What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like?

The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency.

Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don’t go right. Which is to say, often.

And endless psychodrama: the essential Clintonian experience that mesmerizes the press, confuses the citizenry, confounds members of both parties in Congress (not to mention the Clintons themselves, at times) and pretty much keeps the rest of the world constantly amused and fixated.

In A Woman in Charge, I wrote about her ability to evolve, observable especially in the years before she met Bill Clinton and in the Senate: to learn from her mistakes. Events have proven me wrong on that count.

The 2008 Clinton campaign, in fact, has been an exercise in devolution, back to the angry, demonizing, accusatory Hillary Clinton of the worst days of the Clinton presidency, flailing, and furtive, and disingenuous; and, as in the White House years, putting forth programs and ideas worthy of respect and deserving of the kind of substantive debate she claims she wants her race against Barrack Obama to be based upon.

Carl lays out the "ouch" on Hillary..

Carl Bernstein’s View: A Hillary Clinton presidency

... based on exit polls.

California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could banish ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state.

Two other standards require voting machines to be "effectively" or "reasonably secured against untraceable vote tampering" and cruder "denial of service" attacks intended to make a machine inoperable on Election Day.

For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with "red teams" of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes.

"An army of computer scientists will come forward to testify that computer programs cannot be verified to be secure against 'undetectable vote tampering' and therefore they all will have to be decertified."

Great news. California is the right place for an initiative to solve the voting machine problem. Silicon Valley should be able to come up with a solution to this.

California finally fixing voting machines (maybe)

Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

This is really interesting. I had no idea that Obama spent a part of his childhood growing up in Indonesia. As a smear tactic, this already backfired. I wonder if the "madrassa" thing was leaked specifically to backfire like this.

It appears this is not only going to be easy to spin as a Moonie plot against the Democrats, but it will be a tool to show that Obama has a better understanding of the world than people think, regardless of if it's true or not. Were the Moonie papers just used as a clever pawn?

This is not the kryptonite you are looking for.

Moonie papers, madrassas, Clinton, and Obama

HBO's Hacking Democracy provides a good summary of how the US elections are now about fooling machines rather than fooling voters. I made T-shirts, magnets, hats, etc. HERE! Spread the word that not only does your vote not count, Diebold has made it so it might not even be counted!!

Terratogen made a new t-shirt /hat/button/magnet/etc. design to celebrate the election.

frottage. | Diebold | It's not broken... It's Fixed!

Here are Neoteric's reasons to vote:

1) Iraq
2) Fear is not motive, it's a flavor enhancer (and now trans-fat free).
3) Your [I Voted] sticker is your ticket into my kegger.
4) Yelling at FNC doesn't actually accomplish anything.
5) Everytime a vote is supressed Lee Atwater eats another baby.
6) Democracy is only for the people that show up.
7) The time spent in the voting booth will be time not spend huffing glue.
8) All your base.
9) You goto vote w/ the electorate you have, not the electorate you want.
10) Everyone that doesn't vote gets a dick cheney facial.

I just got back from checking my mail, and it appears my absentee ballot has not arrived yet. Sigh..

Vote!

Let the games begin!

Update: w00t!

CNN.com - America Votes 2006 - Midterm Elections

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has another article in Rolling Stone about electronic voting machine fraud.

Rolling Stone : Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- Will The Next Election Be Hacked?

Islamist terrorists are adapting to global counterterrorism efforts, as the "jihadist movement" is becoming more decentralized and spawning offshoot organizations with anti-American agendas, according to a declassified intelligence document released Tuesday.

The movement lacks a global strategy, but new terror cells are likely to emerge, making it "harder to find and undermine jihadist groups," states the National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism trends.

The report adds that the U.S.-led Iraq war has become a "cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."

It's not the "Pentagon Papers v2.0", but it's a start...

The report credits four factors with facilitating the spread of the jihadist movement: 1) "entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice and fear of Western domination;" 2) jihad in Iraq; 3) the torpid pace of economic, social and political reforms in Muslim nations; and 4) a "pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment among Muslims.

Among ways to combat the growing Islamist terror movement are exposing the jihadists' radical ideology and urging respected Muslim leaders to denounce terrorist tactics, according to the report.

For instance, the idea of a government based in ultraconservative Islamic law, or Sharia, doesn't sit well with the majority of Muslims, the report states. Exposing the jihadists' "ultimate political solution" would help divide jihadists "from the audiences they seek to persuade."

"I hear it paints a grim picture. And because it does, I am told it is being held until after the November elections. If this estimate is finished, it should not be stamped 'draft' and hidden from the American people until after the elections," Harman said in a statement.

Allah forbid American voters be handed a clue...

CNN.com - National Intelligence Estimate summary declassified - Sep 26, 2006

] But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut
] revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American
] creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived
] exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in
] four countries in four years, has been used to try to
] salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

I've been trying to follow along with events in Ukraine. This is the first article I have seen that points to the US as a direct influence in the election.

Guardian Unlimited | US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev