Can’t let January slip away without noting that it was three years ago this month that Pensito Review was launched. Our servers say we’ve had more than 5.8 million visitors, who have viewed 12.3 million of our pages, since then.
Thanks to all of you.
At the end of the debate at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood tonight, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama if they would agree to either a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket this year. Transcript to come, but here’s a rough version:
Obama started first and gave a moderately wordy response that ended with, “Hillary would be on anyone’s short list,” and then went on to talk about wanting the very best people in his administration.
Blitzer: “So that’s a yes?”
Obama did not say no. Blitzer tossed the question to Clinton, who said, “I agree with what Barack just said.”
Blitzer: So that’s a yes?”
Clinton did not say no.
Update Feb. 1: Here is CNN’s transcript:
Now that the 2008 presidential campaign has narrowed to four candidates — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney — one thing is clear: The next president of the United States will be a liberal.
It may seem counterintuitive to younger people but, back in the day, liberal Republicans were relatively common, and many of them were quite powerful: Pres. Teddy Roosevelt, Vice Pres. Nelson Rockefeller, New York City Mayor John Lindsey and Michigan Gov. George Romney (father of Mitt), to name a few.
In the Reagan era there was a concerted effort to reframe the word “liberal” to give it a negative connotation — the Republicans’ sneering construct of the “liberal media” was a product of this effort that is still with us today. As a degree on the scale of political ideology, “liberal” was replaced by “moderate” — “liberal Republicans” became “moderate Republicans.” Conversely, in order to make “conservative” a purely Republican association, the media were also complicit in Republicans’ rebranding of “conservative Democrats” as “moderate Democrats.” The result today is that in the public mind, only Republicans are “conservatives,” and only Democrats are “liberals.”
In fact, branding and framing aside, “liberal,” “moderate” and “conservative” are simply degrees on the ideological scale. Dennis Kucinich is more liberal than Hillary Clinton who is more liberal than Joe Lieberman who is more liberal than McCain who is more liberal than Tom DeLay, and vice versa.
While most people on the left would not consider either McCain or Romney to be liberals, doctrinaire conservatives — who are heavily invested in maintaining “liberal” as a slur — do.
In particular, leading rightwing propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity feel about McCain the way that liberals feel about Sen. Joe Lieberman. They hate him:
The biggest effect of Rudolph Giuliani’s dropping out of the presidential race yesterday may be on the future ratings of the Fox News Channel, which had been openly promoting his candidacy. Much of FNC’s success stems from its unparalleled access to the Bush political shop. By anointing Giuliani, the channel hoped to extend its role as the White House propaganda outlet for at least four more years.
But it is not to be. In fact, FNC’s ratings have taken a hit during this campaign season, in part because a campaign by liberal bloggers to disencourage Democratic candidates from debating on Fox — a move that has spotlighted Fox’s role as a tool of the Republican Party.
A lot of us have been watching Keith Olbermann anchoring election coverage on MSNBC, but CNN has had the biggest audiences this season.
Eric Boehlert, writing at Media Matters:
Here’s the spin CNN president Jonathan Klein put out following its New Hampshire ratings win: “There’s a freshness and exuberance to our coverage that the others just aren’t matching. … Fox almost seems downright despondent in their coverage.”
So I’m not the only one who feels like Fox News coverage, especially of the Republican field, often feels like a televised wake. Or maybe that’s just been Fox News’ collective, subconscious mourning of the Giuliani campaign.
After all, Sean Hannity serves as Fox News’ official ambassador to the Giuliani campaign; a campaign that Ailes and Fox News were hoping to ride back into the White House. Yet despite showering Giuliani with all kinds of laudatory coverage, both Hannity and Ailes have been powerless, as they’ve watched Giuliani’s rudderless campaign go nowhere for months.
Even an all-out Fox News marketing blitz to label Giuliani “America’s Mayor” never got traction. In fact, it ranked right up there with the launch of New Coke, in terms of branding success.
Media Matters put together the video above that shows how brazenly Fox News rolled out its “America’s Mayor” marketing campaign. There could be no better example of the lie that Fox News has anything more than a semblance of journalistic integrity.
I smell a rodent. ABC News is quoting WashingtonDeCoded’s Max Holland about a soon to be released book that exposes the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission as a Bush White House insider.
9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, (sic) Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush’s National Security Council in early 2001 – and that he was “instrumental” in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar…
“[Zelikow] had laid the groundwork for much of what went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?” [“The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation author Philip] Shenon writes, according to Holland.
Zelikow denied that was the case. “It was very well-known I had served on this transition team and had declined to go into the administration. I worked there for a total of one month. I had interviewed Sandy Berger, Dick Clarke and most of the NSC staff.” He noted he recused himself from working on the section of the panel’s report addressing the NSC transition, and that other staffers had held conflicting positions in the Clinton administration.
Did you get that? Clinton, Clinton, Clinton!
Not only did Zelikow work for Rice, he seemed to remain a tad too loyal to her as well.
Holland reports that Shenon discovered some panel staffers believed Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”
He also kept in close contact with Karl Rove whose business the 9/11 Commission should have been none of.
In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission’s general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.
The book comes out on Feb. 5, the same day as Super Tuesday, when the newsers will be consumed in the minutiae of the Clinton/Obama contest. Chances are good it will be lost in the din. We’ll try to keep an eye out for it, though, and keep you posted.
4:28 p.m.: I thought the media weren’t releasing any results until the polls closed in the Panhandle’s Central Time Zone. MSNBC has early results up that show McCain slightly ahead of Rudy.
4:32 p.m.: Keith Olbermann explained that the numbers MSNBC is reporting were released officially by the state of Florida.
5:12 p.m.: The MSNBC anchors can’t decide what to call the Democratic contest since it is not officially a primary. There’s a saying that the only real opinion poll is a ballot so let’s just call it the “Florida Democratic Opinion Poll.” In that poll, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by about 100,000 votes, with 22 percent of precincts in.
Exit polling found that 400,000 Democrats voted early, some as early as Dec. 20, and most of these were for Hillary Clinton. Of voters today, 69 percent said they made up their minds before last week.
Oh yeah, and John McCain is ahead of Mitt Romney by 9,603 votes.
5:40 p.m.: Latest Dem numbers: 447,003/49 percent Clinton – 264,096/29 percent – 137,178/15 percent.
5:40 p.m.: In her victory speech for what she called a “vote of confidence,” Hillary Clinton says Florida’s delegates should be seated at the convention.
In a new Christian-nationalist video voter guide from the hate group, Focus on the Family, an FOTF official falsely claims that Mitt Romney said Mormons are not Christians — but then amazingly proceeds to give a tacit endorsement for president to the infidel Romney over Mike Huckabee, an evangelical politician, or the Democratic candidates, all of whom are Christians in good standing.
It is fundamental to Christian extremist ideology that non-believers, including Jews, Muslims and, apparently, Mormons, are without redemption and will spend eternity in hell.
It is illegal for nonprofit organizations like FOTF to endorse candidates.
In the video, Tom Minnery, an FOTF “policy analyst” says:
Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith. I appreciate his acknowledging that, but on these social issues, we are so similar and that is true.
In fact, in Romney’s “faith speech” late last year, he said:
There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.
It is passing strange that a Christianist organization like FOTF would tacitly endorse a non-believer since it is fundamental to extremist ideology that non-believers, including Jews, Muslims and, apparently, Mormons, are without redemption and will spend eternity in hell. The fact that FOTF will support an infidel like Romney over the Democratic nominee, even though both leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are Protestant Christians, is evidence of the shallowness of the religious conviction of groups like FOTF, whose real mission is to support rightwing political causes.
It’s that time of the year again: time to get wasted while listening to Bush slaughter the words his speech writers so carefully crafted. So here are the rules for this year.
After the speech is over, polish off the entire bottle (in the case of beer, complete the six-pack, 12-pack, or suitcase) just because this is the last frickin’ time we’ll ever have to suffer through a SOTU address from this bozo again. The hangover will be well worth it.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
