If Bill Keller really wants to build an exciting fantasy team for his new online league, why doesn’t he give up pushing a trade all three parties have nixed and start promoting this guy as Joe Biden’s replacement?
And then he can draft Megan McCain to move to Virginia and run for Cantor’s seat!
Meanwhile, in the first tally of NH’s crucial first-in-the-nation primary, Huntsman and Romney are neck-and-neck, while President Obama increased the Democratic base by 50% in a unanimous sweep….
Chuck Butcher
Oooh, oooh, me, me.
Better here than previous thread:
It didn’t take a lot of words to dispose of it. (Keller)
JGabriel
Anne Laurie:
After reading that piece, I’m convinced the Times’ editors should
askdemand that Keller see a doctor for Early Onset Alzheimer’s testing. That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen published by Keller, and that’s a fucking low bar to limbo under..
amk
but vermin supreme, vermin supreme …
Suffern ACE
I believe that one of the pleasant surprises of this new SoS/VP Hybrid position is that it frees up Hillary for the historic role of the first VP candidate on the ticket against her will. We’ve never had an unwilling VP candidate before. Well, not for awhile at least.
Warren Terra
Meghan McCain is, Wikipedia informs me, too young to run for Congress, however strongly her apparent apparent lack of intelligence, education, or interest in policy might seem to qualify her as a Republican.
Honestly, I wonder how anyone can grow up the child of someone truly famous in this modern world and achieve a successful career of true independent achievement. I’m gonna continue to wonder, it seems, because so many of the obvious people facing such a quandary don’t seem to try, and instead are given sinecures by “our” media (Luke Russert, the Bush twin(s), Meghan McCain, now Chelsea Clinton, etcetera).
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Warren Terra: I remember seeing Meghan McCain appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show, where she went to the NRA convention with Rachel. Maddow so completely owned her, without being the slightest bit nasty or rude, that she started agreeing with everyone Maddow said. It was a thing of beauty.
Warren Terra
Oh, and from Anne Laurie’s link:
What kind of nincompoops schedule resort-closing reservations that include the one night every four years they know they can rent out every room at whatever price they care to quote, because of all the television hairdos and their camera crews wanting to go to bed at 12:05 AM?
ETA Also, oughtn’t they have had the renovations completed and looking beautiful for the camera shots in the nationwide free advertising they get every four years?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Warren Terra: It’s not the Overlook?
ETA: Yes, I know the Overlook was in Colorado.
slag
I’m much more interested in reading Kthug than his boss this week (and probably all other weeks):
That’s the ticket!
Amir Khalid
There’s simply no reason to replace Biden, a rock-solid team player in Obama’s administration, unless Biden himself wants out. The notion that Obama should replace Biden on the Democratic ticket rests on the premise that Biden is somehow a liability to Obama’s chances of re-election, or at least less of an asset that Hillary Clinton would be. Which is rank speculation unsupported by any evidence. With whom exactly, and how badly, has Biden lost popularity for Obama? Keller doesn’t say. Futile speculation too; as Keller admits, none of the three concerned — Obama, Biden, Clinton — is even remotely interested in the deal. And, as Keller fails to acknowledge, Clinton has already said she’s not running for president again.
But apparently Keller’s former subordinates love him so much that they’ll publish any old rubbish he writes in his journalistic dotage.
amk
gop undecided voter.
Warren Terra
@slag:
I’d love to hear more from Kthug’s boss.
(Wrong boss, I guess).
PeakVT
I’m all for skewing politicians and cooking them on a rotisserie.
ETA: Probably doesn’t taste like chicken.
dogwood
@Amir Khalid:
Amen. The Villagers don’t like Joe so he must be an electoral liability in their minds. But the truth is Joe is “literally” one of the best retail politicians in the business. Rank and file Democrats love the guy, and he’s really terrific on the stump. He’s very genuine and he likes people. The Richard Ben Cramer book on the 1988 election provides a very thorough look at Joe. When he screwed up his campaign with the plagiarism thing, he was pissed that he lost any shot at the White House, but what really got to him was that as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he worried that his disgrace would hamper the Dems. ability to stop the Bork nomination. In his mind that was way more important than his presidential bid, and he offered to step down as Chairman. Joe’s a good guy.
Alison
I ranted about this piece to my mom earlier, and I don’t want to lose my shit again, but I will just say that the line about her being the good Methodist schoolgirl made me want to run Keller’s nuts over a cheese grater.
What a schmuck.
slag
@Warren Terra: Good point.
And so the playing field keeps on unleveling.
Chuck Butcher
@dogwood:
If you care anything about the process of getting elected, I don’t care where you live – you should be familiar with Joe Biden.
Brachiator
There is a BBC news story about how the financial crisis is hitting Greece so hard that increasing numbers of people thrown into poverty are giving up their children, leaving them at kindergartens, relief agencies, churches. I don’t know how to do a clean link from an iPad, but the article is listed in the list of current most popular, and hopefully can be found here…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16472310
Talk about social safety nets unraveling.
Yutsano
@PeakVT: I’m guessing they don’t do well in tandoori ovens either.
dogwood
@Chuck Butcher:
We get so obsessed about how the MSM covers our candidates that we forget the local aspect of all of this. The President grants interviews to local tv and radio affiliates all the time. And when a campaign rolls into town, it’s the local media perspective that matters. If I lived in a swing state, I can guarantee you my area would be getting a presidential visit. There are 3 universities in a 30 mile radius. And if the president showed up here ,local media would go crazy, and no one in town would give much of a damn about what Chris Matthews had to say.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
… no matter how much they deserve to be put in one.
Chuck Butcher
@dogwood:
Ole Chris has climbed pretty thoroughly onto the Obama train lately, especially on to the relentlessly mock and train unforgiving light on the GOPers. Talk about “bipartisanship” seems to have evaporated from his vocabulary over the last year.
Takes some people awhile to get an idea, I guess.
JGabriel
@Alison:
Suddenly I feel all swoony.
.
Calouste
@JGabriel:
I think “dig” is the word you are looking for, not “limbo”.
amk
Pierce
Chuck Butcher
@dogwood:
Bill Clinton came to Baker City, OR during the Primaries, that is 10K pop with another 4K pop in the 3500sq mi County. He arrived knowing about everyone he’d meet pre-event and post event. First names and you count contact. Family ties to one lady from Arkansas with extended personal annecdotes. He knew I was strong for Obama and it didn’t matter, though a bit more time was made for Hillary people. The guy will try to make sure you’re a pal even if you’re not his guy. If you don’t like Bill Clinton in person – you’ve got an agenda. He’s another master of retail politics.
Joseph Nobles
I’ve been watching the original “Shameless” on Netflix. In it, Lip is called a gobshite, and I was happy to finally have an example of what a gobshite is.
Now I have an American example. Thanks, Bill Keller!
Chuck Butcher
@amk:
Our liberal media in action…
Sly
@Amir Khalid:
No, it rests on the notion that those in the Clinton Personality Cult are sane and sober practitioners of electoral calculus. They’d be doing this whether the current Vice President was Joe Biden or someone completely different who was still not Hillary Clinton.
I say this without any degree of animosity towards my former Senator and current Secretary of State, but having strong feelings about Hillary Clinton, either positive or negative, is like having strong feelings about your old High School Assistant Principal. How she inspires such loyalty and vitriol is a feature of modern American politics that I don’t think I will ever understand.
Though I do wish her supporters would embrace one of the best features of her personality: she’s a team player.
dogwood
@Chuck Butcher:
Yeah, those moments are priceless for a lot of people. My sister lives in a small town in eastern Washington and she traveled to Butte Mt. for the Obama 4th of July event in 08. She was right in front on the rope line and when he shook her hand she said she wasn’t from Montana, but had come from Washington. He asked her where, and he knew the town and that it was about 90 miles from Spokane. He then commented that he had won her county caucus. And she had to give him some shit by saying since he won every county caucus in the state his knowing that wasn’t very impressive. To which he threw his head back and laughed like crazy. He then saw her husband had a book and offered to autograph it. He closed by saying the campaign wouldn’t be coming to Washington but he wanted her to know how much it meant to him and his family that she had made the trip. Try telling my sister that Barack Obama is distant, aloof, and doesn’t connect with people and she’ll knock your front teeth out.
debbie
@ Warren Terra:
Obama got more votes than either Romney or Huntsman this morning. I believe Dixville has correctly predicted the winner of the general election since 1960. Weep, Republicans.
Chuck Butcher
@dogwood:
I wasn’t about to try the rope line for Obama, I had 2nd row VIP seating and didn’t think it fair to others who’d traveled to get more bennies and I don’t like crowds. Pendleton, OR and Obama killed, both with the stump and especially with Q/A. I’m hard to impress, I was.
Your sis in Pomeroy or near there? I know that area.
distant and aloof? That’s to laugh.
dogwood
@Chuck Butcher:
I know Baker City. I live in a border area locally known as the quad cities. It encompasses Pullman and Clarkston WA. and Moscow and Lewiston ID.
I’ve never met a president or a presidential candidate and don’t have much desire to do so, but I have a bit of a soft spot for the president because of what I read in one of those 08 post mortems. The President’s pollster said he was the strangest candidate he had ever worked with when it came to polling. He only asked to look at polling data twice. The first time was on the eve of the NH primary. And the second was around convention time when he wanted to see the Montana numbers. He made his case that winning Montana was very important to him and he wanted to go back and give it a go. He took a bit of ribbing for this because staff knew he just wanted to find any excuse to go back to Montana because he loved it so much. Anyone that truly appreciates Montana is one of the good guys in my book.
dogwood
@Chuck Butcher:
She’s in Clarkston WA.
Chuck Butcher
@dogwood:
I know the area. I love the hill when traffic is light and I can use the Harley’s 110CID and big tires.
Raven
@dogwood: I used to shoot rockets in Yakima!
harlana
ridiculous – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it
what world are these people living in, anyway?
harlana
there’s still a Hillary Cult?
i don’t really get it- perhaps it comes from those years of defending her from republicans out to destroy her and Bill and then developing some sort of protective instinct towards her while at the same time wanting her to experience her ultimate place in the sun for all she suffered
really, i wonder if that has something to do with it
Still, she’s Secretary of State, that’s nothing to sniff at
amk
@dogwood: Nice anecdote.
Chuck Butcher
I thought I’d posted pics from our ID, MT, Wa run over last Labor Day week. nope. so I’ll give you cute
1600 mi 5 days.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Hah, one from MT
dogwood
@Raven:
Ah, yes. Yakima. The story of the country is written in all the wonderful place names throughout the continent.
I actually live where the Clearwater River meets the Snake, It’s on the Lewis-Clark trail. Ken Burns premiered his documentary here.
Sly
@harlana:
Hillary Clinton should be President because Republicans were mean to her?
harlana
can people stop comparing Mitt’s monumentally stupid comment to the manufactured “Dean Scream” moment which was simply a media tool to bring him down because nobody could find any shit in his past to pound him with.
For the love of God, Dean cared about people, he laid hands on sick people and, unlike Ron Paul, actually wanted to help them and make their lives better. He wanted to end a fucked-up war that NOW, magically, everybody is pissed about. Romney destroyed jobs and is unapologetic and even proud about it.
I am sick to death of this fucked up analogy.
Chuck Butcher
They liked Walla Walla enough to name it twice…
harlana
@Sly: maybe, i’m just speculating, trying to figure it out and i guess i never will
but what kills me is republicans and people like Rove talk about what an awesome, formidable candidate she would be and how much moderate republicans looove her!
and all the while salivating at the thought of tearing her apart, if given the opportunity.
Chuck Butcher
@harlana:
Well hell, the Democrats had it out about Clinton v Obama. I think now as then that the better won.
harlana
eh meh god – all the friggin candidates on Morning Ho – i can’t do it
shinobi
I heard Bill Clinton on the radio a few months ago. A local chicago morning sure that I hate but I wa, listening got traffic. He was SO breaking charming! Telling stories about his campaign’s visits to chicago and just being super cool and nice.
Mino
The Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas FAIL soured me on Biden.
But swapping out the two positions is a pretty stupid idea.
dogwood
@Mino:
Well if not for Biden, Bork would be on the court right now.
JPL
@harlana: If you listened to Good Morning America, you would have heard that Tebow threw for 316 yds and that is also the number of his favorite bible verse.
Mino
@dogwood: Frankly, neither should be. Hard to say which is worse.
tofubo
am now ranked #303379 in the fantasy football thingy, a woo and then a hoo
Phylllis
@JPL: One wonders if it was the number of his favorite verse in the Koran or the Torah if we would be alerted to that ‘fact’.
dogwood
@Sly:
The press just wants a new story. Mittens is an uninteresting bore, and they’re tired of Obama. They want Clinton on the ticket so they write stories about who Bill might be screwing and how that will effect the election.
dogwood
@amk:
It is a good story and an honest one, Feel free to share it with your friends on TOD. Tell them it comes from Lurker, aka Jodi Kantor’s agent or an Obama-hating concern troll. In fact search the threads here and share all my Obama-hating posts with those folks. Feel free to quote me verbatim.
BO_Bill
It is time for Open Society-funded bloggers to get out of bed, kick off their bedroom slippers, brew one of those feminine K-cup coffee thingees, and get to work.
Emma
@Chuck Butcher: Actually, if you think about it, it was a darn good question. In regular-person-speak, it meant, “tell the American people what you’re going to do to screw them.” Weaseling and parsiflage usually follows this sort of question, as the candidate knows he’s going to expose his putrid underside. The problem with our media is that they should follow up the question with another one and not let them get away with the weaseling, and they never do.
Triassic Sands
@Suffern ACE:
I’m not so sure Hillary would be an unwilling VP candidate, no matter what she says publicly. Just as there seems to be an almost universal tendency toward appearing the victim among politicians, there is also a strong urge to appear to reluctantly do things to help others, despite the burdens that accompany that service. Martyrdom. Yes, accepting the VP slot would be overt admission of Obama’s victory over her, but being the first serving female VP would be a major historical milestone that being the third female Secretary of State didn’t get her. In addition, she’s not young anymore and the VP job would be a helluva lot easier on her than jetting around the globe dealing with foreign leaders. There would be the remote, but real possibility that she could succeed to the presidency, and barring that she would be in position to take the nomination in 2016 if she still wanted it. Frankly, unless she absolutely wants out of politics altogether, I think the VP position would be a comfortable fit at this point in her career.
I didn’t support Clinton in 2008, but I wanted Obama to choose her as VP. Biden’ choice was a huge disappointment to me; I have
little orno respect for him and I considered his selection to be acknowledgment that Obama was going to be a disappointingly conventional president. Clinton had earned consideration by virtue of her primary campaign, and choosing her should have helped mend the rift and bad feelings that Obama’s victory had created.I strongly support Obama getting rid of Biden in 2012 (and I hope he — Biden — keeps walking right on out of the administration and into private obscurity), and, once again, I think Clinton would do the most to strengthen the Democratic ticket.
amk
@dogwood: Relax. Every blog has its own meme. I try not to mess with that much. I was kossack for 3 years before I quit that deranged place. No big deal.
Anya
@dogwood: Some people over there go way over the board with there support. They are so hyper sensitive that I hardly read the comments. Last night some were complaining about how Rachel Maddow was promoting Huntsman. WTF!
Amir Khalid
@Triassic Sands:
Why do you have no respect for Biden? Do you feel he pulls Obama administration policy to the center or the right, or is he simply too old-school a Democrat?
marcopolo
I think the tone of this post, that considering a Biden/Clinton switch for the 2012 election is ridonkulous, misses the point that (and understanding that atm it seems like neither Biden wants to step down or Clinton step up) if Clinton wanted to be the VP nominee she would have the shot of being the first woman serving as VP, that if she still harbored any interest in being the first woman president, it would grease the skids towards that end, that she is 5 years younger than Biden (who is 70 now) and would perhaps be better situated to run for president in 2016 and keep the position for the Dems. I am not a Hillary or Obamabot but my pragmatic side says that an Obama/Clinton ticket in 2012 would be as electorally strong as Obama/Biden and definitely stronger heading towards 2016 if Clinton had, once again, any interest in being president. I would definitely support her as I have been totally impressed by the amount of work she has done to be a good Sec. of State. Just my 2 cents.
Of course, based on his history at the NYT vis a vis Judy Miller and other stuff, Bill Keller can still go suck rotten eggs.
grandpa john
@Emma: Our current media is well versed on the questions they are paid not to ask
redshirt
@Warren Terra: The resort was just bought by some Mainers. And it’s a spectacular resort, but very surreal – it’s so big and so sprawling that for many years they had a basement level factory under the resort. At one point making condoms. Check it here: The Balsams
amk
@Anya: There are hundreds of obama bashing sites. TOD chose a different uncritical, fully supporting path. Big fucking deal. Or you think pundtwits like maddow are beyond criticism ?
dogwood
@amk:
3 yrs, before you quit. I lasted about 30 minutes on Sunday at TOD before I was kicked off. I’m not sure what the “meme” is for that. Maybe like Mitt they enjoy firing people. But all snark aside, my mistake was not being fully aware of the Nixonian level of paranoia that permeates that place. I truly am tech challenged and remembered trying to post one time a long time ago and the comment didn’t appear. I have no doubt it was my mistake. On Saturday I made a short post on the Kantor book and why I thought it might not be as bad as we fear, and I think it went to moderation and eventually appeared, but I was unaware of that. So on Sunday I began by saying I wasn’t sure if the post would see the light of day but here goes. That set off the blog owner and everyone else. I had my “Who is Barack Obama” moment. It really was hysterically funny. So I decided to be gracious, write a nice apology and make an exit. But before I finished typing, she had banned me permanently. At that point I couldn’t stop laughing, I was the Kola Noscopy of TOD.
I really don’t know if every blog has a “meme”. But every blog has an ethos. TOD has plenty of ethos and pathos, but logos? – Not so much.
Judas Escargot
@Chuck Butcher:
Don’t you just love it when David Gregory, with his 8 figure salary and ex-Fannie Mae executive wife, lectures the rest of us on all the sacrifices we’re going to have to make?
amk
@dogwood: Well, that place has had about 7 million hits within a very short span. So obviously it resonates well with so many people because of its positive coverage of a dem president.
You don’t dig it, cool, you quit it. No bfd.
Just Words
Such wankery from Keller.
dogwood
@amk:
Oh come on. You know me here, amk, do I write or sound like some suspicious character to you? Is there any other pro Obama blog that would ban someone for saying the Kantor book may not be a hit piece? And the irony of it all is that I saw Matthews yesterday say that the book is actually a very positive portrayal of the Obamas. I mean the blog owner was asking me who was I working for and what was my agenda. It took every bit of decency and self- control I have not to ask her if she wanted to see my fucking birth certificate.
dogwood
@amk:
You know amk, I have always really liked you here, and I hope nothing will change that. But you are changing the subject and refusing to even read what I wrote. I didn’t quit TOD, I was permanently banned after making 3 comments that said absolutely nothing negative about Barack Obama. Are you really so defensive about that place that you can’t even admit I was treated like crap in my illustrious debut? Or are you afraid of being banned yourself if you don’t continue to assert that I quit the place rather than I got booted out on my arse?
catclub
What is TOD? The Oil Drum?
amk
@dogwood: I think you’re making a big deal out of this ‘banning’ thingy. So what if blog owner over-reacted ? It’s his/her right. I suggested that you quit because you didn’t like the tone there. How that came into my banning and my being afraid beats me.
Juts let it go.
kay
@Just Words:
It is, but I have to say, I hear this all the time, and not from disgruntled Clinton supporters. I hear it from the people who were onboard for either Clinton or Obama, because they wanted The Democrat to win.
They think it will help the ticket. I don’t know about that, but they’re well-intentioned, and it isn’t shocking or divisive. It’s matter of fact, ordinary “what I would do” type speculation. I don’t think they’ll care if it doesn’t happen, but I do hear it all the time. It’s presented as an easy and painless way to maybe add a point or two, nothing more.
kay
For myself, I don’t think the VP matters that much.
I do wonder if the people who were “either Clinton or Obama, FINE WITH ME” had more fun with that primary, though, because it was great and stress-free to watch if you weren’t committed to either candidate, but instead were voting for The Democrat. You couldn’t lose.
Maybe they just want them both back out there. A lot of people enjoyed that particular dynamic, even with the ugly parts.
WaterGirl
@marcopolo: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I think Biden has been nothing but good in his role as VP. He and Obama work well together, and they each have different strengths. Clinton brings scandal and tons of baggage that they would just drag out. AGAIN. I suspect that’s something HIllary likes about being SOS, at least all that crap has stopped.
All this Hillary for VP talk is either an attempt to give the “media” something more interesting to talk about or it’s an attempt to derail Obama.
kay
He swept! And in NH, the site of his 2008 defeat!
Anya
@amk: Is there no middle ground between bashing and an honest disagreement with, or critique of the President? I am all for challenging the conventional wisdom and fighting the media slant but jumping on every freaking issue and infantilizing the President the way some of the commenters do is beyond disgusting. Also the paranoid slant of the way some people discuss any events and the misreporting of what a particular media type or a public figure says is just maddening. Rachel Maddow is a media person, she will focus on an angle of a story that interests her but attacking her because she wants to challenge the media anointing Romney as the undisputed front runner or showing some glee that Mitt might not win New Hampshire big and that Huntsman might catch up to him should not garner her attack from the freaking left. Some of the most anti-Meddow commenters are homophobic assholes. If I had the time I can give you a treasure trove of veiled and unveiled homophobic comments. Your friend Jovi, an anti-Semite in addition to his homophobia, is a prime example.
Lastly, I really like Chipstick, and I agree with her weary of the place turning into another heaven for Obama bashing, but she really overacted to @dogwood’s harmless comments and encouraged the usual suspects.
dogwood
@amk:
This has nothing to do with TOD. This is the first time on this blog that I’ve ever seen you be disingenuous. You never twist people’s words, or take what they say out of context. You don’t use weird diction like “banning thingy. Look, I know TODers read this blog and I admire your defense of the site. What’ pissed me off was your subtle attempt to twist my words in order to make the site look better. Defend them all you want but don’t imply that I’m a liar and we’ll do just fine.
See ya later,
dogwood
@Anya:
Thanks you and thanks for “harmless” The blog is a good place to go if you want some good news every once in a while, I always liked Chipsticks too until she went full tilt boogie on me the moment I put one foot in the door. But I probably should thank her, because I’m sure it will be the first and last time anyone suspects me of being a subversive, and it was kinda fun. But I was pissed at amk for trying to spin it that I got my panties in a knot over nothing when it was the other way around, Talk about projection. With that I’ll go find someone else to annoy on the internet.
amk
@dogwood: oh, what a load of crap. You brought in another blog butthurt here in response to my two word reply to you and then you start to get personal about it ? GFY.