I was heartened to hear Barack say after the last primary that he looks forward to a debate with Hilary on foreign policy. I think that would be a great way to either highlight their differences or find that he shares some of her plans. So far it looks like they’re quite different on the question of exiting Iraq.  Hillary has put forth a clear plan. Obama has said that we’ll leave as carefully as we went in carelessly.  Let’s look at where they each stand.

Senator Obama: Debate This, Part II

Electability

Senator Obama has made the claim that Senator Clinton’s record makes her unelectable.  In part 2 of a series of debate challenges to Obama, let’s take a look at the remaining two candidates ‘base,’ their constituents.  Obama has made the claim that his voters won't vote for her.  Michelle Obama has suggested that she'd have to "think about" whether or not to support Hillary if she's our candidate, suggesting that something in Hillary's stance on things would need to get Michelle's closer attention.  

Senator Clinton’s base is working adults, mainly working mothers and the least affluent working Americans who have worked 'for' women, and who thus have some direct experience with female supervisors.  Mainly her base is single working mothers.  Why do these working Americans support Hillary?

Hillary's my 1st Choice:  Part I: Exiting Iraq

Policy statements are wonky by nature, and questions on policy in debates must be answered in ‘sound bites’ that fit into 90-second frames.  To be both accurate and brief, the candidates can only give a broad outline of what they’ll do. For Obama it’s “we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.”

Clinton uses the questions to highlight various points:  

There has been a lot of speculation about why Hilary is asking for more debates but Obama is refusing.  I guess the main claim is that he wants to let the voters get to know him, but this makes little sense to me, since debates are televised and he's likely to get mainly supporters at his rallies.  I think he should want to debate one on one, the differences are clearer when both have to answer the same questions and respond to each other. Some say he thinks he'll lose votes with more debates, which seems unlikely to me. Others say he wants to give the perception that he's actually ahead in votes, and that her call for more debates is desparation and not respect for the voters right to get to know candidates better before voting, and that he's more interested in perception than in reality, but this also seems far fetched. So, why won't he?  

We’ve had a wild week, with some over the top snarls, but when Saturday roles around we get to fraternize, right here at the Clinton Cocktail Hour, all are welcome, check your six-shooters at the door.

I received a call yesterday evening from an Obama fundraiser, a man who immediately identified himself. So I told him I supported Hillary but that Obama was my second choice. He complimented Hillary and suggested that I’d perhaps support Obama for vice president and I agreed that that would be a wonderful ticket, a Hollywood ending. He then went on to say that I probably donate quite a bit to Hillary but that I might also consider donating a smaller sum to Obama, to be fair.  It was a cool sales pitch and I might just have bought some, except I didn’t want to, so I declined, and he sounded sad and kind of disappointed, but the call ended on a friendly note.  

In a previous life I wrote a doctoral dissertation on working women, specifically those who made it to executive positions that had been exclusively held by men.  It was in the early 80’s when interview studies had gained respect.  I interviewed the handful of women I located, and tried to figure out what they had in common with each other. I came up with some interesting stuff.

Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday column, She’s No Morgenthau...

http://www.nytimes.com/...  t

... claims the girl candidate has been shamelessly inflating her credentials.   I didn’t think it was funny enough, so I did a parody.   This diary is about feminism, and not about any particular girl candidate.    

I posted a version of this a few days ago, but some thought I just copied her column.  I reworked some of it to make it more obvious.  I also parodied Obama's quotes, and the quote from some letter published in the Wall Street Journal.  

One of the arguments often put forth, as a basic reason for not backing HIllary Clinton, is this so-called dynasty issue. That George Bush is the son of his father, and that Hillary is the wife of her husband.  On examination I believe this argument does not hold up.  

Chris Matthews announced on his program this afternoon that he's in favor of national identity cards. He says, "in this day and age," he's in favor. Well, Chris, you are being un-American with such a proposal. You want the police to stop you and ask for your identification?  He even got Eliot Spitzer to agree that it's time to end our freedoms the way we've always known them.  This to protect us from undocumented workers, or to track terrorists, who surely won't be traveling under their true names, or to give our police forces further means to abuse some of us?  

Move-On's new ad campaign

I got the following email in response to a complaint I'd made about David Brooks 'innoecntly' linking Americans to Osama bin Laden.

This is more a question than a real diary, the data is clearly not in.  There's a report on CNN that there were nuclear warheads on a plane flying over the US.  This is apparently a violation of a treaty forbidding plane travel for nukes.  It's being billed as a mistake, but,. how can nuclear warheads be mistakenly placed on a military plane.  So, some questions:

Who told?
What was the ultimate destination?
and,
could this possibly be a whistle-blower who can't say all he or she knows, but who can say that there were nukes on a plane flying within the US?

Makes me wonder if nukes are being moved to be in place for those potential tactical nuclear first strikes in Iran.  

At http://www.truthdig.com/... there is a report that some Democrats are now buying into the possibility of 'winning,' in Iraq.  This is a kind of madness born of fear and ambition - fear that they'll predict defeat incorrectly and we'll find out because no one can stop Bush from trying, and ambition, that if they seem like nay-sayers and Bush pulls it off, they'll never win another election again.  Other than showing we have a lot of really dumb people in our congress, this weird support so late in the game when it's clear that it can only get worse, whether we leave or stay, and probably less worse the faster we leave, is a kind of 'bring 'em on' to the Iraqis who don't want to be occupied.  

In today's truthout editorial, http://www.truthout.org/... a new executive order is revealed:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/...

Mr. Bush, who was alleged to be a CEO president but turned out to be a foolish preening lazy president, has ballyhooed democracy as the sound-bite answer for all nations who wish to be US. If this sounds good, how can it be bad?  Yet we see in Iraq that democracy only meant voting for the selected.  And we see in Palestine that real election, the voice of a people who were sick of corruption and wanted to throw the bums out, resulted, just like in Iraq, with the minority simply not giving up (albeit with help from us and Europe).  So, what's wrong with democracy "over there?"  And how can it survive so well here, even in the darkness of a Cheney faux presidency?

This is a very short diary, to gather together some thinking on framing.  Now that the scandals are coming hot and heavy, they need to be named for the purpose of chuckle-eliciting sound bites.  I guess E-Mall-Gate is obvious, but maybe there is something better, not to mention that there are many many other various nefarious scandals that Must Be Named.  

Our dangerous president said in his SOTU that no one voted for failure, his speechwriter's implication being that we voted for 'winning' in Iraq. I don't think so. I think the American people have long given up on winning, we only want out of the middle east, and pronto.  Mr. Bush also makes the claim that when we stop fighting them there, they'll come right here and fight us at home.  His third argument is that when we leave there will be a bloodbath.  This are his three 'best' arguments for continuing the war in Iraq, and for widening the war to include first Iran and then Syria.  This is nothing but madness based on nonesnse.