Mark Penn Is Still an Ass

Funny:

Hillary Clinton was going to be president. She knew it. So did her chief strategist, Mark Penn, the man who had once delivered victory for her husband Bill. Barack Obama was “unelectable”, Penn declared early in her campaign, “except perhaps against Attila the Hun”. How wrong can you be?

Not much more wrong. The Democrats have screwed themselves way too often on the “electibility” argument for way too long. Kerry and his “electibility” is what gave us another four years of Bush.

Snip.

This is a man whose friend once described him as having “the IQ of Bill Gates and the emotional intelligence of an eggplant”. Now Penn says, in his surprisingly high-pitched voice: “Hillary ran on a theme of ready for change, ready to lead. Change was always a central and important part of her message.” That’s strange. I could have sworn it was more like, “Don’t trust the new guy, vote for someone with experience”. But anyway. “Look, at the end of the day, they both got about 18 million votes. It was the hardest-fought primary in the history of America. And it turned out that some small groups switched and became critical players.” Which is a pitch for his theory, obviously. “At the end of the day, they are separated by only 85 delegates out of close to 4,000.”

None of which answers the question. Let’s try again, being more specific about one of his biggest mistakes. People wanted a break with the past, Hillary could not provide that, and emphasising her experience only made it all the more obvious, surely? “The only thing I can tell you is that they [the Obama people] ran an excellent campaign,” he says. “We regarded him as a strong challenger throughout the entire period. There was no question that he had the personal abilities, the resources, all of the things necessary to win.”

Really? So why did Penn say in a memo of March 2007 that Obama was unelectable? “Huh. No. It doesn’t say that at all.” Yes it does, if the facsimile published by Atlantic Monthly magazine is correct. The great communicator appears thrown. “Those memos, right, that came out, were really … er, were really, I think, show you, you know, just a piece, because … a small part, a piece of how we were looking to, I think, set up or solve the fact that he was a very strong candidate.”

Just go check out the article and enjoy.

Penn had a chance to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and he blew it. But of course, her defeat is not Penn’s fault. And he never said Obama was unelectible. And Hillary ran on change.  And Penn never said that Obama was “fundamentally American in his thinking and values.”

I might not have a problem with Democrats and the Obama campaign helping to eliminate Clinton’s campaign debt if $5 million of it wasn’t slated to go to Penn.

He really is an ass.

Matt Drudge Is Still an Asshole

If you look at the Drudge Report right now, you’ll see a headline at the top of the page that reads: Federal Investigation Launched into Obama’s MD-80.

Sounds serious, huh?

The Feds are investigating Barack Obama’s MD-80! Obama must have done something horrible to get the Feds to investigate his MD-80, even if I have no idea what an MD-80 might be.

Well, if you click on the link that Drudge provides, you’ll learn this:

The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that it is investigating what caused Senator Barack Obama’s plane to make an unexpected landing today in St. Louis.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president was traveling from Chicago to Charlotte when the pilot’s first officer announced that they were experiencing controllability issues with the pitch of the MD-80 series aircraft.

So, on the top of Drudge’s page, we’re told that the Feds are investigating something about Obama. That sounds pretty scandalous. But if you click on the link, you learn that the MD-80 is simply the airplane that Obama was flying on that had to make an emergency landing in St. Louis today.

Way to provide a misleading headline, Matt! Good work. Your mother must be proud.

Ralph Nader Is Still an Asshole

From Nader:

There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.

Obama’s thoughts on payday loans?

Cap Outlandish Interest Rates on Payday Loans and Improve Disclosure: In the wake of reports that some service members were paying 800 percent interest on payday loans, the U.S. Congress took bipartisan action to limit interest rates charged to service members to 36 percent. Barack Obama believes that we must extend this protection to all Americans, because predatory lending continues to be a major problem for low and middle income families alike. Obama also believes that we need to ensure that all Americans have access to clear and simplified information about loan fees, payments and penalties, which is why he’ll require lenders to provide this information during the loan application process…

Ralph, first tip. If you want to appeal to African-American voters, don’t refer to lower-income African-American neighborhoods as “ghettos.”

Second, don’t accuse a successful African-American politician as someone who wants to “talk white.” Insult much, asshole?

Third, thank you for giving us George W. Bush and all he has wrought. Do you still think that George W. Bush is the same as Al Gore?

You were once a great voice in our democracy, but now you’re simply irrelevant.

Bush Gave Up Golf for Dead Soldiers

He’s still an asshole:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

George, the problem isn’t that you like to play golf. Play all the golf you want. But just make sure that when veterans return from your war, they are well taken care of and have every opportunity available to them.

Sigh…I’m Going to See Bill Clinton

tomorrow night in a town-hall meeting in Avon, IN, for the sake of family unity.

I don’t want to go, but I have to to play nice in my Democratic family.

Any suggestions on what I should ask him to make his face turn red and shake his finger at me?

Scalia Is an Asshole

Torture is OK if the tortured person is not being punished for his deeds and it’s fine if he is being used to gain information. But torture is not OK for a prisoner who has been convicted of a crime.

Did I get that right?

Oh, and if you don’t like the Bush v Gore decision, get over it!

I’m not over Bush v Gore as its consequences are still with us, but courts have been told not to use the Bush v Gore decision as a precedent for anything.

Have you gotten over it?

Terry McAuliffe Against Seating Michigan Delegates

Er, well, he was:

“I’m going outside the primary window,” [Michigan Sen. Carl Levin] told me definitively.

“If I allow you to do that, the whole system collapses,” I said. “We will have chaos. I let you make your case to the DNC, and we voted unanimously and you lost.”

Snip.

“You won’t deny us seats at the convention,” he said.

“Carl, take it to the bank,” I said. “They will not get a credential. The closest they’ll get to Boston will be watching it on television. I will not let you break this entire nominating process for one state. The rules are the rules. If you want to call my bluff, Carl, you go ahead and do it.”

The situation was different in 2004. Hillary wasn’t running and hadn’t won an unopposed primary in that state yet.

Even when McAuliffe was the DNC Chair, I thought he represented every thing that was wrong about the Democratic party

He still does.

Bill Clinton is Still an Asshole

Clinton’s words:

“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country and people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

So Obama doesn’t love this country?

Way to inject a right-wing narrative  into the DEMOCRATIC campaign.