Liberal Talk Radio

Longtime reader Nihilist Easter Bunny wrote in with his own reinterpretation of Hillary Clinton’s comments about the strength of her white support:

White men! White women! Clinton is calling you! The Muslim is using the black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, whitey? Just sit there? Of course not. You, are going to join with us. The members of the American, Hillary Clinton, Presidential Party. An organization of non-elitist, hard-working, white folk. Just like you.

Thanks, Nihilist, you made my week.

He’s being incredibly charming on The Daily Show right now. Must… resist…

The talk of Obama asking Clinton to be his running mate is heating up again after her less-than-stellar performance last night in IN and NC.

Can I just say this would be a bad idea? And not only because you’d have Hillary’s negatives dragging down the ticket. Obama would be a fool to allow Hillaryland and the Clintonistas to set up shop in the Naval Observatory. Think Cheney but without the loyalty to Bush. Having Howard Wolfson and Harold Ickes (not to mention Bubba himself) running around the hill scheming and undermining your agenda and not having any desire to be managed or told what to do sounds like a total mess.

Update: What Josh Marshall said, too.

Haiti’s recent food riots have caused several deaths and lots of pain and suffering. This is depressing, and a reminder of what happens when globalization and “free trade” is approached from the point of view of helping the U.S. at the expense of the rest of the world:

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries, to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The US has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.

Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, US subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence … ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”

“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.

Did the IMF force the U.S. to stop subsidizing its rice farmers in exchange for access to the Haitian market? Of course not. That would have been too fair.

Nice point from Ezra Klein:

Our identities are deeply interwoven into our dining choices, and the hipsters ostentatiously traveling across town to try jellyfish in a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant and then telling all their friends about the discovery are saying something about themselves just as surely as the young family dressing up for a night out at The Cheesecake Factory. Whatever you think of the objective merits of the cuisine, both groups are enjoying their dinner, and enjoying their ability to be the people having that dinner.

Most Americans don’t give a rip:

WASHINGTON — A majority of American voters say that the furor over the relationship between Senator Barack Obama and his former pastor has not affected their opinion of Mr. Obama, but a substantial number say that it could influence voters this fall should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

At the same time, an overwhelming majority of voters said candidates calling for the suspension of the federal gasoline tax this summer were acting to help themselves politically, rather than to help ordinary Americans. Mr. Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, has made the suspension of the gas tax a centerpiece of her campaign in recent days.

Seriously, I’m stunned. Stunned that I can still be appalled by anything GWB could do/say.

“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. “And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.”

Bush is claiming that the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner was not specific enough, that it was properly referring to the mission of the aircraft carrier, and not to the war more generally.  Riiiiiight.

I like’d Ezra Klein’s take on whether Wright would be a problem for Obama if he and Obama were white:

So here’s the thought experiment: If in 2004, it turned out that John Kerry’s minister of 20 years — a man who had been like a father to him, who had married Kerry and Theresa Heinz, and who figured heavily into Kerry’s autobiographical book — held the same opinions as Wright, how big of a deal would it be? My sense, as we’re seeing with the furor over Obama’s laughably casual relationship with Bill Ayers, is it would still be a firestorm. Americans recoil from the Chomskyite critique, and any Democratic candidate whose personal relationships implied a sympathy for that worldview would have a tough time of it. In fact, it looks like this is the narrative Wright is really fitting into — a narrative that ranges from Ayers to lapel pins to Obama not holding his hand on his heart during the national anthem — rather than a story of racial strife.

I think that’s right. The problem with what Jeremiah Wright was preaching was that it was a leftist critique of America. In other words, it’s okay for a pastor to say that America is going to hell for killing unborn babies at home, but it’s not okay to say that America is going to hell for killing actual babies in Iraq. And by “not okay” I mean that only the latter will generate wall-to-wall coverage on cable news networks.

Low on funds.