Even I had never really heard too much about this before today, and I thought I was an expert on Clinton sleaze. I guess this is part of the Clinton “dump truck” of dirt Barack Obama referred to yesterday. Definitely worth checking out…

Bling, bling! Seriously, this is phenomenal. In the 24 hours since the polls closed in California, the Obama campaign will have raised about $6 million and counting. Bill and Hill, that’s us saying that we’re not gonna let you steal or even take this nomination from us. The Obama site was going so crazy that the servers went down temporarily. Remember, nobody can donate more than $2,300 per election, so these numbers are truly amazing. Check out this screenshot…

Remember, we still have about 90 minutes (10:30 CST) left before the polls have been closed for 24 hours. Who knows what this number could end up being.

Just what in the hell was Bill Clinton doing in Kazakhstan? Not participating in Borat’s “Running of the Jew,” but he might as well have been. From Fox News:

Yet, in late 2006, as his wife was laying the ground work for a presidential race and serving in the U.S. Senate, Bill Clinton flew on a lavish private plane to the former Soviet State and met with its President, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, known best for eliminating all opposition in his country. In the short time that he was there, Clinton promoted Nazarbayev for chairman of a U.N. committee – a position that the United States government, and his own wife, had opposed. That made no difference to Clinton. Of course, he never mentioned anything at all about the rampant human rights violations.

Clinton was there as the guest of Frank Giustra, a Canadian billionaire who wanted to buy the country’s uranium rights. Although he had no experience in this area of the world, he was suddenly awarded the contract which the New York Times termed a “monster deal…. [that] suddenly transformed the company into the world’s largest uranium producers.”

Clinton made sure that the Kazahstan President understood that Giustra and Clinton were an item.

After the deal was closed, Clinton’s foundation received a $31 million contribution from Giustra and a pledge of another $100 million.

Continue Reading »

No, not the actual Clintons themselves — the term “Billary.” I fucking love the term. Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. Reminds me of their first co-presidency, Clinton Drama and the 22nd Amendment. Good stuff. Political analysts have said time and time again that this term is terrible for the Clintons. So now that Billary is back, let’s ride it until the damn wheels come off.

Fired up… Ready to go!

Paul Abrams — a former Bill Richardson supporter — makes the best case I’ve read yet for why undecided Independents and Democrats (ahem, John Edwards backers) should vote for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Here’s the gist:

There is nothing the Clintons bring to the election or the presidency that Barack Obama does not.

The converse, however, is not true.

Go on over to the Huffington Post and read it for yourself. Seriously, this makes more sense of the current situation Democrats are facing than anything else I have read anywhere.

I watched There Will Be Blood this past Sunday. Simply the best movie I’ve seen since I watched Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth over a year ago, which is definitely saying something. As a film junkie who’s watched literally thousands and thousands of flicks, it’s not often that one leaves me awestruck. Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood did just that.

The first thing TWBB reminded of was Citizen Kane. Not just the plot itself, but also Daniel Day-Lewis’ career performance. It was so reminiscent of what Orson Welles accomplished in Kane. Then I started digging deeper.

TWBB is based on a book called Oil. Obviously, that is a topic that resonates now more than ever. For me, the word oil has become synonymous with greed, with power. And it appears that was the case long before any Bushes ever called the White House home. The movie, to me, is really about greed.

The parallels to this election are obvious as well. On one side you have the older mogul, hellbent on winning no matter the cost (Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview/Hillary Clinton). On the other side you have the young prophet, who possesses an uncanny ability to gather and rally people behind him (Paul Dano as Eli Sunday/Barack Obama). I won’t give away the end of the movie, but it was a bleaker outcome than I am hoping the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination race ends up being.

Continue Reading »

What a great endorsement and terrific speech. The Clintons have to be scared shitless at this juncture, because this is the closest thing to JFK himself passing the torch to Obama as their could possibly be.

Seriously, what the fuck is Hillary Clinton doing? She made a pledge to the Democratic National Convention not to appear in Florida, a state that was stripped of all of its delegates for illegally moving up its primary. She did this so she could run in Iowa and New Hampshire. But now she is campaigning in Florida. Rules, scmooles. A little more, from Yahoo! News:

But Iowa and New Hampshire are history and, after a landslide loss in South Carolina on Saturday, Clinton needs a win.

So she has begun appearing in Florida in anticipation of Tuesday’s Democratic primary there.

Clinton’s move insults not just the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire who trusted her pledge but also the voters of all the states that respected the DNC’s outline for the nominating process. Effectively, she is saying to Democrats in states that will participate in February 5th’s “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses and in the two dozen states that have scheduled later votes: You may follow the rules if you please, but I write the rules as I please.

That’s the raw political reality of Clinton’s move, even if she is spinning it as an embrace of participatory democracy.

She got her ass whooped in South Carolina, so now she’s headed to campaign for and compete in an imaginary primary. Seriously, this would be like the New England Patriots hyping up a scrimmage game with the Super Bowl looming right around the corner. Shouldn’t she be focused on something that actually matters? Say, like Super Tuesday?

The comparisons to the New England Patriots don’t stop there, though.

Continue Reading »