Bill Clinton: The Same Old Experience Is Not Relevant

Obama should be using Bill Clinton's words when Hillary claims he doesn't have experience, but she and John McCain, Iraq war supporters, do. The same old experience. Wrong then, wrong now.



hat tip to Oh You Pretty Things

The Imus Effect

Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times
C. Vivian Stringer and her Rutgers players at a news conference last year. They made an impression on recruits with the way they handled Don Imus.

C. Vivian Stringer had her biggest recruiting year ever at Rutgers -- five, count 'em, FIVE McDonald's All-Americans have committed to Rutgers for next year.

Way to go Viv.

On the October morning Chelsey Lee awoke with her decision made, her destination clear, she summoned Shirlene Horne into her room and said, “Mommy, I’m going to commit.”

Connecticut or Rutgers? Geno Auriemma or C. Vivian Stringer? Horne had promised to withhold her opinion until her daughter, a 6-foot-3 center from Parkway Academy in Miami, disclosed the one that mattered most.

“Rutgers,” Lee said.

Horne hugged her and whispered, “I was feeling that, too.”

In Crawford, Miss., April Sykes, a 5-11 guard/forward ranked as high as No. 2 in the country by some scouting services, got on board the same northern-bound train as Lee, her A.A.U. teammate. A 5-9 point guard from Pasadena with the splendid positional name of Nikki Speed was also feeling Rutgers, over Duke. In Fort Worth, Brooklyn (no relation to the borough) Pope, a 6-2 forward, was resisting in-state pressure, opting to weather the comparatively daunting winters of central New Jersey.

Add Jasmine Dixon, a 5-11 guard from Long Beach, Calif., and Stringer has what every college basketball coach dreams of in a single incoming class — five McDonald’s all-Americans from across a continent she now calls her recruiting base.

Thank you, after all, Don Imus.

“He pretty much put Rutgers on the map,” said Janice Pope, the mother of Brooklyn.

[]

[] Then came last season’s run to the final, falling short of Stringer’s first title against Tennessee, followed by the seismic event of Stringer and her players, most notably Carson, standing up on national television for themselves and for young African-American women everywhere.

“Hearing E speak, oh my goodness, it was amazing,” Nikki Speed said, already relating to Carson on a first-initial basis. “We still talk about that now, but when I was watching it, I remember thinking, that’s what I want to learn, that’s how I want to carry myself, like a proud African-American woman.”

Brooklyn Pope had another thought that day, concentrated on Stringer, during the coach’s characteristically eccentric but emotionally irresistible appeal.

“When I was looking at the television that day, I was like, ‘Dang, that’s not a coach, she’s like their mother,’ ” Pope said. “She defended them like they were her own children.”

In separate telephone interviews, three of the Rutgers recruits — Pope, Lee and Speed — all spoke of the close-knit family Rutgers appeared to be on television, and later, upon visiting, in real college life.

John McCain's Bad Temper On Display

Nobody wants this batshit crazy old man's finger on the button. Even the military is scared of his temper. Here's video of him going off on a reporter, for daring to ask a question. The nerve!



Mccain doesn't have enough patience and self-control to run a local city council meeting, much less deal with an international crisis. Just another reason why it's absurd for Hillary Clinton to state that McCain has "crossed the commander-in-chief threshold". By making that claim she has opened her own CIC credentials up to scrutiny, and not surprisingly, she's not faring so well. Here's an article from the Chicago Tribune analyzing her claim:

But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises.

She'd have much better off attacking McCain's temper and lack of judgment than going after Obama's lack of experience. They all have the same executive experience: none.

I Call Bullshit

"Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn't make me Madonna. Never will."

Joan Cusack as Cynthia in Working Girl

"I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

This is the kind of thing that makes me go ballistic. I'm a unity Democrat. I believe either of the Democratic candidates will make a fine President. I support Obama over Clinton because she voted for the war, and he spoke out against that foreign policy mistake. I have tried SO HARD not to criticize Hillary, not to demonize her, not to tear her down, because she may be the party's nominee, and I'm a good Democrat. I want the Democrats to win, not the Republicans.

Now Hillary is saying not only that Obama is not qualified to be commander-in-chief, but that the Republican candidate, McCain, IS qualified. [Based on what? Five years as a prisoner of war? Four years in the House? Twenty-two years in the Senate?] What party is she working for here? Whose side is she on?

Let's face it, the three candidates for President are all Senators. None of them has any executive experience. Is Hillary just saying she and McCain are older than Obama? Or is she trying to claim that somehow sleeping in the same bed with the President gives her executive experience? Here's how the NYTimes evaluated that claim:

[D]uring those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”

I've had front row seats to Celtics games. Doesn't make me Larry Bird. Never will. I've had front row seats for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Doesn't make me Seiji Ozawa. Never will.

And I know that scorched earth tactics leave nothing but burned ashes behind.

My Congressman, Jim McGovern, is a Hillary supporter. I'm sending him an email reminding him that Clinton is running to win the Democratic nomination. Tearing down Obama and praising McCain to the skies is not the way to go.

John McCain Can't Quit John Hagee

Watch this video. John Hagee is NUTS, and McCain not only accepted his endorsement, he solicited it and brags about it.



from Talking Points Memo

Indefensible

Read this post from dailykos; no way was the Obama darker ad by the Clinton campaign an accident. Shame. Clinton should withdraw the ad and apologize.

McSame As Bush

hat tip to TPM Election Central

Interesting

Rather than a brokered convention, an Obama-Clinton (or Clinton-Obama) ticket?

Craig Crawford, HuffPo: Only a Dream Ticket Prevents Democratic Nightmare

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama might be stuck with each other – not just for the long haul to the Democratic nominating convention, but well beyond. They might have to run together, whatever the order and whether they like it or not.

Bush To Endorse McCain Today

That's the best news of the day for this Obama supporter.

Let's hope we get a few good pictures to reinforce the truth:

McCain = 4 more years of Bush.

Clinton Takes Ohio

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) smiles during a campaign rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio February 27, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008
(USA)
TIME: Clinton Wins Ohio

Just an excuse to post this hilarious photograph. Where were her advance people? Didn't they think, avoid the photo with the devil mascot?

One other even funnier photograph, also from the Clinton campaign:



LATImes Top of The Ticket Blog: Hillary Clinton puts the media in its place -- the men's room

Yeah, she put the media in the bathroom next to the urinals. Where they belong. Way to go, Hillary.

Hillary on Jon Stewart

Hillary Clinton on the Daily Show last night (parts 1 & 2)

A Few Fine Links

flickr: Library of Congress photostream
The WaPo says they were just kidding about that whole dumb women thing. So, they think it's OK to joke about sexist stereotypes, and they really think we are dumb enough to accept that lame excuse. Laura Rosen has excellent coverage of the issue at War and Piece.

Vanity Fair reports that George Bush, Master of Disaster, royally fucked up the Gaza/Hamas/Fatah/Israel relationship (which was bad enough to begin with) with a disastrous intervention into Palestinian politics. If you don't have time to read the whole article, here's a summary by Ron Beasley of Middle Earth Journal:

* The administration demanded that elections be held in Palestine, the Democracy thing you know.
* Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council which took everyone in the administration by surprise. They must not have been listening to Rumsfeld when he said Democracy is messy.
* The Bush administration told the Abbas to disolve the recently elected government and declare Marshall law.
* They then armed his party, Fatah.
* When word of this leaked out the result was a civil war which Hamas won.
* Hamas confiscated most of the US supplied weapons are are now using them to shoot at Israelis.

Troutnut at dailykos catches Hillary Clinton's campaign darkening Obama's skintone in her ads. Shades of the Time magazine OJ Simpson cover.

Did you ever buy that Airborne stuff that is supposed to keep you from getting sick on planes? Turns out they made up the supposed scientific research they cited. There's a $23 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit (they must have sold a LOT of those pills, no?) and The Consumerist has the links where you can file for your refund. This is the kind of case tort reformers want to eliminate.

A little parody site: John McCain Is Our Jalopy. Just keep hitting refresh to see the messages change.

Climate Progress points out the "brutal drought" in Australia and predicts that this is what the American Southwest will be like in 2050.

Charlotte Allen and the Washington Post: Dumb, and Dumber!

Author Dumb (from the Dallas Morning News)
Newspaper Dumber!
Yesterday the Washington Post published an editorial by conservative writer Charlotte Allen, entitled "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" (I'm not linking that piece of shit. Go to the other links in this post, from the excellent feminist website, Feministing.) On the online edition of the post, the article was front-paged with this teaser headline: "Women Aren't Very Bright".

After a torrent of protest, they changed the teaser headline to: "Why Do Women Act So Dumb?"

The article is pure conservative crap. The woman even calls herself a dummy in it, and extrapolates from anecdotal evidence that all women are dumb. Sad. But why is this getting printed on the editorial page of a major newspaper? Do they take us for fools? I guess they do. I'm not dumb. I wouldn't subscribe to the Washington Post if they paid me to. No money for Fred Hiatt's right-wing editorial page. Let Novak and Krauthammer eat dirt.

I posted a comment on the article quoting the John Lennon song, "Woman is the N***er of the World", but they deleted it. So: It's OK to call women dumb, but not to use the epithet nigger to make a point, even if you are commenting on an article that reveals prejudice and stereotyping.

A few months ago the ombudsman for the Post wrote wondering why young female readership of the Post was down (hat tip, Atrios). I can't imagine, can you?

Imagine if the Post had published such an article about other groups? Why are Blacks So Dumb? Why Are Jews So Dumb? Why Are Catholics So Dumb? Why Are Handicapped People So Dumb? Why Are Old People So Dumb?

Why is the Washington Post so dumb?

Better

The New York Times could take a lesson from their West Coast namesake on obituary writing. No equivocations, no bows to critics, no mining trivial events from her personal life.

LATimes: Barbara Seaman, 72; author sparked modern women's health movement

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 2, 2008
Barbara Seaman, a writer and health activist whose groundbreaking 1969 book that warned against the dangers of the birth control pill is widely credited with launching the modern women's health movement, has died. She was 72.

Seaman died of lung cancer Wednesday at her New York City home, said her son, Noah Seaman.

In her first book, "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill," Seaman exposed the serious and little-known side effects of the high-estrogen pill prescribed at the time. Women weren't warned that the pill could cause heart attacks, strokes, depression and a host of other ills.

Her investigative work prompted Senate hearings in 1970 that led to a warning label on the drug and the mandatory inclusion of patient-information inserts.

When women who had been harmed by the pill were barred from testifying at the hearings, they fought back by constantly interrupting, calling out questions such as "Why isn't there a pill for men?" and "Why are 10 million women being used as guinea pigs?" Seaman wrote 30 years later in the New York Times.

Those acts of "feminist disobedience," as Seaman called them, are often portrayed as ground zero of the women's health movement.

Judy Norsigian, an author of the pioneering women's health book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" (1973), told the Los Angeles Times last week that the protests were "the beginning of women's voices being heard in women's health."

"It was an extraordinary moment, and Barbara was responsible for getting that movement off the ground," Norsigian said.

With four other women in 1975, Seaman founded the National Women's Health Network, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

According to Cynthia A. Pearson, the network's executive director, "the kind of journalism that Barbara started doing back in the 1960s . . . affected most of the women in this country. It led to more women in medical school, more written information in patient's hands, the breaking down of rules against dads in the delivery room. It was profound."

Carol Downer, who co-founded the Los Angeles Feminist Women's Health Center in 1971, said Seaman's high-profile support was invaluable.

"We were very grass-roots and she took to us and smoothed the path for us over the years," Downer said. "She was just a hub of the women's health movement. She brought the best out in all of us, and she had an impact on women's health around the world."

The 1957 birth of Seaman's first child greatly influenced her career path. When she told her obstetrician that she planned to breast feed, he responded that she "didn't have the right personality for it, too educated," she wrote in a statement for the Jewish Women's Archive.

Her doctor assumed that she would follow his advice and prescribed a laxative that she inadvertently passed on to her son through her breast milk. He nearly died.

"He recovered, but in one sense I did not, for I would never again trust a doctor blindly," Seaman wrote in her 2003 book "The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth."

By the early 1960s, she was a health columnist for such magazines as Brides and Ladies' Home Journal. The first oral contraceptives were on the market, and Seaman was inundated with questions from readers who were experiencing distressing side effects. Her answers formed the beginning of her book and helped push for lower-estrogen versions of the pill that later became available.

"I just started out to try and give women plain facts that would help them to make their own decisions and not have to rely on authority figures," Seaman said in a 2003 interview with Women's eNews. "I didn't start out to be a muckraker."

Her books included "Free and Female" (1972), which addressed women's sexuality; "Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones" (1977), written with her second husband, psychiatrist Gideon Seaman; and "The No-Nonsense Guide to Menopause," co-written with Laura Eldridge, to be published later this year.

One writing project stood apart, a 1987 biography of "Valley of the Dolls" author Jacqueline Susann called "Lovely Me." Seaman said she was drawn to her subject because she saw Susann as an advocate for women's rights who operated within the prism of popular culture.

Seaman was born Sept. 11, 1935, in New York City, the eldest of three daughters of Henry and Sophie Rosner.

She credited her passion for social justice to her father, a public welfare administrator, and her affinity for writing to her mother, a high school English teacher.

At Ohio's Oberlin College, Seaman received a bachelor's degree in history in 1956. While completing a fellowship in advanced science writing at Columbia University in 1968, she started working on her birth-control book.

Seaman was married and divorced three times.

In addition to her son, she is survived by two daughters, Elana Seaman and Shira Seaman; sisters Jeri Drucker and Elaine Rosner-Jeria; and four grandchildren.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com