TW3 -- and the Monumental's

[Political Waves]

That Was The Week That Was -- damned odd, as reported, and full of Believe It Or Not overtones [but I did make mental note that if McCain wins in November, we should all consider relocating to Ecuador.]

In other ... monumental ... news, it appears that the cyclone may have taken as many as 100,000 souls; very disturbing and an emergency reminiscent of the Christmas Tsunami. Go here for links to relief organizations.

And it turns out that the race last night was not same-old, same-old at all. Hillary barely won Indiana,with vastly fewer votes than expected [and given the slight numbers, Rush's chaos theory creates a question of legality ... or should] and she lost North Carolina hugely -- the pundits said, after a respectful few moments of banter, "that's the end of the Clinton era." I tuned in late, in time to watch Hil's victory speech ... but more, to watch the face of Bill Clinton, standing behind her ... and that told the story. He'd worked tirelessly in NC; he looked old and sad, and I'd rather not have seen that.

The polls give Obama more of the white guy numbers than he had before and Hil has lost all but the most faithful [2%] African-Americans; Hil still has the elders; what the pundits call the "red/blue divide" in the Democratic party. Obama has the blue -- Clinton has the red. We will need purple to send the Old Coot packing.

But if this was uphill for her before, now it's Everest. It appears that Hil will carry on for awhile yet -- she's talking White House publically but as the bonus read indicates, her people are, cautiously, not. Still, Kentucky and West Virginia beckon, both of them favored for her by large numbers; she can take them to give her that lift she'd like, while still not moving the delegate count by enough. Meanwhile, the Super D's are moving steadily toward Barack.

Here are some of the cookie crumbs: FAUX News, including Karl Rove, all began the "Obama v. McCain" dialogues ... McGovern has switched his support to Obama; he and Wes Clark, both big Hil supporters, are urging her to quit and that's projected to be followed by other heavy-weights ... she's loaned herself another several million ... and the only way to stop Barack now is in the "nuclear option" -- finding a way to the FL and MI votes while touting herself more electable, although that illusion is beginning to crack. After last night, a Clinton nomination is farther from reality than ever. Below Harpers, I'm including a short piece blogged over at Huffy that pretty much illuminates the tone in Hil's camp.

The big concern, as this goes forward, is time; it has to be apparent to those of us who watched these guys stump that the energy required is immense. And there's no time to craft the larger strategy ... policy, VP contenders, battle plan against the Pubs, yadda. To take this to the bitter end would leave so little time for rest and preparation that stumbles would be assured. And of course, there will be hurt feelings -- we will need time for wound-licking and reconfiguring; the best way to lure back the disenchanted will be to draw clear differences between the proposed Dem and McRib [who is evidently being advised by [gasp!] Karl himself] but the whole specter of more years with Bush44 won't be too hard to illustrate ... see here, here and here ... and go here if you need an irreverent chuckle.

Either way, this was the turning point, where reality intrudes and where what has been apparent since February took root -- pundits say that that there will be no more "attack/defend" stuff between the candidates; the mental switch to Dem v. Pub has taken precedence. Obama's speech hit that note last night. Speculation is that by June, we will be able to tear apart [to wee bits, no doubt] an actual candidate and their opponent.

And so it goes.

Jude


HARPER'S WEEKLY REVIEW
May 6, 2008


Cyclone Nargis tore off roofs, shredded trees, overturned
cars, and killed more than 10,000 people in Myanmar. Tens
of thousands of Somalis rioted in Mogadishu over the high
cost of food, President Bush pledged $770 million in
international food aid, and an inmate awaiting trial for
murder sued an Arkansas county jail for underfeeding him
after he shed 105 pounds from his 413-pound frame. "About
an hour after each meal," he stated in a complaint, "my
stomach starts to hurt and growl [and] I feel hungry
again. We are literally being starved to death." The
sister-in-law of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian electrician
accused of locking his daughter in a basement dungeon for
24 years and fathering seven children with her, told the
Associated Press that Fritzl hadn't had sex with his wife
in many years: "I believe it was because my sister had
been getting bigger," she said. "He never liked fat
women." Police in Germany discovered the bodies of three
dead babies stored in a freezer in the cellar of a family
home, after two of the family's older children went
rummaging for a frozen pizza, and a former Mr Gay UK
charged with murder was accused of carving up, dicing,
cooking, and eating his victim's leg. Philipp Freiherr von
Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of
the circle of plotters who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler
with a briefcase bomb, died at the age of 90.

A Japanese government employee was found to have viewed
online pornography at work more than 780,000 times in nine
months, and an Ecuadorian politician proposed that a
woman's right to sexual pleasure be made part of the
country's new constitution. Western Australia's Liberal
Party leader, Troy Buswell, admitted to having sniffed the
chair of a female staffer in 2005. At a town-hall meeting
in Iowa, Baptist minister Marty Parrish asked Republican
presidential nominee John McCain whether it was true that
he had called his wife, Cindy, a "cunt" in 1992. "You
know," McCain replied, "that's the great thing about
town-hall meetings, sir, but we really don't, there's
people here who don't respect that kind of language. So
I'll move on." Parrish was then escorted from the meeting
by the Secret Service and local police. In western
Indiana, the president of the Sheet Metal Workers' Union
attributed his support for Hillary Clinton to her
"testicular fortitude" in facing problems like
NAFTA. After Hillary Clinton proposed that she and Barack
Obama compete in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate, Fox News
broadcast an image of Abraham Lincoln facing off against
ex-slave Frederick Douglass instead of 1860 Democratic
presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas. A filly named
Eight Belles, Hillary Clinton's pick, came in second in
the Kentucky Derby, while victory went to the agile colt
Big Brown; after losing, Eight Belles broke both front
ankles and was promptly euthanized. Speaking to North
Carolina Democrats, Clinton promised, "If Senator Obama is
the nominee, you better believe I'll work my heart out for
him."

An Italian police officer shot herself in the head outside
a stadium during a second-division soccer match, Brazilian
football star Ronaldo picked up and was blackmailed by
three transvestite prostitutes, and an eight-year-old boy
in Arizona died after a goal post fell on him during a
soccer game. An Illinois newspaper carrier rescued an
elderly woman whose leg had been pinned for four days
under the dead body of her obese 77-year-old
husband. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people made
reservations to visit the exhumed corpse of Saint Pio of
Pietrelcina in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Padre Pio, who
exhibited the stigmata, and who once wrestled with the
devil, died in 1968. Scientists reported that echolocating
bats cry out loud to detect their prey, emitting sounds
louder than those at a rock concert, while spiders "talk"
to potential mates using a type of light not visible to
the human eye. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who
invented LSD and credited it with allowing him to see "the
wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the
animal and plant kingdom," died in his hilltop home at the
age of 102.

-- Gemma Sieff
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/WeeklyReview2008-05-06


Hillary Will Drop Out by June 15
Lawrence O'Donnell, HuffPo
May 7, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/hillary-will-drop-out-by_b_100625.html

A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. He could not bring himself to say the words "Hillary will drop out by June 15," but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, "So, Hillary will drop out by June 15," and he kept saying, "We will have a nominee by June 15." He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is.

Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary. He said the Clinton campaign plan is to collect as many votes and delegates as they can right through June 3, then take no more than a week or so to make their case to the superdelegates. Nothing he said indicated that he actually expected the superdelegates to move to Hillary in the week after the final election. The Clinton campaign has not lost its grip on reality.

 

Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near. ++

 

http://www.politicalwaves.net

 

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

 

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