Bill’s ‘I love you’
Watch the video of Hillary Clinton’s convention speech last night, and you can see Bill Clinton mouthing the words, “I love you.”
I didn’t know Bill talked to himself.
Guinta endorses Stephen
Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta today endorsed John Stephen.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I feel that John Stephen is the one candidate who can best protect the taxpayers of Manchester and New Hampshire,” Guinta said in a statement. “He’s the true fiscal conservative in this race. I know that John will do the hard work to keep taxes low and has the discipline to say no to new spending. He also is totally focused on finding solutions, not continuing the bickering we see in Congress. That’s just what we need right now in Washington.”
Has Hillary really got you going?
The video introducing Hillary Clinton at the DNC last night kicked off with The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me.” This is one of my favorite rock songs of all time. I just hope I don’t think of Hillary now every time I hear it. Anyway, it’s a song about a “girl” — not a woman, mind you — who gets Ray Davies so worked up that he can’t sleep at night. Kind of inappropriate as a theme for Hillary.
On the whole I thought she delivered her speech very, very well, and it was a good speech for what it was intended to do. It was too much of a laundry list of Democratic talking points. But the audience liked that. And when she got into the rhetorical parts, she delivered them with style and passion. I particularly liked the portion in which she asked her supporters if they’d gotten into this race just to support her or if they’d gotten in for the ideals. That was a nice theme and a good way to shame anyone who refuses to support Obama. She did her job, and did it well.
And she did get the audience going. Not in that way, although she looked very pretty, I thought — the best she’s looked in a year. You could see the difference a few months of rest have made. (You can see it in the male former candidates, too, but it really showed on Clinton last night.)
Now, back to the music. The second song of Clinton’s introduction video was Lenny Kravtiz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” This is a perfectly appropriate song for the moment. It’s a good left-wing anthem, but it’s a great Barack Obama theme song:
“I was born long ago
I am the chosen; I am the one
I have come to save the day
And I won’t leave until I’m done.”
After that was Tom Petty’s “American Girl.” Again, there’s the “girl” word. If anyone of prominence calls her a girl, the backlash will be swift and harsh. But Hillary’s own team twice referred to her as a girl last night, and no one seemed to notice.
UPDATE: NH House Speaker Terie Norelli came away from the speech with a similar impression — the portion of the speech about working for common ideals, not an individual candidate, was motivating. Here is what Norelli told The Washington Post:
“She hit it right out of the ballpark. I’ve never been prouder of a Democrat than I was tonight.” Norelli said the speech made her want to work hard for Obama. “She said it better than I ever could have: Everything I worked for and that she worked for would be at risk if we do anything less.”
The unifier
So let me get this straight. Barack Obama is supposed to be the man who — finally! — unites the country, who ends the partisan gridlock, crosses party lines and brings Republicans and Democrats together to hold hands, put aside their differences, and make our government work for the people, not the parties or the special interests. (Did I get enough cliches in there?)
OK, fine. But how can we expect a guy to unify the country who can’t even unify his own party?
Really. John Harris has a great article in today’s Politico in which he examines the big rift between Obama and the Clintons. Here’s a telling bit of reporting:
“Obama has taken the minimum public steps necessary to accommodate the Clintons, including giving them prime-time speaking spots.
“But he has taken few of the extra steps that Clinton allies say would have gone miles toward fostering goodwill.
“He did not work hard to help her retire her $24 million campaign debt.
“He did not make a high-profile statement repudiating any suggestion that Bill Clinton played ‘the race card’ in the nomination contest — an allegation that the former president considers grossly unfair and that continues to infuriate him.
“Just as significant, Obama has maintained a certain cool diffidence toward the former president. They spoke by phone last week. But for weeks before that, associates said, Clinton had heard nothing and did not even know when he would be speaking at the convention. The Obama campaign’s only communication was a form letter sent to all delegates.
“Clinton loves to offer advice to fellow Democrats. But even in their conversations, Clinton friends say, Obama shows little deference or signs that he thinks Clinton, the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms, has any special wisdom to offer.
“’There is a lot Obama could have done to unify the party, and basically he hasn’t lifted a finger,’ said one Democratic operative who is close to the Clinton team.”
Now, I do think the supposed refusal or reluctance of a lot of Clinton supporters to back Obama has been overblown. But still, something real is there. And Harris’ reporting indicates that Obama’s reluctance to pull the Clintons into his own circle, to make them feel part of the team, is a major factor.
Obama has been the presumptive nominee since the last primary on June 3. He has had almost three months to bring the Clintons on board, and yet here we are facing the night of Hillary Clinton’s convention speech and the rifts remain significant, partly because Obama apparently has been unable or unwilling to bring the tribal factions of his party together.
So, tell me again how he’s going to unify the country?
Forget Biden, Obama represents change, people!
Concluding today’s editorial about Joe Biden’s selection as Barack Obama’s running mate, we wrote:
“What the Biden selection means is that Obama doesn’t really believe all of his own rhetoric. It is an admission that experience matters, that age and wisdom do beat youth and inexperience, and that “change” means not uprooting the culture in Washington, but simply electing Barack Obama President.”
A Democratic spokesman, trying to refute that charge, wound up confirming it. Howard Kurtz reported in his column today:
“Former newspaper reporter and Democratic spokesman Phil Trounstein slams some of the media critiques on Biden’s selection:
“‘The most idiotic punditbabble we’re heard in the wake of Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden — advanced by the AP’s Ron Fournier, NBC’s David Gregory and others as if they were channeling John McCain’s talking points — is the notion that Biden undercuts Obama’s message that it’s time for a change.
“‘Exhibit A, in this silly argument, is Biden’s 35 years in the United States Senate. The simplistic formulation argues that because Biden is an old hand in Washington, he undermines Obama as a standard-bearer for change.
“‘First of all, consider the absurdity of the suggestion that a brilliant, young, black president wouldn’t represent an historic, transforming leap forward in American politics. On its face, this is nothing more than Rovian hyperspin.
“‘Barack Obama personifies change — no matter who his running-mate is.’”
Thanks, Phil, for confirming that “change” simply means electing Obama President because no matter what actually happens once he’s elected, “Obama personifies change.”
Random thoughts on Obama/Biden
Look for an editorial tomorrow on Joe Biden’s selection as Obama’s running mate. Until then, here are a few thoughts on the team:
1. Biden is the 20th longest-serving senator — not in this Congress, but in U.S. history. That kind of undercuts the whole “change Washington” theme Obama’s running on. Reportedly, Obama personally wanted to choose Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. I think that probably would’ve been a smarter choice. It would have solidified the campaign’s theme of change.
2. Where’s this mythical appeal to blue-collar voters? Supposedly, Joe Biden has great appeal to Joe Lunchbucket because he has working class roots. Right. So did John Edwards. I suppose that, compared to Barack Obama, Biden has more working-class appeal. But he didn’t have that appeal in his two runs for the White House. He’s another ultra-liberal career senator, who is also a lawyer, who 12 years ago sold his home to a credit card company executive for $1.2 million. I just don’t see the appeal. A moderate governor from a red or purple state would have done better on that score.
3. Biden also is supposed to be a hard worker and campaigner. I don’t see it. When he ran for President last time, he could hardly be bothered to raise money. In an editorial board interview, he told us that he never has to raise money in Delaware, so he had found it difficult to do in his run for President and he frankly just hates doing it. I think his presidential campaign suffered from a lack of effort on his part. If he couldn’t find the energy to go all-out for his own presidential bid, how energetic will he be on Obama’s behalf?
4. Conventional wisdom is that Biden is a safe pick. I think he’s a risky pick. He comes with the great potential to upstage the candidate, get way off message, and embarrass the campaign right before the election. It’s not just that he has slips of the tongue (”Barack America”). It’s that he has a childish lack of self control. I’ve read some commentary that Biden is a grown up and brings that credibility to the campaign. Well, he is and he isn’t. He is a serious guy with serious ideas about politics. But he also has little self restraint and loves to speak without thinking first. He is the anti-Obama in that sense. Obama thinks too much before speaking; Biden doesn’t think enough before speaking. It’s almost a guarantee that he will say something to undermine Obama’s message and give the impression that this is a team that is not ready for prime time.
5. National Journal ranked Biden the third most liberal member of the Senate last year. Obama was first. Someone like Tim Kaine would’ve given the team greater appeal to moderate voters. Biden doesn’t bring that. He makes it even easier to portray the Obama campaign as a far left movement.
6. Biden voted for the Iraq war and against defunding the troops. He has made clear that he wants a withdrawal, but he wants it done based on conditions on the ground. On the main issue on which he is supposed to help Obama, his record shows strong disagreement with the candidate’s judgment. It’s hard for Obama to portray himself as the visionary outsider on the war when his own VP thought the war was justified and sharply criticized his fellow Democrats, including Obama, for voting against supplemental war funding. Obama has said all along that Washington experience is unnecessary and what matters most is judgment. So why pick a VP with 35 years of Washington experience and whose own judgment on Iraq is starkly different?
7. It’s cocky and cockier. Obama is not the cockiest member of the U.S. Senate. That would be Joe Biden. Obama is probably second. Seldom has so much arrogance been crammed into one ticket. (JFK and LBJ, maybe?)
8. Sure, Biden strengthens the Obama campaign where it was weakest: on foreign policy. But I’m not convinced that is what Obama needed. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it really will reassure a few million voters who were reluctant to vote for Obama because he was weak on that issue. But it is possible that the selection of Biden weakens Obama on more points than it strengthens him. It highlights his inexperience and poor judgment and shows that maybe all that talk about needing a fresh voice in Washington was really nothing more than talk after all. Had Obama picked a retired military officer, he would have brought military credentials without necessarily undermining his own message. Had he picked a moderate governor, he would have been able to continue claiming that he really is serious about changing the culture in Washington. Instead, he picks a 35-year veteran of the Senate whose own son is a lobbyist (EVIL!) and who, in two presidential campaigns, didn’t exactly show that he could attract broad public support. Maybe I’m paying too much attention to Obama’s message and how Biden contradicts parts of it. Maybe voters won’t see that as a liability. But I suspect it might plant enough doubt in the minds of enough voters to work against Obama rather than for him. I think a youth and vigor ticket (ala Clinton-Gore) probably would have been a better move.
5 tips for improving the Olympics
If I were in charge of the Olympics, here are some improvements I would implement:
1. All swimming and diving events would have an added obstacle: pirates. Sure, you can swim really fast from point A to point B, but how well do you do with bands of buccaneers pursuing you? And divers, you have to dodge cannon fire. Aaaaarrrrgh!
2. Winter has the biathalon: skiing and riflery. Summer needs it to. Water skiers with rifles. Could it get any better than that?
3. Divide all team sports into separate skill events. It’s not fair that Michael Phelps, who only swims, can come home with eight gold medals, but LeBron James and Kobe Bryant can come home with only one. Basketball players should be able to medal in each skill set: dunking, dribbling, free-throw shooting, three-point shooting, fouling, etc. The USA would come home with golds in every category except free-throw shooting. Baseball and softball should be divided likewise: power hitting, contact hitting, fielding, throwing, base stealing, sunflower seed spitting, etc.
4. Poker. Nothing says “Olympics” like the words, “All in!” It’s high time Texas Hold ‘Em became an Olympic event. The winner would get a gold medal and $1 million in cash, brought in by models in sequened dresses.
5. Dissident protests inside the Olympic venue. Every time the Olympics is held in a totalitarian nation, dissident protesting becomes a medal event, and all of the local political prisoners and agitators are automatically qualified.
Comment from Frank Moore in Derry: I love it. Where do I sign up to be a pirate? Of course, if you do it right, the summer biathlon athletes now have a target, shooting at the pirates who are trying to take out there swimmers. Or, maybe the dissidents would be the de facto pirates? Let’s give people who already have a metaphorical ax to grind against the host country some real axes.
Go, Cuba!
Today the Cubans beat the Americans 10-2 for a trip to the Olympic baseball finals in Beijing. They play South Korea for the gold medal. I’m pulling for Cuba. A Cuban win will enhance the market value of the Cuban athletes, which will give them greater incentive to defect. And when some inevitably do, it will be bigger news: “Member of Cuba’s gold-medal-winning Olympic baseball team defects.”
Ideally, the entire Cuban baseball team would defect the night after winning the gold. Unfortunately, they are playing in China, where defection would be a moot point. Maybe they will have a night’s layover on the flight back to Havana, and they can defect there.
Holding the Olympics in Beijing also prevents the Chinese athletes from defecting. But there still is a way to get some of them out. Those tiny Chinese gymnasts will fit nicely into a big athletic duffel bag. Each American gymnast can pack one Chinese gymnast into a bag and still have room for a uniform, shoes and a couple of medals.
Bradley dishonesty continues
Jeb Bradley’s new TV ad might be the most dishonest political ad I’ve ever seen. I cannot remember one more deceitful. Every single point is deliberately misleading — at best. Let’s break it down.
1. “Big spending bureaucrat John Stephen,” the ad says. Please. No department head in New Hampshire cut more from his budget than John Stephen did. Stephen actually asked legislators to give him less money multiple times. During his tenure at HHS, he kept state general fund spending on his department essentially flat from FY 2004 to FY 2007. From FY 2005 to FY 2007 he actually reduced the total amount of general fund spending on his department by about $5 million. There is no truth whatsoever to the charge that John Stephen was a “big spending bureaucrat.”
2. The ad accuses Stephen of “false negative attacks” against Jeb Bradley. But curiously, it doesn’t list any. That’s because Bradley has none to list.
3. The ad says Stephen “increased spending at HHS by $438 million.” That’s misleading, and Bradley knows it. Department heads are required by law to create maintenance budgets that continue all existing programs. The result is that department heads have to propose larger budgets every year; they are barred by law from cutting spending in their initial budget proposals! Bradley knows this because when he was a legislator Bradley voted for that budget-busting law.
Stephen managed to cut his budget despite that law by putting forward his growth budget, then cutting it after legislators passed it. That’s how he cut tens of millions of dollars from the HHS budget. You know Bradley is being dishonest when he simultaneously accuses Stephen of being a “big-spending bureaucrat” and of recklessly cutting the HHS budget. Well, which is it, Jeb? They can’t both be true.
4. Stephen “increased your property taxes.” Baloney. The county nursing homes claim that Stephen reduced their Medicaid reimbursements, which forced them to raise taxes. But when I asked the head of the state nursing home association for numbers showing this, I was told that, well, those numbers don’t exist. When I asked how much of the nursing home cost increases were attributable to Stephen’s cuts, the answer was: we don’t know. We have no numbers on that.
Nursing home costs were going up anyway as health care costs were rising and the number of nursing home patients was going down (partly as a result of Stephen’s resolve to save money by providing these people with less-costly home care). Medicaid payments to county nursing homes in New Hampshire rose by about $14 million during Stephen’s time as commissioner — at the same time nursing homes were losing patients to home-based care. If counties increased property taxes in that time, the nursing homes are responsible, not John Stephen.
5. “Stephen’s mismanagement is under investigation by state auditors calling his actions incomprehensible.” This is a complete lie. The ad flashes the words “under investigation” in bold red type. But there is no investigation of HHS, nor was there any investigation. The audit cited by the ad was a routine state audit of the Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services.
The audit never called Stephen’s actions incomprehensible. That word comes from these lines in the audit: “The Bureau’s nursing facility rate-setting process is nearly incomprehensible to an outsider of the Bureau’s Rate Setting and Audit Unit (Unit). The rate for each nursing facility providing service to Medicaid clients is calculated semi-annually and is made up of over 30 different components obtained from varied sources inside and outside the Bureau.”
The lies and deliberate misrepresentations in this ad are truly astonishing. Bradley ought to pull it out of sheer embarrassment. He should be ashamed for putting his face on this disgraceful ad.
Jeb: Carol is my opponent
If you got John Stephen’s campaign mailer this week, you know he’s running against Jeb Bradley. One side is split in two, with one half featuring a photo of Jeb with a list of reasons not to vote for him, and the other featuring a photo of Stephen with a list of reasons to vote for him. But if you got Jeb Bradley’s mailer last week, you would think he is running against Carol Shea-Porter in the general election — on Sept. 9!
It’s a tri-fold mailer with the front mocking Shea-Porter’s energy plan (including a quote from a New Hampshire Sunday News editorial). Open it up, and you see one page devoted to attacking Shea-Porter on energy policy, one devoted to praising Jeb on the subject, and a third with a now famous image of a gas price sign with prices listed as “arm,” “leg,” and “both.”
Right in the middle, at the bottom, are the words “Vote Republican — Vote Jeb, September 9th”
Wait, what?
This unmistakably implies that the general election is on Sept. 9 and features Jeb against Carol. There is no mention of John Stephen anywhere in the mailer.
Now that’s deceptive. What happens to the voter who shows up at his polling place Sept. 9 expecting to vote against a Democrat only to see two Republicans on the ballot?
I asked Bradley spokesman Periklis Karoutas if this is a primary mailer, and if so, why doesn’t it mention Stephen?
“Yeah, it is a primary mailer,” he said, “but I think a lot of people want someone who can beat Carol Shea-Porter.”
Why does it say to “vote Republican — Vote Jeb, September 9th”?
“Sept. 9 is primary day, it’s election day,” he said.
But you can vote Republican and still vote against Jeb on that day.
“Unless you pick up a Democratic ballot,” he responded.
I asked for a comment from Bradley, and Karoutas said he’d call me back. A little while later he called back and said, “We addressed Carol and gas because that’s who Jeb’s running against.”
So there you have it. Jeb Bradley says he’s running against Carol Shea-Porter, not John Stephen. Won’t he be surprised if Stephen wins the primary?
Karoutas also alleged that Stephen had a mailer that was exactly the same. He said it didn’t mention Jeb at all and said to vote on Sept. 9. I asked him to fax it to me. He did, and guess what? The mailer doesn’t mention Jeb, but it doesn’t mention Shea-Porter either. It’s not a contrast mailer, it’s an ID mailer. It identifies Stephen as a fiscal conservative and says to “vote for John Stephen Republican Primary Tuesday September 9, 2008.”
Sorry, Jeb, that’s not a deceptive mailer. Yours is.
Obama’s lost brother
Wow, life imitates The Onion again.
Obama has a real-life half brother who, sadly, lives in a shack in extreme poverty.
The Onion last week, before the story of Obama’s real half-brother broke, imagined Obama having a Billy Carter-like hillbilly brother.
The story of the Obama half brothers is extremely interesting, I think, in that it shows the vast differences in opportunity that are available to black males in America vs. Africa. Had Obama’s father raised his other children in the United States, what might their lives be like today? What might Obama’s life be like if he had moved with his father to Africa instead of staying with his mother’s family in the USA?
Obama, McCain, patriotism and Big Oil
At the VFW convention, John McCain suggested that Barack Obama has chosen his positions on Iraq based not on what’s best for the country but on what he thought would get him elected. Obama, predictably, responded by saying, “That’s how political campaigns have been run in recent years. But I believe the American people are better than that. I believe that this defining moment demands something more of us…. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics.”
Oh, please. I don’t know about you, but I’m plenty sick of Obama pretending to take the high ground whenever his motives are challenged, while at the same time he challenges McCain’s motives.
Every chance he gets, Obama portrays McCain as a shill for “special interests,” particularly “Big Oil.” That is nothing other than attacking McCain’s patriotism. It is saying that McCain puts political interests before his country’s interests. Obama cannot cry foul when his motives are challenged as long as he is running around saying his opponent is a corporate stooge. And yet, he does just that.
The mainstream media really ought to call Obama on this double standard. Someone needs to put him on the spot and ask him to explain the difference between McCain’s attack and his own. Alas, I suspect no one will.
