Political Punch

Sorry for the crummy typing in my prior post: "closed" in the second line should read "closet." I wouldn't like anyone to think I have a closet mind!

It comes as no surprise that both senators have skeletons in their closed, speaking in terms of fundraising. Until politicians don't need to spend almost every waking moment engaging in fundraising for present and future campaigns, there will always be shady or questionable characters giving donations to them. No politician is invulnerable on that point; it's more a question of how beholden the politician is to the donor. To their credit, both Dem candidates have returned contributions from the most egregious rogues, but there are probably a lot more dubious contributions than we know about.

And as for the debate yesterday evening, it was refreshing to hear the candidates dicuss the issues instead of sniping at each other.

The other problem with the comparison is that Rezko gave Obama money for his CAMPAIGN, engaged in a sweetheart land deal with him, and was on his 2004 US Senate finance committee. The Gustra guy gave money to a CHARITY that helps AIDS victims and fights global poverty. Just a little different.

Are you saying that this Giustra stuff is wrong or seedy? It seems we have a case here of Clinton simply acting as a lobbyist and getting someone a no-bid contract. I personally think this stuff is seedy, and if you are saying it is wrong, I want to know why the standard you are holding the Clinton's to is not applied to any other politicians.
The entire Bush family glad hands Saudis like the bin Laden family and hooks up no-bid oil deals with them. And I bet it wouldn't take too much work to establish terrorist financing ties to some of the people they are doing business with. And when Barbara Bush donated a bunch of money for hurricane victims, you all forgot to mention that she earmarked much of that money to buy products in a no-bid contract from the convicted criminal Neil Bush. And if you don't think Cheney has used his position to promote Halliburton interests and get them no-bids you are simply delusional.
I would also detail some of the ways the war profiteers in Iraq use political contacts to get no-bid contracts but that is too easy.

I think both sides played it well at the debates...

but about Wolf's question/comment last night regarding "dream ticket"...I
I think Clinton/Obama would be a TERRIBLE ticket for several reasons:

1) It would be a waste of Obama's professional and personal resources…namely his ability to listen to the needs of Americans (not his ego) and then rally experts together on the issues, inorder for him to provide informed solutions to the problems.

2) How many vice presidents have ever subsequently run for president and gotten elected? Do the math…the likelihood of him every becoming president would be even slimmer if ever there were a scenario of him running on a Clinton/Obama ticket. Again, that would be a waste of a remarkable talent.

3) Taken together the previous points suggest that the Clinton/Obama ticket would benefit only ONE person/family and that is Hillary, and her husband, who would use Obama as a means to try and bring in new voters for the general election, which would ultimately fail since there seems to be a substantion number of people so against the Clintons that they would prefer not to vote than cast a vote for Hillary.

And I don't think Obama should put Hillary on his ticket when he wins the democratic nomination. I believe that would hurt his chances of winning in the general elections.

What WAS wrong with a little joke about the debate being for entertainment purposes only?

Seriously, what's up with the lack of Giustra followup? Was Hillary even asked about it yesterday on the trail before the debate? For that matter, is the NYT such a fringe outfit that Jeanne or Wolf couldn't have asked her about the story directly?

Or was Giustra/Kazakhstan a gauntlet that they expected Obama to pick up and bash her around the head and neck?

AS I SAID, you missed Bradley Whitford.

The major flaw in this story is drawing a comparison between Obama and Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton is running for President - not Bill. Spin it any way you like, but facts are facts and it seems that the media doesn't want a direct comparison of candidates.

is this clinton-giustra story just going to get buried? seems like no one is jumping on this one. Is it because Bill is just to damn powerful (uranium strenght you might say).

This is old Washington, like all old Washingtons, but i have had enough of 20 years of clinton-bush.

Can't we all just move along?