As The Page notes, the New York Times has two interesting pieces today, one referring to the papers favorite son Barack Obama as “bored” and the other noting Clinton as an “effective listener” putting forward the message that she is the “dream boss”.
But questions face his campaign that were barely discussed among his advisers only a few months ago, when he seemed on the cusp of quickly winning the Democratic nomination. Is his candidacy now off the table for some white voters? Was it bound to happen anyway? Have voters’ concerns about his patriotism and religion become a permanent weight on his biography?
or some senators, the promises made by Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) outside of Washington may not match the political reality on Capitol Hill.
“We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a Finance Committee member and an Obama supporter, referring to the presidential candidates’ healthcare plans. “What they are doing is … laying out their ambitions.”
Liberals cannot continue to live in a world where the rest of the country doesn’t exist. FOX speaks to a large percentage of the country that doesn’t listen to Air America, Watch Michael Moore movies or read DailyKos. FOX is the regular nightly winner of the cable newscasts and it is the choice of many Pennsylvania, Ohio and rural voters.
I thought a year ago it was a mistake for Democrats to shun a FOX sponsored debate and if Obama doesn’t start appearing on the news channel regularly I think he is making a major error in judgement. How can a guy who says he will sit down with Iran and Cuba fear a news network?
From Reuters John McCain responded to North Carolina’s GOP refusal to stop airing an aid attacking Senator Barack Obama by saying the party was “out of touch”.
Many North Carolina TV stations refused to air the ad and it was condemned by the National Republican Party and Senator John McCain. The ad replays scenes of Barack Obama’s pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright and connects the endorsements of locals Bev Perdue and Richard Moore made to Barack Obama to those statements.
From the Reuters article:
“They’re not listening to me because they’re out of touch with reality and the Republican Party. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and this kind of campaigning is unacceptable,” McCain told NBC’s “Today” Show.
“I’ve done everything that I can to repudiate and to see that this kind of campaigning does not continue,” he added.
Asked if the state party’s unwillingness to heed his call raised questions about his leadership, McCain replied: “I don’t know exactly how to respond to that.”
AP is reporting that many states are finding themselves with massive budget shortfalls.
_More than half the 16 states reporting deficits this year have cut spending, including $1 billion by Florida lawmakers last year and across-the-board cuts in Nevada. At least eight states are debating raising taxes or fees, including a proposed $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase in Massachusetts to raise $175 million.
_Twelve states, including Georgia, Idaho and Illinois, reported that personal income tax collections were failing to meet estimates, and in eight of these, collections were even below a reduced forecast.
_Many states, including Alabama, Arizona, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin, plan to tap their rainy day funds, which contain money set aside for fiscal emergencies. Nevada may use its entire rainy day balance.
As I see it, here is the mess we are in. The federal government cannot stop spending money, state governments cannot stop spending money and county and local governments cannot stop spending money and so everyone is going into massive debt. There are only two alternatives to fixing these problems. You either cut spending or raise revenue (taxes). These are two options no one wants to consider because they want to get elected.
Our economy is changing, the world is fastly moving ahead of our country and in the year 2008 who is going to start telling the federal government PLUS the states they need to either cut a lot of fat or start hiking up taxes?
Ralph Vartabedian writing in the LA Times (found via Fort Hard Knox) put together a pretty low attack on Senator John McCain using his collection of a “disability pension” as well has his past health problems to suggest he might not be fit for the job. I remember in 2004 Democrats pushing forward the idea that someone with military experience, John Kerry, was the clear choice against someone without military experience, George W. Bush. Whatever happened to that argument? Oh, right, I get it.
McCain was disabled while having the living daylights beaten out of him as a POW serving his country. To belittle that experience or suggest that somehow its end result makes him unfit, especially a man with as much energy, vitality and endurance as Sen. McCain, you are not just trashing the man but the institution. It is as shameful as Bush & Cheney’s attacks on Sen. Kerry’s purple hearts and rather than sink to their level, I would suggest Dems could do better.
While Democrats are out pushing the argument that they are better at commanding our armed forces, they had best watch themselves and their surrogates because the military families and veterans who are skeptical won’t be turned on by talk like this.
From the Boston Herald a story about the continuing questions over Howard Dean’s leadership of the DNC that includes the quote “The Democrats have developed a system that is so fair it’s unfair.”
Though I don’t think Howard Dean is doing a wonderful job running the party I have to say he inherited a terrible system and only helped make it slightly more terrible.
OK, the likelihood that I will be able to tap the Chinese audience with a Chinese version of ElectionGeek is pretty slim at this point, I have enough problems with English (thank you grammar policing comment-leavers who misspell themselves). With that said many sites and writers have devoted themselves to the influence of technology on politics and world affairs and I have news for them. This story showing that China and the US are now tied for the #1 spot of most Internet users is a sign of where our world and electronic politics are headed. 221 million here, 221 million there, that is a whole lot of people. Just think though, with just 300 Million people here and over a billion there, which nation do you believe will win out?
Think of it, the worlds two superpowers, a Communist nation and a Democracy tied for those vying to get online to buy pornography, check sports scores and find a love connection. Oh and get themselves involved in the global economy, push innovation and spread ideological/philosophical/political ideas. The Western dominance of the Web in terms of audience and marketshare is ending. Add to China those in Japan, Korea and the rest of Asia and you have an online powerhouse that will soon be roving targets for marketing, advertising and content generators.
More than that, imagine a day when the political world online is dominated by Chinese thinkers, eye-witnesses and ideologues. If only we had an instant ability to get accurate translations (sorry babelfish but it just isn’t there yet) and information sharing among the worlds largest Internet populations begins an explosion of sharing ideas and questioning long held beliefs..
If the liberal/egalitarian dream of the Internet was the connecting of opposing forces in an innovative way, there can be no greater reality than seeing China and the US coming together economically and ideologically online and there may be no larger influence on our political ideas or theirs. Yes, I am talking about more than sharing Obamagirl with them. Time will tell and it will tell fast because it won’t be long before that number on which we are tied today stays somewhat fixed for us but doubles for them.
From the Associated Press it looks like intelligence officials will brief Congress today with evidence of a Syrian nuclear program that supposedly existed before Israel bombed the facilities back in September of 2007. It is believed the program was built with the assistance of North Korea.
A good deal of the early Democratic primary debates focused on what the candidates saw as a drumbeat to war with Iran. Ms. Clinton took a firm stance toward declaring the nations terrorist and nuclear ambitions a potential threat to the World and Senator Obama advocating a policy of open diplomacy and ending nuclear proliferation. The triangle of Syrian and Iranian influence in Iraq is clear for the administration and the military but at times seems to be questioned by the Democrats. Meanwhile the larger role of China, Russia & North Korea in the region is startling to everyone.
In short, it seems clear that the Republicans will once again run on a platform of pointing out world events and drumming up fear over their potential to harm the nation, leaving Democrats with the choice of either once again running against those fears or finding some kind of new global resolution to many of our foreign policy problems.
Thus far I haven’t heard many wonderful plans from either side in dealing with our foreign policy woes and a nuclear Syria doesn’t lend itself to Obama’s belief that we can rid the world of nuclear weapons or John McCain’s argument that Republicans have made the world safer. Leaving us with the potential for another election cycle with much talk, but little in the way of new ideas or solutions.
