Chris Bowers notices:

While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the [Bush Dog Jim] Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren't nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper's. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right. . . . MORE

Good on Rahmbo:

[Rahm] Emanuel called to assail Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for remarks he made when asked about the possibility of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois choosing Mrs. Clinton, of New York, as his running-mate. “I have a lot of respect for Ted Kennedy, but I don’t know how the hell he comes off saying that,” said Mr. Emanuel, who has ties to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama and has not endorsed in the race. “The gratuitous attack on her is uncalled for and wrong. He is a better senator than that comment reveals.

(Emphasis supplied.) Good on Rahmbo. and I think probably good on the Obama campaign who might have spurred Rahmbo to do this.

A friend of mine writes this comment:

At one point in time Armando was one of this site's most passionate and articulate voices about ending racism and empowering people of color. As well as promoting a "politics of contrast." . . . Armando used to speak of a Lincoln 1860 strategy, but Hillary has been playing a Harrison 1840 strategy instead ("look at me! i can play the strong warrior champion of the white working class too!").

Short answer - Hillary Clinton is not a Politics of Contrast candidate. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton's campaign. I defy anyone to find a post where I extol Hillary Clinton's candidacy or campaign. There are no such posts. And when racial comments were made by Clinton surrogates, I severely criticized those comments, including those by Bill Clinton.

More . . .

Yesterday I wrote about Rep. Steve Cohen's offensive remarks regarding Senator Hillary Clinton. Today I received an e-mail from the Congressman indicating that he has apologized for the remarks.

Representative Cohen has been a strong progressive voice in Tennessee and it is good that he realizes his remarks were hurtful and wrong. Kudos to the Representative for his realization and acknowledgment that the remarks were inappropriate and hurtful. His e-mail to me:

I sincerely apologize for the comments I made about Senator Clinton's campaign. I have great respect for Senator Clinton as a US Senator. She has waged an historic campaign which has done much to break the glass ceiling. My comments obviously do not reflect the sentiments of Senator Obama or the Obama campaign. Nor do they reflect my opinion of Senator Clinton whom I have known for years and admire. My hope is that our party will come together to work to defeat John McCain.

Comments closed

Plutonium Page reports on this:

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.

. . . Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies. "We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists," House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said last week.

(Emphasis supplied.) So the way to avoid having people labelled shills is to buy the research you want? Not only is this outrageous use of government funds, it is monumentally stupid. Who is going to believe any findings from scientists funded like this?

Via Glenn Reynolds, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), a Barack Obama supporter, trafficking in more sexism:

Memphis Commercial Appeal's Blake Fontenay: According to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, she may be starting to more closely resemble another famous movie character: The psycho lady played by Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."

When asked about whether Clinton should drop out of the race on Fox 13's "Good Morning Memphis" program today, Cohen said: "Glenn Close should have stayed in that tub."

Nice. Sexism is the bigotry that has the imprimatur of respectability it seems.

By the way, for folks and bloggers who are getting tired of my harping on the rampant sexism directed at Hillary Clinton, I say this, when it stops, then I will stop.

I am watching a C-Span broadcast about the broken, undemocratic, and corrupt nomination process. Elaine Kamarck of the DNC Rule and Bylaws Committee is going through the history and droning on about this and that. And it hit me. The solution to the problem is simple - we should change the Presidential nomination process to a pure popular vote system. This would end all the silly calendar nonsense. You want to go first? Be my guest. That is not going to change the fact that California has the most people.

This would also let states decide if they wanted to pay for a real election (a primary) or wanted instead to hold a phony election (a caucus). It gets rid of superdelegates. Heck, it gets rid of DELEGATES period. It gets rid of every unDemocratic feature in the process (no overweighting rural districts or urban districts or any district.)

Finally, it eliminates the importance of incompetents like Donna Brazile. So there you have it. My proposed reform for the nomination process.

Steve's Audio has a post up on our economic condition using the Little Pink Houses video I took in Iowa at a John Edwards campaign event.

Steve notes that in 1967, at the end of his first year in college, gas was 21 cents a gallon and his parents bought their home for $27,000.

When I moved to Colorado in 1971 to start law school, I have a vivid recollection of driving to Target (a novelty in itself for someone from the East Coast) in my yellow mustang convertible with the top down, and stopping on the way for gas and to buy a pack of Marlboros. I remember it because they were the same price: 26 cents a gallon and 26 cents a pack.

My first apartment in law school, a one bedroom in Capitol Hill, right off Colfax (not a ritzy area but decent enough) was big and bright, and the rent was $125.00 a month. Like Steve, I had a minimum wage job for $1.35 or so an hour, working for the same record store chain I had worked for in Ann Arbor during college.

Steve crunches the numbers: [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Via Matt Yglesias (who misunderstands Wills' post imo), Garry Wills revisits Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union Address and compares it to Barack Obama's address on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Race. For nearly four years now, I have been, along with Digby, writing about the political lessons of Lincoln 1860. My first post ever Talk Left post discussed what Obama needed to learn from Lincoln's Cooper Union address. Wills rightly describes Lincoln's political challenges when he delivered it:

President Bush recently granted two of his infrequent pardons to brothers in Colorado Springs. Their transgressions? Misdeanor sales of mounted owls.

Jerry and Thomas Moldenhauer sold migratory birds to an undercover Colorado Department of Wildlife officer in 1992 and 1993, court documents show, violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibits the possession or sale of migratory birds, dead or alive, as well as their feathers, eggs or nests. Each man received three years of probation and a $1,000 fine.

I'm reading this article, shaking my head, thinking, well it must have been a one-time occurrence. Not quite.

[More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

I gotta say I disagree with Matt Yglesias on this:

In a History News Network poll, 61 percent of historians say that George W. Bush has been the worst president ever. . . . I . . . take the view that Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly.

Um, I don't. I think history will NOT be kind to the worst President in history, George W. Bush.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

I am an avowed supporter of free trade agreements like NAFTA. But I am not a rube. I realize that demagoguing against free trade is now standard issue Dem politics, but that does not mean it is right. Today The NYTimes explains why: