Clinton, Iron Lady, Needs Another Game Plan
Bill Clinton seized the spotlight by taking the low road with a goulash of ineffectual charges: Upstart Barack Obama would be a risky roll of the dice for the voters, a vague dreamer whose gauzy speeches were bereft of 10-point programs. On top of that, he charged the guys in the race with ganging up on his wife.
Senator Hillary Clinton, with 10-point programs to spare, took the high road, sticking mostly to policy but shedding a timely tear on the eve of the New Hampshire vote. She snapped back with a two-point win.
Clinton saw the New Hampshire result as her political resurrection, where she finally found her “voice.” But if the voice was different, the message was the same.
Her Lazarus-like win kept her from looking any further into why she lost so badly in Iowa. It put off any move to change her insular staff and validated her original strategy in which the primaries were a mere formality. Voters would coronate her partly because she had been first lady, because she was a Clinton, and because it was her turn after all she had been through.
It wasn’t as much a matter of competing as it was waiting until Super Tuesday to accept the crown.
Dark Days
Now the days ahead look darker than they did on that flight from Des Moines to Manchester.
On Feb. 12, Clinton was whomped in Virginia (64 percent to 35 percent), Maryland (60-37) and Washington, D.C. (75-24). Obama has now won 23 of their 35 contests.
She has an explanation for why each of Obama’s victories is inferior to hers. His wins are in teeny-weeny states (Virginia, Washington state, Missouri?) with large black populations (Iowa, Utah, Nebraska?). They are the result of independents and crossover Republicans who dilute the will of loyal Democrats, or they took place in caucus states that measure intensity not breadth (caucuses are suddenly bad for democracy).
Clinton is trying to pull a Rosie Ruiz. Ruiz, the putative winner of the Boston Marathon in 1980, actually sat out much of the race only to emerge near the finish line to claim victory. Clinton is virtually not running anywhere in February, planning to re-emerge in March to sprint to the finish line by triumphing in races in Texas and Ohio. Rudy Giuliani tried this in Florida, only to find that his chosen field of play would be his final resting place.
Just Didn’t Happen
Even as Clinton pretends that any primary she doesn’t win doesn’t count by refusing to congratulate the winner, Obama’s wins are getting bigger and broader. His coalition has expanded to include every age, education, region and income category, including those over 60 and those earning less than $50,000. Even white women — including the blue-haired ones who are most averse to “rolling the dice” — are moving toward him.
Everyone has been waiting for a shake-up of the Clinton team, but that would mean getting rid of her security blanket, Mark Penn, a major reason the campaign has burned through most of the money raised. Against all evidence that the populace already knew Clinton had a steel-trap brain and needed to be shown she had a heart, Penn insisted on an Iron Lady strategy of numbing recitations of memorized facts.
When it failed, titular campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and her deputy were sacrificed.
Negative on Herself
Going forward, Clinton will push for more debates in which she can expose the naivete and inexperience of the untested Obama, while baiting the press into delving into his unexamined life. The latter effort is part of a major theme — that she can better withstand any Republican attack because she already has.
This is the first known instance of going negative against yourself — reminding people of your scandals to show you are scandal-proof.
Clinton’s best hope is to reverse her slide among women by resuming identity politics. The old guard of feminists, including Gloria Steinem, came to her defense when they saw the men in the race picking on her. Even when non-feminists saw an exhausted and worn-down Hillary get choked up at that Portsmouth diner, they remembered how often they have been underappreciated and overworked. Voting against a man is small compensation for it, but it’s better than nothing.
Clinton’s (and Obama’s) problem is that Democrats are experts at identity politics against Republicans, but not against each other.
Who Knew?
Who knew that a member of one protected species would be running against a member of another within the party? The groups to which they belong have front men and women ready to go off like a cheap car alarm at the least infraction.
The Clintons have suspended political correctness when necessary, labeling as unbalanced, a stalker, or a liar Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. They did so against Obama but it didn’t work. Now Bill Clinton has gone quiet to try to get back his designation as the “first black president” tarnished in this campaign. The former Goldwater Girl and Wellesley alum never managed to be hailed as the first black first lady.
Hillary Clinton needs to answer Obama’s rhetoric of change with which he has subliminally conflated the Clintons, the Bushes, and everything wrong with Washington into a seamless whole that must be removed. She needs to do it quickly.
Hillary - You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.
MSNBC’S Chelsea Confessions
(OPINION) - Hillary Clinton should be nobody’s idea of a paragon of civil discourse in the political arena. Her personal style of political warfare is ruthless, a bare-knuckles fight to the death. Ask Ken Starr. Her idea of employee relations is also rough. Paul Fray, an Arkansas campaign worker, said she cursed him out with F-bombs and ethnic slurs after Bill Clinton lost his one race for Congress in 1974. A co-worker told NBC News in 1999 that he heard cussing from Hillary that night like he’d never heard before.
But once Hillary registered her displeasure, like an obedient liberal lapdog, MSNBC quickly began an apology tour. Shuster apologized the next morning on “Morning Joe.” He apologized again later that day on “Tucker.” Shuster was forced not only to apologize to Chelsea but to her parents. “I am particularly sorry that my language diminished the regard and respect she has earned from all of us and the respect her parents have earned in how they raised her.”
After all the slavish apologies, MSNBC still suspended Shuster indefinitely for the remark. Buzz from insiders suggested some wanted Shuster fired for not being more abject in his apologies from the first minute Team Clinton learned of the Shuster gaffe on the Internet. (In a flash, Mark Finkelstein of the NewsBusters blog posted the stupid remark, just 10 minutes after the show ended.)
Hillary sent a hectoring public letter to MSNBC complaining that Shuster had not been fired yet: “Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used, and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient. … Surely, you can do your jobs as journalists and commentators and still keep the discourse civil and appropriate.”
The remark was idiotic and offensive. But enough to merit suspension? Our culture is so awash in prostitution lingo from hip-hop lyrics that this remark doesn’t have the shock value that it should. When a song called “Big Pimping” is a radio smash and “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” wins an Oscar for Best Song, and is performed on national television without a shred or regret to an audience of millions, the P-word has gained mainstream acceptance.
Clearly, the brass at MSNBC disagrees and feels this language is wholly inappropriate, proving there is a definitive double standard at play on this network. Those same executives mustered no outrage last September when, in one of his typically hysterical tirades against “dictatorial” George W. Bush, Keith Olbermann accused him of “pimping General David Petraeus” as he sold the surge on Capitol Hill.
Oh, but Petraeus is a grown man with a grown-up job, you say? Somehow we forget that Chelsea Clinton also fits that mold, since she’s 27 and works for big bucks in Manhattan for Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund founded by two major Democratic Party donors.
But Chelsea is the Daughter of Bill, and presidential offspring should be off-limits. Okay, Olbermann crossed that line, too.
On Nov. 28, 2006, after President Bush’s twin daughters Barbara and Jenna traveled to Argentina to celebrate their 25th birthday, Olbermann used the flimsiest of office cooler whispers to suggest the girls were engaged in lewd public behavior: “After reports of lax security, a media frenzy and at least one lurid tale in the Argentine papers about the girls running naked down a hallway of their hotel, denied fervently by that hotel, by the way, ABC News reported the situation was so bad that the U.S. embassy asked the girls to leave, which the embassy fervently denies, by the way.”
Olbermann then extended the outrage by interviewing comedian Mo Rocca, having more fun demeaning the Bush twins as comparable to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears: “Let’s start with the First Twins and this rampage through Argentina. You have met the Bush daughters, and you know your White Houses. Are these the kind of women who would do things like run around in a hotel naked?” Rocca joked that the reports were exaggerated, that the Bush twins had only run around topless.
And the folks at MSNBC laughed, because that Keith Olbermann is such a cutup.
Now you know the real story. Still going to vote for the pimp’s mother?
22,000 died amid delayed Bayer drug recall
Dr. Dennis Mangano, the study’s researcher, said during the program that 22,000 lives could have been saved if Trasylol had been taken off the market when he first published his study in January 2006, according to a CBS News report on its Web site ahead of a broadcast slated for next Sunday.
He said in the broadcast that Bayer failed to disclose to the FDA during an FDA advisory panel meeting in September 2006 — at which Mangano’s negative findings were discussed — that the German drugmaker had conducted its own research which confirmed the same dangers established by his study.
The chairman of the FDA advisory panel, Dr. William Hiatt, told 60 Minutes he would have voted to remove Trasylol from the market had he been informed about Bayer’s study, according to the CBS report.
Bayer spokeswoman Meredith Fischer said she could not comment about the broadcast until it is aired, including allegations that the drugmaker had failed to protect patients.
She said Bayer is facing a number of product-liability lawsuits filed by patients who had taken the medicine or their families, but said she not know how many lawsuits were filed.
That’s big pharma for ya’ - to hell with the negative reports, so what if a few thousand die, we still have to keep our stock holders happy - so what if our corporate is sued, we’ll just raise the cost of medications to offset the lawsuits.
Exposed: The long, cruel road to the slaughterhouse
This post is fairly disturbing. I therefore have taken out the videos, just in case some of you might not want to watch them - the descriptions quite enough. For those of you who would like to see this article in it’s entirety, just simply follow the link at the bottom of this page. I’ve also limited my tags for the very same reason.
The video is the product of the Handle With Care coalition, which has united animal charities to campaign against the abhorrent practice. The coalition, which is lobbying for change in the countries concerned, unveiled an international campaign yesterday in countries including Brazil, Australia, the US, Spain and Italy.
Spain to Italy: Horses driven for 46 hours before slaughter
Across the world, more than a billion live animals are transported every week, many over long distances. The video reveals the horror of five particularly gruesome journeys. Australia, the world’s largest exporter of live animals, sends more than four million live sheep every year to the Middle East. Shipped in cramped, poorly lit dens, the journey takes 32 days. Three sheep are crammed per square metre in the ship’s hold, causing many of the animals to die of suffocation before encountering the slaughterhouse weeks later.
Those sheep that do arrive are fattened before being killed in accordance with Halal butchery laws. Eighty per cent of Australia’s abattoirs are Halal-certified, raising the question of why they could not be slaughtered in Australia and transported frozen.
Many live exports are undertaken to make the fraudulent claim that the animals are home-reared. In Spain, thousands of horses are illegally crammed into lorries for a sweltering 46-hour journey to Italy. Canadian pigs, in conditions just as obscene, are condemned to a 4,500-mile journey by land and sea to Hawaii, so that, when slaughtered, their carcasses can be sold as “Island Produced Pork”. For nine days, hundreds of pigs are crammed together in the dark, standing in their own excrement. Exhausted and hungry, they become ill, vomiting from motion sickness and waiting for long periods without food.
Canada to Hawaii: Pigs transported for nine days
Compassion in World Farming’s chief executive, Philip Lymbery, said: “The cruelty these animals endure is completely unacceptable in the 21st century. This trade is one in which millions of animals suffer cruel and unnecessary journeys each year. It must stop.”
Despite EU regulations which should protect the animals on the filmed routes, the horses are denied adequate food and water, and endure temperatures of up to 40C.
Speaking on behalf of the International League for the Protection of Horses, Jo White said: “Long distance transport for slaughter is the biggest single abuse of horses in Europe, with around 100,000 involved in the trade. The ILPH is committed to ending this unnecessary suffering and with the review of EU legislation next year, urges the public to demonstrate its objection to this inhumane trade as a matter or urgency.”
Rules on the minimum standards of care for the transit of live animals are flouted regularly, with many in such cramped conditions that they have no room to lie down. In Europe alone, some six million animals are taken on long journeys of up to 70 hours, which often cause extensive suffering.
No investigation is usually conducted into a live export unless more than 2 per cent of these animals die in transit; those in the industry say that 1 per cent will die on their journey – equivalent to about 40,000 sheep dying in inhumane conditions each year.
Campaigners say that humans could also be at risk from the live shipping as diseases such as bird flu are spread more easily. Britain’s trade in live animal exports is not on the scale of countries such as Australia, but the coalition wants the practice stopped altogether. In this campaign, the coalition hopes to emulate the success of the veal calf campaign of the 1990s, which saw the export of live calves banned in 1996. One woman even gave her life to the cause as she attempted to stop a cattle lorry at Coventry airport.
But after a decade of keeping the trade at bay, pressure from the farming industry prevailed. Traffic resumed in 2006 when the EU lifted the ban after a downturn in the number of BSE cases in the UK.
Each year, 80,000 live sheep and lambs are taken from Britain to continental Europe, and campaigners believe they could be dealt with more humanely by being slaughtered before transportation. David Bowles of the RSPCA said: “We are urging everyone to support this campaign so that we can stop this cruel and unnecessary trade.”
‘Live animals were living on top of carcasses’
An undercover Compassion in World Farming investigator tells of seeing zebu cattle arrive in Beirut on a ship from Brazil:
“When I boarded the ship the first thing that hit me was the smell. Even before it had docked you could smell it, a combination of ammonia from the stale excrement, the sweat of the packed cattle, and diesel from the ship.
Video footage of the cattle
“I didn’t have to look hard to see the effect of this. I saw two cows lying dead as soon as I got on board; the crew had been unable to get them out from among the live animals, who were living virtually on top of their carcasses. I’m not a vet, but it looked like the impact of that journey had been too much for them.
“The crew said there were 2,500 cattle on board, and you had animals falling down that couldn’t get up again because they were struggling to find the space to stretch their legs. It was so confined they were constantly pushing against each other, even while the ship was stationary. I dread to think what it would have been like when the ship was moving. It was a very stressful environment; the noise of the engines and the dark made it unbearable for me being down there for just a few hours, but I can’t imagine what it was like for the animals on that 17-day journey. In Lebanon, the temperature was in the high 30s, but in the metal hold of a confined ship it was unbearable.
“Because these were zebu from Brazil, they had lived wild on expansive ranches. So when they were moved on to trucks and ships, they didn’t understand their environment. They bashed against the confines of the lorry in an attempt to find their way out. And, in an effort to keep them as stationary as possible, the traders had packed them in so closely they could hardly move.
“There was no provision made at all for the fact that what they were dealing with was a living thing, not an inanimate object. It was the same with the ship. The space they were kept in on this threeweek trip was simply a metal floor with little or no surface to provide grip; they were keeping wild animals in what was basically a tin.
“And at the end of this brutal process, the very reason for their live transportation seemed defunct, as they were slaughtered in front of each other, a practice not considered halal by the experts I consulted.
“As we stood there filming, all I could think was, ‘This is so unnecessary and so cruel’.”
Pigs
Crammed together in the dark, the animals are condemned to a 4,500-mile journey to Hawaii. They suffer from exhaustion, hunger and vomiting caused by motion sickness.
Cattle
Zebu cattle are forced to live in their own excrement during this appalling journey; some of the 2,500 animals on board die on the way from heat stroke or respiratory disease. The rest are killed on arrival.
Horses
The animals are squeezed into lorries for this sweltering journey. They are denied adequate rest, food and water. And all so the meat can be marketed as being of “traditional Italian” origin.
Goats
15,000 animals a week are packed into trucks for the 2,500-mile journey with nothing to eat or drink. Temperatures exceed 40C, and many of the animals die from dehydration.
Sheep
Australia sends four million live sheep every year on the barbaric journey to the Middle East. They are transported in such cramped conditions that many die of suffocation on the way. On arrival, they are killed according to Halal butchery laws.
Yes, I have read ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair - it made me ill. This post makes me insane. Here’s the link.
