Rough Neighborhood

Looks as though we have a new neighbor.

Nice house, but like they say, LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.

Barring a cyclone, tornado, earthquake or summer breeze for that matter, all should be well.

I'm sure everything will be just fine....

Home at the Edge of the World

I will of course keep all Posted with further developments.....

Someone Had to tell Her

Toasted

Campaign Desk

Russert Watch 4-12-08

In Which Hillary Surrogates Get Got

By Todd Gitlin Mon 12 May 2008 02:30 PM

What’s a Sunday morning show to do when it specializes in political prophecy and the expectation is a foregone conclusion? Bring some players on, ask them routine questions, register their spin, try to trip them up when the spin is ridiculous, and move on.

By all conventional measures, the news is that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is sinking beneath the weight of arithmetic. Senator Chris Dodd, an Obama supporter, came on Meet the Press and said so, and since the arithmetic is on his side, he didn’t present any trip-up potential. Clinton proxy Terry McAuliffe, on the other hand, crammed himself into the absurd position of sticking up for the remote possibility of a game-changing event that could resurrect the expiring Clinton campaign. When he plumped for counting the Michigan votes in a primary where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, all McAuliffe could summon up in support of that argument was to insist that Obama had taken himself off the Michigan ballot. Russert countered with a passage from McAuliffe’s own book insisting that when it comes to the way the party chooses its delegates, “The rules are the rules.”

This is the sort of gotcha moment where Russert’s research staff excels, and McAuliffe must have known it. Russert offered no more than a perfunctory nod in the face of McAuliffe’s feeble prayer—for a bolt from the blue—he offered the pathetic historical precedent of a onetime come-from-behind victory by (surprise!) the Buffalo Bills. Nice try but no cigar.

The other morning “issue” was Clinton’s maladroit remark May 8 about “white Americans.” She referred to an Associated Press poll “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” Russert confronted McAuliffe with the thunderous objections from her supporter, Representative Charlie Rangel, and from The New York Times’s Bob Herbert, in the Saturday paper, charging her with arousing white West Virginia voters to see her as their champion and, in effect, to vote their race prejudice. Curiously, thrust into a corner, a possibly ill-briefed McAuliffe scrounged around but scraped up nothing but boilerplate to toss back.

He could have offered a defense to the effect that Clinton garbled her words. It could have been argued—myself, I’d be inclined to argue—that Clinton meant to say two distinct and true things, and erred when she crammed them into a single sentence: first, that she does better than Obama so far among white working-class voters; and second, that working class Americans are “hard-working.” This benign interpretation would hold that she was merely pandering-as-usual, though even so, this sort of constituency-calculating is the sort of thing that a candidate best leave to journalists and academics. It’s her business to present herself as potential president of all the people, not a slicer and dicer of factions. But I can’t believe that she was impugning black voters for not being “hard-working.”

Well, it’s not Russert’s job to untangle a candidate’s garbled syntax. (On the Stephanopoulos show, Harry Reid stumbled around trying to cast a rosier light on her words and then flatly gave up.) If she gaffes it up so badly that her surrogates can’t put out the fire, then maybe she’s not just “TOAST,” as the New York Post screamed last week, but burnt toast.

- Columbia Journalism Review 08

Dropped by Bordines... AGAIN

So Nice

HAPPY HAPPY

And Many More....

Happy Birthday Jeff!!!

Jeff's Big Day! Loaded up the Car (jeep) and headed to... TROY!!




Dinner with the Birthday Boy.. Ruth's Chris, Ummmmm.....





Brownies as a appetizer, what a concept!





Actually, Everyone was happy.. except for the Cow.





DELICIOUS!!



The Waiter, Brian, was a case. Not sure why, but he had a penchant for Card Tricks and racial whispers during dinner, neither of which were very good. Can't say I have ever had a waiter do that as I ate, and in the state I was in, I had no idea what his true motives were.





And the evening ended on just the right note. We introduced Jeff to AbFab... All so Fitting!








So good to have you as a friend.. Love you Jeff!!

Eat Drink and be Merry

Headin out to the Big City!

The Empire Strikes Barack

The Choice is Obvious

Smiles all Around

Workin the Crowd at the Caribou

KEEP MOVING

Charity Case

ANOTHER Great Idea...

Thanks go out to My Jimmy for suggesting I move the audio player up higher in the blog. I of course love the music (hey, I picked it!), but sometimes it does get in the way, especially if you are trying to listen to a video clip. Having it more accessible makes it easier to turn down or pause (or off as the case may be).

He is my Beautiful Man with the mind... me, I'm just here for entertainment purposes, having lost my mind years ago.

Love You Jim!!

Turning Point

May 5, 2008 at 9:54 p.m.

The Mini's All Grown Up....

Deja Vu (all over again)

Catherine Crier

A 'Fighter' in the White House

Posted May 8, 2008 8:49 AM (EST)

---

If you've been listening to the pundits, the campaign staff and the candidate herself, Hillary's pugilistic display is a prime reason to back her. Surely we want this fighter in the White House. It doesn't matter that the election numbers are overwhelmingly against her. It doesn't matter that party leaders and political experts are screaming about the damage to the Democratic Party. Pay no heed to glaring reality; damn the torpedoes -- full speed ahead.

Who does this remind you of? Who else is a fighter in the face of overwhelming opposition? Who else listens to no one holding contradictory opinions? Is there another politician who ignores the numbers, the advice of experts and the popular consensus on critical issues?

Can you say 'George Bush'?

Yes, Hillary has displayed great tenacity. Yes, she is impressive in her drive and commitment to her campaign. But these characteristics are not inherently valuable. We have an outstanding example of this residing in the White House right now.

Stick In The Eye

Running on Empty

Gotta laugh to keep from Crying...

Doing ANYTHING to Win