Month: March 2008

I really hate to use profanity like this on the blog – but I think it is called for under the circumstances. The New York Times is reporting that:

…influential fund-raisers for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have stepped up their behind-the-scenes pressure on national party leaders to resolve the matter, with some even threatening to withhold their donations to the Democratic National Committee unless it seats the delegates from the two states or holds new primaries there.

According to the Times article, Ms. Clinton’s donors have donated just under $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee – and they are threatening to stop supporting the Democratic party if the DNC doesn’t cave in to their demands. I have some hope that Howard Dean will not give in to Ms. Clinton’s bullying. But he undeniably is being pressured, bullied, strong-armed. And big donors today have an outsize influence in the DNC.

So far, the DNC has been lagging behind the Republican National Committee in fundraising. This is exceptional considering the money advantage both Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama have had over any of the Republican presidential candidates. I support the DNC – and no matter who the Democratic presidential candidate is, and no matter who wins in November, I want a strong Democratic party.

But today, I am donating to show that Ms. Clinton’s backers do not own the Democratic party. I may not be able to donate $63,500 like Paul Cejas – and I won’t try to hold the Democratic party hostage to my personal views. But I am donating $50.00 right now to make a point. I hope you can show your support as well.

Mr. Dean has not taken sides in the current primary battle – but is trying to enforce the rules that Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama explicitly and publicly agreed to last year. Ms. Clinton’s backers are now trying to bully the DNC to break the rules and hand Ms. Clinton the nomination against the will of those people who have voted so far.

This is outrageous. We are the Democratic party. Let’s show Hillary’s big money pals whose party this is.

(If you just want to donate to the DNC without showing support for Mr. Obama’s candidacy, try here. Otherwise, to show support, donate here to “We are the Democratic party.”)

(I am not a big fan of Ms. Clinton – but I don’t hate her. This post is not about Ms. Clinton herself – but about my outrage at the tactics of her supporters. Shame on them.

And Ms. Clinton – if you don’t condemn these anti-democratic and anti-Democratic tactics, shame on you.)

Updated: Let me be clear – I support Barack Obama in the primary – and have since before he won more states, more delegates, and more votes than Ms. Clinton. But if Ms. Clinton were in the position Mr. Obama was in – I would not want Mr. Obama to win by extortion.

2nd Update:

The Drudge Report is highlighting the news – which means that it will likely dominate the news cycle tomorrow. Obviously, most commentators will say that the tactics of the Clinton campaign are wrong. But nothing would prove them wrong more than a donation to the DNC – allowing the Democratic party to ignore the powerful individuals who are trying to hijack the party.

3rd update: NJ Mom over at dKos interprets the story in much the same way:

I’ve been concerned for a while that the Obama/Clinton contest is becoming a surrogate battle between the Dean and McAuliffe wings of the DNC. It is a battle between those that believe in the “important states” vs. “the other 40”, between DLCers and DFAers, between an addiction to corporate/special interest money and those that believe that small donors in vast numbers are democracy at its most powerful.

What I read in the NYT today, makes me concerned that McAuliffe and those that he represents are trying to ambush Dean using Clinton donors.

The NetRoots helped Dean get where he is today. With the DNC coffers very low right now, he is under attack. He needs us.

N.B. This post was written in the midst of an obviously contentious election campaign – one in which I had strongly considered supporting Senator Clinton but after careful evaluation, had come to the conclusion that Barack Obama was the only candidate suited to our current challenges. While I stand by the content of the post, in retrospect, the tone is a bit overheated.

Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The race card and Ferraro

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in Slate today about the “race card” and Geraldine Ferraro:

The racist card is textbook strawmanship. As opposed to having to address whether her comments were, as Obama said, “wrongheaded” and “absurd,” Ferraro gets to debate something that only she can truly judge—the contents of her heart.

It’s a clever and unassailable move: How would you actually prove that Ferraro is definitively a racist? Furthermore, it appeals to our national distaste for whiners. It’s irrelevant that the Obama campaign never called Ferraro a racist. It’s also irrelevant that Ferraro said the same thing of Jesse Jackson in 1988. And it’s especially irrelevant that Ferraro apparently believes that Obama’s Ivy League education, his experience as an elected official, and his time of service on the South Side of Chicago pale in comparison with the leg-up he’s been given as a black male in America. By positioning herself as a victim of political correctness run amok, Ferraro stakes out the high ground of truth telling.

Catholicism Excerpts from my Journals Life Morality Prose Reflections

Mock-forbidden

Excerpts from my Journals

[Dated August 18, 2001.]

What a sickness it is, Rory, this latter-day post-Christian sex. To be pagan it would be one thing, on easement taken easily in a rosy old pagan world; to be Christian it would be another thing, fornication forbidden and not even to be thought of in the new life, and I can see that it need not be thought of if there were such a life. But to be neither pagan nor Christian but this: oh this is sickness, Rory. For it to be longed after, longed after as a fruit not really forbidden but mock-forbidden and therefore secretly prized, prized first last and always by the cult of the naughty nice wherein everyone is nicer than Christians and naughtier than pagans, wherein there are dreamed not one but two American dreams…

Binx Bolling in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, page 207.

Election 2008 Obama Politics Scandal-mongering The Clintons

Suspicious activities…

Last November, Geraldine Ferraro made some headlines by trying to defend Senator Hillary Clinton against accusations that she was playing the gender card by…playing the gender card. I wrote about this back then. In a post dated November 5, 2007, I wrote:

Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential candidate in 1984, spoke to the New York Times attempting to defend Hillary against accusations that Hillary’s campaign was “playing the gender card” in responding to the quote politics of pile-on unquote. Judge for yourself how well she did:

“We can’t let them do this in a presidential race,” [Ferraro] said. “They say we’re playing the gender card. We are not. We are not. We have got to stand up. It’s discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman.”

Is it just me, or does Ferraro play the woman’s card as she says she’s not? It seems that Hillary isn’t the only member of her campaign who can contradict herself within a two minute time limit. I think this type of verbal feat – taking two opposing positions within two minutes – should be called a “pulling a Hillary”.

Now that Ms. Ferraro is in the news again, this post has started getting some search engine traffic. What I find odd is that since March 11, the post has gotten about 100 hits from Google and other search engines – and of those hundred hits, 8 people have left comments – an unusually high percentage for this blog. Additionally, most of the comments are pro-Hillary – also unusual. None of this would be exceptional if:

a. the blog post were new;
b. the blog post were about Ms. Ferraro’s most recent comments, or comments significantly similar;
c. the blog post discussed race in any way;
d. the comments were not so similar-sounding, and all by women (except one);
e. any of the comments had responded to the post in any manner.

Clearly – none of the commentors read the post they were commenting on. The comments they are referring to were about race. Not a single comment mentions anything about the post – or in fact mentions that the post is over four months old. ((I should also mention that two of the comments were defending Mr. Obama.)) Recently, two sites linked to this post: a commenter on BarackObama.com and MyNewswire.

I don’t know quite what to make of this. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? Does anyone have a plausible explanation for this?

Update: Ten more people “viewed” the post, and I received one more comment. I’m also noticing that two of the commentors – Catherine Fadden and Eileen Lewis – have:

Requested to “follow” the post; and
Given fake email addresses – or at least, email addresses for which I am getting this error: “A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error”

That means that my email box is getting errors for every comment posted.

Excerpts from my Journals Politics Prose Reflections The Clintons

“Cynicism”

Excerpts from my Journals

[Dated July 29, 2001, 11:09 pm.]

[My father] has become a social and economic conservative, but remains a liberal with regards to class and wealth; he keeps talking about my “cynicism” – but my “cynicism” was born out of the stories of Nixon’s law-breaking and tales of papal corruption he told me when I was younger, and nourished by facts I came onto myself. My “cynicism” is mislabeled as such. I have great pride in my country – at the same time, I cannot in good conscience toast to either, “My country, may she always be right; but my country, right or wrong.” The power of denial is strong – and in everyone’s life, there is the choice between truth and repose. Which is how my father can construe my defenses of Clinton as naive, but my dislike of Bush as cynicism.

I wrote this some time ago; and since this time, my father has come to change his mind on President George W. Bush. But I especially liked this passage because I see similar sentiments to those my father held in 2001 in the anti-Obama backlash. Perhaps it would be better labeled the anti-Obama-supporters backlash. From the right and left, Obama supporters are labeled naive; and from the left, Obama supporters are called out as cynics for allowing their candidate to benefit from attacks on Ms. Clinton – and for attacking Ms. Clinton themselves. Although I am sure that Obama supporters include their share of cynics and their share of the naive, I do not think either group is dominant.

The problem I see is with the critics who assume that you cannot be critical of America and proud of it; who assume that you cannot be hopeful for change and also clear-eyed about power; who assume that a candidate cannot both criticize his opponents and represent a “new politics”. All of us recognize within ourselves the complexity that allows us to be both proud and critical, hopeful and pragmatic – yet we do not acknowledge that complexity within our opponents.

Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Obama Politics The Clintons

Top McCain aide: Thanks for softening Obama up for us.

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 12, 2008
7 Comments on Top McCain aide: Thanks for softening Obama up for us.

[digg-reddit-me]I was listening to a podcast this morning and came across some comments that I am surprised haven’t gotten more attention.

Last Friday, March 7, the Council on Foreign Relations hosted a discussion among top foreign policy advisors to Mr. Obama (Susan Rice), Ms. Clinton (Mara Rudman), and Mr. McCain (Randy Scheunemann). There’s audio of the whole event here. The event wasn’t insightful, but the tensions between the campaigns kept it from being boring. As you can imagine there were a few testy exchanges, including one where after Ms. Rudman told a rather large fib about Mr. Obama and NAFTA. More on that later.

The most revealing comment was not on foreign policy – a matter on which all of the advisors remained rather bland – but on the Democratic primaries. Mr. Scheunemann addressed Ms. Rudman:

Well, let me first address what Mara said about the experience and judgment. Can I just say, please keep running those 3 a.m. phone call ads about who you want to answer the phone – (laughter) – because we like those.

That’s right – a top McCain advisor was thanking a top Clinton advisor for softening up the likely Democratic nominee. At this point, everyone paying close attention to the Democratic primaries has noticed that short of a huge stumble by Mr. Obama, he will be the Democratic nominee. His leads in delegates, states, and the popular vote look insurmountable – and in the event he wins all of these categories, it seems extremely unlikely that the superdelegates will impose a different choice on the party. Even after Ms. Clinton’s best week in the campaign so far, she lost ground on Mr. Obama.

Yet Ms. Clinton has decided on a strategy which severely undercuts her party’s nominee against his Republican opponent – and seems extremely unlikely to win her the nomination.

I’m sure John McCain will call her to thank her after she concedes.

NAFTA

Less exciting, but still interesting is the other exchange I mentioned above was between Ms. Rice and Ms. Rudman. (Although many people missed it, Ms. Rice refers to this story which broke last week indicating that the comments supposedly made by an Obama aide to the Canadian government were actually made by a Clinton aide. Of course, Ms. Clinton’s surrogates have continued to use this story to attack Mr. Obama’s campaign as disingenuous, despite the fact that the Canadian government now reports that the campaign at fault was the Clinton’s.)

Rudman:
To me, the bigger question is, again, in how you approach tough situations, how you approach tough issues, how you approach challenging discussions with both friends and adversaries. And not only how you do it but how, frankly, the people who are working with and for you do it. And that’s where, I think, we are particularly dismayed to see what happened within the Obama campaign with their economic adviser because that was an example of just, you know, in however it played out, a perhaps lack of experience and how you communicated with a foreign government on a particularly delicate and sensitive issue….

(Cross talk.)

Jim Hoagland(moderator):
I’m going to stop an argument that you two have already had or your candidates have had – (laughter) –

I’m going to go to a questioner right here.

Life is not fair. (Laughter.)

Questioner:
Well, sometimes it is, and I’d really love to –

Hoagland:
If you’d state your name and any affiliation.

Questioner:
My name is Rebecca Barnard, Goldman Sachs, formerly of Senator Biden’s office.

I would just be very interested in hearing Senator Obama’s response to that last point, because it has – (laughter and applause) –

Hoagland:
The deck was stacked!

Rice:
Thank you, Rebecca. (Laughter.)

As the Canadian government has repeatedly acknowledged and has now been amply reported in the press, Austan Goolsbee said nothing to the Canadian government that he or Senator Obama have not said many times in public. And Mara, I think, in all fairness and with due respect, that needs to be clarified and acknowledged.

What he said is exactly what I just said, which is that when we revisit NAFTA, it is with the aim of putting binding labor and environmental standards into the core agreement. Anybody who wants to see the memo that the Canadian government wrote reporting on their meeting can find it on the Internet. You will find that that is exactly what Austan Goolsbee said.

You will also find that he made a general statement which was then taken out of context in the press reporting, which was that neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton nor the Democratic Party in general is protectionist. We want to fix certain specific agreements.

What happened was the summary paragraph of the memo is – those of you who have seen cables know – was not reflective of the body of the conversation and indeed, the quotations or the statements, the characterizations of Goolsbee’s statement in the body of the cable. So the summary was distorted. That was what was leaked to the press. And the Canadian government has said it wasn’t accurate and apologized.

And by the way, while we’re talking about this, now the press is reporting that indeed not only was there a contact which we have now acknowledged and explained from Senator Obama’s campaign that actually began with the Canadian government, not us, but in fact the Clinton campaign, at least that’s what the reports are suggesting, initiated a contact with the Canadian embassy or government for the same purpose. I have no idea if that’s true. There’s been a lot of false reporting on this.

Hoagland:
Well, maybe Mara can respond to that.

Rice:
But let’s be accurate.

Rudman:
No, I think that’s been completely denied by the campaign. There’s no name –

Rice:
Well, then, it can’t be true. Okay. (Laughter.)

Excerpts from my Journals Prose Reflections

Reflections on Writing

Excerpts from my Journals

[Undated. From sometime in the spring of 2000.]

Eventually writing empties you.

There is nothing left to write, to think. You still feel, but without the weight of a past. The danger in emptiness lies in confronting the emotions hidden underneath the endless layers of the day to day.

What’s left is usually painful.

Writing is a meditative process used to instill clarity in the writer.

It is as essential as sleep or bowel movements.

Election 2008 Iraq McCain Obama Politics The War on Terrorism

Steve King: Obama will be a savior to Al Qaeda

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date March 11, 2008

[digg-reddit-me] Representative Steve King, Republican from Iowa, yesterday stated:

Obama will certainly be viewed as a savior for them [referring to Al Qaeda]…

I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.

Despite a rebuke from Mr. McCain, Mr. King is standing by his remarks.

Mr. King did promise later that if

…we elect Obama to the presidency and he declares defeat, if they don’t dance in the streets, I will come and apologize to you and everybody in America.

We’ll have to remember in November – after Mr. King loses his seat in Congress as he deserves to – to rub this trash in his face.

Mr. Obama, of course, retained on the high road but rightly pointed out that our intelligence agencies have reported that in fact the Iraq war has played into Al Qaeda’s hands. He then scoffed:

But I have to say that Mr. King and individuals like him thrive on offensive or controversial statements as a way to get in the papers, so I don’t take it too seriously. I would hope Sen. McCain would want to distance himself from that kind of inflammatory and offensive remarks.

I’m sure we’ll see much more of this in the coming campaign – no matter how much Mr. McCain condemns it. This is sure to be one of the right wing propaganda machine’s main talking points against Mr. Obama (or Ms. Clinton). Although Mr. Obama’s response was adequate, I’d like to see a stronger response from him, and for him to pivot to his forward-looking strategy. Something like this:

I applaud Senator McCain for condemning these attacks. As I have said many times before, the Senator has a distinguished record of public service and he has, as I have, committed himself to running a clean and issue-based campaign. I have many disagreements with Senator McCain – one of which is about the strategy America must pursue in the War on Terrorism. Men like Representative King degrade our politics by trying to turn disagreements about strategy into virtual treason. I believe the best way to attack Al Qaeda is to focus our military and intelligence resources on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are still hiding nearly seven years after they attacked America on September 11. Senator McCain disagrees, and I respect that. But both of us want to protect American lives and interests – and whichever of us wins the coming election, we will do whatever we must to protect the United States – and Al Qaeda knows that. Congressman King should be ashamed that he is trying to play politics with national security. Republicans are not the only people who are fighting to protect American lives – there are intelligence officers, soldiers, diplomats, and politicians who are Democrats, Republicans, and independents. As Americans, we must unite in the face of the evil of organizations like Al Qaeda – and those who seek to divide us against ourselves, to portray our political opponents as friends of terrorists – they only serve to distract us from the real challenges we face. I would call on any Democratic office holder to withdraw from the Democratic party for comments like that. But I am thankful that Senator McCain has condemned these remarks as he has.

New York City Politics

Eliot Spitzer: Client #9?

[digg-reddit-me]I managed to get through the heavy traffic at The New York Times to get some information on their apparent exclusive scoop on Governor Eliot Spitzer’s “involvement” in a prostitution ring.

Some titillating details…

Emperors Club VIP apparently charged between $1,000 and $5,500 an hour for the services of it’s ladies of the night. It had offices in New York, Washington, London, Paris, and Miami.

The Web site [of the Emperors Club], which was disabled shortly after the arrests were announced, ranked the prostitutes on a scale of one to seven “diamonds.” A three-diamond woman, for example, could command a fee of $1,000 per hour. A seven-diamond woman cost more than $3,000 an hour.

From the Criminal Complaint – with the Times article identifying Spitzer as Client #9 – a record of a telephone conversation between “Rachelle” and “Kristen”, Kristen just having left Client #9’s hotel room:

Client #9 “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe – you know? I mean that…very basic things.”

No more details are given.

It is also suggested that Mr. Spitzer was a regular client. Shortly before he is about to meet “Kristen”, Mr. Spitzer asks “Rachelle” to remind him what “Kristen” looked like. “Rachelle” described “Kristen” as “an America, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 poinds.”

At the start of the incident described in the complaint February 11, 2008, Mr. Spitzer had an outstanding balance of $2,600 with the Emperor’s Club. This led to quite a number of phone calls and text messages back and forth trying to determine how he could pay appropriately. Eventually, he paid “Kristen” $4,100 according to the complaint.

Additional suggestive information: Mr. Spitzer’s liaison with “Kristen” was only revealed in the Complaint because he was soliciting across state lines – asking “Kristen” to travel from Manhattan down to Washington, where he was scheduled to appear before Congress the next day. This was how the Federal government got involved with the “interstate commerce”.

Possibly relevant information: the Lieutenant Governor of New York is David Paterson. Despite the fact that Mr. Spitzer did not choose to resign in his minute-and-a-half-long press conference – it’s hard to see how he avoids it if the Times is right about Mr. Spitzer being “Client #9”.

Update: I’m not that outraged by this. As a matter of public policy, it’s hard to see why high end prostitution should be illegal. (I differentiate between high end and normal prostitution, because normal prostitutes – because they are valued less – are at increased risk of drug dependence, physical abuse, exploitation, and sexually transmitted diseases. Normal prostitutes even suffer extremely high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, comparable to soldiers in a war zone.) It does seem typical that Mr. Spitzer prosecuted a number of prostitution rings as attorney general – and now finds himself labeled as the client of one.

Update II: ((Post time edited to reflect this update.)) I don’t think there is anything wrong with going over the salacious details of the lives of public officials – especially if they come out in a criminal investigation. There is a natural interest – at least for me – in the celebrity-style gossip. I generally have little to no interest in news about celebrities. But the same type of news about politicians does interest me, although I am almost and sometimes ashamed to admit it.

But some disturbing questions are beginning to be raised about how Mr. Spitzer came to be the target of this investigation – questions which my interest in the salacious details distracted me from. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake follows up the ABC New revelation that the operation to take down the prostitution ring apparently began when investigators noticed suspicious money transfers in Mr. Spitzer’s private accounts. Ms. Hamsher asks the logical question: Why was the federal government snooping around in Mr. Spitzer’s private financial records? How did this come to the government’s attention? Ms. Hamsher concludes:

There are all kinds of things about this that just don’t pass the smell test.

Scott Horton of Harper’s points out that this prosecution was under the little-used White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910.

Glenn Greenwald asks why it is only Mr. Spitzer’s name that has been leaked, suggesting that this entire prosecution might have been politically motivated.

Such a thought would not have occurred to most reasonable people just a few years ago – but the numerous revelations about directives to U.S. Attorneys to investigate Democratic officials that came out of the U.S. Attorneys’ scandal makes this seem plausible. There are certainly unanswered questions about how this investigation got started – and why.

ka1igu1a of the Freedom Democrats points out the similarities of this incident to HBO’s The Wire. He shares a similar distaste for Mr. Spitzer that I have had. I have always considered him to be somewhat of a bully – even if he shares a significant part of the agenda I espouse. I am happy to have him as a governor – but the thought of him as president would concern me.

Emily Bazelton over at Slate gives probably the best public policy model and argument for making prostitution illegal, in contrast to my point above.

Excerpts from my Journals Politics The Clintons

Clinton and the Mummy

Excerpts from my Journals

[digg-reddit-me][Early June 1998.]

…the president made a crack about a five-hundred-year-old Inca mummy that had just been discovered at the summit of a Peruvian volcano. “You know, if I were a single man, I might just ask that mummy out,” Clinton said. “That’s a good-looking mummy.”

Afterward, McCurry [Clinton’s press secretary] told the president this had not been a wise comment for a man with his reputation for philandering. Clinton snapped at him…

On the ensuing flight to Milwalkee that night…McCurry had a drink, and he was shooting the breeze with a dozen reporters clogging the aisle. One scribe asked about Clinton’s appraisal of the mummy.

“Probably does look good compared to the mummy he’s been fucking,” McCurry said.

Had one of the reporters published the remark, even with the expletive deleted, McCurry’s tenure at the White House probably would have been over.

From Spin Cycle by Howard Kurtz, pages 48-49.