How long until Spring Break Teddy?

Ted Kennedy has gotten into a pickle again - this time with a bunch of angry activist supporters of Hillary Clinton. The liberal Massachusetts Senator, fresh off his brazen endorsement of Barack Obama, barely had time to duck from flying purses thrown at him by an attacking band of frenzied New York feminists. With his endorsement of Obama just given yesterday, Ted Kennedy was jumped on early and often today and has jeopardized, if not already lost, his long standing approval rating with women activist groups and feminists across the country.

"Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal," NOW's New York State chapter said in a scorching rebuke. "Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard."

The AP article went on to quote

But the move angered the state chapter of NOW, which called Kennedy's decision the "greatest betrayal."

"We are repaid with his abandonment!" the statement said. "He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton."

The group said it was our obligation to "elect, unabashedly, a president that is the first woman after centuries of men who 'know what's best for us."'

"A Betrayal to Women"

Is this video really from Marcia Pappas, President of NYC NOW Chapter, it sure looks a lot like Rosie O'Donnell to me. Does it seem to you that Hillary has really surrounded herself with a good group of people to be in the White House with her?

After years of support for NOW, Ted Kennedy now has made a new bed to lie in after his "ultimate betrayal". For Ted's sake, he better hope Obama follows through and beats Hillary, because if Billary wins ... it is going to be very hot in the White House kitchen for Teddy from NOW on!

WSJ Reprint - Breaking up is hard to do

By PEGGY NOONAN
January 25, 2008; Page W14

We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that "fairytale," is low, sneaky. "He put out a hit job on me." The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama's counter-jabs. "You live for it."

In Dillon, S.C., according to the Associated Press, on Thursday Mr. Clinton "predicted that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties" and suggested his wife may lose Saturday's primary because black voters will side with Mr. Obama. Who is raising race as an issue? Bill Clinton knows. It's the press, and Mr. Obama. "Shame on you," Mr. Clinton said to a CNN reporter. The same day the Web site believed to be the backdoor of the Clinton war room unveiled a new name for the senator from Illinois: "Sticky Fingers Obama."

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.

There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are "high minded" on the surface but "smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years."

That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.

Mr. Obama takes the pummeling and preaches the high road. It's all windup with him, like a great pitcher more comfortable preparing to throw than throwing. Something in him resists aggression. He tends to be indirect in his language, feinting, only suggestive. I used to think he was being careful not to tear the party apart, and endanger his own future.

But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we've done for you?

Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage.

* * *

Featured Billary Comment: Women in Blue Dresses

After over six some decades as living as woman in a society in which one needs to be a both a bit smarter and a bit tougher to make it, the idea of the first US woman president is an exciting one. But the spectacle that has become Billary is a sad commentary on the “first” and it is comforting when other women, or “Friends of Bill” are willing to boldly state the truth in the midst of the untruths that Billary have been directing against Obama.

Do we really want “our first” woman President to be elected because people like her husband more than they like her but can only vote for her to get him back in the White House? Can it really be that deep thinking women think that the Republicans are even more excited about Billary defeating Obama so the general election can revive the explicit scenes of oral history from the Clinton Oval Office? The Billary duo is not one that will bring pride to women but rather will revive the memory that the blue dress didn’t lie.

There will be no basis for pride for women if Billary return/s to the Oval Office. We need to show up at the Clinton rallies in our blue dresses over the next weeks. We need to show them and others that we reject the images of Hillary grabbing Bill’s stained coat tails to carry them both back to the White House or, more likely, to bring defeat to the Democrats in 2008.

Let’s rally as Women in Blue Dresses before February 5

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Hillary Unchains Bill - that dog can hunt!

All we heard from the beleaguered Hillary Clinton camp in the days going into the Iowa Caucuses was the need to show the personal and sensitive side of Hillary. Then came the tears on the way into New Hampshire. But don't forget that at that time the steely-eyed machine was confused and reeling. There was talk of Bill taking the reins and having the leadership turned over to James Carville and Paul Begala. Hillary was NOT to bite anymore, this was to be done by Bill - and we all know that Carville and Begala would flush the birds out of the bush for Bill to bite.

Now here we are, just a couple weeks have gone by, Hillary has returned and is now clearly the favored front runner. Obama has been spending significant time and precious resources fighting perception and opinion lies. Emails circulating the web falsely accuse him of being a Muslim, that he would use the Koran to swear in with instead of the Bible, that he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance take him away from being able to focus on sharing his vision for America. Barack, you better get a dog if you want to stay alive in this fight.

The Billary Dynasty is rolling. Many democrats still fond of Bill, are now wondering just how far Bill will go to get Hillary elected, to the point they are now very concerned about the damage this will do to the party. Bill has said before, "you gotta do what you gotta do", he is going to do what it takes to get Hillary elected. Billary has never been beaten - and Carville and Begala are a big part of the reason for this.

Never in the history of the United States, has a former President weighed in this far or taken these tactics to get someone elected. Bill is unchained and he loves it, Hillary is now charming - or at least she is suppose to be charming. Take a good look at it - this is as charming as Hillary gets - and one thing for sure, with guidance from Carville and Begala - this dog can hunt and loves to bite.

Wall Street Journal Billary Reprint

Obama's Clinton Education
January 23, 2008; Page A24

One of our favorite Bill Clinton anecdotes involves a confrontation he had with Bob Dole in the Oval Office after the 1996 election. Mr. Dole protested Mr. Clinton's attack ads claiming the Republican wanted to harm Medicare, but the President merely smiled that Bubba grin and said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

We're reminded of that story listening to Barack Obama protest his treatment by the now ex-President Clinton on behalf of his wanna-be-President wife. "You know the former President, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," Mr. Obama told a TV interviewer. "He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas."

Now he knows how the rest of us feel.

The Illinois Senator is still a young man, but not so young as to have missed the 1990s. He nonetheless seems to be awakening slowly to what everyone else already knows about the Clintons, which is that they will say and do whatever they "gotta" say or do to win. Listen closely to Mr. Obama, and you can almost hear the echoes of Bob Dole at the end of the 1996 campaign asking, "Where's the outrage?"

This has been the core of the conservative critique of the Clintons for years. So it is illuminating to hear the same critique coming from Mr. Obama and his supporters now that his candidacy poses a threat to the return of the Clinton dynasty. Even Democrats are now admitting the Clintons don't tell the truth -- at least until Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination.

Mr. Obama's two examples are instructive because they are so wonderfully Clintonian. On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Clinton attacked Mr. Obama's claims of having opposed the Iraq war all along as a "fairly tale." This is a tough charge coming from a two-term Democratic President in a Democratic primary, and it probably helped turn some voters against Mr. Obama.

But it was also a classic distortion intended to turn voter attention away from his wife's own Iraq fairy tale. She's the candidate who voted for the war and backed it for years before she decided she had to be sort of against it, only to later become really against it, and now to favor a withdrawal starting in 60 days. We think Mr. Obama is dangerously wrong about Iraq, but compared to Mrs. Clinton he's a model of consistency.

Then there's Mr. Clinton's moaning before Saturday's Nevada caucuses that his wife's supporters were being strong-armed by pro-Obama unions at casino voting sites. Clinton campaign allies sued and lost on the matter, and the former President sounded like a Chicago ward heeler as he told reporters about the Obama campaign's voter-intimidation tactics. Yet on the day of the vote Mrs. Clinton won at seven of the nine casino sites, and the Obama campaign was left asking if its vote had been suppressed. It wouldn't be the first time Mr. Clinton accused an opponent of doing something his own campaign was planning to do.

Some in the press corps argue that Mr. Clinton's attacks are hurting his wife. But if they were, he'd stop. His behavior is part of the familiar Clinton playbook of letting others do the dirty work so the candidate can stay above the fray. Hillary and other surrogates took on the task of saving her husband from his lies under oath by inventing the specter of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," calling Paula Jones trailer trash, and portraying the widely respected Ken Starr as a rabid partisan.

Now Bill is returning the favor by attacking Mr. Obama; at the same time, other surrogates raise his long-ago cocaine use, only to apologize after it's been widely reported. News reports also say that so-called robo-calls in Nevada repeatedly referred to Mr. Obama by his middle name, "Hussein." And emails suddenly appeared last week on Jewish lists accusing the African-American Senator of being fond of Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Obama had to disavow Mr. Farrakhan and his associates.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton can claim to disapprove of these attacks, and even assert that she herself is being unfairly picked on by the media because she's a woman. She wants to make the primary contest about race and gender, rather than about Mr. Obama's larger, more inspiring message of change. She can then diminish Mr. Obama and make the choice a trench fight for the votes of typical Democratic constituencies. You gotta do what you gotta do.

"I understand him wanting to promote his wife's candidacy," Mr. Obama added on Sunday, referring to Bill Clinton. "She's got a record that she can run on. But I think it's important that we try to maintain some -- you know, level of honesty and candor during the course of the campaign. If we don't, then we feed the cynicism that has led so many Americans to be turned off to politics."

Welcome to the education of Barack Obama.

Are Blacks Split?

Today the front page of the NY Times states that Blacks Split on Clinton vs. Obama. Are they really? Perhaps we should distinguish between "black leaders" to whom the media goes for comment, and black voters. The sometimes self-appointed "leaders" may have personal axes to grind in terms of expected rewards from a Billary administration, but will black citizens pass up a chance to have a black in the White House in order to vote for the white lady?

Dynasty?

Some of the comments on my previous post indicate support for a particular candidate. That is fine, but the post was not intended as an endorsement of Obama, Paul, or anyone else. Frankly, like many Americans I have not made up my mind who I will support, but I know that it will not be Billary.

So far in this campaign there has been very little discussion of the "dynasty" issue. I think the phenomenon is the same as the endless Hollywood remakes of successful films from the past. Financial backers are willing to invest only in proven commodities. Certainly, there is risk in supporting or contributing to a candidate with no name ID.

Other than GW Bush, we have only one example of a dynastic presidency and that was John Quincy Adams a long time ago. Roosevelt does not count because Teddy and Franklin were distant cousins, they were from different parties, and were probably as different ideologically and in personality as any two presidents could be. Interestingly, there is only one known photograph of Theodore and Franklin together.

This does not mean that sons of presidents have not sought the office. I believe that Jimmy Roosevelt, who represented a California district in the House in the late 40s and early 50s, believed he could do it, but his hopes were dashed when he failed to support Truman for the nomination in 1948 and he became something of a pariah among Democrats. Nobody thought he could be elected just because his father was a very popular president.

Finally, I have a question. Is there anyone who seriously believes that offered the choice between Billary and Obama, any great number of black voters will choose Billary? After over 200 years of struggle to rise from slavery and attain social and political equality with whites (still not fully achieved) will enough black voters choose Billary to give them the nomination? Obama is the first black candidate in history to have a real chance. What do you think? Isn't this the "elephant in the room" in the campaign?

Tomorrow I will mention some other issues that have not emerged in the campaign so far.

4 (8) more years?

Well folks, are you ready for another 4 (8) years of Billary? I thought that we did away with kings and queens over 200 years ago when some people decided that they did not want that kind of government any more. By the time we get rid of Billary, perhaps Chelsea will be ready to run.

Maybe we should just save time and trouble and amend the Constitution so that the presidency is passed around among two or three designated families. I am sure that the Kennedys will apply to be included if they ever get any who are not drunks or spendthrifts.

Seriously folks, I think it should be considered. I am going to write up the amendment right now. Maybe I can get a grant from the Bush/Clinton/Kennedy Foundation.

Billary Paul HuckaBush from Texarkana

"Hi, I'm Billary Paul HuckaBush from Texarkana, and I am gonna be your President for the next 28 years, I hope you like me, if not ... deal with it."

With a combined 12 years from George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 8 years from Bill Clinton, and potentially 8 more years from either Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, or Ron Paul it looks like Texas and Arkansas may be able to boast of providing us all the Presidents over a
the last 28 year span - I am not kidding you? Texas and Arkansas, all the Presidents - if you ever wanted to see just how far our country has fallen you don't need to look any further than this.

What is even more alarming is that for the past 20 years, just two families from these two states have governed America from the highest position there is - as Commander-in-Chief. And if you listen to them - you would think they had nothing to do with the issues we are all facing today, including Iraq, immigration reform, global terrorism, health care, education, civil rights, social issues. No, not Billary or the Bush's, they tell us that it was someone or somebody else that has caused all the problems we all now have in front of us.

I thought there were 50 states in the United States. What is it with Texas and Arkansas, and not with it for the other 48 states when it comes to producing our Commander-in-Chief? East Coast - zero! How about it New York, major under-achiever. Massachusetts - all intellect and talk. West Coast - C+, at least California sent Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon before this Texarkana run. Midwest - lousy, way below expectations. South - well, does Jimmy Carter even count? In Texarkana, they say the other 48 States are all hat - and no cattle when it comes to Presidents. And from the looks of it - they are right.

You can't convince me that only Texarkana lineage produces the Commander-in-Chief gene. You can convince me that the country deserves better leadership than what we have gotten the past 20 years - so I say - either Billary Paul HuckaBush starts taking responsibility for the
state our country is in and starts doing something to lead us out of it. Or I say we run Billary Paul HuckaBush out of Washington for good - who is with me!

Edwards has the keys - but not for long

Heavily-favored and current race leader Billary Clinton is in position to win the Democratic Caucuses, but needs to clear a few more bumps before there is smooth sledding. The constant berating Billary has put Obama through in portraiting him as inexperienced, naive, and cowardly is working at this point in the race - but just how true is it?

No matter who you are cheering for, you have to be impressed with Obama's ability to stay so close to Billary at this point in the race - especially in light of everything that has been thrown at him.

What's in Obama's tank? We've discovered that it is a mixture of fuel that includes: a strong base of Billary discontents; a dose of new start change agents; and mild traces of Barry O belief chemicals. Looks like it has been a good mixture so far - but the tank is going to need a lot more fuel shortly if Obama is going to move up the the Number 1 spot.

Up to now, Edwards has been almost silently present in 3rd place, running an efficient and sometimes even noticeable campaign. Don't be fooled, John Edwards is in a very powerful position, maybe not pointed out in the news headlines yet, Edwards will be the one who ultimately picks Billary or Obama.

Think about an Obama-Edwards, or even an Edwards-Obama ticket for a moment. Could it be enough to derail Billary? You bet it could - even Billary believes this could. You should expect to see Billary "cozy-up" with Edwards if Obama comes out of Iowa and New Hampshire still in 2nd place, especially if Obama wins it all in Iowa.

The Obama camp should cut their deal with Edwards as soon as Edwards will let them, there is a "time sensitive" window for Obama to act and now is the time to move. Let's all watch to see how Obama handles this critically important strategic issue, then we can judge on our own just how inexperienced, naive and cowardly he truly is.