Wow

Pennsylvanians are a bunch of stupid hicks after all!

The Boss... what a commie!

Dubya unplugged!

Bitter people!

By now the quote is famous. You’ve heard it, Barack Obama at a fundraiser in San Francisco saying:

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Was it a polite thing to say? No, probably not. Was it politically astute? Nope, surely not. It is usually inappropriate to use broad generalizations when describing group of people or regions of the country. I live in Austin, Texas and please don’t paint me with the same brush as all my neighbors. They are good people but we are pretty diverse.

Here is a hard truth. People who have lost as much as some people in these rural communities have tend to become more traditional. In most cases this probably isn’t a conscious decision (i.e. they don’t know why they are sticking to traditional culture and values). It is called being reactionary. It is neither surprising nor an unreasonable response. Wouldn’t you get “bitter” and xenophobic if a bunch of politicians told you that Mexicans were to blame for all your troubles instead of the politicians that created tax loop-holes for outsourcing manufacturing jobs? I am a realist. Those jobs are leaving anyways. There is nothing to be done about that. But do we need to reward the companies for doing it?

Here is another hard truth: just like the working class people in Pennsylvania see San Franciscans as a total foreign enigma, the opposite is true as well. These are two different worlds and neither of them are one dimensional. But just like Pennsylvanians don’t like to be called gun toting, religious, xenophobic yokels, people in San Francisco are not all rich, liberal, intellectuals who shop at boutique super markets (though the ones I know are). There are Harvard alumni in the steel towns and there are uneducated folks in the Bay Area.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that all San Franciscans are rich, liberal intellectuals. What is wrong with that? I thought that the premise of this country that Republicans liked best was the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which they always substitute with pursuit of wealth even though the Founders purposefully chose not to use the phrase ‘and property’, they must have done that for a reason). Is it not the goal of this country to provide opportunity for upward mobility? It isn’t San Francisco’s fault that there is a correlation between educational attainment, wealth and liberal political attitudes. It is called being panoptic versus myopic.

But I digress. In a media world where brevity is rewarded is it any surprise that people have trouble communicating broad issues in a format that sound bytes? It is no shock that there will be instances of misunderstanding. It is easier when you speak in platitudes and emotionalisms like Republicans (e.g. tax cuts good, criminals bad!).

All that aside, I am voting for Barack Obama, because I too like arugula and other organic veggies from Whole Foods! If that offends people in the Heartland – go shoot at some beer cans!

Baracky

Easy does it Honky Cat!

"'I've always been a Hillary supporter,' [Elton] John, 61, said before launching into his 1970 breakthrough hits, 'Your Song' and 'Border Song.' "There is no one more qualified to lead America.

"'The English singer, composer and pianist added: 'I'm amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some of the people in this country. And I say to hell with them .... I love you Hillary, I'll be there for you.'"

Let me tell you, nothing that heartland voters love more than being lectured by foreigners about our shortcomings! That is definitely going to turn us around!

The Walken Family reunion!

Faith restored

I attended the Travis County Democratic Convention on Saturday. I voted and caucused for Senator Barack Obama in the March 4th Texas Two-Step. As part of that effort I served as an Obama delegate at the County convention. I had hoped to serve as an Obama delegate at the State Democratic Convention in June here in Austin, but there was too much interest in our precinct and I didn't have the will to fight for it.

I had been concerned attending the convention that there would be animosity between the Clinton and Obama supporters, but was pleased that we were generally very friendly to one another and there was more cheering for our own candidate than booing for the other. The message of the day, repeated over and over by speaker after speaker was unity. Unity first, unity foremost and unity above all else. I will be very disappointed if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, but I will, without doubt, vote for the Democratic nominee.

There is a lot of talk from the angry faces on TV about the divided Democratic Party. This is bunk. We're ready to go. The press is asking who can unite the Democratic Party. Is it Al Gore? Howard Dean? Nancy Pelosi? John Edwards? I've got the answer. It is John McCain. That guy may be a hero and he may know world history, but his ideas are stale and Neanderthal. We'll be united to beat that Cro Magnon man.

Bring It On!!!

Is it just me or is this guy awesome?

Gee, black people are sooooo mean to white people!!!

The Problem with Jeremiah Wright…

…is that he isn't wrong.

I absolutely grant and acknowledge that his words are simultaneously inflammatory, incendiary, insensitive, and make us all feel uncomfortable. We should stop and reflect on why it is that we feel that way when we hear those words. We love our country; it is a special place where we have all had the opportunity to pursue our dreams, we value the words that our forefathers wrote in that magic document:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.________ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But there is a painful truth in the American experience: the playing field is not level. There are segments of our population which have been and are to this day marginalized. These segments include racial minorities, the poor, immigrants, women, the old, and homosexuals.

Look at the Presidential nomination process that the Democrats are engaged in and that is all the evidence that you need to prove that our nation is still struggling to fulfill the promise so eloquently laid out in the Declaration of Independence written in that hot summer of 1776 in Philadelphia. Those white men were a product of their day; there were bigots and ideologues among them. But their pens were inspired and without fully knowing it they laid out the blueprint for every fight for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” that has come after.

I think what we are going through represents both the best and worst of us. We want so badly to be better, to see ourselves as better, to make progress, to be inclusive, but we don’t actually want to go through the uncomfortable self-examination that is required in order to achieve that progress.

Americans have come to feel entitled to everything that we have. That is true for all Americans. We feel entitled to drive big cars, live in big houses, consume vast amounts of resources, crucify public personalities for their failings, pass judgment on anyone and everyone who does subscribe to our world view or agree with our view of America’s place in that world. The wealthy feel entitled to their elite power and status. White Americans feel entitled to the status quo with all the good and bad that comes with it because it is comfortable to us and doesn’t challenge us or make us uncomfortable. African Americans feel entitled to their jealousy and anger for being marginalized and oppressed now and in the past. White Americans feel entitled to their resentment over seeing “less qualified minorities” given jobs and college admissions slots. African Americans feel they deserve entitlement and affirmative action programs which are owed for past wrongs.

And so the status quo perpetuates itself; on and on and on it goes. We have made progress. All is not bleak. We are not where we were 40 years ago. The struggles of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) and many, many others were not in vain. Racism isn’t remotely gone. It is still in the hearts of all people whether we are outwardly or inwardly prejudice. It is in black, white, Hispanic, Asian or Native Americans. It is now incredibly taboo to be outwardly racist. And so the prejudice has become far more subtle and difficult to quantify.

Feminists are right in that it is much more acceptable to be sexist than it is to be racist. Though they are wrong in another respect: racism, subtle or not, is generally far uglier and a much deeper rooted prejudice. It is far more difficult to be pervasively sexist. Everyone has a mother, sister, wife, grandmother, but not everyone interacts with people of other races.

To make this a battle of who is more oppressed is to divide and conquer. The thing that should unite the Democratic Party is exactly the thing that is their greatest asset. No matter who gets the nomination they would shatter one glass ceiling or another. It is something that I cannot imagine the Republican Party being capable of. They say that the Republican Party is a three legged stool. This is a vast over simplification. They do include fiscal conservatives (a dying breed), social conservative (religious value voters), and the neo-conservatives.

Republicans, to build their popularity, played on something more sinister to get power: fear. Fear of those gay people who want to corrupt your children in the Scouts, fear of those scary Mexicans coming across the border with diseases and looking to take your job and impregnate your daughter, fear of the black guy walking behind you on the street, fear of the “Arab looking” guy on the airplane with you. But beyond that Republicans prey on far more subtle fears: fear of the homeless guy asking for spare change at the traffic intersection, fear of the world around us and all the thousands and thousands of things that could go wrong or harm us everyday.

Running campaigns based on fear is a great way to win, but not a great way to lead. This makes sense, the modern GOP have never been concerned with leading. They don’t want to be leaders, they want to have power. This is why Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign strategy is so disheartening. Clinton isn’t a Republican and she should not be mistaken for one. Her policy positions are solid and are actually quite hopeful and filled with optimism. It is frustrating that her politics would play to fear and would push to crush the hopeful youth and optimism that the Obama campaign (and her own platform) embodies. In truth, Clinton’s campaign could be about hope too. Her campaign is about change and providing a feminine perspective in the Presidency.
This tack isn’t surprising, though. This is her only chance, it is the only angle she has left, and it tells us all that we need to know about Clinton. It isn’t that she is willing to throw the kitchen sink at her opponent that makes her totally unacceptable as a Presidential candidate. It is her willingness to throw away optimistic, hopeful, and progressive nature in the pursuit of power.
Clinton isn’t seeking to lead, she is seeking power.

We have a choice in this country and contrary to what Ralph Nader would have you believe, it isn’t a subtle contrast. The Democrats, whoever gets the nomination, offer the progressive policies of hope. They offer, Obama or Clinton, the symbolic evidence that we do indeed “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal.” Jeremiah Wright and the equivalent feminist (Geraldine Ferraro?) espouse a frustration of past oppression. We all want to react in a knee-jerk fashion and say: “hey, why are you so angry?” It is jarring and difficult to reconcile with the overall message of inclusiveness that is the foundation of the Democratic Party. But to simply typecast these dissenting voices as extremists is to ignore the past and perpetuate the marginalization.

Let’s look at some of the comments that Reverend Wright made:

"The government gives them [African Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

This quote reflects wrongly or rightly (I have never seen any evidence of government sanctioned drug dealing anywhere) a popular sentiment in the African American community. With the exception of the drugs, nothing here is false. The government did create a three-strikes law and the government does build bigger prisons instead of building bigger schools to head-off the development of the next generation of criminals. These criminal justice policies have a larger impact on lower income communities and because of a disparity in educational resources in African American communities they are more likely to live in the lower income communities.

After September 11, 2001, he said: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Obviously the American people have not supported state terrorism of South Africans or Palestinians, but our government made the decision to deal with the racist government of white South Africa. Our government has aligned its foreign policy interests in a biased fashion towards Israel. You can argue about whether that is a good thing or not, I am not touching it here, but we can’t then be shocked when Israel’s enemies become our enemies. We pay a lot of lip service to the plight of the Palestinian people, but we are not prepared to do very much to improve it. It is a classic chicken and egg scenario. Do we have to stop the extremists before economic support can be given or is the economic development of the Palestinian territories an important tool in defusing the extremist ideologies?

"It just came to me within the past few weeks, y'all, why so many folks are hating on Barack Obama. He doesn't fit the model. He ain't white, he ain't rich, and he ain't privileged. Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fit the mold, Giuliani fits the mold. Rich white men fit the mold. Hillary never had a cab whiz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong color. Hillary never had to worry about being pulled over in her car as a black man driving in the wrong… I am sick of Negroes who just do not get it. Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home, Barack was. Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons."

I can’t really say anything more then that this is right. White men and women can’t possibly know what it is like to be black living in America.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye...America's chickens are coming home to roost."

This gets back to the point about American foreign policy. We have made a calculation about what our interests are. You can agree with those decisions or not, but they are what makes up America’s face to the world. We have a tendency to assume that the United States can do no wrong, that we have no flaws, that we are infallible. But this is wrong. Our nation is a work in progress. It is this that make the United States special. The fact is that we are a great human endeavor in liberty, in unity, in equality, in egality. Note though, that this is a human endeavor, and as with all human endeavors perfection is not within reach. We are imperfect, we are fallible, we are human.

I think perhaps the most controversial part of Jeremiah Wright’s comments is their lack of hope and optimism. These are a handful of comments taken from 30 years of sermons. Does anyone want their comments over 30 years scrutinized to the same degree? What unflattering comments would be turned up in your past? Do these comments mean that Reverend Wright is a hateful pessimist, or do they mean that he is a man who is as susceptible as anyone to moments of despair and anger? I think the answer to these questions aids us in putting this event in context.

Two quotes to end with:

“Out of many, we are one.”

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

John McCain: He is old!

WOW!

Geraldine Ferraro's constituents!

DOWN GOES FRAZIER, DOWN GOES FRAZIER!!!!!!

This is worth watching in full

Slip-sliding away...

From the Wall Street Journal Blog - "The Numbers Guy"

March 10, 2008, 4:43 pm
Obama’s California Comeback

A little-noticed shift in the tally of California’s Democratic delegates may affect the primary between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton as much as the heavily hyped results last Tuesday in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island.

election

Sen. Clinton won primaries in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, while Sen. Obama won the Vermont primary and appears likely to win the Texas caucus. For the day, Sen. Clinton is likely to trim fewer than 10 delegates from Sen. Obama’s lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, which by most counts stands at about 100 delegates.

But Sen. Obama may make up all that lost ground in the media counts that are the closest this race has to an official scoreboard. A California politics blogger has argued that Sen. Clinton won 36 more pledged delegates in the state than Sen. Obama, rather than the 44-delegate margin that has long been included in the news organizations’ tallies. A spokesman for the state party confirms the blogger’s numbers.

The shift, if validated once the state certifies its election results this week and the party chooses its delegates, is a reminder that the commonly reported delegate totals are mere estimates, subject to change as states finalize election results. It also highlights how a blogger with intense focus on the numbers may be faster than the established delegate counters.

David Dayden Dayen*, who blogs at the site Calitics and serves on its editorial board, wrote last week that Sen. Clinton won 203 of the state’s 370 pledged delegates — and not the commonly reported total of 207. He relied on updated vote totals from the state, based on late counts of absentee and provisional ballots. Later, when he noticed that several major news organizations still were showing Sen. Clinton with 207 delegates, he wrote a follow-up post explaining his calculation and exhorting, “I know math is hard and everything, but get out your calculators, people.”

It’s hard to explain the difference because most news organizations don’t provide a breakdown of projected delegates, district by district. Some of the discrepancies may arise from the peculiar math of congressional districts. For instance, in the 16th district, Sen. Clinton received 50,056 votes; she needed about 58 more votes to get three of the district’s four delegates, but instead she split them evenly with Sen. Obama. In the 53rd district, which has five delegates, Sen. Clinton received a small plurality of the early returns, but has fallen behind, which swings that fifth delegate to Sen. Obama.

The statewide vote matters, too. On primary night, it appeared Sen. Clinton won the state by 10 percentage points. Now she’s up by 8.7 percentage points. That means she gets an 11-margin win among delegates apportioned on the basis of the statewide vote, rather than a 13-margin win.

There won’t be an official delegate total until California certifies its results and the state Democratic party chooses delegates, Bob Mulholland, advisor to the California Democratic Party, told me. But he confirmed that the party’s unofficial count is 203-167. “It’s been this way for a couple of weeks,” he said. The earlier counts, he said, were based on preliminary results, before all of the ballots had been counted. Mr. Mulholland estimates that more than one in four ballots weren’t counted on primary day: “We’re a big state. We have lots of ballots.”

On Monday, some news organizations were updating their totals. Earlier in the day, CNN showed Sen. Clinton up 204-161, with five delegates unallocated. A spokeswoman told me the site was waiting for California to certify its results before updating, but by this afternoon, the site’s California results page was in line with Mr. Dayden’s Dayen’s* 203-167 margin. The New York Times’s page for California results shows the 207-163 result, but a page listing delegate totals for each state showed the 203-167 margin. NBC and CBS still showed the 207-163 margin. An inquiry to New York Times polling editor Janet Elder wasn’t returned. An NBC spokesman told me, “Apparently, there are discrepancies between the state count and the individual county tallies.” Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, told me, “delegate allocation is a work in progress.” (UPDATE: Ms. Frankovic told me later Monday that CBS would update its totals to reflect the 203-167 margin. “Thanks for alerting us to the problem,” she said.)

Mr. Dayen, who identifies himself as a 35-year-old television editor in Santa Monica, Calif., told me, “I think the 207-163 number was flagrantly wrong and nobody bothered to change it.”

*Correction: The California blogger who counted delegates in his state is named David Dayen. This post previously spelled his name incorrectly twice.
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Read more: campaign08, politics, Global

Eliot Spitzer scandal...

There is only one person you can trust with this story.

From the Huffington Post today

The Clinton camp has released a memo questioning Sen. Obama's capacity to be Commander-in-Chief:

Please note my commentary mixed in between in red.

Senator Obama has thus far failed to answer key questions about his qualifications to meet the Commander-in-Chief test. The following are questions that Senator Obama should address:

Will you stand by your definitive commitment to removing all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months, or will you, as your former advisor said, not rely on "some plan" you "crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US Senator?"

No, Obama should not paint himself into a corner like this. If Clinton thinks that it is a good idea to say in March 2008 that all troops should, without a doubt, be removed on a set timeline without consideration of changing events, let her look foolish.

Do you regret that you have never held any substantive hearings on Afghanistan or any other subject, since you became chairman of the subcommittee on European Affairs in January 2007?

No, because the Bush administration wouldn’t have listened to the recommendations anyway. With the filibuster, the Senate would never be able to force changes in policy. Stop treating the Senate as a training ground for being Commander in Chief.

Do you agree with General McPeak that you are more qualified to be commander in chief because you don't "go on television and have crying fits?"

Blah, Blah, Blah… Did you hear something?

Are you prepared to remove General McPeak from your campaign for what is viewed by many as a sexist comment?

Yawn! Two word: Gerrie Ferraro!

Are you still willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of an Obama administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea? Are there any circumstances in which you would not conduct such meetings?

Yes. Just because you talk with someone, doesn’t mean they will be able to extract concessions from you. Is Clinton really that gullible and cowardly? Maybe we should meet with them all at once! Party on with Raul Castro and Kim Jong Il!

As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it's legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?

No! Next question. Having had tea in 80 countries doesn’t impress.

Earlier in the campaign you were asked how you would respond to a terrorist attack on two cities in the United States. You talked about the need for an effective emergency response but were initially unclear about the need for a military response. What do you think that says about your readiness to be Commander-in-Chief?

It means that dealing with hypothetical scenarios is pointless. It means that the President should never view the world in two dimensions. Obama can leave that approach to George W. Bush (and Clinton apparently).

You publicly broadcast your willingness to attack Pakistan unilaterally, a statement which caused unrest in that country. Recognizing that we need to combat terrorism wherever it exists, do you wish you would have made your comments in a way that didn't cause unrest?

No, the Commander in Chief needs to reserve the right to act to protect the national security of this country. That is their first and foremost responsibility. Stability in other countries is important and the decision to act should consider this, but if there is a imminent threat, and it is the advice of the National Security Council to act immediately, action in Pakistan is not out of line.

It seems to me that Barack Obama does not need to beat Hillary Clinton. She is basically screwing herself in the general election to beat Obama in the primary. It is a dangerous tactic. Obama should turn to focus on the domestic agenda. Let Clinton ask all the questions that she wants. Obama isn’t trying to court her vote. New York already had their primary. Keep talking about your agenda Barry. Talk about what your vision is and don’t get sucked into every little tit-for-tat that Clinton lobs your way. It makes her look very small and unpresidential.

Will she do anything to win?

From Arriana Huffington's piece entitled: Democratic Scorecard: The Lizard Brain Wins Again!

"When Clinton was still pitching the inevitability of her candidacy and fending off attacks from her opponents, she roundly disavowed these kinds of tactics. 'I'm not interested in attacking my opponents,' she claimed in Iowa in November. 'I'm interested in attacking the problems of America and I believe we should be turning up the heat on the Republicans.'

"Terry McAuliffe reiterated the do-no-harm-approach: 'We're going to focus on the Republicans. We're going to focus on winning the White House. We're not going to attack our fellow Democrats. That's not what we want to do.'"

Here is Terry McAuliffe on HBO with Bill Maher:

Barack Hussein Obama... Is he a Muslim?

A lot of questions about whether Barack Obama is a Muslim. I confess to being incredibly underwhelmed with his campaign's inability to get back on message this week. But allow me to help dispel one myth right here and now. Barack Obama was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. Do they look like Islamo-fascists to you?