we all shared in the victories of
2006. All of us, united as a party in a way we had grown unaccustomed to.

It's not like the Clinton campaign is actually fooling very many folks. After eight years of politics Karl Rove style, it's starting to get obvious, as well as old.

And the Clintons are running as the Rove Republicans. If they fail to
destroy Barack Obama as effectively as Karl Rove -- George W. Bush's master of
the dark arts -- destroyed Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, with tactics
just as brutal but even more personal, then they will have driven American
politics to a critical point. They will have shown that the paradigm that has
reigned in US politics for at least two decades has been shattered.

That's what is being tested this week. It may be the most important
vote in America until the final one, in November.

Obama has been pummelled by a Democrat in ways never witnessed in a
primary campaign.

I'm not even writing this because Hillary's seems to be getting cozy with the same right wing that did it's best to destroy her family. Although, I do find that kinda sick.

(CNN) – Hillary Clinton's campaign is pointing to its Pennsylvania primary
endorsement Sunday morning by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - the latest in a
stunning series of recent rapprochements with previous conservative media
foes.

The Tribune-Review is owned and published by conservative Richard Mellon
Scaife — a frequent critic of the Clintons who helped fund The Arkansas Project,
a series of exhaustive investigations into former President Bill Clinton.

The New York senator famously built a relationship with former critic
Rupert Murdoch, whose New York Post frequently blasted both Clintons. The
Australian-born media baron even hosted a fundraiser for her during her second
Senate run.

But over the past few months, her presidential campaign has taken its
apparent embrace of former media adversaries to a new level, sending reporters
articles that praise Clinton and attack Barack Obama drawn from conservative
outlets including the National Review and the American Spectator, and quotes
from Republican pundits like Ed Rollins and Grover Norquist.

And former President Bill Clinton made an appearance on talker Rush
Limbaugh's show the day of the Texas and Ohio primaries - contests in which the
conservative radio host had urged listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton as a
means of sabotaging the Democratic nominating process.

This, in the long run, is probably a good thing. There is going to be a fight in the Democrat party over the direction that the party is going to take anyway, so this will be a good way to get the lines drawn and see who wins. The Democrats are going to have to be either a progressive party or Republican lites. Blue Dogs, watch out.

Hillary's win at any cost campaign is bad enough, but what makes me so dead set against her is the way that she is exploiting her daughter, who I think is just an all around good person, to pressure delegates. Bill and Hillary should be ashamed to put their daughter in that position. They should be ashamed to put the delegates in the position to have to explain to Chelsea why they think her mother doesn't deserve to be president.

WASHINGTON — Nancy Larson’s most difficult conversation was, by far, the
one with Chelsea Clinton.


“It was just heartbreaking,” said Mrs. Larson, a Democratic
National Committee member from Minnesota and, more to the point, a
superdelegate who had initially pledged herself to Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton. This was last Saturday, after the former first daughter
learned that Mrs. Larson would be shifting her allegiance to Senator Barack
Obama.

“She is a delightful young woman who loves her mother very much,” Mrs.
Larson said. “She was really pushing me. She kept asking me why I was doing
this. She just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ”

I think that I can answer the "why".

A lot of folks are sick and tired of George W. Bush and the extreme Right, even Republicans and the right wing smear of Hillary still sticks in a lot of people's minds. McCain's positioning himself to be a bush clone and that leaves one choice. Fortunately, this choice is quite impressive. Here's a couple of examples of what's happening around the country.

What's happening in Bucks mirrors trends throughout Pennsylvania, where the
state Democratic Party has added a remarkable 300,000 voters since January.
Nearly half of these Democrats, according to the state board of elections, are
new or previously unregistered voters lured by the excitement of the
Clinton-Obama race. The other half are former Republicans and independents who
switched to vote in the Democratic primary, mostly for Obama. Before the March
24 registration deadline (only registered Democrats may vote in the April 22
primary), the Obama campaign made an all-out effort to convert disaffected
Republicans, otherwise known as "Obamicans."

And if it's happening even here in Oklahoma, I'd be willing to bet that it's got to be nation wide.

Oklahoma-based journalist Richard L. Fricker was surprised when chatting
with his Republican niece to find that she wasn’t happy with John McCain and was
open to voting for Barack Obama -- but was hostile toward Hillary Clinton, a
pattern that the latest Washington
Post poll also has detected.

She and her husband embraced Republicanism a decade ago, during the sordid
scandals of the Clinton years and her ties to the GOP grew stronger during the
early stages of George W. Bush’s presidency amid the patriotism around 9/11 and
the “war on terror.”

Today, however, they are planning to vote for Barack Obama, if given
the chance.

Meanwhile, as I sit here and bitch about Hillary, we have American troops putting their lives on the line for no reason in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, April 20 -- Heavy fighting broke out in Baghdad on Sunday following a
particularly deadly night in the eastern part of the city. The clashes came a
day after Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to wage an open war against U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces.

Yeah, Moqtada's pretty upset and I think that's he's holding the strong hand in this game.

A full-blown uprising by Sadr's Mahdi Army militia would be a major setback to the security
improvements in Iraq over the past year, credited largely to his cease-fire order
last summer. The Mahdi Army, which waged two bloody rebellions against U.S.
troops in 2004, has shown in the past how quickly it can gather thousands of
fighters.

"Do you want a third uprising?" Sadr said in the statement.

The smart answer would be no.

In yesterday's post I had the NYT's article on the military analysts that the media are using to give us the low down on Iraq. It's basically a scam to to put make up on a pig by ex-military officers who also have financial intrests with defense contractors. What a racket. Here's more on that.

NEW YORK The front-page David Barstow epic in today's New York Times on how
the Pentagon, starting in 2002, assembled a crew of retired military officers to
disseminate propaganda via all-too-willing network and cable news outlets is
drawing wide attention (see other story). Barstow aptly refers to this as "a
kind of media trojan horse."

Even if it confirms what many have already sensed the details are truly
damning and shocking -- more Orwell than oh, well. And it continues up to the
present day, with the revelation that Gen. Petraeus met with members of this
propaganda group just two weeks ago (he had met with them previously, as well).
"Anything we can do to help," one analyst described this most recent meeting.

The entire lengthy article, and special interactive and original source
features, are posted at www.nytimes.com. But a few angles:

Check out the link for the angles. It's a good read. A sorry situation, but a good read.

Once again I'll leave you with what passes for humor on the right. Remember that this is put out by the crowd that elected George W. Bush. I may be a country boy, but I know irony when I see it.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Obama is a 'post turtle'."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just want to help the dumb ass get down."

Sure sounds like the Bush presidency to me.

It's Monday and you know the money you make this week won't buy as much as it did last week. You have my admiration.

Later.