JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL?...

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=309462

JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL?...
Ari Berman


John McCain ditched his disabled first wife after Vietnam and married a rich beer heiress twenty years his junior.

Bill and Hillary Clinton made $109 million over the last eight years and sold the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder when in the White House.

And now both McCain and Clinton are deriding Barack Obama as "elitist."

Give me a break. When Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart and McCain was getting reprimanded for his role in the Keating 5 scandal, Barack Obama was a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. You tell me which experience better prepares one to understand the struggles of working people.

What Obama said about the bitterness of those in small-town America, stymied by job loss and economic stagnation, was hardly scandalous. It's only a "scandal" because McCain, trying his best to ignore an economic recession, and Clinton, looking for any opportunity to jolt a campaign on life support, said it was--and the media dutifully bought the spin.

snip//

The kitchen sink overfloweth yet again.

*******************************
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=309355

CLINTON CAMP SEEKS TO SPIN ITS WAY OUT OF PENNSYLVANIA...
John Nichols

snip//

The senator from New York has led by as much as 20 points in credible polls of Pennsylvania voters. In fact, she was so far ahead at one point that there was speculation that Obama might drop back and accept his beating -- on the theory that he could make things up elsewhere. Instead, after a rough March, Obama came back fighting in April with an expensive and effective television advertising campaign, a surprise endorsement from Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey Jr. and a somewhat -- though certainly not sufficiently -- more populist message on economic issues.

Obama has begun to close the gap in Pennsylvania. But, with barely a week to go before the April 22 primary, he still trails in almost all polls.

If Obama loses Pennsylvania by a narrow margin, he'll sustain a blow but not a particularly serious one. It certainly will not be "a significant defeat for him."

On the other hand, if Clinton loses by even one vote, it will be a significant defeat for her.

Howard Wolfson is trying to rewrite the rules of the expectation game. But Clinton has led in Pennsylvania for too long and by too much to spin a false victory. She needs to win the state by a wide margin if she -- or Wolfson -- hope to make a case for continuing a campaign that has staked its future on the Keystone State.

To suggest otherwise is not political spin.

It is a fantasy too ridiculous even for those who are familiar with Howard Wolfson's creative relationship with the truth to entertain.

[dkf]

1. Wow. What a smackdown.

Love it!

[depakid]

2. The kitchen sink?

You do realize the irony in that statement...

[babylonsister]

3. You do realize the Clinton camp coined the phrase...

Later that month, however, the welcoming, wide-mouthed sink became a sinister repository of innuendo: The Times reported plans for “unleashing what one Clinton aide called a ‘kitchen sink’ fusillade against Obama, pursuing five lines of attack” that CNN’s Anderson Cooper dubbed the Clinton “kitchen-sink strategy.” That was a phrase defined back in 1996 by The Washington Times, covering Bill Clinton’s legal defense as a “tactic in which lawyers routinely throw in every possible argument that could bolster their case, however absurd.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/magazine/30wwln-safire-t.html?ref=magazine

[depakid]

7. Maybe, but still

don't you find it... ironic to throw a comment out like that in the midst of a barrage of, well, kitchen sink arguments and posts that have the same diluted effects?

[NMDemDist2]

4. Obama has his own WalMart skeleton in the closet

or else how did he afford his big ChiTown house, even with the sweetheart deal from Renko?

[babylonsister]

5. Link? You know better than to just spout stuff out with no back-up. nt

[NMDemDist2]

9. here ya go sis. I'm not taking sides here, I have given up on the Pres. Race.

I'll vote for whoever shows up with a (D) after their name. I've got bigger fish to fry trying to turn NM's Congressional delegation from 3 repukes and 2 Dems to 5 Dems in 2008. But the mud is flying fast and furious from both sides it seems to me. :shrug:


ABC News' Sunlen Miller Reports: Michelle Obama, the wife of democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has resigned her position as director of TreeHouse Foods Inc where she has served since 2005..... snip

Her position on the board of the company was not without controversy. Many pointed to her role on the board as a direct conflict with her husband's stance against the company Wal-Mart. TreeHouse Foods is one of the main suppliers to Wal-Mart and Senator Obama has come out against Wal-Mart's labor practices in the past.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/05/michelle_obama_.html

[babylonsister]

12. That's a supplier of pickles, IIRC, not a WalMart board member.

And this was resolved almost a year ago.

[NMDemDist2]

13. well sure, and Hillary was on the board when Old Sam still ran the company

and that was what? 20 years ago??

see what I mean? it's OK to throw WalMart at Clinton even though it was over decades ago and was a totally different company then but heaven forbid anyone say anything about the beautiful Barak.

Politicians are whores for money and power. It's their job description. I don't expect any different as that would be silly. I just try to support pols who'll remember who brung em to the dance.

like I said, I'll vote for whoever is left standing in Nov. but I am not so naive to believe Obama is pure as the driven snow and that Clinton is the evil witch in skirts.

now I'll go back to the passion that I have in this race, calling my neighbors and telling them about an exciting new candidate named Bill McCamley. for Congress.

not an exciting new candidate for the highest office in the land. and when Obama is president (which I fully expect he will be) I just pray he's got the heart and the gut to do the job he's promising us. I know the Clintons and know what to expect from them. Obama is not a known entity so I'll just pray he's all his supporters keep telling me he is.

edit to add, I'm an Edwards supporter. but that ship has sailed

[MADem]

11. It is common knowledge that his wife got a massive bonus from a principal supplier

to Wal-Mart (i.e., the business is in business in large part to supply WalMart with "house brand" foodstuffs; the business relies on WalMart to survive, in essence).

Here's the link. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/wobama13.xml

This is actually old news--not anywhere near as old as Clinton's ancient connections to the old WalMart (when Sam Walton was alive), though.

Salient points:

....she has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago .......And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions.

As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a "moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the company and "force them to examine their own corporate values".

According to the couple's tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse's board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.

She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.

[Yael]

10. "Sweetheart deal from Rezko"

Or, he was the only offer on the house and the sellers agreed to drop their asking price to his bid.

If you are going to believe everything you read on the interwebs, you should really be a lot more thorough...

[NMDemDist2]

14. hmmm, I missed that. got a link? n/t

[Yael]

15. It was easy to miss

The owners stepped forward in February and told their side of the story:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a_9sOMpy91Js&refer=us

Unfortunately, the meme is still out there and being repeated that it was somehow a shady deal.

[NMDemDist2]

16. well good. Chicago politics is a dirty business, let's hope there's no

other nasty 'deals' lurking in the background.

thanks for the update.

[Yael]

17. Happy to help

I am glad we have their side of the story.

[madrchsod]

19. opps -i get pissed about the chicago stuff..it`s a non issue now.

..in fact rezko`s case hinges on the testimony of a guy that had a hundreds of thousands of dollars drug problem...the defense has been taking him apart..it`s up to 12 jurors to decide...

[NMDemDist2]

20. don't get pissed at me, I'm the least of your problems

I don't even own a flame thrower

:rofl:

[madrchsod]

18. oh no it`s the "treehouse scandal"

and rezko all in one post!

[MADem]

6. Carol McCain had been married to one of John's classmates, he was her second husband, and she wasn't

unhappy to cut him loose, from what I understand. Before he married Cindy, he raised hell up and down and all over. There are people (now nearing retirement) in federal service who still remember what a jerk he was at OLA.

I believe she said something like "John wanted to be 25 again" and she wasn't interested in dealing with that bullshit. Good luck getting her to say anything bad about him, though. Apparently, they parted amicably enough....

[phrigndumass]

8. Thank you for posting this

... and thanks for your insightful replies above!

Wolfson says a 6-point win would be a major victory for Senator Clinton. Lowered expectations!