Beirut Blogging
A little bit of on-the-ground blogging from Beirut, where things today are still very much in flux.
--David Kurtz
We Hardly Know You Anymore
Add Joe Conason to the list of those dismayed by the direction of Hillary's campaign.
--David Kurtz
"Swimmingly"
The Vice President today, in a Mississippi radio interview with an obviously friendly host:
INTERVIEWER: . . . You know, I look at this, and every once in a while, we'll see a story, Mr. Vice President, things like an amusement park opens in Iraq or in Baghdad, which is totally counter to what we're hearing over here, as far as the marketplaces being open, the schools, and things such as that. But I saw a story several weeks ago about an amusement center maybe over there, and I'm thinking this is not what you get in today's media.VICE PRESIDENT: No, that's true. It's -- what gets covered obviously is bad news. That's -- you know, if everything is going swimmingly, then that's not news, so it doesn't get the kind of attention.
--David Kurtz
Hard Sell
TPM Election Central has posted the power point presentation distributed to House Democrats by the Clinton campaign making her case for why she is the better nominee to help Dems hold on to the toughest swing district seats in November.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
A second land swap deal takes a little more luster off the McCain myth.
--David Kurtz
Never Thought I'd Say It
How far off track is Hillary's campaign? It's so bad even Peggy Noonan is making sense, painful as that is to say.
--David Kurtz
Pretty Black and White
TPM Reader AB is having a hard time reconciling Hillary's remarks on Obama's support among working class whites:
It seems to me that every progressive voice in this country should be outraged - jumping up and down - shouting in print and word - to repudiate Hillary Clinton's remarks that Obama "is having trouble winning over blue collar "white" voters... "white Americans"...It is a disgraceful, shameful tactic to justify her own non-candidacy. This is a remark I would expect from a politician from Mississippi or Louisiana - not from our New York State senator... I am outraged, I am deeply embarrassed that my children have heard this reported on the news...and I regret that have I ever gave her one hard earned nickel.
All the while she touts the glass ceiling as a woman but when her chips are down, the racism springs forth fully formed.
AB is right. Maybe it's general campaign fatigue, or the sense that the race is all but over now, but a month ago her remarks would have been a huge story, the dominant political story of the day.
The political press spent weeks trying to divine whether the Clinton camp was really attempting to cast Obama as the black candidate, a favorite son candidate of the African American community. The Clinton camp vehemently denied it then and even as recently as a few days ago Bill Clinton claimed it was the Obama camp playing the race card against him.
Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary's argument for her own electability. But now she's thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can't win because he's black. Vote for me instead.
You don't have to believe that Hillary's a racist (I don't) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community.
Hers is not an appeal we'd tolerate from a Republican candidate, nor should we from a Democrat, no matter how sterling her progressive credentials might otherwise be.
There's been a lot of talk about the damage Hillary will do to the party by staying in the race this long. Perhaps she should consider the damage she's doing to herself.
--David Kurtz
Super-Duper Delegates
Our Election Central team has been tracking developments all day in the superdelegate primary. Obama has been working them especially hard, trying to use the momentum from his Tuesday showing to peel off a few more undecideds -- with mixed success. We've got the rundown here.
Late Update: Greg Sargent interviews Obama's chief superdelegate whip, Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL), about the state of play, and she makes a surprising assertion: Not only has Rev. Wright not posed a problem for superdelegates, but it's actually encouraged them to come out for Obama sooner. Surprising and counterintuitive. Count me as skeptical.
--David Kurtz
Dismissed Without Prejudice
The Senate Ethics Committee takes a pass on Sen. David Vitter's acknowledged use of the late DC Madam's services.
--David Kurtz
Rummy and His Sycophants
The Pentagon has now made public all the documents it turned over to the New York Times for the paper's blockbuster story a few weeks ago on the cozy relationship between the Pentagon and the ostensibly independent military analysts retained by the networks and cable news channels to provide on-air expertise.
Among the documents were audio files of some of the regular meetings between the analysts and then-Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, where egos were massaged and favor curried. We've pulled some of the highlights from those tapes and have then posted at TPMmuckraker.
Meanwhile, as the Politico reports, there has been deafening silence from the networks about their complicity in Rummy's domestic psy-ops campaign.
--David Kurtz
Judge: Turn Over Torture Evidence
Things not going so well for the prosecution in one of the Gitmo trials:
A military judge in the trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr threatened Thursday to suspend the terror trial unless the prison camp releases a detailed log of Khadr's treatment in more than five years of detention as an alleged al Qaeda terrorist. ...His attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, wants the log in a pretrial effort to limit the scope of evidence given to a jury of U.S. military officers at his upcoming trial, expected in late summer. He argues the circumstances of some interrogations would exclude some of his statements from the trial.
Thursday morning, the military judge, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, agreed with the defense that it should get copies of the log entries from the prison camp's Detainee Information Management System, or DIMS.
Brownback is believed to be the first war court judge to threaten to ''abate'' the proceedings if the prison camp's command staff does not turn over the evidence.
Just goes to show how much difference an independent tribunal -- even one as flawed as this one -- can make.
--David Kurtz
Never!
Cindy McCain was asked about releasing her tax returns, this morning on the Today show, and reiterated that she would never release them -- ever -- even if she becomes First Lady:
She's managed to get away with it so far (just like the spouse of any other candidate not named McCain would, right?), but never is an awfully long time.
--David Kurtz
The Dark Side
Top Democratic senators want the inspectors general for the Pentagon and CIA to investigate reports that enemy combatant detainees were drugged by U.S. interrogators.
--David Kurtz
Chaitén
In the course of scanning the news to populate our news section to the right there, I occasionally come across items that are unrelated to our focus on politics and muck but are so cool they're worth sharing. So indulge me for a moment my fascination with geology and check out these amazing photos from the eruption of Chaitén in Chile.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
--David Kurtz
TPMtv: Lanny Inanity!
Hillary Clinton's campaign is running primarily on the sheer defiant enthusiasm of her supporters and staff, and perhaps no one embodies that doggedness more than former Special Counsel to President Clinton, Lanny Davis. In today's episode of TPMtv we present Lanny's pièce de résistance, his stint on CNN's Tuesday night North Carolina and Indiana primary coverage ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Ben Craw
The Families Guy
Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) has just issued a statement confirming what the New York tabloids have been in a tizzy about since Fossella's DUI arrest in suburban DC last week: He fathered a child with the woman -- not his wife, the mother of his three other children -- who picked him up from jail that night.
From Roll Call (sub. req.):
"I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a three year old daughter," Fossella said in a statement."My personal failings and imperfections have caused enormous pain to the people I love and I am truly sorry.
"While I understand that there will be many questions, including those about my political future, making any political decisions right now are furthest from my mind.
"Over the coming weeks and months, I will to continue to do my job and I will work hard to heal the deep wounds I have caused."
The buzz is that this episode will force Fossella, the only Republican congressman representing NYC, not to seek re-election this year.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
The ACLU continues its undefeated streak in challenging FBI National Security Letters.
--David Kurtz
What a Pennhead
Time recounts the top 5 mistakes made by Hillary's campaign. This one jumps out:
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game.That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.
Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified -- and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"
And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.
Late Update: Greg Sargent unearths a 2007 memo from Penn that seems to suggest the same winner-take-all analysis.
--David Kurtz
Till Next Week
I'm going to be stepping aside from my normal duties at TPM for the rest of the week for some family time. I'll be leaving you in the able hands of the rest of the TPM staff. Next week or the week following we'll have some announcements about new projects and personnel at TPM.
--Josh Marshall
Shocker: Lobbying Works On McCain in Land Swap
Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) invulnerability to the charms of lobbyists and campaign supporters is put to the test again -- this time by the story of a major 2005 land deal.
Junta Confiscates UN Myanmar Aid
The UN temporarily suspended relief supplies after the military government seized their first shipment.
ABC: Obama Overtakes Hillary in Superdelegates
- Hillary Camp Emails Out "Electability" Powerpoint to All House Dems
- Obama Holding Florida Fundraiser May 22
- Rahm Emanuel: Obama "Presumptive" Nominee
- G.O.P. Web Site Attacks Obama
- Union Chief, Superdel, Endorses Obama
- SurveyUSA: NY-13 Constituents Want Fossella To Stay in Office
- McCain Camp Accuses Obama Of Hitting McCain On Age
- Dems Now Claim More Hispanic Voters in FL Than GOP
- Why is McCain Still Losing Nearly 1/3 of the Popular Vote in GOP Primaries?
- Bush Urges Court to Keep Meatpackers From Expanding Mad Cow Testing
- WVU President Clings to Job After Governor's Daughter Scandal
- Plame Trying to Resurrect CIA Leak Lawsuit
- CIA Kept in Dark on High Level Contacts With Ghorbanifar
- U.S. Army's 'Stop-Loss' Orders Up Dramatically Over Last Year
- Eric McDavid Sentenced to 19 Years in Terrorism Plot
- Judge Plans To Review Opinion on CIA Tactics
- Rocket Hits BBC Bureau in Baghdad
- Pakistan PM: U.S. Strikes Against Al Qaeda in Pakistan "Counter Productive"
- Rep. Miller (D-CA) Wants Criminal Probe Of 2007 Utah Mine Collapse
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