Hot Potato Mash

Conservatives For Change

VIDEO MASHUP EXCLUSIVE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JOHN MCCAIN AND THE ECONOMY

RIGGED DEMOCRACY

Professor and cyber lawyer extraordinaire, Lawrence Lessig, discusses his big idea - that the American public has lost faith in and respect for the central institution of our democracy, Congress - at the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival.



Yesterday Rasmussen Reports released a poll that showed Congressional approval ratings had fallen to single digits (9%) for the first time in tracking history.

Yet, if history is any indication, more than 90% of all Congressional incumbents running for reelection will win despite the single digit approval rating:

1964 87%
1966 88%
1968 97%
1970 95%
1972 94%
1974 88%
1976 96%
1978 94%
1980 91%
1982 90%
1984 95%
1986 98%
1988 98%
1990 96%
1992 88%
1994 90%
1996 94%
1998 98%
2000 98%
2002 96%
2004 99%
2006 94%

How does this happen? Well, throwing election fraud aside, the system is rigged to ensure incumbents win by, among other reasons, gerrymandered districts, unfair money advantages and "perks" of the Office.

Gerrymandering is when Congressional districts are redrawn, often in ways that look and are insane, to give unfair advantages to one party. In 2000, the two dominant parties in California (aka Republicans and Democrats) co-operatively redrew the legislative map to ensure electoral safety for politicians on both sides of the aisle. This included the 38th district (at right) which, despite being held by a Republican from 1984 to 2000, is now overwhelmingly Democratic to the point that the Democratic incumbent was not even challenged in 2004 and garnered 100% of the vote.

Then there is the ridiculous money advantage incumbents enjoy over challengers. For example, in the 2000 election cycle incumbents spent 93% of the total money and won 67% of the total vote. And in 2004, challengers in the House were outspent by incumbents by an average of $700,000 while Senate challengers were outspent by $4 million.

The result of this rigged system is that the American people have little say in determining who represents us in Washington. More to the point, Congress has little incentive to represent the American people. Instead, Representatives and Senators write laws that benefit the corporations that keep them in office through large donations to their campaigns. And more often than not, those same laws hurt average middle-class Americans.

Thus, a Congressional approval rating of 9%.

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: VINCENT BUGLIOSI: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

On Wednesday, famed Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi spoke to a packed and enthusiastic crowd of more than 350 Angelinos about his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” While Bugliosi’s talk will eventually appear on C-SPAN, you can view it first in its entirety below…

Part 1 (19:45)

In my book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” I present evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that George Bush took this nation to war on a lie, under false pretenses, and therefore under the law is guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers who died so far in this war.

Bugliosi began the evening by explaining to the Los Angeles audience that George W. Bush is guilty of murder, according to the law, if he brought the country to war under false pretenses. And Bugliosi emphasized the legal aspect of the case in order to fend off likely attackers:

So although Bush supporters can argue that Bush should not be prosecuted because they don’t think he did anything wrong, they cannot legitimately say that he should not be prosecuted if he has done what I say he did. To say that is to admit that you have no respect for our American system of justice and democracy and that you would prefer that presidents have the same rights as tyrannical dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein.

Bugliosi had a similar answer for those who simply believe it is impossible to prosecute Bush for murder:

There’s this sense out there among many that prosecuting Bush for murder can’t be done. Which is the equivalent of saying what - that he is above the law. That ordinary laws simply don’t apply to him.

Bugliosi also had some special words for the American Right Wing which has expressed its disapproval with his book:

The third group of people responding to my book is the nation’s right wing. And they of course have contempt for me and my book. But whatever contempt they have for me, I can assure them and I can assure you I have much much much more contempt for them. There are no more repugnant, hypocritical and un-American – and that’s the word I want to emphasize – un-American people in our society today than the right wing.

Bugliosi, however, made clear that this book was not political for him and even said he would have written the same book had Bush been a Democrat. So fair is Bugliosi that he even offers up some mitigating evidence for Bush and his co-conspirators:

And there is one thing that I should probably say in partial defense of these people that goes in mitigation, arguably reduces their moral culpability. And what I’m talking about is that many of these people are incredibly stupid. And they make up for their stupidity by being extremely ignorant. And when you combine stupidity with ignorance that’s a toxic combination.

Finally, Part 1 ends with the law:

If a conspirator, or anyone for that matter, deliberately sets in motion a chain of events which he knows will cause – that’s the key word – cause a third party innocent agent to commit an act, the defendant is criminally responsible for that act. Bush, in invading Iraq, caused Iraqis to kill American soldiers in much the same fashion that a person causes a gun to fire a bullet that kills someone by pulling the trigger.

Part 2 (17:54)

Part 2 begins with Bugliosi explaining the only way Bush might be innocent of murder:

Bush can only wash his hands of culpability if he did not take this nation to war under false pretenses. If he did, which the evidence overwhelmingly shows, he is criminally responsible for the deaths of all those American soldiers who have died fighting his war in Iraq.

The main issue would be whether or not George Bush went to war, as he always claimed, in self-defense – the so-called pre-emptive strike. Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, alleged as so, therefore he was an imminent threat to the security of this country so Bush had to strike first in self-defense. If the war was not in self-defense but one that the prosecutor can prove Bush took us to under false pretenses than all of the killings of American soldiers in Iraq become unlawful killings and therefore murder.

While Bugliosi's animus was mostly reserved for Bush and his co-conspirators, he did find time to also criticize Ken Starr, The New York Times and the Supreme Court:

I seem to be getting more angry and acerbic and caustic and that’s because I am always in a state of rage. How can I help but be -- the monstrous, grotesque, obscene Ken Starr almost destroyed the Clinton presidency over absolutely nothing while being totally and completely supported and funded by the federal government. They funded his seven year, seventy million dollar effort, the federal government. And the so-called liberal media, The New York Times savaged Clinton on a day to day basis, supported this monstrous, grotesque, obscene figure – one of the most reprehensible figures in American history – Ken Starr.

The US Supreme Court 2000, stopping the recount in Florida which was specifically authorized by Florida law, taking the election away from the American people and appointing George Bush president, one of the biggest crimes in American history.

The heart of Part 2, however, is reserved for Bugliosi's evidence against George W. Bush. And first on the list was Bush's lies to the country that were contrary to the National Intelligence Estimate:

In George Bush’s first speech to the nation on Hussein and Iraq, October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein was a great danger to this nation either by his attacking us with the so-called weapons of mass destruction or by giving these weapons to a terrorist group to attack us. And Bush said that this attack could happen, ‘on any given day,’ meaning what, that the threat was imminent.

The only big problem for George Bush is that on October the first, six days earlier, the CIA sent Bush its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – a classified top secret report that represented the consensus opinion of all 16 US federal intelligence agencies on the issue of whether or not Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country and on page 8 of that 91 page report it clearly and unequivocally says – and by the way what I’m about to tell you to my knowledge has never been said or never been written or never appeared in any major newspaper or magazine in America – page 8 clearly says that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country. That he would only be a threat if he feared we were about to attack him.

So we know then, not think but know, that when George Bush told the nation on the evening of October 7th, Cincinnati, Ohio, that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, he was telling millions of unsuspecting Americans the exact opposite of what his own CIA was telling him. Now if we had nothing else at all, and there is so much more, that alone shows what, that George Bush took this nation to war on a terrible terrible lie. Therefore all the killings in Iraq became unlawful killings and murder.

But it gets worse! In fact, it gets evil, perverse, sick and criminal:

But it gets worse. It gets worse. October 4th, three days later, Bush and his people had the CIA release an unclassified summary version of the October 1st classified report so that this October 4th unclassified version could be released to the American public and to Congress. This unclassified version came to be known as the White Paper. And in this White Paper that was shown to the American people and to Congress, in which contained the opinion of 16 US intelligence agencies that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the security of this country, that conclusion was completely deleted, completely eliminated. Every single one of these all important words, the most important conclusion in that classified document, was completely deleted from the White Paper. And the question I have of you, is how evil, how perverse, how sick, how criminal can George Bush and his people be?

The next piece of ever damning evidence, according to Bugliosi, is the January 31, 2003, Manning Memo written by Tony Blair's chief foreign policy advisor after a top level meeting in the Oval Office less than two months before the invasion.

He says that George Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction that Bush started to talk about three ways to ‘provoke a confrontation’ with Saddam Hussein. One of which he said was to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft over Iraq falsely painted in United Nations colors and he said if Saddam fires on those planes it would be a violation of UN resolutions and therefore justify our going to war. So here is George Bush telling Americans, telling the world, that Hussein is an imminent threat to the security of this country, but behind closed doors this very small human being was talking about how to provoke Hussein into a war.

Part 3 (15:50)

Part 3 begins with another piece of evidence against Bush. Mainly, how Bush responded to the ever positive testimony of chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix on March 7, 2003, by throwing him and his team out of the country and quickly invading Iraq. Blix had told the UN Security Counsel that the inspectors were getting proactive cooperation from Saddam Hussein and that their investigation would be completed in a few months:

Blix and his people became Bush’s biggest adversaries because if Blix and his people confirm that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that would rob Bush of his main argument for war – a war that he wanted to fight at all costs.

The bulk of Part 3, however, does not concentrate on evidence of Bush's guilt but rather Bush's state of mind. Bugliosi takes great offense to the fact that Bush has often described his days as perfect and that he proclaims himself to be so happy:

Even if George Bush was only guilty of making an innocent mistake in taking this nation to war in Iraq, not murder as I firmly believe, with all of the death, horror and suffering he has caused, what type of a monstrous individual is it who could be happy with his life? What type of a human monster is George Bush?

If I ever killed one person in my life, even accidentally – a car accident – I’d never have another perfect day as long as I lived. George Bush is responsible for the horrible deaths of thousands of human beings and he is talking about having a perfect day. Bush’s plans to have a perfect day right in the middle of all the death and horror in Iraq goes so far beyond acceptable human conduct that no moral telescope can discern its shape, form and nature.

Bugliosi concludes by telling the audience that he will not rest or be satisfied until George W. Bush is prosecuted for first degree murder:

I don’t like to see anyone get away with murder, even one murder. [O.J.] Simpson got away with two murders and I got so angry that I wrote a book - Outrage, the Five Reasons O.J. Simpson got away with murder. If I can get so angry about someone getting away with one or two murders you can imagine how I feel about George Bush who has gotten away with over 100,000 murders and has been smiling and enjoying himself throughout the whole period. It may sound presumptuous of me but I can tell you that while I may not succeed, I’m not going to be satisfied until I see George Bush in an American courtroom being prosecuted for first degree murder.

The first degree murder of over 4,000 American soldiers:

If justice means anything at all in America, if we are not going to forget about those 4,000 young American soldiers who came back from Bush’s war in a box, I say we have no choice but to bring murder charges against the son of privilege from Crawford, Texas.

"The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" (Vincent Bugliosi)

George W. Bush, Ken Starr, Manning Memo, Murder, NIE, Right Wing, Saddam Hussein, Supreme Court, video, Vincent Bugliosi

Lieberman Must Go - Amen!

Lieberman Must Go

Iran, Joe Lieberman

I'm Voting Republican!

Republican

Yacht Party

From the Courage Campaign:

The most extreme high priests of the tax cut cult operate right here in
California. Because Democrats do not hold a two-thirds majority in our
state legislature, a small minority of Republicans is able to hold
Californians hostage to a $20 billion state budget deficit, refusing to raise taxes on the super-rich.

It gets worse. Much worse. While California's future is being put in grave jeopardy, the tax cut cult is refusing to close a tax loophole for yacht and private jet owners.

Schools closing. Social services slashed to the bone. And right-wing Republicans are letting the uber-wealthy off tax-free on yacht and private jet purchases. It's no wonder the California Republican Party has been re-branded as the “Yacht Party” by the netroots.

To increase the pressure on Republicans in Sacramento to close this
yacht tax loophole, we need to make this “Yacht Party” brand stick. That's
why the Courage Campaign and California Nurses Association have just
teamed up to produce a new 60-second TV ad that strips naked the
shocking nature of the California Republican Party's priorities.

“Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe” (Arianna Huffington)

Technorati Tags: Tax cuts, Yacht Party

Hillary Is Literally The GOP Candidate Of Choice (For Now)

The Boston Globe reports that Hillary is benefitting mightily from Republicans hoping to sway the outcome of the Democratic race:

For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

A sudden change of heart? Hardly.

Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November. With every delegate important in the tight Democratic race, this trend could help shape the outcome if it continues in the remaining Democratic primaries open to all voters.

Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.

This is what Hillary calls momentum. For more on Republican Party preference for Hillary see:

• CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA (03/06/08)

• VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama? (02/11/08)

• ELECTABILITY IS EVERYTHING (02/03/08)

• Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media (12/04/07)

Yet, none of this appears to phase Hillary and her supporters who seem hellbent on fighting dirty 'til the finish in order to tarnish Obama so badly that the super delegates will not be reluctant to overturn the will the people (Obama has an insurmountable delegate lead). Wow. Sick. Gross. Unbelievable. Unreal. Despicable. Outrageous. Contemptible. And stupid.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, gop, Hillary Clinton, republican

Brock Olivo Is A Republican Running For Congress...YIKES!!!!

(h/t Joshing Politics)

Technorati Tags: Brock Olivo

REPUBLICANS ARE THROWING JOHN MCCAIN UNDER THE BUS

Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?

The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.

Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.

Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:

• Old vs. Young
• Old vs. New
• Old vs. Good looking
• Anti-hope vs. Hope
• Plain spoken vs. Articulate
• Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
• Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
• Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
• Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner

So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.

And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, cheney, christianity, CPAC, democracy, Democrats, election, foxnews, Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee, iraq, Jeb Bush, McCain, Mitt Romney, New York Review of Books, Newt Gingrich, nytimes, Politics, Wisconsin, religious_right, republican

Ronald Reagan: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Ronald Reagan Campaigns for Dems Harry Truman and Senator Hubert Humphrey in 1948 and actually seems like a good guy who cares about workers, the elderly, veterans and civil rights all the while lambasting Republicans, Wall Street, big oil and tax breaks for corporations. (h/t Ken)



So how did this nice caring guy turn into a nasty Republican whose presidency was second to only George W. Bush in catering to business interests at the expense of the American people? Jeff Cohen tries to explain the transformation in “Stepford Republicans Caught On Tape” over at Consortium News.

And if you have forgotten just how awful was the Reagan presidency, be sure to check out, “Reagan was no hero but he played one in a movie” by The Existentialist Cowboy.

Who Is Smarter?

The Existentialist Cowboy raises an interesting point:

A GOP sacred word is “stimulus” and people naively support them expecting a trickle down effect which never comes. Dogs are trained by giving them a treat at the end of a trick. It is doubtful that a dog will jump through the hoop if there is nothing on the other side. Humans and especially the GOP inclined are not nearly so smart. Year after tiresome year, those susceptible to GOP propaganda will fall for the same old GOP bullshit: let's give business a “stimulus” and wait for the trickle down that never comes. I am weary of posting, year after year, the cold hard stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (primarily) that prove conclusively that there has never been a “trickle down” effect from any of those sacred GOP stimuli. GOP “stimuli” never work because they are always inequitable. They never reach nor benefit the people whose work and purchases drive the economy. GOP “stimuli” stop trickling at the bottom of an increasingly tiny elite who simply squirrel them away in ways that never trickle down.

So who is smarter?

Or

Bush League Justice Series

MSNBC's Live With Dan Abrams ran a four-part series this week titled, “Bush League Justice”, which investigated the administration's abuse of the Department of Justice to expand its power.

Day 1 - Bush Administration's Use Of The DoJ To Expand Its Own Power

The series began with a look into the “department's almost unrecognizable Civil Rights Division” and even includes a snippet of my infamous John Tanner video (without credit!) first posted and reported about on The Brad Blog.

Day 2 - Bush Administration's 'Unprecedented Use' of Signing Statements To Subvert The Law

A signing statement is a president's written interpretation of legislation passed by congress which accompanies his signature when he signs a bill into law. Bush has used signing statements almost twice as much as all the presidents that preceded him combined and has often done so to circumvent the law.

For example, in 2005 congress voted overwhelmingly to ban torture which Bush signed into law. However, Bush also included a signing statement which basically allowed him to ignore the new law.

Day 3 - Partisan Investigations and Prosecutions

Despite the overwhelming criminality of Republicans since Bush was gift wrapped the White House by the Supreme Court, Democrats have been investigated and prosecuted at nearly six times the rate of Republicans at the federal level.

Day 4 - The Controversial Prosecution Of Former Democratic Alabama Governor Don Siegelman

Evidence suggests that Siegelman, who remains in prison, was wrongly prosecuted by prominent Alabama Republicans with the help of Karl Rove.

Dan Abrams concludes the series by stating, “Now while this was the last episode of this series, our ”Bush League“ investigations are far from over. A new Attorney General has taken over. We are going to be watching very closely. The days of Justice Department malfeasance remaining under the mainstream media radar are over. You are on notice.”

Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media?

Karl Rove is the ultimate partisan operative who guided a career underachiever with a checkered past to the White House. He is credited with keeping the 2000 election close enough, through dirty campaigning and still dirtier election engineering and fraud, to allow the Supreme Court to step in and gift wrap the presidency for his boss. Suffice to say no one uses dirty tricks more effectively or more often than Karl Rove. As such, many Americans who care about the Constitution, Democracy, the rule of law and plain decency, long ago concluded that Karl Rove sucks. 

But winning the White House was not enough for Rove who “dreamed of creating a 'permanent Republican majority'”. Such a partisan is Rove that he played a central role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and the firing of eight US Attorney's who refused to help him illegally create his permanent majority.

In part because of Rove's despicable tactics, the Republican party enjoyed years of success and Rove earned labels like...

 

  “Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect Of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs” (Carl M. Cannon, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid)

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

“The Architect” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Rove loved the praise bestowed upon him from his friends and foes alike. But then everything came crashing down around him and now his “genius” moniker is in serious need of repair. In an astonishing turn of events, Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in 2006 despite Rove's repeated assurances to the contrary:

“I’m looking at all of these [races] and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to the math” - Karl Rove (10/24/06)

Meanwhile, George W. Bush's approval ratings have been on a steady decline and now rest at 30%, 1% above their all time low. 

 

It is hardly surprising that all of the GOP presidential candidates continue to distance themselves from Bush's body. Worse, Rove's permanent majority has been replaced by a public that favors the Democratic Party over the GOP by a whopping 50% to 35% margin. And independents favored Democrats in 2006 by an even larger 57% to 39% margin. It seems that the politics of hate, racism, division, war, war-mongering, propaganda, cheating, lying and stealing can only take a party so far. 

But Rove will not go down without a fight. And thankfully propaganda rags like the ridiculous Newsweek magazine have given Rove a platform to win back his genius (In Newsweek's defense, it is not Time magazine). Despite the new gig, Rove proved to be every bit the partisan with his first column: “How to Beat Hillary (Next) November”:

“And so the question to John McCain from a woman at a town hall in South Carolina last Monday was tasteless, but key: ”How do we beat the [rhymes with witch]?“ Right now, Republicans are focusing much of their fire on Senator Clinton. Criticizing her unites the party, stirs up the unsettled feelings many swing voters have toward her and allows each candidate to say why he is best able to beat her.

For now, that's enough. But when a GOP nominee emerges, he needs to remember no Republican is as well known as Hillary. The Republican has room to grow in the polls as voters get a better sense of who he is and what animates him. Here's what he needs to do.”

The truth is that Karl Rove and the entire Republican Party are salivating at the opportunity to face off against Hillary Clinton and her “high negatives”. And why not, in a Zogby Poll released last week, Hillary now loses in the general election to all five GOP frontrunners while Barack Obama handily defeats the same five:

With this backdrop it seems clear as day that one should take Rove's latest piece in the Financial Times, “Memo to Obama: win Iowa or lose the race”, with many grains of salt:

“Not that you have asked for advice, but here it is anyway: Iowa is your chance to best her. If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere.”

And Rove's stellar advice:

First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.   

Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.

Please! Could Rove give any worse advice than to turn the nice-guy, above the fray, uniter that is Obama into, well, Karl Rove? All can plainly see that Rove is rightfully scared of Obama whom he admits has “the buzz” and could very well win the nomination and upset Rove's plans to keep the White House in GOP hands. And as Frank Rich so ably points out, facing off against Obama would be a far more difficult task than defeating Hillary:

But much like the Clinton campaign itself, the Republicans have fallen into a trap by continuing to cling to the Hillary-is-inevitable trope. They have not allowed themselves to think the unthinkable — that they might need a Plan B to go up against a candidate who is not she. It’s far from clear that they would remotely know how to construct a Plan B to counter Mr. Obama. The repeated attempts to fan “rumors” that he is a madrassa-indoctrinated Muslim — whether on Fox News or in The Washington Post, where they resurfaced scurrilously on the front page on Thursday — are too demonstrably false to survive endless reruns even in the Swift-boating era.   

Part of the Republicans’ difficulty in countering Mr. Obama, should they have to, is their own cynical racial politics. For the most part, race has been the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign despite the (largely) white press’s endless fretting about whether the Illinois senator is too white for black voters and too black for white voters. Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included. (Those who are won’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate even if it’s not Mr. Obama.) But the G.O.P., by its own doing, is nonetheless saddled with a history that most recently includes “macaca” and Katrina, Mr. Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University in 2000 and the nonexistent black population of its Congressional delegation.   

As the Republican leadership knows, this record is an albatross, driving away not just black voters but crucial white swing voters, too. Ken Mehlman, the former G.O.P. chairman, and Mr. Rove, as recently as in that Newsweek column, have implored their party to reach out to minorities. So have Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp. But not even conservative leaders of this stature could persuade their party’s top 2008 presidential contenders to show up for a September debate moderated by Tavis Smiley for PBS at the historically black Morgan State University.

So the polls emphatically prove that Hillary would be far easier prey for Republicans in the general election than Obama. And if statistics aren't your thing, commonsense clearly dictates the same. And finally, just about every political pundit from Karl Rove to Frank Rich have written as much. So what does Wolf Blitzer of the Clinton News Network wonder about Karl Rove's latest advice column?:

OMG! He is actually taking Rove's words at face value! LOL! Could Wolf really believe that Rove has forsaken his legacy as the greatest partisan political operative of the last 20 year in order to go legit and is now an uninterested, outsider, merely commenting on the political landscape? ROTFL! Yeah, that's the ticket, Rove couldn't possibly have ulterior motives. 

The way I see it, there are two possible explanations for Wolf's comments: 1) he is an imbecile, or 2) he wants Hillary to get the nomination. Either way, he should be laughed out of his job. Of course, this is nothing new from Wolf or the Clinton News Network which showed its true colors at the last democratic debate in Nevada:

To be fair to Wolf and CNN, avid Clintonites like George Stephanopoulos, who formerly helped Bill Clinton get elected President and served as his communications director before moving on to become Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News and host of his own Sunday morning show, also spew the same nonsense:

All of which makes Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency all the more remarkable. He continues to rise in the polls and threatens to win Hillary's “inevitable” nomination despite having to fight against Karl Rove, the entire Republican Party, the Clinton machine, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George and most of the mainstream media.

If the Illinois Senator can overcome those long odds he certainly has what it takes to lead the country.

  “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (Barack Obama)

“Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (Barack Obama)

 

“Barack Obama in His Own Words” (Barack Obama)

The Real Rudy In 30 Seconds

The Real Rudy