The William Holmes Blog

By Brent Budowsky
May 7, 2008

Editor’s Note:
Often it’s hard to assess genuine turning points. Sometimes what looks
important one day fades into irrelevance a week later; other times,
history-changing events occur and are missed in the rush of daily
events.

In this guest essay, former
congressional staffer Brent Budowsky – a backer of Barack Obama –
argues that the May 6 results marked a crushing defeat for a
long-running era of political negativity and manipulation:

The old politics died on May 6, 2008 as the predictable and inevitable happened and the
voters said no to business as usual.

The voters said no to the most phony and
fraudulent proposal in memory for a gas tax cut that would never
happen, that would profit the oil companies that Senator Clinton
falsely said she was fighting with it, that would do nothing for the
people she falsely claimed she was helping with it.

The most reprehensible and shameful aspect of this gas tax fraud was
that it was the cheap exploitation of people who are hurting, and
fearful. There is nothing lower in politics than exploiting people who
are hurting, trying to deceive them. The voters said no.

The voters said no to the politics embodied by the shameful ABC debate of Gibson and
Stephanopoulos that was nothing more than an oppo research festival.

Voters said no to the Tim Russert “Meet
the Press” that insulted them last Sunday, that wasted time with more
than a dozen questions about Jeremiah Wright rather than a serious
discussion of national issues. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008.”]

The voters said no to the insider pundits
who pontificated about what a brilliant and clever tactic the gas tax
fraud was, about how Hillary is on a huge roll and Barack looked broken
and on his heels only hours before he won a crushing and devastating
victory.

Soon, as I predicted some time ago, Hillary will
withdraw and the superdelegates surge will reach a juggernaut pace that
has already begun.

Soon, there will be new talk about 2 million Obama donors that will
rise to 3 million. There will be talk of a historic voter registration
program that has already been approved and will exponentially
strengthen democracy and build even more voter turnout, voter
excitement and voter enthusiasm.

Soon, there will be talk about a Democratic landslide throughout the
Congress as Democrats come together and coordination begins between the
presidential and the congressional Democrats.

Soon, there will be talk about the outpouring of enthusiasm around the
world from good people everywhere ready to begin a new day of American
world leadership based on the great role we have played in the past.

It was the night they drove old Dixie down, the night the old politics
ended, the night a great new era in American politics truly began.

The battle now begins in earnest. On Tuesday, May 6, 2008 the Rubicon was crossed.

Brent Budowsky was an aide to
former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Bill Alexander, then the chief deputy
whip of the House. A contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service,
he can be read on The Hill Pundits Blog and reached at<!– var prefix = ‘ma’ + ‘il’ + ‘to’; var path = ‘hr’ + ‘ef’ + ‘=’; var addy96332 = ‘brentbbi’ + ‘@’; addy96332 = addy96332 + ‘webtv’ + ‘.’ + ‘net’; var addy_text96332 = ‘brentbbi’ + ‘@’ + ‘webtv’ + ‘.’ + ‘net’; document.write( ‘‘ ); document.write( addy_text96332 ); document.write( ” ); //–>
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brentbbi@webtv.net.

I wanted to remind everyone that It’s the End of the World as We know it is worth checking out on youtube. Check out all the great commentary from the stimulator here

This is pretty cool. This makes a pointed list of many of the MANY McCain flip-flops and policy choices that prove…beyond a shadow of a doubt…He is 4 more years of Bush

“Now, South Carolina Senator and John McCain water carrier Lindsey Graham has issued a challenge of his own. Claiming on CNN McCain “is his own guy,” Graham then threw down the gauntlet, “Good luck making him George Bush.”

Challenge accepted.

As it turns out, John McCain in his eternal quest for the Republican presidential nomination has adopted virtually the entire Bush agenda. In so doing, the supposed “maverick” McCain
has repeatedly reversed long-held positions, compromised core
principles and swallowed his pride in order to curry favor with both
the leading lights of the conservative movement and right-wing
Republican primary voters. No doubt, Americans are right to view a John
McCain victory in November as a third term for George W. Bush.”

Permanent American presence in Iraq.

Making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Broken promises on the deficit.

Health care redux.

Opposed the expansion of S-CHIP.

Social Security privatization.

Conservative Supreme Court Justices.

Overturning Roe v. Wade

Take the Lindsey Graham’s McCain challenge (”Good luck making him George Bush”) today.

Six
weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert
offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar
with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Read it here

Move On has some 30 second ads for Obama. Some of them are quite good. Go vote on your favorite.

Published on TheHill.com on March 25, 2008.

The USA Today/Gallup survey clearly explains why Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton (D-N.Y.) is losing. Asked whether the candidates were “honest
and trustworthy,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won with 67 percent, with
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) right behind him at 63. Hillary scored only
44 percent, the lowest rating for any candidate for any attribute in
the poll.

Hillary simply cannot tell the truth. Here’s her scorecard:

Admitted Lies

• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)
• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was
wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)
• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)
• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the
futures market. (It didn’t cover the market back then.)

Whoppers She Won’t Confess To

• She didn’t know about the FALN pardons.
• She didn’t know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.
• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.
• She didn’t know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.
• She didn’t know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.
• She opposed NAFTA at the time.
• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.
• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.
• She played a role in the ’90s economic recovery.
• The billing records showed up on their own.
• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.
• She was always a Yankees fan.
• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they
voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House
about the pardons).
• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).

With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?

Why has McCain jumped out to a nine-point lead over Obama and a
seven-point lead over Hillary in the latest Rasmussen poll? OK, Obama
has had the Rev. Wright mess on his hands. And Hillary has come in for
her share of negatives, like the Richardson endorsement of Obama and
the denouement of her latest lie — that she endured sniper fire during
a trip to Bosnia. But why has McCain gained so much in so short a
period of time? Most polls had the general election tied two weeks ago.

McCain’s virtues require a contrast in order to stand out. His
strength, integrity, solidity and dependability all are essentially
passive virtues, which shine only by contrast with others. Now that
Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, less
honest, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks that
much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while the Democrats rip one
another apart.

It took Nixon for us to appreciate Jimmy Carter’s simple honesty. It
took Clinton and Monica for us to value George W. Bush’s personal
character. And it takes the unseemly battle among the Democrats for us
to give John McCain his due.

When Obama faces McCain in the general election (not if but when)
the legacy of the Wright scandal will not be to question Obama’s
patriotism or love of America. It will be to ask if he has the right
stuff (pardon the pun).

The largest gap between McCain and Obama in the most recent USA
Today/Gallup Poll was on the trait of leadership. Asked if each man was
a “strong, decisive leader,” 69 percent felt that the description fit
McCain while only 56 percent thought it would apply to Obama. (61
percent said it of Hillary.) Obama has looked weak handling the Rev.
Wright controversy. His labored explanation of why he attacks the sin
but loves the sinner comes across as elegant but, at the same time,
feeble. Obama’s reluctance to trade punches with his opponents makes us
wonder if he could trade them with bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. We have no
doubt that McCain would gladly come to blows and would represent us
well, but about Obama we are not so sure.

Serial interrupter and McCain groupie, Joe Scarborough ran to the bathroom to cry for his Saint McCain at the end of MSNBC’s “Race to the White House” today. If you watch the video you’ll see that the exchange, in which Joe claim’s he ISN’T trying to be condescending…when he clearly is doing just that…ends without him on the show.

Why?

Jeremy Gaines tells the Huffington Post:

“Joe didn’t walk off. He chose not to participate in the final couple of minutes of the discussion because he felt the conversation didn’t fit his role as a political analyst.”

(Thanks Crooks and Liars.com for this little update)

Watch video here

Rachel Maddow has got the nuts. You gotta lover her.

Did Hillary Clinton Risk the Life of an 8 Year Old For a Photo-Op?

No.  Hillary Clinton did not risk the life of an 8 year old for a photo opportunity in Bosnia in 1996.  She also didn’t risk the life of her only daughter by making her stand under withering sniper fire on the tarmac in Tuzla so 12 years later she could burnish her foreign policy credentials by claiming her plane landed amid gunfire and that she had to scamper across the tarmac to safety.

What Hillary Clinton DID do, 12 years later, was fabricate a series of events that never occurred.

Read it for yourself