As another fine example of how the mainstream press constantly shills for people while pretending to be fair and balanced, Wolf Blitzer spins McClellan's revelation on Bush's "I don't remember" on cocaine: "Why revive an allegation that has long been dormant?"

Uh, let's see, Wolf - how about

1) McClellan just published a book - a kind of memoir. Generally that's what we do in memoirs is bring up dormant stuff, especially on a sitting President. In bygone eras, this was considered "news".

2) The press dismissed the cocaine story as unprovable or not true. McClellan provides a Bush statement saying "I honestly don't remember, I went to some pretty wild parties in those days", which can lead one to say pretty definitively that he did do it (it didn't take much to insert a $20 bill in your nose in the 70's, and it's not like Bush is expressing revulsion to the concept). And

3) it supports the major issue of McClellan pointing out that all the press and Bush's press secretary regularly lied and distorted the truth to further the ends of the few - that includes *YOU*, Wolf. For the guys who were happy to sift through Bill & Hillary's undies drawer, you were only too happy to ignore any evidence of Bush's transgressions on anything, including your whole coverage of the war and your daily prime time encouragement of lies posing as evidence.

For your shilling, you can expect a pay raise and a summer cottage on the cape at Martha's Vineyard. Failing upward is the norm for the press - go read Daily Howler for years of confirmation.

Better than McClellan spilling the beans on the White House (as if we didn't know) is Jessica Yellin spilling the beans on MSNBC (which we kinda knew as well). <a href="http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/unreliable-narrators-by-digby-from-what.html">Digby analyzes</a>, and you might say the ripples float up on the TPM beach as well. How much of the argument permeating the expressoprogressoblogosphere since November or January is based on the prognoses of Matthews and Olberman, who as Chotiner quoted by Digby notes are firmly ensconced in the Obama hip pocket? And of course if those are the one set of facts we're arguing vs. those of a completely different bias, or God forbid one relatively bias-free, is there any wonder why discussions and arguments have little resolution after months of spinning around the same themes? Because make no mistake, half the time we're not talking about "facts" - we're talking about impressions concluded about understandings reached about things we'd like to call "facts" (even if sourced from Drudge) - along with additional psychoanalysis-from-afar, extrapolations, historical comparisons and related musings.

It is a weird dance we've wandered into.

I chanced into the Fireman's Ball
Well spun into a free-for-all,
With partners fixed in complement
To soothe each others' merriment
But 'neath this surface there arose
Unsummoned passions to dispose.
Once touched desire with jealousy,
The frolic turned to misery.

Following the rule that anything Robert Novak says about a Democrat must be exactly opposite the truth, you can imagine how clairvoyant this little article on MI & FL from last September was. Almost like Scooter Libby leaked it himself:

<a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/hillarys_brier_patch.html">Hillary's Briar Patch</a>

Novak counters the opinion of the NY Times, which stated "The decision seemed to dash any hopes of Mrs. Clinton relying on a strong showing in Florida as a springboard to the nomination." Instead he draws this interesting conclusion:

"Assume Clinton starts by losing Iowa and New Hampshire after more than a year of campaigning. That could be nullified by campaign-free Michigan, where a public poll gives Clinton a 19-percentage point lead over Obama. Assume Clinton also loses in heavily campaigned South Carolina. That could be nullified by campaign-free Florida, where polls show Clinton's lead as high as 30 percentage points."

Ah yes, brilliant Bob Novak. A nullified election trumps an actual win even if the press refuses to report it in any meaningful way. Always creative in interpreting the slippery playing field of facts. It must be an advantage for sneaky conniving Hillary - where's our idiot savant to scream "It's EXCELLENT" - so now we can bash her a little bit more.

Well, I had a fun outing on Memorial Day with this post on Security. Worth a look - some of the discussions are more into implementation details and interpretations than typical. Latin America, Middle East, China, etc. Kind of like a Rorschach test on what Obama's foreign policy means - hopefully I'll understand the consensus soon, but one interesting item is that Obama supporters seem to think NATO is dead, obsolete. Is that really the perception? Latin America looked a bit peculiar to me as well - hopefully someone will confirm or deny my impressions that it looks like business-as-usual for promoting security forces and drug interdiction south of the border.

Anyway, enough prelude - in the middle of the debate, someone sent me to Obama's foreign policy site. And there I came across this gem:

Seek New Partnerships in Asia: Obama will forge a more effective framework in Asia ...[and] work to build an infrastructure with countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity; and work to ensure that China plays by international rules.

My my my. One glance at that and my mind popped up "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere". Which as Wiki helpfully notes "is remembered today largely as a front for the Japanese control of occupied countries during World War II, in which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan."

Am I too sensitive? Are the Chinese? After all, they're still bickering with the Japanese over how China and the Rape of Nanking are portrayed in Japanese school books some 70 years later, or visits to soldiers' tombs by Japanese leaders. How would they react to this candidate's Web site? Couldn't someone in the campaign find a synonym for "prosperity"? A different term than "East Asia"? Some other way of saying this? How long has this item been up? It almost seems like a hacker got in there just to mess with him.

So anyway, do words matter? Should we be concerned about the bickering that that "East Asian prosperity" infrastructure might produce with our sensitive friends in China? (Remember how long we negotiated over the embassy bombing in Belgrade and subsequent protests in the street? Our plane they dismantled in Hainan?). Is this just a single isolated slipup or one in a worrisome trend of misphrasings in a campaign that had the reputation of being carefully choreographed?

Okay, fire!!! (Don't forget to click Recommend, and I'll even pay for the bullet you hit me with)

Now that Memorial Day has passed, I'd be curious about the Obama crowd's comments on security and defense. Obama stated he wasn't against war, just "dumb wars". Do you folks see any smart wars on the horizon, tough postures we'll have to take, or other types of military involvement? Do we need to build up the armed forces or ratchet down? Where do you see the fight against terrorism - a red herring and diversion? Alive but elsewhere? Dying down? Ever present? How forcefully should we interact with Pakistan? What if anything should we do about Palestine & Israel? Where do you see Syria & Hezbollah? Are you concerned about the growth of Russia and China over the last 7 years, both economically & politically? What about the influence on Central Asian states? Whither Taiwan?

And now for the controversial part (you knew this was coming). If Obama's to extricate us from Iraq and balancing interests like those noted above, he'll likely need some assistance from Europe, yet with his Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe he held no meetings. Do you see this as a lost opportunity for him to bolster his own connections and understanding, or simply an irrelevant detail? Where do you see our future with NATO? MyDD.com offered up these points:

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For comparison, as Steve Clemons (who originally discovered that Obama had held no hearings) noted, both the same Senate subcommittee under Republican control and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe have both been much more active.

In the 109th Congress (2005-2006), the Senate subcommittee was chaired by George Allen, who has never had a reputation for hard work or intellectual stature. And yet I found at least three hearings that Allen chaired:

The Lifting of the EU Arms Embargo on China, March 16, 2005

U.S.-E.U. Regulatory Cooperation on Emerging Technologies, May 11, 2005

Islamist Extremism in Europe, April 5, 2006

Allen even had the excuse that he was running in a high-stakes election himself, one that he would eventually lose to Jim Webb.

The House counterpart to Obama's subcommittee has been very active as well, holding at least nine hearings since January 2007, under chair Robert Wexler (Florida).

11/14/2007 U.S.-Greece Relations and Regional Issues

10/3/2007 America's Role in Addressing Outstanding Holocaust Issues

6/20/2007 Adding Hezbollah to the EU Terrorist List

5/24/2007 Expanding the Visa Waiver Program, Enhancing Transatlantic Relations

5/3/2007 Do the United States and Europe Need a Missile Defense System?

4/17/2007 Extraordinary Rendition in U.S. Counterterrorism Policy: The Impact on Transatlantic Relations

3/28/2007 Opening up of the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives in Germany

3/22/2007 Polling Data on European Opinion of American Policies, Values and People

3/15/2007 U.S.-Turkish Relations and the Challenges Ahead

As we can see, there are some highly important issues here, including relations with Turkey (a country much in the news for its involvement with Iraq), missile defense, extraordinary rendition, and others. Obviously, as a House member, Wexler is never really not campaigning.
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Okay, skewer me (and please click Recommend - you'll be glad you did).

Interesting item from 1988 primary Wiki entry: "Jesse Jackson's campaign believed that since they had come in a respectable second, Jackson was entitled to the vice presidential spot. Dukakis refused, and gave the spot to Lloyd Bentsen."

1992 update:
3 of 4 defeated candidates won't endorse Clinton

From June 1992, Jerry Brown and his convention fight:
Mr. Van Dyk said that "what the committee decides will go a long way toward determining what we do, on endorsement and on a floor fight." He said that he and former Governor Brown had met in Santa Fe over the weekend and had discussed the possibility of a common challenge to the platform on July 14, when the convention is scheduled to vote on it, if the Clinton majority on the committee did not compromise.

"We have 600 delegates," Mr. Brown told reporters at the Santa Fe gathering. "I don't think they are going to New York to be extras in a 'B' political movie. They want to be participants in a live debate and process."
============================================
Brown's site:
Despite limited financial resources, Brown defeated Bill Clinton in Maine, Colorado, Vermont, Connecticut, Utah and Nevada during the 1992 Presidential primaries and was the only candidate other than Clinton to receive enough voter support to continue until the Democratic National Convention.

In June 1992 before California, Clinton's main strength had been the South, and he had had trouble winning outside of the South. (Shades of Jesse Jackson). He was behind both Bush and Perot in the polls. Even after California, there were enough opposition delegates to give him grief at the convention, and with 3 of the 4 Democratic candidates he defeated not endorsing him, there was no party unity and a good chance he would be crippled going into November.

Like Waldo in Repo Man, when people talk about "unity" among Democrats, I respond "fuck that". At least when they trot out the Unity Pony under mythical circumstances.

So here we have 1968, 1980 and 1992 as 3 strong examples when the primaries went on until June and there were issues into the convention. Unfortunately, as is typical, lies get dragged out long enough that other slip-ups happen. Similar to what happened with Whitewater - keep investigating and dragging out crap until something else is found to investigate. Politics as usual, conventions as usual - get it?

[Please click Recommend]