(Speaking for John…)
I’m certainly not as vehemently opposed to a Clinton presidency as some, but I am becoming moreso every day. I mean, she’s just being a complete jerk.
That’s the difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. If the situation were reversed, Clinton would have held a presser to say her remarks were taken out of context. Obama goes to the cameras and says, “I meant exactly what I said.”
The folks at CNN summed up exactly how I feel about this whole load of crap:
This has nothing to do with Obama being a “media darling.” It has everything to do with Hillary Clinton being a complete tool who’ll do anything to get elected.
Mark
I live in Central Pennsylvania. I am not offended at all. I am bitter. Bitter at $4 gas, bitter at Iraq, bitter at the economy, bitter at wealthy tax cuts, bitter at no child left behind’s failures. I don’t expect Se. Clinton to be bitter, after all, she made $109 million during the Bush presidency. She is probably sad to see the ‘good times’ end.
Karmakin
The mainstream political media (really focusing on CNN and to a lesser extent, MSNBC), are trying to thread a really tight needle here. They’re trying to make sure that they’re not seen by the public as being out of touch with what’s going on..that they actively acknowledge and talk about the problems that are currently going on. However, they’re trying to do it in such a way that doesn’t result in the GOP being destroyed, they want to keep it competitive.
Better ratings.
A real danger for Clinton/McCain, which I think they both already stepped on the land-mine, is speaking in such a way that actually dismisses the real state of things. Clinton’s statement in particular, I think reminds astute observers of Bush’s “uniquely American” remark, which by and large I think if people understood the scope of what he was saying (He was saying that overworking people via forced desperation is a good thing, and official policy) that there would be a massive uproar.
This is much the same thing. They’ve made the decision to kill the whole thing now, less Obama really go on the offensive and give a name to the elephant in the room.
Googootz
Obama didn’t say anything that isn’t true. In fact, this video can be boiled down to one sentence: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Here in my working-class community, people are frustrated with all the things Obama identified, and when they talk about that frustration, it always includes: “My taxes keep going up, the prices of fuel and food keep going up, and the politicians in Washington are busy lining their pockets. Nobody cares about us, people who have to work for a living.”
AllenS
If the economy is so bad, where is all the money coming from to the Obama and Clinton campaigns. The amount of money being raised is simply staggering. Yeah, $4 gas is expensive, but which one of those two are going to propose drilling more wells? I’ll answer that, neither.
Walker
Senator Clinton is my senator. The thing that worries me most about Clinton is that she believes she can just magically make the economy go back to what it was under her husband. The opening up of the Internet was a great thing, and it did lead to a bunch of new jobs, but every attempt to recapture that magic has failed. Green energy and biotech have high barriers to entry, unlike the Internet.
More over, Clinton I was responsible for a lot of really bad economic decisions that have led to high inflation (albeit under reported) and heavy debt in our society. These include massive changes in the CPI and unemployment measurements (see the piece in the NYT), repeal of Glass-Steagall, and over reliance on bubble-blower Alan Greenspan. Remarks that she has had in the past about increasing “housing affordability” programs, plus her desire to form a task force from Greenspan and Rubin suggests that she believes more debt is the solution to our problems. This is the last thing we need, and hence I believe that not only does Clinton not understand the economic bitterness in this country, but she would do nothing about it.
Unfortunately, in my darker days, I look at the financial figures and I think that no one is going to be able to get us out of this debt collapse. It may be that we are doing nothing but electing the next Hoover, who flails about helplessly while the crisis unwinds itself over four years.
Walker
Where?
ANWAR would top out at 1 mbd. That’s a drop in the bucket for world wide production, and given that oil prices are set on a world market, will have negligible effect on prices. And that is our largest easily accessible area. Other places have even less production or are just to expensive to get to.
For example, the new finds in the Dakotas, are horizontal wells. Drilling them is only made feasible by the high prices. Anything we do to drop prices will make these places economically infeasible. So while they may help costs from going much higher, they will not help drop costs.
The Grand Panjandrum
Well said. Obama’s forthright response to this faux “outrage” is spot on and once again contrasts the true differences between the only straight-talker in the campaign and the Clinton/McCain axis of disinformation, dissembling, and disaster-in-the-making.
Billy Bob Neck
There really ain’t no difference between the two of them – they’re both murderers of both the born and the pre-born. If y’all think that’s good for America then you’re dumber than a box of french fries. The real difference is one’s a Muslim and the other is a Wiccan. That’s it. That’s all. Stop hating America!
bago
Seriously, for carbon based life forms having too much carbon in the atmosphere is a real problem. People used to think that dumping carbon into the atmosphere was free. It’s not, and has very dangerous consequences. It’s a tragedy of the commons, something that anyone who has even the slightest cursory education should know about.
As such, ownership rights of the carbon when it is pulled from the ground should extend to when it is released into the atmosphere, and sufficient dues should be paid for its cost when released.
Anyone who argues differently is trying to pull the famous trick of “profits and bailouts for me, higher taxes to pay from thee”.
Of course this is something McCain really does have experience on. See the Keating 5.
Herb
See, Billy Bob just validated Obama’s remarks.
AllenS
Walker–
With all due respects, are you advocating doing absolutely nothing to supply more gas to this nation? Forget about “a drop in the bucket for world wide production”, I want someone to at least try to increase production for the consumers of this nation.
TR
Yep. He counterpunches with the best of them. People are saying he’s been put on the defensive, but it’s looking like offense to me.
McCain says he’s “out of touch,” and Obama blasts him on his inept response to the housing crisis. Clinton calls him an “elitist,”
and Obama points out she’s in bed with the financial industry contributors and passed the horrid bankruptcy bill. They hit him with epithets, and he clobbers them with facts. Suck on it, assholes.
Conservatively Liberal
South Oregon coast, small town and people are bitter and pissed. They bust their asses day in and day out, and they are going nowhere fast. For example, compared to what Bill Clinton made off of just one speech supporting the Colombian trade deal ($200,000.00), my wife would have to work for 9 years to make the same amount (before taxes). Bill got paid for opening his mouth and saying what the people who were paying him wanted to hear. Easy money for him. If anything, I would call it a payoff rather than a payment. Either way, my wife would spend nine years busting her ass serving the public to make the same amount. Nine years of forty hours a week.
I am supposed to believe that *Billary will be looking out for me when people are waving that kind of cash in their faces? If I was a Billary supporter, I guess I would have no problem swallowing that load.
* Remember, they are a package deal, right? Then Billary it is.
Tim F.
Why? In twenty years gas will be ten times as expensive. As long as other countries are willing to sell us theirs at fire sale prices and our current rate of consumption would soak up ANWR’s best production rate without making so much as a blip at the gas pump, we would be idiots to tap it.
Walker
First of all, I have no opinion on these drilling issues either way, provided that the companies pay money for the externalities involved (e.g. if you pollute the water table in an area, you have destroyed all the property values in that area and owe replacement costs to everyone that owns affected land). The problem is that oil companies do not want to pay for these externalities, because if they did, oil would cost even more. Instead, innocent property owners pay or tax payers do when they have to clean up after their messes.
Secondly, peak oil is real, and saying this does not make me callous towards the American consumer. Either we will develop alternate energies or Mr. Market will solve the problem by downgrading our lifestyle. All the drilling solutions would do is to delay the problem so that we would be okay, but our children would feel the pain because we did nothing about it. So either we feel the pain or our children do. Pick one.
Conservatively Liberal
Why drill for more oil when we are not making the most of what we are currently using? More oil would only encourage the do-nothing attitude of the auto manufacturers, and they would only continue to pump out vehicles that burn gas like it is the 60’s.
If we were making significant progress towards better CAFE standards for cars and trucks, drilling for more oil would not be as bad. But as long as we continue to burn it like it will never go out of style, there is no need to feed the beast any more than necessary.
Whether peak oil is real or not, we cannot continue to dump all of the carbon into our environment without consequences. Anybody who paid attention in high school chem knows about reactions and closed environments, and how we can’t continue on the track that we are on.
We can face it and deal with it now, or dump it on our children later. The choice is ours to make. Frankly, I don’t see what the fuss is about. We like to keep our homes clean, why not our world? Is that too much to ask?
People who profit or benefit from pollution are the only ones that want to continue to dump the waste in our environment. And they are going to do everything they can to fool or scare everyone into agreeing with them.
Karmakin
You’re right, but I think that it CAN be done. It doesn’t need a Clinton ‘tho. Obama has a really good plan for this.
Soliton
Why not commercial hemp production?
Hemp oil makes a good diesel fuel with minimal processing.
Hemp is an extremely fast growing weed which grows just about anywhere it is not actively eradicated. It can be grown on a lot of land that isn’t really all that suited for food crops.
Hemp growing would be carbon neutral, any carbon released by burning hemp oil would have been sequestered by the plant during its growth.
Hemp provides a high quality fiber, superior in many respects to cotton and does not require the energy intensive fertilization that cotton does.
Since hemp is not a foodstuff we would not have the problem with converting a food to fuel as we do with corn based ethanol.
Photosynthetic plants are a form of solar collector, converting the radiant energy from the sun into carbon based compounds which we can use for our own purposes.
Of course the government would have to knock off demonizing marijuana to make commercial hemp growing a possibility.
Never mind..
/Emily Litella
Jake
Folks should watch this video from 2004 of Obama on the Charlie Rose show, talking about this very issue in much more detail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oGF3cyHE7M
There’s some irony that the one politician who’s actually trying to speak to the electorate as adults is being labeled as condescending by those all too willing to talk down to the same.
Googootz
To AllenS:
Crude oil is sold as a fungible commodity on the global market; opening ANWR and other areas in the US to drilling and exploration will not necessarily translate to cheaper fuel prices at the pump.
Is there a good short-term solution? Probably not. For the long term, it helps to understand what hydrocarbons really are and where they come from:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/193
mightygodking
Hemp oil makes a good diesel fuel with minimal processing.
Hemp is good for a lot of things, but fuel isn’t high on the list – it only generates about 300 gallons of fuel per acre of hemp grown, whereas corn, the least viable ethanol fuel crop, generates about 330 gallons per acre.
Yes, hemp processing for biodiesel is less energy-intensive than turning corn into ethanol, but it’s still pretty inefficient. Ethanol’s future is in cellulose.
Bob In Pacifica
In 1976 the outgoing CIA Director, George H. W. Bush, left a report on incoming President Carter’s desk saying that the then Soviet Union would be running out of oil in five years and that the U.S. needed to arm our friends in the Middle East to protect them from Soviet invasion. That little lie helped to militarize the region into what it is today. Now the U.S. is fighting a war in Afghanistan to build a pipeline to all those Stans of the former Soviet Union in order to get at all the oil there. (You didn’t think we were still searching for Osama there, or creating democracy there, or staunching the flow of heroin, did you?)
I believe remaining on the oil economy will destroy the world ecologically, but won’t believe word one on the amount of oil in this world based on oil companies and their CIA brethren. Oil companies tighten the spigot or open it depending on their political needs and what they can get away with.
I don’t think that anyone in his right mind would say that oil, of its own accord, would be over a hundred dollars a barrel if the U.S. hadn’t interfered with the “free market” by invading Iraq. And does anyone really think that the oil industry is a free market, that they don’t jiggle the prices up and down when needed? Unless McCain peed in someone’s punch bowl the price of gasoline will be way down around election day.
Gus
AllenS, more pie, please!
cleek
good times ahead!
woo hoo!
James Lecato
The facts are that a WHITE woman with 100 million dollars is some how more in touch with the poor and working classes in this country than a poor black man is the proof that these are RASICT WHITE PEOPLE(or HOUSE NIGGERS)!!! Why if you told me that someone would be making this arguement. I would have said that’s good for OBAMA? But, for some reason whites’ said it’s good for clinton!! The HATE and RACISM just jumps off the page at you!!! Rednecks and Bible toteing whites in this country should pay attention to the book they carry. The hate that you have will comsum you in the end!!!!
Tara the anti-social social worker
On Friday it was revealed that torture was directly authorized by the President of the United States. And all I can find all over the media is endles parsing over whether Obama should have said “bitter” while stating the obvious. If we don’t start getting some actual news in our “news,” I am going to be a very bitter person indeed.
libhomo
If anyone thinks a corrupt, war mongering, rightist Republican like Clinton will improve the economy for working people or the growing army of the unemployed, they are as senile as McCain.
Dug Jay
While I am pretty sure that this cartoon didn’t come from the Obama campaign, perhaps it will help reduce the bitterness between the Clinton and Obama camps.
oldfatherwilliam
That cartoon is from the Wingnut arsenal of trivial poisonous blather. I clicked so you don’t have to.
Shinobi
Godking,
I think sacrificing around 30 gallons an acre is a valid sacrifice compared with the skyrocketing food prices caused by the use of corn for ethanol creation. Corn is used not only as corn, but as feed for most types of livestock. So, as the price of feed has gone up so has the price of just about everything else. If we could grow 300 gallons an acre without causing a rise in food costs, especially since we could possibly grow it on acres that couldn’t grow corn, well frankly, we’d be well ahead of the game.
The reason marajuana is illegal in the first place is that cotton, lumber, and nylon didn’t want to compete and lobbied to illegalize the production of hemp. Hemp used to be in everything.
jake
The difference between Clinton and Obama you say? Here it is:
Obama never forgets he’s running for the Democratic nomination. Clinton frequently gets confused and courts the Republicans.
Adam
Wow, that old Charlie Rose clip is pretty striking.
Davis X. Machina
Mediocre — or worse — presidents run so they can be someone. Good — or great — presidents run so they can do something
Foo
I am french,
wish we have this kind of straight talks in politics in France,wish i could vote for him.
ThymeZone
The difference between Clinton and Obama is that if Clinton gets elected president, I’m thinking seriously about moving to Canada or Mexico to avoid having to see and hear that godawful woman for four years.
She represents everything I hate about American politics right now. And after 16 years of the Clintons, I think I have paid my debt to society. I can’t take any more.
Dennis - SGMM
In other news, Paulson has personally promised me that I will have a continuing role on a popular daytime television show and that I’ll also lose twenty pounds of ugly fat.
Then there’s this from Asia Times Online:
This is that same Fed that stood watching from the sidelines while investment banks like Bear Stearns created ever more exotic financial instruments of such complexity that they remained opaque even to those who invested in them.
Now they’re geting into Mortgage Backed Securities to the tune of $51bn, $24bn of it in just two days last week. The Fed is now in the business of reinflating the bubble. It has to because in the brave new world of an economy that creates nothing, consumer spending is all we have.
zzyzx
This has nothing to do with Obama really. This has been Clinton’s strategy – wait until right before an election and find something to attack with. Changes we can Xerox, NAFTA, and now this. Fortunately, she’s such a bad fighter and Obama is such a great counter puncher that this will backfire again.
w vincentz
Well folks, the truth is out. Hillary finally admitted her past. It’s in her BLOOD!
Yup, when she was just a little girl, she was taught to shoot those cute little quacky things that I feed bread to at the local pond. Hear the BANG! BANG!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/12/hillary-becomes-a-gun-lov_n_96396.html
So, the next logical “mission” for this gun totin’ gal, (ifin’ a hunt with Deadeye Dick doesn’t pan out), is to go to Iraq, (hopin’ of course that there aren’t snipers at the airport) and start blastin’!
Jesus with a hand-grenade, I wouldn’t want to be an Iraqui duck!
BANG!
ps. Did hubby fuck one in his sorted past?
w vincentz
oops. Sordid – not sorted. But ya get the point.
w vincentz
Oh…the answer to the question about the difference between Clinton and Obama.
Barack loves ducks. Hillary hates them.
Theere goes the mallard vote, Hillary.
Quack quack!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is to the economy what “the Surge” is to Iraq. It doesn’t fix anything (you can’t fix a solvency problem using liquidity tools), and is just an attempt to kick the can down the road for another Friedman Unit or two so the whole house of cards will collapse on the watch of the next administration, probably a Democratic one.
MNPundit
C’mon…. if most of the change you experience makes your life worse, you’re going to stick with what you know. It’s not that hard a concept.
w vincentz
MNPundit,
What if change makes your life better? Will you believe in the hope of change rather than repeating the insanity of doing the same again and again?
Gus
Anyone else remember Kerry’s duckhunt in ’04? Christ, they just keep recycling the same shit.
w vincentz
Gus,
Yes.
Quack, quack, quack, quack.
BANG!
thud.
Only proves ya can’t windsurf and swing a double barrel at the same time, (or even again).
John Petty
Nonsense. Even the other day, he blamed both Reps and Dems for the lack of hope in small towns. It is NOT the Dems fault. It is the Republicans’ fault. This “split the difference” crap that Obama peddles is flat annoying.
I wish he WERE more of a Democrat.
TenguPhule
With all due respect, you’re a fucking moron.
ANWAR will do shit for oil or gas prices for consumers. Oil producers will sell to the highest bidder. ANWAR is all about oil profits. Not a drop will hit American tanks unless the price paid is high enough to satisfy the seller, otherwise it will be shipped straight to China.
You want lower prices? Nationalize the oil and gas and start shooting oil executives en masse.
Dan
I was an Edwards supporter and kind of dismissed this guy, but chose him when Edwards dropped out, mostly because I didn’t like the Clintons’ (both) sense of entitlement.
But, now, God I love this guy. I really want my kids to have him as the president of their country.