Chickens Coming Home to Roost (2016 Edition)

The phrase about the chickens is most familiar to modern Americans from the fact Barack Obama's Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pointed out to his congregation on September 16, 2001, that "America's chickens are coming home to roost." Just as with most figures of speech that contain a lot of truth, that phrase is much older than the current century. Robert Southey used "Curses are like young chicken, they always come home to roost" on the title page of The Curse of Kehama in 1811. Earlier than that, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote "And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest" in The Parson's Tale in the late 14th century.

In the six centuries since Chaucer, there may never have been a better illustration of the homing instincts of Gallus gallus domesticus than we saw this week when the CIA announced with "high confidence" that Russia had interfered with the US election to help Donald Trump win the presidency. The CIA. They should know. Since their founding in 1947, they have influenced elections on every continent but Antarctica (and maybe Australia?), beginning with the Italian election of 1948. Here's a short audio recap from Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, that was heard on WNYC yesterday:

Dear @realDonaldTrump,
What is the penalty going to be during your Administration for burning the Russian flag? pic.twitter.com/6l8zTRQpRc

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) December 10, 2016

One Thing We Can Do Today.

I had a plan for this morning. Though I'm a digital subscriber to The New York Times, I was going to run out early and buy a print copy of today's paper with its headline about America's first woman president. I was going to put it away with these copies from 2008 for my one-year-old granddaughter.

Yes, We Did.

I have no desire to buy (or even see) a print copy of the Times this morning, but I have another plan. I want anyone who reads this to think about subscribing to the Times or the Washington Post, or your local newspaper that probably endorsed Hillary Clinton along with every major print publication in the nation.  In many ways, last night's result was a victory of the illiterate reality-television world over the world of printed words. Subscribe to the Times if only to prove the man wrong who unfailingly and gleefully refers to this essential national publication as the "failing @NYTimes" whenever he tweets about it.

The failing @nytimes reporters don't even call us anymore, they just write whatever they want to write, making up sources along the way!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2016

I don't work for the Times or the Washington Post or any other newspaper, but I consider subscribing to at least one paper as a civic duty of anyone concerned about the First Amendment. Think about it as a non-deductible charitable contribution if you need to. Think about it the same way you think about contributing to your local PBS or NPR station. We need them all all the time, but we will need them all even more over the next four years.

This is the purpose for which I started TrueBlueLiberal.org in 2004...

...so I take complete credit for this significant rehabilitation of the word 'liberal'!

Proportion of Dem caucus-goers and voters identifying as "liberal":

IA
2008: 54%
2016: 68%

NH
2008: 56%
2016: 68%

NV
2008: 45%
2016: 70%

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 22, 2016

Flip Flopping on Gitmo is the Mavericky® Thing to Do

Watch John McCain from 2008 give all the reasons why Guantanamo Bay's prison camp should close:

"So, I'm for closing Guantanamo Bay. It may be one of the nicest places in the world to live in, but it has become a symbol and we need to close Guantanamo." 

So why has this ex-Prisoner of War decided now, six years later, that Gitmo is A-OK with him?

I'm sure that this new John McCain would be perfectly OK with it if North Vietnam had decided in 1967 that the enemy combatants bombing their country could be held indefinitely without trial in an offshore extra-legal prison camp and grilled for information, wouldn't he? 

Remember January 20, 2009

There's an obvious tendency in this blog to spend all my time in horror and amazement that the 2012 election might be bought by those with great wealth whose main purpose is preserving their wealth at the expense of the rest of the nation. But enough about Republicans.
Sometimes we need to cleanse our souls.
Sometimes we need to remember the real reason we need to be committed in this 2012 election.
Sometimes it helps to take the time to remember how proud we all felt on January 20, 2009.

'That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. 

'These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. 

'Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. 

'They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.' 

--Barack Obama, From the First Inaugural Address

John McCain will raise YOUR taxes

If you are lucky enough to have a job that pays for part or all of your health insurance, then your taxes will go up under John McCain's health plan (a.k.a., the private insurance company protection act of 2009).
Keeping it simple in today's Bob Herbert column in the Times, "McCain's Radical Agenda" :

" ... the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs. "

"Why?" you might ask. The same blind and stubborn ideological faith in "markets" and morbid fear of "socialized" anything that has done so much economic damage over the last eight years leads him to believe that we'd be better off shopping for our own health insurance (as if dealing with the annual choice of four or five progressively less-attractive insurance plans at work is anything less than hellish as it is). But let's not cloud the issue by asking "Why?" Let's put it in the type of bullet points the electorate seems to understand.

• JOHN McCAIN WILL RAISE YOUR TAXES IF YOU WORK FOR A LIVING.
• PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL NOT RAISE YOUR TAXES UNLESS YOU MAKE OVER 250K/YEAR.

Maybe she thinks she's Little Red Riding Hood and needs protection from big bad wolves

Or maybe Sarah Palin is simply trying to protect that most important group of dyed-in-the-wool Republican voters, a.k.a. the Sheeple:

It's not just a coincidence that her name is an anagram for Sharia Plan

If the typical American voter were to read one article about the unknown governor from Alaska, I would recommend one that appeared in Salon today, "What's the Difference Between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists? Lipstick: A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian" by Juan Cole.

On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts.

For another frightening religious angle today, here's a blog entry over at The Nation, "Sarah Palin and the Jews," by Jon Weiner, drawing parallels between Miss Congeniality Sarah and Queen Esther. Time to wipe out Persia again?

CNN is reporting poll results today showing that men are the backbone of Sarah Palin's support. At the risk of sounding sexist, I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say, Men are Fucking Idiots!

Joe Biden for Vice President (Part Two)

[I know this seems out of order between Parts One and Three, but this Part Two of my Joe Biden For Vice President campaign was originally posted on May 27th. It wasn't there when I wanted to look at it today after getting my text message from Barack. This afternoon (August 23) Barack and Joe will be making their first joint appearance as running mates!]

Bob Herbert has a great column in today's New York Times, "Roads, High and Low," which begins with these words:

"On Friday morning, Joe Biden gave us an example of a leading national politician exhibiting decency and class. Later in the day, Hillary Clinton gave us an example of something else."

No, Joe Biden wasn't again pointing out the "bullshit" and "marlarkey" underlying the President's latest utterance (at least not in those exact terms), but he was continuing to stay on the attack against the Bush/McCain foreign policy: "The idea that they are competent to continue to conduct our foreign policy, to make us more secure and make Israel secure, is preposterous. ... Every single thing they’ve touched has been a near-disaster." These statements, coming from the Democratic Senator with the most universally-recognized foreign policy credentials will carry even more weight if he is on the ticket in the fall. Picking the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his ticket will also reinforce Barack Obama's "Team of Rivals" theme of picking the best and picking (where appropriate) his adversaries for the nomination (John Edwards for Attorney General, anyone?). Picking Biden will also address the "experience" question at least as well as Richard "Dick" Cheney's selection answered the question about young Doubleyou's lack of "gravitas" in 2000. Biden not only has 28 years more service in the Senate than the Junior Senator from New York who is constantly of speaking of her experience, but he has 14 more years in the Senate than the presumptive Republican nominee (even though Joe Biden is 6 years younger than McCain, and only 5 years older than Clinton).

Biden may not be the best choice for all the crass ticket-balancing political reasons that have given us such great nominees as Dan Quayle and Joe Lieberman in recent years, but he's definitely worth some serious consideration (and, for what it's worth, he's my front runner).

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008
(anagram: An Idea Bomb!)

Joe Biden for Vice President (Part Three)

See E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column in the Washington Post today, "A List Biden Belongs On".

Evading national security, says Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), would be a disastrous mistake. "The only way we lose this election is not to engage this issue head-on," Biden said during an interview in his Capitol office the day after Obama clinched the nomination. Democrats, Biden said, should be "proactive" and not "play defense on foreign affairs" because "the case against McCain and Bush on national security is so overwhelming. . . . It should be an essential part of the case for the Democratic nominee."

I visited with Biden because he should be at the top of any list of vice presidential picks for Obama. Why Biden? In part because of where he took our discussion: Few Democrats know more about foreign policy, and few would so relish the fight against McCain on international affairs. Few are better placed to argue that withdrawal from Iraq will strengthen rather than weaken the United States.

The worst thing in a running mate is the fear of muddying his or her image in political combat. Biden would be a happy warrior.

Read the rest here.

An Important Day

Barack Obama in Washington Square Park
in Greenwich Village on September 27, 2007

The Democratic Party found its 2008 standard bearer last night and I couldn't be happier. Up above is a picture from the beautiful fall evening in New York when I found that I had no doubts about who I was whole-heartingly supporting for President. I hope that every American voter gets a chance to see Barack Obama live, unfiltered by the media, at some point in the next five months.

Even on this historic day, I don't think we can imagine the joy that will break out around the world in early November when President Obama is elected.

They already realize that he's different from earlier American politicians for reasons other than the amount of melanin in his skin. This key sentence is from Le Monde's lead editorial, "Barack Hussein Obama," today:

Les électeurs qui lui ont apporté leurs voix dans les primaires, le million et demi de partisans qui ont contribué à sa campagne, dont la moitié avec des dons de 200 dollars (130 euros) ou moins, les responsables du parti qui l'ont soutenu, les médias qui ont rendu compte de son entreprise ont démontré que la démocratie américaine n'est pas vouée à être confisquée par une classe politique étroite, financée par des lobbies et pilotée par des experts de la communication.

Hillary Clinton's victory -- though historic in its own way -- certainly would not have been seen as the same kind of break (or any kind of break) from the powers of "that narrow political elite that's financed by lobbyists and piloted by spin doctors."

The general tenor of the first comments from readers of this editorial is one of praise for the USA and one of wondering how France can learn from us (it's not a tone that's been heard often in the European press during the Bush II regime).

Joe Biden for Vice President

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
- - Senator Joe Biden, a man who knows malarkey, especially foreign-policy malarkey, when he sees it

How many all-knowing made men among America's punditocracy have proclaimed, "Obama needs to get mean," or "Obama needs Hillary's killer instinct"? Maybe Barack Obama just needs his own Dick Cheney, though a Dick Cheney willing to use his genius for good rather than evil.

Hey, White Guys from Pennsylvania! Do You Know What "They" Are Saying About You?

I'm one of you . . .

This map shows the surname distribution of the writer of TrueBlueLiberal.org.
Create a map with your surname's distribution at www.gens-us.net.

I may live in the state to your east now, but I'm one of you (a ninth-generation Pennsylvanian) and I'm pissed that the editorial writers and Sunday morning talking heads are all parroting a variation of the same line about Barack Obama's historic speech (which will be known in America's future textbooks as "A More Perfect Union"). Not to oversimplify too much, but the argument with which "they" all agree seems to go like this: "This may have been one of the most eloquent speeches delivered in the United States in half a century -- certainly the most eloquent speech of this young century -- but Tom Sixpack, Dick Beergut, and Hardhat Harry of Pennsylvania only have the attention span to watch short out-of-context clips of Jeremiah Wright sermons on Fox News; they will never watch or read the entire Barack Obama speech on race delivered in Philadelphia. And if Pennsylvania's Toms, Dicks, & Harrys do somehow accidentally read the words, they won't understand or be moved by them."
Please prove them wrong on April 22nd!

If you can't see the video up above, please read the transcript, in which the words lose none of their power.

Barack Obama gives Tom, Dick, and Harry a lot more credit for understanding these issues and these arguments than those who try to mediate (or influence) the conversation between candidate and voter. Read and listen to some of his words directly:

"Like the anger within the black community, these resentments [of the white working and middle class] aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

--Barack Obama
Philadelphia, March 18, 2008

If anyone forwards you a video or transcript of an out-of-context Jeremiah Wright sermon, send them the links to the transcript and video of "A More Perfect Union." How much better will this country be if we start to assume that every citizen can read and appreciate a well-reasoned, well-written, and soberly-delivered speech that treats us like adults and partners in running (and improving) this nation?

Just asking,
True Blue (Pennsylvania) Liberal

Whose Election Is It Anyway? The Guardian reports on our Former First Lady's whereabouts.

At this moment, 3:15pm on 3/19/08, major American news sources I check regularly (NY Times, Washington Post, CNN... ) have nothing prominent on their front pages about the release of 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton's White House schedules today, but the paper of record in the UK, The Guardian, has this story prominently featured at the top of their splash page under the headline, "Clinton not in White House at key foreign policy times."

You can scan through all the diaries for yourself right here, through a link at the Clinton Library.

Here are a few of the Guardian's initial findings from today's data dump:

. . . Clinton has said she helped negotiate the April 1998 Good Friday agreement between warring factions in Northern Ireland. But while Catholic and Protestant figures hashed out last-minute details of a power-sharing agreement in Belfast, Clinton was at the National Press Club in Washington at a party honouring Bella Abzug, a congresswoman from New York City who had died recently. While President
Clinton phoned major participants in the peace talks, she met with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and joined a farewell party for Democratic operative Karen Finney. On the day the agreement was actually signed, she met with Philippine first lady Amelita Ramos.
When Nato launched air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, Clinton toured ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor, and stayed overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel there.
On August 20, 1998, Bill Clinton ordered US missile strikes on suspected terrorist sites in Sudan and Afghanistan. The president and Hillary Clinton were on holiday on Martha's Vineyard, a posh island vacation spot off the coast of Massachusetts. After announcing the attack, Clinton cut short his break and returned to Washington to confer with his national security team; Hillary Clinton remained on the Vineyard until August 30, her records show.

But even at key moments when she wasn't absent from the White House, she wasn't necessarily paying attention:

On November 15 1995, when President Clinton is said to have begun his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, she was in the White House, according to her schedule.

And if you have the patience to dig through piles of redacted government documents at http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/hrcschedules.html, we'd love to hear about any interesting findings in the comments.

E Pluribus Unum. A speech that will be read and watched in fifty years?

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice ... we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, 18 March 2008

At lunchtime today at work, I thought I would skim the transcript of the prepared text of this speech on the New York Times website . I couldn't skim it. I couldn't skip a word.
If you can't see the video up above, please read the transcript, in which the words lose none of their power. I hesitate to lift any lines out of context, because it really is a finely woven speech in which every paragraph depends on all the others to complete the argument, but I can't resist:

I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

or, after a very honest and very insightful dissection of the roots of black anger and white anger and resentments, he adds:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

But please read the whole thing. I haven't read any commentaries or listened to any reviews yet. I'm sure that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and hundreds of bloggers are already ranting while I'm raving about these words. I just want to let these words seep in unfiltered by the commentariat and the punditocracy who may see this speech as less Lincolnesque than I do.
It's perfect, and I don't think that's just my opinion.

New Rule for Potential Presidential Candidates: Never Join a Church!

The Huffington Post has Barack Obama's obligatory mea culpa, "On My Faith and My Church", for statements that he never made. but were made from the pulpit of the church that his family attends in Chicago.

"All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country."

I hope we now don't have to hear the greatest hits of every preacher of the left and right who ever became angry and may lapsed into a rant that made parts of his or her congregation uncomfortable. A colleague at work told me on Thursday that Limbaugh and Hannity have been flogging Reverend Wright's most controversial quotations as evidence of Barack Obama's hidden anti-American, anti-White prejudices, so I knew that this response would be forthcoming (I'm sure that Barack would condemn some of the angrier statements in my blog too, but why should that be reason for him to reject my vote or support?).
Along with condemnations of Rev. Wright's most controversial sermons, his statement also tells us why he didn't quit the Trinity United Church of Christ:

"I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church." [emphasis added]

Here's my controversial statement about the matter: In my personal experience (and I'm older than Barack), I've never known an unmarried man who joined a church on his own, or joined a church other than his wife's when he did get married. According to the personal life section of Obama's biography on Wikipedia, he both started dating Michelle Robinson and started attending services at Reverend Wright's church in 1988. A coincidence? I don't see how those two events can possibly be unlinked. Am I now going to be asked to defend the crackpottiest statements of the Popes in Rome -- or defend child abusing priests or the murderers of abortion doctors -- because I happened to be married to a Catholic woman for 25 years?
I look at these facts and I see a man in Obama who is much like every man I've ever known -- a man who has religion in its (minor) place in his life. He was probably dozing off, or thinking about the White Sox, during many of those sermons.

North of the Mason-Dixon Line? or will the real Pennsylvania please stand up on April 22!

James Carville is a Clinton adviser well-versed in the old 20th-century techniques of identity politics. His famous characterization of rural Pennsylvania as an extension of the deep south is one that I've repeated over the years, but it seems to have a variety of citations.
These are the variations on the theme collected at Wikiquote:

• Between Paoli (one of Philadelphia's westernmost suburbs) and Penn Hills (one of Pittsburgh's easternmost suburbs), Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn't film "The Deerhunter" there for nothing -- the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas.
• Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in between. (Alternate)
  
• Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama stuffed between them. (Alternate)
• During the 1992 presidential campaign, Democratic political consultant James Carville described Pennsylvania as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between."
• Pennsylvania is "two cities separated by Alabama."

The first variant, with its specificity and its qualification of rural PA as "Alabama without the blacks" has the truest ring to it even though I wasn't familiar with that version. Alabama with its African-American population would, of course, give Obama an absolute landslide.

I'm a native of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is my birthplace and was my home for the first eight years of my life; before that, eight generations of my father's family lived toward that maligned center of the state (my unusual last name is almost common in the Lancaster, Gettysburg, and Harrisburg area). There's nothing I want more than to have the good people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania -- not just those in the Steel City and the City of Brotherly Love -- prove that the politics of racial division don't work anymore. I want my home state surprising the rest of the country with a resounding victory for Obama that effectively ends this primary campaign. If my bumper stickers ever arrive from the BarackObama.com store (the demand is very high), I'll slap them on the back of my car just to drive back and forth along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

-True Blue Pennsylvania Liberal

The Real Dream Team! ... if you love their war and the Iraq-War Recession, you'll love the next four years with these two in power . . .

Check out the The John McCain for President, Hillary Clinton for Vice President War Party Fusion Ticket over at BuzzFlash.com for more details.

The main point, other than their shared support of the Iraq War, is this recent quote from Ms Clinton about the experience of the presumptive Republican nominee (to the detriment of the presumptive Democratic nominee):

"I think that since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And 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. [read more here]

It's time for John Edwards and anyone else with a constituency in the Democratic Party to make a formal endorsement of Barack Obama. Now. They can no longer afford to wait the five and a half weeks until her next "firewall" in Pennsylvania on April 22. The divisive racial politics of her surrogates, and her direct questioning of Barack Obama's credentials, has gone beyond the pale (it's not Barack's fault that he didn't have the "experience" of being married to a President for eight years, privy to all [well, almost all] the President's secrets).

And if Geraldine Ferraro had been named Gerald Ferraro, would she have been a candidate for Vice President in 1984?

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position . . . And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
--Geraldine Ferraro, March 7, 2008 interview with Torrance, CA Daily Breeze)

As a member of Hillary's finance committee, is she speaking for the campaign? Should she be forced out for driving this racial wedge within the Democratic party? Will she be? As ridiculous as this quote is, the line in the interview that leads into it is possibly more absurd:

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign." [emphasis added]

The myth of the mainstream media bias against Hillary is the biggest of the big lies out there at the moment. Just take a look at the absolute middle of the mainstream media: Time Magazine. On their website today for the March 17 issue on the newstands now, we see a happy clapping Hillary Clinton, "The Fighter," on the cover. The first five featured articles on the site have a decidedly pro-Hillary slant:

Ready to Rumble (The Well / Cover Story) Hillary Clinton has rescued her campaign by getting a lot rougher on Barack Obama. But Democrats worry: How much collateral damage will be done before it is over?
Clinton: One Day at a Time (The Well / Cover Story) On the day after her Ohio and Texas victories, TIME managing editor Rick Stengel caught up with Hillary Clinton to talk about the challenges ahead
NATION
The Long Way Home (The Well / Campaign '08 Obama) Barack Obama says he's "got game," but he'll need all his moves to stay ahead of Clinton
Obama: Still Confident (The Well / TIME Interview) In an interview with TIME's Jay Newton-Small, Obama talks about Hillary Clinton, double-standards, talking tough and going negative
The Race Goes On (In The Arena) By focusing on national security--and laughing at herself--Clinton managed to stay alive. Now it's up to Obama to prove he's not just another politician

It's easy to imagine from this cover and these article summaries that Hillary Clinton had just taken the lead (she hadn't) or at least narrowed the delegate gap (nope). You would never guess that the real story were those insurmountable Clinton leads in her safe firewall states of Texas and Ohio that were almost blown (until she pulled out the fear commercial and NAFTA lies). The real story was the way the media ignored 11 straight lopsided Clinton losses leading up to Ohio. If Obama had suffered 11 straight losses, the media would have been calling for him to step aside "for the good of the party" after loss number 5 or 6. But then again, Barack Obama was never their favorite. He was not nominated by the mainstream media before the first vote was even cast in Iowa. Hillary was. Hillary and Rudy (remember Rudy?) were on their way to the Democratic and Republican nominations without a serious challenge. Or so they told us. Those same media outlets are now having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the Clinton (right) wing of the Democratic Party is now well on its way to becoming the fringe rather than the center of the party.

But if a member of Barack Obama's finance committee were to say, "If Hillary weren't married to a President, she would not be in this position," how quickly would the media be calling for that sexist spokesperson's head? "And if she were a man (of any color) she would not be in this position. She happens to be very lucky to be who she is." (And so was Geraldine Ferraro.)

Does the Spitzer Sex Scandal Hurt Hillary or Help Hillary?

When this news about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's rendezvous with an expensive prostitute in DC broke this afternoon, my first thought was that this was bad for Hillary Clinton, and not just because Eliot was a vocal supporter of Hillary's presidential candidacy. I simply figured that the last thing any Clinton wants is for the words "sex scandal" to appear in any headline during this campaign, especially regarding a scandal involving another Democratic Chief Executive.

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.
“I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”

--Eliot "Client 9" Spitzer, 10 March 2008

But when I saw Eliot Spitzer's obligatory and stereotypically-weaselly public statement in print, I couldn't help thinking of similar appearances by another recent Democratic Chief Executive (no, not Jim McGreevey) and that Hillary Clinton will be seen sympathetically once again as the strong wronged spouse. I wouldn't be surprised to see her national numbers take a small quick uptick in the next few days.

If she does pull off the impossible and win the nomination and the election, maybe she should think about making Eliot Spitzer the US Attorney General. Not only was he a great Attorney General in New York for many years, often taking on national issues that Bush and Ashcroft ignored, but he and the first spouse could hit the town together -- keeping Bill out of the White House and out of Hillary's hair, leaving her undistracted when those important phone calls come flooding in at 3AM.