Bringing the Heat...

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John Kerry:

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

Bill Clinton:

Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama.

That makes two of us.

Actually that makes 18 million of us - because, like Hillary, I want all of you who supported her to vote for Barack Obama in November.

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Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States.

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Most important, Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

Kiss My Arse

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Sources say that Bill Clinton stays bitter about Obama, telling close confidantes that Obama will have to "kiss my ass" to get Bill Clinton's support.

Well, Bill, as one of millions of Americans who stood by you while you made a jerk of yourself over a cheap thrill in the Oval Office. One who joined in urging the country to MoveOn. One who voted for you twice... Kiss my ass.

Your shoddy race-card tactics may have served you well getting elected in Arkansas or in the Old South in the 20th Century. But the country's grown past you. You are an ex-president.

Your petulance is unbecoming.

Especially because it's patently obvious this has a lot less to do with whether or not Hillary won the nomination, and a whole lot more to do with the reality that you are not the top dog any more.

So you can sit on the sidelines in your own poo, petulant and pouting, or you can suck it up and act presidential. Post-presidential.

Because whether or not Obama wins in November—and I'll be working with millions of other Americans to try to assure that he does—the Clinton Era is over.

And good riddance.
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Small Town Thinking

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Much being made in today's media about Bill Clinton's "small town" tour to drum up votes for Hillary.

I'll save for another day deconstructing the mindset in small towns...is it "bitter," or "set in its ways" or that other b-word, "bigoted...."? [Answer: none of the above...depending on who's doing the framing...or twisting it for their own advantage.]

Instead--from the perspective of small city living in Fargo, and weekending in such exotic locales as Park Rapids and Walker, Minnesota, and considering that our wee cabin in the woods was one of the first in the country to have satellite teevee...

And from the perspective of listening over time to people like Russet, and Tweety, and Snuffy, and Cokie, and Wolfie, and ... well, you get the idea. I've come to the conclusion that the "small town" most in need of exposure to the great big world outside the bubble and the cocktail wienie circuit and the incestuous revolving doors that are K Street and Congress and Big Media and Congress and Military Contractors and Congress and political consultants and.... is the rarified and isolated little burg of DeeCee.

The posturing portion of the population of DeeCee probably adds up to the size of yer everyday small town out in the boonies. The kind of small town where the satellite trucks are clustering these days breathlessly touting "once in a lifetime" visits. But at least we, in the boonies, actually check out what's going on in the rest of the world instead just pontificating for the mirror or the teevee camera... oh, wait, that's pretty much the same thing, these days, now isn't it.

And when the satellite trucks pack up and follow the parade of candidates and the very important pundits and "journalists" who follow in their wake, we'll consider how it's just like the good ol' days when the circus came to town, and there was a lot of hoopla and folderol and then the wagons headed on down the road and all that was left was a few pleasant memories and a whole lotta dung to clean up.

We're looking to clean up this election year...now if we can just get those big city folk to stop thinking that we're rubes for backdrops and tellin' tales to, "once in a lifetime," before they all pack up and head back to their cozy salons in DeeCee.

Gone to the Dogs....

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The Clinton family's favorite junkyard dog—James Carville—is out and about in the media again today pushing his screed against Governor Bill Richardson for endorsing Barack Obama. "Judas" "30 pieces of silver"...the insults are flyin' thick and fast, and Carville shows no sign of backing down.

Why should he? It's a nice distraction from the more important story—Hillary Clinton's fabrication of her arrival in Bosnia under sniper fire.

We're hearing a lot of dog whistle talk these days from the Clinton team. And it's an unsavory sight. Bill Clinton's little stick with Hillary and McCain you won't have to deal with all that "stuff" bears the subtext of the dog whistle, and it's as repellent as a pile of poo.

And this puts the media in the spotlight, too. Will they be the same ol' lapdogs, letting oppo teams and campaign blast emails and conference calls drive their stories? Will they be distracted by some poison-laced red meat?

Or will they be the watchdogs of honesty, trustworthiness, and calling a dog a dog?

UPDATE: And, for the record... I personally find all references to Monica and blue dresses by anyone—media and politicians alike—way out of bounds. Clinton's penis is not the candidate and there's a woman who at long last deserves to be able to put a "youthful indiscretion" behind her instead of having that sleaze-n-snicker brought up every four years.

Thugs Walk Among Us

There’s a sorry videoclip making the rounds of YouTube—a deputy tipping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair, facedown so he can see it coming, onto the hard concrete floor.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it. Our family knows what it is to be wheelchair reliant, and frankly it’s a little like gawking at an injury accident scene along the highway. I just can’t look.

But I can listen, and this morning I heard the defense attorney for the deputy lamenting that all that YouTube coverage means his client can’t get a fair trial.

Cry me a river.

I want an outraged jury. I want them to look. And decide based on the cold hard facts. Not let the woman off the hook because the facts show her for the thug that she is. And no better are the sniggering deputies around her.

We live in a thug culture these days. It starts at the top. A little shoot an old guy in the face and get away with it here. A little waterboarding and Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and other tortures there. And gaming the legal system. Trying to backdate the laws, skirt the responsibility, withhold the evidence, rationalize the blame—boogga-boogga, ticking timebomb anyone—and you’ve got a whole societal norm that extends from the Oval Office right down to the local sheriff’s office saying, hey, we’re the law, we get to do whatever we want. And get away with it.

And look where it gets us.

The media play no small role in this situation. This morning, instead of telling us anything about FISA, for example, the Morning Mouths are giving us More Hill, Less Bill, then proceeding to wallpaper Bill all over the airwaves.

When there were voices loudly crying out against the use of torture, including voices of WW II vets and professional interrogators saying it does not work…including a Senator who has lost his way who knew first hand torture did not work…those voices were given short shrift for more of the BushCo spin. And media consciences were shut down for whatever reason they told themselves—bad for the corporate bottom line; it’s unpatriotic; it’s treason; oooooh, it’s hard and it gives me a header… but no reason excuses such compliance.

Meanwhile, who watches the watchdogs when they’ve been so watered down and hamstrung and w-ussified by Bushie that they’ve lost their will? The Congress, the media are both complicit in the thug culture. But so has been the rest of the country. Fear worked, for a while.

It’s not just the Congress that needs a spine, it’s every last one of us. We’re working on it, and so far, we’re looking pretty fair. And Congress may even be sitting up and taking notice.

And it’s important cleanup work we have to do. Because when a country is debased, when people are made beasts, then they have lost their claim to leadership and honor in the world community…and in their own hometowns.

Accountability matters.

So give that deputy her day in court. If I were on the jury, I’d sentence her to every payday for the rest of her life write out a check to that man in the wheelchair. Doesn’t matter the amount so much, it could be one dollar. Let him collect a bigger compensation from the government that failed him…and all of us. Let's all of us wheel a mile in his shoes.

There’s a segment of the country that believes dinosaurs walked the earth with man some six thousand years ago. As long as thuggery is ennobled, for whatever excuse, they still do.

Prairie Postcard: Presidential Looks

Morning Joe Scarborough telling Andrea Mitchell today that Bill Clinton trying to build up an audience and dealing with hecklers--from both sides of the political spectrum--just "doesn't look Presidential."

What, Joe, we should have another go-round of staged, scripted, voice in the earpiece, invitation-only, "town hall" appearances to "look Presidential"?

Well excuse me for thinking that it looks exactly presidential to see a President interacting with real people, even the ones who disagree with him.

Enough of the imperial bubbleboy surround yourself with people who KYA emperor has no clothes kind of presidency.

Get real.

UPDATE: Scarborough goes on a riff to the Clinton campaign: More Hillary, Less Bill...More Hillary, Less Bill. *ahem* Joe, you're from the Bible belt, how does that line go...take the beam from your own eye... yeah, that's the one.