Somebody call Lamont Williams!   It seems that "Women's Voices, Women's Votes" is screwing around again.

This time, it's West Virginia.  

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There's a diary on the Rec list right now by teacherken, someone whose writings I admire, especially in his focus on education.   It uses Eugene Robinson's column in the Washington Post as a jumping-off point to argue that that Hillary Clinton may be arrogant, but not a racist.

I'm a fan of Eugene Robinson as well, but I find this partial exoneration of Hillary to be far too kind to her and her campaign, given what they've said over the last few days.

As many people in teacherken's diary have said, in different ways:  racist is as racist does.  Forgive the Forrest Gump-ism, but that puts it in a nutshell.

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Hillary Clinton really told off those those ELITIST economists on Sunday morning with Little George.   These so-called "experts" had the gall to oppose her gas tax pander holiday, and The Woman who has Testicles (h/t: James Matalin-Carville)  stood up and smacked them down good:

INDIANAPOLIS — This morning, George Stephanopoulos began his televised interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by asking if she could name a single economist who supported her plan for a gas-tax suspension.

Mrs. Clinton did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on the ABC program “This Week.” A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

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I haven't participated in the Wright discussion much, so please indulge me...

Yesterday Barack Obama ended the relationship between himself and Rev. Wright in no uncertain terms.  Period.  Full stop.  

He should leave it here, and refuse to address the matter any further.  And I don't mean only address it here and there, or only with certain interviewers, or just in "casual" moments (these don't exist in a campaign, alas)...

... I mean put the kibosh on the subject whenever someone brings it up again.  Get them nothing.

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[NOTE: I humbly request that you read this diary all the way to the end.  And if the title and initial content make you angry, please skip right down.  Thank you.]

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It's been covered very little in this campaign, but Hillary Clinton used to work for actual Communists and Black Panthers -- members of organizations whose radical agendas believed that the United States is a corrupt, decadent, criminal nation.  

Here's Carl Bernstein describing how Hillary worked for radicals who rejected America...

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If you take all the statements that John McCain has made about military and foreign affairs over the last few years and really examined them, it paints a portrait of a absolutely clueless man.  

McCain's perceived "strength" is in this very territory.  Republicans, the media, and unhelpful Democrats (ahem, Sen. Clinton) keep feeding us this picture of McCain as some kind of wizard on all things having to do with the military, and/ or foreign matters.   Even McCain himself says that the domestic arena is relatively weak for him, but it's taken as a matter of faith that he has the other side of the job MORE than covered.

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According to John Cole, Hillary's campaign sent out an email today that contained the following Obama-is-doomed messages:

Grover Norquist: 'That sentence will lose him the election... He just announced to rural America: I don't like you.' "Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who leads an influential weekly meeting of conservatives, went as far as to argue that Obama's line would cost Democrats the White House. 'That sentence will lose him the election,' Norquist told ABC News. 'He just announced to rural America: 'I don't like you.'" [abcnews.com, 4/11/08]

Republican strategist Ed Rollins: Q: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how damaging is this?" Rollins: 'Ten.' [CNN, Lou Dobbs, 4/11/08]

Damn, I've gone and supported Obama. And Hillary is not happy with me.

Man.  I really should apologize.

Yeah, I should apologize up and down to Hillary.  She's been such a great national leader for 35 years, fighting for us every step of the way.  

She's gone out of her way to help other Democrats, and make sure that she sticks by them against the Republican agenda.    Things like the AUMF vote and Kyl-Lieberman were really good for the Democratic party!  It showed that Democrats are strong -- especially Hillary!

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This will be a short diary, especially given that I usually have trouble keeping mine down to a reasonable length.   But I mostly wanted to get this MoveOn ad out there, and hope that some friendly frontpager puts this ad up in the higher end real estate.

Though I called it an anti-McCain ad, it really is a condemnation of everyone who has kept the Iraq disaster going -- from Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?) to Tom Friedman, inventor of the infamous "Friedman Unit" (a phrase I hear the Mustached One despises).

The ad is directly below the break:

Patrick McHenry, Republican member of the house of Representatives, is a notorious chickenhawk.  He didn't serve in the U.S. military,  despite being a vocal cheerleader for the Iraq occupation at every opportunity, and he's a relentless propagandist who questions the patriotism of those who question the Iraq invasion and occupation.  

But he recently showed his true colors, and bad luck for him, it's on tape.

You see, Patrick McHenry is happy to show his contempt for soldiers who actually ARE serving in Iraq.

Please read on, for yet another tale of what Republicans really think of our troops.  And the tape to prove it!

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This statement is from Hillary Clinton's campaign website, part of a charming list titled "Just Embellished Words: Senator Obama’s Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements," released a mere three days ago, on March 25:

Sen. Obama consistently and falsely claims that he was a law professor. The Sun-Times reported that, "Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school. In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles. Details matter." In academia, there's a significant difference: professors have tenure while lecturers do not. [Hotline Blog, 4/9/07; Chicago Sun-Times, 8/8/04]

Though the allegation was relaunched a few days back, it's been part of the Clinton campaign's bill of anti-Obama particulars for a while.

Well, guess what?  It's nonsense.    (more below:)

In the five years since the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, history has been revised by many interested parties.  The myths usually involve some variation on a theme:

"Saddam Hussein was a threat, and everyone agreed that something had to be done.  We were all fooled."

...with the latter sentence applied either to Saddam, or George W. Bush, or both.  

People who were either for invading Iraq, or who were wishy-washy on the point, now claim to have been against this epic disaster because they have criticized (however mildly, however many years later) the way the war was managed.

On this 5th anniversary of the greatest foreign policy debacle of modern times, I'd like to remind us all that there were voices explicitly against this war -- people who warned us, very precisely, of the results we see today.  

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It was rough for many of us, being a Democrat yesterday.  We saw one of the more dynamic members of our party, NY governor Elliot Spitzer, revealed as someone who likes to frequent expensive prostitutes.

There have been a few diaries on the Recommended List here questioning the particulars of the case -- the political motives of all involved, the methods used to catch Spitzer, and so on.  I hope such work will continue.  As diarist eugene says, borrowing from Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake, these are the more important questions, ultimately.  If our justice system is an arm of political interests, that's a real danger to our democracy

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The Chicago Tribune has done a pretty thorough investigation of Senator Clinton's claims of "experience," particularly in the foreign policy and crisis management arenas.

I'd say the short take on it is:  Hillary is greatly exaggerating both the scope and importance of what she has actually accomplished.  But do read it for yourself.

Excerpt:

The debate over readiness for the global arena is emerging as the flash point in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, crystallized by a dramatic Clinton campaign commercial asking who is best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to the White House during a crisis.

Clinton says she is the answer, arguing that Obama's major achievement was his early opposition to the Iraq war in 2002. Indeed, Obama doesn't have much in the way of experience managing foreign crises, nor does Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, for that matter. In fact, it is rare for any president to have that kind of experience before coming into office.

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"I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

-- Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is absolutely right:  she has a Lifetime of Experience.   For her all whole life, she's been experiencing things.   She turned 60 years old this year, and for 60 of those 60 years, she has been alive and things have been happening in her life.   Do you understand?   She has been experiencing things.  

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First of all, congratulations to Hillary Clinton and her supporters here on this site.  She had a great night, and revitalized her campaign.

Second -- I'm aware that the title is presumptuous.  Outside of many dime-a-dozen rumors, we really have no idea if John Edwards is behind Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or if he is simply neutral.   So I grant that we don't know who, if anyone, John Edwards supports.  

I'm a former Edwards supporter who was very disappointed when he dropped out of the race, but understood his reasons for doing so.  He just couldn't have won, and he knew it.

I wanted Edwards as our nominee, and while I liked Barack Obama a lot, I had some reservations about him.  (Then again, I had some reservations about JRE too.  No candidate is perfect, and the search for The One will always end in some disappointment.)

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At Rifftrax.com, the minds behind the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 have done a series of mostly non-political spoofs of current political ads.

See them below, or on their blog...

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Hillary Clinton ruins Christmas:

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People of Daily Kos,

While many of you here deny that you are a member of a cult, I freely embrace it.  I can say without hesitation that I only feel safe and happy when part of a mindless, ant-like collective that follows its leader without questions or complaints.  

I really don't know what the problem with that is.   But apparently some of you take umbrage at being called part of a cult.   Weird.

Well, let me set you straight about a few things below the fold.