Many political observers are astonished the secret held. The McCain campaign is not. 'The key to keeping secrets is not telling people,' says Matt McDonald, a McCain adviser, who was one of only a handful to learn about the pick Thursday night.
A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington--the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it.
Last night the Democratic Party made history by nominating the first major-party African-American candidate for President, Barack Obama.
Tonight, Barack Obama will accept our nomination. It is fitting that a 20,000 seat arena isn't remotely large enough to mark this moment. Even a 75,000 seat stadium will be too small and many will be turned away.
Rightwingers will mock the white columns. (1)Everyone else in America and the world will marvel at the black man who stands before them.
Incredibly, it was the first viable feminist candidate, Hillary Clinton, who put him over the top. In that single act, the parallel lines of the civil rights and feminist movements met to transform American history.
(2) And we did it through the oldest and largest political party in the world - the party that once fought civil rights - our party, the Democratic Party ...
The Republican plan is more disastrous war with Iran or Russia; less health care, education, justice and jobs; and environmental catastrophe. (3) The Democratic plan is the opposite: ending war, more health care, education, justice and jobs; and saving the planet before it is too late. That is our choice, and it leaves us no choice.
In Berlin Barack Obama declared , (4) "This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."
An African-American woman who is an Illinois delegate for Sen. Hillary Clinton maintained Monday that Senate President Emil Jones, a mentor of Sen. Barack Obama, called her an “Uncle Tom” at the Illinois hotel for the Democratic National Convention.
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“When the question of why Hillary Clinton supporters aren’t coming over (to Obama) and jumping up to joy comes up, this is not an isolated incident. This has been going on for months now. Now, here we are. Be gracious in victory.”
Speaking to reporters in Illinois this week, he took pains to play down the razzle-dazzle. “I'm not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric,” he said of his upcoming speech. “I'm much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle-class families live their lives.”“People know that I can give the kind of speech that I gave four years ago,” Obama continued. “That's not the question on voters' minds. I think they're much more interested in, what am I going to do to help them in their lives?"
Barack Obama addressed the delegates in a short message via satellite at the conclusion of his wife's speech.Republicans will probably try something similarly stupid, but I think such Santa sighting reports appear stupid to all but party die-hards camped out at the convention looking for something to cheer about.
"Now you know why I asked her out so many times, even though she said no. You want a persistent president," he joked. Obama's two daughters, Sasha and Malia, grabbed the mic to give their father a quick "hello."
Obama watched his wife's speech from Kansas City, Missouri, where he is scheduled to campaign Tuesday.
Gone are the days when only the right howled about bias and malice from network anchors and star political reporters. What began roughly a decade ago as frustration from Democrats over coverage of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment and adulterous escapades has morphed into an informally organized rapid response network, ready to pounce on any and all perceived media slights against Barack Obama.But even as I write this, I think there is a good argument, based on the past few presidential elections, that Libs seem to be getting diminishing returns on this strategy. Voters kinda get numb to the extreme rhetoric, and there's only so much antipathy that readily transfers from chimpybushitler to McCain.
Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his running mate is underwhelming for many reasons, but it affords an opportunity to review a few of the moments that might have provided all the embarrassment a normal man would have needed to escape from public life.Indeed . . .
Obama said Thursday that he had made his decision but declined to give any further details.(emphasis added)
Obama has told some other potential running mates over the past few weeks that he would not be choosing them, the Democratic source said.
'I won't comment on anything else until I introduce our running mate to the world,' he said in Emporia, Virginia. 'That's all you're going to get out of me.'
"[Lieberman] has a close personal relationship with John McCain. I don't fully understand why he does," said Reid, who said Lieberman called Tuesday from the Republic of Georgia to alert him to the move.(emphasis added)
"I told him last night, 'You know, Joe, I can't stand John McCain.' He said, 'I know you feel that way,' " Reid said.
Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, when asked during an interview on the SI website about the future of softball as an Olympic competition on Thursday, added some liberal commentary into her prediction about the sport’s redemption: "One other wildcard for 2016 is the exit of the Bush administration. The undercurrent of anti-Americanism within the IOC, which some say has hurt the U.S. because of its softball dominance, may abate somewhat with a potential administration led by Barack Obama, a rock star in Europe."As an aside, I hope the Redeem Team is paying attention to the softball story.
But now the environmental movement has morphed into the most authoritarian philosophy in America. The most glaring example of course is the multitrillion-dollar cap-and-trade anti-global warming scheme that would mandate an entire restructuring of our industrial economy. This plan, endorsed by both presidential candidates, would empower climate-change cops to regulate the energy usage and carbon emissions of every industry in America. If we do this, the best estimates are that we could reduce global temperatures by 0.1 degrees by 2050 and save on average about one polar bear a year from early death. But no burden is too great when it comes to helping the planet -- even if the progress to be made is infinitesimal. To weigh costs and benefits is regarded as sacrilege -- the refuge of global warming 'deniers.'By the way, McCain's susceptibility to stupid (and typically "populist") arguments like the "green" agenda is the most troubling thing about him.
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Many studies have shown that the environmental benefits from household recycling are minimal or at least highly exaggerated (because it uses a lot of energy and those recycling trucks emit a lot of greenhouse gases). America is not in danger of ever running out of landfill to store our garbage. For example, a study by Daniel Benjamin, an economist at Clemson, finds that we could store all of America's garbage for the next century within the property of Ted Turner's ranch in Montana, with 50,000 acres undisturbed for the horse and bison.
"'I think that would be up to, first of all, to John to decide whether he wants a pro-choice running mate; then we would have to see how the Republican Party would rally around it,' Ridge said. 'At the end of the day, I think the Republican Party will be comfortable with whatever choice John makes.'"Maybe this type of statement is calculated to appeal to "the muddled middle" on the issue of abortion, but "comfortable"? You gotta be kidding me.
The moderator of Saturday night's presidential forum on faith -- Pastor Rick Warren -- says Barack Obama failed to adequately address the question of when life begins.In all fairness, I have to admit that Obama's answer--when analyzed closely and viewed from a Liberal worldview--was not as glib as it sounds. He was basically asserting that he is not a scientist or a theologian (though I'm not sure the self-deprecating angle is credible, e.g., scientists or theologians are at a higher "pay grade" than legal dynamoes, U.S. Senators and community organizers? Come on.)
Senator Obama (D-Illinois) told Pastor Warren that it was 'above [his] pay grade' to determine at what point a baby should be given human rights.
Following the forum, Pastor Warren criticized Obama's decision to dodge the question. In an interview with Beliefnet.com, Warren said 'to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me.'
Warren went on to suggest Obama's non-answer will not sit well with many Christians. As Warren puts it: 'If an evangelical really believes that the Bible is literal -- in other word[s], in Psalm 139 God says 'I formed you in your mother's womb and before you were born I planned every day of your life' -- if they believe that's literally true, then they can't just walk away from that. They can add other issues, but they can't walk away from the belief that at conception God planned that child, and to abort it would be to short circuit the purpose.'
Nor has the growth of the Chinese and Russian economies produced the political liberalization that was once thought inevitable. Growing national wealth and autocracy have proven compatible, after all. Autocrats learn and adjust. The autocracies of Russia and China have figured out how to permit open economic activity while suppressing political activity. They have seen that people making money will keep their noses out of politics, especially if they know their noses will be cut off. New wealth gives autocracies a greater ability to control information--to monopolize television stations and to keep a grip on Internet traffic, for instance--often with the assistance of foreign corporations eager to do business with them.Exactly; and though I have defended Dubya from unhinged rhetoric about nefarious motives for invading Iraq, I have long believed that the aspiration of planting a republic in Islamic Iraq was uber-wishful.
