http://richmonddemocrat.blogsp...

Clinton's campaign caught red-handed working with the Right Wing to smear Obama.

to do with this, I will go from strongly supporting Obama to strongly opposing Clinton.  I just hope they didn't have anything to do with this, but my understanding is that Sen. Clinton has attempted to "make nice" with Rupert Murdoch.  That bothers me a lot.

HRC and WJC courting of the bad news Robert Johnson, billionaire founder of BET (who is against the estate tax and closing income tax loopholes for hedge fund managers, because they are "class warfare" strategies that hurt black people ... right).

Throw in Warren Buffett, and the Clintons have the billionaire bracket wrapped up pretty well.

I don't think HRC is evil, or a bad person, or unqualified, etc. She seems to be a good, if ambitious, intelligent, hard-working, and qualified candidate. But she is so obviously the candidate of the economic elite/establishment along with the bi-partisan foreign policy establishment that got us into this damned war, that it boggles my mind that people argue against this point. She is who she is, and the Clintons are what they are (see their 1990s trade record, as well).

In a perfect world, Barack would have accomplished more in the Senate than he has heretofore. But, the choices being what they are, his message of change is very relevant. Do you want a different path, or a return to a DLC-style serving of corporate interests versus a Republican one?  

Rupert Murdoch has contributed money to the following --

Lloyd Bentsen
Joe Lieberman
The DNC (I can find $30,000 documented)
Ed Markey
Bob Graham
Ernest Hollings
John Breaux
Bill Bradley
Charles Robb
Ted Kennedy
John Kerry
Max Cleland
Chuck Schumer
Harold Ford

Of course Murdoch is a conservative and gives the majority to Republicans.  In addition, he came to support the UK Labor Party and Tony Blair.  Still, in my mind, he's on the wrong side of the fence.

 . . . run surreptitiously by Hillary staffers to dig dirt on Obama; I read this in British post this morning and have been sent this info also by my political partner in CA ( a retired Foreign Service officer who's integrity has in my opinion always been impeccable for the 30 years I have known him and worked with him) - he has always liked the Clintons until this last week and now he hates the Clintons. I am telling you - you all in Virginia are nice and honorable and genuine people and that is why I felt honored to raise my kids there. But you have no idea what we are capable of in Boston and New York. My own family ran political corruption in Boston politics and that is one reason I moved away after college; but that was when immigrant Irish were fighting for turf against heavily funded Republicans who virtually controlled our world. Again we are beginning to call this "machine politics" and we in Boston know what that means. (The great movie "The Departed" can give you a feel for what we were about in 1973, the year I graduated from college here. And NY was worse and Philly was much worse.)  

There's a 'chain email' making the rounds much more dangerous than the silliness of Obama's camp supposedly celebrating to rap music.

Thanks to the forward button on email programs, it's multiplying like an aggressive cancer.

On Friday morning, January 10, my daughter forwarded me an email that had been forwarded to her by her boyfriend, who was on the end of a long forwarding list that had originated in Israel the same morning, Israel time.  There were 82 email addresses in the various forwards.

When I forwarded it onto to my wife at her office - with appropriate comments - she said that a colleague had walked a hard copy of the same email into her about an hour before.  The colleague's email had originated in Indiana on January 9.

When my sister-in-law stopped by this Saturday and we told her about the email, she said, how odd, I got the same thing in an email forwarded to me on January 9.  Her 'chain email' had originated in Alabama.

This thing is so vile, I hesitate to test Lowell's sense of propriety and include it here.  But evil needs to be confronted.

Here's a link to the poison spreading through the 'net.  The email combines, paradoxically, both the Obama as Wahabi Muslim agent and Obama as black nationalist Christian passages.  Be forewarned - this is nauseating stuff and not for the faint-of-heart.

http://www.snopes.com/politics...

+

http://www.snopes.com/politics...

On Jan. 8, Joe Conason wrote an editorial on Truthdig entitled "The Coming Attack on Obama":

"They will try to Swift-boat me," said Barack Obama in the days before the New Hampshire primary ...

The effective template for attacking a Democratic nominee was developed by former Republican political boss Karl Rove during decades of trench warfare in Texas and across the country. ... Seize upon the Democrat's most attractive quality and sow doubts to undermine that appeal. ...

With Obama, the obvious target is his inspirational life story. The task of the opposition operatives will be to twist that saga, to unearth facts or factoids that raise concerns about the candidate's background, and to make his cosmopolitan upbringing appear alien and even sinister-and, of course, to play the race card against him, either subtly or blatantly. ...

... in e-mail barrages, he is being portrayed as the son and stepson of Muslims from Africa and Asia, who as a young boy worshiped in mosques and madrasas. That is a proven falsehood surrounding a tiny grain of fact, but no matter. Repetition will make the poison. ...

http://www.truthdig.com/report...

 

Richard Cohen's column in today's WaPost should become a classic journalism school staple of journalistic malfeasance. It is what academics call mnemonic slander. (Mnemonic slander would be to say in a business or academic circle "Did somebody say he is sleeping with  . . . ?" - he probably in not and there is no specific slander, but the thought is associated from then on as a shadow which attaches itself to the person.) Cohen in this column says that some leader in Obama's church honored Louis Farrakhan and then goes on to compare Farrakhan to Hitler and somehow Obama thus compares as well (because Obama is a subset of his church and its leader which of course he is not). It is a classic case of journalistic mnemonic slander because after Cohen has associated Obama with Farrakhan and Hitler, he says: "It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views . . . ." Of course, the deal is done. It is a sleazy lawyer trick and a sleazy journalist trick.  

and I say this as someone who believes Louis Farrakhan is a vicious anti-Semite.  What in bloody hell does ANY of this have to do with Barack Obama?  What next, if you're a member of a church that prohibits women from performing certain roles, you're a misogynist?  If you're a member of a church that does not fully accept homosexuals, you're a homophobe?  Richard Cohen has truly jumped the shark with this column.   And the Washington Post, which publishes this trash, is getting ready to jump a few hammerheads itself!

saying that because I am a Catholic I am therefore an anti-Semite because an earlier Pope may have held sympathies with fascism. Or that my wife is a racist because she is a Virginia Episcopalian as was Robert E. Lee. Shame.

The uneasy infighting between Hillary and Obama makes a good target for scummy Republican tricks.  If they encourage an atmosphere of anger among Democrats they split our party - obviously giving their candidate a better shot.  It feels so Rovian.

I like the speculation.  But we would need some proof.  How would we find that out?  And if we did, it would be so deliciously scandalous!

Let's remember that Murdoch owns Fox News.

Don't get played by them.

Cooler heads are prevailing.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

She's opened Pandora's box.

The Clinton's like it rough?  Let's see how rough.