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Presidential Race

Ms. Strangelove

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Hillary wants some sort of common defense umbrella in the Middle East:

Clinton said it was vital that the United States create a new “security umbrella” to reassure Israel and its other allies in the region that they would not be threatened by Iran. She said she would tell them that “if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”

If Obama said this, we’d be hearing how dangerous he was and, well, it would be true.

1)  Israel has the ability to deter anyone in the region with estimates of 200 – 400 nukes.   They even have them deployed on submarines.   If a nuclear attack were to be made upon Israel, Israel could largely wipe out any attacker or group of attackers in practical terms.

What’s bizarre is the infantilization of Israel by many who seem to forget that Israel is the strongest country in the region by an incredibly wide margin.  Israel has far better defense technology and some of the best trained troops in the world.   And a whole lot of nukes with multiple ways of delivering those nukes.

2) While the US has lost some of its ability to act as an honest broker in the Middle East, such a commitment would lead to the US having virtually no ability to facilitate peace negotiations.

3)  US intelligence suggests Iran is not actively seeking a bomb.  Apparently she continues to not read the intelligence reports.

4) It is far from clear that Iran is the most likely nation to attack Israel in the region.  Syria and Israel are facing increasing tension and competition for water that especially affects Syria.

It further diminishes the role of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which the US is essentially in violation of with both Israel and the new deal with India. The way to effectively deal with non-proliferation issues is to stress the international framework created to deal with that issue.  After the Bush administration has played cowboy and weakened NPT with the India nuclear tech transfers and other moves, a united world on the issue of NPT is vital to long term US security interests–not more saber-rattling.

Obama Presidential Race

Oversampling Just Isn’t that Hard to Understand People

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Some of the dimmer lights in the blogosphere aren’t quite understanding the concept of oversampling for subgroups as NBC/WSJ did for the African-American sample in their latest poll.

It’s fairly simple. There is a general sample of 700 respondents with 11% African-American and 75% White respondents. Looking at their subsamples, there are 520 white respondents which is approximately 75% of the whole sample. If you read what the WSJ and Chuck Todd say is that they added 100 African-American respondents to the crosstabs–or the breakdowns by race. This means that in the general sample there are 77 African-Americans and in the smaller African-American sample there are 177 African Americans.

Before trying to discredit the poll or acting all outraged, do the math. All one needs is a basic understanding of percentages.

Furthermore, Taylor Marsh is very upset that the poll includes Republicans.  I kid you not. She might read the poll results with questions from the article she linked to and notice that it only includes Democrats and likely Democratic primary voters if they identify themselves that way. But shiiiiiiiiittttt, we’d hate to read the damn thing and know something about what we are talking about.

Obama Presidential Race

The Thing About Going Negative

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It hurts you too:

As expected, one of the two major Democratic candidates saw a downturn in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, but it’s not the candidate that you think. Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.

Here’s one of the most basic rules of campaigning.  Negative campaigning hurts your opponent, but it also hurts you.  Your hope is that it hurts your opponent more, but there is one big problem for some candidates. If your unfavorability is already higher, your unfavorability might drop enough so the other candidate still stays on top.  I e-mailed this to a friend probably a month ago in saying how she couldn’t go too negative. Of course, she can go that negative, it’s just not going to help her win.

Congratulations Clinton camp–you screwed yourselves and the party.

For those ranting about new polling showing Obama falling in some states, both are falling and will continue to fall as long as this crap continues.

Obama Presidential Race

Feeling Kind of Used

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What’s stunning to me is that as many of us have spent time trying to point out that a big portion of the right wing noise machine is not credible and shouldn’t set the agenda after watching the Clinton’s get cut up by it for 8 years, Clinton is now embracing those sources as reasonable sources to work though:

Phil Singer cites the American Spectator 

Hillary dumps on Wright in front of….Richard Mellon Scaiffe 

Next she’ll go watermelon hunting with Dan Burton.

Obama Presidential Race

Fine Moments in Advocacy

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Hillaryis44 compares Reverend Wright to Tawana Brawley.

That’s special.

According to Taylor Marsh, it’s horrible to talk about lynching on Easter.

Because a day that celebrates the resurrection of Christ who was put to death by bleeding him to death with the giant stakes driven through his hands and feet is a day that shouldn’t include any talk about persecution.

Until the last couple of years, which now finds me meditating on Easter Sunday, I never in my entire life have heard anyone mention “lynching” on Easter Sunday. I’ve spent a few Easters inside a Baptist church as well.

Yeah, because lynching is so seldom mentioned in sermons at black churches.  I know people are pretty clueless about black churches—okay African-Americans in general, but this is perhaps the stupidest fucking complaint ever.

It strikes me that Easter is a perfect day to talk about lynching if one thinks that Jesus was sacrificed for our sins.

Of course, Marsh and most disappointingly Jerome Armstrong continue the claim that Wright was anti-American.

Despite the years of criticism of the mainstream media, they fall into the trap of accepting sound bites over context.   When one listens to the comments in context, one finds Wright is not Anti-American, he is anti-Bush and anti-Conservative. I thought Jerome and Taylor were of similar mind.  And Wright argues that violence begets violence in context.  That is certainly a message one should hear in their Church.

Obama Presidential Race

If the Right Choice Wasn’t Clear Yet

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It should be now with the Clinton Campaign fundraisers threatening Nancy Pelosi that they will withhold donations to the DCCC if she doesn’t change her view on the SuperDelegates.

It’s not theoretical whether the Clintons will burn down the party if Clinton doesn’t get the nomination, her supporters just said they would destroy the party if she doesn’t get the nomination.

The Party is not the Clintons and that they and their supporters confuse the party’s and their interests as being the same is exactly the reason they must be defeated.

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