Bill Clinton has actually done Obama a favor hasn't he?

The Favor. Not a pretty one. Not a nice one. But an inadvertent wake-up call type of favor.

If anyone thinks the stupid clumsiness of Bill Clinton is 'hurtful' or 'not playing fair', just what laser-guided anti-personnel bombs do you think the republicans and right-wing 527s are going to do? Ugly? Yes. Wish it wasn't like that? Darn right. Naive enough to think the repugneocons are going to play fair? No frickin way.

I love Obama. I love his philosophy and soaring rhetorical inspiration. (I don't like his pandering to the homophobes and the religious right - I hate it when any candidate does that).

I hope he can accomplish what he says he wants to accomplish. Can he do it from day one? I don't know. I have serious doubts about 'operational readiness.' How long will it take him to 'learn on the job', find out that the repugs have more dirty tricks than he has even dreamt of.

And if he can't pull a victory out of the nominating process, shouldn't there be a Plan B? Contingency planning -- the lack thereof is part of what we all know with certainty to be MAJOR FAILURES on the part of the current administration:

• the willful failure to listen to those who knew Osama Bin Laden was a serious threat and that something near September 11 was about to happen
• the debacles, lack of preparation, mismanagement of the (illegal) Iraq War and occupation
• failing to capture Bin Laden and stay focused on Afghanistan which is a complete mess reverting back to Taliban control and Islamic fascism
• the horrors and mismanagement of FEMA in response to Hurricane Katrina, to name but four major examples.

I know for certain that Hillary can hit the ground running on day one. And who has more reason/motivation to have already created a systematic plan that starts on Jan 21, 2009 to undo the horrible damage of the past 7 years (really, the past 12+ because republicans were in control of the house and senate most of the time Bill was prez).

Hillary is not Bill. Bill is one weapon in her secret armament. She is much more committed to and determined to achieve REAL social justice and she will have a much deeper impact and longer lasting progressive legacy than Bill ever could have.

To consider all this does not make one a 'traitor' to the progressive cause. I'm not Anti-Obama. I'm definitely ANTI-Republican. I'm more pro-Democrat (because realistically there is no other option -- are they flawed, yes, dreadfully -- but there's the whole lesser of two evils strong at work now). And at this point -- any of the dems will do -- whoever can win, that's who i will support.

But disturbingly, most of the supporters of Obama seem to actually be not just Pro-Obama, but even more Anti-Hillary instead of Anti-Republican. The magic of sexism lives.

Hillary is not Bill. She may use some of his strategies, tactics, tools, connections, knowledge -- but she is NOT Bill. I'm pretty sure she will be her own president once in the white house -- using the good from Bill, combined with her own 'powerful intellect' (NYT endorsement) and multiple formidable strengths. That is what the republicans fear most. That's why they're anxious for Obama to win the nomination. They know he's ripe for plucking in a hardball world. And that the dems, once again are forming a shooting squad in a circle.

What bugs me most about Obama (my way or the highway) Supporters is their "I'll take my toys and go home if I can't play and win only on my terms." Fine. but that attitude of (especially white) entitlement is part of what cost Gore the election in 2000 when the purist left voted for Nader. Those purist idealists got us 8 years of hell, war, economic devastation, dismantling 60 years of hard-fought, hard-won progress. We don't even know the extent of the damage -- it's far worse than anyone can imagine.

Clinton supporters are perfectly willing to support Obama if he wins, but the reverse apparently is not true. If that's the attitude, look forward to 16 more years of Bush-Cheney-Rove if Clinton wins the nomination and the Obama-ites pack up their purist 'principles' and go home instead of participating in the most important election of the 21st century.

Real life and real politics is not pretty. There is no such thing as perfection in a flawed human system, especially one that was rooted in corruption and hypocrisy from the beginning. Idealism must be tempered with pragmatism and actually getting things done (GTD).

We can't afford to be naive. We have a mixed economy. Capitalist Patriarchy has most of the tools and is invested in retaining their power, privilege, control, influence and economic power. The USA is not going to become a socialist utopia anytime soon. Not when there is so much at stake. We all have a lot to lose (more than ever now) -- especially by being 'purists' -- also known as being dogmatic. Isn't that what Obama preaches against?

I have a longer term view that I don't hear from many of the (mainly white) youthful Obama supporters (who are so urgent, demanding, 'entitled' to everything happening NOW.) They seem to have a total Gen Y/Gen X slacker attitude more in line with customer service/consumer entitlement than strategic pragmatism combined with knowledge of both short & long-term impacts, combined with 'the vision thing' that Obama definitely has. I hope he can pull it off.

My gut tells me the repubs, the right, the corporations and the ultra-wealthy have too much at stake to do anything close to 'playing fair'.

Should Hillary learn from Obama's wisdom, knowledge and obvious strengths? Yes, absolutely. But if anyone knows the ugly tricks of the right, and has been strategically preparing for them for 10+ years, and knows how to dismantle them, it's Hillary Clinton.

Here's what I'd like to see: a Clinton-Obama ticket winning in 08, Obama would become president in 2016 -- we'd ultimately have at least 16 years of progressive democrats in charge of the White House. Okay, maybe I am still an idealist at heart.

Just my 2 cents on a work in progress.

Addendum: Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes something quite insightful (and a bit more reality based from my perspective than all the right wing, left-wing, media pundits and talking heads at MSNBC, Faux News, CNN, etc, all the right-wing radio hosts, chattering stenographers, I mean 'reporters' and especially the oh-so concerned-about-racism-now republicans):

If the Clintons beat Obama on the merits, then [he] has lost. If they beat him on account of race, then the rest of us have lost as well.

LARRY CRAIG: Another Self-Hating Homo Who'd Rather Be Powerful Among His Torturers than Honest

poor whiney hypocrite-victims .... boo hoo hoo...

They're virulent hatemongers, hypocrites and homophobes. Craig is a self-hating denier who deserves to be outed, abandoned and to go down in FLAMES, as it were.

good riddance. don't let the stall door hit you in the @ss on the way out.

be sure to check out the latest installments on one of the evangelical republican rightwing's other poster boys for homophobic hatemongering hypocrisy --TED "i only got a massage" HAGGARD

his latest antics: joining forces with a REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER to ask for money from their dull headed sheeplike lemming followers
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/08/families_with_a_mission

more stories in the archives
http://www.google.com/custom?sitesearch=thestranger.com&domains=thestranger.com&q=haggard

How to create an Angry American

Past time to Ditch the Denial & Sense of Powerlessness

Time to Translate Anger into Action.

Footnote: As of this date, Imperial Republican President Bush has yet to attend one funeral of any soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan (where Osama Bin Laden still hides).

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press, press failures, Failure of the Media, Jon Stewart, Particpatory Democracy, voter responsibility, Citizen Action

Frank Rich: When Cheney the Vice Does It, It’s Not Illegal

When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal

By FRANK RICH
July 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes.com


WHO knew that mocking the Constitution could be nearly as funny as shooting a hunting buddy in the face? Among other comic dividends, Dick Cheney’s legal theory that the vice president is not part of the executive branch yielded a priceless weeklong series on “The Daily Show” and an online “Doonesbury Poll,” conducted at Slate, to name Mr. Cheney’s indeterminate branch of government.

The ridicule was so widespread that finally even this White House had to blink. By midweek, it had abandoned that particularly ludicrous argument, if not its spurious larger claim that Mr. Cheney gets a free pass to ignore rules regulating federal officials’ handling of government secrets.

That retreat might allow us to mark the end of this installment of the Bush-Cheney Follies but for one nagging problem: Not for the first time in the history of this administration — or the hundredth — has the real story been lost amid the Washington kerfuffle. Once the laughter subsides and you look deeper into the narrative leading up to the punch line, you can unearth a buried White House plot that is more damning than the official scandal. This plot once again snakes back to the sinister origins of the Iraq war, to the Valerie Wilson leak case and to the press failures that enabled the administration to abuse truth and the law for too long.

One journalist who hasn’t failed is Mark Silva of The Chicago Tribune. He first reported more than a year ago, in May 2006, the essentials of the “news” at the heart of the recent Cheney ruckus. Mr. Silva found that the vice president was not filing required reports on his office’s use of classified documents because he asserted that his role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, gave him an exemption.

This scoop went unnoticed by nearly everybody. It would still be forgotten today had not Henry Waxman, the dogged House inquisitor, called out Mr. Cheney 10 days ago, detailing still more egregious examples of the vice president’s flouting of the law, including his effort to shut down an oversight agency in charge of policing him. The congressman’s brief set off the firestorm that launched a thousand late-night gags.

That’s all to the public good, but hiding in plain sight was the little-noted content of the Bush executive order that Mr. Cheney is accused of violating. On close examination, this obscure 2003 document, thrust into the light only because the vice president so blatantly defied it, turns out to be yet another piece of self-incriminating evidence illuminating the White House’s guilt in ginning up its false case for war.

The tale of the document begins in August 2001, when the Bush administration initiated a review of the previous executive order on classified materials signed by Bill Clinton in 1995. The Clinton order had been acclaimed in its day as a victory for transparency because it mandated the automatic declassification of most government files after 25 years.

It was predictable that the obsessively secretive Bush team would undermine the Clinton order. What was once a measure to make government more open would be redrawn to do the opposite. And sure enough, when the White House finally released its revised version, the scant news coverage focused on how the new rules postponed the Clinton deadline for automatic declassification and tightened secrecy so much that previously declassified documents could be reclassified.

But few noticed another change inserted five times in the revised text: every provision that gave powers to the president over classified documents was amended to give the identical powers to the vice president. This unprecedented increase in vice-presidential clout, though spelled out in black and white, went virtually unremarked in contemporary news accounts.

Given all the other unprecedented prerogatives that President Bush has handed his vice president, this one might seem to be just more of the same. But both the timing of the executive order and the subsequent use Mr. Cheney would make of it reveal its special importance in the games that the White House played with prewar intelligence.

The obvious juncture for Mr. Bush to bestow these new powers on his vice president, you might expect, would have been soon after 9/11, especially since the review process on the Clinton order started a month earlier and could be expedited, as so much other governmental machinery was, to meet the urgent national-security crisis. Yet the new executive order languished for another 18 months, only to be published and signed with no fanfare on March 25, 2003, a week after the invasion of Iraq began.

Why then? It was throughout March, both on the eve of the war and right after “Shock and Awe,” that the White House’s most urgent case for Iraq’s imminent threat began to unravel. That case had been built around the scariest of Saddam’s supposed W.M.D., the nuclear weapons that could engulf America in mushroom clouds, and the White House had pushed it relentlessly, despite a lack of evidence. On “Meet the Press” on March 16, Mr. Cheney pressed that doomsday button one more time: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” But even as the vice president spoke, such claims were at last being strenuously challenged in public.

Nine days earlier Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency had announced that documents supposedly attesting to Saddam’s attempt to secure uranium in Niger were “not authentic.” A then-obscure retired diplomat, Joseph Wilson, piped in on CNN, calling the case “outrageous.”

Soon both Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Congressman Waxman wrote letters (to the F.B.I. and the president, respectively) questioning whether we were going to war because of what Mr. Waxman labeled “a hoax.” And this wasn’t the only administration use of intelligence that was under increasing scrutiny. The newly formed 9/11 commission set its first open hearings for March 31 and requested some half-million documents, including those pertaining to what the White House knew about Al Qaeda’s threat during the summer of 2001.

The new executive order that Mr. Bush signed on March 25 was ingenious. By giving Mr. Cheney the same classification powers he had, Mr. Bush gave his vice president a free hand to wield a clandestine weapon: he could use leaks to punish administration critics.

That weapon would be employed less than four months later. Under Mr. Bush’s direction, Mr. Cheney deputized Scooter Libby to leak highly selective and misleading portions of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to pet reporters as he tried to discredit Mr. Wilson. By then, Mr. Wilson had emerged as the most vocal former government official accusing the White House of not telling the truth before the war.

Because of the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation, we would learn three years later about the offensive conducted by Mr. Libby on behalf of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush. That revelation prompted the vice president to acknowledge his enhanced powers in an unguarded moment in a February 2006 interview with Brit Hume of Fox News. Asked by Mr. Hume with some incredulity if “a vice president has the authority to declassify information,” Mr. Cheney replied, “There is an executive order to that effect.” He was referring to the order of March 2003.

Even now, few have made the connection between this month’s Cheney flap and the larger scandal. That larger scandal is to be found in what the vice president did legally under the executive order early on rather than in his more recent rejection of its oversight rules.

Timing really is everything. By March 2003, this White House knew its hype of Saddam’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal was in grave danger of being exposed. The order allowed Mr. Bush to keep his own fingerprints off the nitty-gritty of any jihad against whistle-blowers by giving Mr. Cheney the authority to pick his own shots and handle the specifics. The president could have plausible deniability and was free to deliver non-denial denials like “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is.” Mr. Cheney in turn could delegate the actual dirty work to Mr. Libby, who obstructed justice to help throw a smoke screen over the vice president’s own role in the effort to destroy Mr. Wilson.

Last week The Washington Post ran a first-rate investigative series on the entire Cheney vice presidency. Readers posting comments were largely enthusiastic, but a few griped. “Six and a half years too late,” said one. “Four years late and billions of dollars short,” said another. Such complaints reflect the bitter legacy of much of the Washington press’s failure to penetrate the hyping of prewar intelligence and, later, the import of the Fitzgerald investigation.

We’re still playing catch-up. In a week in which the C.I.A. belatedly released severely censored secrets about agency scandals dating back a half-century, you have to wonder what else was done behind the shield of an executive order signed just after the Ides of March four years ago. Another half-century could pass before Americans learn the full story of the secrets buried by Mr. Cheney and his boss to cover up their deceitful path to war.

www.buzzzed.com

Technorati Tags:
Chicago Tribune, Mark Silva, press, MSM, media, mainstream media, press failures

Open Letter to Maureen Dowd: How Oprah has become a tool of the Right Wing Republicans

MY OPEN LETTER TO the BRILLIANTLY SATIRICAL & SNARKY MAUREEN DOWD
re: A Giant Doom Magnet
by Maureen Dowd
February 17, New York Times
........................

Dear MD:

Loved your smart (and smart-ass) column! (see below for link):

Is it just me or has Oprah gone beyond inspiring to downright sanctimonious? And tedious.

Worse that that, Oprah has 'unconsciously' become a tool for rightwing ideology and republican 'non-compassionate' conservative capitalism above all else. Of course, it greatly benefits her (and all rich powerful people) for her 'consumers' to swallow this stuff hook line and sinker. Sure there's some value, of course -- we could all benefit from our own deeper spiritual and personal awareness -- but 'unconscious acceptance of an ideology' i.e., 'there is one-answer-for everyone' is the purview of fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism, and a message of ultimate powerlessness. (Did you ever read Susan Griffin's essay "The Way of All Ideology"?)

What was one of those things Oprah said yesterday that basically reinforced the 'blame the media' mantra of the right? I don't remember exactly (I'm sure you can get the transcript thru Lexus-Nexus) -- but the moment she said it, and attributed it to 'the media' -- what she actually stated was standard dogma and propaganda created and repeated by the rightwing/whitehouse/republican about whatever it was she said and attributed to the media. (damn my short-term and long-term memory!)

Anyway, okay, sure I'm into spiritual awareness, development of consiousness and accepting the bounty of the universe -- really I am! (I pretty much believe that saying that old twelve-step saying: 'religion is for people afraid of hell, spirituality is for people who've already been there')... But part of what disturbed me most and what I kept hearing was this:

separate the personal from the political, the spiritual from the material -- as if they aren't connected or related!

And 'don't worry about changing things out there, only worry about what's in here' -- as if they're not connected, as if they don't affect each other, each realm or sphere.

It also sounded very much like an (unconscious?) attempt to absolve lots people (regular everyday people, voting-age citizens -- not to mention Oprah herself and all those folks of power, privilege and means) -- of any responsibility for what the hell has been going on in this country for the past six years -- (more like 27+)!

As if Oprah the High Priestess is absolving us all of the leaders we-the-people have put in power and tolerated in their unceasing violence, greed, wars, lies, abuse of power, ultra-rich getting more obscenely rich ad-infinitum ..... while working people, families, children, poor, elderly, sick continue being told increasingly that 'you're on your own' and 'we got ours, to hell with you', 'if you're not smart/rich/fast/slick enough to be on top, it's your own damn fault' and other myths of rugged american individualism which excuse and foster blaming the victim -- indeed they require it to continue the myths. I'm sure there are other critical times in our history when people were casting about for 'religious' and spritual and magical answers to human-created catastrophies and eras of great turning points -- the inquisition, the crusades, the reformation, witch-burnings, the birth of fascism (and the world's collective denial about the Holocaust) come quickly to mind. It's not that spiritual lessons can't be learned, it's that some things require real action not simply passivity and navel gazing.

All this 'Oprah-ordained' stuff basically reinforces learned helplessness, forced individualism & social conformity and totally discourages collective political and economic action -- it promotes the unchecked power of the powerful and the continued psychological dependence of the masses on 'elite know-it-all gurus' (who know the secret nyah nyah nyah nyah) while discouraging people -- as groups and as individuals -- to engage together in actively challenging those in power and actively working for EXTERNAL changes while simultaneously developing personal spiritual power.

Oprah is also reinforcing and advocating black and white/all or nothing thinking -- again, benefiting those who have the most while disempowering and victimizing (i.e. blaming) those who don't and who are obviously are 'too stupid' (not spiritual enough) to get it the way Oprah does. Meanwhile people are suffering here, in Iraq, everywhere, but those who have the Secret surely don't have to worry about getting the stench of the stupid anywhere near their own sweet smell of success.

You rock.
love & hugs and the wisdom of the universe!
Buzzzed

#END LETTER#
........................

You can read some of MoDo's smart (and smart-ass) column below or HERE compliments of that rocking blogger: Donkey OD

A Giant Doom Magnet
February 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
By MAUREEN DOWD

So I was sitting around watching “Oprah” yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.

All I needed to do was Unleash my Unfathomable Magnetic Power into the Universe!

Energy flows where intention goes. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Anyhow, Oprah taught me how to stop abusing myself and learn The Secret. I finally get it: because the Law of Attraction dictates that like attracts like, my negativity toward the president and vice president is attracting their negativity and multiplying the negative vibrations in the cosmos, creating some sort of giant doom magnet.

I need to examine my unforgiving stance toward them and use my power of visualization to let them know that in my consciousness and awareness, they cannot determine my destiny. I am severing those emotional and vibratory tonalities that keep me tied to their toxic energy, causing me to repeat the same old pattern of bemoaning in the newspaper their same old pattern of blundering in the Middle East.

Oprah did her second show in eight days on “The Secret,” the self-help book (and DVD) by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian reality-TV producer. The book hit No. 1 on the USA Today best-seller list this week.

At first glance, “The Secret” might seem like inane piffle, a psychobabble cross between Dr. Phil and “The Da Vinci Code,” a new-age spin on Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” But that’s a negative way of thinking.

James Arthur Ray, a teacher of The Secret method, who talked to Oprah, says it’s “very, very scientific.”

“If you think you’re this meat suit running around, you know, you have to think again,” he said. “You’re a field of energy in a larger field of energy.”

Oprah enthused that The Secret “really is touching a nerve around the world” because “so many people are hungry for guidance and meaning.” Ms. Byrne claims it improved her eyesight; others say it works on everything from weight loss to panic attacks to getting rich to snagging the mate of your dreams or a good parking space.

“We create our own circumstances by the choices that we make, and the choices that we make are fueled by our thoughts,” Oprah explained in her first show. “So our thoughts are the most powerful thing that we have here on earth. And based upon what we think — and [what] we think determines who we are — we attract who we are into our lives.”

Or as the book so eloquently puts it, “You must feel good about You.”

If it works on eyesight, can’t it work on foresight? Can’t we use The Secret on the secretive Bush White House to prevent a calamity in Iran?

According to the Sacred Principles set out by the Law of Attraction Specialists, the universe responds to your thoughts. So if I want certified chuckleheads to stop mucking up American foreign policy, all I have to do is let the universe know. I forgive the president for being a goose and the vice president for being a snake, and I start thinking about the sort of amazing, or even mildly competent, leaders I deserve to have in my life.

Maybe W. should read the book. He likes things biblical, and “The Secret” says it takes its Creative Process from the New Testament.

He would learn, as Mr. Ray said, that “trying is failing with honor,” adding: “Take the word ‘try’ out of your vocabulary. You either do it or you don’t.”

W. could have applied that to Iraq, where he has always done only enough to fail, including with the Surge.

A main tenet of The Secret is learning to avoid the chain reaction of churlishness, which begins with a single thought: “The one bad thought attracted more bad thoughts, the frequency locked in, and eventually something went wrong. Then as you reacted to that one thing going wrong, you attracted more things going wrong.”

It’s an apt description of Iraq policy. A bad thought that led to more bad thoughts, and the negative frequency is now locked in on Iran, which is responding with its own negative frequency.

With The Secret, W. will realize that all he needs to do to change his current reality is admit that it’s fake. (Similar to the wisdom of Dorothy clicking her shoes three times.)

Once he stops his chain reaction of negative thought, I can stop my chain reaction of negative thought. And then there will be peace on earth and parking spaces for everyone.

Maureen Dowd spirituality The Secret Oprah NYTimes Secret