We've got to thank Barack Obama. It looks like he has sealed Hillary Clinton's fate. Yes, Slick Hillary will continue with her false smiles and false assurances, but everything is beginning to ring hollow. I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary got out of the race soon.
The Democratic primaries sure have been fun. To me they have been reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq war. Needless to say, I have been hoping for heavy casualties on both sides! Hillary's attacks on Obama have taken a toll. It was especially gratifying to hear Hillary make the argument that both she and McCain are vastly more experienced than Obama. Surely McCain will get some mileage out of that in the next several months. Hillary also raised questions about whether Obama can be trusted in an emergency. Again, this is a theme that can only benefit McCain. Between the questions raised by Hillary and the doubts raised by Obama's association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's reputation has been tarnished.
Ambivalent though I am about Obama, I must credit him with saving the nation from the prospect of another Clinton presidency. For eight years the Clintons used the Oval Office for personal self-aggrandizement, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, selling pardons, and chasing around the hired help. Yes, Bill was the lecher, but Hillary was the enabler. I wonder if this is the "experience" she has been touting on the campaign, since I'm not sure what else she accomplished over her eight years as First Lady. Finally America may be ridding itself of this cunning, opportunistic duo.
Contrast the Clintons with other recent presidencies and the difference becomes apparent. Many people disagree with and even loathe Bush but it's hard to say that Bush became president for personal gain. All the folks who said he invaded Iraq for the sake of oil interests have never shown Bush to be the beneficiary of any such gains. By contrast, the Clintons came to Washington virtually broke and have been cashing in since day one. Now the couple since has a net worth in excess of $100 million. Is there any precedent for such self-enrichment? George H.W. Bush and Reagan and Ford and Carter had their share of Oval Office troubles but all of them involved disagreements about policy. No one suggested that these men were using their office for their own benefit. The Clintons are clearly in a low class of their own.
Good riddance to the Clintons also means good riddance to the era of the 1960s. The self-indulgent, megalomaniacal sixties generation is not only an embarassment to itself, it also represents the great failure of the World War II generation. For all its accomplishments, the "greatest generation" failed in one significant respect: it couldn't replicate itself but produced instead the spoiled children of the Clinton generation.
This November, America will have a choice between an independent-minded candidate of the World War II generation and an inspiring but also troubling candidate of the post-sixties generation. Meanwhile, it appears, two sullen, resentful Clintons will be watching from the wings.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 28)
61. I can't believe the crux of his argument is that one candidate is better than the other because his generation is better. Do they teach basic fucking inductive reasoning at Dartmouth?
Mokele Mbembe at 11:36AM on May 12th 2008
62. The race is still not over,and I still think that Clinton is going to be the DFemocratic nominee.
Why
1.Florida and Michigan suddenly get validated.
2.Obama's association with "evil'" Rev Wright and "evil" Bill Ayers become a big issue(Show me your friends and i will show you who you are)
3,Obama is still seen to can't close the deal.(i.e He can't win thwe important states)
4.Obama is sooo inexpirenced(compared to Hillay's "vaster experience")
5.Obama is an angry black man.(Do you want bitterness in the White House)
6.Obama is elitist.(He deingrated hard-working American people as evil and uncultured and dangerous.)
7.Obama is black
8.Hillary is white.And ballsy.
On another note,the Dems got to end this.Or else,it is 4 more years of the Republicans.Maybe 12 more years.
Can the dems close the Deal?
mad african christian at 11:55AM on May 12th 2008
63. m.a.c.,
"The race is still not over,and I still think that Clinton is going to be the DFemocratic nominee."
Throw in your bets now. The only way she can win now is if she robs a bank while wearing an Obama mask.
Mokele Mbembe at 11:58AM on May 12th 2008
64. I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face that George W. Bush is our worst President.
Clearly, James Buchanan is our worst President. He blew every opportunity to head off the Civil War, leaving it to Lincoln to hold the Union together through a war that killed more Americans than any other war.
Remember that more Americans died at Gettysburg than for all of the Iraq campaign to date.
And let's not forget that, but for a resignation, Nixon not only would have been impeached, but the only President to be removed from office by the Senate.
And for all of you who say that W. has screwed up the economy, remember that Nixon created wage and price controls that, every time controls were removed, caused inflation to make up for lost time.
It wasn't until the Clinton Adminiastration that the economy completely got over the harm that Nixon did in the early 70s.
Kent at 12:03PM on May 12th 2008
65. Kent:
There were other atrocious presidents besides Buchanan: Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, even Richard Nixon.
From Sean Wilentz of Rolling Stone:
Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies."
In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
Linda at 12:18PM on May 12th 2008
66. It’s hard to say that Bush became president for personal gain? Does Dinesh even smell the putrid stench of the crap he’s peddling?
Several times weekly Dinesh proves himself to be the very definition of self-indulgence and megalomaniacal masturbation with these rabid, divisive and embarrassingly refutable rants. Must we really list here all the ways in which this country was left in much better shape after Bill Clinton in contrast to the shape we’re in now after seven and a half years with the horribly embarrassing mental defective currently sitting in the oval office?
What kind of “ranch” has no animals? Why doesn’t anybody else in the Bush family speak with that ridiculous and inauthentic Texas accent? How is it that a whole chunk of the American population can believe the country bumpkin persona from a Connecticut born, blue blooded, Mayflower descendent who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a golden phallus in his ass? How can we overlook the fact that a man who has failed at everything he ever tackled managed two serve two terms in the highest office in the world and managed to suck at it so badly?
How about McCain?
McCain (literally son of Cain) who’s saber rattling suggest that we cannot only expect a long protracted stay in Iraq but also the addition of a quagmire in Iran.
The current John McCain (John McCain 2.0) is not the same John McCain so many people fondly remember from 2000. Here is a man who has so thoroughly been cowed by the Bush attack machine that he has he should change his middle name from Sidney to Helsinki-Syndrome. McCain is such a media darling that no one seems to have jumped on the fact that he has an almost pathological sense of entitlement to the presidency as evidenced by his flip flops on issues he was previously passionate about.
What can be said about a man who calls his wife the c-word in front of reporters when she playfully points out that his hair is thinning? This man is so desperate to become president that he would have us believe he has been a Baptist for quite a while as he has recently stated, even though he has long been on record as referring to himself as a life long Episcopalian. Why is it important that he be perceived as a Baptist? So he could broaden his appeal to the followers of Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, men he dismissed agents of intolerance at the outer reaches of American politics.
I decided a long time ago to vote for Obama rather than Clinton, but she is one of my two senators and she is doing a fantastic job as far as I’m concerned but since Dinesh feels the need to denigrate her with his hyperbolic characterization of her as a money hungry opportunist I will engage in some hyperbole of my own.
“John McCain? John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”
If he ever becomes president, we had better make sure he never sets his sights on a deck of playing cards while holding office.
rabidmccain at 12:21PM on May 12th 2008
67. In fact, the whole article is pretty good:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history
Linda at 12:20PM on May 12th 2008
68. Since this blog entry's rather slow today, it's time to hijack it! Here's some entertainment:
http://tinyurl.com/56ucd6
A video clip of Bill O'Reilly totally losing it in his earlier days on another TV show. I'm surprised he hasn't blown a gasket and croaked on live TV by now.
brandon at 12:50PM on May 12th 2008
69. I LOVE WHAT DINESH WRITES HERE!!
(Good riddance to the Clintons also means good riddance to the era of the 1960s. The self-indulgent, megalomaniacal sixties generation is not only an embarassment to itself, it also represents the great failure of the World War II generation. For all its accomplishments, the "greatest generation" failed in one significant respect: it couldn't replicate itself but produced instead the spoiled children of the Clinton generation.)
BUNCHA DARN HIPPIES SCREWED UP EVERYTHING. ONCE THE BOOMERS START DYING OFF, THEN WE WILL SEE A RENEWAL IN TRADITION. SOCIALISM & CAPITALISM WILL WEAKEN. A RETURN TO DISTRIBUTISM WOULD BE NICE.
CAIN at 1:01PM on May 12th 2008
70. I've spoken of vertical and horizontal or lateral thinking before. Today I got an article about it in my email. SO, I shall paste it here. It's by Roy H. Williams, a business consultant. From his website newsletter Monday Morning Memo. You can subscribe here:
http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/?ShowMe=OneVeryBadDay
Horizontal Thinking
American education teaches a subject vertically, narrow and deep. And the deeper one plunges into the subject, the narrower it gets. Specialization.
1a. Liberal Arts
1b. Literature
1c. Spanish Literature
1d. Spanish Literature of 1492-1681
1e. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
1f. Don Quixote de La Mancha by Cervantes (1605)
1g. Symbolism in Don Quixote
And then you write your master’s thesis:
1h. Sancho Panza as a Figurative Symbol in Don Quixote de La Mancha
Our educational system has taught us to value vertical, deductive reasoning. This is why our logic is so often binary: if-then, either-or, right-wrong. This is the logic of technology.
But vertical thinking is most powerful when augmented by a horizontal viewpoint since the lateral perspective will often spy answers that lie outside the vertical path.
Horizontal thinking will recognize a pattern it has seen, even when that pattern was observed in a completely unrelated field. (The cognoscenti will remember this technique as Business Problem Topology.) This "pattern recognition" often allows the horizontal thinker to correctly predict an outcome from what appears to be too little information.
Intuition is unconscious, horizontal thinking.
"Some people are unhappy about lateral [horizontal] thinking because they feel it threatens the validity of vertical thinking. This is not so at all. The two processes are complementary, not antagonistic. Lateral thinking enhances the effectiveness of vertical thinking by offering it more to select from. Vertical thinking multiplies the effectiveness of lateral thinking by making good use of the ideas generated."
- Edward DeBono, author of 62 books on creative thought.
Purely horizontal thinking is known as daydreaming. Fantasy. Mysticism. The purely horizontal thinker has a thousand ideas but puts none of them into action. He or she sees the big picture and all its possibilities but has little interest in linear, step-by-step implementation.
Purely vertical thinking leads to compliance, conformity, and a false sense of knowledge. (False because it’s often just memorization in disguise. The student knows what to do without understanding why.) The purely vertical thinker is a nit-picker, a legalist, a tight-ass.
The healthy mind is capable of switching from vertical to horizontal thought and back again.
Problem solving is horizontal thinking adjusted by vertical analysis. But the implementation of that solution will require step-by-step, vertical action modified by horizontal adjustments as the need arises.
Read his books and you’ll recognize Lee Iacocca as a horizontal thinker who implements his ideas vertically.
Iacocca sees patterns, then takes sequential action to accomplish what he has seen in his mind.
"When you stop to think about it, most of the great companies of our times began as upstarts – little Davids taking on big Goliaths." – Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? p. 159
Horizontal thought is how Iacocca rescued Chrysler from the brink of disaster. It's how Peter Ueberroth organized the wildly successful Los Angeles Olympics and generated a surplus of 250 million dollars. It's how Amazon.com and eBay came to be. It's how the Prius and the iPod were born.
Godless Heathen Brian at 1:37PM on May 12th 2008
71. Personally, if my choice is between a self-serving, self-interested person with experience and an idealist with little or no practical experience, I'd rather go with the former.
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REALLY? So you'll give it to the person that wants to rape the country for themselves AND know's exactly how to do it? Instead of the man that, although without a LOT of experience (he does, after all, have some...) has a vision for the country that's upwards rather than downwards, for us rather than himself? REALLY?
That's not even an american attitude!
Godless Heathen Brian at 1:45PM on May 12th 2008
72. 47. I am registered as a Democrat......If Bin Ladin...Oh sorry, Obama, gets nominated I will NOT vote for him.....In fact I probably will vote rep just to get revenge for the way Hillary had been portrayed... I hope Hillary voters get even...and NOT vote obama too. Take that to the bank Osama ...oooops obama
msducky7 at 10:34AM on May 12th 2008
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Good, because he can still win without the false democrats that are gonna go over to the dark side over the vagina not winning the nomination.
Godless Heathen Brian at 1:51PM on May 12th 2008
73. msducky7 probably thinks that when Obama is sworn in he'll place his hand on the Necronomicon.
Mokele Mbembe at 2:04PM on May 12th 2008
74. A video clip of Bill O'Reilly totally losing it in his earlier days on another TV show. I'm surprised he hasn't blown a gasket and croaked on live TV by now.
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I can't watch it on my work computer, brandon.
Is it funny?
Linda at 2:18PM on May 12th 2008
75. You propose to be christian? Your a hypocrite!
See thru the smoke at 2:19PM on May 12th 2008