Obama and Race

Yesterday I posted a blog entry on voter suppression and also added a sentence or two on why I thought the Clinton's chose to play the race card, especially puzzling since Bill is generally revered in the black community. The gist of it was that they're attempting to win by provoking a response from Obama, which may trigger a response from the white community via a backlash. They know that their margin of victory could be very slim, and they're attermpting to peel off Obama's white supporters one at a time if needed. The Chicago Daily Observer has a piece today on the exact same topic, saying it much better than I could. The money quotes:

The more the conversation gets to be about race, the better the Clintons think they will do. It’s as simple as that.

They want to nudge—even provoke—Barack Obama into becoming the “black” candidate rather than the healing, unity candidate. They want black supporters to raise their voices on his behalf—preferably the Al Sharpton types who will shrilly cry “racism” and thus exacerbate the divide.

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Voter Suppression Fails in Nevada

(cross posted from my blog on the Obama website, hence the reason its out of date).

Via Reuters, it looks like the Clinton push to suppress voter turnout has failed.

At this point, it really feels like Clinton is pushing the race button along with the voter suppression lawsuit in hopes of baiting a response from the various minority groups. This could fuel a backlash amongst white Dem voters. This backlash may give her an overall victory because of the power of the Dem base (a classic Rove tactic), but could really fuel disgust among blacks and possibly Hispanics (although she tends to do very well with the Hispanic population). A pyrrhic victory won in this manner could really impact the general election depending on who the GOP nominee is.

So, yet another reason why we need to reject the restoration of the Clinton family and inject some new blood into Washington. Obama may (or may not) be able to change the political landscape, but to my mind he's the most likely to do something. Electing anyone else will only perpetuate the sickness in our political system.

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Rapidly Losing Respect For Bill

Obama: Running against 2 Clintons

Over the last couple of weeks I've really been losing respect for the former President. Here is a man who spent most of his career building up a bridge of support with the black community, to the point where he's almost universally loved. But in the blink of an eye, as soon as his grip on power becomes shaky, he's willing to toss that support out the window. He's willing to alienate and divide a community that he has professed to love, as well as risk his own legacy in the pursuit of elected office. Their lust for power is really pretty breathtaking and shows that behind all of their words of progress and caring, they're really just power-hungry slash and burn petty office seekers.

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From The Nation: Slick Willie Rides Again

Hilarious and oh so true.

my favorite part:

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

Or maybe:

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.

God I hope the Dem voters in this country can find some sense - and soon.

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Back in the saddle again

I'm back. And I'm in full-out Clinton hatin', Hillary Derangement Syndrome mode.

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We're Kidding You

Ah, the smell of shamelessness in the morning.

From the June 12 press gaggle:

When asked if the indefinite detention of combatants at Guantanamo undermined the President's push for democratization, Snow answered:

Are you saying that detaining people who are plucked off the battlefields is an assault on democracy? Are you kidding me? You're talking about the people who were responsible for supporting the Taliban, somehow detaining them is an assault on democracy?

To which Scott Horton has an entirely reasonable reply:

The battlefield that Al-Marri was “plucked off of” was an apartment complex in West Peoria, Illinois, where he had been living, under constant observation, for many months. He was a computer science student at Bradley University at the time.

So this is the true state of the union here. Just so we're clear here (since this is a fairly important point), the president now has the power to define where the battlefields are (even if the battlefield is your bedroom), who the enemies are (including American citizens - see Padilla - and terrorists' 8 year old children), and is allowed to detain them for as long as he wants and with no due process of law, up to and including Verschaerfte Vernehmung (i.e., torture). In fact, the preliminary evidence shows that Al-Marri may have been reclassified as an enemy combatant because doing so would make it easier to torture him. Topping all of this off, I want to mention the fact that Guantanamo is only the public face of Bush's entire corruption of justice. Obscured in all of this is the existence of secret CIA prisons (black sites) scattered all over the world. Toss in a little destruction of habeus corpus and I'd say we're at about September of 1983. Only 3 months to go.

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Today's Must Read

Andrew Sullivan on the roots of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques".

His post is way beyond essential reading. If you want to get a grasp on how future historians may look at our torture policy then read the entire thing and digest. Point by point, the evidence is damning.

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