“‘I have a sneaking suspicion it’s over after North Carolina and Indiana,’ says Emanuel. ‘It will be clear by then who the presumptive nominee is.‘” In keeping with this analysis, Clinton confidant Rep. Rahm Emanuel argues the primary race will be over on May 6. Since Bill Clinton has recently deemed North Carolina a make-or-break state akin to Texas and Ohio, and since Obama currently leads in Tarheel country by an average of 13 points, a May 6 end to proceedings now seems like a solid bet.
Month: April 2008
To the Promised Land.
“‘The world is a tough place,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You’re never going to get out of it alive.‘” A damn dirty ape no longer, Charlton Heston, 1923-2008. (Between this and Buckley, it’s been a bad year so far for the patriarchs of conservatism.)
Update: Hmmm. After reading up on him further, it seems Heston (nee John Carter!) was a late-comer to the conservative movement, and even to the NRA philosophy: “In his earlier years, Heston was a liberal Democrat, campaigning for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963…In 1968, following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Heston…called for public support for President Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968…He was also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he saw as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He opposed the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America. He turned down John Wayne’s offer of a role in The Alamo, because the film was a right-wing allegory for the Cold War.“
White-Out.
By way of Bitten Tongue, the teaser trailer for Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness is now online. From the book by Jose Saramago, it stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, and Sandra Oh. I’m not as big on City of God and The Constant Gardener as a lot of people, but this looks intriguing.
Thandi Rice & Mr. Not-so-Fantastic.
The first family set, Oliver Stone’s W picks up some Dubya admin hangers-on: namely, Thandie Newton as Condi Rice and Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair. Those are both solid. “Among the key “W” roles yet to be cast are those of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove.“
The Clintons’ Colombian Connection.
“The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it.” Clinton consigliere and inveterate torturer of reason Mark Penn gets into trouble for playing both sides of a Colombian trade deal, is forced to apologize, and subsequently gets sacked by the nation in question. If only Sen. Clinton had followed Colombia’s example months ago, she might still have a shot at the presidency right now.
In related news, Al Giordano of Rural Votes explains why Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is rooting against Obama, and why that speaks strongly in the Illinois Senator’s favor. “The Uribe regime, after all, continues a chummy friendship with Bill Clinton, granting him the government’s ‘Colombia Is Passion’ Award last June. That, during the same 2007 spring when former vice president Al Gore cancelled his appearance at a Miami environmental conference because he did not want to share a podium with Uribe, the hemisphere’s poster boy for state-sponsored terrorism, narco-trafficking, and assassinations of opposition political, labor and social movement leaders.“
Nice work if you can get it.
“‘We’ve come a long way from Harry Truman,’ said Leon E. Panetta.” At long last, the Clintons release their tax returns (to Drudge first), and the total post-White House tally amounts to $109 million, “with the former president collecting nearly half of that money as a speaker hired at times by companies that have been among his wife’s most generous political supporters.” The numbers are still being parsed, and the connections to key members of Clintons’ post-presidential rogues gallery — Ron Burkle, Vinod Gupta, the Quellos Fund, etc. — itemized and assessed. Still, the news that leaps off the page here is [a] the Clintons have done very well for themselves since leaving the White House, and [b] speechifyin’ pays top dollar in certain circles. “Sen. Clinton’s financial disclosure forms have offered a glimpse into her husband’s speaking career and the nexus between his clients and her campaign donors. The New York investment giant Goldman Sachs paid him $650,000 for four speeches in recent years…On one day in Canada, he made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.“
Now, how ’bout those Foundation records?
Yoo must be joking. | SSDAG.
“Our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the president is free to override it at his discretion,” said the memo written by John Yoo, who was then deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.” (Nor, apparently, does the Fourth Amendment apply.) An unsettling memorandum by Dubya stooge John Yoo which advocates both dictatorial rule and the legality of torture is released to the public, five years later. “‘The whole point of the memo is obviously to nullify every possible legal restraint on the president’s wartime authority,’ Jaffer said. ‘The memo was meant to allow torture, and that’s exactly what it did.‘”
More than anything, I’m reminded of Lincoln’s remarks to the Indiana fourteenth: “‘Whenever I hear anyone arguing over slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.’“
And, just in case anyone was under the impression that this sort of thing only happened in the dark days of 2003, witness Attorney General Mukasey last week getting publicly verklempt and making up 9/11 tales as he goes along, all to help preserve the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps. At this point, Chuck Schumer has a lot to answer for.
Kael’thas called. He wants his look back.
It’s the Burning Legion vs. the forces of Tempest Keep, with the U.S. of A. caught in the middle, in the full trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Looks like a healthy dollop of summer fun, if nothing else.
The Real World Beckons.
You may have noticed it’s been quieter than usual around here over the past week. This is partly because I’ve come around to the opinion that blogging every minor twist in the Obama-Clinton primary saga has become redundant. We all know Sen. Obama is our nominee, and many of us have known it since Wisconsin back in February. (The most recent evidence of this assertion: Obama picked up a +2 delegate swing in Miss. on Thursday.) So, my inclination to cover this extended garbagetime as closely as I would an actually tight contest has grown more attentuated over the past few weeks. This isn’t to say I won’t be covering the primary anymore, just that I doubt I’ll be spending as much time on it.
More to the point, it’s also been quiet around here because I’ve been busier than usual in meatspace this week. To wit, I’ve been stripping down my apartment, throwing out all the useless junk, as per the spring cleaning norm, but also putting all but really necessary items in boxes, to prepare for my imminent departure from the Columbia environs in two months. I’m still writing at the moment, and don’t plan to defend until the fall term. Still, it’s soon time to leave this place, in preparation for either a return to writerly-type ventures in DC or an academic job search, which I plan to embark on after knowing the electoral lay of the land in November. (Or perhaps I’ll just spend a few years walking the earth like Tom Joad, ’cause you never know.)
Either way, the bills don’t pay themselves, so my non-dissertating, non-blogging time is now mostly spent looking for remunerative employ — if not a full-time gig then at least enough freelance projects to swing the summer months. We’ll see how that goes. Early feelers to Team Obama in Chicago came up blank, unfortunately (they seem more than fine in the speechwriting department anyway), and applications to some higher-profile political blog-jobs didn’t even merit a rejection letter. (Which reminds me, I have a rant about the current state of the paid political blogosphere on broil at the moment — short version: it’s effectively become as insular and echo-chambery as the Weblog Jr. High/”blogger cabal” of the early days — but I’ll save it for another post so it doesn’t come across totally as pique.) But, I’m working on other leads too, so hopefully something will shake out. (Of course, if y’all hear of anything, do let me know — the resume is over here.) In any event, if you’re wondering why it’s quieter than usual here for now, that’s why.
Gasket, Blown. | Carter et al.
“‘It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended,’ one superdelegate said.” From denial to anger? Bill Clinton goes off the rails at a superdelegate gathering in California, after a question about the Bill Richardson endorsement. “It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade. ‘Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that,’ a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.” Meanwhile, it comes out that, while trying to woo Gov. Richardson, Sen. Clinton repeatedly emphasized her view her view that Obama is a general-election loser: “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.” She didn’t say why she thought this, although one can presume.
Fortunately, more and more supers don’t share the Clintons’ dim view of the American electorate. Recent announcements of note: Montana super John Melcher, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, and, if you read between the lines, former president Jimmy Carter: ““My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for, but I leave you to make that guess.” Also, New Jersey Gov. John Corzine, like Cantwell before him, began laying the groundwork for a Clinton-to-Obama switch on CNBC this morning, although he retained some degree of plausible deniability [video.]
Update: The Clinton campaign attempts to elide her unelectable remark, now arguing that [a] Obama is in fact electable and [b] Richardson said it first.