HillSec?

Are you reporting that she met with Obama in Chicago?

“SecDef McCain, anybody? Nah.” Impossible. But a partner in making government “more effective and efficient” as per the Obama release, absolutely. They do share this as a focus point, and an open partnership on this would effectively put the lie to one of the McCain campaign’s area of lies about Obama.
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A twofer.

“To which the logical response is: What “private” and “personal” matters do Clinton and Obama have to discuss at exactly this moment in time”

If I’m not mistaken, the CLinton people didn’t say she was in Chicago meeting w/ Obama about personal business. They just said she was in Chicago on personal business.

Still probably b.s.

Never mind, . I couldn’t tell from all the tiptoeing around it in the post.

Oops, link scrubbed: Confirmed.

Hillary would be a good choice for a number of reasons, not least is that Sully would go nuts about it. He has, quite notably, not said a word about the possibility yet, but I’ll bet he is stewing over it.
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Assuming Palin’s too long 15 minutes are about up, Sully needs a new/old obsession to keep him going.

SecDef McCain, anybody? Nah.

That isn’t even close to funny!

If the election had any effect whatsoever, it was to repudiate belligerence as the default position on any issue. As I’ve said many times, McCain’s cozy relatiionship with Scheunemann and Woolsey preclude any consideration of allowing him within 5,000 miles of actual foreign policy. The man was ready to embrace utter disaster as a desirable end state.

Let us never forget.

They just said she was in Chicago on personal business.

She IS from Park Ridge…….

Maybe visiting family…..

Idea: Hillary could be in charge of the night shift and take the 3 am calls. It’s called closure people. Look it up.

At least this type of speculation distracts us from the really big Obama questions:
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Does he leave the cap off the toothpaste?
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How does he put the toilet paper roll on the spindle?
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Boxers or briefs?
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Cubs or White Sox?
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Did I miss any other important questions?
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We’ll find out about his cabinet appointments when he tells us. And probably not before. Maybe MS can talk to Marty Eisenstadt at the Harding Institute to get the real 411 on this meeting w/Hillary.

What would we do without speculation and innuendo? That are any number of reasons for Hillary to go to Chicago — and many other positions in the Obama Administration she might be under consideration for.

That said, I’m giving MS credit for dealing with the speculation du jour by poking fun at the media’s obsession for guessing all the secrets. And McCain as Obama’s SecState is as funny as curing Irish hunger by eating babies.

I think McCain as Secretary of the Treasury would be even funnier given his deep, deep knowledge of economic issues.
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Speaking of gossip: MS how come no posts on the National Enquirer’s allegation of the an extra marital affair by Cindy McCain? They have a pretty good track record (with John Edwards).

SecDef McCain, anybody?
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Wingnut fumigation has to be the #1 priority for the next four years. Anybody who has AEI/PNAC fellows as his advisors should be avoided like the plague.
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Great piece on Cheney and the AEI in the latest NY Review of Books:
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****These were the years… of Dick Cheney’s close association with the American Enterprise Institute and its offspring, the Project for the New American Century. The parent think tank, once an ordinary home for postwar business conservatism, had mutated, under the guidance of Irving Kristol, into the most lavish and energetic of the quasi-academic lobbies of neoconservative doctrine. The AEI, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, had been transformed into an institute for the promotion of laissez-faire economics, militarized foreign policy, and the dismantling of the welfare state. It differed from, say, the Rand Corporation in eschewing any claim to impartiality of analysis. It was polemical and took confrontational positions that were disseminated early in the lectures and seminars open to resident fellows. The AEI differed, also, from an older centrist policy outfit like the Brookings Institution in having superior access to the mass media, thanks to careful self-advertisement and the coaching that its representatives often received from editors and agents such as Adam Bellow and Lynn Chu. A more-in-sorrow style was favored in discussing the grim necessity, for example, of increasing America’s nuclear stockpile or stopping the “culture of poverty” in the black community by cutting off federal programs.
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Cheney’s familiarity with the policy institute way of talking was a steady and not a negligible factor in his ability to gain acceptance for his most outlandish maneuvers in the years between 2001 and 2003…
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Never before, in the history of the United States, has there been an ideological camp so fully formed and equipped to extend itself as neoconservatism in the year 1999. It was, and remains, a sect that has some of the properties of a party. There are mentors now in the generation of the fathers as well as the grandfathers, summer internships for young enthusiasts, semiofficial platforms of programmed reactions to breaking news. But to grasp their collective character, one must think of a party that does not run for office at election time. They can therefore evade responsibility for botched policies and the leaders who promote those policies. Donald Rumsfeld had his first and warmest partisans among the neoconservatives, but they were also the first, with the solitary apparent exception of Cheney, to identify him as a scapegoat for the Iraq war and to call for his firing when the insurgency tore the country apart in 2006.
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With the peculiar tightness of its loyalties and the convenience of its immunities, neoconservatism in the United States now has something of the consistency of an alternative culture. Its success in penetrating the mainstream culture is evident in the pundit shows on most of the networks and cable TV, and in the columns of The Washington Post and The New York Times. In the years between 1983 and 1986, and again, more potently, in 2001–2006, the neoconservatives went far to dislocate the boundaries of respectable opinion in America. The idea that wars are to be avoided except in cases of self-defense suffered an eclipse from which it has not yet returned, largely owing to the persistence of respected opinion makers in urging the spread of freedom and markets by force of arms. More particularly, and to confine ourselves to recent events, the nomination of Samuel Alito and the drafting and legitimation of the “surge” strategy by Retired General Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan of the AEI could not have succeeded as they did without the early and organized advocacy of the neoconservative camp.
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How did they get so close to Dick Cheney? The answer lies in the fact that Cheney has an inquisitive mind, but from the accidents of his career and placement, he was for a long time a thinker deprived of intellectual society. Neoconservatism, as it developed in the 1980s, came to have its own heroes (Robert Bork), its canon of revered texts (Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind), and a set of prejudices delivered in a reasonable tone: hostile to individual liberty, appreciative of modern technology, friendly to religion as a guide to morals and an engine of state power. It was, to repeat, a substitute culture of satisfying density. The AEI along with journals like Commentary and, more recently, The Weekly Standard offer, for those who take the full course, a total environment, an idiom of managerial-intellectual judgment that blends the rapidity of journalism with the weightier pretensions of an academy.
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The self-confidence of this substitute culture fortified Cheney’s sense that he had always already heard the relevant views, and that he had come into contact with the best minds…****
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Wingnut minds. DO NOT WANT.

Cubs or White Sox?
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He’s made it clear that he’s a Sox fan. Fortunately, Cubs fans are more tolerant of their South side bretheren than the converse. Odd that way…..

“Assuming Palin’s too long 15 minutes are about up, Sully needs a new/old obsession to keep him going.”
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Bears?

Paul Dirks — thanks for the scoop. Now about the toothpaste…

More likely that they are working on how to get health-care passed. That fits better with HRC’s skill-set, political future, and in general her aims and motives. My guess is that they are talking about what the legislation would require, where to get the votes, and who should lead it.

Greenwald follows up on the Sarkozy PWNAGE of Bush
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/14/putin/index.html

Uhmmm is Scherer going to update his post now that its been confirmed that HRC and Obama met to discuss her future in his administration? Of course not, wingnuts are never wrong!

Much prefer Clinton as SecDef.

MS, this post from Karen a few days ago was helpful and interesting because it provided larger context. This sort of speculating is fun and easy, but it isn’t really all that illuminating.
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Not that there’s no place for this sort of thing anywhere ever, but it seems to get an undue amount of coverage.

As usual, Al Giordano has the real poop on this non-story:
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No, it was not Mitchell that first floated this Hindenburg balloon. It was former Clinton White House aide (and reliable media spinner for all agendas Clinton) George Stephanopoulos on who first dropped HRC’s name for Foggy Bottom last week. ABC’s Jake Tapper reminds:
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George Stephanopoulos reported Clinton’s name being in the mix last week on Good Morning America
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The whole thing is a media freak show being served up by members of the Clinton factions in the Democratic party and obliged by a national media (some of them also Clinton noisemakers) in search of a story. The speculation is not because Senator Clinton wants the job, but because her people so desperately want to muddy the waters and throw up a roadblock to either New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson or Massachusetts Senator John Kerry – two of the leading contenders – serving in the post, whom they consider turncoats for having endorsed Obama vs. Clinton earlier this year.

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[...]
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The US Department of State’s budget for FY 2009 is $11.4 billion dollars.
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What makes anybody think that somebody that so mismanaged her presidential campaign and its finances – still millions in debt – is going to be tapped to manage an 11 billion dollar budget with Embassies across the globe?
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President-elect Obama is going to meet, in Chicago, on Monday with Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham: the same courtesy he’s reportedly given Senator Clinton. Shall we read into it that one of them will become Secretary of State? (No, we won’t, because their people in the media won’t be pushing such rumors.)
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The conflicts of interest of former President Bill Clinton and his Clinton Global Initiative – a “charity” with a $208 million dollar surplus, undisclosed donors, many of them foreign – signify that before Senator Clinton could hold the post of Secretary of State, Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe would have to disband their own “shadow state department” that is the Clinton Global Initiative.

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And as always, Al’s article is an excellent read from top to bottom.

As usual, Al Giordano has the real deal on this non-story:
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No, it was not Mitchell that first floated this Hindenburg balloon. It was former Clinton White House aide (and reliable media spinner for all agendas Clinton) George Stephanopoulos on who first dropped HRC’s name for Foggy Bottom last week. ABC’s Jake Tapper reminds:
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George Stephanopoulos reported Clinton’s name being in the mix last week on Good Morning America
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The whole thing is a media freak show being served up by members of the Clinton factions in the Democratic party and obliged by a national media (some of them also Clinton noisemakers) in search of a story. The speculation is not because Senator Clinton wants the job, but because her people so desperately want to muddy the waters and throw up a roadblock to either New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson or Massachusetts Senator John Kerry – two of the leading contenders – serving in the post, whom they consider turncoats for having endorsed Obama vs. Clinton earlier this year.

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[...]
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The US Department of State’s budget for FY 2009 is $11.4 billion dollars.
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What makes anybody think that somebody that so mismanaged her presidential campaign and its finances – still millions in debt – is going to be tapped to manage an 11 billion dollar budget with Embassies across the globe?
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President-elect Obama is going to meet, in Chicago, on Monday with Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham: the same courtesy he’s reportedly given Senator Clinton. Shall we read into it that one of them will become Secretary of State? (No, we won’t, because their people in the media won’t be pushing such rumors.)
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The conflicts of interest of former President Bill Clinton and his Clinton Global Initiative – a “charity” with a $208 million dollar surplus, undisclosed donors, many of them foreign – signify that before Senator Clinton could hold the post of Secretary of State, Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe would have to disband their own “shadow state department” that is the Clinton Global Initiative.

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And as always, Al’s article is an excellent read from top to bottom.

Clinton for SecState? You mean Bill Clinton, right?

Tom
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I dont know about Giordanno but this newest rumor comes from Andrea Mitchell who said she got it from 2 different Obama sources and she said she had to work her azz off for it. Not saying she is right about it, just sayiing it has more than Stephanopalous as the story’s nexus

I can’t think of any other job she would consider leaving the Senate for. Secretary of the Treasury would be great, although by custom it’s supposed to go to someone who made hundreds of millions of dollars through a financial system that is destroying the global economy.
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My first reaction is that I’d rather see her in the Senate working on health care. Although the visual of her and Obama leading foreign policy is powerful; Unfortunately Condoleeza Rice never used her gender or race in the office. Seeing Obama attract huge crowds in third world countries, and Clinton working closely with women, as she did in Ireland, to work towards new solutions for war would be pretty amazing.
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And I guess this means that all those anonymous “Obama and Clinton hate each other stories,” were imaginary. The Secretary of State probably has more power to undermine the President than anyone else in government.

sgwhiteinfla:

No doubt that Mitchell’s unnamed sources are also from the Clinton camp. Read Al’s whole article. There is no way Hillary passes vetting for this job considering Bill’s conflicts of interest. Ain’t gonna happen.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/freak-show-behind-clinton-secretary-state-rumors

High Sherrifs — don’t bother releasing the version in moderation.

I mean, “Al Giordano has the real p@@p on this non-story:” is pretty lame to be a show-stopper, but I edited around it.

Tom
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I appreciate the faith you have in Giordanno but in my opinion he doesn’t make that great of a case that Obama isn’t considering Hillary for Secretary of State. Thats not to say she will get it but its already been confirmed that Hillary met with him yesterday to talk about her role in his administration. To say that George Stephanapolous was the first to mention her as maybe Secretary of State is patently false. After Obama didn not pick HRC as his running mate there have been PLENTY of people who speculated that she might be Sec of State or a Supreme Court justice to the point where HRC had to shoot down the rumors about a month ago and say she was committed to surving in the Senate. Again its all speculation and nothing is guaranteed but I tend to believe that Andrea Mitchell did hear from two real Obama advisors and that Obama is considering her for Secretary of State. Remember something here, if Giordanno is to be believed then its likely that HRC if she had gotten the nomination would have had to get bill to nix the Global initiative and or if she had been elected to POTUS following Giordanno’s logic Bill would have DEFINITELY had to nix his global initiative so evidently he was ready to do that because he supported her run for president. Just something to think about.

Shorter Obama/Clinton discussion: Where’s the really good take-out near the White House?

sgwhiteinfla: It ain’t faith, it’s track record. You can look it up. Every time he’s made such a definitive statement he’s been absolutely correct.

Maybe Secretary of Defense? CNN is reporting that HRC is surprised by the State rumors, and thinks they’re “silly,” like the VP rumors.

Maybe Secretary of Defense? CNN is reporting that HRC is surprised by the State rumors, and thinks they’re “silly,” like the VP rumors.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….

rose83
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I am watching CNN and HRC was just shown saying that she wouldnt confirm or deny and she was directing all inquiries to Obama’s transisition team. There was nothing about her saying it was “silly”. Maybe we are watching two different kinds of CNN.

Oh and she had a big azz kool aid smile on her face when she was talking

Tom, I’m now a little skeptical about the State rumors, but Giordano is just wrong about Stephanopoulos. He doesn’t particularly like the Clintons, and was never very favorable to her on his show. Admittedly, the Clintons don’t have many friends in the media, but I still think if this was just a plan to attract attention – which they’re always really lacking – this would be coming from someone like Ben Smith.
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Any chance this is coming from one of his 700 advisors? Seeing how Newsweek didn’t verify the anonymous Palin rumors with a 60-second search on Google, it’s possible that this is being fueled entirely by media who are happy to embrace the new Clinton story and trust the anonymous comments of a few unconnected foreign policy aides.

sg, it was an anonymous report on CNN’s website. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/14/transition.wrap/

This will send all 16 PUMAs over the edge.

rose83
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I think you have fallen victim to the meme that Newsweek got their information about Palin not knowing her geography from a bogus source. That is not true. The people who were duped by the prank were the people who reported that this fake McCain aide with the bogus name Martin Eisenstadt TOOK CREDIT for the information. Both Newsweek and Carl Cameron from FoxNews has confirmed that the bogus guy was NOT their source. Hope that cleared it up for you.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/13/msnbc-retracts-story-sour_n_143517.html
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The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin _ not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

sg, no I was talking about the story that she refused to acknowledge Sununu because he’s pro-choice, when in fact he’s pro-life. It demonstrates they’re checking their stories the same way McCain chose his pastor Hagee: without Google.

rose83
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The one thing about that report is that it confirms that HRC was meeting with Obama about a role in the administration. Even if she gets a role other than State I think it shows that she is being considered for something. Really this is more so directed to Tom but I think that if HRC gets ANY role in Obama’s administration that pretty much destroys Giordano’s central argument because he would have you to believe that nobody in Obama’s administration could have soemthing like Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative. Again I am not a huge follower of Giordano but his argument on this particular subject came off as weak sauce to me no matter how his former predictions panned out.

rose83
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lol ok I gotcha on that one but I think that happens sometimes when writers try to push their own memes. The truth is the other guy IS pro choice but the fact that both of them werent would have destroyed their narrative. Now I for one having listened to her almost everyday since the election wouldnt put it past her to snub someone she disagreed all on her own to try to preserve her own street cred for 2012 but Newsweek did flub that one pretty spectacularly
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As for Pastor Hagee, John McCain knew full well who he was. Don’t forget that Hagee was one of the “agents of intolerance” that McCain talked about in 2000. He just went to kiss the ring because he felt he HAD to in order to up his profile with the religious right. Of course he thought Hagee would knock it off until after the election and that was stupid of him. But don’t think for one minute that he didnt know EXACTLY who Hagee was and what kinds of things he stood for. I really think thats the major reason why he wanted Rev Wright off limits.

sg, good point.
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What about Ambassador to the UN? I’m not sure it’s a better job than Senator, but I love the UN building so I think it sounds like a great job… But then HRC is probably not deciding her future on the basis of her taste in architecture.

rose83
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I am thinking maybe something truly obvious like which ever Secretary position would be overseeing health insurance. I can’t say I know which position that is but I would think that makes the most sense

lol ok I gotcha on that one but I think that happens sometimes when writers try to push their own memes.
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Agreed. It’s the same thing as the pre-Iraq reporting, although on a vastly different scale. When reporters like a story they often don’t check it sufficiently. And one thing everyone can agree on, all across the political spectrum, is that the media love Clinton stories.
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It’s depressing to see how similar the media treatment of HRC and Palin are, even though they have nothing in common except their gender. They cover women politicians like they’re covering female celebrities. Lies are printed all the time about famous women – most of them spend 8 months of the year pregnant, according to gossip columns – and it’s not much better for women politicians.

Basilbrush: If I wanted to get health care passed and I was Obama, I’d be meeting with Max Baucus before I met with Hillary. I think, this meeting maybe more about retiring Hillary’s campaign debt, talking more about the transition and campaigning for Martin in the GA runoff than any cabinet post.
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The way the Obama campaign has kept the lid on the transition, it’s hard for me to think such a public meeting isn’t about cabinet positions.

By the way PNNTO
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No dice on Sully freaking out over HRC being Sec of State
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Gotta admit I am quite surprised also
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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/hillary-for-sec.html

Sully is pathological with the Clinton’s.
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“Left to fester in the Senate, Clinton will plot against the president if he doesn’t actively seek her support and engagement and “spread the political wealth” of his mandate.”
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Project much Andrew?

PNNTO
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Sully is bad but D!ck Morris is the WORST. Somebody should punch that guy in the face. Seriously

The only bad thing about Obama’s victory is that it made Sullivan happy.

Yes sg, Dick is well named.

rose83
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While Sully is over the top I have to say I would rather have him for Obama than against him. The whole Sarah Palin obsession was crazy but then again in the end he kind of looks not as crazy as initially thought considering she never released those medical records. I won’t go as far as he did with saying it wasn’t her baby but I mean the point he made early on about her being able to crush any speculation by releasing her records seemed less and less crazy every day that passed without her releasing them Then when she told Brian Williams she WOULD release them and didnt was even curiouser.
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There are many things I don’t agree with Sully on but I think that because for the most part he doesnt use empty rhetoric and instead uses pretty sound logic to make his points, he is a lot more persuasive than the case of characters over at NRO. Now I really don’t believe he will be an Obama cheerleader for the next 4 years mind you, but as long as he gives him a fair shot I think thats a good thing.

sg, I couldn’t agree with you less on Sully! Paranoia, contempt for facts and an unnecessary level of hatred are problems even in people that we agree with. His logic is sound, which makes otherwise reasonable people take him seriously, but the problem is that it’s based on false assumptions. Once you believe the Clintons are evil, Sarah Palin may have faked a pregnancy (Although obviously not for Bristol; That really makes sense.), and every anonymously sourced negative story about people you don’t like is true, his arguments make sense. But then going to Iraq made sense if Saddam Hussein really did have stockpiles of WMDs he was ready to attack London with: the assumptions you base your arguments on matter.
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And I think he’ll stay an Obama cheerleader. If he’s willing to accept HRC as Secretary of State, he’s willing to accept anything.

Pontiac is a set-up for a well-known racist joke?!?
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I’ll tell you, that’s the problem with my generation; we don’t even know the racist jokes and stereotypes. We’re abandoning our heritage and tradition!

wrong thread, obviously. Andrew Sullivan, though, he’s infuriating. He cares about getting stuff right… but prioritizes having extreme, emotional reactions to things.

rose83
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Well as far as I can tell or remember Sully never speculated unequivically that Sarah Palin’s baby wasn’t hers. I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty because I may have missed one of his gazillions of posts about her. But I believe he just asked to have the medical records to put down any rumors. Now the story of the actual birth of Trig no matter how much anyone believes that child is hers, is pretty curious. I can’t think of another woman who would start leaking amniotic fluid and then fly all the way back to Alaska to have the baby. Now that story is absolutely true. Of course if you believe that story then its hard to believe she wasn’t pregnant. But again I think for him it became one of those situations where you start off like ok this is no big deal but then the fact that she didnt want to turn over the records along with all he other lies she told during the campaign ala Bridge to Nowhere made him go crazy about the whole situation and start obsessing over seeing the records. To me thats more of a investigative tone albeit an obsessive one and i will accept that on any issue. As long as he isnt one of those people who just want to do anything people say because the MUST be right then I am good with that. Because that kinda thinking is what made so many journalists promote the Iraq war to begin with in my opinion
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Now the reason I don’t think he will cheerlead for too long is because Sully really is a conservative. He didnt cross over to being a liberal or progressive just because he backed Obama. Sooner or later Obama will do something that offends Sully’s conservative sensibilities and he will start bashing Obama relentlessly. The other thing that might offend him will be if he doesn’t think Obama is responsive enough to the LGBT movement. I would hope that his support was more permanent but I don’t think its going to turn out that way.

“The other thing that might offend him will be if he doesn’t think Obama is responsive enough to the LGBT movement”
Yep and that’s why I thought
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“Clinton will plot against the president if he doesn’t actively seek her support and engagement”
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was pure projection. “Hey I got him elected!”

Oh Lord, now ABC gets in on the <a href=”http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=3105288&page=1″<Hillary Goes to Chicago story..

It its wisdom, ABC News reports, “The Hillary rumors are the first potential stumbling block for the smooth machine that is President-elect Barack Obama’s transition efforts.”

Stumbling block?

Hmm. Apparently my html skills still suck.

Only a GOPer would think that McCain rates the SocDef appointment.
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Not until after Hades is thoroughly frozen!

I’ve always said Sully suffers from penis-envy where Hill is concerned. Strange given the general adoration for Hill from gay circles–a family member and most of my “gay friends” included. Though that embrace, too, is something I’ve never managed to get my head around given Bill’s record.

To the point–I second Rose’s preference for having HRC in the senate working on health care. For one thing, I don’t think Teddy will be around to see that battle through. More importantly, as voter who likes Ron Paul’s fo-po, I’d prefer not to see GOP-lite helming state. Her stance on Iraq, from beginning to end, was absolutely wrong. What message does that send to Obama’s anti-war supporters, that the primary reason for our embrace of his candidacy during the primary wars was all for naught. Not to mention the Iranian revolutionary guard vote and other muscular fo-po posturing on her part. Yes, of course, the SOS represents the current president’s world view, but this bothers me. And god, no doofus like Richardson either.

Would she be a huge improvement on Bush Cheney absolutely, but you’re drinking the centrist kool aid of death if you’re up for her at state folks. Sure, why not, give her state, Lieberman, what the hell, let’s have him back in the fold, and sh-t, I’ll even sing cumbyefreakingyah with Johnny Mac.

Color me skeptical and disappointed. Something about two sides of the same tired coin comes to mind.