O.K. someone's got to address this...it's like the big, pink, drugged-up elephant standing in the middle of the room.

I plan on not being so nice to Dear Cindy Where's-My-Prescription-Drug-Pad McCain, so if you don't have the stomach for it...now's your chance to click on another diary.  Go ahead, don't torture yourself, you know you can't handle a little Cindy McCain smackdown...it's o.k. with me, I still luvs ya!

If you're game and don't belly-ache over some catty commentary...then meet me on the dark side.

Yesterday Laura Bush was at the White House giving a press conference on the tragedy in Myanmar. Everything appears on the level until the very end when the focus shifts to the details of Jenna's upcoming wedding plans.

The first lady appears to totally lose focus on the crisis at hand and is all smiles about the blooming flowers and limestone etc. and to be fair its also the fault of the press for allowing this highly insensitive shift to occur.

The question is - is this something similar to when she said "nobody suffers from the war more than we do (she and her husband)" and a window into the psyche of the Bush's? Or is this just a mental lapse? Was it the fault of the Press?

Don't get me wrong, I love Barack, and he's great, but honestly, the best thing about Barack is Michelle.

Now some people may, and probably will disagree with me, but the more I see of Michelle, the more awesome I think she is. She's a strong woman, but she's not afraid to stand by her husband. She has her own career, but still finds time to support Barack and do a hell of a good job raising her daughters. She is truly the best example of what America could be if we decided to finally pay attention to our terrible education system and reinvest in communities and children who are not of a great economic advantage.

She's truly amazing.

There has been much ado about Michelle Obama's college thesis in which she described feeling like an outsider at Princeton -- a black person first, a student second. I understand how she could have felt that way, especially twenty five years ago. After reading a poignant article about Michelle Obama's first college roommate, I have new insight into the environment that made her feel like a second class student during her college years.

More after the fold...

What's up with Hillary lately?  Is she still missing sleep?  Here's another misstatement.  Not as bad as Bosnia but you think that she would have learned a lesson.  If this is how she is going to govern if elected - we are in deep trouble  

Hillary claimed that she misspoke about Bosnia but then said that she was the First First Lady to fly into a combat zone.  Wrong again!

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton explained how she "misspoke" about a story she's told several times over the past four months, that of avoiding sniper fire on a 1996 trip to Bosnia. (I already mentioned how reporters were mocking the Sinbad story back in Iowa.)

But while discussing the issue at a Pennsylvania news conference, Clinton added another inaccuracy to the Bosnia story.

From today's Washington Post:

   Questioned about this speech yesterday while campaigning in Pennsylvania, Clinton said that she remembered being told by the military and the Secret Service that "we were going into a war zone," adding: "I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt.

It was groundhog day at Tuzla Airbase. Three months into our operations at the MND North headquarters and every minute of everyday was the same. We worked half-day schedules, yeah that's right, 12 hour shifts with no days off. There were two hundred of us there playing solitaire and Doom on our networked computers. The CG was an asshole and banging some chick (alleged by none other than the Sergeant Major of the Army who was going down for banging some other chick not his wife). That was the proximate cause of our CG's "early retirement." But I digress.

More below the fold

It was a gloomy Thursday morning in Washington, and I was exhausted.  The sun was beginning to rise over the Capitol, and I was just getting into bed in the White House after returning from a daring combat mission smuggling suitcase nukes out of Chechnya.  Bill was snoring.

I took off my fatigues and cleaned the camouflage makeup off my face.  My muscles ached.  I hadn’t slept since Thursday, when I woke up in a dank sweaty fallout shelter in Kosovo next to guitarist Dan Fogelberg and prop comic Carrot Top.

She [HRC] says she's been to eighty countries on trips.  My travel agent has been to one hundred fifty countries on trips.  That doesn't make him qualified to be President.

Look, if John Kennedy - who was running for President in 1960 when Eisenhower couldn't run again - if he had been running not against Nixon, but against Mamie Eisenhower, would someone say that Mamie Eisenhower is better prepared to be President than John Kennedy?  I mean, being the wife of a President doesn't make you ready to be President.

-Zbigniew Brzezinski, 3/20/2008, on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Cross Posted here (http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/19/192345/914 ) at MyDD.com.  The difference of replies between this site and that site are always astonishing.

No matter how many claims of being "fully vetted," no matter how much you say that you are transparent, in the end it only matters until it doesn't.  It no longer matters how much Hillary says she has been vetted.  It no longer matters how often her surrogates say that she is a very open person who has undergone decades of scrutiny.  It no longer matters how many years of tax returns are available for the public.

It no longer matters because she is no longer "fully vetted."

Remember the racism flap after Bill Clinton said Obama's anti-war stance was a fairytale? (I'm still trying to figure out when "fairytale" became a racist term.) How about when Geraldine Ferraro said Obama was lucky to be black?

With a woman and a black man the only Democratic candidates left in the presidential race, accusations of race and gender baiting are unavoidable. Not every accusation makes sense. But please, as Obama supporters, don't fool yourselves that your shit doesn't stink.

I'm a solid Obama supporter, and I have been appalled at some of the tactics of the Clinton campaign in recent weeks. However, I'm also finding myself uncomfortable at some of the rhetoric coming from my side of the conflict these days.

By now, we all know how over-hyped are Hillary claims about her foreign policy experience – including her claims that she negotiated peace treaties and opened borders.

But there’s also hype in her claims about domestic policy.  Take, for instance, the claim on Hillary Clinton's web site that

As First Lady, she helped pass the Family and Medical Leave Act

Now, that sounds like she worked hard to get the FMLA put into law, that her efforts really made a difference.  However, this is patently untrue.  

If you don’t read this whole post, all you need to know is that Bill Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993 and the FMLA was signed just sixteen days later, on February 5, 1993.

Just on that basis it doesn’t look like the First Lady had to do much of anything to get it done.  But read on for the full chronology which reveals the emptiness of Hillary's Clinton's attempt to get credit for  this legislation.

Many people have questioned the remarks made by Michelle Obama regarding the America that she is (or isn't) proud of. Try to keep things in perspective, there are at least TWO Americas, one of them is our 52% anti-democratic majority (Republican base and Indies) in America. This group includes people who will NEVER see themselves with a black president.

    With the Iowa caucuses rapidly approaching the candidates are pressing their main messages with renewed intensity. The key to campaigning appears to be to "stay on message" regardless of the chaos around you. I am not sure how substantive it is to have a candidate repeat the same slogan over and over, to our political discourse, but this seems to be the conventional wisdom. The daily mantra for Hillary Clinton is "strength and experience". The ex-First Lady cites her experience as a major difference between her and her opponents and one worthy of giving her the nomination. Something about her being able to "hit the ground" running, to where we aren’t quite sure. The experience that Ms. Clinton is touting is not just her experience as a junior Senator from New York, given that her closest two rivals also share that experience, no it is her experience in the White House as First Lady.

I know this isn't really a diary, but I have to say it.

   It seems like most of my comments these days are made towards passionate Clinton supporters trying to tone down some of their more ridiculous assertions. The Clintonites are certainly the vocal minority on Dailykos, yet they fight on with a passionate belief that only Hillary Clinton can fight the GOP, only Hillary Clinton has beaten back Republican attacks.  This diary will ask a series of questions to the Clintonites on this site (I've been accused of being a Limbaugh supporter for using the term Clintonista, so I've substituted Clintonite, which apparently doesn't bother anyone). I would appreciate HONEST, OPEN discussion of my questions. I am not here to attack Clinton supporters. I'm here to get answers from them on questions that continue to bother me as the first elections near. B/c the logic I've heard so far, is pure nonsense!!

When: January 20, 2009

Duties: Protect and Defend the United States and make sure that    
                the laws are faithfully executed and be the Commander
                and Chief of our Military forces.

Qual Req’d: Several years of Foreign and Domestic policy experience
                   OR experience being First Lady (arranging State parties,
                   shaking hands with dignitaries, smiling when necessary,
                   attend official ceremonies and functions of state, participate
                   in humanitarian and charitable work).

A wise person once asked me, "What do you suppose motivated people to work before there was money?" I looked blankly at this individual and couldn't think of a thing. Her answer was: "Across time, what has motivated humans is a desire to improve living conditions and beautify the environment." That was simple enough. And to this day, I use these two measurements when assessing the value of people’s actions. For example, when I think of Princess Dianna, Mother Theresa, and now Lady Bird Johnson, I look past the media glitz and politics involved to see their successes in a different light. All of these women—Dianna, Theresa and Lady Bird—were motivated during their lifetimes by something more than greed and the pursuit of money. Each, in her own way, worked to improve the conditions around them and beautify the world. Living in Austin, Texas, I can see evidence of Lady Bird's actions to improve and beautify at every turn.

The recent comments by First Lady Laura Bush reveal a woman who is blindly loyal to her husband. She won't let the deaths of nearly 3,000 American troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi citizens interfere with George's beauty sleep.

Oh, to be married to a sociopath.