J's Cafe Nette

Archive for October 22nd, 2007

Courtesy of Blogs for Fred Thompson, we offer you last evenings debate in nine You Tube videos of ten minutes each.

Part One

Part Two


Part Three


Part Four


Part Five


Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine
HT: Blogs for Fred Thompson

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Self-proclaimed liberal and probably Democrat (I can’t remember) Camille Paglia has told an interviewer Hillary can’t win the election.

Firebrand writer Camille Paglia says Hillary Clinton “has no vision” and can’t win the general election against any of the leading Republican presidential candidates.

In an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail, Paglia – who came into the public eye in the early 1990s with her denunciation of “political correctness” – declared:

“I don’t know where people are getting the idea that the Democrats are a shoo-in. I don’t see them gaining the White House unless there’s a third-party spin-off, like Ross Perot.

“I listen to conservative talk radio, because the callers really do give one a sense of where popular sentiment is at the moment. And I just don’t see how any of the Democratic candidates is going to be able to present the national-security credentials that will be crucial in this election.

“The Republicans have [Mitt] Romney, [Rudy] Giuliani, [Fred] Thompson, even [Mike] Huckabee – a series of candidates who would be way more credible than Hillary, if only because of the projection of strength they give.”

Paglia even doubts that Clinton will get the Democratic nomination.

“She has a powerful machine,” the author of “Sexual Personae” told the Globe and Mail. “But many, many other candidates will be draining off support … The Democrats around me don’t want to go backward into the Clinton years.”

Not only does Paglia – who now teaches at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts – believe that Hillary can’t win, she also asserts that Clinton shouldn’t win.

“There’s an over-clever, over-conceptualized political personality there who has trouble being an ordinary person.

“For someone with so much international exposure, she’s not great on the stage. She’s well prepared with her sound bites. But when she has to play outside her sphere of preparation, she seems taken by surprise…

“She’s essentially a policy wonk. She has no vision.

Sounds to me like she has her pegged. We’ll see if she’s right soon enough.

When the Republican nomination is sewn up we’ll all come together and support our candidate in the end. The alternative is to horrifying to imagine.

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In a Zogby poll taken Oct. 11-15 of 9718 likely voters, 50% said they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, compared to 46% in the last poll in March.

You know how we feel about polls around here, but I find this to be a snapshot of how voters feel now, and it presents a big hill for Hillary to climb. Her negatives will only get higher as this campaign goes forward into the general election, despite her efforts to come off as a motherly figure.

Here’s how the other candidates fared:

Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?

%

Clinton (D)

50%

Kucinich (D)

49%

Gravel (D)

47%

Paul (D)

47%

Brownback (R)

47%

Tancredo (R)

46%

McCain (R)

45%

Hunter (R)

44%

Giuliani (R)

43%

Romney (R)

42%

Edwards (D)

42%

Thompson (R)

41%

Dodd (D)

41%

Biden (D)

40%

Obama (D)

37%

Huckabee (R)

35%

Richardson (D)

34%

Not sure

4%

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In probably one of the most stupid statements I’ve heard or read I think the one by Charlie Rangel, Democratic Representative of NY, and a big Hillary supporter takes a lot of chutzpah.

In a cover story on Giuliani in this week’s New York Observer, Rangel went after Giuliani in unusually personal ways, expressing confidence that Giuliani’s frontrunning status will fade either because of the former mayor’s liberal positions on social issues or the operatic drama of his personal life.

“Referring to Andrew Giuliani’s reportedly distant relationship with his father since the ugly bust-up of Mr. Giuliani’s marriage with Donna Hanover,” the article says, “Mr. Rangel said it was because ’sons respect and admire their fathers, but they love their mothers against cheating gxxdxxn husbands.’ … Rangel said he regretted that all the personal problems surfaced so soon in the electoral process. ‘I’m sorry this damned thing turned out so early because, really, just like [embattled former Giuliani aide Bernard] Kerik, it would have bombed his ass out.’”

Mrs. Clinton responded there is no room for personal attacks, as well she should, but none of these things get said without campaign approval.

Do the Clinton campaign or the Clinton supporters really want to talk about someone else’s personal lives? I mean really?

Opposing candidates don’t even have to focus on her own marital problems brought on by her own cheating husband to get down and dirty with Hillary.

All they have to do is repeat her record since she was in Arkansas with a list that is too long to print.

Lost billing records, fired travel office employees, funny money from Chinese donors who can’t afford it and from some who are not even legal residents, using FBI files to spy on political enemies, listening to illegally recorded telephone calls from political opponents and on and on ad nauseum.

Go ahead and open up this can of worms, but I’ll bet you won’t like the things that come out of the cans.

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The NYT confirms what many of us already know.

Matt Drudge has the potential to be a driving force in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates — or unfavorable coverage of competitors — onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.

Because of the sheer number of people who look at it and because of the attention it gets from the media, what appears on Drudge can, for a few minutes or an entire day, drive what appears elsewhere, making it, “a force in the political news cycle for both the press and the campaigns,” said David Chalian, the political director at ABC News.

Nielsen/NetRatings has clocked three million unique visitors to the site over the course of a month, and the Drudge Report said its users clicked onto the site a combined 16 million times in the course of a single day last week. The site’s influence, which is not limited to politics, has survived the proliferation of blogs offering all manner of news, analysis and gossip, as well as the advent of one-stop shopping political sites like Politico, which has a big staff of established political reporters.

What sets Drudge apart as much as anything is its ability to attract well-placed leaks and traffic in the freshest and rawest material — though sometimes including what some have considered smears.

Most of us are no doubt included in those huge numbers of hits which Drudge receives daily. He has become a valuable tool in many instances for those who are “news junkies.” Has he been incorrect in his “reporting” from time to time, sure, but show me any newspaper, news program or radio commentator who has not. I doubt anyone can find one.

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Senator McCain may be having difficulty gaining traction in his bid to win the Republican nomination, but apparently he had no problem garnering a standing ovation last evening at the debate with this statement:

HT: Power Line

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My beloved Red Sox, who have broken my heart many times in my life, have made me a very happy person tonight with their 11-2 win against the Cleveland Indians.

Now on to the Colorado Rockies for the World Series.

Because of the game I missed the Republican debate (hey, you have to have priorities), but I can give you a link that gives you a flavor of what the debate was like.

I did TiVo the debate and will try to watch it tomorrow, mostly for my own edification, as everyone else will have told you about it anyway.

Right now I think I need toothpicks to hold my eyelids open and will get back to regular posting on Monday after I have my allergy shot.

Go Sox!

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