Frank Rich: The demographic reshaping of the electoral map still isn't fully understood. But this isn't 2004, and the rise in black voters and young voters of all races in Democratic primaries is re-weighting the electorate. As long as the likely Democratic nominee keeps partying like it's 2008 while everyone else refights the battles of yesteryear, he will continue to be underestimated every step of the way.
read moreThe Clintons are destroying themselves and their legacy and their capacity to bridge the very gaps they now must widen to stay in the race. It is a Clinton tragedy and one that most Americans seem slowly, cautiously but palpably determined not to make their own.
read moreThe U.S. military has, since 2001, cremated some of the remains of American service members killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere at a Delaware facility that also cremates pets, a practice that ended yesterday when the Pentagon banned the arrangement.
read moreBob Herbert: The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully. Theirs is a repertoire that's always been deficient in grace and class. The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.
A group of U.S. evangelical leaders called on Wednesday for a pullback from party politics so that followers would not become "useful idiots" exploited for partisan gain.
read moreSeveral funeral directors in the U.S. are considering the adoption of a new alternative to burial and cremation: alkaline hydrolysis, a process of heating a the carcass up to 300-degrees at 60 psi and flushing the brown, syrupy loved one down the drain. "It's not often that a truly game-changing technology comes along in the funeral service," the newsletter Funeral Service Insider said in September.
read moreCindy McCain says she will never make her tax returns public even if her husband wins the White House and she becomes the first lady.
read moreShe's well on her way to becoming the spoiler of the 2008 presidential election.
read moreAfter paying $75 to fill his black Dodge Ram pickup truck for the third time in a week, Douglas Chrystall couldn't take it anymore. "The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting," said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. "It's an irrational vehicle. It'll never come back."
read moreAnyone who votes for Clinton in order to save 18 cents per gallon for 3 months should not let her stop there --- they should demand that she repeal her husband's gas tax hike. Then we'll find out if her pandering knows no bounds.
read more
My son, daughter-in-law, and I came up with some tuned windchimes and a brimiliad. Major league hit.
Hey, Jomama, with all the situational ethics on display of late I thought there'd be nothing wrong with situational geography.
www.masonsmaps.com
Pay To Attention To Obama's Voter Registration Drive
The Obama campaign calls its "Vote for Change" voter registration drive a mere voter registration drive. Nothing to see here, folks, except for ordinary people helping ordinary people gain the franchise.
But it's more than that. The Vote For Change program will lay the foundation for Obama's general election get-out-the-vote efforts. Obama aides won't say much more, but I gather that the campaign is constructing an incredibly elaborate online interface to allow its more than a million donors and volunteers to directly persuade their neighbors through a variety of media. Names gathered from the voter registration effort will be merged with names gathered through Obama's primary efforts and the names off of the Democratic Party's integrated voter file as well as lists purchased from outside vendors.
On election day, Obama might have more than a million individuals volunteering on his behalf. That should scare the beejeesus out of the McCain campaign and the RNC.
marcambinder.theatlantic.com
If someone doesn't want to acknowledge his being subject to the dominion of this country by participating in its rituals, then let him be denied other aspects of participation.
Repeated patriotic displays shape the structure of the brain to adapt the expressed beliefs, which are reinforced by actions.
faculty-
web.at.northwestern.edu
(Sounds like the story line for "Triumph of the Will.")
"We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again." She added: "There's a pattern emerging here."
Yes, there is a pattern -- a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses."
[The New York Times, May 9, 2008
www.nytimes.com]
Obama picks up 9 superdelegates, union endorsement
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama all but erased Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-imposing lead among national convention superdelegates on Friday and won fresh labor backing as elements of the Democratic Party began coalescing around the Illinois senator for the fall campaign.
Obama picked up the backing of nine superdelegates, including Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who had been a Clinton supporter.
In addition, the American Federation of Government Employees announced its support for Obama. The union claims about 600,000 members who work in the federal and Washington, D.C., governments.
Clinton also gained a superdelegate.
The developments left the former first lady with 271.5 superdelegates, to 271 for Obama. Little more than four months ago, on the eve of the primary season, she held a lead of 169-63.
news.yahoo.com
Gee, what a shame. Whuhappen?
Kennedy: No veep slot for Clinton
It's fun to think about, but there are so many obstacles, and Ted Kennedy isn't buying, he said on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital With Al Hunt," which airs this weekend.
"I don't think it's possible," he told Hunt of the joint ticket, continuing that:
Obama should choose a running mate who "is in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people," Kennedy said. "If we had real leadership -- as we do with Barack Obama -- in the No. 2 spot as well, it'd be enormously helpful."
Ouch.
www.politico.com
Drip-drip-drip, one of these days we're gonna wake up to the news that Obama has passed Hillary on the number of SDs.
ABC News thinks he already has:
Obama - 267
Clinton - 265
blogs.abcnews.com
Fair-Weather Wolverine:
Hillary Clinton wants to seat Michigan and Florida delegates.
She sang a different tune last year
It was a different story in October. Back then, Clinton was far and away the national front-runner--by some 20 points in a number of polls. With much less at stake in the matter, she told a New Hampshire public-radio audience, "It's clear, this election [Michigan is] having is not going to count for anything." Clinton was unwilling to take her name off the Michigan primary ballot, as Obama and her other significant rivals did, but like them she agreed not to campaign in Michigan or in Florida before their primaries.
On Aug. 25, when the DNC's rules panel declared Florida's primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules. Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida's defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. In doing so, the DNC essentially committed itself, for fairness' sake, to strip the similarly defiant Michigan of all 156 of its delegates three months later. Clinton held tremendous potential leverage over this decision, and not only because she was then widely judged the likely nominee. Of the committee's 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them--most notably strategist Harold Ickes--voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)
Six days later, when the party chairs in the DNC-approved "early" primary states urged Democratic candidates to sign a "four-state pledge" promising not to campaign in any state that violated the DNC calendar, Clinton did not object. She waited, with characteristic prudence, until the other candidates had signed, then signed herself.
. . .
In October, after Obama and some of the other candidates withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot, Clinton declined to do the same. Her stated reason, however, was not to dissent from the DNC's decision to disenfranchise wronged Michigan, but rather to mend fences with Michigan voters come November. Besides, Hillary said, there was no reason to remove her name if the results weren't going to count anyway. "I personally did not think it made any difference," she said.
. . .
What a difference four months make.
mobile.slate.com
Will Obama Win Enough White Votes to Beat McCain?
By Art Levine
...
Obama doesn't need a majority of blue-collar white voters to win the general election, and he's unlikely to win them all over. All he needs is enough whites in his coalition of liberals,concerned middle-class people worried about the economy, some fed-up blue-collar workers, enthusiasic young people and college students, and the 90%-plus of African-Americans to piece together a winning coalition. Indeed, he's competitive or ahead in several of the states that Hillary says that only she can win, including Ohio and Pennsyvlania. In fact, it's worth remembering that no Democratic presidential candidate since LBJ has won a majority of white voters. The search for these blue-collar "Reagan Democrats" to stay with the Democrats may be as elusive as the search for the "NASCAR Dads" before the 2004 election, who had previously voted less than 30% for Democrats. As an ABC pollster observed before that Kerry vs. Bush election:
"When we run data from our recent polls we find that married, middle- and lower-income white men account for a single-digit share of the national population, and support President Bush in precisely the same proportion as all white men. (Make it rural white men, and it goes down to low single digits.) And white men, particularly Southern white men, are a solidly Republican group, highly unlikely to swing anywhere, anyhow.
For good measure, we checked rural, suburban or small city married white men with children and incomes under $50,000 in the 2000 exit poll. They accounted for 2 percent of all voters, and supported Bush over Gore by 70 percent to 27 percent. You really want to call this a swing voter group?"
Apparently white people hold a grudge for a long time: ever since Democrats pushed for African-American voting rights and integration, most whites haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for over 40 years, even as the racial animus got translated into a cleaned-up anti-govenment, anti-crime, anti-tax message.
. . .
Actually, it seems, Hillary isn't just playing the race card, she's playing the race deck -- throwing everything she can against the wall about Obama to see what sticks, in a last-ditch effort to convinces the superdelegates. But a nuanced look at the racial dynamics at Real Clear Politics, found that Obama's reduced some of the defections among whites since Ohio and Pennsylvania.
. . .
Some observers argue by speaking so bluntly about race, and invoking Jesse Helms/George Wallace-type comments about "hard-working" white people, she's playing to racial and class stereotypes again.
www.huffingtonpost.com
The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes "the regime at prayer," Christians become "useful idiots" for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests.
(www.evangelicalmanifesto.com)
"A town official opposed to the swap said other Yavapai Ranch land sold nine years ago for about $2,000 per acre, while some of the prime commercial land near a parcel that the developers will get has brought as much as $120,000 per acre."
Business as usual. The guy who invested in McCain got a pretty good return for his money.
Oh, and a bit more about Mr. Straight Talk:
A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain
query.nytimes.com
Slate's Hillary Deathwatch
Dubious supporters and money woes drive Clinton's odds ever downward
Hillary's chance of winning the nomination: 2.3%
www.slate.com
"Did heinz kerry release her tax records?"
She released her 2003 1040. (Source: www.washingtonpost.com)
Lower-income white Democrats may well defect to John McCain in the fall if Obama is the nominee, Clinton is arguing, whereas African Americans -- who have been choosing Obama by 9 to 1 -- are going to vote for the Democratic nominee no matter what. Thus, she claims, she can better knit the party back together.
Let's examine those premises. These are white Democrats we're talking about, voters who generally share the party's philosophy. So why would these Democrats refuse to vote for a nominee running on Democratic principles against a self-described conservative Republican? The answer, which Clinton implies but doesn't quite come out and say, is that Obama is black -- and that white people who are not wealthy are irredeemably racist.
The other notion -- that Clinton could position herself as some kind of Great White Hope and still expect African American voters to give her their enthusiastic support in the fall -- is just nuts. Obama has already won a majority of the Democratic primary contests; within a couple of weeks, he almost certainly will have won a majority of the pledged convention delegates and will be assured of finishing with more of the popular vote. Only in Camp Clinton does anyone believe that his supporters will be happy if party leaders tell him, in effect, "Nice job, kid, but we can't give you the nomination because, well, you're black. White people might not like that."
Clinton's sin isn't racism, it's arrogance. From the beginning, the Clinton campaign has refused to consider the possibility that Obama's success was more than a fad. This was supposed to be Clinton's year, and if Obama was winning primaries, there had to be some reason that had nothing to do with merit. It was because he was black, or because he had better slogans, or because he was a better public speaker, or because he was the media's darling. This new business about white voters is just the latest story the Clinton campaign is telling itself about the usurper named Obama.
"It's still early," Clinton said Wednesday, vowing to fight on. At some level, she seems to believe the nomination is hers. Somebody had better tell her the truth before she burns the house down.
www.washingtonpost.com
UPDATE: Howard Dean has released the following statement:
"What is John McCain trying to hide? Throughout this campaign, he has acted like his own calls for openness and accountability apply to everyone but himself. Now he thinks he can bring that same double standard to the White House. Whether he is skirting the FEC, withholding his tax returns, or stocking his campaign with the same Washington lobbyists he attacks on the campaign trail, John McCain is showing that he doesn't respect the voters enough to be honest with them. John McCain may not like it, but the American people have a right to know about the well documented links between his political career and the McCains' business ventures. John McCain's refusal to meet the standard of every other candidate seeking the office is one more reason he's the wrong choice for America's future."
www.huffingtonpost.com
Last Sunday, the New York Times editorial board knocked the McCain campaign for not releasing various records, among them Cindy McCain's tax returns:
The portrait of Mr. McCain's finances is particularly skimpy because his wife, Cindy McCain, has chosen not to make her separate tax returns available. Mrs. McCain, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, is not the candidate, but the need to gain public trust and to air potential conflicts of interest is vital. Four years ago, we urged Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wealthy wife of the 2004 Democratic nominee, to release her tax returns.
There is no question that Mr. McCain benefits from his wife's money, including his low-cost use during the campaign of a corporate jet owned by a company headed by Mrs. McCain.
www.huffingtonpost.com
"I wouldn't call spreading of democracy a religious movement"
Your post reflected the NeoCons' quasi-religious ferver about spreading democracy throughout the world. Same dynamic, different objects of worship.
Here, educate yourself:
The Powell Doctrine
Is a vital national security interest threatened?
Do we have a clear attainable objective?
Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
Is the action supported by the American people?
Do we have genuine broad international support?
en.wikipedia.org
Note that while George Bush's father had an administration that could answer these questions before going into Kuwait, his son managed to ignore these valuable questions before choosing war with Iraq.
Similarly, you are not able to answer them with respect to your support of wars without exit strategies.
Yours is the road to defeat.
Hillary's math problem is one of the side effects of her situational ethics. She was just fine with excluding Florida and Michigan before her campaign went into meltdown mode.
Check out "Fair-Weather Wolvrine: Hillary Clinton Wants to Seat Michigan and Florida Delegates - She Sang A Different Tune Last Year" www.slate.com
As Bob Shrum just said on MSNBC, "The campagin can go on but the contest is over."
From the "scientific study" -
The estimates here suggest that the suspension of the 5% sales tax led to decreases
in retail prices of 3% compared to neighboring states. When the tax was reinstated, retail
prices rose by roughly 4%. The reinstatement estimates are particularly compelling given
that the timing of the reinstatement was not based on market conditions, but rather a 1981
law in the case of Indiana, and the end of the calendar year in the case of Illinois. While
the point estimates suggest that stations do not lower the price in response to the tax cut
as much as they raise them in response to the tax increase, the 3% and 4% changes are
not statistically significantly different.
www.nber.org
About the study -
between 60 and 70 percent of the 5% gasoline sales tax cut was passed on to consumers, while 80-100 percent of the reinstatement of the tax was passed on albeit at a time when prices had already dropped. (The original spike in prices was caused by temporary limits on supply.) Thus, it appears that drivers got some, but not all, of the benefits but paid for the tax reinstatement. They also found somewhat smaller pass-through effects near the state borders.
taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org
It's over, Clintonistas. A hard fight, badly fought, and how it's done. So, do you want McCain or not?