Form 180?
 

Can I also get in on this action?

Only conceivable way she could possibly win is if a third party candidate splits the GOP and takes over 20% of the vote

Form 180?
 

Several Slate articles address them -- but I was recalling one of them that linked to this FactCheck.org (a website that our Vice President endorsed, as I recall) article. Click away, Bimore.

Slate articles: http://www.slate.com/id/2105353 and http://www.slate.com/id/2105529

And O'Neill was the tool of those swell guys Nixon and Colson signed up simply to smear John Kerry 30 years ago -- and I think that the White House tapes (thanks, Alexander Butterfield!) show that Mister Clean lied to them about his own service when they hired him to smear Kerry. I'll hunt the cite for that down later if requested.

Form 180?
 

Nah. Yours just get eye rolls, because I don't want to speak to you or touch you.

Form 180?
 

mmmmmm rolls mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Form 180?
 

Those are rolls of fat, baby.

Form 180?
 

Okay. 5 from Slave.

It's the split of the GOP that I'm betting on. I think Hil challenges the middle, the R party has to move that way to meet the challenge, and some hard-core righty then has more elbow room.

Form 180?
 

Do you really think she would lose in the primaries? As soon as she announces, there will be no money left for anyone else. If she has half a brain, and I concede she probably does, she'll have the nomination locked up by Super Tuesday.

Form 180?
 

So you don't think the Rove strategy of steering the party to the right and bringing out the Red state votes will keep? Is it still going to be all about Ohio and Florida?

If Hill goes for it, her strategy will focus on Florida. If you add Florida to Hillary's column, it is possible for her to then lose one modest sized state that Kerry won and still take it, but she can't lose Michigan or Pennsylvania. It's the eye of the needle.

Form 180?
 

You are making this up in hopes we will get our defenses down, correct? Nice try. Your people will bring up her communistic plans for universal health care and her amorality in cooperating with/abetting in her husband's activities with Monica etc. What about her would possibly appeal to red states? (or, states on the redder side of purple, since pretty much all the states are really shades of purple and not solidly blue or red, which people tend to forget).

Form 180?
 

Man, how many times did we all parse Saletan back then? Not hard to imagine, as his defense of Kerry and attack on the Swifties is best characterized like this:

"One comes from Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." The other comes from Van O'Dell: "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. ... I know, I was there, I saw what happened."

Letson loses credibility right away for implying that he has firsthand knowledge about his allegation. He doesn't. The allegation has to do with the source of Kerry's injury, not its severity. According to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, Letson told the paper that after treating Kerry, "[Letson] learned from some medical corpsmen that other crewmen had confided that there was no exchange of fire and that Kerry had accidentally wounded himself as he fired at the guerrillas. Letson said he didn't know if the crewmen giving this account were in the boat with Kerry or on other boats."

That's third-hand testimony from somebody who doesn't even know the identity or location of the firsthand source. Pretty lousy stuff. Furthermore, the Times notes, "Navy rules during the Vietnam War governing Purple Hearts did not take into account a wound's severity—and specified only that injuries had to be suffered 'in action against an enemy.' … A Times review of Navy injury reports and awards from that period in Kerry's Swift boat unit shows that many other Swift boat personnel won Purple Hearts for slight wounds of uncertain origin." Case closed."

Case closed? That's his case for that point? Maybe you buy that. That sounds like my brother telling mom that, since mom didn't actually SEE him hit me with the hammer, the bloody hammer laying next to the puddle on the floor next to my gashed head means nothing.

The whole Slate article is comprised of "this isn't enough proof for ME!" I was, somehow, not surprised. Remember Saletan's words about his own bias:

"After the election, I examined the faulty inferences through which I had translated an accurate account of Bush's shortcomings into an inaccurate prediction of his defeat. I never owned up to why had I drawn those inferences: because I had formed—and still retain—a negative opinion of Bush's maturity and wisdom, which I expected others to form as well. I had focused entirely on Bush's flaws."

And yet, you direct me to this as your source of info on the Swifties?

(ETA - forgot the cite - http://slate.msn.com/id/95513/ )

Form 180?
 

Fair point. The parts of Bill that turn purplish don't really like Hil.

Form 180?
 

This last election was decided by an awful lot of people who could have gone the other way fairly easily, but just couldn't hand a war to a Dem. I don't see that as (that big of) an issue next time. I think four more years of carping about "those rich bastards" will tell - I don't have a lot of respect for the mental capacity of a lot of voters who are stuck in the middle - I think sheep probably do better in a Darwinian sense - and I can see them going for Hil, 'cuz she'll be "nicer."

Form 180?
 

She's smart, and she has money, but I don't think she's a particularly capable politician. You can't just buy votes in Iowa and New Hampshire. She'll have rivals, and I'm hoping one of them (Bayh? Richardson? Dean?) can put it together.

Form 180?
 

Okay, now you're just teasing me.

Form 180?
 

Dean now holds the purse - and least I checked, he's not exactly a Clinton [either] fan.

Form 180?
 

I think people generally think she's an unfeminine battleaxe -- not at all nice. Whoever gets the D nomination will get some votes from people who are kinda unhappy that the deficit is ginormous and growing and they aren't doing any better financially than they were before -- but that has nothing to do with Hilary.

So are you just saying you think she'll win the primary, and that whoever the Rs put up in 2008 is destined to lose?

Form 180?
 

I long for Bradley. Or McCain, even.

I think it's been a more successful strategy to run a governor and unfortunately I'm not familiar with who more than a few governors are.

Form 180?
 

You don't think Hillary can out-raise Dean? Pretty sure she could do that while holding down a semi-full-time job. A couple flights to LA might suffice.

Form 180?
 

I don't see what his position on gay marriage has to do with it.

Form 180?
 

I think people who pay lots of attention - hc left and right - are the only ones who think of her at all. I think a ton of people wander through life making important decisions based on the best last commercial they saw, and she'll make some nice commercials. She's gonna get Dean kicked out of his new comfy chair in 15 months, and then it's Katey bar the door.

She's moved fairly conservative lately - she luvs the troops (ETA - and Bush's handling of Iraq), she wants to deal with anti-abortioners, she's praising parts of conservative spending and not-taxing, and she's no longer a (blatant) commie wingnut. And, like some people talked about during this election, I think people will be ready for a sort of unserious period. After eight years of intense foreign and domestic strife, people will be lookin to relax. I think Hil can offer that to them.

Form 180?
 

well, she doesn't publicly speak like one.

Form 180?
 

Yeah, I should have used "public".

Form 180?
 

So you look to people voting to return to those pastoral times of synergy between Bill Clinton and the Rep congress?

Form 180?
 

Well, fer gawd's sakes, we're not gonna let her have interns!

(But, seriously, fault and causation aside, compared to the post-9/11 world, those were pastoral times.)

Form 180?
 

Guess you didn't go to the factcheck.org link (here it is again: http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=231) I posted. Or you would have seen this:

• Two who appear in the ad say Kerry didn't deserve his first purple heart. Louis Letson, a medical officer and Lieutenant Commander, says in the ad that he knows Kerry is lying about his first purple heart because “I treated him for that.” However, medical records provided by the Kerry campaign to FactCheck.org do not list Letson as the “person administering treatment” for Kerry’s injury on December 3, 1968 . The person who signed this sick call report is J.C. Carreon, who is listed as treating Kerry for shrapnel to the left arm.
  
  In his affidavit, Letson says Kerry's wound was self-inflicted and does not merit a purple heart. But that's based on hearsay, and disputed hearsay at that. Letson says “the crewman with Kerry told me there was no hostile fire, and that Kerry had inadvertently wounded himself with an M-79 grenade.” But the Kerry campaign says the two crewmen with Kerry that day deny ever talking to Letson.
  
  On Aug. 17 the Los Angeles Times quoted Letson as giving a slightly different account than the one in his affidavit. The Times quotes him as saying he heard only third-hand that there had been no enemy fire. According to the Times, Letson said that what he heard about Kerry's wounding came not from other crewmen directly, but through some of his own subordinates. Letson was quoted as saying the information came from crewmen who were "just talking to my guys … There was not a firefight -- that's what the guys related. They didn't remember any firing from shore."
  
  Letson also insisted to the Times that he was the one who treated Kerry, removing a tiny shard of shrapnel from Kerry's arm using a pair of tweezers. Letson said Carreon, whose signature appears on Kerry's medical record, was an enlisted man who routinely made record entries on his behalf. Carreon signed as "HM1," indicating he held the enlisted rank of Hospital Corpsman First Class.

Form 180?
 

She has too much baggage. It'll be easy to remind people of the healthcare stuff etc. I don't think people generally think about her a lot -- but because they haven't been paying attention, they don't associate her with her new, tougher persona. I bet if there were a poll on associations, it would be (a) cheated on wife (b) not Tammy Wynette "stand by your man" (c) commie healthcare.

Form 180?
 

You're a good man, Not Bob.

(spree: sound)

Form 180?
 

Watch Mark Warner, current Gov. of Virginia.

Form 180?
 

BTW, what's the word on Romney for the other side?

Form 180?
 

You do understand that until Kerry actually allows the records to be made public (signs form 180) that which he provides is so much fluff.
If the Pig Mart tried to pick out what discovery you needed you'd call Bullshit bob, wouldn't you?

Form 180?
 

Is he R or D?

Form 180?
 

She wins the nomination easily. Whether she wins the who shabang depends on who she runs against. The GOP bench is short right now. Jeb is not going to run, Frist would get creamed, and McCain can't get the nomination. Rice would be interesting, but I'm not convinced she'll run. The wild card is Newt. He's been entertaining a run recently. Talk about a fun race to watch!

Form 180?
 

I don't want her to win the nomination, because I don't think she can win the whole thing.

I would like DeLay to run on y'all's side.

Form 180?
 

Doc says, I treated him, corpsman signed off. No one - no one - disputes that. You're only point is, well, you don't think there's enough proof to satisfy you. Find me a dispute, even from Kerry, and we'll talk.

And, the story of the no-firing? Again, any dispute? From anyone? If I remember correctly, a number of people came back with that same story. Was this the injury that even his commander told him to forget, because it was trivial, but he went around him and got a PH anyway, or was that another, different, trivial injury that "merited" a PH?

Form 180?
 

Democrat. Former venture capitalist, with access to lots of cash. Plays well in border states, but liberal enough to play well throughout the hard-core blue states. He has more weight than Edwards.

Form 180?
 

No mention of Collin Powell.

His family might be against it, but he's the R's best candidate.

Form 180?
 

Has the President authorized the release of all of his service records?

And Bilmore's Swiftie doctor conceded that he "delegated" the signing of the treatment form. Just because Kerry didn't release everything doesn't mean that the stuff he released was fluff.

Form 180?
 

He's a better candidate for the D's.

Form 180?
 

OK. I really think governors run better -- they don't have the weird Senate/House voting records (everyone does, because everyone ends up voting for many that can easily be characterized as "bad" or against things that can easily be characterized as "good" simply because of the unrelated shit that gets attached to so many bills).

Run better ultimately, not run better in primaries. Primaries are so much about narrow distinctions.

Form 180?
 

Didn't he sign the 180? I thought he did. (Might be wrong on this.)