I have it on good authority from the Obama campaign (my cousin's running a lot of his NH/Iowa outreach) that more damaging information is coming out about Hillary Clinton's past, specifically with regards to dogfighting in Arkansas.  The Obama camp was originally going to sit on the information, especially due to the age of the accusation, but the newly released "kindergarten essays" and other low blows from the Clinton camp has made Obama's group have to go back on the offensive.

First, a reminder of what dogfighting actually entails, courtesy of the Michigan State University College of Law:

Yes, it's true.  

In a little over a month, I have decided to walk into my polling place (a church, believe it or not) and pull a lever (actually, complete an incomplete arrow with a golf pencil) for Dr. Ron Paul for the Republican nomination for President.

"But Dale," you may cringe, especially my longtime readers, "what happened to your support for Obama?"

I posted this as an off-the-cuff comment in a YouTube open thread last night, based on my impressions of the candidates' debate performances, and it received enough kind kudos that I thought I'd expand it to a full diary entry.  

Enjoy!  :)

First of all, let me state unequivocally that I'm all for fresh faces, and I think some of our nation's best leaders haven't always had 30 years of politics under their belt.  But doesn't it bother anyone that the frontrunners, on both sides of the race, seem to be the candidates with the least amount of actual experience as an elected representative?  

Let's look at who's running:

Three months ago, I did a popular poll by request that tried to determine what percentage of Kos readers wouldn't actually vote for Hillary Clinton for President if she were to get the nomination of our party. Now, obviously, these aren't scientific polls, and so feel free to insert any applicable grains of salt here.  But I don't think they're worthless exercises either, and it's been a while since I've seen one.  At the very least, it'd be interesting to see if Hillary Clinton's support or opposition has increased since August.

First of all, congrats to Markos for scoring the tasty Newsweek opinion gig!

His announcement, though, intriguingly offers this little nugget:

But Newsweek is "balancing" me out with someone that should make heads on our side explode. Announcement on that name is still a couple of days off.

The way this is worded, I'm guessing Markos knows who his Republican counterpart will be, but isn't allowed to say.  (I'm also guessing that Kos wouldn't agree until he knew who the other side would be, as well, to assure he was pitted against someone of equal stature.)

So.... who?

A few years ago, homemade political commercials were relatively rare, still requiring a fairly significant investment in equipment, a high-bandwidth video host, etc.  Nowadays, not only are such commercials nearly ubiquitous on sites such as YouTube, they're often even encouraged by the candidates themselves.  Even my Michigan-based "Stop Devos" YouTube commercials got me thousands of views and hundreds of emails last year, and I didn't even promote them -- just dropped them on YouTube and waited for people to find them.  

The exciting thing is that anyone with a voice can share their thoughts, and with the internet video being "free", there's less a concern with who's paying for what, who approves what, etc.  (Whether this will end up being more problematic than its worth is debatable, but at least right now it seems a promising development for free speech.)

For example:

In the most recent (daily) "Gore's going to come in and save us at the last minute" diary, many posters yet again insisted that Gore will announce "when" he wins the Nobel Prize.  Everyone here tends to treat this possibility as a done deal.  

First of all, the idea that he's waiting to announce until the Nobel Prize is awarded is kind of offensive.  Are Gore supporters implying that his running for office is dependent on the outcome of the Prize?  What does one have to do with the other?  Is the implication that if he started campaigning now, and then didn't win the Nobel Prize, he'd have to drop out in shame?  How is that leadership?  I just don't get the logic.  

Second of all, there are nearly two hundred Nobel Prize nominees for 2007.  Anyone can be a nominee.  Everyone from Muhammad Ali to Rush Limbaugh is a nominee this year.  For all we know, Markos himself is a nominee.  Nominations are only secret if the nominator doesn't issue a press release.

Watching Anderson Cooper (as usual) tonight, listening to the generals and troops on the field, and I realized something rather striking.

I support the war in Iraq.

It sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?  I've been opposed to the invasion since the beginning, and have written about my feelings here and elsewhere.  And yet.

I have a friend who is an DCSA on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Mediterranean Sea. (DCSA: Double-Classified Secret Agent -- she's responsible for the most secretive super-secret missions the Bush administration doesn't want you to know about.) She told me we are going to attack Monaco. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking and Eucharist-Poisioning plans are finished. That means that all the Monocan targets have been chosen, prioritized, cross-referenced, triple-blended, triple-filtered, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers, atomic rayguns, photon torpedos, and so forth.

I asked her why she is telling me this.

Her answer was really amazing.  One might say unbelievably so.

Quick diary here.

It seems like whenever someone, for whatever reason, expresses the opinion that "if Hillary gets the nomination, I'm not voting for her in the general", a hundred Kossacks leap out of the woodwork to say things like "then you support a Republican Presidency" or "President Romney thanks you".  

But ya know what?  No.  It's not the same thing.  

In an open thread, I wondered aloud if a significant percentage of progressives really wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the election if she got our party's nomination, as some had claimed/threatened.  Encouraged by others in the thread, I created the following poll, with these results:

The percentages stayed consistent throughout the voting process.  While 780 is still a relatively small number compared to total regular site visitors, it's certainly high enough a sample (though obviously self-selected) to conceivably reflect the views of the community with a reasonable margin of error.  (Whether self-selection matters in this case has to do with factors such as, say, if the diary title "Would you vote for Hillary in 2008?" encourages greater or fewer respondents predisposed to one position or another.)

I was trying to see if someone else had polled on this topic lately, especially with the flurry of new articles involving certainly liberals and progressives vowing not to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008, if she gets the nomination.  As I commented in the open thread, it seems a lot of people are in this camp -- but I wondered if it's just the same handful of vocal individuals, or if it genuinely reflects the position of a significant percentage of our members.

Seriously.  It's just, like, so obvious, isn't it?

Give me... a break.

Are we even serious?

No.

Alright then.

More after the jump.

Yes, I admit to sharing in a little giddy, selfish glee whenever I see another article comparing the Democratic and Republican candidate fundraising efforts.  The fact that the top-tier on their side can barely compete with the mid-to-lower-tiers on our side is subjectively awesome.  Conservatives are completely demoralized, and keeping their mouths and wallets largely shut.  There's even a palpable sense not only of impending defeat, but of quiet shame, as if they've kinda granted that they f**ked up, and Democrats probably deserve to win this next one.

In other words, Bush has become the Ryugyong Hotel of the Republican Party.  After so much arrogant build-up, he's now just an empty, embarassing shell, oppressively shadowing the very people he was elected to inspire.  Some of my strongest conservative friends just kinda sigh and nod these days when Bush comes up in conversation, unwilling to fight to defend even the principles of the President they still fervently support.  I feel kinda sorry for them.  Almost.  :)

But here's what worries me.

I hate, hate, hate being in a position to "defend" Ann Coulter under any circumstances, especially against someone I respect and admire as much as Elizabeth Edwards.  

But after watching the actual clip of Ann Coulter, I am forced to conclude that Edwards' description of her comment is simply not true.  It's just not.  I wish it was.  I'd love another reason to hate her.  Some of the things she said about Edwards' deceased son Wade really were inexcusible.  But she did not "wish that John had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."  There is simply no way you can watch the video and conclude that she did.  

Count me among those who thought "Fahrenheit 9-11" was a profound disappointment.  No, not because I disagreed with the content, and I certainly enjoyed the film from a "yeah, go get 'em!" standpoint.  But its presentation was so smugly one-sided and vicious and baiting that I can't imagine it winning over a single individual.  What good is a documentary (and/or any piece of activism) if it's only liked by those who already agree with its point of view?  I can't imagine a single individual who was pro-Bush before viewing the film would have been won over by it.  You can't change minds with condescension and ridicule.

That's why I'm so excited by "Sicko".  The reviews I've been reading are positive from both "sides", and may actually be able to educate and inform people who don't understand how serious the U.S. health care crisis really is.  Fox News writing a glowing review of anything Michael Moore puts out is really rather amazing:

Hey everyone -- this is awesome news!!

Rather than settle for someone uninspiring and old school like Obama or Edwards or Richardson or Clinton, we might finally get the candidate we really believe in: John F. Kerry!  

Our 2004 nominee cleared it up this way (actual quote) when asked whether his decision not to run in 2008 was final: