The December issue of Vogue has an excellent interview/profile of Hillary Clinton by Jonathan Van Meter. It’s gotten most of its attention from the behind-the-scenes explanation of how she came to accept the offer to be Secretary of State when she really did not want the job. The piece really shows Hillary’s ability to keep moving forward despite being tossed around by political misfortunes not entirely of her own making, and leaves me genuinely feeling like the Democrats picked the wrong nominee. For all the Hillary Hatred that the right would have mustered up against her, it couldn’t be near as bad as the batshit-insane stuff they’ve plastered Obama with, and I think she would probably have made more headway by now than Obama. Most insiders expect that she won’t stay if Obama wins re-election in 2012, but unlike Bill Clinton, who’s massive ego keeps him going and going and going, it’s hard to see what she would do ex officio.

Last week’s New Yorker takes a peek inside the world of Michelin restaurant reviewers. While all restaurant reviewers have to struggle with maintaining anonymity, the people who work for Michelin are a whole order of magnitude more secretive about it. Author John Colapinto’s description of meeting one of the reviewers who covers New York City for lunch at Jean Georges reads like the machinations of a James Bond novel…and it seems the Michelin people prefer it that way. There’s some criticism of the guides and their old-fashioned biases toward traditional French restaurant cuisine, and after reading the challenges the reviewers themselves face in having to maintain their secret identities, having to live up to the demands of the guide’s management, and having to eat everything on their plate everywhere they dine, I think I won’t be applying for that job.

This original post at the group blog 3Quarks Daily by Evert Ciliers gets down to brass tacks about Afghanistan: it was stupid to go to war there in the first place, everything we do there is back-assward, and Barack Obama is only making things worse by prolonging the conflict in order to look tough. Here’s the money pull-quote, which is actually a quote from John R. MacArthur at Harper’s:

“’Fighting terrorism’ in Afghanistan ‘to prevent another 9/11′ simply isn’t a serious argument, and I suspect that even the deluded Gen. Stanley McChrystal understands that his men are shooting at indigenous Afghan rebels, not Osama bin Laden or his followers. No, the more likely reason for killing all those people and wasting nearly $3.4 billion a month is an ugly mixture of vanity, misplaced pride, crass politics, and liberal self-righteousness. The Army still wants to prove it can defeat a guerrilla army and erase the shame of Vietnam. The politicians, Obama included, want to look warlike and tough, so they can’t be accused of being ‘soft on terror’ in 2010. And then there are the civil servants and think-tank denizens known as ‘humanitarian interventionists’ — now led by Hillary Clinton, who think that America’s ‘civilizing’ mission in the world includes not only establishing ‘democracy’ but also ‘freeing’ Afghan women from being required to wear the burqa.”

If you’re still operating under the delusion that Barack Obama is Superman, hopefully this article will dissuade you of that once and for all. If you’re operating under the delusion that Our Soldiers are Fighting For Our Freedom, this probably won’t change your mind because you’re too big a dumbfuck to get it.

So here’s my take on this whole “Hillary For Secretary Of State” thing: it’s a ploy.

Obama took a lot of flak for not making Hillary his running mate. The campaign made a very cursory effort at making it look like they were at least putting her on the short list, but nobody except the Hillary-Hating Republican crowd thought it was anything except the illusion it turned out to be.

They are doing the very same thing now, but doing a slightly better job of making it look realistic. The stories right after the election about John Kerry wanting the job were more of a traditional “trial balloon”, and they got shot down pretty fast by a very unhappy party. Hillary Clinton seems to be getting far more serious consideration as an actual possibility, but over the last 48 hours there have been all these stories about how Bill Clinton’s assorted post-presidential activities might create conflicts of interests and how he hasn’t been all that cooperative about turning over his lists of donors and contributors. And it’s my belief that the Obama people completely and utterly anticipated that and are ready to use it as a way to shuffle her out the door without looking like the bad guys.

I also believe that Hillary’s people knew all of this, too, and needed to play along for the sake of rehabilitating her public image after the “sore loser” end-game of her primary campaign. She sucked it up and played nice in the fall campaign, but did not get as much credit for it as she probably deserved. So this gives her a more favorable opportunity AND lets Bill look like the bad guy all over again. Moreover, I think HRC herself is 100% aware that her destiny is now in the United States Senate as the likeliest successor to Ted Kennedy as the ideological leadership of the Senate Democrats, and recognizes that there is absolutely no upside for her in actually becoming Secretary of State.

And for Bill, he takes the short-term hit on his reputation in the U.S., which isn’t all that great to begin with, but he doesn’t have to curtail his present-day activities for Hillary’s behalf. WIN-WIN-WIN.

Personally, I think Obama’s stealth candidate for State is Chuck Hagel — openly critical of Bush and the GOP, but with enough cred to fit the “bipartisan” approach Obama seems to be taking, has sufficient foreign policy experience, AND because State doesn’t have any domestic policy role to speak of, it helps to neutralize the elements of Hagel that are more objectionable to us pinko commie liberal bastards, namely his conservative and religious positions on domestic issues.

It’s been about a week since the news broke about Ted Kennedy’s medical condition, and the initial flood of pre-obituary tributes and emotional responses has had a chance to wane a bit. Now the pundits and bloggers have moved on to write about what’s next, and many, particularly those Democrat-friendly types, have come to a somewhat obvious, though reasonable, observation: that Hillary Clinton should take a page from Ted’s book and settle into her Senate seat rather than spend the remainder of her political career keeping her options open about running for president.

I, personally, agree with this idea 100%. A long Senate career like Kennedy’s gives a politician so much more opportunity to play a role in shaping the future of the country than the comparably-short tenure one has in the White House. If Ted Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination in 1980 and had gone on to somehow beat Ronald Reagan, he would have disappeared from the active scene in Washington twenty years ago, to while away the time sailing and carousing (I doubt he would have sobered up if he’d retired to private life years ago). Instead, he has accomplished more than many of his contemporaries on either side of the aisle and will leave the Senate with a genuinely well-earned reputation as one of the great legislators.

Timothy Noah at Slate took the time in this piece to clarify some of the misconceptions around the idea of Kennedy’s post-1980 career. It wasn’t until 1985, after Reagan’s landslide re-election, that Ted Kennedy actually publicly announced that he would give up his presidential ambitions. Many pundits and bloggers have created the impression that Kennedy made his announcement after the 1980 campaign, but he did briefly consider running in 1984. I don’t know that those five years make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things — Noah seems to be trying to make more of this particular fact than it really is. His decision was as much a milestone for the political scene of the late 1960s and 1970s as Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run in 1968. The pundito-bloggers are just compressing time in their own memories. The parallels between the Carter-Kennedy campaign of 1980 and the Obama-Clinton campaign of 2008 are strong and clear, and Hillary Clinton has the fortune of a historical model to help her lay the foundation for her political future.

The Clintons have done a lot to erode their political capital with the general public through this election season, just as our collective memory was getting ready to solidify around a much more forgiving vision of the Bill Clinton administration. While they don’t seem to have alienated too many people in the party’s power echelons as much, those movers and shakers will be far more swayed by public opinion against the Clintons if they make any obvious movement toward a 2012 campaign. They have more to lose than to gain at this point. Saving what face they can by easing up on the fight going into the convention will be enough salve for now, but if Hillary Clinton is truly interested in helping her “base” of working-class Democrats and not just serving her own ego, then she should stay in the Senate for at least a couple more terms. Four years from now, when we are all rueing the day we voted for Barack Obama or John McCain, she’ll have more seniority and more power than either of them, and probably a better legacy.

Hillary is getting all souped up to win the Kentucky primary today. This time for sure she’s going to PROVE that she’s the rightful nominee. I think she’s going to need a WHOLE LOT of Maker’s Mark to get there, though.

Over at Going Like Sixty, our Man-On-The-Scene reports that some extra-vigilant security people confiscated the little American flags he and his family brought to a Hillary Clinton rally because the sticks could be used as weapons.

Because, after all, Hillary is a firm believer in the “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” school of politics.

…or Clinton, or Obama…

• Five Mistakes HIllary Clinton Has Made
• Hillary Plays The Crazy Card
• Why Hillary Can’t Win
• When Will The Clintons Realize It?

• Joseph Wilson (Valerie Plame’s husband) slams Obama’s qualifications
• Obama’s Top Ten Weaknesses
• Obama “Vulnerable” To Republican Smear Tactics
• Rush Limbaugh changes his mind and tells “Dittoheads” to vote Obama

• Voter confronts McCain about his short temper
• John McCain’s Top Ten Out-Of-Touch Moments
• John McCain and John Hagee
• McCain is a “Flip-Flopper”

That carrot is looking better and better by the second.

This AP wire story sums up what I’ve been reading on a number of political blogs this week, namely that Michigan Senator Carl Levin has proposed a redistribution of the Democratic Party delegates from his state’s invalidated primary. Levin, who was the guy who caused the primary to be invalidated by going against DNC rules and scheduling it too early to try to get ahead of New Hampshire, is now responding to DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s call to wrap this all up by June. (Whether there will be any resolution to the situation with the Florida delegates remains to be seen)

At this stage I am sick to death of both of these two. I wasn’t crazy about either of them in the first place, and now I would sooner write in Zippy The Pinhead’s name than cast a ballot for Clinton or Obama. In the run-up to and subsequent run-away from the Pennsylvania primary, both candidates demonstrated what you might really expect from them as President of the United States. Hillary Clinton continues to position herself closer to John McCain with each passing day, while making use of some of Karl Rove’s shittiest playbook entries. Meanwhile, Obama’s beginning to get hopelessly boggged down in the Jeremiah Wright story, along with the usual racist bullshit about him, and his “exciting rhetoric” and “charisma” aren’t helping him “seal the deal” with voters.

So I guess the only reason to vote for either one of these two is because they “don’t suck as much as McCain.” Swell. That sure is a clarion call to leadership for the troubled times ahead.

I would like to officially send a request to Chairman Dean, Senators Clinton and Obama, and all the other Democratic candidates who “suspended” their campaigns in February: may we please have a do-over? One great big Second Chance Primary in all fifty states (plus Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam, and whoever else gets a shot), where we can wipe out all the delegate counts, skip the interminably stupid debates, forego any advertising or fundraising, and just have a “first-across-the-finish-line” race. Or maybe all of them could go on stage and sing in front of the American Idol judges (just as long as Paula Abdul is sober enough to tell the difference between one and two songs), or even do the Paso Doble on Dancing With The Stars (I would love to see Barack Obama dance with Cheryl Burke, or Dennis Kucinich do the jive with Anna Trebunskaya). Anything, anything, ANYTHING! but make us have to pick one of these two 3-D losers, only to have them lose to John “Batshit Insane” McCain…or worse, beat him.

Of course, it could be even worse…Londoners today have to choose between these two dorks for Mayor

The problem with being Democrat is that if you vote for Obama, you’re sexist. And if you vote for Hilary, you’re racist. Its easy being a Republican. No matter what you’re retarded.

When Adlai Stevenson was running for president, one of his supporters gushed; “Sir, every thinking person in America will be voting for you!” Stevenson replied; “Thank you, ma’am, but it won’t be enough. We need a majority.”

Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink. — Earl Long

Meanwhile, I think I have found my dream ticket:

Cleese-Obama ’08!

I even have a slogan for them: “I didn’t like the others, they were all too flat!”

The problem for liberals…excuse me, progressives…is getting these wishy-washy people on board to support the swing of the pendulum back after years of Republican mis-management. Waldman says that while the Democratic Party seems to hold the cards for doing well in November, without the support of these people, it may be difficult to bring about any sort of progressive movement in government.

What Waldman doesn’t say in his piece, unfortunately, is that any chance of progressive reform in Washington next year is almost equally hampered by the rightward leaning positions of the two Democratic candidates. Today’s Electoral Vote.com post takes a look at the relative liberal-vs-conservative skew of the current United States Senate and reveals that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are two of the least liberal Democrats. Interestingly, former Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Chris Dodd are even more conservative than Clinton or Obama. (To no one’s surprise, I assume, John McCain is rated as one of the most conservative senators.)

After 24 years of conservatism, interrupted only by the slightly-less-conservative Bill Clinton, the need for progressive reform is enormous. The swing voters are deserting the Republicans, the progressive voters are ripe for change, and only the hardcore right-wing faithful are left to stand with the failed Bush Administration. With two right-leaning moderates fighting for the Democratic nomination, it will take enormous effort to make any real progressive headway if either Clinton or Obama are elected.

An important civic leader known for his crusading against immorality was caught up in a shocking prostitution scandal this week: apparently Client #10 is the police chief of Tehran, who was reportedly nabbed in flagrante delicto with six…count ‘em, six…prostitutes. Somehow I don’t think a simple resignation is going to get this guy off the hook.

While we were all busy watching Clinton and Obama hack and slash at each other, Dennis Kucinich managed to fend off the four other Democrats running against him in the primary contest for his seat, scoring a large enough majority to avoid a run-off. So did Ron Paul. And there is now a second Muslim in the House of Representatitves: Democrat Andre Carson won the special election to fill the seat that was vacated when his mother passed away a couple of months ago. Sorry Rush and Hillary, Barack Obama is NOT the other one. Also flying under the radar was the news that a Democrat won the Illinois Congressional seat vacated by former speaker Dennis Hastert.

The Pentagon would like you to know that they’ve concluded that there were absolutely NO ties between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al Quaeda. However, the White House would prefer that you didn’t know that. After all, if Saddam didn’t have WMDs, and he wasn’t working with Al Quaeda, then what the fuck have we spent $3 trillion dollars for?

If you’re a kid attending school in Oklahoma, pretty soon you can ace every exam from here on out just by saying “Jesus did it.” The Oklahoma legislature will vote on a bill that will allow students to express their religious viewpoints without being penalized in class, on homework, or in any other way. Of course, as Phil at Bad Astronomy Blog points out, that applies to everyone, not just Christians, so if you’re a Pastafarian you can credit the Flying Spaghetti Monster without fear of summer school, too. The Texas legislature is considering a similar meaure.

And that’s the way it is….