Clinton electability cover - elitism or racism

For Democrats, Questions Over Race and Electability - Kudos, Times. You finally noticed, with some prompting from As Good As News and the Obama campaign, that winning Democratic primaries in key states has nothing to do with winning the general election in key states. In fact Obama polls better against McCain than Clinton does in some of the very swing states that Clinton is using to bolster her electability argument. You finally noticed that the real electability argument is about race - if Obama can't win in November its because the White, blue -collar vote that turns out for Hillary in the primaries will vote for McCain or stay home in November, rather than vote for a Black candidate with the same Senate voting record and views as Hillary.

What happens if Hillary wins big in Indiana and breaks even in North Carolina? Will the super delegates begin to migrate to Hillary, even though she would still be behind in elected delegates and vote totals, because they buy into the argument that America won't vote for a Black President?

Obama's remarks about bitter people clinging to guns and religion may end up hurting him badly. It's not that these remarks say anything critical about his capability as President. The problem for Obama is that the remarks give Clinton cover to argue that Obama can't get blue-collar Whites to the polls in November because he's an elitist snob, without having to openly argue that he's not electable because of his race.

Garbage to the Rescue - Carlos Castillo paused at the window, his apartment a flaming inferno at his back, his neighbors gathered on the sidewalk three stories below. "Hold on" shouted the neighbors, as they gathered bags of garbage left at curbside awaiting pick-up. The garbage became a mound below the window, Castillo jumped - and wound up alive, though seriously hurt. As Good As News loves NY, there's always garbage when you really need it.

Mayor Lends Ear as Verdict Near in Bell Shooting -Sadly, today's on-line Times does not include the page B-6 photo of Mayor Bloomberg looking scared and desperate to escape as the Reverend Al Sharpton grabs his hand and poses on the steps of City Hall. Reverend Al has positioned himself as both the defender of the Bell family and a keeper of the peace - who can still erupt in rage tomorrow if he doesn't hear the verdict he wants. The Mayor gave Reverend Al a voice and he shrewdly used it to capture a can't lose position, regardless of the verdict. The Mayor looks like he has begun to realize this. Maybe he's thinking he should have learned something from Rudy, who would have met with Sharpton only after hell had frozen over.

They Did What in Vegas?

DON'T FORGET MIKE'S NEXT SHOW - FEB. 4 AT CAROLINE'S
Caucusing With Flair, Las Vegas Goes to the Polls - Nevada switched from primaries to caucuses this year and held the caucuses right in the casinos. Most of the voters were confused. Many were stunned to learn that caucus was neither a new version of Keno nor an acrobatic procreational activity. Even to politically astute Nevadans, the caucus seemed like a primary. They were stuck in a room full of machines with levers, they just couldn't find the curtains. One dazed Republican wanted to vote for Thompson, Huckabee and Ron Paul, he kept pulling the lever waiting for three lemons to come up.

The Democrats were confused by Vegas too. Dennis Kucinich might seem a little nerdy (see Revenge of The Nerds), but his wife Elizabeth is a thirty year old red head with a tongue stud who looks good enough to be a show girl. Kucinich got only 5 votes, and no delegates, but enthusiastic Kucinich supporters kept stuffing campaign contributions into Elizabeth's bra.

Obama 2nd, but Takes 1 More Delegate - How can this be? Barack ran a close second but won an extra delegate (not the delegate's vote, the actual delegate) when a Hillary supporter on a losing streak threw herself into the pot in no limit Texas hold-em.

Sitting On Top Of the World

Surfers Defy Giant Waves Awakened By Storm - Major storms off the California coast produce some of the largest waves ever recorded in the North Pacific.

Clinton Escapes to Fight Another Day - Riding an emotional wave of her own tears, Hillary races to victory in New Hampshire.

Corzine Proposes Steep Rise in Tolls - NJ is drowning in debt, but Corzine will use higher tolls to fund cheaper bonds and stay out in front of debt service costs.

Kenya's Crisis Worsens as Opposition Cools to Talks - Disaster looms over the country as tribal violence threatens to break national bonds.

Young and Broke in the City, But Staying Afloat -Friends with New Orleans connections live on live on Westchester Creek and await their opportunity to surf the Bronx.

SF Golden Gaters 1- Santa Monica Reds 0

state funded universal health care- the graveyard of Hillary Clinton - 1st Lady - Beta Version; something corporate America, especially industrial America, suddenly wants as a competitive edge. S[s]tate provided health care for every uninsured adult is the subject of an experiment in San Francisco. Many, including As Good As News, thought this had to be addressed on a national basis. Any state or city that offered free health care would be overwhelmed. Every employer would cancel it's medical benefits on a local basis, leaving the unlucky leader in the move to state sponsored care to pick up the tab, as care for the uninsured quickly became care for everyone. San Francisco thinks it has an answer. The city's health care is not portable. You need to be an SF resident seeking treatment in SF, or you are not covered. So, if Cisco does not cover its San Francisco based employees in an effort to shift costs to the city, then the employees better stay healthy on their wine country tour. SF thinks this will deter the Cisco's of the world from dropping coverage. What if Cisco provides back-up or wrap-around care that applies only when the SF resident/employee is outside SF? We will see. In the meantime, that's what Federalism is all about. And in the newly created As Good As News Emma Goldman Cup (modeled after the Fed Ex Cup in golf - its got a point system that is way too complicated to explain but the best city will surely win) - San Francisco grabs the first round lead while the People's Republic of Santa Monica can only gasp in awe at another city grabbing the starring role in the national debate on universal health care.

Alan Greenspan is barely scratching the surface with his query on how W can be a Republican and still be Mr. Big spender, Big government. Teddy Roosevelt would lead the charge against W's last gasp wave of regulation designed to exploit Federally owned natural resources. Barry Goldwater would ask what happened to individual rights when W let Darth "anything goes" Cheney gut the constitution. AuH2o would be confused by the whole social conservative movement that Karl Rove turned into the basis for the Republican base- Barry might not favor gay marriage - but he would say it was none of the Federal government's business. Notice how Barry's picture refused instructions to go left at the top of today's post. Ike would be astonished by the Federal budget and budget deficit. This guy won two wars for less than W's annual budget shortfall and knew the military - industrial complex required a wary eye. Ike also passed the first modern civil rights bill and nominated Earl Warren as Chief Justice. W prints money to fund Iraq and gets his advice from the military-industrial complex. W's own father was a sophisticated internationalist and a realist who understood that the dream of democracy wouldn't justify sending American men and women to die in Iraq so that an Iraqi civil war could be initiated (with Saddam's overthrow) and then contained (through continued coalition presence) with no net long term accomplishment. W campaigned on including minorities in the Republican party and he has succeeded. The minority who believe public schools should teach evolution as science, the minority who believe in faith based snap decisions that ignore history and the facts, these minorities are solidly in the Republican camp.

Who hijacked the Republican Party? Newt Gingrich was driving when the bus made a hard left toward tax cuts uber alles with no concern for deficit spending. The religious right jumped on to sign the Contract for America, then Karl Rove called shotgun and navigated the 2000 campaign "won" on issues like gay marriage, school prayer and abortion, issues that had little to do with the President's duties. Darth Cheney saw a chance to revisit Iraq (he left some laundry in Baghdad in the 90's) and pulled the cord for an emergency stop just as the bus was on track for success in Afghanistan. Darth put W on his lap, grabbed the wheel, and took charge, steering the bus to a secret and very dark underground cell as John Yoo kept whispering everything was OK. Now a swarm of GOP candidates is struggling to rediscover where, and what, the party really is in time for the 2008 election.

Foul Ups

Today we revisit recent posts with new information and assess a plot twist for Big Love.

As Good As News was dead wrong in not picking Justine Henin to win the US Open singles (original post - Scouting Report - September 3). The problem may have started in the semis, where Venus Williams was holding her own in the second set, despite spraying some forehands long. Suddenly, Venus was asking the chair umpire for help from the trainer, which is allowed, but not until the next changeover. Bang, Venus loses three points and her service game in no time. By the time the trainer can get on court to take Venus's pulse the match is out of control. Henin wins in straight sets, shows up for the final rested and confident and handles Kuznetsova with ease. The Kuznetsova pick assumed that an exhausted Williams or Henin would struggle into the final, but Henin looked like she could have handled Kuznetsova even if Henin had been worn down by Venus.

As Good As News gets partial credit for spotting mixed doubles champ Victoria Azarenka as a talent to watch. Perhaps we can still redeem ourselves completely if we get lucky with the courageous pick of Roger Federer as men's singles champ.

The Golden Gate Bridge authority should be collecting royalties from Ghirardelli Chocolates( original post - Golden Gate Could be Golden - August 26). Take a look at the ad on the back cover of the Times Magazine. Great photo of the bridge at night, how about a small contribution to keep that bridge beautiful, not to mention safe.

A Fugitive Political Fund Raiser Leaves A Shadowy Money Trail - Mystery campaign contributor Norman Hsu may not be so rich, he filed for bankruptcy in Hong Kong in 1998. He is in custody. Bits and pieces of information are emerging. Hsu was clearly using a shell company to shuffle money around, in one month in 2003 taking $600,000 from various sources, including $200,000 from two individuals, and then transferring $600,000 to other individuals who contributed money to the Clinton campaigns through Hsu. This looks like a mechanism to help the sources for these funds circumvent limits on campaign contributions. Hsu's lawyer denies "Hsu provided money for others to make contributions", but the statement was narrowly worded. Reimbursing for prior contributions is equally illegal, and defense counsel's statement includes only Hsu, not his companies.

A $100,000 political contributor who's using a shell game to avoid detection usually wants something in return, access at the very least. Someone was almost certainly paying for the full attention of Senator Clinton, although if everything was presented through Hsu and his straw man donors Hillary may well not have known about the shenanigans to avoid contribution limits. How Hsu evaded campaign finance laws will be interesting - but, because she is not an idiot, we will find Hillary did not know anything about violations of campaign finance law. Watch for a deeper issue - who were the fat cats that funded the contributions Hsu managed? What issues mattered to these fat cats? What positions did Hillary take on these issues and how active was she? In other words, what did Hsu's backers get for their money.

Boys Cast Out By Polygamists Find New Help - The arithmetic of polygamy creates a problem. If a man is supposed to have four wives, and if the birthrate is 50/50 male/female, then what do the three males who are shut out of the marriage market do? Not something we think about every day in New Jersey, but the numbers don't lie - it's a serious problem. In the fundamentalist LDS sect run by Warren S. Jeffs the unlucky extra males are selected, ejected and shunned as teens, usually on the basis of a pretext that makes the kids believe they are doomed to eternal damnation. Ejection also creates some immediate problems, like loss of family, food, clothing and shelter. The families, even many of the male teen victims, remain true believers in Mr. Jeffs' vision. To the non-believer the power of faith and 24/7/365 conditioning is amazing. With this kind of hold on his sect, it's surprising Jeff's doesn't turn the extra males into a militia of suicide bombers. No wife for you in this life, but if you take out an IRS agent or a Federal Marshall you'll find forty virgins when you get to heaven. Fortunately Mr. Jeffs is about to stand trial on charges of sexual exploitation, but watch for the bachelor militia angle in the season finale of Big Love.

Finally, even the Times does not understand it's own general approach to headline capitalization. The notion that any rule applies seems to be a massive oversimplification perpetrated by the naive here at As Good As News. In the polygamy story headline, "By" is capitalized in the hard copy, but not on line. Since a preposition should not be capitalized in the "rule" As Good As News derived by observation, this may be a simple correction. Maybe the e-crew took the opportunity to fix a mistake that slipped by the hard copy gang working on deadline. I think it's actually a sinister plot to drive me nuts.

With the Cinnamon Girl

Scouting -Yawn -Report - Posting late and bleary today as the grind of watching late night tennis is catching up with me. This would be really horrible if As Good As News was a real job. As the US Open reaches the singles semis As Good As News stands by its early predictions. Venus is still outplaying all women, but a rested Svetlana Kuznetsova will emerge from the unsung lower half of the draw to grab the title from the Henin-Williams survivor. Federer remains king, unless the succession of late, late night starts confuses him. Notice how he's starting to look grumpy in the photo from this morning's practice? Maybe he will show up for a Letterman appearance instead of the final, there is no other way this guy will lose. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

Before we move to the headlines - a first from As Good As News, a shameless plug- buy the July 2007 issue of the Comstock Review (a poetry journal) which includes work from Julie Hassett. I have been lucky enough to hear some of her poems. If you were ever married, raised a teenager, lived through the death of a loved one then you will be moved, cry, laugh out loud. $9 per copy, order from:

Peggy Sperber Flanders
Associate Managing Editor
The Comstock Review
4956 St. John Drive
Syracuse, NY 13215
http://www.comstockreview.org/

Clinton Donor Fails to Appear In Court Again - OK, Times headliners- what are your mysterious rules of capitalization. As Good As News thought the riddle was solved. Capitalize the initial letter of the first word in every headline and the initial letter of every other word except for articles, prepositions and conjunctions. This approach explained every headline I noticed for a few weeks, but the pesky "I" in "In" is now driving me nuts. What possible rule, consistently applied, would capitalize "In" but not "to" in the Clinton Donor headline?

By the way, where are Hsu, Norman? The Chinese garment industry multi-millionaire, peerless Democratic fund raiser, FOB and FOHillary too, and trustee of the New School is on the lam again. Why did he come back to the US from the safety of China after skipping out on his initial conviction? How did he remain unnoticed through years of fame following his return? Why didn't someone put cuffs on him once they realized his identity a few weeks ago? This guy's story is more confusing than the capitalization in his headline.

What Do Young Jobseekers Want (Something Other Than the Job) - For over 65% of young job seekers it's more important to be in the right location than the best possible job. The right location is safe, clean and green - and conducive to a lifestyle the respondent considers desirable. A couple of the top ten cities are places As Good As News would visit only on business, and since we are retired that will not be happening soon, but in general we get the idea. Based on informal observation of my immediate family at least 50% of college students seem to be emphasizing location over job description at this time. The story is oblivious to a critical concern - the Neil Young factor. Especially for grad students and post collegiate workers, taking a job based on the location of your significant other has to be the number one priority for many job seekers. As Good As News is coming to you from the NY area because, today and thirty years ago, I want to live with the cinnamon girl, so I can be happy for the rest of my life.

Department of Just Right - The NY Times story is a rave review of the A.P.C. clothing line with store in SoHo. Post here is about the story title. As Good As News loves the Department of Just Right, sounds like it should be a hip boutique for witches and warlocks in Diagon Alley or maybe the cabinet ministry in charge of law enforecement in Monaco .

Hillary NOT on Craigslist

City Says It's Prepared as Taxi Strike Begins - This is old news to As Good As News - see yesterday's post for details on emergency unicycle distribution points. Cabbies strike because they don't want to take credit cards. Leaders say this will cut into income? Every other merchant in the world seems to be able to handle credit cards, what's wrong cabbies. Wasn't this cost part of the deal you made to get the last big fare increase through the TLC? What's the big deal here? Tips won't be rounded up? Cabbies will have to report more income to the IRS and pay taxes like the rest of us? As Good As News not prepared to join striking cabbies in chorus of Joe Hill over the credit card issue. Leaders also say that mandatory GPS units will turn the cabs into sweatboxes - duh - dont't many cabs already have GPS units? Aren't all the NYC cabs supposed to have AC? What is this strike really about? Union leadership trying to establish credibility with rank and file, or maybe just get a picture in the paper - well, no photo here Ms Desai.

In Turmoil of '68, Clinton Found a New Voice - So, why do so many people hate Hillary so much? It seems like she was a very nice young woman in college, active but working within the system. In fact, Hillary was so active that just reading this article will make me feel like I was a completer slacker in college for at least the next three days. She never used drugs (so much simpler than Bill's story), she was caught up in politics, not fashion. The story paints a positive picture of a thinking, caring dynamo, slides through some quotes that don't really make sense and rationalizes Hillary's effective work as a young Republican intern even after she became a liberal Democrat. But if the story is emphasizing the positive, why is the page 1 photo placed directly, and confusingly, above a headline about prostitutes using Craigslist? Once again, the NY Times seems to have some closet conservatives conspiring in composition.