This is Obama, Not Truman, You Are Talking About,

Joe, and since this president idolizes Reagan, fat chance he is going to do anything but bend over and take it in the ass.

The American people will continue to take it in the ass because both political parties are bought off by the same financial elite which has destroyed this country as a matter of "libertarian" or "neoliberal" ideology.

We HAVE to get a candidate to go up against Obama in the primaries. If we don't, Democrats are going to risk being wiped out again.

If it meant ridding the party of the neolibs, that would be a good thing, but I have doubts the party could ever get back into power.

Conason:

No doubt the Obama White House, which too often prefers "bipartisanship" to principled confrontation, will be tempted to make such a deal. The problem is that cutting the budget so drastically will undo the stimulative effects of the December tax-and-spending agreement — and plunge the economy back into recession. The President loses either way.

Perhaps the time has come for the Democrats to adopt a different strategy. Let the Republicans govern, or misgovern. Don't rescue them from their own recklessness. Don't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless and until the Republican leadership supports the bill — and if they refuse, let them take the responsibility for the consequences. Let's see how long they can listen to the screaming of their major contributors on Wall Street as the world economy shudders. Make the hostage takers surrender this time.

I Have ALWAYS Said,

even before I had ever heard of Joe Conason or Gene Lyons, that the Clinton "scandals" were bogus.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the stories of "scandal" were all politically motivated, trotted out like clockwork, and timed for the election cycles.

The GOP feared Clinton and Gore because they made inroads into the GOP's once solid South.

Of course, Obama also has made inroads into that region, and he is getting some of the same crap thrown at him.

A low point was the magazine's December 1996 cover story, which dramatically featured the prosecutor's promise to "deliver" justice in five scandals supposedly percolating in the Clinton White House. With the "extraordinary access" provided by Starr, Newsweek declared breathlessly that within the coming months he would "decide whether to bring indictments that could very possibly alter the course of Bill Clinton's second term." A helpful sidebar on potential criminal acts attributed to the Clintons and their aides accompanied the exclusive Starr interview.

What Starr actually delivered, only eight weeks later, was his own resignation as special prosecutor -- to take a deanship at Pepperdine University (financed by Clinton nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife) in a deal that he had been negotiating for months. He had nothing, but he punked the Newsweek boys.

There's lots more. Don't miss this article.

Joe Conason

says what I have been saying about Obama all along. I maintained Obama's idea of "postpartisanship" and "reaching across the aisle" simply would not work with Republicans; they want him to fail, and the cynic in me said the GOP threw the election last fall in the hopes Obama would fail to turn around the mess the GOP created.

Conason:

But if seeking consensus is still his strategy, as he and his advisors insist, it may be time for a rethink. All the months of bipartisanship in talk and tactics from the White House have neither brought congressional Republicans closer to supporting Obama's objectives nor preserved Obama's early support among moderate voters. What they have done is encourage the most outrageous conduct by his opponents – including those who themselves claim the bipartisan mantle – and make the president look weak.

The simple truth is that there is nobody on the Republican side who wants to negotiate with Obama. They are no longer afraid of him, and they unanimously want to ruin his presidency, regardless of the consequences. They are in thrall to the stupid extremism that questions the president's citizenship and suspects that he is driving the country toward a socialist dictatorship – while simultaneously demanding angrily that the government be stopped from interfering with Medicare.

These people don't care; they HATE this country because they are in thrall with a twisted ideology.

If Obama had just studied what was done to Bill Clinton when he was president, he might have had a clue of what the opposition is all about. But he didn't.

Where

are all of the hidden billions by corporate America, by the way?

Why Does Anybody

really care about Rush Limbaugh? He's always been a drama king, and now his over-the-top nonsense is getting even more publicity, publicity it doesn't deserve. That helps him with his ratings and fattens his bank account.

I guess the good thing about Limbaugh being in the headlines is he makes the GOP look worse and worse all the time. Ten years ago, Newt Gingrich was the buffoon of the Republican Party, and now Limbaugh can take his place.

More Conason Stupidity

This column is even stupider than the one he wrote on Palin.

Good going, Joe. Just keep pissing people off. And a clue for the clueless like Clueless Joe: This was NEVER about Hillary Clinton, so it doesn't matter what she says about Obama. She's a party loyalist. But there is no getting around the filthy campaign Obama chose to run, the 24/7 propaganda by the media in his favor, and the ratfucking by the opposing party to get the weak candidate they want.

Obama is NOT supposed to win, but in the remote chance he does and somehow doesn't get himself removed from office because of his crooked Illinois dealings, he can be counted on to kiss the Republicans' asses and carry out many of the things want, such as "reforming" (destroying) Social Security and some of their other pet issues.

Why Of Course

Sarah Palin is a token while Barack Obama is not, and remember, boys and girls, Palin is underqualified while Obama is not. If McCain dies in office, she won't be able to handle the job while Obama can hand the presidential reins to Joe Biden if it gets too hard for him. Thus sayeth the Kool-Aid-drinking idiot.


Joe Conason used to be a halfway decent commentator and reporter, but something happened when he fell off the turnip truck. Yes, he did some great reporting on the fake Clinton scandals, although one could argue his former literary partner, Gene Lyons, was and is a far more perceptive commentator.

Oh, brother, Joe doesn't get it:

Even as a political tactic, choosing Palin may well backfire. Presumably the same Clinton voters who were willing to vote for McCain mostly to vote against Obama -- despite the Arizona senator's right-wing record on reproductive rights and pay equity -- will be pleased by the choice of Palin. But by definition those voters were already attracted to the Republican side. The calculation is that millions of undecided Hillary backers will cross partisan lines because a woman is on McCain's ticket. But will they believe that Palin is comparable to Clinton just because both happen to be female? Or will they regard that comparison as an insult to their heroine?

It's OBAMA, stupid, not Clinton or McCain, that's the reason for the bleeding of the Democratic Party base. If ANYBODY else had been the standardbearer, there wouldn't be this problem. But Obama and his campaign cheated, lied, and stole their way to the nomination, aided and abetted by the DNC.

THAT is the issue, Joe, and you just don't get it.

Campaign Advice

Hillary Clinton should ignore her advisors and simply board the U.S.S. Obama.
_____

We DID have a candidate this year who spouted New Deal-style populism, and we all know what happened to him.

With Edwards gone, who is going to take his place?
_____

Before

Obama starts attacking the Clintons on their supposed shady finances, he should clean up his own Rezko-influenced mansion.

Of Course

McCain is a fake "reformer," but it doesn't matter.

No, Joe,

you AREN'T impartial; the fact you don't even mention Edwards says it all.

You are in the tank like the rest of them.

Joe Conason Proves

he's a media whore like all of the rest.

They've got their goddamned marching orders to ignore Edwards, and it will take a miracle for Edwards to overcome this blatant, immoral bullshit.

Joe Conason

points out yet another problem with Obama to add on top of numerous other problems which make him completely unelectable.

I Seriously

doubt Obama is going to get the nomination anyway.

The hype is just a little bit over the top and too obvious.

Joe Conason

summarizes the sordid career of Ted Olson, and he didn't need to marry the late Barbara Bracher to pad his dubious resume.

Olson earned his sleazeball reputation all by his little self, with such lowlights as helping to install our dictator into the White House and his involvement in the notorious Arkansas Project.

Snip:

If you think Gonzales was excessively partisan in staffing the Justice Department and firing U.S. attorneys who didn't carry out Karl Rove's agenda, Olson demonstrated his own pure Republican partisanship -- and absolute Bush loyalism, another Gonzales trait -- when he helped direct the Republican legal team that "won" Florida for the Republicans in the Supreme Court of the United States during the aftermath of the 2000 election. Actually, he had earned his far-right credentials years earlier, when he joined the secret campaign to destroy the Clinton presidency that was financed by Richard Mellon Scaife, the conservative Pittsburgh billionaire behind American Spectator magazine's Arkansas Project.

What kills me is Olson's argument in front of the USSC on behalf of our dictator was a wretched performance. He was such a nervous mess, he sounded if he were about to pee in his pants.

Presidential Notes.

Joe Conason proves he's as capable of being a partisan hack as anybody on Fox News.

The media hostility towards Edwards is increasing, and it is increasing for quite obvious reasons.

In 2004, the media simply ignored him both during the primaries and in the general election, and this year they have decided to trash him on trivialities or just plain bogus crap like the "hedge funds," which is too much like Jeff Gerth's stirring "investigative reporting" on Whitewater.

Too bad Conason has fallen sucker for it, too.

Well, No Shit

the reason our dictator doesn't want Turd to testify under oath is because he is a liar and would go to prison where he belongs if he was caught committing perjury.

And if by some miracle he had to tell the truth, oh Jesus Christ. The mind boggles.

A Bored National Media

suddenly starts talking up former President Gore, and so far he has rejected their entrities to jump into the 2008 presidential race.

Why would he ever go back into that mess, especially after what happened in 2000? For him it had to have been the most crushing thing to have ever experienced in his political career, that the media, plus a corrupt USSC, plus our dictator's cronies would undermine democracy in the most brazen way possible, and know there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

The media, continuing to be handmaidens of the mostly Republican economic elite in this country, are trying to encourage him to run so they can destroy him, just in case Hillary Clinton finally rejects her husband's obvious attempt to circumvent the 22nd amendment and wisely drops out, or in case Barack Obama decides to get it in his head he is being used by the same media and also withdraws.

I hope supporters of a draft-Gore movement reject the idea this time around. He's clearly not interested.

While It Was Clear

this country was in deep doo-doo from the time the USSC decided to illegitimately hand over the 2000 election to our dictator, it is in far worse shape now than we could have ever predicted.

Worse yet, just because the Democrats won Congress this past November doesn't mean our country isn't in dire peril.