Kudos to Brian and team for doing double-duty.

Yeah!!!! Hillary beat Barak. I am thrilled. His wife's prescense in Nevada only reminded me more why I will NOT vote for him. Maybe if he got a divorce, ha ha... No, seriously, that man can't do anything but pick on others and steal their views. If this jr. senator could form his own opinion, he might have a shot.

Hopefully, not in my lifetime and I am in my 30s.

It's interesting to see the race develop on the Republican side. Almost scary. Are they channeling the current administration?

Can't wait to see the report.

http://www.spiegel.d...ional/world/...,530129,00.html

A very interesting article. German article xlated to english. The article makes several interesting points but not even once thinks its important enough to mention that Obama is black and that actually might (just might) be a factor with white voters in the US of A.

I read somewhere before the Iowa primaries that Republicans said Obama was the guy to watch. How many amongst us think that, if nominated, Obama's race might give a significant advantage to Republicans ?

Question for US politics guroos -> Has anybody seen any surveys that analyzes the race factor in Obama's nomination ? Any surveys, interviews etc ? I am really curious to know

1. whether race is really a non-issue in Obama's case ?
2. whether race-as-a-factor has been debated in the open enough or is it something that just stays in the background - a dont-ask-dont-tell type thing ?
3. whether it has been debated plenty and the society has accepted a black man as a-ok for the top-post in western world.

Interesting take - how credible is this ?

http://thehill.com/d...2008-01-23.html

Voting for president along racial and gender lines "is understandable, because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time," Bill Clinton told a Charleston audience Wednesday while campaigning for his wife, a role he has played all week.

Bill Clinton said black civil rights leaders Andrew Young and John Lewis have defended his wife. "They both said that Hillary was right and the people who attacked her were wrong and that she did not play the race card, but they did," he said.

"As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender," he said. "They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender — that's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here."

I was told by some people that they will sit it out if Obama isnt on the ticket.

All this matters, for if Obama once was a Muslim, he is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed. Were he elected president of the United States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world.

In sum: Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque. This precisely substantiates my statement that he "for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian step-father."

Therefore, what MMfA calls the "Obama-Muslim falsehood" is in fact confirmed by both articles as truthful and accurate.

Calling this a falsehood is in itself a falsehood.

Even so, it has all the earmarks of a smear job. It also raises another more important concern -- which has led to the dramatic increase in Secret Service protection. It would take only one crazed Islamicist to regard him as an "apostate," or fallen-away Muslim, which fanatics consider far, far worse than being an infidel.

Then there are the usual paranoids, like a reader who posted on my blog last week that Obama was a front for Osama. This underscores the challenge everywhere, that as the "globalization" of societies spreads, a lot of unevolved, uninformed and violent people remain among us. Thank heavens the Secret Service is out in force.

Mudy how accurate do you think reports of Barack being a muslim (even in the past) are?

In an interview with The Associated Press, Obama labeled the memo and its headline — "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)" — as "unnecessarily caustic." The memo had referred to Bill and Hillary Clintons' investments in India; her fundraising among Indian-Americans; and the former president's $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company that has moved U.S. jobs to India.

"It was a dumb mistake on our campaign's part and I made it clear to my staff in no uncertain terms that it was a mistake," Obama told the AP in a brief interview.

The memo has created a furor in the Indian-American community and raised questions about Obama's claims that he is above attack politics epitomized by secretly distributing opposition research about a rival. Placing the blame on his staff is not new. Earlier this year, Obama faulted his staff for comments in a dispute with the Clinton camp over Hollywood donor David Geffen.

"In case we receive an invitation, party Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Digvijay Singh will go there and campaign in her favour," said Kumar.

He made the statement when asked to comment on reports that he and Singh have been approached by Hillary's campaign managers.

"So far, I have not received any invitation. If invited, Singh will go since he is well versed in foreign affairs," Kumar said.

Lauding profusely the first woman aspirant for the top job in the US, he said, "I am definitely in favour of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton".

CHICAGO - Indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has poured thousands of dollars into Barack Obama's political campaigns, was arrested by federal agents Monday after his $2 million bail was revoked.
..........

Rezko had long been a fundraiser for Obama. The Democratic presidential candidate and senator from Illinois has said he had no indication of problems with Rezko when he accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. When prosecutors unsealed their charges against Rezko in 2006, Obama gave $11,500 in Rezko contributions to charities
...
Earlier this month, Obama gave to charity more than $40,000 in past political contributions from seven individuals with ties to Rezko. The decision to donate the money contributed to Obama's House and Senate campaigns — but not his current presidential bid — came after a published report that Obama is the unnamed "political candidate" in one paragraph of a 78-page prosecution document that outlines the case against Rezko.

Obama also has had to answer questions about how Rezko became involved in the purchase of the Obama family home as well as other ties that go back more than 15 years.

Obama wins South Carolina. He needed to win this. Why is Edwards still around?

Obama got 80% of black vote. White vote was a three-way split between the candidates.

Probably THis will be the last male democrat candidate in any election.

oklahoma-galMessage #23
01/28/08 10:23 AM An endorsement from the man who has killed and did no time, that puts him right in the same cell as Charlie Manson in my opinion.  I'm not voting for anyone democratic any way.  I also wonder why they refer to her as "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton" in the news stories, but do not say "Barack Hussein Obama" in his news stories.  Is the media playing favorites?  Or trying to lessen the fact of who he is named after?  It scares me to think of either of these two candidates to become president.

sara0135Message #70
01/28/08 10:39 AM I have always supported the Kennedy family since i was a child, i feel betrayed and disrespected by the family. Hillary was getting the majority of the female vote. Clearly the democratic party now is hampering women in the United States and obviously they don't even care. We should send Kennedy a black flower arrangement because he died to numerous democratic women today.  If Hillary does not get the nomination..I will not vote Obama.  The media didn't even catch his reverse discrimination of John Edwards at the last debate where John was just a White man.  Perhaps the republician party can do an outreach to the democratic women-We need help- Our party does not care about us.  I urge all democratic women who feel betrayed like me to call Kennedy and tell him they will no longer endorse him until he accepts our views as women.  It probably was best if he did not endorse at all.  Also, I urge all democratic women that are Hillary supporters to let the democratic party know we will not take this abusive approach to our future(s). Now is the time to UNITE WOMEN within the Democratic Party.  If they continue to push Obama down our throats-we will not vote and the  may again be in the white house.  I am a mother, sister, wife, aunt, worker, and daughter  MY VOTE COUNTS  STOP TELLING ME WHO YOU ENDORSE AND WHO TO VOTE FOR IN THE PRIMARY.

freedomeagleoneMessage #27
01/28/08 10:24 AM What will be interesting is the trip Obama (Hussein-Bin-Lama) took with the most notorious Muslim Louis Farrakan to see the Muslims terrorists back in the late 80's.  That will be interesting. Two muslim radical fathers. It is amazing how gullable people are in this country surely as the muslims stated we will get the US from within. Looks like the anti-christ is emerging.

T.MoonMessage #30
01/28/08 10:24 AM Strange to see Ted Kennedy talking about changing the evil atmosphere in Washington while Andrea Mitchell gloats in the background about Hillary Clinton being hurt by this endorsement - really ugly, Andrea...


So what if the Kennedy's endorse Obama!  They're as corrupt as they come.  Never liked them, and don't like Obama.  Enough said!

mysonismyheroMessage #36
01/28/08 10:26 AM Hillary Clinton should be down on her knee's thanking God that Ted -I never met a bottle of Jack Daniels I didn't like- Kennedy has endorsed Obama!  She is indeed a lucky lady.

jerasmilesMessage #81
01/28/08 10:42 AM As much as I think that Senator Obama is perhaps what we need as a president, I think with the Kennedy endorsements he just lost the nomination for the Democratic party.  Their endorsement of Obama will make the Independent voters back-off and he can't win in the primaries without them, especially as he heads west.  Hillary isn't liked by Indpendent's and if she wins the nomination, I think the Republicans will come out in droves.  Personally, I think it's time for a third party candidate to step forward since the candidates of both parties only offer more of the same.  Same free trade policies, bigger national debt, larger trade deficit, higher taxes, and all of the candidates are for the (SPP)  Security Prosperity Partnership, which will give amnesty to the illegal aliens and form the North American Union.

aghast_and_amazedMessage #13
01/28/08 10:16 AM How do I feel about it?  It doesn't change a thing.  I supported Obama before and I support Obama now.

Vevita1Message #54
01/28/08 10:33 AM I feel that the Kennedys are traitors to the Clintons. I will not vote for Obama even if JFK came back from the dead to support Obama. Again, I do not think that just because someone is black he should be president. If the democrats choose Obama, I will vote Republican. Teddy and Caroline you are both traitors.

NothingbettertodoMessage #14
01/28/08 10:16 AM Rain fell on Teddy's parade with the announcement Reczko was arrested today by the FBI.  Bad timing, Teddy.  What is your endorsement worth?  Ask John Kerry who also got your endorsement.  You have been a non-player in the party for decades now.  But, it makes you feel good, I guess.  Sorry about the rain today.

freedomeagleoneMessage #15
01/28/08 10:18 AM These Kennedy's are no way close to John or Bobby, these Kennedy's are a joke and the brothers would probably be turning in their graves to see the nonsense little edward has become. The EXTREEEME left endorses Obama it is just to show in whcih direction this team is heading. Next they will invite Castro and Bin Laden to retire in this U.S.  More and more the anti-christ (obama bin lama) is showing his stripes.

nycguyMessage #16
01/28/08 10:18 AM This is the "Kiss of Death" for Obama..........Barack we hardly knew ye!

adayspayMessage #17
01/28/08 10:19 AM They should be endorsing booze and not a muslim boofer...

freedomeagleoneMessage #18
01/28/08 10:20 AM Endorements do not mean a thing. I will support who is best suited for the position, nonsense circus politicians (Kennedy) could never sway my vote.

MN TOMMessage #62
01/28/08 10:36 AM If Bozo Obama gets the nomination--I will be voting Republican this year!! This country is NOT ready for Obama

chalmersMessage #63
01/28/08 10:36 AM The Kennedy endorsement tells me that it's not just Republicans who don't want to see the Clintons back in the White House. Are both sides willing to risk everything to make that happen? It seems so. Putting Obama in the White House, at this perilous time, could be national suicide.

MicahMessage #64
01/28/08 10:37 AM You are right Max, it will be if Obama wins the Democratic Ticket, Hello Mr McCain, President Sir!

The Hyde Act, passed by the US Congress in 2006, is a legal provision that enables the US Administration to negotiate and conclude an agreement for nuclear trade with India. Obama was one of the 17 Democrat Senators who proposed amendments that would have struck down the Act if any of them had been passed.

His amendment opposed giving India the right to build strategic fuel reserves for its imported nuclear reactors. As it turned out, the Obama amendment was rejected along with the other “killer” proposals and the Hyde Act passed into law.

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has said he is a cousin of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Mr Odinga told the BBC's The World Today that Senator Obama's father was his maternal uncle.
.....

Mr Obama has previously been identified as a distant cousin of Vice-President Dick Cheney
.....

He said Mr Obama had on Monday taken time out of campaigning for the New Hampshire primary to call him twice, to express his concern, and to say that he would also be calling Mr Kibaki

http://newsimg.bbc.c...00_split203.jpg

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008.

“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.

“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”

As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program because he says his successor will need it.

“I specifically talked about it so that a candidate and/or president wouldn’t have to deal with the issue,” he said. “The next person has got the opportunity to analyze the utility of the program and make his or her decision about whether or not it is necessary to protect the homeland. I suspect they’ll find that it is necessary. But my only point to you is that it was important for me to lay it out there, so that the politics wouldn’t enter into whether or not the program ought to survive beyond my period.”

The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take his advice.

“First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That’s one way you get elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,” Bush replied. “I don’t expect them to necessarily take advice from me. I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how we see things.”

He added: “We have an obligation to make sure that whoever is interested, they get our point of view, because you want somebody running for president to at least understand all perspectives, apart from the politics.”

Besides, Bush suggested that Clinton and Obama just might benefit from his advice.

“If I were a candidate running for president in a complex world that we’re in, I would be asking my national security team to touch base with the White House just to at least listen about plans, thoughts,” he said

January raises a long-term question. If an African-American with as great a cross-racial appeal as Obama had in Iowa can be so easily ghettoized in three weeks to where whites and Hispanics, the fastest growing minority in America, recoil, when if ever can a black American be nominated or elected president?

Is Bill Clinton not only "our first black president," but our last?

Democrats prize the black vote in Alabama, where 77% of registered black voters identify as Democrats, according to Gerald Johnson of Capital Survey Research Center. Before Iowa, 40% of Alabama Democrats supported Clinton, compared with 25% for Obama. Since Iowa, the race has become a dead heat, with black support driving Obama's resurgence.

In a Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll, black Democrats in Alabama favored Obama over Clinton 49%-18%.

Even so, Alabama's black power brokers remain divided. The Alabama Democratic Conference, the state's oldest black Democratic coalition, has endorsed Clinton. The younger New South Coalition? Obama. 

"Black people would be ungrateful not to support Sen. Clinton," says state Rep. Alvin Holmes of the ADC. "She has introduced bills to stop discrimination against blacks. She has introduced bills to stop discrimination against women."

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=jOFT8jtuVpo
http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

What these videos say is Obama did favors for Rezco, GOT favors from Rezco and GAINED politically and financially from a 17 year relationshipwith a CORRUPT Chicago POLITICAL FIXER.

Huckabee what a moron.

Even with some of the things we're mad that he hasn't touched on, I still see nonsense on the net from other races.

"I don't want February to have 31 days so I won't vote for Obama"

Harris

Any bets for Super tuesday?

http://politicalmarket.cnn.com/

ARIZONA DEMOCRATS

MSNBC/McClatchy/Mason-Dixon
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
January 30 -- February 1
Clinton 43%
Obama 41%
Unsure 16%
Sampling error: +/-5% pts

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS
California Democratic poll of polls
January 30-February 2
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 44%
Obama 40%
Unsure 16%

*The Democratic and Republican California poll of polls both consist of three surveys: Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby (January 30-February 2), MSNBC/McClatchy/Mason-Dixon (January 30-February 1), and American Research Group (February 1-2).

CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS
American Research Group
January 30-31
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 48%
Obama 35%
Unsure 17%
Sampling error: +/-4% pts

DELAWARE DEMOCRATS
American Research Group
January 31 -- February 1
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 44%
Obama 42%
Unsure 14%

Sampling error: +/-4% pts
GEORGIA DEMOCRATS
MSNBC/McClatchy/Mason-Dixon
January 30-February 1
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Obama 47%
Clinton 41%
Unsure 12%
Sampling error: +/-5% pts

ILLINOIS DEMOCRATS
Chicago Tribune/WGN
January 30 -- February 1
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Obama 55%
Clinton 24%
Unsure 21%
Sampling error: +/-4.4% pts

American Research Group
January 30 -- January 31
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Obama 51%
Clinton 40%
Unsure 9%
Sampling error: +/-4% pts

American Research Group
MISSOURI DEMOCRATS
Missouri Democratic poll of polls
January 30-February 2
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 44%
Obama 43%
Unsure 13%

*The Democratic and Republican Missouri poll of polls both consist of three surveys: Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby (January 30 -- February 2), MSNBC/McClatchy/Mason-Dixon (January 30 -- February 1), and American Research Group (January 31 -- February 1).

NEW JERSEY DEMOCRATS
New Jersey poll of polls
January 30 -- February 2
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 46%
Obama 39%
Unsure 15%
**The Democratic and Republican New Jersey poll of polls both consist of three surveys: Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby (January 30 -- February 2), MSNBC/McClatchy/Mason-Dixon (January 30 -- February 1), and Monmouth University (January 30 -- February 1).

NEW YORK DEMOCRATS
WNBC/Marist
January 30 -- 31
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 54%
Obama 38%
Unsure 8%

Sampling error: +/-5% pts
UTAH DEMOCRATS
Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV
January 31 -- February 1
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Obama 53%
Clinton 29%
Unsure 18%
Sampling error: +/-6.5% pts
 
National Democratic poll of polls
Likely Democratic primary voters' choice for nominee
Clinton 47%
Obama 40%
Unsure 13%

Who will win the most Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday?

TIP: Current value = probability prediction will occur, e.g. $10 = 10% chance prediction will occur.
Select one:
PREDICTIONS CURRENT VALUE TODAY
Hillary Clinton  $52.89  $1.20 
Barack Obama  $47.11  $-1.20 

Some people are very nervous regarding outcome. Because country need change and wants democrats to inject some socialism but not inexperienced far left candidate. So it is imortant to have Hillary to get elected or  otherwise get ready for another round of rep. Well democrats knows how to commit sucide and we may see.

Obama sweep is coming

Ron Paul is very popular among young and educated, but no chance for him, too bad.

Ron Paul Votes not counted in In New Hampshire District
Vote fraud confirmed, Clinton reversed mammoth pre-polling deficit to beat Obama, Diebold machines aid Giuliani, Romney

An entire family voted for Ron Paul in Sutton, yet when the voting map on the Politico website was posted, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero. Vote fraud expert Bev Harris contacted the head clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who was forced to admit that the 31 votes Ron Paul received were completely omitted from the final report sheet, claiming "human error" was responsible for the mistake.

Anything wrong with these?

With Obama he says something but do something. He said, he will never take money from lobbist but over 90K known money he had received from them.

Ron Paul is more a grass level movement, only problem, he is old and don't have time to make it successful. Media just ignored him. In California, he may do better.
Media was behind only for those candidates who had paid for ads.

About #2 above:

I think Obama will try to disprove his muslimness (or rumors thereof), and encourage faith-based  (xtian-based) initiatives. An understanding woman pres is Dharma's best bet. Also, Hillary would be sure to encourage more diversity than Obama to show people that it is she and not Obama who is more pro-black.

what is their respective stand if any on terroristan?

The gospel according to Oprah

Oprah is on a mission. Repeatedly stated, her "mission" is, "I want people to see things on our show that makes them think differently about their lives...To be a light for people. To make a difference...to open their minds and see things differently…how to get in touch with the spiritual part of their life." Unfortunately, the "light" Oprah offers is the "angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14), and "opening their minds," in this case means their brains fall out-they become empty headed (Romans 1:21-25).

Oprah, Obama, and the New Age Christ!
..
In January of 2008, on XM Satelite Radio, Ophah will sponsor a year long study on the New Age Christ put forth in the book entitled, A Course In Miracles.

"A Course in Miracles is allegedly a “new revelation” from “Jesus” to help humanity work through these troubled times. This “Jesus” bears no doctrinal resemblance to the Bible’s Jesus Christ.

http://www.blackagen...id=501&Itemid=1

This site should continue to dissect Mr. Obama. I am sick of the love affair the Black community has for him and it is obvious by the knee-jerk reactions many on this site has displayed because someone dared look at him honestly and not get carried away with his looks, charisma and speech.

Until we stop looking for a Black first and look at who represents our interests, we will always be in the same boat. Sinking.

KS, really do not argue with these people. You're quite right they're supporters and want to squash and divert any crticial critique away from Mr. Obama. Do not fall into their trap.

Watch the mainstream media.
If they are pushing Obama then it is a image buildup for worldwide coverage. It will get sympathy and connection.

I am Legend, Bob Marley and One Love, & Obama:

http://www.topix.com...C3UQNUJVB28QGJT

renegade comment:

Why don't you crackers go find something to talk about. Anybody with common sense know doggone well that man did not say those things in that way. You all just found another black celeberty to mess with; all the time bush is destroying this country. Yet instead when that white disc jockey made his comment you white people were the first to say he didn't mean it that way. You crackers have never had to endure no hardship ever like any other race but you always complain. One day yours will come and it won't be nice.

The Black Church and the Hollowing Out of Black Politics

Much of what passes for Black leadership no longer represents African American political interests or opinion, having broken from their progressive mass moorings under the lure of corporate money and “faith-based” government bribes. Black politicians dance to the tunes of Big Business campaign contributors, while many Black preachers “ape the undemocratic and bigoted worst” of their white Christian counterparts. The ambitions of both the secular and religious hustlers converge in Memphis Tennessee, where Black preachers fan the flames of homophobia to elect their chosen candidate, and in Georgia, where an elected Black county executive is poised to run for Cynthia McKinney’s old seat in Congress with the help of real estate interests and money-grubbing mega-preachers, thus threatening to push the Congressional Black Caucus further to the Right. The Black Georgia incumbent congressman’s crime: he’s a Buddhist.

Watch the mainstream media.
If they are pushing Obama then it is a image buildup for worldwide coverage. It will get sympathy and connection

Is Republican confidence so low that they are sitting this one out?
Or there are less registered Republicans than registered Democrats?
Or states where independents are allowed to vote going democrat in big way?
Not sure. But this trend doesn't bode well for McCain.

This is where coffee preferences come in. Among voters whose voting choice is not based on identity politics, Mr Obama's supporters are the latte liberals. These are the people for whom Starbucks, with its $5 cups of coffee and fancy bakeries, is not just a consumer choice but a lifestyle. They not only have the money. They share the values.

They live by all those little quotes on the side of Starbucks cups about community service and global warming. They embrace the Obama candidacy because to them he transcends traditional class and economic divides. He is a transformative political figure - potentially the first black man to be president - and is seen as the one to revive America's faith in itself and restore America's status in the world. For these voters the defining emotion is hope.

Mrs Clinton is the candidate of what might be called Dunkin' Donut Democrats. They do not have money to waste on multiple-hyphenated coffee drinks - double-top, no-foam, non-fat lattes and the like. Not for them the bran muffins or the biscotti. They are the 75-cent coffee and doughnut crowd. For them caffeine choice doesn't correlate with their values but simply represents a means of keeping them going through their challenging day.

Though they don't doubt that global warming is important, they think it can wait. They want to make sure first they can pay the heating bills. They're not in favour of the Iraq war but neither are they so focused on restoring America's image in the world. They're not necessarily racist, it's just that they're not especially animated by the idealism represented by the first black president. For them anxiety, not aspiration is the defining factor.

Does anybody know a place where they have race-wise breakup + genderwise breakup for democratic primaries ?

Bill Clinton says he's learned a lesson

5 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton says he's learned a lesson from the dustup over his remarks on the campaign trail — he can promote his wife's presidential candidacy, but he's not free to defend her.
ADVERTISEMENT

Bill Clinton also said that everything he said in South Carolina about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was "factually accurate," but a lot that has been said about what he said is "factually inaccurate."

"I think the mistake that I made is to think that I was a spouse like any other spouse who could defend his candidate," Clinton said, referring to his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is waging a hard-fought contest with Obama for the Democratic nomination.

"I think I can promote Hillary but not defend her because I was president. I have to let her defend herself or have someone else defend her," Clinton said in an interview with NBC affliate WCSH-TV as he was campaigning in Portland, Maine, Thursday.

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Clinton called Obama's celebrated opposition to the Iraq war "a fairy tale," suggesting that while Obama had spoken out against the war in 2002 while he was an Illinois state senator, Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

Later, campaigning for his wife in South Carolina, Clinton suggested an Obama victory there would be a racial one, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson's twenty years ago.

Critics accused Clinton of injecting race into the Democratic campaign.

"A lot of the things that were said were factually inaccurate," Clinton said. "I did not ever criticize Senator Obama personally in South Carolina. ... But I think whenever I defend her, I, A, risk being misquoted, and, B, risk being the story. I don't want to be the story."

While he's toned down his defense of his wife, Clinton said he doesn't intend to stop campaigning for her even though some critics have suggested it's inappropriate for a former president to take sides in a nomination race.

If his wife is elected president, Clinton said he will not interfere with her work or her advisers.

"I will do what I'm asked to do," Clinton said. "I will not be in the Cabinet. I will not be on the staff full-time. I will not in any way interfere with the work of a strong vice president, strong secretary of State, strong secretary of Treasury.

"I will do what we've always done for each other," he said. "I will let her bounce ideas off me. I will tell her what I think."

"I, at this point, can't envision a scenario where we would continue to engage in debates on that network," he added.

Racist code words used by clintons:

hillary: 'SPADE WORK' (clinton racist code words)
http://video.google....8040463104948&q

Wolfson pointed to what he called a pattern of tasteless comments by MSNBC anchors about the Clinton campaign. Weeks ago, "Hardball" host Chris Matthews apologized to the former first lady after suggesting her political career had been made possible by her husband's philandering.

Shuster told The Associated Press he has tried to reach Clinton to apologize.

Saturday, the margin of victories were surprising, particularly in Washington, a predominately white state where he captured 57 percent of the vote in caucus voting compared to Mrs. Clinton’s 31 percent. And in Nebraska, which also held caucuses, he received an impressive 68 percent of the vote to Mrs. Clinton’s 32 percent.

Bush is not endorsing a candidate. He also had praise for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, calling him "a good, solid conservative person."

The president weighed in on the Democratic race, saying it "seems far from over to me." And he rejected criticism of former President Clinton's work on the campaign trail for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

"I can understand why President Clinton wants to campaign hard for his wife. And those accusations that Bill Clinton's a racist, I think is just wrong. I just don't agree with it."

As for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Bush said, "I certainly don't know what he believes in."

March 4th will, at worst, be a wash for Obama with his probably wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont offsetting his probable defeat in Texas. (Although in Texas’ open primary, Republicans and Independents may flock to the Dem primary to beat Hillary).

And then come a list of states almost all of which should go for Obama, including likely victories in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. By the convention, he will have more than enough delegates to overcome the expected margins Hillary may rack up among super delegates.

And don’t bet on all the super delegates staying hitched to Hillary. These folks are politicians, half of them public office holders who are really good at reading the handwriting on the wall and really bad at gratitude for past favors.

Huckabee as a VP will be a disaster. He is a confirmd evanjihadist -- he also of course does not accept the evolution of life

Huckabee as a VP will be a disaster. He is a confirmd evanjihadist -- he also of course does not accept the evolution of life

Seriously, how do these losers live with themselves?

If Obama is on ticket, US will get Huckabee, who will change consitution and whole list from bible.
Democrats are just democrats 
Blacks are just seeing skin color and whatever Clinton had done for them is gone into drain.

This is not fair comment on blacks. Whatever good Clinton did they ensured him two terms. You can't expect as a group they do same to elect the next Clinton or his kid Chelsea.

True international, multi-culture, multi-racial, multi- religion family.

Hence the appeal to 'progressive' types, if you catch my drift. Remains to be seen if they'll back him all the way to Nov or they start bailing out once the Republican machinery start swift boating him.

In last two years Clintons Global had spent 50+ millions in Africa. He raised money for New Orleans. His and Her contribution after 2000 is remarkable.

Thomas Paine: A Hero for the World

Every once in a while, the world is fortunate to have a great person come to edify. Generally the person is completely ignored or disdained by their own generation but increasingly valued by subsequent ones. Such is the case for the greatest American hero, Thomas Paine.

Thomas Paine came to live in the United States in 1774 at the invitation of Benjamin Franklin. Soon after his arrival, he began to speak his mind and was both hated and loved by many.

Paine was the greatest defender of the disenfranchised that this country has ever known. He was a prolific writer and the first piece that he ever had published was against slavery in America. He pled for the rights of black people, and stated that it was an offense to all humanity that they should be imprisoned and forced into submission. A few short days after the publishing of this article, the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed. Some 90 years later the Emancipation Proclomation finished the job that Thomas Paine got started. 

Paine continued to fight for rights. He fought against the practice of dueling, claiming that it was a "barbarous act" that did not solve the right/wrong issue. He fought against the mistreatment of animals with, "A Protest Against Cruelty to Animals." He fought for equal rights for women with, "A plea for the Rights of Women," one of the earliest documents of it's kind in the New World. 

Thomas Paine was the first to coin the phrase "The United States of America". He was the first to suggest that colonies become united. He was the first to suggest separation from Great Britain.

The United States of America was born as much from the pen of Thomas Paine as it was from the sword of George Washington.

For the next decade or so, Thomas Paine set about making the newly founded nation as strong as possible. He sailed to France with Ben Franklin in order to secure six million silvers for a loan, as well as clothing and military stores. He raised 1.5 million dollars in 1780 to pay the army which had been considering mutiny.

At the end of all of this, he knew that his work had been done in America. Being a man not prone to idleness, he set out for England to educate the people there.

Once in England, Thomas Paine wrote the well known book, "Rights of Man". In the book he wrote that all people were of the same mother and as such deserved the same equal treatment. He wrote that the upper ruling class was there by birth and not through some feat or divine placement. Needless to say, this text caused BIG trouble in the monarchy of England. (Remember, christo-castaism was ingrained in England. Christoism's castaism was factually everything that they can only ever accuse Hinduism of.)

Immediately upon publication in England, the Rights of Man was suppressed. The author was indicted. Those who published it and those who sold it were arrested. To avoid arrest and probable death, Paine left England. However, his ideas had left their mark on the nation and the English people today enjoy a freedom that stems back to those who rallied around Paine's text.

After leaving England, Paine went to France where he had become widely famous. His actions in America were well known.The pamphlet "Common Sense" had been published in French and was having an immense effect. The French knew of the "Rights of Man". Paine was so popular in France that he was elected to the National Convention by three political parties. Once in government, he founded the first Republican Society in France and wrote their manifesto. These actions helped to give Paine the reputation as the "defender of popular rights" throughout America, England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

Despite his popularity, trouble soon found Thomas Paine in France. After the French Revolution, the king of France was to be executed as a traitor. The National Convention wanted the King dead. But Thomas Paine, being the great humanist that he was, made a plea to the Convention to spare the king's life. He asked that the king be exiled to the United States. He asked not only as a citizen of the United States but also as a member of the Convention. This action of asking for sparing the king's life was, at that time, a request to also be executed.

Robert Ingersoll, a widely published Agnostic, wrote of Paine, "From the moment that Paine cast his vote in favor of mercy - in favor of life - the shadow of the guillotine was on him. He knew that when he voted for the King's life, he voted for his own death."

Paine recognized his predicament, and knew that his time on Earth could be very short. Knowing that there was no time to lose, he set out to write "The Age of Reason". The book contained Paine's thoughts on "revealed religions" and the Bible. This writing was as threatening to the church as "The Rights of Man" had been to the monarchy. In writing "Age of Reason," Paine sought to break the bonds that the church held on the common man. The book is as powerful a source of revelation today as it was when it was written some two hundred years ago.

Ingersoll again points out, "Not one argument that Paine urged against the inspiration of the Bible, against the truth of miracles, against the barbarities and infamies of the Old Testament, against the pretensions of priests and the claims of kings, has ever been answered." And it is true even 100 years after Ingersoll wrote that.

In 200 years, no one has been able to disprove the points that Paine made against the Bible. What are we to make of this?
(Thomas Paine was not an atheist, nor was he a christian disapproving of the church. He was a Deist. His God comes across to me like the Grand Spirit of the native Americans.)

Thomas Paine was arrested just a few short hours after completing the first part of the Age of Reason in December, 1793. He was forgotten by almost everyone but not the future American president, James Monroe. Monroe wrote in Paine's behalf and won his release in November of the following year. While in prison, Paine finished his work on part II of "Age of Reason".

After his release, Paine remained in France for some time before returning to America, expecting to live out his days among those he had helped to gain their independence. What he got was widespread hatred. The Federalists hated him because of how he fought for the rights of the people. The slave-traders hated him for trying to ruin their business. The clergy hated him for his work, and he was labeled an atheist, a blasphemer, a hater and enemy of God and men, alike.

I leave the end of Thomas Paine's life to the words of Robert Ingersoll:

"Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred -- his virtues denounced as vices -- his services forgotten -- his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death, Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend -- the friend of the whole world -- with all their hearts.

On the 8th of June, 1809, death came -- Death, almost his only friend.

At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead -- on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head -- and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude -- constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine."

Webster Tarpley:Zbignew Brzienzki leading Obama campaign PT1

Obama Economic Controller
Is Skull And Bones Member
Austan 'The Ghoul' Goolsbee, Yale '91
By Webster Tarpley
2-4-8

OBAMA'S TRIFECTA: FOREIGN POLICY LINE IS RUN BY TRILATERAL FOUNDER ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI -OBAMA''S WIFE LINKED TO COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

WASHINGTON DC -- Barack Obama's top economics adviser is a member of the super-secret Skull & Bones society of Yale University, of which George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and John Kerry are also members, reliable sources confirmed tonight. Goolsbee is widely reported to have told Obama not to back a compulsory freeze on home mortgage foreclosures to help the struggling middle class in the current depression crisis, as demanded by former candidate John Edwards. Hillary Clinton has advocated a one-year voluntary freeze on foreclosures. Obama has offered counselors to comfort mortgage victims as they are dispossessed, citing the 'moral hazard' of protecting the public interest from Wall Street sharks.

By adding the infamous Skull & Bones secret society to his campaign roster, Obama, who bills himself as the candidate of change and hope, has attained a prefect trifecta of oligarchical and financier establishment backing for his attempt to seize the nomination of the Democratic Party for 2008. Obama's main overall image adviser and foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, and the mastermind of the disastrous Carter administration. Obama's wife Michelle is reputed to be closely linked to the Council on Foreign Relations. Behind the utopian platitudes dished up by the Illinois senator, the face of the Wall Street money elite comes into clearer and clearer focus.

George Will, in an October 2007 Washington Post column saluted Goolsbee's "nuanced understanding" of traditional Democratic issues like globalization and income inequality; he "seems to be the sort of fellow -- amiable, empirical, and reasonable--you would want at the elbow of a Democratic president, if such there must be," wrote the arch-oligarchical apologist Will.

From Wikipedia: 'Austan D. Goolsbee is an economist and is currently the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is also a Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation[1], Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Panel of Economic Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office. He has been Barack Obama's economic advisor since Obama's successful U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois. He is the lead economic advisor to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.'

If Obama can translate all that into true leadership and effective policy that would be real change. If not, we’ll be asking the same question posed by Robert Redford’s character Bill McKay to end The Candidate: “What do we do now?”

We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption.

We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption.

CNN) — Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights movement veteran and Democratic congressional leader who endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid last year, is switching his superdelegate vote to Barack Obama, according to a report Friday’s New York Times.

Start with Pennsylvania, which votes April 22. Quinnipiac today released a poll showing Clinton leading Obama there 52 to 36 percent. Whites back Clinton 58 to 31; blacks back Obama 71 to 10. Since Pennsylvania's population is only 10 percent black, that accounts for Clinton's big lead.

Then look at Ohio, which votes March 4. Here Quinnipiac shows Clinton ahead 55 to 34 percent. Whites back Clinton 64 to 28; blacks back Obama 64 to 17. Ohio's population is 11 percent black. Quinnipiac's Peter Brown (whom veterans of the campaign trail will remember as a first-rate reporter) explains why Clinton seems to be doing so well in Ohio (and, by implication, demographically similar Pennsylvania) after losing eight straight contests:



Quinnipiac's result is similar to two other recent Ohio polls. Rasmussen has Clinton ahead 51 to 37 percent; SurveyUSA has her ahead 56 to 39 percent. The only Ohio poll taken in January, by the Columbus Dispatch, showed Clinton ahead of Obama 42 to 19 percent. Obama has apparently made gains since then. But so has Clinton.

In the other big state that votes March 4, Texas, it seems that there has been no public poll since last April(!). Texas's population is 12 percent black and 32 percent Hispanic, so we can expect the Democratic primary electorate there to be about 20 percent black and perhaps 15 to 20 percent Hispanic.

One primary Penn did not stress in his memo was Wisconsin. The Clinton campaign line has been that the post-Super Tuesday February contests are all dismal ground for their candidates. But the Wisconsin polling data tell a different story. Scott Rasmussen shows Obama leading Clinton by only 47 to 43 percent. This is similar to Strategic Vision's Wisconsin survey, which shows Obama ahead 45 to 41 percent. Wisconsin's population is 6 percent black and 3 percent Hispanic.

How can Clinton be doing so much better here than she did in Maryland and Virginia? One reason is that there are smaller percentages of black voters in these states. Another, probably more important, reason is that the white Democratic primary voters are different. In Maryland and Virginia, they tended to be quite upscale and on the young side, especially in the big suburban counties outside Washington, D.C. In Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, they're much more downscale. At a time when Clinton and Obama are essentially tied in national polls, it stands to reason that if Obama is ahead in states like Maryland and Virginia, Clinton will be ahead in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Texas is another, interesting story. Texas doesn't have party registration, and, historically, huge numbers of white voters participated in the state's Democratic presidential primary—1.3 million in 1980, 1.8 million in 1988, 1.5 million in 1992. That number plunged downward to 786,000 in 2000 and 839,000 in 2004, even though the state's population grew from 14 million in 1980 to 22 million in 2004. The obvious conclusion: An awful lot of white Texans began voting in the Republican primary again. This year's Texas Democratic primary could turn out to be largely a battle of minorities, with blacks voting heavily for Obama and Latinos, as in most other states so far, heavily for Clinton. In this battle Obama will undoubtedly have an organizational advantage, both because his campaign— unlike hers— has done organizational work in the post-Super Tuesday states and because of the strength of pre-existing black turnout organizations. As for white Democratic primary voters, upscale Texans still tend to be heavily Republican, though a little less so than 15 or 20 years ago—very much contrary to the pattern in Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Md. White downscale voters in southern states have generally gone for Clinton, but not by overwhelming margins. Of the four states we've looked at here, Texas appears the most problematic for Clinton, though she's on far stronger ground there than in the already concluded post-Super Tuesday contests.

Democrats and the Politics of Identity
By Blake D. Dvorak

A few days ago Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, stated the obvious. His chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton, he said, was in good shape to win the state's April 22 primary because "[y]ou've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate." As swift as lightning, down came the curmudgeons of high sensitivity rebuking Mr. Rendell for injecting race into the campaign. In repentance, the good governor spent the next several days explaining what he really meant by using a different example: There are some men, he said, who won't vote for Hillary Clinton either.

In fact, there are a lot of men who haven't voted for Clinton, and there are a lot of whites who haven't voted for Obama. But there are also quite a few African-Americans who haven't voted for Hillary, just as there are a whole bunch of Hispanics who haven't voted for Obama. You get the point.

My colleague Jay Cost, as someone who not only knows what an ordinary least squares regression analysis is, but also knows how to perform one, has calculated that each of the states Obama has won since Super Tuesday played heavily to at least one of Obama's demographic strengths: states with either large African-American populations or, somewhat counter-intuitively, "homogeneously" white populations; states with high median incomes for white voters; states with low Hispanic populations; and states with low union membership.

Using this formula, Cost noted that it is possible to forecast the upcoming contests. So, for instance, Obama should do well in Oregon (homogeneously white) while Clinton should do well in Kentucky (low median white income). The model does not account for momentum, however, which Obama might have picked up by winning the last eight contests. But the larger point is that, given the demographic makeup of the remaining states, one can predict, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, just which candidate should do well in which state. In fact, on average, the remaining states favor Clinton slightly. Good news for her tear ducts.

But bad news for a Democratic Party that can no longer deny that it has a serious problem of identity politics. As long as the Democratic Party was nominating white men who were quickly able knock out the rest of the field, the coalition of competing interest groups defined by race, class, gender, or geography was in little danger of fracturing. But with Clinton and Obama - "one protected species ... running against a member of another," as Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson put it - the politics of identity has turned inward, like the Jacobins turning on the Girondins.

Quite a change of events for a party accustomed to using the politics of identity against the Right: Tax cuts for the rich; "nativist" immigration policies; disenfranchisement of minority voters; Trent Lott -- basically, John Edwards' whole platform. When employed across a broad spectrum like the Republican Party, the strategy works quite well in appeasing the various demographic factions. But when employed inside the party, those who once cried outrage at the slightest infraction now find themselves the ones charged with "insufficient sensitivity." And here all Gov. Rendell was doing was stating something the data empirically proves.

But for all their political expertise, the Clintons never saw it coming. What a shock it must have been for America's "First Black President" to suddenly find himself accused of intentionally demeaning a black candidate by comparing him to Jesse Jackson. Imagine the surprise in Hillaryland when the campaign's video ad showing a bunch of men picking on the woman was suddenly criticized for "playing the gender card." The thought must have sent waves of anxiety through headquarters: "How can we touch this guy if all the old tricks aren't working? Worse, the tricks are being turned against us." Those tears in New Hampshire certainly won't reap the same rewards in Ohio.

And there's more to come. According to The Politico, white men make up 46% of the superdelegates that could decide the nomination in Denver this summer. That's nearly half!

"It's still the old guard, the white men. They always want to control the outcome," an anonymous superdelegate told the newspaper. "But this time, they won't be able to do it." At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, much like our superdelegate friend here, those given the honor of superdelegate status are usually the most partisan, ideologically-driven folks in the party. They're like super-duper caucus-goers. And yet by virtue of their maleness and whiteness, Mr. Anonymous Superdelegate sees nothing but a threat to his particular interest group. Such are the absurd logical contortions one makes when all one knows is the politics of identity.

Republicans must be smiling while they watch foes like the Clintons subjected to the same tactics they once so freely exploited. The schadenfreude will be short-lived. This season of Democratic discontent will eventually end, the loose coalition of squabbling interests will regroup, and it will be back to identity politics as usual.

But if it hadn't before, there must now reside in the Democratic Party the fear that the Obama-Clinton contest has exposed fault lines of serious racial-gender-class fragmentation, any part of which could turn on another. Even Obama, who once had to endure questions of being "black enough," might one day stand accused of racial, class, or gender insensitivity, as the barrel of identity politics is ever in need of targets. Just ask the Clintons.

I didnt know that his Islamic upbringing is from his Indonesian step-father! What was his mother's thoughts about all this? Is this multiculturaism time bomb? Man what a mess.

Obama’s older brother still lives in Kenya. Abongo “Roy” Obama is a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must “liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.” He urges his younger brother, Barack Hussein Obama to embrace his ‘African’ heritage.

The way Barack Obama describes his oldest half-brother in his book, Abongo (Roy) Obama inherited their father’s hard-drinking ways but straightened his life out by embracing Islam and his African heritage.

Abongo Obama began using his Luo tribal first name and had sworn off pork, smoking and drinking by the time of his younger brother’s 1992 wedding.

“Abongo’s new lifestyle has left him lean and clear-eyed, and at the wedding, he looked so dignified in his black African gown with white trim and matching cap that some of our guests mistook him for my father,” Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father.

Clinton was seven percentage points behind Obama in the Feb. 15-17 average. In Monday night's interviewing, Clinton's percentage of the vote of national voters was higher than Obama's, but there has been fluidity in the nightly tracking numbers over the past several days as Democrats nationally process the intense, often heated, nature of the campaign. Monday's news coverage of the Democratic campaign was replete with a focus on the Clinton campaign's charges that Obama had plagiarized material from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and other negative attacks on Obama by the Clinton campaign. It is unclear which, if any, of these factors could be responsible for changes in the candidates' standing

With the two rivals now battling state by state over margins of victory and allotment of delegates, surveys of voters leaving the Wisconsin polls showed Mr. Obama, of Illinois, making new inroads with those two groups as well as middle-age voters and continuing to win support from white men and younger voters — a performance that yielded grim tidings for Mrs. Clinton, of New York.

One Major Difference Between Clinton and Obama? Their Records On Cuba
By John Nichols, The Nation.

If we look past their bland pronouncements on the campaign trail, it becomes clear that Clinton and Obama have widely divergent views on Cuba.

It is often suggested that there is not much difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when it comes to the stands they have taken as senators. And on the question of how the U.S. relates to Cuba -- an issue that has suddenly moved to the forefront with the news that Fidel Castro is stepping down as the leader of the Caribbean nation -- the candidates can sound similar.

When word came of Castro's move, Obama said the Cuban president's decision to hand power to his younger brother "should mark the end of a dark era in Cuba's history. ... Fidel Castro's stepping down is an essential first step, but it is sadly insufficient in bringing freedom to Cuba."

Clinton said, "The United States must pursue an active policy that does everything possible to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and opportunity in Cuba."

That's reasonably standard language for presidential candidates talking about Cuba.

But this is a case where the records behind the words really do tell different stories.

During their shared tenure in the Senate, and over the course of the current campaign, Obama and Clinton have taken different stands and sent distinct signals.

They have even voted differently on an issue that has provided a regular test of congressional sentiments regarding U.S. policy toward Cuba.

When the Senate has debated proposals to strip funding for TV Marti -- the always-troubled initiative to beam U.S. produced television programming into Cuba, which in turn jams the signal -- Obama has sided with those who argue that the $200-million propaganda campaign wastes money and good will.

Breaking with the powerful anti-Castro lobby in the Cuban-American community, the senator from Illinois voted twice to cut off TV Marti funding.

In contrast, Clinton voted to maintain TV Marti funding.

Last year, The Washington Post wrote that, "Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the senator's opposition to TV Marti was primarily about cost. But within Florida's large Cuban exile population, one of the most powerful voting blocs in the state, Clinton's and Obama's stances ally them with distinct groups: the older hard-liners and a younger, more progressive group of second-generation Cuban Americans and more recent immigrants whose numbers are growing."

Miami-based pollster Sergio Bendixen, one of the ablest analysts of campaigning on issues related to Cuba, says, "(Clinton) is going with the status quo." In contrast, argues Bendixen, "(Obama) is with the position of change."

It is not just on the question of funding for TV Marti that Obama is distinguished from Clinton.

The senator from Illinois says he wants to ease U.S.- Cuba travel restrictions, while the senator from New York would maintain the harsher policies imposed by the Bush administration. Obama went so far as to outline his position in an August, 2007, opinion piece written for the Miami Herald, in which he argued that, "Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island." As a result, he said, "I will grant Cuban-Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island."

In that same article, Obama also raised the possibility of opening bilateral talks with a post-Castro government.

Those are hardly radical positions, and Obama is no friend of Castro's. He's criticized the outgoing Cuban leader over human rights concerns and said today that, "Cuba's future should be determined by the Cuban people and not by an anti-democratic successor regime."

But the Illinois senator's relative moderation on travel and diplomatic fronts has drawn criticism from several of his opponents, including Clinton, who argued when Obama wrote his Miami Herald piece that, "Until it is clear what type of policies might come with a new government, we cannot talk about changes in the U.S. policies toward Cuba."

The criticism from Republican John McCain has been even more pointed. McCain, who has campaigned ....

Texas State Senator Kirk Watson (D-TX) learned a lesson in preparedness Tuesday night when he was humiliated on MSNBC. Watson was on to talk about his support of Senator Obama alongside Representative Stephanie Tubbs (D-OH), who backs Senator Clinton. Watson has endorsed Obama and writes glowingly of all the things Obama will do for the country, if elected.

But he was unable to answer Chris Matthews most basic demand: "Name some of his legislative accomplishments... name any..." A fantastically awkward mix of dead air, stuttering, laughter and repetition ensued, as Watson could not name a single one.

Obama Wouldn't Be First Black President
By Aysha Hussain

You've seen the headlines: "Are Americans Ready for a Black President?" "Is Obama Black Enough?" "Obama: America's First Black President?"

Ever since the nation first met Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in 2004, his race has been called into question more times than Michael Jackson's. Obama is clearly a black man, but is this really a breakthrough? Some blacks say Obama isn't "black enough," which seems ironic because for many blacks, former President Bill Clinton was "black enough." In 2001, Clinton was honored as the nation's "first black president" at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C.

Were there other "black" presidents? Some historians have reason to believe  people don't really understand the genealogy of past U.S. Presidents. Research shows at least five U.S. presidents had black ancestors and Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, was considered the first black president, according to historian Leroy Vaughn, author of Black People and Their Place in World History.

Vaughn's research shows Jefferson was not the only former black U.S. president. Who were the others? Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. But why was this unknown? How were they elected president? All five of these presidents never acknowledged their black ancestry.

Jefferson, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809, was described as the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father," as stated in Vaughn's findings. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people.

President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a black man. The magazine also stated that Jackson's oldest brother had been sold as a slave.

Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Leroy's findings. Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed "Abraham Africanus the First" by his opponents.

President Warren Harding, the 29th president, in office between 1921 and 1923, apparently never denied his ancestry. According to Vaughn, William Chancellor, a professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy. Evidently, Harding had black ancestors between both sets of parents. Chancellor also said that Harding attended Iberia College, a school founded to educate fugitive slaves.

Coolidge, the nation's 30th president, served between 1923 and 1929 and supposedly was proud of his heritage. He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor" and in Europe the name "Moor" was given to all blacks just as "Negro" was used in America. It later was concluded that Coolidge was part black.

The only difference between Obama and these former presidents is that none of their family histories were fully acknowledged by others. Even though Obama is half-white, he strongly resembles his Kenyan father. And not only is Obama open about his ancestry, most people acknowledge him as a black man, which is why people will identify Obama, if elected, as the first black president of the United States.

Obama’s White Male Voters: Do They Hear Something Blacks Don’t?

The corporate media and most Blacks with access to a mass public never seem to seriously examine the meaning of the most dramatic, history-shaking statistic in Barack Obama's march to the White House: he's picking up strong majorities of white men. That's unheard of in the annals of electoral activity in the United States. White men have always been the most reactionary, racially-bonded voting group, the deepest well of anti-Black hostility in the country. So, what makes them flock to Obama's banner? The answer is simple: Obama has based his entire strategy on sending messages to white males, assuring them he will take race and sex privilege off the table of American discourse. They got the message, and vote accordingly. The other side of this color blind coin is Black Americans, who don't seem to hear the conversation that's going on all around them.

Tuesday's Democratic primaries saw Barack Obama racking up over 60 percent of the white male vote in Wisconsin, riding an unprecedented historical demographic anomaly that will likely send him to the White House - barring a third consecutive general election theft by the Republicans. It appears Hillary Clinton's goose is cooked.

Once whites demonstrated their willingness to vote for a "certain type" of Black man, in Iowa back in January, it was a foregone conclusion that African Americans would line up in overwhelming numbers behind the Illinois Senator. Before then, all that had held back the tides of Black mass commitment to Obama's candidacy were lingering doubts that whites would support any "type" of Black person's elevation to the nation's highest office. When that dam broke, the African American celebration began. After 400 years in slave hell and Jim Crow purgatory, we've finally got a chance! Or so the crowd believes.

Obama wasn't taking any chances. His strategy from the very beginning has been to flip the historical script by appealing directly to the most backward demographic in electoral politics: white males. This "white male strategy" - smelling eerily of a previous Republican "southern strategy" -  required constant assurances to white men that Obama's run would signal the end of race as a point of political contention in the United States. No longer would whites, especially males, be compelled to answer for their privileged status. A 40-plus year annoyance was nearly over, since Blacks had "already come 90 percent of the way" to equality. Obama told them so.

Reagan-loving whites - especially the white men who have always led the "backlash" against real and perceived African American gains - found themselves wooed by a Black man who understood their sense of revulsion at "the excesses of the Sixties and Seventies." Wow! That's the kind of change we've been waiting for, exclaimed increasing numbers of white males. A new day beckoned, free at last of psychological harassment from the likes of Reverends Jesse and Al.

Obama is a world-class wooer. His white male wooing is made much easier by the fact that those who consider themselves his "sisters" and "brothers" demand nothing whatsoever from him. Just come home when you get ready, brother. Obama is free to concentrate his attentions on the hard-to-get demographics, especially white men with their peculiar notions of "change." No need for Obama to promise the hood a damn thing, except that he'll cut a dashing figure in the Oval Office and make the homefolks proud that he's there, symbolically representing them.

Republicans and GOP-leaning "independents" (meaning, deep-dyed whites) are crossing over in herds to vote for Obama. They've gotten the message: happy days are here again, when the darkies smiled and were careful not to hurt our feelings by telling the truth. That's the kind of "change" we've always "hoped" for, by golly!

The white liberal/left, ineffectual and geographically scattered, are drawn irresistibly to the Black man who regales them with sweet nothings - literally, nothing in the way of the concrete policies for peace and social justice they claim to champion. His presence in their midst is enough. Besides, Obama is someone who is "capable of forging a progressive majority," they say.

That's a strange concept, since Obama doesn't act like a progressive, or claim to be one. But he has no problem with folks gathering around him. He's a real party guy.

The no-nonsense white men that rule society and cling to ownership of the world were harder nuts to crack; you've got to sign a prenuptial to get skin-tight with them. No problem. Before Obama even began to strut on the national runway, he'd won the approval of the Wall Street and military/industrial (and nuclear power) branches of the Money Family. Run-of-the-mill citizens will be barred from state court relief, so as not to jam up big corporations with their silly lawsuits. Energy companies can count on their usual subsidies. The "sanctity of contracts" will not be violated to save homeowners from foreclosure, no matter how deep the credit crisis becomes. The voracious military will be fed an additional 92,000 soldiers and Marines, regardless of what happens in Iraq, to be available for more wars. Most importantly - and this is the really smooth part of Obama's game - the ever-increasing military budget will make moot all of Barack's and Hillary's (near identical) promises about health care, affordable housing, the whole public agenda that has been dangled in front of those fans and groupies in the cheap seats.

Once he gets in office, many of the swooners will find out that he's already married to the Power Mob.

But that's OK. Obama knows his most enthusiastic supporters - the ones that claim him as their own as a matter of blood - will stick by him without complaint. Hell, their "leaders" show every sign of allowing him to wine and dine and make promises to everybody else BUT them, at least until he is comfortably in office - maybe for the entirety of his first term. For the time being, though, Black folks aren't even hearing what he's saying to the white men or anybody else - they're just enjoying the music: "It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know, a change gonna come."

Oh no it ain't.

The latest three-day average finds Clinton favored by 45% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters and Obama by 44%. Gallup interviews from Feb. 19, the first day following Obama's strong win in Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, do not show an increase in Obama's support that some might have expected as a result.

I have also made another donation but believe it is as important to get on the phone (or in person) to talk with friends, relatives, and co-workers as to why they should vote for Hillary.  Republicans are voting in the Democratic primary so it is as important to talk with them as well as fellow Dems.  Invite folks to view the debate with you.  While at the Clinton rally in Tyler, I overheard a woman tell her companion; "My husband attended an Obama rally and loved it. He said he found himself swaying with the crowd and felt terrific when he left but he could not recall what Obama actually said."

I am a fifty year old disabled single mother of seven, grandmother of five.  I live on my 624.00 disability check.  I have never given money to any Presidential candidate in my life.  Today I gave five dollars to Hillary Clinton. I believe in Hillary, I believe she wants what is best for this country.  I believe she is what is best for this country.  I am only sorry I could not give her more.  I say my prayers each night, that Hillary will become our President.  I pray this for the good of our country.  I pray that those who have been deceived by the other candidate, soften their hearts to the message Hillary has for our country and its people.  Each one of us matters, Hillary believes it, lives it, and has fought for us for years.  There is something to be said for experience, and I for one want the person who knows exactly what they are doing running our country.  Hillary--2008!!!!!

Below are excerpts from the Economist Magazine. The Economist is the unofficial voice of the London based Bankers that control a majority of the world's media, natural resources and food supplies. The article reveals that the rise of the EU depends on the collapse of America and the use of Obama as their surrogate, to 'threaten massive nuclear retaliation' against Russia. The article clearly states that the EU intends to re-instate the Czar among other things. Some may say its just a speculative article. I say it is not. It appears to be the official EU blueprint for the next 50 years. In my view, it is obvious that any nation or person who stands in the way of this agenda will be dealt with accordingly. Vibrant nations of America, China, Russia and India, all economically and militarily powerful and Nationalist in nature, seem to be the greatest threats to the EU agenda.

The European Union at 100

Is the best yet to come?


LIKE anybody nearing a 50th birthday, the European Union needs a makeover. But as this special report has suggested, the past two years' talk of a deep crisis is overblown. The union is functioning as well (or as badly) as it did before French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution.

The efforts by the Germans to use their stint in the EU president's chair to resuscitate the constitution may thus be as mistaken as the fatuous logo they have chosen (above). It is possible that an agreement may be reached on a minimalist treaty, but it depends on a string of heroic assumptions: that Mr Sarkozy wins the French presidency; that the Poles can be bullied into accepting institutional change; that some way can be found to buy off Britain; and that almost everybody can avoid referendums. Since at least one of these assumptions is likely to prove wrong, the odds of a successful deal on the constitution seem low.

Rather than harping on institutional reform that may never happen, the EU should concentrate on things it can achieve. That means putting forward sound policies in fields such as the environment; continuing the union's enlargement to take in the western Balkans and, ultimately, Turkey; and doing more work, both in Brussels and in national capitals, to engage citizens in the project. Above all, it means taking advantage of the present recovery to push through economic reforms.

The future of the EU is hard to predict. Over the next decade or so it could undergo a burst of further integration; it could fall apart into opposing camps of those who would go forward and those who would go back; or, perhaps most likely, it could just muddle through. So how might it look in 50 years' time?

A centenary celebration, 2057

The EU is celebrating its 100th birthday with quiet satisfaction. Predictions when it turned 50 that it was doomed to irrelevance in a world dominated by America, China and India proved wide of the mark. A turning-point was the bursting of America's housing bubble and the collapse of the dollar early in the presidency of Barack Obama in 2010. But even more crucial were Germany's and France's efforts later in that decade, under Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy respectively, to push through economic reforms.

These reforms produced a sharp fall in unemployment just as Europe began to enjoy a productivity spurt from the spread of information technology. The eventual result was a growing labour shortage, which was not resolved until the arrival of Turkey and Ukraine as full members in 2025. The accession soon afterwards of the first north African country, Morocco, helped to prolong Europe's boom.

Of course it was not all plain sailing. The great Italian crisis of 2015, when the government of Gianfranco Fini quit the single currency just as David Miliband's Britain was about to join, cast a long shadow. Yet although Italian bondholders took a hit from the subsequent default and Italy's economy was soon overtaken by Spain's, financial markets proved forgiving, and the government of Walter Veltroni managed to rejoin the euro fairly quickly. Since then no country has been tempted to repeat Italy's painful experiment.

The other cause for quiet satisfaction has been the EU's foreign policy. In the dangerous second decade of the century, when Vladimir Putin returned for a third term as Russian president and stood poised to invade Ukraine, it was the EU that pushed the Obama administration to threaten massive nuclear retaliation. The Ukraine crisis became a triumph for the EU foreign minister, Carl Bildt, prompting the decision to go for a further big round of enlargement. It was ironic that, less than a decade later, Russia itself lodged its first formal application for membership.

At the same time politicians in Brussels and Washington, grappling with the blocked Middle East peace process, had a eureka moment. EU membership had worked, eventually, in Cyprus, which was reunified in 2024; why not try it again? So it was that Israel and Palestine became the EU's 49th and 50th members.

The big challenge now is what to do about Russia. Its application has been pending for 15 years. Some say that it is too big, too poor and not European enough to join. But now that the tsar has been symbolically restored, Russia has an impeccably democratic government. A previous tsar saved Europe from Napoleon nearly 250 years ago. It would be apt to mark the anniversary by welcoming Russia back into the European fold.

India must know its Mccain and Obama
By V. Balachandran

In May 1981, our embassy in Paris was not mentally prepared for Francois Mitterrand’s victory over Giscard d’Estaing as President. Our ambassador frankly admitted that he knew no one in the Socialist Party. A similar situation arose in 1992, when a Congress Party delegation from Delhi wanted to visit Little Rock to felicitate Bill Clinton. Our embassy in Washington DC, which never thought of developing contacts with the President-Elect’s group, had to search deep inside Arkansas to locate an Indian American doctor to facilitate a meeting with Clinton.

Bureaucracy is notorious for its inability to anticipate new situations as Laurence J. Peter (The Peter Principle) said: "Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." A similar situation should not arise in November 2008 if John McCain is to clash for the high office with Barack Obama, now buoyed with the triple "Potomac" victory on February 12, unless derailed by Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates.

The contrast between the two could not have been sharper. John Sidney McCain III will be the oldest President if elected (72), while Barack Hussein Obama "Junior" (Barry) will be the fifth youngest (47). McCain, a highly decorated soldier, comes from an illustrious family of naval officers. Nicknamed "McNasty" in the Navy, he was fearless but rebellious, a tendency he has displayed even during his Congressional term since 1982, where he was considered a maverick because of his speeches and actions. But he was a national hero, showing the highest leadership quality in refusing to be released on priority ahead of his comrades when he was a prisoner of war for six years in Vietnam where he was often tortured.

Iraq will be the central issue for McCain and Obama for different reasons. McCain believes in a militarist Jacksonian model of foreign policy on unilateral overseas intervention if American interests are threatened. His ideas conveyed through Foreign Affairs (November-December 2007) go beyond the Bush and Cheney doctrine of a military and civilian "surge" in Iraq, strengthening Pervez Musharraf in defeating Taliban, organising unilateral or multilateral sanctions on Iran, supporting Israel against its enemies, increasing US military muscle by raising US Army and Marine troop level to 900,000 and setting up a new Second World War type OSS to fight unconventional warfare and covert operations to "take risks that … bureaucracies today rarely consider taking." McCain wants a new US information agency to defeat Islamic extremism, the creation of a "worldwide League of Democracies" as envisioned by Theodore Roosevelt, to take over when the United Nations fails, close cooperation with European Union and cementing a growing partnership with India.

Obama "Junior" comes from a lower middle class family where the burden of raising children fell on his mother and grandmother. Barack Hussein Obama "Senior" hailed from a remote Kenyan village. In 1959 he was selected for a US scholarship to Hawaii University where he met a White student, Ann Dunham from Kansas. Their marriage lasted only till 1963 when he moved to Harvard to study economics. He returned to Kenya with another American wife, became an alcoholic and died in a car accident in 1982. Later Obama would pen a sensitive sketch of how he missed his father in his best-selling book Dreams from My Father (1995) remembering that "more than half of USA’s 5.6 million black boys lived in fatherless households, 40 per cent of them impoverished."

Ann Dunham then married an Indonesian student, moved to Jakarta in 1967 where Obama studied in Indonesian schools spending four years of "joyous time, full of adventure and mystery" as he wrote in his second book The Audacity of Hope (2006), another best-seller. Always at the top of his class at Harvard Law School, he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review in 1991. His anti-Iraq War speech in Chicago in October 2002 at a time when he was considering running for the US Senate and when 28 Democratic senators had voted for the proposed war, was a great risk, but it paid off. His impressive keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, despite being a state legislator, won him instant fame.

The Audacity of Hope contains his political philosophy of "empathy and inclusiveness." Chapter 8, "The World Beyond Our Borders" contains his foreign policy scheme. He credits the post-Second World War American leadership of crafting "a new architecture combining Wilson’s idealism with hard headed realism" which saw its results after 60 years. However "American foreign policy has always been a jumble of warring impulses." Nationalist movements, ethnic struggles, reform efforts or left leaning policies were viewed through Cold War lenses and considered potential threats, since, "US policymakers unnecessarily viewed problems elsewhere in the world through a military lens rather than a diplomatic one." The post 9/11 policies were old and outdated strategies, "dusted off, slapped together and with new labels affixed."

On the other hand, he decries "isolationism," since globalisation has made the US economy, health and security captive to events outside. Also, such transnational threats are from "the margins of the global economy," through weak or failing states, corruption and poverty which the US had earlier ignored. Unilateral military action should only be when US faces imminent threat. In all other cases, a multilateral action on the lines of George H.W. Bush’s First Gulf War should be undertaken, with cooperation from other countries. "Freedom means more than elections" in many parts of the world reeling under poverty. He faults US trade barriers, patent regimes and World Bank-IMF policies for depriving the poor access to drugs, food and development.

Obama’s July 2007 declaration in Charleston that he would meet the leaders of Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea in the first year of office to resolve differences, was attacked by Hillary Clinton as "naïve." However, for a world tired of the present American policy which creates more problems, this would come as a breath of fresh air. Also, it would prove that Obama is the "future" while Clinton is the "past." Would US electors choose a further dose of militarism or "empathy and inclusiveness"?

V. Balachandran is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

Tough road ahead (Pioneer)
Rajeev Srinivasan

Barack Obama might be ahead of Hillary Clinton, but his path to White House will not be an easy one

There certainly is a buzz around Mr Barack Obama. His string of 11 straight victories over Ms Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries has startled both pundits and average voters. The extravagant comparisons to John Kennedy's fabled Camelot, the enthusiastic youngsters who mob him everywhere, the immense fund-raising he has managed -- all this suggests that Mr Obama's momentum is unstoppable.

There is a generation gap among voters: Those who remember Camelot and those who read about it later. The older generation is much more willing to accept Ms Clinton's record of experience and maturity. The young are swept away by the promise of change and the idealism that are the cornerstones of the Obama campaign.

So Mr Obama has the "Big Mo", momentum. It is indeed remarkable that a Black man is now offering a credible challenge for the US presidency. After all, the brutal racism of Jim Crow, the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs Board of Education, and Rosa Parks's refusal to yield a seat on a bus are all within living memory.

There certainly has been considerable progress in the ability of individual Blacks to rise to the top in the US. But it is questionable whether America is ready to accept a non-White as the Commander-in-Chief. The President is almost deified in the US, his (yes, his, as there has never been a woman in the position) every move and every word is analysed with great interest, he becomes the role model for youngsters. And America still thinks of itself as largely WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. As a result, it is unclear whether the enthusiasm shown by the crowds today will translate into a winning coalition.

In opinion polls conducted today pitting Mr Obama against Mr John McCain, Mr Obama ends up winning. But do these opinion polls mean much? The prejudices of the pollsters enter into the picture, as has been seen often in the disastrous predictions of so-called psephologists in India. Besides, it is likely that many people will appear more liberal in a poll than they really are. Some of Mr Obama's perceived support may well vanish at the polling booth.

Besides, Mr Obama is all rhetoric and no substance. He has no track record. Yes, we all want world peace and want to stop global warming, but oratory won't do it. Mr Obama's watchword is change. All very nice, but exactly what is he going to change?

Is Mr Obama going to immediately pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Is he going to bring in universal health care? Is he going to single-handedly rescue the recession-bound American economy? Is he going to change American foreign policy so that the US stops supporting dictators like Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf? Is he going to immediately reverse the decline in American education and competitiveness?

Is Mr Obama going to move away from depending on Saudi petro-dollars? Is he going to make the plight of oppressed racial minorities in America much better? How is he going to rein in rampaging China and resurgent Russia? Is he going to reduce global warming by America dramatically?

None of these are amenable to quick fixes. It is, therefore, not entirely clear exactly what Mr Obama is going to change. He may be able to beat Ms Clinton based on all this rhetoric, but Mr McCain may not be quite so easy.

Ms Clinton suffers from some disadvantages: One, the public is tired of her, and of her spouse. Two, Americans are more sexist than racist. But there is no question about her competence or her experience and she may yet be the "Comeback Kid", as Mr Bill Clinton was.

There are also troubling issues about Mr Obama's faith that Mr McCain will exploit. Apparently Mr Obama's personal pastor is an Afro-centrist to the extent that staffers had to prevent him from being prominent in the campaign, fearing he would alienate Whites.

And indeed, there is some murky stuff about Mr Obama's religion. He wears his Christian faith on his sleeve, loudly proclaiming all the right Jesus-saves stuff. But is it that a case of "milady doth protest too much"? It is a fact that Mr Obama was born a Mohammedan, to a Mohammedan father (a Kenyan) and a converted-Mohammedan (White) mother. He spent some years of his childhood with his Mohammedan step-father in Indonesia. All this makes him, forever, a Mohammedan in the eyes of, say, Saudi Arabia.

This has also led to persistent rumours that Mr Obama is a Manchurian Candidate, someone whose loyalties lie elsewhere, and someone who is being bank-rolled by them, specifically by oil-rich Arabs. Whether or not this is true, there will be a determined smear-campaign to this effect. In an America that feels embattled both by terrorism and by the influx of foreign money, this may well resonate.

In the end, Mr Obama will not be a winning candidate against Mr McCain. There is an intriguing possibility, though: The Democratic Convention may draft Mr Al Gore. After all, he actually did win the presidency some years ago, only to be cheated out of it on technicalities. And since then, he has burnished his credentials, winning not only a Nobel Prize but also an Oscar. It is unlikely that Mr Gore would want to have Ms Clinton as his running mate. This leads to the possibility of a Gore-Obama ticket; which could well be a winner. Mr Gore's southern roots may win them votes there. In the West, North-East and Mid-West, both of them have enough charisma. Mr Gore's stolid earnestness combined with Mr Obama's oratorical flourishes may be just the ticket.

Two, Americans are more sexist than racist.

One Nation Under Many Gods

Although Obama is not Muslim, TV and the Internet (including newspaper Web sites) broadcast stories that Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan endorsed Barack Obama on Sunday on the same day the Pew Internet project released its report on the state of religion in the U.S. We are a nation under many gods, but primarily One.

Farrakhan's speech was entitled, "The Gods At War -- The Future is All About Y.O.U.th." He said Obama's the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better.

He never endorsed Obama. He came to the McCormick Center in Chicago to praise Obama, not to bury him.

Farrakhan also took some jabs at Hillary Clinton, saying she represents the politics of the past and has been engaging in dirty tricks.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton distanced the campaign from Farrakhan: "Sen. Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support."

Farrakhan's speech wasn't inflammatory. He compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.

"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he said. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."

That positive message though will not be found when someone searches for Farrakhan. Many people are searching for Farrakhan. They'll likely find his anti-Semitic remarks and Elijah Mohammed's relationship with Malcolm X. At best they'll find a religion that promotes black empowerment and nationalism, neither of which promise to help Obama's presidential aspiration.

In the late 1970s Farrakhan rebuilt the Nation of Islam, after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime leader Elijah Mohammed, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.

What's unique about the Obama challenge: people are searching for information and finding disinformation. Search has a viral aspect as the Obama keywords

Bush predicts GOP will hold White House
Told you, same is my prediction.

We have faith in Hillary! I actually voted for Obama in the Alabama primary, but have since regreted that decision. I continue to contribute to Hillary's campaign b/c the Obama campaign had alot of advertisements on the t.v and radio when Alabama was at play. Hillary needs the money to compete. Donate! Donate! Donate! I know she's a fighter and we have all seen that in the past couple days! I have also made some phone calls. (I can't belive how involved i've gotten with all this campaign stuff). Hillary needs us!!!  Yes We Can Yall!!!

Obama's women reveal his secret
By Spengler

"Cherchez la femme," advised Alexander Dumas in: "When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman." In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama's women reveal his secret: he hates America.

We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama. No man - least of all one abandoned in infancy by his father - can conceal the imprint of an impassioned mother, or the influence of a brilliant wife.

America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.

Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised.

Ann Dunham died in 1995, and her character emerges piecemeal from the historical record, to which I will return below. But Michelle Obama is a living witness. Her February 18 comment that she felt proud of her country for the first time caused a minor scandal, and was hastily qualified. But she meant it, and more. The video footage of her remarks shows eyes hooded with rage  as she declares:

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.

The desperation, frustration and disappointment visible on Michelle Obama's face are not new to the candidate's wife; as Steve Sailer, Rod Dreher and other commentators have noted, they were the theme of her undergraduate thesis, on the subject of "blackness" at Princeton University. No matter what the good intentions of Princeton, which founded her fortunes as a well-paid corporate lawyer, she wrote, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong."

Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama's campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. "I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There's Barack Obama the phenomenon. He's an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there's the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy's a little less impressive," she told a fundraiser in February 2007.

"For some reason this guy still can't manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn't get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is." New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time, "She added that the TV version of Barack Obama sounded really interesting and that she'd like to meet him sometime." Her handlers have convinced her to be more tactful since then.

"Frustration" and "disappointment" have dogged Michelle Obama these past 20 years, despite her US$300,000 a year salary and corporate board memberships. It is hard for the descendants of slaves not to resent America. They were not voluntary immigrants but kidnap victims, subjected to a century of second-class citizenship even after the Civil War ended slavery. Blackness is not the issue; General Colin Powell, whose parents chose to immigrate to America from the West Indies, saw America just as other immigrants do, as a land of opportunity. Obama's choice of wife is a failsafe indicator of his own sentiments. Spouses do not necessarily share their likes, but they must have their hatreds in common. Obama imbibed this hatred with his mother's milk.

Michelle Obama speaks with greater warmth of her mother-in-law than of her husband. "She was kind of a dreamer, his mother," Michelle Obama was quoted in the January 25 Boston Globe. "She wanted the world to be open to her and her children. And as a result of her naivete, sometimes they lived on food stamps, because sometimes dreams don't pay the rent. But as a result of her naivete, Barack got to see the world like most of us don't in this country." How strong the ideological motivation must be of a mother to raise her children on the thin fair in pursuit of a political agenda.

"Naivete" is a euphemism for Ann Dunham's motivation. Friends describe her as a "fellow traveler", that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero's student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation.

Soetero had been sponsored as a graduate student by one of the most radical of all Third World governments. Sukarno had founded the so-called Non-Aligned Movement as an anti-colonialist turn at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Before deposing him in 1967, Indonesia's military slaughtered 500,000 communists (or unfortunates who were mistaken for communists). When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediate following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history.

Dunham's experience in Indonesia provided the material for a doctoral dissertation celebrating the hardiness of local cultures against the encroaching metropolis. It was entitled, "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds". In this respect Dunham remained within the mainstream of her discipline. Anthropology broke into popular awareness with Margaret Mead's long-discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which offered a falsified ideal of sexual liberation in the South Pacific as an alternative to the supposedly repressive West. Mead's work was one of the founding documents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and anthropology faculties stood at the left-wing fringe of American universities.

In the Global South, anthropologists went into the field and took matters a step further. Peru's brutal Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla movement was the brainchild of the anthropologist  Efrain Morote Best, who headed the University of San Cristobal of Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, between 1962 and 1968. Dunham's radicalism was more vicarious; she ended her career as an employee of international organizations.

Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. In the Muslim world of the 1960s, nationalism rather than radical Islam was the ideology of choice among the enraged. Radical Islam did not emerge as a major political force until the nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser or a Sukarno failed.

Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

Since the Ronald Reagan boom began in 1984, the year the American stock market doubled, Americans have enjoyed a quarter-century of rising wealth. Even the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000 did not interrupt the upward trajectory of household assets, as the housing price boom eclipsed the effect of equity market weakness. America's success made it a magnet for the world's savings, and Americans came to believe that they were riding a boom that would last forever, as I wrote recently [1].

Americans regard upward mobility as a God-given right. America had a double founding, as David Hackett Fischer showed in his 1989 study, Albion's Seed . Two kinds of immigrants founded America: religious dissidents seeking a new Promised Land, and economic opportunists looking to get rich quick. Both elements still are present, but the course of the past quarter-century has made wealth-creation the sine qua non of American life. Now for the first time in a generation Americans have become poorer, and many of them have become much poorer due to the collapse of home prices. Unlike the Reagan years, when cutting the top tax rate from a punitive 70% to a more tolerable 40% was sufficient to start an economic boom, no lever of economic policy is available to fix the problem. Americans have no choice but to work harder, retire later, save more and retrench.

This reversal has provoked a national mood of existential crisis. In Europe, economic downturns do not inspire this kind of soul-searching, for richer are poorer, remain what they always have been. But Americans are what they make of themselves, and the slim makings of 2008 shake their sense of identity. Americans have no institutionalized culture to fall back on. Their national religion has consisted of waves of enthusiasm - "Great Awakenings" – every second generation or so, followed by an interim of apathy. In times of stress they have a baleful susceptibility to hucksters and conmen.

Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

The George W Bush administration has squandered a great strategic advantage in a sorry lampoon of nation-building in the Muslim world, and has made enemies out of countries that might have been friendly rivals, notably Russia. Americans question the premise of America's standing as a global superpower, and of the promise of upward mobility and wealth-creation. If elected, Barack Obama will do his utmost to destroy the dual premises of America's standing. It might take the country another generation to recover.

"Evil will oft evil mars", J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama. As he recalled in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama idealized the Kenyan economist who had married and dumped his mother, and was saddened to learn that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a sullen, drunken polygamist. The elder Obama became a senior official of the government of Kenya after earning a PhD at Harvard. He was an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career.

The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

Both Obama and the American public should be very careful of what they wish for. As the horrible example of Obama's father shows, there is nothing worse for an embittered outsider manipulating the system from within than to achieve his goals - and nothing can be more terrible for the system. Even those who despise America for its blunders of the past few years should ask themselves whether the world will be a safer place if America retreats into a self-pitying shell.

Note
1. Obama bin lottery Asia Times Online, January 29, 2008.

Yet it also reflects the fact that, unlike Jesse Jackson, Obama simply lacks certain cultural signifiers--not to mention an urban-centric policy agenda--that would viscerally threaten racist whites obsessed with maintaining "white rights," ending affirmative action, and cutting off nearly all non-European immigration.

Mudy thanks for the link. I saw the blogger who talks about Oprah etc - is the the one you were referring to ?

NEW YORK (Feb. 27) - The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a speech Sen. Barack Obama gave at its national meeting last year after he became a candidate for president, the denomination said Tuesday.
....

In a letter the denomination received Monday, the IRS said "reasonable belief exists" that the circumstances surrounding the speech violated restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt organizations. The denomination has denied any wrongdoing.

Obama, a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, spoke about faith and public life at the denomination's June 2007 General Synod in Hartford, Conn.

In some very shattering news tonight Cliff Kincaid reported that Obama's childhood mentor "Frank" is none other than Frank Marshall Davis.This Newsvine reporter writes that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was an identified communist. Obama frequently referred to "Frank" in his book Alan Keyes, Obama's republican opponent for the Senate in 2004 also charged him with being a "hard-core academic Marxist." Other commentators like the National Review mention that "for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics." Another shocking revelation that is just coming to light is that Dr.Rev Jeremiah Wright Jr, Obama's pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has ties to Minister Louis Farrakhan, in fact Farrakhan "received the "Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright,Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer" Award at the 2007 Trumpet Gala at the the United Church of Christ, according to Power and control blog. Rev. Wright is reported to be quite anti-semitic. In fact, Rev Wight traveled with Farrakhan to meet Khadafy in 1984. Obama was bapized in that church when he was 26.Obama's advisors have tried to distance him from Wright.

"With hundreds of air charter companies and airliners to choose from, the Saudis chose a company that owns “Worship Ministries” and Christian Network, Inc."
by Daniel Hopsicker 

The lavishly-furnished custom Boeing 727 airliner (727PX) which ferried Senator John McCain on four occasions during his Presidential run in 2000 also flew Saudi Royals out of the U.S. right after 9/11, carrying an entourage of Saudi Royals from Las Vegas to London six days after the 9/11 attack in a controversial operation later scrutinized by the 9/11 Commission.

The 727 figures in the current tempest over his relationship with female lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who provided and flew with McCain on the plane. 

With hundreds of air charter companies and airliners to choose from, the Saudis chose a company that owns “Worship Ministries” and Christian Network, Inc., turning to Paxson Communications, a “Christian broadcaster” which owned the plane, to make its corporate jet available to spirit the Saudi princes and their entourage out of the U.S. six days after 9/11.

The Saudi Royal party made good their escape from Las Vegas on an airliner sporting a Christian symbol of peace, a dove, on it’s tail, an intriguing detail and compelling human interest story—Muslims flying Air Jesus—that has to date been reported nowhere but in the MadCowMorningNews.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Champion of Fascism in the name of Socialism with enforced vaccinations, health care based on Government approved standards that do not recognize natural and alternative health care, mandatory health insurance similar to the auto insurance industry mandates. Dedicated to the so-called drug war against the people and continued subsidization of the prison industrial complex. At best she will give America another dose of Clintonian governance.

Barack Hussein Obama: An unknown whose rise to political power was built upon the scandals of his political rivals. Both his Democratic and GOP rivals for the US Senate were taken out by well timed exposes involving abuse and sex scandals. Mysteriously, legally sealed divorce records were opened against the wishes of the clients that were than used to torpedo Obama's rival. Obama will at best give us a Euro-America and most likely turn America into an EU surrogate. The very same media that gives us ceaseless drivel of irrelevancy and daily doses of trauma, murders, rapes and perversion has given us Obama. No surprise really once we learn that George Soros is a major player behind the Obama ascendancy.  Despite his alleged liberality, in part based on his extreme and impassioned defense of partial birth abortion, Obama is dedicated to the so-called drug war against the people and continued subsidization of the prison industrial complex.

John Sydney McCain: A 5+yr Prisoner of War. Potential Manchurian Candidate, torture victim with his finger on the nuclear button. Scary thought. Ever ready to continue draining America's resources in foreign wars and misadventures lasting up to one hundred years if necessary.  Like Hillary and Obama, McCain is dedicated to the so-called drug war against the people and continued subsidization of the prison industrial complex.

Michael Dale Huckabee:  Christian idealist that is allegedly for freedom yet supports the continued drain on our resources for foreign wars and international entanglements.  Dedicated to the so-called drug war against the people and continued subsidization of the prison industrial complex.

Alan L. Keyes:  Articulate and intelligent but his disastrous Senate campaign against Obama says it all. Dedicated to the so-called drug war against the people and continued subsidization of the prison industrial complex. 

Ralph Nader: A passionate consumer advocate. However he has no track record of governance and is more suitable in a role of an advocate. He could make an excellent congressional representative.  Nader's presidential campaigns have no doubt raised many legitimate issues. Refreshingly Nader is dedicated to ending the drug war and freeing America from the corporate stranglehold.  Admittedly positive goals yet Nader appears to represent special interests of another sort rather than the Nation as a whole. He would, of course, be a good addition to any administration.

Soros is behind Open Society institute

$35 Million: In February, the campaign recorded its best fundraising month ever – by more than double. Hillary raised approximately $35 million from roughly 300,000 donors. More than 200,000 new donors contributed to the campaign.

I've Switched to Hillary: In Texas, El Paso County Commissioner and former Sen. Obama supporter Veronica Escobar switched her support to Hillary.

“African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom.

“This is the politics of the 1950s,” he complained. “A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but it’s happening.”
...................

“I’ve gotten threatening mail,” Watson said. “They say, ‘Your district went 61-29 Obama and you need to change.’ But I don’t intimidate. I can hold the ground. … I would lose my seat over my principles.”

....

Black superdelegates are getting heavy pressure from such groups as ColorOfChange.org, a grass-roots organization backing Obama.

“Some [Congressional Black Caucus] members are threatening to vote against their constituents, and perhaps against the will of the American people, by casting their superdelegate vote for Sen. Clinton,” the ColorOfChange.org website reads. “We can prevent this from happen by letting black leadership know we're watching.”
..............


Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), a Black Caucus member, said he is still “very strong” for Clinton even in the wake of Lewis’s turnaround. He was unmoved by discord in his Queens district, which backed Obama in the New York primary.

“Some people threw out flyers. That doesn’t faze me at all. If someone wants to run against me, that’s democracy,” he said. “Sen. Obama is a very inspirational person. People in the district are proud. I’m proud. You can’t not be proud being an African-American… But I have to do overall what’s in the best interests of my district.”

....


Cleaver questioned why white superdelegates such as Massachusetts Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry weren’t being targeted to support Clinton after she carried their state.

“If white people were being harassed and threatened because they were not supporting a white candidate, we’d see headlines,” he said.

HIGH VOTER TURNOUT IN PLANO, TEXAS
I have already sent my absentee ballot in the mail for HILLARY, the 44th President of the United States!

My dad, a registered republican who will be VOTING AND CAUCUSING for HILLARY, texted me and said that at his precinct in Plano, the line was 300+ deep. This is a VERY conservative area. My dad re-committed yesterday to voting for Hillary after Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters to get out the vote for Hillary. 

I have, after many failed attempts, persuaded my Republican mother who has NEVER voted in ANY prior election to vote for Hillary.  My persuasion was really very simple.  Vote for Hillary to prevent Obama from being the Democratic nominee.  I then told her she could easily vote for the Republican party in November.  She said, "Alright, sounds fair to me.  So how do I vote and where?  My 85 year old Democratic grandmother took her at 9:30 this morning.  She too voted for Clinton and said she will vote Republican in November if Obama is the nominee."  Also, my sister, who is 35, has never voted in any election.  She went today at noon with my grandmother to vote for Hillary.  Go HILLARY!!!  Everyone:  Use the power of persuasion to get Hillary nominated

I have heard some sickening news.  It was announced that our senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has endorsed BO.  He states that BO has the experience to be our president.  I can't believe it!  All of the early polls has Hillary 2:1 over BO.  This is also his re-election year.  I'm glad that he has told us now, so we can let him know on May 13th that his services are no longer needed.  He has lost several votes!

Obamanomics
Hope and fear

Feb 28th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Democratic economic policy sounds worryingly populist

AP

FOR a man who has placed “hope” at the centre of his campaign, Barack Obama can sound pretty darned depressing. As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico. The man who claims to be a “post-partisan” centrist seems to be channelling the spirit of William Jennings Bryan, the original American populist, who thunderously demanded to know “Upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight—upon the side of ‘the idle holders of idle capital’ or upon the side of ‘the struggling masses’?”

There is no denying that for some middle-class Americans, the past few years have indeed been a struggle. What is missing from Mr Obama's speeches is any hint that this is not the whole story: that globalisation brings down prices and increases consumer choice; that unemployment is low by historical standards; that American companies are still the world's most dynamic and creative; and that Americans still, on the whole, live lives of astonishing affluence.

It is not fair, moreover, to blame Mr Obama exclusively. His rival, Hillary Clinton, is no less responsible for the Democratic Party's wholesale descent into economic miserabilism. Both candidates have threatened to pull America out of NAFTA, the free-trade deal with Mexico and Canada, unless it is rewritten. Both rail against oil companies, drug companies, credit-card companies—the usual suspects. Both want more government spending and regulation to protect individuals against predatory companies. Indeed, in some ways, Mrs Clinton is worse. She appears to be sceptical of all trade deals, including the multilateral Doha round which would produce big benefits for the world's poorest countries. Unlike Mr Obama, she has proposed a deeply unsound five-year freeze on interest payments for subprime borrowers, which would surely result in higher rates and scarcer credit for future borrowers.
Beyond the campaign

How worrying is their populism? The sanguine—and conventional—argument is that none of it matters much. Democratic candidates always veer to the left during primaries, because that is where the votes are. But come the general election, the winner will tack back towards the centre, where the crucial independent voter resides.

The winner, unless Mrs Clinton can stage a dramatic comeback in the big primaries on March 4th, is likely to be Mr Obama. If you look on his website rather than listen to his speeches, there are plenty of intelligently designed, reasonably centrist proposals to be found (see article). It is sensible, for instance, to make it easier for people to save for retirement by enrolling everyone in a scheme unless they specifically opt out. His plans for health-care reform, like Mrs Clinton's, are middle-of-the-road. And his economic advisers, even more than hers, are sound academic economists. So although it might seem odd to advise suspicious voters to ignore the rhetoric of a man whose principal appeal rests on his speeches, Mr Obama in office would surely seek to be something other than the capitalist-hating demagogue he has recently sounded like.

Yet there are reasons to worry. The longer the Democratic race grinds on, the more entrenched the candidates may become in their populism. As America moves into the election proper, there is every likelihood that it will do so against a backdrop of worsening macroeconomic figures and rising numbers of house repossessions. Both John McCain and the Democratic nominee will then be chasing swing voters who are, typically, white working men—the type already prone to pessimism about their prospects. This group is not a natural part of Mr Obama's constituency and, if he were the nominee, he might well be tempted to keep the populism turned up high. If he were elected president, backed by a Democratic Congress with enhanced majorities, Mr Obama might well feel obliged to deliver on some of his promises. At the very least, the prospects for freer trade would then be dim.

The sad thing is that one might reasonably have expected better from Mr Obama. He wants to improve America's international reputation yet campaigns against NAFTA. He trumpets “the audacity of hope” yet proposes more government intervention. He might have chosen to use his silver tongue to address America's problems in imaginative ways—for example, by making the case for reforming the distorting tax code. Instead, he wants to throw money at social problems and slap more taxes on the rich, and he is using his oratorical powers to prey on people's fears.

Mr Obama advertises himself as something fresh, hopeful and new. But on economic matters at least he, like Mrs Clinton, has begun to look a rather ordinary old-style Democrat.

US society helping to make people sicker

By Christopher Bowe in New York

Published: February 29 2008 02:39 | Last updated: February 29 2008 02:39

Americans should be living four years longer at current rates of healthcare spending, signalling that US society is helping to make people sicker, a report on health inequality said on Thursday.

The report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), an influential US philanthropy, presented new evidence of widening disparities in health between income levels in the United States.

The nation’s poorest adults were nearly five times more likely to be in “poor or fair” health as the richest - 31 per cent versus 6.6 per cent - and at every income level the wealthier group was healthier than the next lower one.

This trend of declining health according to income was seen in all race groups. Although socioeconomic factors are “harshest” on the poorest, the report said, “economic inequality has increased in the United States and the middle-class has lost ground.”

Dr Risa Lavizzo-Mourey chief executive of RWJF said: “A far greater determinant is the sometimes toxic relationship between how we live our lives and the economic, social and physical environments that surround us. Some of the factors affecting our health we certainly can influence on our own; many of the factors, however, are outside our individual control.”

The report and a new commission formed by the RWJF to look at remedies highlight potentially wider discussion and scrutiny on health disparities due to socioeconomic status and income inequality.

Researchers, including social epidemiologists, have long sought wider attention to socioeconomic forces to improve national health and reduce healthcare spending.

Dr Stephen Bezruchka, of the University of Washington school of public health, told the Financial Tines in an interview this month: “That is the key thing. Inequality basically shapes the whole structure of society. The thing is - in America - people seem to like it. But that’s what’s killing us.”

US healthcare reform proposals have so far centred around better access to basic healthcare for all Americans, in particular 47m people without health insurance.

Americans’ health and life expectancy is relatively poorer than other rich countries, even though the US spends more than $2,000bn a year on healthcare and nearly double per capita than the amount spent in the UK.

Dr Mark McClellan, former chief of both Medicare, the US health programme for elderly and poor, and the Food and Drug Administration said: “In fact, wealthy Americans have worse health than middle income Britons, as measured by several major chronic conditions. But there are promising strategies out there that show we can take practical steps to close the gap.”

Dr McClellan will lead a commission comprised of leading private and public sector voices, including Wal-Mart, to explore how to mitigate US society’s worsening health despite significantly higher healthcare spending than other countries.

It plans to take two years to formulate potential remedies to health disparities through in urban planning, economic development, improved schools and access to higher education, housing subsidies and health prevention efforts.

Linda Dillman, head of Wal-Mart risk management and benefits, said US society presents some obstacles to good health, and fixing them is good for the nation and makes better customers. “There are underlying causes that need to be addressed in this country. For instance, compared with Europe, we’re a ’drive-thru’ country,” she said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Trans-Atlantic Relations | 24.02.2008
Europeans Hopeful US Democrats Will Rescue Trans-Atlantic Ties
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Europe has high hopes for the Democratic presidential hopefuls

Europeans think the next US president will be better. They hope a Democrat in the White House will reinvigorate trans-Atlantic ties. But the candidates aren't necessarily much more in tune with Europe.

Europeans' interest in the US primaries and caucuses is immense: leading German newsmagazine Der Spiegel even devoted its title story to Democrat Barack Obama last week, and the Internet is alive with young Europeans commenting on the campaigns in innumerable blogs and forums.

US soldiers talk to journalists in BaghdadBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Many have been unimpressed by the Americans' actions in Iraq

Many Europeans connect the election of a new US president with the hope for a new beginning in trans-Atlantic relations, which suffered setbacks due to numerous controversies, from George W. Bush's uncompromising approach to climate change to his foray into the Iraqi desert. To many Europeans, everything will get better once there's a new president. And if he or she is a Democrat, they believe, it's guaranteed.

Regardless of how passionately Europeans follow the duel between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Europe plays a negligible role in the top Democratic contenders' campaigns. Aside from a few sentences in speeches and essays, the two have hardly said a word about Europe.

And according to some, European hopes will likely be dashed.

"A fundamental new evaluation of the trans-Atlantic relationship will not take place," said Esther Brimmer, research director at the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.

But the tone will change.

"Obama and Clinton will make themselves out to be more cooperative, more international. And for every American president, Europe remains the most important partner," Brimmer said.

US won't allow Europe to dictate

On points of contention between the US and Europe, such as climate change or human rights, the Europeans could expect significantly more cooperation than in the past, she added.

President Bush in Biloxi, Mississippi, surveying damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  A new president may take a different approach to climate change

But whether under a President Obama or a President Clinton, the US would demand the leadership role in fighting climate change. It would also refuse to let the Europeans dictate what should be done, Brimmer said. And it's inconceivable that a new president would ratify the statutes of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an issue that looms large for Europeans.

"With so much military personnel all over the world, the US doesn't want to be subjected to politically motivated accusations from other states at the ICC," Brimmer said.

But a new president wouldn't try to actively thwart the ICC, as the Bush administration did at the start.

And when it comes to Iraq and Iran's nuclear ambitions, a President Obama or Clinton would discuss the issues more closely with the Europeans, Brimmer reckoned.

Obama attracted attention last year by suggesting he would try to engage in direct talks with Iran. Clinton called the suggestion naive.

Grown apart

Brimmer said the biggest difference between the two Democrats in regard to Europe was that Obama wanted to set the course for where the US would be in 30 or 40 years, particularly in terms of climate change and international dialogue. Clinton, on the other hand, was focused on improving America's standing in the world in the near term.

The World Trade Center on fireBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Sept. 11 doesn't loom as large for Europeans as it does for Americans

This different approach "naturally influences the role Europe plays for the US in the mid-term," Brimmer said.

Though Bush's foreign policy may have caused a storm over the Atlantic, actually there had been a fundamental, structural change in the trans-Atlantic relationship, said Karen Donfried, vice president of the German Marshall Funds of the United States.

"The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, hit the US at a time when the Europeans -- after the end of the Cold War -- felt safer than ever," she said. The US and Europe had not only developed different interests, but were also no longer united by a common enemy.

Polls reinforce that view: While Americans identify terrorism as the number one threat, Europeans say climate change is the biggest problem.

Finding a common cause

The rise of new 'super powers,' such as China and India could, however, bring Americans and Europeans closer together again, according to Donfried.

"The EU and the US must work together to integrate countries that come from outside this tradition into the global political system they have so clearly molded," she said.

In that sense, Obama and Clinton would certainly view Europeans as effective partners. But the "Europeans would have to finally get their house in order," Donfried said.

"In haggling over a new European constitution and the Lisbon reform treaty, the Europeans were so occupied with themselves that they were neither united enough nor did they have the necessary view of the outside world to be this effective partner," she said.

The secret to Obama's success

A yearning for a new day in US politics is behind Obama's success, but other factors will determine if he wins the Democratic nomination, says Mike Rosenberg for ISN Security Watch.

Barack Obama by Joe Crimmings. (Joe CrimmingsFlickr)
    Image: Joe Crimmings, Flickr

Commentary by Mike Rosenberg for ISN Security Watch (27/02/08)

Europeans are scratching their heads over how US Senator Barack Obama - until recently a politician relatively unknown outside the US - has become not only the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primaries, but also a serious contender to become what is arguably the most powerful political leader in the world.

To understand this peculiar American phenomena - in which the media appear only too ready to compare the Illinois senator to that of US president John F Kennedy without further explanation - one needs to understand not only how most Americans perceive recent presidents, but also how Obama's campaign is the by-product of a deep cynicism that has become ingrained in the past 50 years.

Kennedy is something of a mythical figure that held the Russians at bay and took on the Mafia. Beating out then-vice president Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, he offered a vision of the US that was progressive, while promising to make the world a better place. While Kennedy's administration made a number of mistakes - and his personal life was questionable - he is nevertheless remembered as the US' last great president.

Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, then-vice president Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, took office. Johnson's presidency was heavily marked by the Vietnam War, for which he is largely blamed.

After Johnson, America fell in love with the late president's brother, US senator Robert Kennedy. After the latter's assassination just before the 1968 Democratic Convention, the party turned to a rather gray but qualified man, Hubert Humphrey, who went on to lose the presidential race to Nixon.

Nixon is remembered of course for bombing Cambodia, losing the war in Vietnam, and authorizing the 1972 Watergate break-in, as well as a number of other "dirty tricks" against domestic opponents.

The disgraced commander-in-chief was followed by a line of US presidents who left dubious legacies: Gerald Ford, remembered for pardoning his old boss, Nixon; Jimmy Carter, who although some believe did a lot of things right, will go down in history for his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis; Ronald Reagan, viewed by many as the country's greatest president and harbinger of tremendous optimism, while others remember him for huge deficits, simplistic views of issues and siestas; and George Bush, who most would say did a credible job, but had the bad luck to run for re-election during an economic slowdown and losing to Bill Clinton.

But while the country did well by most measures during the Clinton years, and he demonstrated a certain mastery of detail and an interest in very complex policy discussions combined with optimism, the lasting legacy of Clinton's presidency is his relationship with a White House intern.

After Clinton, the divided nature of the US electorate was brought to a head and George W Bush won a very narrow and, to some, controversial victory over Al Gore. Since then Americans have seen 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and lately a crumbling economy.
Yes we can

Into this picture come two very different politicians competing for the Democratic nomination. Obama and his opponent, US Senator Hillary Clinton, actually have the same or similar views on most policy questions. If not for their both having chosen this moment to make their presidential bid, they would probably be allies. Besides the obvious aspects of the first woman and first black American to get this far in their quests for the Oval Office, each offers a compelling vision of how to meet the challenges facing the country.

Clinton projects competence and carefully researched policy positions on a myriad of questions and to some degree tells voters that she can repeat the success of her husband's tenure. Obama, on the other hand, offers hope. He, like Kennedy, Reagan and Bill Clinton, makes people believe that the US can do better on all fronts and terms the presidential race a choice between the "past and the future."

The real success of the Obama campaign has been its ability to penetrate the US' accumulated cynicism and give the country a glimmer of hope that it can actually move beyond its current divisions and come together. He echoes one of Kennedy's most famous ideas, saying that "we are the change we've been waiting for" and telling Americans that they have a role in "healing the nation and repairing the planet."
The role of new media

There is a further lesson in Kennedy's win over Nixon in 1960. The most common explanation of why a relatively young and inexperienced senator from Massachusetts could beat a popular vice president was that Kennedy was the first politician at the national level who understood how to portray himself on television.

What is clear about the Obama campaign is that it is using the internet in a way that has never been used before to raise money and awareness, as well as to organize voters at the local level to register and vote in the caucuses and primaries.

The success of his campaign is due, to a large extent, to a "viral" movement begun many months ago that used the internet as a key ingredient for spreading its message of hope and change and "infecting" potential supporters.

Both the message and the medium appeal particularly to people under 35, who are supporting Obama in record numbers. Currently, around 100,000 people send the campaign donations every month. For many, this is the first time they have contributed money to a political campaign.

My European friends have a hard time seeing the simplicity of the message for what it really is and accepting that millions of Americans are ready to suspend their disbelief and support what the Obama campaign calls a "movement for change."
The role of the super-delegate

Will Obama's campaign go all the way? Will the momentum continue to build until the national convention in August? The race is far from over and the Clinton campaign is betting heavily on winning in Ohio and Texas on 4 March.

But the story – as perhaps it can only be in the US – doesn't end there. Perhaps the most interesting question is assuming that Obama goes into the convention with a lead in delegates, will the roughly 800 "super-delegates" split evenly across the two candidates or would they, as a group, come out for Clinton?

This is not a question in vain.

Unlike the Republicans, Democrats, prompted by the battle between Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in 1984, instituted a system whereby super-delegates can have the final say of who will be the party's presidential candidate.

Super-delegates are political insiders, senators, representatives and governors who are not bound by any previous primary vote to cast their selection for the presidential candidate. In essence, they are free to cast their vote as they wish, however, in practice their vote may be susceptible to political pressures. In the end it is these super-delegates that may very well hold the keys to the White House.

Obama has said that he feels it would be "unwise" for the party officials to go against the will of the people – in reference to delegates awarded in the various primaries. However, to see if the Democrats are willing to listen to the voice of the people we may have to wait until the convention in Denver.


Mike Rosenberg is a professor of strategic management at IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).