dajafi wrote:Honest question:

Is this great satire, or horrible agit-prop?

(I grasp in theory that there's a third option. But I really, really don't want to entertain the notion that this dimwit is serious.)

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:Honest question:

Is this great satire, or horrible agit-prop?

(I grasp in theory that there's a third option. But I really, really don't want to entertain the notion that this dimwit is serious.)

Any idiot can have a blog.

dajafi wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:Honest question:

Is this great satire, or horrible agit-prop?

(I grasp in theory that there's a third option. But I really, really don't want to entertain the notion that this dimwit is serious.)

Any idiot can have a blog.

Oh, tell me about it. I've got two, if you count TGP. But isn't the Huffington Post supposed to be, y'know, serious?

Stephen Schlesinger is the former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York City (1997-2006). Mr. Schlesinger received his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Harvard Law School. In the early 1970s, he edited and published The New Democrat Magazine. Thereafter he spent four years as a staff writer at Time Magazine. For twelve years, he served as Governor Mario Cuomo’s speechwriter and foreign policy advisor. In the mid 1990s, he worked at the United Nations at Habitat, the agency dealing with global cities. He is coeditor of Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published by Penguin in 2007. He is also the author of three books, including Act of Creation: The Founding of The United Nations which won the 2004 Harry S. Truman Book Award; Bitter Fruit: The Story of the U.S. Coup in Guatemala (with Stephen Kinzer), which was listed as a New York Times "Notable" book for 1982 and has sold over 100,000 copies; and The New Reformers. He is a specialist on the foreign policy of the Clinton and Bush Administrations. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers...

dajafi wrote:His bio:

Stephen Schlesinger is the former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York City (1997-2006). Mr. Schlesinger received his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Harvard Law School. In the early 1970s, he edited and published The New Democrat Magazine. Thereafter he spent four years as a staff writer at Time Magazine. For twelve years, he served as Governor Mario Cuomo’s speechwriter and foreign policy advisor. In the mid 1990s, he worked at the United Nations at Habitat, the agency dealing with global cities. He is coeditor of Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published by Penguin in 2007. He is also the author of three books, including Act of Creation: The Founding of The United Nations which won the 2004 Harry S. Truman Book Award; Bitter Fruit: The Story of the U.S. Coup in Guatemala (with Stephen Kinzer), which was listed as a New York Times "Notable" book for 1982 and has sold over 100,000 copies; and The New Reformers. He is a specialist on the foreign policy of the Clinton and Bush Administrations. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers...

This makes me feel somewhat better about myself; Schlesinger's had a great career, and I haven't done squat with my lame life... yet he's apparently an utter moron, based on his Clinton/Obama post. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

jerseyhoya wrote:Hillary Clinton's campaign isn't always the fine tuned machine I think it is:

Kindergarten?

When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. "They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."

That is, the Clintonites--and the campaign--may be overreacting. Will Democratic voters really buy the Clinton argument that Obama is an inauthentic and a dissembling scoundrel? Until the caucus-goers of Iowa speak, there is no way to know if Clinton's DEFCON-1 assault on Obama will succeed or backfire. But the Clinton attacks do say something about Hillary Clinton. She's adopting a whatever-it-takes strategy, mixing legitimate criticisms with truth-stretching blasts. And her campaign aides have adopted a we-must-destroy-him mindset that they justify by viewing Obama as a political lowlife.
...
Clinton is playing with fire. In explaining to reporters that she will be tougher on Obama, she said, "Now the fun part starts." That was tasteless. It's a remark that certainly can--and will be--used against her. And some Democratic voters might worry that the comment reveals too much desire for (political) blood.

dajafi wrote:More charm from the Clintons:

When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it. And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. "They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."

That is, the Clintonites--and the campaign--may be overreacting. Will Democratic voters really buy the Clinton argument that Obama is an inauthentic and a dissembling scoundrel? Until the caucus-goers of Iowa speak, there is no way to know if Clinton's DEFCON-1 assault on Obama will succeed or backfire. But the Clinton attacks do say something about Hillary Clinton. She's adopting a whatever-it-takes strategy, mixing legitimate criticisms with truth-stretching blasts. And her campaign aides have adopted a we-must-destroy-him mindset that they justify by viewing Obama as a political lowlife.
...
Clinton is playing with fire. In explaining to reporters that she will be tougher on Obama, she said, "Now the fun part starts." That was tasteless. It's a remark that certainly can--and will be--used against her. And some Democratic voters might worry that the comment reveals too much desire for (political) blood.

Emphasis mine.

pacino wrote:you know jeff, i really gotta say that all this anti-clinton stuff is making it more nad more likely that a republican is in the white house

TenuredVulture wrote:It looks like Huckabee supporters are going to have to find somewhere other than Redstate to go.

dajafi wrote:If the Dem nominee is anyone but Clinton, he will have a much clearer shot to define the race along those lines than she will. The Clintons are larger-than-life, and they're the most prominent embodiment of the Baby Boomers' endless self-absorption. If she's the candidate, the race will be about her--just as the 2004 race, somehow, became about John Kerry's questionable character rather than George W. Bush's awful presidency.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
...
Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.
...
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.