Bent Corner

I guess Elizabeth Edwards has issued a statement about her husband’s infidelities and the subsequent lying about it over on Daily Kos.  I don’t know if she actually wrote the words that appear there or if someone from her husband’s staff (if he even still has a staff) wrote the words on her behalf. 

Her concluding statement was interesting. It was:

I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

Voyeurism? Is that what she thinks is going on here? Webster’s defines voyeurism as “sexual stimulation or satisfaction from looking at naked people, most often without their knowledge.”

I’d argue that there is only one person in this whole mess that was deriving sexual stimulation or satisfaction. His name is John Edwards.

What if John Edwards had won the Democratic Presidential nomination? Imagine what the right-wing would have done with this information in the last week of October. They would have run nonstop commercials showing Edwards with his mistress along with her baby. The same baby that does not have a father listed on the birth certificate. The same baby that we are supposed to take at Edward’s word that is not his.

Knowing what we know now about John Edwards, he never should have pursued the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2008. Anyone that knew John Edwards had been screwing around on his wife in 2006 should for the good of the party and the country have discouraged him from pursuing the nomination. That includes Elizabeth Edwards. If she knew about it.

I’m not convinced that she did.

I guess there is a rumor floating around the Internets that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Some have been demanding to see a copy of his birth certificate. Why people have been saying that he was born somewhere other then the United States is unknown. The fact is that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Technically, that is in fact part of the United States.

Markos Moulitsas over at Daily Kos posted a copy of something he claims is Obama’s birth certificate. He writes:

In any case, here is Obama’s birth certificate. Click on it for a bigger version. Note, I have trimmed the edges of the scan, so before someone tries to inevitably “debunk” this based on the dimensions of a Hawaiian birth certificate, that should be noted.

Whatever this is, it’s not a birth certificate. It’s something called a Certification of Live Birth. A birth certificate is something issued at the time of birth. I don’t think even Dan Rather would think this form was issued in 1961. It looks too modern. It’s printed on anti-tamper paper and the bottom left corner states OHSM 1.1 (Rev. 11/01) LASER.

Normally something like that would mean that it’s a form last revised in November, 2001 and it’s printed with a laser printer.

A birth certificate normally has a signature from the attending physician. It also usually includes things such as weight and length. It normally also includes the name of the hospital where the child was born. More importantly, it has a raised stamp showing that the birth certificate is legit.

This doesn’t have any of those things.

I think it’s silly to argue that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. I also think it’s kind of silly to present this document as an actual birth certificate. Personally, I think we’ve had enough silly in this presidential campaign.

Update: It’s not just Kos that is claiming this is a birth certificate. The Obama campaign is also claiming this is the birth certificate.

Pretend you are a candidate for the Democratic nomination and you just lost the Kentucky primary by 35 points. What do you do? If you are Barack Obama, you fly to Iowa and announce that you have just achieved a pretend milestone. You announce that you have won an absolute majority of pledged delegates.

Think of it as Barack Obama’s very own MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment. The only thing lacking was a flight suit and an aircraft carrier.

From Larry Johnson’s superb blog NO QUARTER:

How does winning a majority of pledged delegates qualify as a “major milestone”? It doesn’t, because winning the majority of pledged delegates does not make Obama the nominee. Period.

Under the Democratic Party’s un-democratic rules, super-delegates can vote for whomever they want (and they can switch), regardless of the pledged-delegate totals or popular-vote count.

Facts aside, some media have given air time to Obama’s surrogates to create potentially misleading headlines and sound bites about the pretend “milestone.”

I often wonder if Obama supporters even know that superdelegates don’t actually cast their superdelegate vote until the Democratic National Convention in August. From reading many of their posts on Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, I’m guessing not. Otherwise I’m not sure they would be so visceral and arrogant about their favorite candidate.

The superdelegates will have a choice to make in August. Will they simply go with the candidate that has a slight lead in the pledged delegates or will they go with the candidate that has a slight lead in the popular vote?

Obama might regain his lead in the popular vote in the remaining contests, but he seems to have all but decided to start campaigning for the general election against John McCain. He seems confident that he will be given the nomination no matter what happens in the remaining contests.

Members of the lefty blog Daily Kos who are supporting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination are boycotting the popular website over what they feel to be a pro-Obama, anti-Clinton bias. From the New York Times political blog, The Caucus:

One user, Sentient, called for a “permanent succession”:

“Why should this site and Kos profit from the traffic we add to DailyKos, and the sense by outsiders that it represents the netroots as a whole?” the blogger asked, adding later, “But I just don’t see how people come back together on a daily basis after a falling out like this.”

I see Sentient’s point. I don’t do a lot of reading over at Daily Kos. Though I’m a tree hugging liberal, I don’t care much for the format over there. The whole “Diary” thing kind of creeps me out. People don’t write posts. They write diaries that are to be read by everyone else. I always thought reading someone else’s diary was wrong?

It’s not hard for me to imagine how things have been for pro-Hillary people over at Daily Kos. I’ve seen how pro-Hillary people are being treated by the members of Democratic Underground. By the way folks over there have been acting, you wouldn’t know that Hillary Clinton has received over 12.5 millions votes compared to Barack Obama’s 13.2 million votes. You would think that every Democrat has voted for Obama.

Granted, Obama is currently in the lead of the overall popular vote, but only slightly.

So what is Daily Kos trying to do about this? Not much. Also from The Caucus:

Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, spoke to Jake Tapper of ABC News about the so-called strike, which he said was really more like a “boycott.”

“But whatever they call it, I think it’s great,” Mr. Moulitsas said. “It’s a big Internet, so I hope they find what they’re looking for.”

What a strange comment for someone to say that makes a living by driving people to his website. The less people he has visiting Daily Kos, the less money in ad revenue he takes in. Could Markos Moulitsas be on the Obama payroll? It wouldn’t be the first time he accepted money from a Democratic candidate.

Cindy Sheehan has quit the anti-war movement. She posted a resignation letter on Daily Kos renouncing her position as “the face of the American anti-war movement”. She blamed this decision on negative criticism made by members of Democratic Underground, a liberal website dedicated to progressive ideals. Some of the members of Democratic Underground were participating in a discussion on a forum referring to Sheehan as an “attention whore”.

Evidently she took exception to this.

I think it’s strange that she would respond to the charge that she’s an attention whore by going out of her way to bring yet even more attention to herself. Worse, she chose to issue this ridiculous resignation letter on Memorial Day. It’s the one day a year that is supposed to be about honoring those in the military that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. People like her son, Casey.

Casey didn’t “die for nothing” as Cindy Sheehan likes to say. He died going to the aid of his fellow soldiers. This is from the blog BLACKFIVE:

Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment were ambushed with RPGs and pinned down and dying. While fighting off an attack himself, the Commander of the 2/5th, LTC Volesky, called for help. A Quick Reaction Force (QRF) was formed of volunteers - their mission was to go out and rescue the American troops.

Casey Sheehan’s Sergeant asked for volunteers. Sheehan had just returned from Mass. After Sheehan volunteered once, the Sergeant asked Sheehan again if he wanted to go on the mission. According to many reports (and according to his own mother), Casey responded, “Where my Chief goes, I go.”

The QRF was launched. Not long after entering the Mahdi area, the QRF was channeled onto a dead-end street where the roofs were lined with snipers, RPGs, and even some militia throwing burning tires onto the vehicles. The Mahdi blocked the exit and let loose with everything they had.

Sheehan’s vehicle was hit with multiple RPGs and automatic-weapons fire.

Specialist Casey Sheehan and Corporal Forest J. Jostes were killed.

Casey was killed doing a truly heroic thing. He deserves to be honored. What he doesn’t deserve is to have his mother go around telling everyone that her son died for nothing.

Tell that to the soldiers he volunteered to help that tragic day. Tell that to their families.

Memorial Day should be about Casey Sheehan and people like him, not Cindy Sheehan. She’s has 364 days a year to bring attention to herself. Memorial Day ain’t one of them.

It’s not as though I believe she is actually going away. I would be very surprised if this was the last any of us ever heard from Cindy Sheehan. I think she likes attention too much to just walk away.