Bent Corner

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.

I was checking out the forum over at Democratic Underground when I read this post from a Hilary Clinton supporter. She is planning on voting for Clinton not because she agrees with her positions or because she thinks Clinton represents the what we need in our President. No, she is voting for Clinton because the people at Democratic Underground have pissed her off.

From Democratic Underground user Writer:

You’ve done it. I can’t even begin to annunciate just how furious I am with many of the posters in this forum. I have never seen such hate. I have never seen such embittered enmity carried to the point where sexist insinuations are justified. You disgust me. You disgust me to the point where I absolutely, under NO circumstances, will vote for Barack Obama tomorrow in my state. And I will be sure that my husband does the same and that every caucus goer does as well.

The reasons for voting AGAINST Hillary Clinton are underwhelming, vindictive, and petty. To take pictures of her CRYING - showing HUMAN EMOTION - then using that as a reason for her somehow being UNFIT is despicable.

The reasons to vote FOR Hillary Clinton were made evident to me in the last debate.

You are an abomination to this party, to this era, and to women in this country.

I am now a committed Hillary Clinton supporter.

~Writer~

So not only will she be voting for Clinton out of spite towards the other Democratic Underground members, she making her husband vote for Clinton too. I don’t know how she is going to do this exactly, but she did refer to her state as having a caucus, not an election. It isn’t like he will be able to get into a booth and have some privacy from his wife and vote for who he wants to vote for.

Women telling their husbands who they can vote for. That’s what I call progress.

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.