Wisconsin Primary

[Harlan Huckleby]

I see. So you're saying that he should be even better during his second term?

A lot of people have compared Obama to Bill Clinton in 1992, a fresh, energetic, youthful new face talking about change, the future.

i'd say a more apt comparison is to Michael Jackson after his Thriller album came out. Obama is exciting people world-wide, in that same way.

Politicians have jumped on the Obama train because he is electable, he's a winner. They have a strong personal stake in backing the winner. That's not to say this is the only reason, many must think he will be a good president.

I don't know what to make of Obama. Ya, I would expect he will be better after the first couple of years, sure.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I don't think it would take Obama 5-10 years to become wiser. He seems like a pretty quick study to me who will learn very quickly.

His improvements in the debates have been dramatic.

Some people act like he's some kid just out of college. He's the same age Bill Clinton was when he became President, and is older than Kennedy was. He has more Washington experience (for what it's worth) than either Reagan or Clinton had when they became President.

We've been through this, Reagan & Clinton had relatively massive executive experience. Kennedy had a more distinguished record.

But my problem with Obama is not his experience on paper. Its what I've seen of him on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is among the group of relatively dopey Senators who never ask any good questions. I know he is smart, but its clear to me he is immature.

Why is he running now? Because there is a great opportunity, its a down year for the republicans. OK.

certain comfort level in riding an old plowhorse instead of a young stallion.

I find your homoerotic imagery to be unnecessary and somewhat offensive. Lets just stick to politics.

[Joemailman]

*** BREAKING NEWS ***

Larry Sinclair has failed his polygraph.



Retest! Retest!

There must be easier ways to get your 15 minutes of fame. On the other hand, failing this polygraph test probably isn't the worst thing considering what he was claiming. Unless it means he'll lose his job with the Hillary campaign.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Well, we don't know for sure whether Larry actually did smokum peace pipe.

He gave an interview describing Obama's member in some detail: said its about 8" long erect, and oddly it has a pink flesh color like a white man! I'm not making this up.

So, we now know that Michele OBama and all the guys who shower with Barack at the basketball gym know whether Larry the Fable Guy is lying or not! Poor Barack and his incriminating pink cock if it is true.

[Joemailman]

Where is Ken Starr? His country needs him.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Bill Kristol is a right-wing pundit who's all over TV and major publications. He's very smart and a bit devious. For months he's been talking about Obama like he's a great man, a sure winner, and treating the Clintons like Bonnie & Clyde. (Kristol is of the minority view that the fall election will be decided on national security issues, and I infer that he thinks McCain will beat Obama easier than Clinton.)

Anyway, so now that Obama has the nomination virtually sewed-up, Kristol does an about-face and attacks Obama with a very snarky column. I knew this would happen - what a snake in the grass! (You can see his earlier columns at NY Times for words of love.)

I print the column as a reminder to Obama fans that their new Republican friends may not be so reliable.

It’s All About Him
By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: February 25, 2008, NY Times

Last October, a reporter asked Barack Obama why he had stopped wearing the American flag lapel pin that he, like many other public officials, had been sporting since soon after Sept. 11. Obama could have responded that his new-found fashion minimalism was no big deal. What matters, obviously, is what you believe and do, not what you wear.

But Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

Leave aside the claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism. What’s striking is that Obama couldn’t resist a grandiose explanation. Obama’s unnecessary and imprudent statement impugns the sincerity or intelligence of those vulgar sorts who still choose to wear a flag pin. But moral vanity prevailed. He wanted to explain that he was too good — too patriotic! — to wear a flag pin on his chest.

Fast forward to last Monday in Wisconsin. Michelle Obama, in the course of a stump speech, remarked, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Michelle Obama’s adult life goes back to the mid-1980s. Can it really be the case that nothing the U.S. achieved since then has made her proud? Apparently. For, as she said later in the same appearance: “Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime, through Republican and Democratic administrations. It hasn’t gotten much better.”

Now in almost every empirical respect, American lives have in fact gotten better over the last quarter-century. And most Americans — and most Democrats — don’t think those years were one vast wasteland. So Barack Obama hastened to clarify his wife’s remarks. “What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America,” he said, “because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone.” Later in the week, Michelle Obama further explained, “What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud of how Americans are engaging in the political process.”

But that clearly isn’t what she was talking about. For as she had argued in the Wisconsin speech, America’s illness goes far beyond a flawed political process: “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”

But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama ... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.

John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.

Obama likes to say, “we are the change that we seek” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for.

Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician. But could the American people, by November, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Obama tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Bill Clinton, the patronizing elitism of Al Gore and the haughty liberalism of John Kerry?

It’s fitting that the alternative to Obama will be John McCain. He makes no grand claim to fix our souls. He doesn’t think he’s the one everyone has been waiting for. He’s more proud of his country than of himself. And his patriotism has consisted of deeds more challenging than “speaking out on issues.”

[Joemailman]

No one was more consistently wrong about what would happen when we invaded Iraq than Bill Kristol. His commentaries on Obama are no more impressive to me.

[hoosier]

Well, we don't know for sure whether Larry actually did smokum peace pipe.

He gave an interview describing Obama's member in some detail: said its about 8" long erect, and oddly it has a pink flesh color like a white man! I'm not making this up.

Sounds like ol' Larry is just speculatin' on a hypthosis, that Obama gets half of who he is from his father and the other half from his mother. I don't see any smoking gun here.....

[The Leaper]

No one was more consistently wrong about what would happen when we invaded Iraq than Bill Kristol.

Kristol is an asshat...which merely makes it very convenient that the NYT hired him. If you are a lefty asshat organization looking to "show a conservative side", you will hire a righty asshat.

If anyone gives any credibility to anything written in the NYT, they are delusional.

I'm all for Obama having to answer some hard questions though...especially relating to foreign policy and specifics on change. IMO, if he is elected without a barrage of serious questions on those issues, this country is worse off than I thought.

[Harlan Huckleby]

No one was more consistently wrong about what would happen when we invaded Iraq than Bill Kristol. His commentaries on Obama are no more impressive to me.

I wouldn't dismiss Kristol (although of course I don't expect you to swoon over this latest turn.) He was the very first pundit to specifically diagnose the strategy failures in Iraq. He correctly saw that the surge would work politically for the republicans, way back when it looked like a dog. He correctly predicted that Obama would be the nominee last fall when Clinton was still riding high.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Kristol is an asshat.

Could you be a little more specific?

If you are a lefty asshat organization looking to "show a conservative side", you will hire a righty asshat.

So you think David Brooks & Bill Kristol at the NEw York Times are second rate conservative columnists? Who's better?

[The Leaper]

Barack Obama is a beginner as a leader. There is every reason to believe that he will be a wiser and more capable person 5 or ten years from now. From what I've seen of him in the Senate, there's no way he should be running for president now.

So Obama compares well to...Colledge?

[Harlan Huckleby]

PRobably he's more like Adrian Peterson in highschool - if Adrian had a pink dick.

[Harlan Huckleby]

John Stewart's best line at Oscars: "Julie Cristie was amazing in the moving story of a woman who forgets her husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feel-good movie of the year."

[The Leaper]

So you think David Brooks & Bill Kristol at the NEw York Times are second rate conservative columnists? Who's better?

I never suggested they were second rate columnists.

To me, asshats are smug and holier-than-thou...and I put Kristol in that category. He might even be right a majority of the time, but he's still an asshat.