Category: Politics (explicit)

Posted on

Soft side successfully deployed, sir!

Now that Obama has crossed the delegate finish-line for the Democratic nomination . . . it’s time for the finger-pointing! Today’s WSJ has a fun article that details the mismanagement, backbiting and strategic idiocy of the Clinton campaign.

For a while now, I’ve been marveling over the Clinton camp’s contention that the Obama has had a free ride, what with his, um, being, half-black and having middle and last names that are markedly similar to those of America’s recent public enemies #1a and #1b.

Even more audacious, I thought, was the complaint that sexism was holding Sen. Clinton back. This was utter BS, as the candidate actually benefited from the lowered expectations the public has for women. Think back to the days before the New Hampshire primary in January, when Sen. Clinton cried on camera. It’s clear to me that if a male candidate had done such a thing, he’d be laughed off the campaign trail as a weakling (I deleted several much harsher terms before settling on that one).

(Oh, and her crying-jag lament of, “I have so many opportunities for this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards,” struck me as a really chilling choice of words.)

The WSJ article is a hoot, because it explores what a mixed-up organization Sen. Clinton assembled, in concert with her lack of understanding of the nomination process. One of my favorite lines was about the campaign’s chief strategist, Mark Penn (dutifully put through the Drew Friedmanizer, below):

Critics’ bigger complaint was that from the campaign’s start Mr. Penn had been its only pollster. Other campaigns typically use many pollsters to provide alternative views; Sen. Obama has had up to four. Ms. Solis Doyle says that throughout 2006 and 2007, she urged Sen. Clinton to add more. Sen. Clinton told advisers Mr. Penn is “brilliant,” and multiple pollsters would slow consensus on strategy.

But top aides chafed that Mr. Penn used his control of “the numbers” to win most disagreements. “He could go straight to the [former] president of the United States, who in turn got to Hillary,” says a senior strategist. “After a while, people just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Hey, look, this is how she wants her campaign run.'”

Mr. Penn defends his polling analyses, and counters that others were responsible for budgets and field operations. “The misleading thing here is, the title of chief strategist connotes that I was in charge of things,” he said. “It was a much more complex structure than any title connotes.”

Anyway, congrats are in order to Sen. Obama and his campaign. As Eddie Griffin recently put it (according to Page 6), “Barack Obama is about to get the Democratic nomination. It’ll be the first time in history that a black man beat a white woman and didn’t go to jail for it.”

Posted on

Get low

Happy 60th anniversary week, Israel!

The Dead Sea

Photo of the Dead Sea by xnir. As he put it:

The Dead Sea is a salt lake between the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Jordan to the east. At 420 metres (1,378 ft) below sea level, its shores are the lowest point on Earth that are on dry land. At 330 m deep (1,083 feet), the Dead Sea is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.

Posted on

Beer-goggling at the WSJ

Last November, I wrote about how the Wall Street Journal’s infamous headshot illo-style — which I like to call The Drew Friedmanizer — had a vested interest in, well, portraying Hilary Clinton a bit unflatteringly:

Nowadays, I think they’re more concerned about derailing Sen. Obama’s campaign. Why, in today’s article about how both Democratic candidates are pandering sacks of shit reframing their messages on free trade as they campaign in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Clinton has been transformed:

Maybe she visited Glamour Shots by Deb.

(I like the carefully placed flag pin, although I think giving her a pearl necklace is a bit cruel.)

Posted on

Sun Roth

Today’s edition of the New York Sun’s Arts+ section continues to defend its title as Official Newspaper of Gil Roth (and several other Roths, as seen in #s 1 and 2):

  1. Roth Time Redux, discussing the impact of Dieter Roth,
  2. a new exhibition on Philip Guston, with a shout-out to Philip Roth,
  3. MoMA’s screening of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West,
  4. Daphne Merkin reviewing a book on the history of crazy-ass women, and
  5. and an absolute smackdown of Benny Morris’ version of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even better: my coworkers believe the Sun must be “too conservative,” so they avoid reading it in the lunchroom, leaving me a pristine copy! However, since the owner of our company canceled our subscription to the NYTimes, which he believes is “too liberal,” the only other choices are the Wall Street Journal and the NYPost. . .

(BONUS! Today’s Sun also has a John Stossel op-ed piece on why the FAA’s inspections of airlines (and governmental inspections in general) are useless at best.)

Posted on

Peace process: solved!

In a Washington Post op-ed piece this morning, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the founder of Hamas, explains what the Israelis need to do for peace:

A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

Note that this would constitute the starting point for negotiations. At least al-Zahar makes a concession that the Holocaust actually happened, remarking, “Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people.”

His big threat seems to be “demographics”; that is, that the Palestinians will out-breed the Israelis. But that notion seems to be undercut when he points out how many of his own kids and sons-in-law have been blown up.

Posted on

Head, meet wall

John Crudele, the very good business columnist at the NYPost, regularly warns us to take the Labor Department’s monthly employment figures with a grain of salt; the birth/death model they employ can fudge a lot of employment stats.

The numbers that came out today are pretty depressing — a loss of 80,000 jobs, and a revised estimate of increased job losses in January and February — but Crudele points out that the April figures (to be released May 2) tend to be twice as “generous” with the number of new jobs that Labor thinks were created, but can’t prove. So we’ll probably see uninformed commentary about how the economy is turning around, about one month from today.

This NYTimes article on the unemployment report isn’t as entertaining as Crudele’s writing, although it does point out that Hillary Clinton “referred to herself as a ‘Paulette Revere’ whose calls for financial assistance have gone unheeded.”

After some harrowing stories of industrial regions that have seen tremendous job losses, the article concludes with this anecdote:

The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world’s biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff — about 120 workers — this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.

Until recently, Parul Vora, 28, was earning a six-figure salary as part of an elite research team at Yahoo. Ms. Vora, who has a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost her job in early February.

“I had never been laid off and never imagined being laid off,” Ms. Vora said. “I was sad personally and professionally.”

But Ms. Vora has better prospects than most. She said she has already been wooed by several potential employers.

“There are a lot of jobs out there, but I’m pretty picky,” Ms. Vora said. “My biggest worry is finding a new job I like.”

Seriously: that’s the end of the article. See, the times are tough for everyone, even a 28-year-old MIT post-grad who lives in the most expensive city in the country and who counts as unemployed, but is lining up job offers and doesn’t know which one to take.

I guess they’re writing to their demographic or something.

Posted on

Cajun style!

I was going to post this column by James Carville just so you could read his defense of his “Judas” reference to Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Obama. I mean, it’s a pretty entertaining read:

Heck, I give myself some credit for managing to get the Clinton and Obama campaigns to agree on something — that neither wanted to be associated with my remarks.

But then I got to the end and was struck by this phrase:

Most of the stuff I’ve ever said is pretty insignificant and by in large has been said off the cuff and without much thought to the potential consequences.

“By in large”? I always thought it was “by and large.” This conversation would seem to confirm that (well, since it’s derived from nautical terminology, they propose “by and larrrrrrrge,” but still), but since my just deserts mistake a few months ago, I’m gunshy. Maybe this is just how you say “by and large” . . . Cajun style!

Any insight on this?