John Edwards has criticized Hillary Clinton for being inconsistent in her positions and debate answers, and she certainly has earned that criticism. But Edwards, who ran as a sunny moderate in 2004 but is running as the angry left nutroots candidate this time, isn’t really the guy to make the criticism. He demonstrated his disingenuous phoniness again last night in an appearance on the nutroots cable network, MSNBC –

Angry Left mouthpiece Keith Olbermann opened his hard-hitting questioning of John Edwards with:

The American people today are rising up, demanding to know how at least one Democrat somehow slipped through the system last night. I’ll resist the temptation to ask you that question about how the Republicans can answer al Qaeda if they can’t answer a Democrat, instead, can you tell us for the record whether you have any contingency plans if, heaven forbid, some time in the future, someone who’s not a Democrat, even maybe an actual registered Republican, were somehow able to ask you a question?

Pretty funny, and hypocritical, from Kooky Keith, who can’t seem to ever find anyone who disagrees with him to come on his little show. (Unlike Keith’s nemesis Bill O’Reilly, it should be noted, who has liberals/Democrats on his show almost every night.)

Edwards answered, playing along:

Heaven forbid, I mean, how could we possibly survive if somebody who is antagonistic or has a different point of view than you do asks you a question, and no, we can’t possibly expect somebody who answers questions from either independents or the other party to get elected President of the United States. How could anybody be ready to do that?

But just earlier this year, Edwards didn’t find the idea of running scared and hiding from those he thinks are his ideological opponents so ridiculous.

Edwards in March 2007:

Edwards to Skip Nevada Debate Hosted by Fox

Former Sen. John Edwards campaign announced that he will skip the Nevada Democratic Party’s planned August presidential debate, the latest fallout from the party’s decision to have the Fox Network host the event.

The move sparked an outcry, particularly among liberals and activist bloggers, who accused Fox of being too sympathetic to Republicans and demanded that the Democratic candidates boycott the forum.

…

Edwards, who has stepped up his efforts to court liberals in the current race after being his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2004, became the first to bow out of the debate this week. His deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, sent an email Tuesday to the blog DailyKos that said Edwards will appear at numerous Nevada events, but not the Fox debate

Maybe next time Keith will be slightly more “fair and balanced” and asked Edwards a follow-up: “if you can’t face Chris Wallace or Brit Hume, how can you face al Qaeda?” Yeah, right.

Of course this issue Republicans have with the CNN debate is not any reluctance to answer questions from Democrats. They answer questions from Democrats all the time – practically every time an MSM reporter asks them a question.

The NY Times reports on top Democrats’ refusal to accept reality and change course:

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

In other words, they’ll pay lip service to the real improvements, but not change their strategy prescriptions one iota – all while claiming it’s President Bush who refuses to acknowledge reality or change course. But much more scary is the fact Americans just might choose one of these unqualified and grossly irresponsible people to be Commander-in-Chief next year.

The Times article is titled “As Democrats See Iraq Gains, a Shift in Tone”. But the Democrats haven’t changed their stance at all. They’re saying the exact same things they were saying a year ago, in effect completely denying the new reality on the ground.

The Times also accuses “many Democrats” of not supporting the troops:

This is a delicate matter. By saying the effects of the troop escalation have not led to a healthier political environment, the candidates are tacitly acknowledging that the additional troops have, in fact, made a difference on the ground – a viewpoint many Democratic voters might not embrace.

What does it say about many Democratic voters that they would be reluctant or unwilling to embrace news of success by our military in Iraq – not just that they don’t believe it, but that they don’t seem to want to hear news of success? Not anything good.

Others:
Captain’s Quarters
NewsBusters

From the AP, of all places, (via Yahoo News):

…many scholars and front-line caseworkers interviewed by The Associated Press see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”

Liberals have been arguing for decades that family structure doesn’t matter, “all kids need is love” and all that. The social stigma has been all but stripped away from illegitimacy, shacking up, etc. As this article illustrates, too many children have paid the price. Yet liberals consider themselves the champions of children’s welfare because they support more government funding for various programs purportedly aimed at children. Essentially, putting more kids on the government dole = caring more about kids, in the minds of many on the left.

Amid the usual uncritical, college dorm bull session-type boilerplate one now expects from Senator Obama, this bit from Sunday’s Meet the Press grated most, because it’s both so cartoonishly simplistic and so obviously untrue:

SEN. OBAMA: Well, look, when we think about, let’s say, foreign policy, we have had a tendency to, to argue along the spectrum of you’re either a hawk or a dove. Either you’re willing to engage in military action and oftentimes think military action first and diplomacy second, or you’re a dove, you’ve got post-Vietnam syndrome, you’re suspicious of any military action. I think that the way we have to think about it is to say that right now we live in a dangerous world. There are times where we’re going to need to act militarily. We should not hesitate to act on behalf of the national interest. But we have to understand that we’ve got more power than just the military at our, our disposal, and that’s something, obviously, the Bush administration has forgotten.

Yes, it is obvious, Mr. Obama. It is obviously untrue. And the senator knows it’s untrue; it is therefore a lie. Our entire strategy toward the Iranian nuclear program has been diplomatic. We haven’t bombed or invaded Iran. The administration has engaged in diplomatic initiatives, worked with our European allies, and gone to the United Nations to press for sanctions. Whether the diplomatic initiatives have been effective or not is a separate issue that can be debated, but to suggest they don’t exist is clearly nonsense.

One could also point to the recent agreement with North Korea on their nuclear program as a use of diplomacy rather than military response. So this line from Obama (and other Democrats) that the Bush administration does not engage in diplomacy is plainly and obviously untrue.

If Senator Obama really wants to run “a new kind of campaign,” if that’s not just an empty bumper-sticker slogan, then he ought to drop this obvious falsehood from his repertoire immediately.

Obama also uncritically passed along Warren Buffett’s likely bogus anecdote supposedly illustrating that he isn’t taxed enough. So we’ll repeat a link to a good debunking of that claim.

Another day, another example of rank bias from the AP:

On Monday, in defense of his wife against political critics, Bill Clinton cited the “swift boat” television ads of the 2004 presidential campaign that questioned John Kerry’s patriotism and the campaign commercials in 2002 that suggested Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia was soft on terrorism. [Emphasis added.]

Notice that it’s presented as fact that Kerry’s patriotism was questioned. Perhaps it’s just sloppy writing, and the AP’s Nedra Pickler really meant to say that according to Bill Clinton Kerry’s patriotism was questioned, but we doubt it. Of course, this is nonsense right out of the Democrats’ spin manual. John Kerry’s patriotism was not questioned by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. His account of his 4.5 month service in Vietnam, which Kerry made the centerpiece of his campaign, was questioned.

In fact, while it’s easy to find examples of leading Democrats questioning the patriotism of Republicans, calling them “unamerican” etc., it’s difficult if not impossible to find an example of a Republican leader questioning a Democrat’s patriotism. Disagreeing with Democrats or criticizing their policy positions does not amount to questioning their patriotism. The Democrats ought to stop lying about this and try to defend their positions instead. We will not hold our breath.

Despite all the problems Hillary Clinton has had with shady fund-raising and doubletalk on pretty much every question asked of her, a new poll shows Democrats don’t seem to care:

Both Barack Obama and John Edwards unloaded on Clinton during the Oct. 30 debate, intensely questioning both her character and her willingness to provide straight answers on issues like Gov. Spitzer’s controversial plan to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.

But the barrage from Clinton’s top Democratic opponents seemingly had little influence on the strength of the New York senator’s support.

Clinton pulled 44% of Democrats in a Newsweek survey conducted after the debate aired, versus 24% for Obama and 12% for Edwards.

Rich Lowry has a good column on the waterboarding controversy, illustrating the Democrats’ posturing and doubletalk. A couple of points worth emphasizing:

Reasonable people can consider waterboarding torture, defined by federal law as an act “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Obviously if waterboarding weren’t so horrifying, it wouldn’t break detainees so quickly. But common sense suggests that the practice belongs in a murky space short of unambiguous torture.

Journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded, something they would never do in the case of such infamous torture methods as pulling out fingernails. Both the Army and Navy use waterboarding in their survival and resistance training. If waterboarding is torture, whoever has authorized and conducted this training should — as a strict matter of the law — be vulnerable to war-crimes prosecutions.

….

Circumstances matter. If we were waterboarding political dissidents, Sen. Whitehouse would be right to compare us to Saddam Hussein. If interrogators were waterboarding KSM every morning for their own amusement, that would shock the conscience. But not many consciences will be shocked at subjecting him to 90 seconds of uncontrollable panic to get information that might save lives.

Those who compare U.S. treatment of terrorist detainees always bring up Saddam Hussein (who they were content to leave in power, despite now using him as an example of the horrors of torture), or the Soviet gulags, or Hitler, or the Inquisition, or whatever. But ignoring all context leads to absurdity. “The Soviets put political prisoners in jail, therefore it’s the same thing if we put terrorists or murderers in jail” would obviously be an absurd claim, even though the “technique” is the same in both circumstances. If the U.S. were cavalierly, routinely beating, waterboarding, pulling out fingernails, etc., anyone with suspected ties to a terrorist group, simply for the purpose of vengeance for 9/11, or something of that sort, that would certainly shock the conscience. But 90 seconds of panic for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with no lasting physical damage, to get vital information about al Qaeda? That doesn’t even begin to make us like Saddam, or the Soviets, or the Inquisitors. We addressed the same issue about a year ago, and still come to the same conclusion today.