I demand that Obama sever all ties with Wright.

You forgot to add that Ed Rendell also thinks Penn should be fired.

Oh, and about 90% of Clinton supporters.

Pretty much everybody except Hillary and Bill.

Please stop asking Hillary Rambo Clinton to be accountable for her campaign staff.

You are going to provoke more of this:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/11/clinton-laughs-off-colombia-questions/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/11/begala-nothing-but-contem_n_96226.html

That Begala article is damning!

"I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Penn," said Begala at a New York City breakfast sponsored by the non-profit group Public Agenda. "And for those of us who wanted to see him out from the beginning, it became almost a Rumsfeldian thing. And he is not even fired. He has been demoted. How could this be?"

"Mark Penn did have this strategy," Begala said. "He wrote a book called Microtrends in which he argued that the era of big trends is over. That's like going to New Orleans before Katrina and saying the era of big storms is over. It might end up being true but it could be really wrong."

Taking more, often humor-laden swipes, Begala went on: "[Penn] is looking to target non-Catholic Latino woman. All two of them... He slices the baloney incredibly thin. And in addition to being a political strategist, he is heading one of the biggest public relations firm in Washington, which is a huge conflict of interest. The campaign ended up looking like Exxon Mobil instead of what it really is..."

It isn't just Obama supporting unions, Rendell and other Hillary supporters aren't happy that she has kept Penn on too.

No matter who you support, you have to admit that keeping him around isn't good.

The Clintons are afraid to let Penn go. He knows too much about what has gone on inside their camp, and might just start spilling the beans. That is the only reason Hillary has clung to him. Can you say Dick Morris revisited, Boys and Girls!

Proof of disagreement between Hillary and Bill on a policy is proof someone, somewhere, is making millions from it! Never mind Tom Daschle has supported it. And if the millions aren't found, it then naturally means that Hillary can't control Bill.

Wingnuts were right about the Clintons!

For everyone in the labor movement, whether they're pro-Clinton, pro-Obama or neutral, this ought to be a no-brainer. Even without the Colombian catastrophe, Penn represents union-busters, corrupt foreign governments and corporate scoundrels. A whore like him has no place in the campaign of any serious Democratic candidate for president.

This begs the question of what the union leaders who back Hillary will do. According to The New York Times of April 8, AFSCME President Gerald "McEntee acknowledged phoning Mrs. Clinton on Saturday to urge her to fire Mr. Penn." If McEntee was satisfied that Clinton changed Penn's title, then it's clear he wasn't serious. If McEntee is serious, though, where is the outrage? Where is the threat to withdraw AFSCME's endorsement? (It took a heck of a lot less provocation for McEntee to withdraw AFSCME's endorsement of Howard Dean four years ago.) For that matter, where is Tom Buffenbarger of the Machinists, whose union has been decimated by foreign competition?

When is she going to sever her ties with the Wagging Finger?

Spine of Steel!!!

Camille Paglia offers trenchant, timely insight

I would like to get your feedback on the subject of those who end up in Hillary's orbit. Can you conceive of a strong, leader-type male ever working under her? An alpha, if you will. And if the answer is no, then why do you think that is? The men you always see under her are to a person passive-aggressive, sadistic, mean, little, petty beta-male pieces of work who would not naturally succeed in a common male-type hierarchy. By that I mean an environment that values straightforward achievement rather than the darker political arts.
Your thoughts?

I agree that the male staff who Hillary attracts are slick, geeky weasels or rancid, asexual cream puffs. ...If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say Hillary is reconstituting the toxic hierarchy of her childhood household, with her on top instead of her drill-sergeant father. All those seething beta males (as you so aptly describe them) are versions of her sad-sack brothers, who got the short end of the Rodham DNA stick. The compulsive war-room mentality of both Clintons is neurosis writ large. The White House should not be a banging, rocking washer perpetually stuck on spin cycle. Many Democrats, including myself, have come to doubt whether Hillary has any core values or even a stable sense of identity. With her outlandish fibbing and naive self-puffery, her erratic day-to-day changes of tone and message, her glassy, fixed smiles, and her leaden and embarrassingly unpresidential jokes about pop culture, she has started to seem like one of those manic, seductively vampiric patients in trashy old Hollywood hospital flicks like "The Snake Pit." How anyone could confuse Hillary's sourly cynical, male-bashing megalomania with authentic feminism is beyond me.

I was just going to shoot off a comment asking that he be kept on, but that everyone keep talking about his generally poor judgment etc, and that it would be continuously tied to Clinton. I though I'd better scan the comments first...

good work, team.

Got it?

Nice try, but I wouldn't count on that, if I were you. ;)

[pssst: let me tell you a secret; they get it, they just like to pretend they don't cause they like to talk about it. It's the current RW buzz]

The Obama Movement [if there really was any such thing], has turned into a mad chorus of shrieking Clinton hatred regurgitated from old paranoid boilerplate wingnut conspiratorial tripe. The candidate Obama doesn't even exist, which is understandable is there really is no movement at all -- if he dropped out today there would be nothing to carry in his absence. I wish it were possible for the commentators here to see just how unhinged and wingnutty you've become.

thanks for the link...that was an excellent article. the ball is in obama's court. let's see if he ceases the opportunity to highlight this fundamental difference between himself and hrc! whatever he does, he needs to proceed with extreme caution. hrc has the majority of non-black women backing her and she does well with sympathy votes! if perceived she is being picked on, legitimately or not, she will get sympathy votes again.

oh what a bind obama is in!!

Kind of a risky policy for that Pa. union to try to drive a wedge between its members and Clinton when most of them are Clinton supporters? Probably not. I'm a union member, and our union doesn't care what we think either.

For anyone who thinks all the old Whitewater stuff is rightwing conspiracy bullshit - fine. But don't imagine for one second that the Republicans aren't going to bring every last bit of it up.

I'm not vouching for what came out in those investigations being true, though people went to jail over the law firm, so something was going on - but most of America already has it firmly in their heads that the Clintons are apt to walk a fine legal line. So here we go again. Which explodes totally the already bogus electability argument, A/K/A he's too black to win. Maybe, though I don't think so at all. On the other hand, she's the pot calling the kettle because she has been dirtied from head to toe already by the Republicans the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy - so what the hell makes anyone think they aren't going to just start over and then add more? Penn looks to be a very fertile field in that respect.

Is everyone buying the narrative the Clintons are selling you?

Bill Clinton has far more commitments to Colombia than Mark Penn.

But if you want to deflect attention from that, put the focus on Penn, get everyone in a tizzy and announce Penn's dismissal next week, right before the April 16 and April 18 debates, and PA. primary.

Like NAFTAGATE before the Ohio primary, and the demotion of Penn after the Clintons claimed not knowing about his association with Colombia, Hillary will be seen once again as distancing herself from free trade when in fact, she's married to the biggest proponent of it.

Let's not forget that Hillary called for the president to boycott the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics.

While it's not logical to you or me, distancing yourself from anything having to do with China is seen by union members as complete support for the American worker.

Granted, Hillary won't vote for the current Colombia Free Trade agreement.

But you can't look at one hand of the Clintons without knowing what the other hand is doing.

All in all, the Clintons will have spent four weeks pretending to take action against free trade.

PLEASE Hillary PLEASE keep Mark Penn.

As an old Ohio pol used to say, "you don't want them to take the punching bag out of the gym."

Specter thinks Obama will take Pennsylvania - CNN

The Hill-backer's cheer:

Cocaine Wright! Cocaine Wright!
Muslim Muslim
Cocaine Wright!

TPM needs to post the CNN video of Paul Begala with Wolf Blitzer bashing Mark Penn again on The Situation Room today.

I swear if McCain wins this election I will volunteer to help those who intend to hunt down every person who wasted so much time and effort putting down other Democrats while they could of been out working to get things in place for the fall election...regardless of who the candidate might be. How any of this crap is supposed to help any of us defies explanation. Snide talk and infantile ravings while hiding behind phony avatars and made up names in a limited view forum is helping who in what way? Get the hell out in the real world and work to accomplish something. Choose the candidate of your choice and think what you want about the other but they are working in the real world to accomplish something not hiding in forums and trying to show off.

This is a person running for president? She is completely unhinged! When asked at a news conference about Bill's lucrative deals with Columbia, Hillary looks very serious as she listens. Then, out of nowhere, she breaks into giggles, mumbles something about angels on the head of a pin? Completely Bizzare!

Hillary dear, there is therapy and medication for many mental conditions.

Check out the vid from CNN. It is disturbing:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/11/clinton-laughs-off-colombia-questions/