It looks obvious

The campaign as a musical, it never looked more appealing…

Election season is often characterized by shameless pandering to voters. One have to wonder how stupid the candidates think we are when they are repeating the gas tax holiday faux ; And one have to really wonder how stupid we actually are to fall for it time after time.

One of the famous traditions of pandering is trying to pander to the Jewish votes, and the Jewish donations, and this year was no different:

This column supports, sort of and with actual numbers, the point I made yesterday - Clinton’s campaign didn’t really suffered from Bill Clinton Comments. Obama rising numbers didn’t came from Clinton’s falling but buy his ability to draft new support:

Here’s my two cents, idiosyncratic as they may be: According to the chart, Clinton’s national poll average was basically unchanged between the beginning of October and the middle of May, starting at about 41 percent and ending at about 42 percent. Although Clinton verged on 50 percent of the average poll and dipped to just below 40 before the New Hampshire primary, her numbers remained relatively steady. Meanwhile, Obama’s numbers started at about 22 percent in October and rose faster than CO2 levels in the atmosphere, breaking 50 percent at the end.

One interpretation of the average poll data—my interpretation—is that as the field of candidates thinned and undecideds got off the pot, they migrated to Obama in huge numbers, first after the Iowa caucuses and then before Super Tuesday. Clinton, on the other hand, was a candidate whose market share was fixed. She never really expanded from her core of support, despite the many style, substance, and personnel changes she made during the campaign and no matter how much money she spent. And even then, she just barely lost the delegate count.

The fact that it was close competition all the way to the end is not so trivial, my bet is that will not that close coming november.

Is this a promise?

Former president Bill Clinton dropped a hint Monday that the end might be nigh for his wife Hillary’s dogged campaign for the Democratic White House nomination, according to reports.

“I want to say also that this may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind,” the former president told Clinton supporters in South Dakota, ABC and NBC reported on their news websites.

Knowing the Clintons past “truth telling” I wouldn’t hold my breath…

How long before someone will start to explain why it is only fair that we, the public, will bailout Clinton’s soaring campaign debt? After all, She didn’t do it for herself, it was all for us…

But the number collected is actually closer to $21 million and the release also neglected to mention that she spent $28.9 million, nearly $8 million more than she took in. She used personal loans to make up part of the difference. She also delayed payments to consultants. Including the $9.5 million in unpaid bills from April, she owes consultants and other vendors $19.5 million.

Not to mention the total $11.4 million she has loaned herself.

One has to wonder why TV news host almost always prefer to bring the most stupid conservatives around and only barely people like George Will. Personally I will always favor someone that has such references in his column:

Finally, Clinton is not entitled to a consolation prize. Robert Frost provided a warning for those who become too accustomed to the limelight:

No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard,

Or keeps the end from being hard.

Harder than, say, working the night shift as a short-order cook at a truck stop out on the interstate? Or being a nurse in a pediatric oncology ward? Maybe not.

More than 300 million Americans living at this hour will never be president. They will never even be senator from New York. That office is not chopped liver. Neither is it a form of disregard.

Alisa’s disagreement with my assessment about McCain is a good reason to look at the remaining candidates and start theorizing who is the leaser evil. We can assume, with high level of certainty that the major parties candidates will be Obama and McCain and that two additional recognize candidates will be Ralph Nader and Bob Barr for the LP. This is a rather depressing list of candidates for me, where even the presumed libertarian candidate is basically a social conservative, which prevent me from the luxury of ideological, or protest, vote. I will not support, nor vote, for any of the candidates this election because I came to conclusion that voting for the leaser evil is a waste of a vote. However, the question which of the two major candidates is potentially less offensive is still worth exploring.

McCain is a very interesting candidate. His ability to attract the anti-war votes in NH is still a mystery to me. He has a pretty solid record of voting for balanced budget, controlled spending and opposing tax increases which mark him on the side of fiscal conservatives. However, this should not confuse us with the illusion that McCain is a “small government” supporter. His record indicates that he, very much like Hillary Clinton, believes in efficient government rather than small government. His voting record, his public statements and the initiatives he took over the years are clear demonstration of increasing the role of the federal government and limiting individual liberties. The famous Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feinglod act, is a clear example of his willingness to limit the freedom of speech (and make it harder for political competition) in favor of regulating behavior. McCain willingness to expand the role of the federal government, regulate behavior and social interactions, such as professional sport, is a clear indication that McCain is not a pro-liberty candidate.

My major opposition to McCain foreign policy agenda isn’t his position on the war in Iraq, or even on the approach he advocate to fight terrorism. What truly worries me is that McCain genuinely believe that in national greatness and greater good. It is not a hockish, but realistic, approach for use of power to achieve national interest goals, which one can argue with, but rather an ideological approach for spreading Americas goodness that is scary. It is the true ideology driven, rather than sober cynical politician, that is more dangerous.

It is the core ideology of McCain, in which he genuinely believe and advocate for, which should make us worry. His believe that individual should subject their interest for some greater good. No, he is not a socialist but the subjecting individual freedom for the collective interest is bad policy regardless its tag name:

“serving a cause greater than self-interest.”

[…]

“We are fast becoming a nation of alienating individualists, unwilling to put the unifying values of patriotism ahead of our narrow self-interests,” Mr. McCain warned in a speech during his 2000 presidential campaign. He added that “cynicism threatens to become a ceiling on our greatness.”

Obama is in many ways an enigma. His public image heavily marketed by his campaign, and by his opponents, is misleading. Obama, unlike the annoying, yet effective, slogan of change and unlike the claim that he is the most liberal, which is to mean socialist, member of the house is actually a main stream politician. The list of issues and policies that makes Obama a non-starter for me is very long. But it is the fact that he is a mainstream politician, even more than his saner foreign policy, that makes him less alarming candidate.

McCain, very much like Clinton and Chaney, is goal driven and the process is subject to achieving those goals. Obama, on the other hand, made the process his campaign main issue. I wrote in the past about the importance of the rules of the game in maintaing liberal-democracy, Obama, the politician and the Presidential candidate, seems more likely to preserve them.

Are you familiar with the Nigerian Scam? You should be aware of its newest form:

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and “top secret”.

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family’s political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a “GAS TAX HOLIDAY”. You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

But bear in mind that this transaction requires absolute confidentiality. Do not visit WWW.GASTAXSCAM.COM where there is information about dangers of our proposal and a petition to stop us from this diversion of funds.

PLEASE NOTIFY US URGENTLY OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PROPOSAL

Awaiting your rapid response

Yours truly

SENATORS HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN MCCAIN

Ideally the election process should help voters make an informed decision. The process should expose the different candidates, their experience, values and agenda. In reality the candidates try to disguise their real agenda, and to smooth problematic issues, in order to appeal to as many voters as possible.

I was, naively, hopping that the long primaries will force the candidates to get out of their armored campaign talking points and tackle real issues. The reality is, obviously, much different. As the campaign progress and the stakes are higher candidates tend to be more populist and say things there is no way they believe, or intend to follow if elected. And since Clinton is the trailing candidates she producing the most populist gems:

This morning, George Stephanopoulos began his televised interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by asking if she could name a single economist who supported her plan for a gas-tax suspension.

Mrs. Clinton did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on the ABC program “This Week.” A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

But I guess voters prefer to be lied and making their decision based on populist slogans, other wise this kind of statements wouldn’t work:

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Indiana J-J dinner, may have taken this white, working-class populism thing to a Cross-of-Gold rhetorical extreme (the authentic WJ Bryan is above). Speaking of the mortgage crisis, Clinton asked the crowd: “Why don’t we hold these Wall St money grubbers responsible for their role in this recession?”

It should be noted that many (presumably non-grubbing) Wall Streeters are her biggest fund raisers and she’s a big investor in a pair of hedge funds.

The new release of, once classified, documents is a reminder that Presidents can be sane, skillful and avoid being dragged into conflicts all over the world. But instead of a President that will follow the footsteps of Eisenhower that ended the war in Korea and avoided getting involve in Vietnam (or anywhere else), we are likely to choose between McCain, the official neoconservatives darling, and Hillary Srangelove:

AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, if she were president, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran attacked Israel.

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

[...]

A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.