Tag: Fox News

Is the Secret Service Doing Its Job in Protecting the Candidates – Or Has It Been FEMA-ized by Bush and His Cronies?

On Feb. 19, Bill O’Reilly told a caller into his Fox News radio show that he won’t “go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama” unless he finds out that she really did say she has lacked pride in her country.
“I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”
– O’Reilly

BILL O’REILLY: “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.”

Well, Bill – get out your white sheets:

MICHELLE OBAMA: “What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.”

Emphasis added. (Video available at same link.)

Later, O’Reilly issued an unapologetic apology in which he brazenly lied about what he actually said that was offensive:

[…]

La Noonan, writing in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:
“Man, she got it all.”
– Peggy Noonan

Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America’s sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think “Man, she got it all.” Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.

That’s the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn’t come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don’t know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.

Emphasis added.

The McCain campaign has had two months to prepare for the story published in the New York Times about his cozy relationship eight years ago with a young blond woman who happened to be a lobbyist.
The possibility that Romney’s mitts were all over this might explain McCain’s palpable antipathy toward him.
The campaign’s rapid response team put out a news release last night that twice used the phrase “smear campaign” to describe the Times story:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

They have had this response in the can for two months, so it bears some scrutiny. The word “smear” is predictable but to use it twice in conjunction with “campaign” is interesting.

One news story is hardly a “campaign.” And it is obvious from even a casual reading of the Times article that lawyers have been all over it. But is there more to come? The McCain team’s use of the word “campaign” suggests there could be.

Or, it is equally likely that “campaign” is a bit of transference — that McCain and his operatives know the source of the story was a rival campaign.

[…]

The New York Times has just published a story claiming that John McCain’s relationship with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, eight years ago so concerned his 2000 campaign staff that they blocked her access to him.
Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access.
MSNBC is wall to wall with the story tonight, because everyone inside the Beltway has known about it since December 20. It was then, two weeks exactly before the Iowa caucuses, that McCain operatives convinced the Times to delay the story in order to protect McCain’s candidacy. If there have been subsequent attempts to get the story spiked, they failed today:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

The alleged sin here is hypocrisy, since McCain presents himself as being pure of the taint of lobbyist influence. There is also a hint of the of sin of adultery, but both parties have denied that their relationship was personal.

These charges are very thin. Pending more to come, the Times may well have given McCain what he needs most: the opportunity to play the rightwing victim card, “See! The liberal media is out to get me.” Thus giving McCain’s conservative critics cause to rally around him.

On the other hand, if the story does have legs, it may explain why Romney suspended, not ended, his campaign a few weeks ago. It also could also explain why Mike Huckabee has not dropped out.

Conservatives are trying to blame the leaking of this story on Democrats, but the original timing of its release (in December when the Dems were focused on each other and McCain was not the frontrunner in any polls) and sourcing ( Republican operatives who worked on the 2000 McCain race) both suggest it came from within the Grand Old Party.

Update: Best guess on the source of the leak to the Times: Team Romney.

After 10 straight wins, including last night’s trouncing of Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin (where Republicans could vote for Dem candidates) and Hawaii, his native state, Sen. Barack Obama is now the putative Democratic nominee for president.

Let’s hope his surrogates are better prepared than this guy from now on:

State Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Texas) learned a lesson in preparedness Tuesday night when he was humiliated on MSNBC. Watson was on to talk about his support of Sen. Obama alongside Rep. Stephanie Tubbs (D-Ohio), who backs Sen. Clinton. Watson has endorsed Obama and writes glowingly of all the things Obama will do for the country, if elected.

But he was unable to answer Chris Matthews most basic demand: “Name some of his legislative accomplishments… name any…” A fantastically awkward mix of dead air, stuttering, laughter and repetition ensued, as Watson could not name a single one. Matthews laid off part way through, it seems at the demand of his producers, but came back around to lay a final blow at the end.

Watch what must be the most awkward clip of the night’s coverage.

It is a fundamental rule of politics: If you don’t define yourself, you will be defined by your opponent. Barack Obama’s charisma and inspirational message may have his supporters fainting in the aisles but his bio and voting records are a blank slate for Republicans to fill, if Obama gets the nomination, which appears increasingly likely.
Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama’s Senate voting record was more liberal than, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.
Republicans noise-machiners met recently to develop lines of attacks against Obama. In yesterday’s London Sunday Times, Grover Norquist, who once compared the U.S. government to something he’d like to drown in a bathtub, previewed other lines of attack:

Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist, said: “Barack Obama has been able to create his own image and introduce himself to voters, but the swing voters in a general election are not paying attention yet. He is open to being defined as a leftwing, corrupt Chicago politician.”

And then Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama has the “most liberal” voting record in the Senate, putting him to the left of, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer:

Obama has the voting record of a “hard-left” socialist, according to Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator.

“It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”

Roger Stone, a Republican operative with ties to Reagan era — and who was fired last year by N.Y State Senate Republicans after he left threatening messages on the phone of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s elderly father — trotted out more of the attacks developed at the strategy meeting on MSNBC’s “Tucker” show yesterday.

He used the word “liberal” repeatedly, of course, and focused on Obama’s unequivocal support for issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens. The MSNBC transcript is unavailable at this hour, but here’s how Stone framed the issue on his website, stonezone.com:

[…]

Gallup:

For several days, nationwide Democratic voters’ preferences have been shifting toward Barack Obama in Gallup Poll Daily election tracking. Now, the Illinois senator enjoys his first statistically significant lead, 49 percent to 42 percent, over Hillary Clinton, according to the Feb. 13-15 results. Additionally, the 49 percent support for Obama represents the high point for him in the daily tracking program.

There is no doubt that Barack Obama has what the elder George Bush called “Big Mo’.” In a conference call early today, his campaign manager, Pavid Plouffe, told reporters that by their reckoning:
If current trends hold, Clinton needs to win the four remaining big states in order to stay even in the delegate race.

Obama now leads Clinton by 136 pledged delegates. Because Democrats split primary and caucus votes proportionally, Clinton would have to win the remaining contests in “blowout form” to pull even with Obama, Plouffe argued.

That includes the big showdowns on March 4 in Texas and Ohio, where Plouffe said Clinton would have to win by well over 20 points to significantly close the gap.

“We see absolutely no evidence in any of the contests remaining that that would be the case,” he said. “The math is the math.”

Following Obama’s string of victories since the weekend, Plouffe said, “We believe that we couldn’t be in a stronger position.”

A lot of people, notably my colleague Trish and, especially, Air America talkshow host Randi Rhodes, are upset at the prospect that even if Obama wins the regular delegate count, Clinton could take the nomination by having more superdelegates.

But if the trends hold, Obama will continue to win by large margins, roughly 2 to 1, while Clinton’s wins will remain narrower, roughly 55 percent to 45 percent.

Plouffe may be overstating a bit what it would take for Clinton to remain even, however. She could still win with slim majorities in Wisconsin (Feb. 19) and the four remaining big states — Ohio and Texas (March 4), Pennsylvania (April 22) and North Carolina (May 6), which would give her the momentum to win narrowly in a few small rural states like Wyoming (March 8), Guam (May 9) and Montana and South Dakota (May 20).

This would leave Obama with lopsided wins in small states including Hawaii (his home state, Feb. 19), Rhode Island (March 4), Mississippi (March 8), Kentucky and Oregon (May 20) and Puerto Rico (June 7).

Trends suggest otherwise, however. If Clinton does not win both Ohio (161 delegates) and Texas (228 delegates) on March 4, it will be harder for her to win Pennsylvania (158 delegates) and North Carolina (115 delegates).

She has weaknesses in both of the latter. If the Philadelphia suburbs trend with their Delmarva neighbors instead of New Jerseyites, she might not be able to make up the difference in Pittsburgh and the central region. North Carolina could well tally up more like Virginia than Tennessee. Tar Heel Democratic demographics skew toward Obama. African-Americans comprise roughly 30 percent of the state, and college-educated professionals dominate in its two largest metro areas, Charlotte and Raleigh.

For Clinton, it appears that it all comes down to Ohio and and Texas in three weeks. Otherwise, the contest is Obama’s to lose.