What a clusterfuck.

The nomination is Obama's. I've called my shot.

And I agree...Obama's gonna pick someone other than Hillary.

Who is now the question.

CRY

Not normal tears...I'm talking uncontrollable sobbing.

Watch it and weep.

This is just nuts. You make two enormous leaps here: from what Obama actually said to the 'dolchstosslegende' (i.e., the notion that opponents of the war caused us to lose); and from there to, I guess, putting old people out on ice floes to die. The text simply does not support your interpretation.

In context of the Webb GI bill which Obama has been hammering McCain over this makes perfect sense. The military these days, not an inconsiderable chunk of the electorate, is just as fed up with the War in Iraq and never ending deployments.

I don't expect the paranoid Lambert to get that, he's gone way over the bend into "Obama's a manchurian candidate!" flailing, seeing Barack as nothing more than Reagan in sheep's clothing.

And what the hell brings on uncontrollable sobbing from a video of Obama talking on the phone on a plane? Seriously wtf?

but I think I'm with Tom Hilton on your point #1, Lambert. Stab-in-the-back is going too far, IMHO. But I agree with your points 2 and 3, although I'm not sure about point 4. I think in some ways you're overanalyzing the OFB, who I think just wanted to back a winner who could "beat the bitch." They're not committed to any particular ideology other than bitch-beating, which is why they'll probably have no problem back-flipping around the hard way to embrace Obama's center-right platform and governing strategy (especially if Clinton is not on the ticket.)

I agree with you on your major point, which is that there won't be a unity ticket (although I think there's a possibility that it will be forced on Obama by the Supers). I don't think he's confident enough to put her on his ticket without coercion, and moreover (and perhaps moreso) he's really not confident enough to have Bill Clinton lurking around the OVP or his administration in any way. (Maybe if Bill drops dead of a massive MCI this summer, in which case Obama could benefit from sympathy and nostalgia by putting Hillary Clinton on his ticket.) Otherwise, I don't think it will happen.

The image of a man preening in front of a bunch of bobbleheaded journalists...

all the while the left has been bemoaning the press' treatment of McCain.

As has been said...

the netroots has squandered it's media critique.

For what?

Come November, you'll be sobbing right here with me markg8.

I'm kind enough to offer you a tissue when that happens, my friend.

is nothing compared to the extreme violence done to vital Democratic issues, principles, and policies.

I won't even bring up the extreme violence of the language used to paint the Clintons as evil racists, and her as evil--and the language used to denigrate millions of Democrats.

because I don't like the guy, and I don't believe for a second he's going to be anything but one of the worst presidents in history, and the worst Democratic president since Buchanan.

Taking that swipe at boomers who opposed the war is just so hurtful. I think he wants to antagonize us.

I'm a self-employed 53 year old with no health insurance. I'm not gonna get it if Obama's the president - that's clear. He's already letting us know he won't withdraw from Iraq - so soldiers and Marines will keep dying. So, what's the essential difference between he and McCain? I don't think there is much difference between how the two would ultimately govern,

IF he is the nominee. But regardless, Clinton has the math to approve the VP nominee, if not force herself on the ticket. Just like Kerry had to pick Edwards, Dole had to pick Kemp, Clinton had to pick Gore, Reagan had to pick Bush, Kennedy had to pick Johnson, etc., etc..

Likewise, if Clinton is the nominee, Obama would have his choice of approving the choice if not forcing himself on the ticket.

This is political reality, both candidates ignore it at their peril.

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Good night and good riddance!

He will offer it to her very publicly and she will decline.

Then he will go with a conservative white guy, possibly military--trust me on this. He won't even pick Richardson.

He would lose the HillaryHaters (his second largest constituency) and he knows she'd play Cheney the ventriloquist to his G-Dub the Dummy.

Plus, purging Hillary and Bill from the party is the goal of his establishment eleet backers.

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

And I've committed to vote for him if (as is very likely) he gets the nomination. But a Republican VP is a big, big problem for me.

markg* at 11;47

"flailing" is precisely the word i would use to describe your comment here.

as for senator obama,

i doubt he has any emotional connection whatsoever with the experience of americans who served in vietnam and/or americans who opposed the vietnam war.

furthermore, it is not "the one vs the other" which obama employs to create a false dichotomy (in order to pander to the right).

you may recall there were a large number of veterans who returned after service in vietnam and then became vehement opponents of the war.

further still, the notion of solders who served in vietnam being mistreated is a myth - a right-wing myth by the way. obama is appropriating this myth for his own use, for his own political purposes.

the fact is that while some soldiers under some circumstances were harassed or treated rudely, these occurances where rare for a country of 250 million people.

there was never any mass effort to excoriate vietnam vets. in fact, there could not have been, simply because nearly every family in america had a vietnam vet in the family somewhere.

58,000 died in vietnam, but i believe somewhere over 2 million served in vietnam. these two million were spread through out the nation.

so, markg8

senator obama brings up and uses a right-wing argument and you, neo-right lefty, or is that neo-left righty, are all for it.

obama does not give a rat's ass about american soldiers from iraq or vietnam. he cares about taking votes from mccain and showing his "soldier" side and "soldier sympathies" to mccain voters.

dukakis without the tank.

markg8.

How you extrapolate that to “preening” something to do with “bemoaning the press’ treatment of McCain” and/or the “the netroots has squandered it’s media critique” I don’t know.

You have not been paying attention in class.

Let's start with the title of the video:

Sen. Barack Obama surprises the press corps by wearing jeans.

Now read Bob Somerby - Part 4 specifically.

But should senior brass from our biggest news orgs be scoring tickets for all that big fun? To their credit, a few major scribes (Joe Klein and the late Lars-Erik Nelson, for example) wrote pointed pieces about the way their colleagues were misbehaving. But the clowning never stopped. Not on the bus, and now in the pages of the news orgs which were making this great man a saint.

Of course, at the same time they were clowning this way, they were inventing two years worth of tales about Gore. They made one man a demon—and one man a saint. We all know how Part One turned out.

The Dems now have their own McCain.

All show, no go.

Sorry, I would have to cut/paste that to get it right.

Isn't this just the first shoe to drop regarding his "excesses" of the 60's (oh, and 70's too)? Reagan had "ideas" (who knew?) apparently as well. Maybe Barry can help bring us all together on those.

Certainly we won't see any "divisive" talk about bringing the criminals in the current WH to justice for their crimes against the Constitution (let alone humanity).

But to your point 4, which I think is the most interesting. I agree completely. It dumbfounds me that this tsunami, designed to wreck the already tenuous broad coalition of the working class, limosine liberals (gentry aka "creative class") and African Americans, has been created. I guess the PERCIEVED chance of inevitable Dem victory in Nov. got the gentry in a greedy high froth to remake the party in their image. And now, how dare the prols get in their way?

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Good night and good riddance!

if he picks a Republican for VP, he'll finally lose me, and lose even more loyal Dems than the many he's already lost. I never have voted GOP and never will--i have held my nose in many elections but will not vote for any Democratic ticket that has a Republican on it-- ever.

Doing that would be a dealbreaker beyond excusing. And it would alienate me from my party forever, leaving me with nowhere to go.

If Democratic bigshots allow any Republican on the ticket, then all hope is lost.

Like I said earlier in context of the Webb GI bill which Obama has been hammering McCain over this makes perfect sense. But it's more than that. The military these days, active and retired, not an inconsiderable chunk of the electorate, is just as fed up with the War in Iraq and never ending deployments. Obama is trying to get their votes, the votes of anti-Vietnam and anti-Iraq War voters, and former GIs of any stripe by standing up for them.

A third of the homeless in this country are Vietnam vets. We're creating another generation of soon to be ex-soldiers with the same problems, the same hidden or unhidden disabilities that we as a nation right, left and center had best not neglect this time. The damaged and wasted lives are individual tragedies. Collectively they are wounds on the soul of the nation and in cold hard financial terms if they can't function in society are a drag on the economy.

We can't expect the Pentagon to fight for them, the DoD has a tradition of shunning ex-soldiers in favor of funding new weapons for the next war. If anybody knows of a retired general who fought politically for benefits for his men after a war besides George Washington please let me know.

A lot of bitterness ex GIs have felt against the government since Vietnam is because they've been shafted time and time and again as the military fought against recognition and treatment for Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, and now Traumatic Brain Injuries from IEDs. It plays right into the Republican meme that all government sucks and doesn't work even though more often than not they've been the party cutting funding for these benefits.

It's the right thing to do morally and economically, and yes smart politically for Obama
to try to bring us all together this time in support of vets young and old. The only losers will be Republican politicians who refuse to vote with us on these bills and a few big budget war profiteers and their enablers in the pentagon and congress.

and i hear McCain really only has 2 serious choices--Romney or Huckabee. The money people and noise machine want Romney, and for the base he needs Huckabee.

So whoever our pick is will probably push McCain one way or another too.

Obama supporters got this shit down pat baby.

LOL

It took you 5 paragraphs to explain one of Obama's.

Good luck with that in the future.

If you’re trying to say the Dem presidential candidate is getting favorable media then I say it’s about time.

I predict massive cases of PTS come November.

do you really think Obama will be able to push ANY costly things thru with the GOP obstructing everything that doesn't directly benefit the rich or their cronies? They'd probably demand the VA be privatized with the no-bid contracts going to their buddies in exchange for any support--or demand SS be privatized or something.

They don't care if they get bad press for not helping vets or homeless vets or the VA, etc--only Congressional Dems care. The GOP brags about voting against SCHIP which was to help kids--vets rank far lower on their scale than even poor kids.

markg8 (13:04)

what you are doing is using the emotional power that attaches to speech about the destructiveness of war and the failure to properly medically treat returned soldiers

to rationalize your candidate's pandering remarks to the right-wing.

in my view, your style of argumentation is as sly and manipulative of emotion as are senator obama's original remarks about vietnam vets being hissed and dissed by war opponents.

and you do understand, don't you, that senator obama has a far-left track record. his big job in the general election is to paint himself as the opposite of his record, so mccain can't get a hold on him (wrestling terminology)

Who are "Too many" in the minds of the audience to which Obama is appealing? That's the nut here -- which mercg8's diversionary tactics reveal quite clearly. (When he says "Look over here," don't. Look over there.)

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

"extreme violence to language" is nothing compared to the extreme violence done to vital Democratic issues, principles, and policies.

I won’t even bring up the extreme violence of the language used to paint the Clintons as evil racists, and her as evil—and the language used to denigrate millions of Democrats.

I understand that your perception of Obama is that he is so vile, so monstrous, that it excuses any misrepresentation of him by any of his opponents. I don't agree with your perception, but more importantly I don't agree that it excuses any such misrepresentation.

One other comment, and this one applies to a lot of people here (including Lambert): your perception of Obama is the exact mirror image of the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of Clinton you (rightly) decry in the more deranged Obama supporters. Surely that should give you pause.

Points 1,2, and 3, but 4 not so much.

I think Obama will indeed go center right and a lot of the great programs will be at least watered down, some eliminated.

Obama will not repair the wounds to the Constitution and separation of powers.

As to #4: I want a third party and I think this election may well give rise to one. I'm sick of being told that I have nowhere else to go.

become 28 percenters like the people who, despite all evidence to the contrary, think Bush is doing a heckuva job?

Maybe we could start a pool. Because they won't get what they think they're getting. A few are starting to realize it, but they're rationalizing it as okay.

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

treatment and presumptions and pathologizing he gives her and Bill--and that he gives to all of Hillary's voters.

I'm not giving him any benefit of the doubt, and in fact do always ascribe bad intentions and motivations--as he does with her, and as his supporters always do.

I intentionally will do that, and i do not hate him or believe him to be vile or monstrous at all. I know he has treated millions of loyal Democrats as vile and monstrous and racist and bitter, etc, so he gets the same treatment.

It's only fair. If people won't look in the mirror or realize they live in glass houses before they accuse so many others of being monstrous and vile, then they won't get the benefit of the doubt and will be treated as they treat others.

I'll ignore your assholishness for the moment and ask you if think this Rambo rant rings true or has ever rung for any part of the American electorate:

Nothing is over!!! Nothing!!! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of crap! Who are they to protest me?! Who are they?! Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!

Republicans have been shoving that speech up our ass with voters, some of whom weren't even alive when the movie was made, let alone when the Vietnam War was fought, for decades. Whether any returning soldier was spit on or not is immaterial. They have successfully promoted the myth, that they and they only care about national security, our military and our soldiers. Even before Rambo they used it successfully against the B-24 pilot McGovern, Carter and his nuclear sub work, the marine Dukakis in his tank, Gore and his service in Nam and with the swiftboating of Kerry in 2004. Clinton was lucky enough to run at the end of the Cold War when Cheney and Powell were gutting our standing forces in Europe and we were in recession.

It's an imperative that our nominee outflank the lapel pin nutcases and show that he's not going to let it happen this time. Dems passed the GI bill over Repub objections late in WW11 and have been fighting for vets rights ever since. It's about time the electorate knows that.

If that bothers you too bad.

with the GOP obstructing everything that doesn’t directly benefit the rich or their cronies?

You're presupposing the moribund GOP is going to be in any position to effectively oppose much of anything next year. I think we're going to kick their butts in house and senate races and the only place they'll be able contest a lot of issues over the next few years will be in the courts with all those activist judges they've appointed the last few decades.