And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.The video:
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.
[The Bush] Administration has allowed states to take advantage of a loophole in federal regulations, delaying bridge inspections to every four years instead of the two years normally required.This following last August's tragedy in Minneapolis.
[When Hillary Clinton] served on the board of Walmart in the late 80s and early 90s she did nothing to push back against the companies aggressively anti-union policies.Sigh. Despite my foaming at the mouth over the possibility of a Democratic ticket led by Hillary Clinton, I really do like the Clintons, thought Bill was a terrific president, and believe they were the target of some really scuzzy partisan attacks from the right.
[A New York Times story] shows Bill Clinton mixing fundraising for his foundation with allowing international tycoons to trade on his friendship to secure international mining concessions in Kazakhstan.
Clinton 48%30 January:
Obama 28%
Clinton 42%Of course, the usual caveats...primary polling this year is notoriously wrong, there are still 5 days until Super-duper Tuesday, yadda, yadda.
Obama 36%
From CNN:Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, two sources inside his campaign said Wednesday.I didn't see this coming. I figured Edwards was going to take his nomination all the way to the convention just to keep Clinton and Obama on their toes.
Edwards has told top advisers about his decision. It is expected he will announce it in a speech at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday in New Orleans, Louisiana.
An Edwards aide said the candidate was not getting the media attention he needed to get his message out and win delegates, especially with races coming up in 22 states next Tuesday.
The idea of Rudy Giuliani in the White House scared me to no end. The man is trigger happy beyond belief; and despite his rather liberal attitudes on gay rights and the right to choose, the former NYC mayor is an uber-fascist who would turn the Constitution into nothing but dust, slamming America into a massive police state.
The Democratic Party stripped Florida of all of its 2008 delegates as punishment for breaking party rules and scheduling its presidential primary on Jan. 29. 2008. All major candidates [including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards] signed pledges not to participate in the state's primary elections if they are held on that date.However, Clinton has been campaigning in Florida for over a week, and today this poster has been seen around the state:
Courting voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, last August Sen. Hillary Clinton signed a pledge not to "campaign or participate" in the Michigan or Florida Democratic primaries. She participated in both primaries and is campaigning in Florida. Which proves, again, that Hillary Clinton is a liar.-The Manchester Union-Leader, calling Hillary Clinton on her shit.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) rescued more than 200 animals from a home in Marshall, Texas. Among the rescued critters were 26 hissing cockroaches, 16 rabbits, 15 guinea pigs, 13 gerbils, seven doves, two dwarf hamsters, two hedgehogs, two bearded dragons, an opossum, and a pink toed tarantula.The kicker:
While some were found scattered around the property, most were living in filth inside the owner's doublewide trailer.
Speaking to workers at a nursing home, Hillary Clinton got overly excited upon ending her speech tonight when she repeatedly asked the crowd to turn out to vote for her in New Jersey's primary on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.I haven't been able to find video of the speech, but the Ed Schultz Show played a clip this afternoon, and at first I thought they were playing her question ("Will you help me?!") in a continuous loop.
"Will you help me?! Will you help me?! Will you help me?! Will you help me?! Will you help me?! Will you help me?!" Clinton yelled six times as she tried to rally the crowd's support. However, her yelling came out more like shrieking.
He radiated the sense of possibility that has attracted the votes of independents and tapped into the idealism of young people during this campaign. He exuded the aura of a 46-year-old leader who could once again persuade the best and the brightest to forestall or pause their grand professional goals to serve in his administration.
I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
Odds and ends from yesterday...Obama 295,091Total Democratic vote: 530,322
Clinton 141,128
Edwards 93,552
Kucinich 551
McCain 147,283Total Republican vote: 442,918
Huckabee 132,440
Thompson 69,467
Romney 67,132
Paul 16,054
Giuliani 9,494
Hunter 1,048
And MSNBC is reporting that the final numbers will show him beating Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in an overwhelming landslide.
I saw "Juno" with friends who were visiting from Santa Barbara over the New Years holiday, but am only now getting around to commenting...There are two things that stick in my mind most about Jason Reitman's new film, "Juno"...Ellen Page and Jason Bateman. Their performances in this smart, touching comedy are two of the very best of this past year. That Bateman didn't get an Oscar nomination is pure injustice.
Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America’s big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience.Oh...and they endorsed McCain on the Republican side. Click here to read it, if you're interested.
...Mrs. Clinton has more than cleared [the commander in chief] bar, using her years in the Senate well to immerse herself in national security issues, and has won the respect of world leaders and many in the American military. She would be a strong commander in chief.
...As strongly as we back her candidacy, we urge Mrs. Clinton to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign. It is not good for the country, the Democratic Party or for Mrs. Clinton, who is often tagged as divisive, in part because of bitter feeling about her husband’s administration.
...We know that she is capable of both uniting and leading. We saw her going town by town through New York in 2000, including places where Clinton-bashing was a popular sport. She won over skeptical voters and then delivered on her promises and handily won re-election in 2006.
From Andy Towle:Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church and his band of haters plan to picket the funeral of actor Heath Ledger, because of his involvement in Brokeback Mountain.
In a news release, the church wrote:Yes. WBC will picket this pervert's funeral, in religious protest and warning: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked." Gal. 6:7. Heath Ledger thought it was great fun defying God Almighty and his plain word; to wit: God Hates Fags! & Fag Enablers! Ergo, God hates the sordid tacky, bucket of slime seasoned with vomit known as 'Brokeback Mountain' - and He hates all persons having anything whatsoever to do with it. Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there - beside which, nothing else about Heath Ledger is relevant or consequential.
Hillary Clinton: ...you talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader. I did not mention his name.I was at the office quite late last night and didn't see the debate. I'm actually sort of happy I missed it because apparently it was quite the heated exchange (and thus, because we're both supporting different candidates, watching the debate with my partner may have itself turned into a heated exchange). But, on the Barack-Hillary back-and-forth quoted above...
Barack Obama: You're husband did.
Hillary Clinton: Well, I'm here. He's not.
Barack Obama: Well...ok...I can't tell who I'm running against.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.-Sen. Barack Obama, yesterday, to parishioners at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for president, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.
So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others -- all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face -- war and poverty; injustice and inequality.
We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.
Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.
...if you're looking forward to a Democratic White House in 2009, I don't think this was a good night. Far better had Huck taken it.-Josh Marshall, on John McCain's victory in South Carolina's Republican primary on Saturday.
With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more of a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district. That was Abraham Lincoln.
Another successful president scorned any need for years of apprenticeship in Washington, declaring, “The same old experience is not relevant.” He suggested that the most useful training comes not from hanging around the White House and Congress but rather from experience “rooted in the real lives of real people” so that “it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.”
That was Bill Clinton running in 1992 against George H. W. Bush, who was then trumpeting his own experience over the callow youth of Mr. Clinton. That year Mr. Bush aired a television commercial urging voters to keep America “in the hands of experience.”
It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.
Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.
They all did have executive experience (as did Mr. Clinton), actually running something larger than a Senate office. Maybe that’s something voters should think about more: governors have often made better presidents than senators. But that’s not a good Democratic talking point, because the candidates with the greatest administrative experience by far are Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee.
Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents.
The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred.
In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty. That front-line experience is one reason Mr. Obama not only favors government spending programs, like early-childhood education, but also cultural initiatives like promoting responsible fatherhood.
Then there’s Mr. Obama’s grade-school years in Indonesia. Our most serious mistakes in foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq, have been a blindness to other people’s nationalism and an inability to see ourselves as others see us. Mr. Obama seems to have absorbed an intuitive sensitivity to that problem. For starters, he understood back in 2002 that American troops would not be greeted in Iraq with flowers.
In politics, Mr. Obama’s preparation is indeed thin, though it’s more than Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledges. His seven years in the Illinois State Senate aren’t heavily scrutinized, but he scored significant achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of early-childhood education.
Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid.
Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.” The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.
To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.
That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case.
Hillary Clinton wins her second straight nominating contest:Clinton 51%That Edwards number is anemic. If he doesn't do even a little better in his birth state of South Carolina next week, then his campaign will be in dire straits.
Obama 45%
Edwards 4%
At the end of the event, a man yelled out to Obama that he will be a better president than George Bush. Obama responded, “So would you!”-Maria Gavrilovic's "From the Road" blog at CBS News.
Anna,
Can't you give me some time?
I got to give myself one more chance.
To be the wo-man that I know I am.
To be the wo-man that I know I am.
Won't you just tell Cleveland,
I'm gonna need your love.
The first line of the Congressional Oath of Office:From Pete Yost, of the Associated Press: All White House emails before October, 2003 have been erased, the disks written over, and the backups lost.I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need...to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.Yes...because by all means we don't want to practice that "family values" drivel his party rants on and on about, do we? Love your son or daughter? Guarantee them equal protection under the law? Absolutely not! Graffiti the Constitution: All pipe smokers and carpet munchers be damned!
I'm not suggesting that we re-write the constitution to reflect [mandatory church donations] or Sunday school attendance. I want to make that very clear.Well...now that he's explained himself...I'm so relieved.
88% Barack ObamaTake it yourself and see how your views compare to candidates of both parties.
84% Joe Biden
83% Hillary Clinton
82% Chris Dodd
82% John Edwards
81% Bill Richardson
75% Dennis Kucinich
74% Mike Gravel
41% Rudy Giuliani
39% John McCain
35% Ron Paul
19% Mike Huckabee
16% Fred Thompson
15% Mitt Romney
8% Tom Tancredo
Mitt Romney 39%This was a state where John McCain was able to beat George W. Bush back in 2000, with many independent and Democratic voters crossing over to cast ballots in the GOP primary that year. Democrats tended to vote in their own primary this year, but McCain won those few who did cross over.
John McCain 30%
Mike Huckabee 16%
Ron Paul 6%
Fred Thompson 4%
Rudy Giuliani 3%
Uncommitted 2%
Duncan Hunter 0%
Hillary Clinton 55%It's important to note that this is not a victory for Hillary Clinton. Because of the Michigan Democratic Party's desire to move the state's primary to mid-January, the National party stripped the state of its delegates to this summer's convention, so the election is, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. In fact, John Edwards and Barack Obama removed their names from the ballot.
Uncommitted 40%
Kucinich 4%
Dodd 1%
Brad Renfro, who made a name for himself in "The Client," and then went on to prove himself an excellent actor in such films as "Apt Pupil," "Telling Lies In America," and "Bully," was found dead in his Los Angeles home yesterday. He was 25.
Energy prices push wholesale inflation up 6.3% in 2007, biggest gain in 26 years.You all know my thoughts on Hillary Clinton's electability. However, all signs point to a major economic downturn in the coming months; and that could very well provide a strong argument in the eyes of many Americans for her election over any of the Republicans in the field.
Martin Luther King's dream became a reality when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.America's whacked mainstream media, on Clinton's comment:
She's a racist!Bill Clinton, at rally for his wife last week:
First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel was one of the co-authors of that resolution, the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.America's whacked mainstream media, on the former President's comments:
He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn't cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally by Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.
Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once, "Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."
Give me a break.
This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
He's a racist!Ok...in the words of my niece (mimicking her teacher)...everybody just calm down.
Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.Without the context of the remarks leading up it, the fairy tale comment can be taken about five different ways and the media used it to paint the Clintons as racist.
I don't think it was in any way a racial comment. That's something that has played out in the press. That's not my view. [We shouldn't] degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this."That said, Robert Johnson, the former head of BET and a Clinton campaign adviser, made a comment that reeks of an underlying racism:
And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book – when they have been involved.Johnson is so obviously referring to Obama's admitted drug use as a young man, that any denials fall on deaf ears.
With my first choice - Sen. Joe Biden - having bowed out of the Democratic nominating contests, I have decided to throw my support whole-heartedly to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. I have tried to look at the remaining viable candidates with an open mind, but on each evaluation Obama comes out on top...each time far and above Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards.Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling...Yeah...but...really, no. Edwards is not the candidate we need for '08.
There were several moments when she could have said, even in a small way, that she misjudged the Iraq war. She could have conceded that, in fact, Obama's judgment was actually better than hers at the outset. Heck, many of us have been able to say such a thing, and in the end, we take our lumps but move on. But she simply cannot.-An American conservative who is ready to back a Democrat...if OBAMA is the nominee.
If you want yet another president who cannot say he or she made a mistake, who can never cop to errors, and who uses everything as a political tool against his or her opponents, you have your candidate.
Boisset Bas, FranceThis is a small little blog in the scheme of things, and I appreciate your readership.
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Buenos Aires, Argentina
[Obama] was a part-time state senator for a few years, and then he came to the Senate and immediately started running for president. And that's his prerogative. That's his right. But I think it is important to compare and contrast our records.-Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail in Nevada.
There was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her.-NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd, on Hillary's little episode the day before the New Hampshire primary.
This is always about the Clintons. [They believe that] If the Democrats have to lose to McCain in November so Hillary Clinton can become the first female nominee for any major party, that's a price the country will just have to pay.I wouldn't have thought that of the Clintons a couple of years ago, but they really are conducting this campaign as if its all about them; as if they are trying to do what George W. Bush did for his family - redeem themselves.
Democrats 55%When you consider the fact that independent voters can cast a ballot in either party's primary, numbers like this make November look pretty darn good for the Democratic ticket.
Republicans 45%
Ladies and gentlemen...your "comeback kid."
Tonight is the first primary - not a caucus. People get to vote in a secret ballot - not in front of their largely liberal peers, as in Iowa. [Voters] may have told the pollsters one thing about voting for a black man, but in the privacy of the voting booth, something else happens. I don't have any hard evidence for this, but the discrepancy in the polls is remarkable...The vast discrepancy between the last polls and the [actual] result puts [race] on the table. I hope it's not true. But it could be.My partner has been arguing since last week that America is not ready to vote for a black president. I've been arguing just as passionately that we are.
