Hillary Clinton's Hyperbole 2008(c) campaign has recently compared not counting the Florida primary results to the election in Zimbabwe.  Reports CBS News:

"We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," Clinton explained. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people," Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

Now, as ridiculous as that comparison may be -- and I think it's pretty silly -- are there any points of resemblance between the Florida and Michigan primaries and elections in developing countries?

(cross-posted at MyDDand paralepsis)

Barack Obama did not raise your gas prices.
Barack Obama did not ship your job to Mexico.
Barack Obama did not write your sermons.
Barack Obama did not deny your habeas corpus.
Barack Obama did not cast your primary vote
and Barack Obama did not dismiss your primary vote.
Barack Obama did not raise your interest rates.

While waiting for the final votes from Lake County, Indiana, I thought I'd check the results from North Carolina.  Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the New York Times results page and saw this:

Candidate		Vote		%
John McCain		374,112		74.0%
Mike Huckabee		61,711		12.2%
Ron Paul		36,636		7.2%
Others		33,010		6.5%

That's right.  John McCain couldn't get 3/4 of the Republican vote in an uncontested primary.

[UPDATED June 1].  I got the story of Simonides a little wrong, and so I'm correcting that.  

This is the latest entry in my ongoing series on "The Rhetoric of Now," which seeks to show how concepts from the rhetorical tradition can help us comprehend the current political crisis. All entries are published on my personal blog paralepsis and are cross-posted at Daily Kos and The European Tribune. Each entry takes a rhetorical concept, explains it, and applies it to some aspect of the current political scene.

Apologies for the long delay since the last installment. This entry, for Memorial Day, is on memory.

I put this in a comment but thought it needed a diary entry.

Mr. No Corruption

for Paul Wolfowitz
with apologies to the memory of Warren Zevon

   I won out over Bono
   To run the World Bank
   Then Shaha she said "Oh No
   My job is in the tank"
   I placed a few quick calls
   To some old friends at State
   Diplomacy's all right
   Only when it gets you laid

   Now it's come back to bite me
   My bank life ends too soon
   Retirement's come early
   I'll leave the end of June
   I managed to hang on
   Just long enough to lance
   The boil I call multi-
   Lateral finance

   I'm Mr. No Corruption
   Top fox in the henyard
   Excuse me while I play my
   Golden parachute last card.

Cross-posted from paralepsis.

This is the third entry in "The Rhetoric of Now," my series on how we can change our current political climate by understanding and employing concepts from the rhetorical tradition.  The first entry was on stasis or framing of questions; the second was on kairos or rhetorical time.  This entry will be on ethos.  

Let's start with something George Tenet said on 60 Minutes this past weekend:

You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It's all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don't have that anymore, well, there you go.

Cross-posed at paralepsis.  

This is the second in a series of posts on how concepts from rhetoric can be used to help transform the current political climate.  For a broader context, see the first entry (on stasis theory).  Today's  entry is on kairos.

Kairos is usually defined as something like opportunity.  James Kinneavy, who has done more than anyone in modern times to revive the concept, defines it succinctly in an interview as "the right time and due measure."  But kairos was also a minor god.  So take a moment, would you, to look at this bas-relief of the figure of kairos.  Take your time; I'll wait.  

Cross-posted at paralepsis.  

This is the first in a series about how concepts from rhetoric can help progressives understand -- and change -- the current political climate.  It is based on the premise that the noble and ancient discipline of rhetoric is not trickery or deception, but rather that rhetorical literacy is a vital element of a healthy political community.  To quote the Greek rhetorician Isocrates, "the power to speak well and think right will reward the person who approaches the art of discourse with love of wisdom and love of honor."  (from the Antidosis). I hold that rhetoric anticipates and surpasses the best aspects of the current vogue for "framing," and that the rhetorical tradition offers a more humane and generous way of comprehending the social world.  

So, as everybody knows, Dick Cheney has a blood clot in his leg.  But don't worry, it's probably not heart related:

Vice President Dick Cheney was treated Monday for a blood clot in his left leg that independent experts said was probably not related to his history of heart disease but rather the result of his recent around-the-world trip, which included 65 hours of plane travel over 9 days.

My question is this: are we being setup for a Rice VP?  Put on your tinfoil hats and join me after the flip.  

So today I was having a conversation with my dear wife, who mentioned that we're talking with North Korea again.  Isn't that great?  And I immediately responded with what I know: that we're not making progress, we're going back to where we were at the start of the Bush administration, only now North Korea actually has nukes.  As Josh Marshall puts it:

Because of a weapons program that may not even have existed (and no one ever thought was far advanced) the White House the White House [sic] got the North Koreans to restart their plutonium program and then sat by while they produced a half dozen or a dozen real nuclear weapons -- not the Doug Feith/John Bolton kind, but the real thing.

I started to explain this as clearly as I could.  And she said to me: "kellogg," she said, "I think you're losing your soul."  

In an interview on All Things Considered today, Joe Lieberman (Lieberman for Lieberman-CT) explains his love-affair with All Things Republican and expresses potential support for a filibuster of a resolution opposing the war.  

Interviewer Melissa Block asks him if he "could imagine" throwing his support behind a Republican filibuster blocking the resolution.  "Yeah, I could," Lieberman responds, explaining that the issue is too important (read: too good an opportunity to -- what was the line Mark Foley used -- oh yeah -- "get out a ruler and measure it").  

To Lieberman's threat of a filibuster I say: bring it on.  Because American people hate your war, and increasingly, American people hate the folks who brought us the damn thing.      

Cards on the table: I'm a Clark supporter.  I really, really, really want him to run.  And I'm a little perplexed by Obamamania.  He seems to be to have great potential but not yet to be a President (whereas Wes has the least to learn next to Al Gore).

That said, in a comment thread on another diary, I repeated something I thought I knew about Obama's voting record.  No need to replicate the meme here; let's just say I was flat-out wrong, and should have checked.  I'm not going to blame the rushed character of the comment or whatever -- it was laziness on my part.  

My apologies to Obama and Obama supporters.

Cross-posted at paralepsis.  

When 1000 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, we remembered.  When 2000 died, we remembered.    Now, on Christmas Day 2006, another milestone has been reached: the number of U.S. military casualties has passed 2973, the number of deaths caused by the combined attacks of September 11, 2001.  By two.

This is the real connection between 9/11 and Iraq: Death.

As though seeking the worst possible setting to make the stupidest possible comments, President Bush decided to turn a menorah-lighting ceremony into an impromptu seminar about Iran.  (Thanks to Josh Marshall for the link.)

President Bush and his Cabinet have seized upon the Maccabean message of refusing to give in to tyranny to reinforce Bush’s refusal to deal with Iran as a means of resolving Iraq’s burgeoning crisis. In at least one closed meeting, Bush made the connection explicitly.

Clash of civilizations, anyone?

Cross-posted from paralepsis.

Oh, you've got to love this: Jimmy Carter refuses to debate with Alan Dershowitz.  I don't blame him -- the whole thing seems like a setup, and even though Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky have crushed Dershowitz in the past, the man is a professional lia lawyer.   But it's Carter's reasoning that really makes me happy.  From the Boston Globe:

"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said. "There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

Cross-posted at paralepsis.

So today I Google-newsed my favorite possible '08 candidate (run, Wes, run!) and stumbled across an interesting article from the New York Observer.  "The Life and Death of an Iraq Plan" is about the rise and fall of explicitly endorsing partition, federal autonomy, or what is sometimes called "kinder, gentler ethnic cleansing" in Iraq.  Too much attention is paid to Joe Biden, as usual, and then Wes Clark is interviewed about why he doesn't support the idea:

Wesley Clark, the retired general who is also mulling a presidential bid also told me that while partitioning may eventually occur, or already be happening, in Iraq, it could never be official United States policy.

Join me on the flip for why this shows again the brilliance of Clark.  

Cross-posted from paralepsis:

Derrick Shareef of Illinois was arrested Wednesday and charged with "one count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction." He made made a court appearance today in Chicago.  The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald (no, not that one!) said that the public was never in any danger because Shareef has been under surveillance for some time, after confessing to an acquaintance that he wanted to take up jihading.  

Here's what I don't understand:

Look, I'm as excited as anybody.  I mean, damn: Harry Reid, Majority Leader.  Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.  How cool is that?  But (you knew that was coming) here's the fly in the ointment:

Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, rejected by his party and spurned by many of his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, could return to a narrowly divided Senate in January more powerful than ever after his stunning victory in this week's congressional midterm elections.

"He becomes the most powerful person in the Senate; he controls the uncertainty," said American University political scientist Allen Lichtman. "The Republicans will offer him everything they can to get him; the Democrats will offer everything they can to keep him."