Where have I seen this before … where? It appears as though Barack Obama is playing the numbers game. He claims that 90% of his donations come from small donors. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission says that half of the money he has raised comes from heavy hitters – contributions of $1,000 or more.

Who’s right?

It’s and old game. Both are telling the truth, though Obama is deliberately trying to mislead us. Of all the people who have given him money, 90% have done so in small increments. But of all of the money he has raised, half of it came from large donations.

Obama is talking about the number of donors, the FEC about the amount of money raised.

Obama is trying to give us the impression that he is running a little guy’s campaign. Not true.

I listen to the Thom Hartmann show – not every day for sure, so I could be wrong about this. He has tried throughout the course of the campaigns to have all of the candidates on. He says, however, that certain of them refused to come on unless they could control the format. They wanted control over which questions could be asked. He doesn’t do that. He would not say who set these conditions, but Hillary or Obama, so far as I know, have never appeared on his show.

It reminds me of another show I saw during the 2004 campaign. It was called a “Town Hall Debate”, and the premise was that Bush and Kerry would be fielding questions from the audience, rather than the reporters who usually act as buffers. But there were ground rules, which were accepted without question: People had to write out their questions in advance, and the questions the candidates wanted to answer were preselected. People would be allowed to read their questions, but if they deviated from the way the question was written and accepted, the mike would be cut off. The normal journalist-buffer was replaced by censors.

Bush one time (I think he was in New York) decided to accept questions from innocent bystanders. I can imagine his aids scurrying, the phone calls behind the scenes, the raw panic. And sure enough, right away, a woman asked him how many civilians he had killed in Iraq. “Oh, I don’t know – twenty or thirty thousand?” It obviously was not something he thought about much. But more importantly, it was not a question any self-respecting journalist would have asked. That’s why they are chosen to moderate these debates – they protect the candidates from the public.

Democrats have debated twenty times now, and we’ve come to accept the format. There is always some famous journalist moderating. And to become famous in journalism, a reporter has to establish with the politicians that he is dependable, that he won’t ask any hard questions. The big names – Brokaw, Jennings, Russert, WIlliams, Blitzer, Cooper – are all dependable. Dan Rather was once dependable, but got uppity one time and lost his job. They form a club of sorts, a protective shell around the candidates. Sure, they supply a little heat now and then, but we’re used to that – they make a big deal out of little things. They don’t talk about the big stuff.

Last night’s debate was no different. I found very little that Obama and Clinton disagree on – they both accept the woefully inefficient private insurance model for health care. Neither will do anything about NAFTA. (Well, they’ll study it – another way of saying it.) Both offer unqualified support for Israel. Both will keep troops in Iraq, committing only to a drawdown that will likely never happen. Both agreed that Bill Clinton did a good thing when he illegally attacked Kosovo in 1999. Both agree that the Russians are now officially a bad actor, now that they have dissed the U.S. (On a humorous note, Obama was spared having to answer a question about Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s likely successor. Clinton fielded that one, and Obama meekly agreed with her comments. Phew!)

Anyway, these candidates do not disagree on anything that I can discern.

So it comes as no surprise that the journalists in the aftermath find themselves analyzing minutia. Was Clinton out of line in complaining about getting the first question? Did Obama land any punches? Was she churlish? Peevish? Why doesn’t his charisma come through like it does when he has an audience all to himself?

And, of course, the questions that are not asked. Who’s paying for your campaign? Senator Clinton, how can you say you’re going to fix our health care system when you take more money from the health care industry than any other candidate? Senator Obama – what’s with you and the Wall Street financial houses? (Campaign finance reform is never discussed – ever.) What are your plans for Social Security? Will either of you attack our inequitable tax system which punishes working people? Scale back the tax cuts for the wealthy? Go after the USA PATRIOT Act? Fight immunity for telecoms? Attack Iran? Privatize Iraq’s oil?

The list goes on, but that’s why the journalists are there – to make sure these questions don’t get asked.

I’d like to see a debate some time where they open up the floor to the audience, uncensored, and no planted questions, please, Hillary. But that will never happen – we saw what happened when Bush so foolishly did it. He got real and hard questions. He was embarrassed. And so too would our candidates be embarrassed as people held their feet to the fire about Iraq, single payer, NAFTA and outsourcing and immigration. That’s why we pay these journalists – not to ask these questions.

PS: Washington Rule #8: You can agree with any concept or notional future option in principle, but fight implementation every step of the way.

Note: The following post ran on January 18, 2007, and has been one of the most widely read since we started this blog. It seems appropriate to run it again. We know as much about Barack Obama now as we did then.

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I’ve been suspicious of the Obama parade from the beginning – it’s been my experience that ‘attractive’ Democrats whom the media fawns over and regard as safe can usually trace their roots back to the Democratic Leadership Council, otherwise known as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Obama’s no easy case, though. There are messages in the smoke.

Alexander Cockburn, as left as left can be, has written a couple of pieces on Obama. This was before the media discovered him. That’s a recent phenomenon.

Here’s Cockburn:

It’s depressing to think that we’ll have to endure Obamaspeak for months, if not years to come: a pulp of boosterism about the American dream, interspersed with homilies about “putting factionalism and party divisions behind us and moving on.” I used to think Sen. Joe Lieberman was the man whose words I’d least like to be force fed top volume if I was chained next to a loudspeaker in Camp Gitmo, but I think Obama, who picked Lieberman as his mentor when he first entered the U.S. Senate, is worse. I’ve never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.

That’s right – Joe Lieberman is Obama’s mentor, and Lieberman brags that Obama picked him, not the opposite.

Cockburn also notes that Obama, around the time that Murtha was making a stink about Iraq, spoke before the elite of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Democrats fled Murtha, few with more transparent calculation than Obama who voyaged to the Council on Foreign Relations on November 22, there to ladle out to the assembled elites such balderdash as “The President could take the politics out of Iraq once and for all if he would simply go on television and say to the American people ‘Yes, we made mistakes’”, or “we need to focus our attention on how to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Notice that I say ‘reduce,’ and not ‘fully withdraw’”, or “2006 should be the year that the various Iraqi factions must arrive at a fair political accommodation to defeat the insurgency; and , the Administration must make available to Congress critical information on reality-based benchmarks that will help us succeed in Iraq.”

Smooth as syrup. There’s a wave of discontent in this country, voiced in the November elections, that we want out of Iraq – no redeployment or scaleback, but o-u-t. No worthy politician can ignore this. But the war from the beginning has been an elite undertaking with unstated objectives. Americans have only been cajoled and frightened into following, and are seeing more clearly now.

It is going to take a politician of considerable skill to 1) heed to public demand to get out, and 2) keep us in. The media, subservient to power as always, will glom on to any politician who can serve those objectives. So, for now, Obama is their man.

[Obama] lobbed up the first signal flare during the run-up to his 2004 senate race, when his name began to feature on Democratic Leadership Council literature as one of the hundred Democratic leaders to watch.

The DLC doesn’t necessarily pre-select candidates, but they do keep an eye out for possibilities. Obama has been on their watch-list for some time. Now that they see his sex appeal, they may rally behind him. He could be Hillary without the polarizing effect, a real possibility to hold the office.

Obama has voted to close filibuster on both of Bush’s Supreme Court selections, to re-up the Patriot Act, for “tort reform”. He’s sent up plenty of signals that he could be Republican-lite enough to be ‘electable’ – code word for no threat to power.

Obama is one of those politicians whom journalists like to decorate with words as “adroit” or “politically adept” because you can actually see him trimming to the wind, the way you see a conjuror of moderate skill shove the rabbit back up his sleeve. Above all he is concerned with the task of reassuring the masters of the Democratic Party, and beyond that, the politico-corporate establishment, that he is safe. Whatever bomb might have been in his head has long since been dis-armed. He’s never going to blow up in the face of anyone of consequence.

There’ll be other candidates testing the wind. Vilsack, another DLC guy, might catch on. Anyone of the left need not apply – Feingold has already ascertained that there is no support among those who matter for a man who really would get us out of Iraq, who really would change our health care system, who really cares about campaign finance reform. We’re pretty much stuck with the DLC, sex appeal, and no substance.

Obama had his fingers stuck in the wind as always. He bends to every breeze, as soon as he identifies it as coming from a career-threatening quarter. This man is no leader.

“My mom made pancakes every single morning at our house,” he said, with a smile of fond reminiscence. He stopped abruptly. “My wife!” he corrected. “I called her my mom. My wife.”

— Mitt Romney hands a nice Freudian slip to Dana Milbank.
(2/1/2008)

So John McCain was having an affair! So says the New York Times, which has released a bombshell story on McCain’s intimate relationship with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist with the firm of Alcalde & Fay, which represents telecommunications clients.

One, I’m impressed. The old guy still has it. If anything, these revelations will help him among libido-challenged senior citizens. He’ll score a few more votes among the Viagra set.

Also, it’s revealing, if only a tad so, of the culture in Washington, DC. Did anyone think that sex is not an arrow in the lobbyists’ quiver? Iseman brings little educational background . She was trained as an elementary education teacher in a minor college. She was originally hired as a secretary. But she was known to fly on campaign flights with McCain, to the point where his staff was concerned that the relationship might be romantic.

Once elected, our senators and congressman likely have a whole array of sexual options that were not available before. Those who succumb to temptation are subject to bribery and intimidation. If the Bushies are wiretapping them, as seems highly likely (why else the frantic rush to cover up past abuses with telecom immunity?), their votes can be had on any issue. That might explain why majority Democrats have been doormats for the Bush agenda.

I’m surprised that the Times, which sat silently on a wiretapping bombshell during the 2004 presidential election, let go with this story. That in itself is a story. There’s no Republican alternative to McCain now, so benefit accrues solely to the Democrats. The mainstream media in general has been kind to Obama and Clinton (while marginalizing Edwards and the other Democratic candidates). Both of them enjoy impressive corporate backing, Clinton from the health care industry and Obama from the financial houses. These two candidates are obviously favored in the game.

That’s not a good thing. There’s great sound and fury in American political campaigns, and little substance. Liberal candidates will say anything to appeal to members of that particular base, and then, like Bill Clinton, ignore them once elected. After all, liberals have nowhere else to go, and never threaten to withhold their votes. They are like puppies. Once a candidate is elected, and financial backers are at the head of the line.

The money behind candidates is an important story that is only rarely covered by mainstream media. The Times is making a between-the-lines statement in reporting what goes on between the sheets.

Anyway, congratulations to John McCain, carrying on at once with a trophy wife and a succubus (the one that we know of, anyway). I salute him, as does AARP.

I like this piece, Liberal Bias is A-OK, by J.D. Porter, who is a senior at Columbia University.

If conservatives truly feel under-represented in the academy, their only option is to do better work. They shouldn’t allow themselves to be coddled by some sort of regulatory system looking out for their welfare. It’s a mistake, however, to say that we even need more conservative voices at Columbia. We need good scholarship and good pedagogy, and not lip service to an ideology just because it’s popular. That may mean we hire conservatives, or, if history is any indication, it more likely won’t. If we judge professors purely on their work, however, conservativism will have the place in academia that it deserves.

He hoists conservatives by their own petards. Anyway, if the campuses are indeed liberal (that is only a teeny tad true, owing to the fact that most PHD’s are liberals), then conservatives ought to just suck it up and get in there and demand more conservative professors. The market will supply. That the David Horowitz crowd instead relies on intimidation and runs to the legislature seeking repressive legislation speaks volumes.

This was over at Crooks and Liars, so is widely read. But it is so bad that I am putting it up here and adding our three readers to C&L’s.

Here’s Glenn Beck:

“If you’re a guy, you can get past it. I don’t think you can as an ugly woman.”

“You’ve got a double cross, because if you’re an ugly woman, you’re probably a progressive as well.”

Beck later added:

“If you believed in God, you’d know that there’s going to be another chance for you. You don’t have to be ugly in heaven. You’re going to be your perfect self, and there will be another perfect somebody waiting for you on the other side.”

Here is what I don’t get – the guy is obviously a cold and cruel jerk, and a moron to boot. Why does he have a show on CNN?

I think Dave Budge and I touched on it a bit in the post below on how mainstream news networks do such a lousy job. CNN is in a ratings battle with FOX and others. They need numbers. It’s not about IQ. That’s the last thing they care about. They want those right wing butts sitting on those couches. After all, TV is just a way of selling audiences to advertisers.

So they bring on the biggest right wing jackass they can find, one not comported to normal decency, one given to saying outrageous things, even if only to draw viewers.

It’s marketing to our lowest common denominator. It’s why the free market can’t deliver a decent product to the public. Our tastes are determined by the dumbest jackasses among us.

Beck is the lowest of sleazeballs to occupy the front lines of mainstream media – an extremely shallow religious freak.

But my – isn’t he a handsome man?

Well, since we are reduced to flinging videos at at one another, here’s the latest. It’s Hillary’s lame attempt to be part of it all. It wouldn’t be so funny if they weren’t trying to be serious.

On the other side of the coin, I was working yesterday, doing some dull, repetitive stuff, so I went looking for some background noise. What I found was this – a news broadcast from Democracy Now! As I was listening to it, it slowly dawned … I was listening to a real discussion of candidates and their stances. No glitz, no videos, no horse race – just a serious dissection of where Clinton and Obama stand on health care reform.

Democracy Now! is often the object of condescension, as it is a lefty network, but it also does something all of the mainstreams forgot how to do – journalism. I have watched a lot of CNN lately – it’s all horse race. DN! doesn’t fear boring its viewership, I suppose. They are not worried they will bail and head over to FOX. And truthfully, they do run some pretty frightful stuff. Code Pink is often featured.

But they also try hard to give good and hard coverage of current events. And they do other stuff – who else would ask John Edwards’s campaign manager to go on opposite Ralph Nader? Or ask him about Edwards’ conservative voting record or his stint with a hedge fund after his election loss in 2004? Who would cover Noam Chomsky’s latest speech (Mr. PNG -persona non grata)? Or East Timor, about to blow up again? Or labor news, long absent from mainstream and local coverage?

No one else. If I watched nothing but Democracy Now!, I would be better informed than if I watched only CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX, or certainly if I only read the local paper.

Now, back to Hillary’s video. Let’s rock and roll with the C-Woman. (Be sure to take note of the sax player – a Bill-clone? Good grief.)

One of the first signs that winter is going to end is that day in February when pitchers and catchers report. We have a foot of snow outside and the wind has been howling, moving the snow around, making rock-hard drifts. The sun rarely shines – it’s usually overcast here in Bozeman. Winter will linger until April, and we won’t have a true green spring until May.

Except today … the Cincinnati Reds and all the other teams are now in camp. Many players have been there all week – the young guns who want to show up and impress the manager. Get this – some of them come early just because they love to play the game.

The Reds have a young outfielder, Jay Bruce, who is ranked the number one prospect in all of baseball. He’s been in Sarasota all week.

Last year the Reds finished 72-90, fired their manager, and played the last month of the season with basically a triple-A roster. Yet they started out in April of 2007 with the same optimism as now. But losing started early – it takes a couple of months for weaknesses to be exposed, but not that long for the 2007 Reds. They lacked two things – starting pitching and bullpen arms. No amount of hitting overcomes bad pitching. By the All Star break they were deep in the hole, and the manager had to go. Like he was the problem.

This winter they signed a closer, Francisco Cordera, to a monstrous contract, and also nabbed a potential starter in former Colorado Rocky Jeremy Affeldt. They traded away a brilliant young outfielder, Josh Hamilton, for a promising young arm, Edinson Volquez, and hired Dusty Baker to manage. Once again, there is hope. Their record right now is 0-0, and they are tied for first. It is February, I’m slogging through tax work, but pitchers and catchers report today. I’m excited.

We are going to San Francisco in late April, staying in a beach condo and babysitting a friend’s pooch for a while. If that wasn’t enough, I checked the schedule, and sure enough, the Reds are in Frisco at that time. If that wasn’t enough, our friend has a friend who has box seats who won’t be using the tickets … it was is if it were foreordained.

That’s something to look forward to this dark February morning. Talk of steroids and congressional hearings will soon give way to balls and strikes and dingers. Baseball fans are not complicated. We’re not so noisy as football fans – baseball is actually boring to many of them. I can see that. It’s a game without a time clock – a game made for lazy afternoons. Football became popular in an industrialized country where people had to punch clocks. It’s a different mindset.

On this dark and cold February morning I look forward to 162 three hour contests, each one uniquely important. This could be the year.

What are we to make of a man with a conservative voting record that rivals only that of Hillary Clinton, who ran as a liberal, dropped out at a most inopportune moment, and now supposedly will endorse Hillary Clinton.

Sounds like a stalking horse to me. But my mind is not trained not to think like that.