Wow, sometimes the press pays attention...

It seems to me that this guy (President Bush) will literally say anything to cover his ass. I am glad that there are people like Keith Olbermann that don't let him get away with it.

I watched this interview yesterday and I have to say that the thing that struck me most about it was exactly how inarticulate the President is. He really struggles to communicate what he is thinking. His relationship with words is almost as staggering as his relationship with the truth. This is what you get, people, when you want a President of average intelligence.

Duck, it's a kitchen sink!!!

I've been sitting on this post for a while!!!

Barack Obama did me proud tonight!!!

How can you not like these people?

"Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride, ain't nothin' gonna slow me down! Oh no, I got to keep on moving."

Does this still qualify as "news"?

Here is the scoreboard for the nomination contest:

Delegate Count:

Barack Obama

Total Delegates: 1732

Pledged Delegates: 1489

Super Delegates: 243

Hillary Clinton

Total Delegates: 1595

Pledged Delegates: 1333

Super Delegates: 262

This includes the Pennsylvania results which awarded 83 delegates to Senator Clinton and 73 delegates to Senator Obama.

But let’s put this aside because the Clinton campaign has changed its tune (again) and decided that it is popular vote that matters. This ignores the fact that nominees for President are not selected based on votes, but rather by delegates.

Popular Vote Total:

Obama: 14,418,784

Clinton: 13,917,318

Margin: Obama +501,466

So, how does Hillary Clinton come to the conclusion that she is leading in the popular vote. Perhaps we should look at the primary states that were stripped of their Delegates by the DNC:

Florida Vote Count:

Obama: 576,214

Clinton: 870,986

So, how does that impact the popular vote totals?

Obama: 14,994,998

Clinton: 14,788,304

Margin: Obama +206,694

That does not get her into the lead. What if we add the Michigan Vote Count:

Clinton: 328,309

Uncommitted: 238,168

This makes things complicated since there was an agreement among the candidates to not campaign in Michigan and most of the candidates removed their names from the ballot. Do we assume that only Clinton should get votes from Michigan? Well she does because it is only by giving Senator Clinton the 328,309 votes and Senator Obama none that she is able to push her into the lead. But of course it will require a compromise between the two candidates to seat the contested state delegations at the National Convention. I can’t imagine that this compromise would stand a chance unless there was an agreement to award the uncommitted votes to Senator Obama. Using that standard, if you add the Michigan totals are:

Obama: 15,233,166

Clinton: 15,116,613

Margin: Obama +16,553

Florida has a halfway decent argument that their delegates should be seating at the Convention in August. A Republican Governor and a Republican Legislature forced the date change on the state Party.

Michigan’s argument is ridiculous. It doesn’t warrant further discussion.

Of course the problem with these numbers is they don’t count states that hold Caucuses instead of Primaries. Real Clear Politics estimates for what the vote count would be if we included caucus states:

Obama: 4,752,868

Clinton: 4,141,180

Margin: Obama +611,688

Chuck Todd from MSNBC, on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Wednesday, April 23rd said: “if we treated this the way we would call an election in a state, you know, the way our numbers gurus are looking at this stuff, we would call it. It‘s over. The pledged delegate count is going to be Obama‘s, it just is - because of proportionality, it is mathematically impossible for her to take the lead.”

I try not to argue with Chuck Todd more then absolutely necessary.

Microeconomics 101 for weenie Senators!!!

"Half a tank of gas, that’s his big solution."

- Senator Obama in response to the McCain/Clinton gas tax holiday scheme which analysts say will save the average consumer $30.

I am a bit disappointed to hear Senator Clinton repeatedly pandering to lower income Americans by calling for a suspension of the federal gas tax (a holiday, will there be balloons?) between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I expect that kind of mindless pandering from Senator McCain since it is abundantly obvious that the fundamentals of Microeconomics are so far over his head. But I expected better from the self-anointed master of the issues. Senator Clinton’s entire rationale for running is that she has a better command of the fundamentals of sound public policy than either Senator Obama or Senator McCain, but she is looking pretty average right now.

The best way to explain the impact of a gas tax holiday in Microeconomic terms is: in a market where there is a fixed supply of oil with which to refine petroleum (gas) and a fixed capacity to refine oil (regardless of what lame duck says), the price that consumers pay at the pump will adjust until the demand at that price matches that fixed supply. That is what is referred to as Equilibrium. I filled up my car two days ago and the price was $3.77 per gallon of high grade gasoline.

P = Price, Q = Quantity, S = Supply, D = Demand, P0 = Equilibrium Price, Q0 = Equilibrium Quantity

Many economists are predicting gas prices in the range of $4.00 per gallon by the summer of 2008. That price could (and probably will) include the 18.4¢ per gallon federal gas tax. Whether Congress votes for the gas tax holiday or not is of no significance. Either way, the price will not change. Oh, the price of gasoline will go down by 18.4¢ per gallon but that price will correspond with an increase in demand to bring the market back into Equilibrium. In essence, what Senator McCain and Senator Clinton are pushing for is a shift of that 18.4¢ per gallon from the federal coffers directly into the oil companies' profit statements. Make not mistake, McCain and Clinton are supporting reducing the federal budget and the governments ability to pay for the maintenance of our transportation infrastructure.

This predictable Demand shift can only be prevented by a corresponding increase in short-term Supply. I say short-term supply because oil is a natural resource with a fixed supply. Suppliers and producers can increase output, but only in the short-term. When it's gone, folks, it's gone. It just so happens that the world petroleum market is an oligopoly, that is to say, a market that is served by a finite number of suppliers. They have formed a cartel called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC has thus far been unwilling to adjust their output levels at the whim of American politicians. Their interest is in maintaining supply levels at their current level because there is no interest to them to do otherwise. There are other market forces and uncertainties that are driving the price of gasoline up. Why would they increase supply and reduce the price of oil? That ain’t capitalist folks, and our entire foreign policy has been predicated on the goal of convincing the world of the genius of the American system, which is at its heart a “free market” system.

The only way to control gas prices and ensure lower prices is to cap the wholesale price of gasoline. I’ll bet a month’s salary that neither McCain nor Clinton have the stomach for that.

If we reduce the taxation level of gasoline the price will drop temporarily (very temporarily) until demand increases to bring the price back to the equilibrium level. Barring a drastic change in the market trends the price of gas (even with a tax holiday) will be higher at Labor Day than it is at Memorial Day. Congress has the power to suspend the gas tax, but not suspend the laws of supply and demand.

It turns out that the candidate with the best grip on reality in this case is Senator Barack Obama. Who woulda thunk it?

Let’s not forget that environmental advocates see a reduction in the gas tax as totally inconsistent with either Senator McCain or Senator Clinton's campaign rhetoric about reducing carbon emissions. The increase in demand that results from the gas tax holiday will increase carbon tailpipe emissions. No way to sugar coat that fact.

Let us also not forget that the federal gas tax is not indexed to the Consumer Price Index and has not been increased since 1995. I will let the following graph depicting the purchasing power of the federal gas tax.

Pretty weak stand Mrs. Clinton. I would have expected better from you than just naked pandering. Do you really think the American people are that dumb? Doesn’t that make you an elitest?

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!