If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait (who inspired the word "Chaitred" for his pioneer work on Bush hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and still shining to her. "She should now go gentle into the political night," he advised in January. "Go Already!" he repeated in March, when she had failed to act on his suggestion. "No Really, You Should Go," he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even less likely to take his advice. "Now that loathing seems a lot less irrational," he wrote of the right wing's prior distaste for both the Clintons. "We just really wish they'd go away."
An absolute romp. On a serious note, I don't think you can discount the possibility that many conservatives, like me, are worried that this is probably a Democratic year, and Obama has troubling ties.
Now these associations over here.... Hendrik Hertzberg attempts to rescue Obama from the Weatherman associations But get this:
1. Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, were prominent members of the Weather Underground nearly forty years ago, when Barack Obama was a child. They are now, respectively, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an associate professor of law at Northwestern. They long ago abandoned the political ideas they supported in their youth, which speaks well for them, but they never acknowledged that those ideas were mindless and vicious, which does not. They live in the same Chicago neighborhood as Obama.
I assume that Hertzberg has some backup for his claim that Ayera and Dohrn long ago abandoned the political ideas they supported in their, heh, youth. I certainly see no evidence of that abandonment. And Ayers was 31 and Dohrn 33 in 1975 when they made their "Underground" documentary.
He goes on to attempt to smear Hillary by association because she was on the board of Wal-Mart with a guy who didn't like unions:
Obama has never served on any corporate boards. Hillary Clinton, however, was a member of the board of Wal-Mart for six years, ending in 1992, when her husband ran for President. Her service on the board coincided with that of John Tate, who summed up his views on labor relations as follows: “Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off of the productive labor of people who work for a living.” These views were not youthful follies, left behind long before Tate joined the board.
Again, the notion that what Ayers and Dohrn did constituted youthful follies is not backed up by any evidence.
The song is called Mother Russia and it's on the phenomenal Turn of the Cards album by the group Renaissance which I have no hesitation in recommending.
Legend has it that she answered an ad from a rock band looking for a singer. Annie Haslam had the greatest singing voice I ever heard. I saw Renaissance at the Carnegie Hall concerts around 1976. The band was extraordinarily talented, and her voice really sounds this good live. Unfortunately most of the live Renaissance videos I have seen on YouTube have awful recording qualities, but there are several good live albums, especially the Royal Albert Hall and the Carnegie Hall performances.
The band was moderately successful with their art-rock sensibilities but never broke through with a big US hit. But some of their extended songs--Black Flame, Ashes Are Burning, are highlights of 1970s music. Give it a couple listens before making up your mind.
Watch for these stories to come out over the next six months, drip by drip:
In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of Feb. 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn't leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong have won; Kill the pigs.
I have talked many times in the past about Bud Day, one of America's greatest heroes. Bud Day is the second-most decorated military man in US history, topped only by Douglas MacArthur. He is the sort of man for whom the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he received, seems ridiculously inadequate. He should be somebody that children learn of in grammar school.
Karl Rove has an anecdote about Bud Day and John McCain during their time in the Hanoi Hilton, that will bring tears to your eyes; I know they did to mine:
Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."
The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.
Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.
(snip)
It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.
Cui bono, the conspiracy theorists always say, and Hillary does undeniably benefit. But who benefits more? Who was the topic of conversation up until yesterday?
Well, no, it's his wife's plane. The New York Times tries to gin up a controversy, but as they admit, there's nothing to it:
The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.
Because that exemption remains, Mr. McCain’s campaign was able to use his wife’s corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign’s actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit.
Even if Obama doesn't personally believe these things, is it really "tired tripe" to ask why he seems so comfortable in the company of people who do? Is it really "extremely stupid politics" to wonder whether such people might play a role in an Obama administration? Rather than slam the few journalists who raise such questions, might it not behoove others in the media to follow suit?
It might, but then the media would not be playing politics and helping out the Democrats.
