Comment upgraded to a post as per Lambert’s request. My not-so-humble analysis of what happened to tonight with Indiana:

What happened tonight:

1. Mess with HRC’s supporters’ minds

2. Try (and fail) at some run-of-the-mill cheating

3. Delay as long as possible a call of Indiana for HRC

4. Delay contributions that normally follow a win

5. Push SDs over the fence to BO’s side

6. Up the ante on WWTSBQ

7. Major troll infestation at major HRC-supporting sites

I think my point 1 worked very well: these results were exactly what was expected after all. Actually, it’s pretty bad news for BO. His base is young voters and AAs and that’s it. Can’t win that way.

Heck, even BTD at TalkLeft took back his electability argument tonight.  Read more 

Now that Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a one-on-one debate (methinks it’s a smart move… he’s cornered), what questions should Hillary ask him?

My choice (and yes, I’m a policy wonk, bite me!):

• What specific policies would you implement toward more gender equality, on the job and elsewhere?
• How would you concretely restore America’s standing in the world community?
• How would you specifically deal with the dual crisis of credit crunch and food prices?
 Read more 

From Barack Obama’ Campaign Manager David Plouffe:

“Fairly or not, the majority of voters don’t trust Senator Clinton.”

I trust HRC to protect and push for women’s rights, worldwide.

Take it away, Correntians,

Why do you trust Hillary?

Real dems are proudly progressive

Real dems are proudly liberal

Real dems are proudly feminist

Real dems stand firmly for women’s and LGBT rights and ALL minorities

Real dems are not afraid of smart women

Real dems get shit done

Real dems understand policy and government as agents of social change

Real dems ARE the reality-based community

Real dems don’t race-bait

Real dems don’t witch-hunt

Real dems count ALL the votes

Real dems ARE fighting dems:

against misogyny, racism, homophobia and heterosexism, against stupidity, against fundamentalism,  Read more 

I know a lot of Hillary supporters refer to her speech at the UN Women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. So, today, I decided to take a closer look at the whole speech, especially in the context of Senator Obama’s remark on abortion and the need to respect the anti-choice position (just like we should respect and understand anti-LGBT positions). Again, remember, this speech was delivered 13 years ago, on one of these trips that Hillary took where she just shook hands with officials and watched little girls dance (snark). The audio is embedded below, otherwise, I selected a few excerpts (the full text is here, with video as well).

 Read more 

It’s Friday night, let’s chill with some French music!  Read more 

Samantha Power’s book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, would have received much more, and well-deserved, publicity if she had not made a stupid comment to a journalist regarding Senator Hillary Clinton. As a result, she resigned from Barack Obama’s campaign and this has probably affected her promotion of the book. It is a shame because it is indeed a fascinating book regarding the complex and frustrating internal workings of the United Nations through the prism of another fascinating figure: Sergio Vieira de Mello.  Read more 

So says the Independent, adding that the movie will also depict him as a dried-out drunk with a baseball obsession and a difficult relationship with his father… and I thought it was going to be a work of fiction and not a documentary!

And check out the cast so far:

• Josh Brolin George W Bush
• Elizabeth Banks Laura Bush
• James Cromwell George H Bush
• Thandie Newton Condoleezza Rice
• Ioan Gruffudd Tony Blair
• Ellen Burstyn Barbara Bush (!!!)

I’ll have to see this just for Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush!

Here’s a question for all of you out there: when the movie will be about this primary, who should play HRC, BO, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Mark Penn, David Axelrod, Chris Matthews, KO, etc?  Read more 

From August J. Pollack:

Wright Opinions

I have already blogged extensively on the current food price crisis affecting mostly poor countries. Now, via Le Monde, we learn, unsurprisingly, that riots have exploded in parts of Africa in response to the cost of food.

L’Afrique piégée par la flambée des prix des aliments
LE MONDE | 04.04.08

©  Read more 

On September, 23, 2003, Senator Hillary Clinton was interviewed for the great PBS program Wide Angle on the topic of human trafficking (2003, folks, that was 5 years ago, ok… and yes, that was the year of the beginning of the war in Iraq but that was not the only thing going on in the world. I, for one, am glad somebody was paying attention to these other crucial issues even though I disagree with her - heck, ANYONE’s vote for the war). Let me excerpt a few chosen quote (full transcript at the link above, so YES, I’m picking and choosing).

“Hillary Clinton: Well. Jamie, the fact that this is a modern-day form of slavery was shocking to me. When I realized, because of my travels and exposure as First Lady, how prevalent it was, I determined that we should do something about it. I went to Beijing to the UN Conference on Women in September of 1995, and spoke out against a long series of abuses that were human rights violations of women’s rights and among those, of course, was trafficking. And then, in the time after the conference, when it did become an item that was of higher interest on the national and international agenda, we followed up. In 1996, I went with my husband to Thailand for a state visit. I went to the north where I met with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], trying to help young girls who had been sold by their families into prostitution, trafficked into the brothels, mostly in Bangkok.  Read more 

I can’t seem to be able to embed Youtube clips here… but anyway… here it is TEH CACKLE that will destroy the Democratic party!

Like it or not, our next president will have to deal with conflicts all over the world. The nature of warfare has been changing (a lot of ink has been spent on this already) but obviously, this administration did not read the memo.  Read more 

Via the Independent,

“A deal has been agreed that will place a financial value on rainforests – paying, for the first time, for their upkeep as “utilities” that provide vital services such as rainfall generation, carbon storage and climate regulation.  Read more 

Except she renames it “Take Your Boobs and Go Home” Watch… which works for me as well. I particularly like this quote which summarizes well what lots of us women feel about these repeated calls to withdraw:  Read more 

This is the first in a (hopefully) collaborative series: WHSBP (title and series idea courtesy of Lambert) to counterbalance the Other Series (WWTSBQ). This series outlines issues on which Hillary Clinton was ahead of the curve, starting with microcredit. I have posted consistently on microcredit (here, here and here) but it is one obvious issue where HRC got it before everyone else.  Read more 

Via
MSNBC,

High profile Obama backer, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), told Vermont Public Radio that he thinks Clinton should drop out and back Obama.  Read more 

Why I can no longer watch cable news.

Edited by vastleft: please don’t post copyrighted works in their entirety. Especially something by a good guy like Tom Tomorrow.

Via Context Crawler, sociologist Diego Gambetta gives an interview to the Independent as to why engineers are overrepresented in terrorist Islamist groups (in addition to being all men between 18-40). There are possible explanations but they are not entirely satisfactory:  Read more 

“Aid does not work” is a meme we often hear when it comes to development. Actually, it is a pronouncement made by people who would like foreign aid to stop and see it as “one of these failed government projects.” Aid does work under proper conditions, but quite often, as Jeffrey Sachs has demonstrated, aid does not work because of the donor countries who either do not live up to their commitment or actually set up aid to benefit themselves without much consideration for the people that are supposed to be helped. Two stories in the news highlight these problems.  Read more 

Here is how Kevin Drum disappeared from my blogroll and $10 more went to HRC’s campaign:

“Yeah, I’m pretty much at the same place. There are already an awful lot of reasons for me not to bother defending Hillary even tepidly, and I hardly need another one. She’s been voted off the island. It’s time for her to go.”

Frenchdoc
The Global Sociology Blog

When she was first lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton did not just organize tea parties (contrary to what passes now for “common knowledge”). She had heard of a Bangladeshi economist who had introduced a great idea to help people out of poverty in Bangladesh and she thought his ideas might help the poor in Arkansas. The economist was Muhammad Yunus and the idea was microcredit. She was instrumental in introducing Yunus to Bill Clinton and they developed a program of microcredit in Arkansas. Yunus mentions her in every one of his books (with photos).  Read more 

IRIN has done a tremendous job reporting on the global nature of child trafficking… in general media indifference. First stop, Mozambique:

“A truck packed with 40 children was intercepted in the central Mozambican province of Manica this week, sparking concern over increased child trafficking and the urgent need for effective legislation to address the problem.”  Read more 

Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib fame, gives a lengthy interview in the German magazine Stern. England was sentenced to three years in prison for her part in the deeds there. She served 521 days and is now out on parole. How’s life for her?

“(She sighs) Oh, it’s just little things going wrong. I’m just trying to get by. Trying to find a job, trying to find a house. It’s been harder than I expected. I went to a couple of interviews, and I thought they went great. I wrote dozens of applications. Nothing came of it. I put in at Wal-Mart, at Staples. I’d do any job. But I never heard from them.”  Read more