Politiek Beeldverhaal door: Gary Varvel

Populariteit: 6% [?]

The remark has been widely interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has said the U.S. should not exclude talking with Iran or Syria.

One of these right-wing “Radio Toilets,” a Mr. Kevin James attempted to defend President Bush’s comments comparing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to Nazi appeasers because he favors talking with ‘US’s enemies.’ James tried to compare Obama to Neville Chamberlain(1869 – 1940), who was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain’s legacy is marked by his policy regarding the appeasement of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany with his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

Mathews asked James if he knew what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in 1938.

James had no answer other than to yell baselessly — like an imbecile in heat.

“What did he do?” x20 — Mathews Asked.

….but “Idiot James” kept on digging…

Mathews retorted: If you answered, “He signed the Munich Agreement, conceding a portion of Czechoslovakia to the Nazi regime,” you are right. If you answered, “He talked to Hitler, and caused 9/11 to happen and made the Statue of Liberty cry, just like Barack Hussein bin Laden wants to!” then you are Kevin James.

The video below is representative of the thought process of right-wing talk hosts and their audiences (TV and Radio), the Bible thumping, Gun Clinging and Xenophobic idiots crawling across West Virginia and many other southern states — Stubborn ignorance piled on top of unconscious delusion — the primary cause of hate crimes in the United States.

Here is the ‘HardBall’ SmackDown:

…..MEANWHILE — Tennessee GOP(Republican) THUGS Attack Michelle Obama

Obama Team Fired Back:

Spokesman Hari Sevugan: “This is a shameful attempt to attack a woman who has repeatedly said she wouldn’t be here without the opportunities and blessings of this nation. The Republican Party’s pathetic attempts to use the same smear tactics to win elections have failed in Mississippi, failed in Louisiana, and will fail in November because the American people are looking for a positive vision of real change. And if the Tennessee Republican Party has a problem with Senator Obama, maybe next time they’ll have the courage to address him directly instead of attacking his family.”

REFERENCES:

1. Paul Begala: Bush Uses Holy Land Pulpit to Launch Smear Campaign
2. Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Swift Boating Comes to Jerusalem

Popularity: 21% [?]

It’s Time For Hillary To Quit!

Barack Obama celebrates with wife Michelle
Sen. Barack Obama won North Carolina’s presidential primary by a wide margin Tuesday, while Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowly won in Indiana.

“We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be,” NBC’s Tim Russert declared on MSNBC last evening. The Meet the Press host was referring to Barack Obama, who won a decisive victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton in today’s North Carolina primary and is within just a few percentage points of her in the Indiana vote count.

The network’s Chuck Todd ran through the math and calculated that Obama now leads Clinton in the “popular vote” by about 710,000 — and by 200,000 if the disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan are counted. He also leads by about 160 Democratic convention delegates, Todd said.

Obama, according to Todd, can now make the case “that no matter how you do the math, I’m still ahead.”

The Politico’s Ben Smith reports that Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said this evening that the campaign is going to spend some time over the next few weeks campaigning in states that will be critical in the fall election. “I don’t think we are doing to spend our time solely in primary states,” Axelrod said. There are six primaries left on the Democratic calender; in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota.

Barack Obama is 200 delegates away from the nomination, two weeks after a decisive defeat in Pennsylvania. Last night Obama sounded increasingly like he was looking forward to the fall campaign.

In a raucous rally in Raleigh, N.C., he congratulated Clinton on what he said “appears to be” a win in Indiana.

But he told the crowd, “Tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from winning the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.”

“This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats,” he said, “because we all agree that at this defining moment in history — a moment when we’re facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril — we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term.”

| …More Barack TV |

MEANWHILE: Clinton vowed at a late-night rally in Indianapolis that her campaign would continue at “full speed” — then made an appeal for money to fight on in the face of a fund-raising disadvantage.

Despite the uncertainty of the outcome in Indiana, Clinton staked a claim to victory there.

“Not too long ago, my opponent made a prediction,” she said at the rally, joined by her husband, Bill, his face sunburned after hours spent campaigning in small-town North Carolina, and their daughter, Chelsea. “I would win Pennsylvania, he would win North Carolina and Indiana would be the tie-breaker.

“Well, tonight we’ve come from behind, we’ve broken the tie, and thanks to you it’s full speed on to the White House.”

Report: Adopted From USAToday.com | MSNBC.com

Popularity: 26% [?]

Writes: BOB HERBERT

Race is like pornography in the United States — the dirty stories and dirty pictures that everyone professes to hate but no one can resist. But I suspect that even porn addicts get their fill sometimes.

We’ve allowed the entire political process in what is perhaps the most important election in the U.S. since World War II to become thoroughly warped by the histrionics of a loony preacher from the South Side of Chicago.

Most of the electorate understands that the U.S. is in sorry shape, which is why more than 80 percent of poll respondents say we’re on the wrong track. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has nothing to do with any of that. The idea that his nonsense may shape the outcome of this election is both tragic and absurd…[more]

REFERENCES:

Editorial Reviews: Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire

From Publishers Weekly: In this provocative, scattershot jeremiad, cultural historian Berman (The Twilight of American Culture) likens America to ancient Rome on the brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug.

The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a “package deal,” the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans’ ingrained “stupidity” and willful blindness, unsalvageable.

Berman’s attempts to tie every American dysfunction to an all-encompassing sickness of soul overreaches, leading him to lump together serious issues like poverty and the Abu Ghraib outrages with trivialities like annoying cell phone yakkers or the “freedom fries” phenomenon, which he bemoans as “symbolic of an emptiness at the core.” Often stimulating and insightful in its particulars, his indictment, like the jingoism it abhors, is too sweeping and essentialist to fully capture American reality.

From Booklist: A despairing analyst of contemporary America, Berman continues criticism begun in The Twilight of American Culture (2000). One character crystallizing Berman’s thoughts is President George W. Bush, under whom, according to Berman, the U.S. is incipiently, if not actually, suffering a “presidential dictatorship,” a “de facto Christian theocratic plutocracy.” In that vein, Berman undertakes a wide-ranging condemnation of American economic and foreign policy of the past 50 years, which he believes has propelled America into disastrous decline.

That Berman inveighs against free markets and thinks the cold war was partly a dynamic of the Soviet Union acting defensively infuses this work with a solidly leftist viewpoint. In Berman’s vigorous arrangement of evidence, current events are propelling us upon an irreversibly downward trajectory toward a societal situation resembling the Dark Ages. However, Berman offers no positive ideas to reverse this perceived free fall, making his tome more of an alarm than a solution.– Gilbert Taylor

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