McCain misstates Obama's sex-ed record...

Margaret Talev writes for McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Throw the flag against: The McCain-Palin campaign.

Call: Unsportsmanlike conduct.

What happened: A new 30-second TV ad attacks Barack Obama's record on education, saying that Obama backed legislation to teach "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer then says, "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Why that's wrong: This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12.

But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.

Republican Alan Keyes tried to use Obama's vote against him in the 2004 U.S. Senate race. At the time, Obama spoke about wanting to protect young children from abuse. He made clear then that he was not supporting teaching kindergartners about explicit details of sex.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Tuesday of McCain's ad: "It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls."

Penalty: 15 yards for the McCain campaign's deliberate low blow.

(Link)

White Voters, Obama and Appalachia

DHinMI of DailyKOS has posted a well-researched and revealing rebuttal to the argument that Obama has an alleged "problem with white voters".

Since it includes many helpful graphics to illustrate the argument, I'm just going to link to it rather than repost.

A must-read!

(Full Article)

Perspectives on Wright...

I hate to come back to this issue, but since the media wont leave it alone, I feel compelled to note some of the better discussions on the subject.
The links, two from black writers, two from white writers, give the context and perspective needed to fully understand why Jeremiah Wright said what he said, and how the media has made this into something it's not.

CNN's Roland Martin provides the FULL context of Wright's 9/11 sermon and an honest analysis of it.

Tim Wise also digs deeper into the context and facts behind that same sermon, and explains why America is not able to handle the truth about itself.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell breaks down the realities of the role the black church plays, and why preachers like Wright are necessary for the advancement of the struggle of people of color in America.

Frank Schaeffer points out the conservative republican hypocrisy in decrying Wright's words.

All 4 of these articles should be read by everyone.

Poll positions...

Much ado is being made about the current Gallup poll that gives Clinton a slight lead against Obama, as though that were a death knell for his campaign.

Before we look at the actual trend in that poll, it should be pointed out that every other recent poll shows that Obama maintains a lead of up to 7 points.

According to the national average of polls (as provided by Real Clear Politics) Obama is still maintaining a 3 point lead (although this is acknowledged to be within the margin of error).

More important, however, is the graph from the Gallup poll which shows that since the apex of Jeremiah-gate the trend for Obama is rising, while Clinton is actually falling...



His historic speech is clearly having a positive impact that will reverberate in the next polling cycle.

White House Documents: Clinton MIA during key foreign policy events...

The Guardian's Daniel Nasaw gives a quick overview of HRC's whereabouts during some key moments in the Bill Clinton presidency:

November 17 1993
The House of Representatives votes to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving Bill Clinton one of the biggest triumphs of his early presidency. Senate approval was virtually assured.

Hillary Clinton meets with congressional and cabinet spouses. She returned to the White House later for meetings and "office/phone time".

April 7 1994
Hutu extremists in Rwanda begin systematically slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Eight thousand are killed the first day of the genocide. Americans had been shocked by US military deaths in Somalia, and the US evacuates American citizens but President Clinton resists calls to intervene in Rwanda.

Names of participants of Hillary Clinton's schedule that morning were redacted by national archives staff, who cited personal privacy. Later in the day she meets with the wife of a Georgia congressman, has private meetings with staff, and gives media interviews on healthcare issues.

April 9 and 10 1998
Catholic and Protestant parties work through the night thrashing out the Good Friday power-sharing agreement in Belfast.

Hillary Clinton attends a memorial event at the National Press Club in Washington for a New York City congresswoman. She also meets with Philippine first lady Amelita Ramos

March 24 1999
Dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Hillary Clinton toured ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor and stayed overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor.

In a separate article for The Guardian, Daniel Nasaw gives more details on Clinton's whereabouts:

On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called "Hats on for Bella" in Washington.

In her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has touted her experience in the Clinton White House as preparation to lead the nation in a time of crisis. "Ready on day one" has been her slogan.

But an initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedules from her days as first lady, released today by the National Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, shows that she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton's presidency.

Clinton, who was an accomplished attorney and first lady of Arkansas before moving to the White House, frequently claims more than 30 years experience in public life, contrasting herself with Barack Obama's slimmer resume - he served several years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the US Senate in 2004.

The Clinton campaign claimed on Wednesday that the release of the papers would show Clinton to have been an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of the US. But the documents from her office in the White House threaten to undermine her claim to have played a major role in Clinton's foreign policy decisions.

(Full Article)

More dates and details in the full article.

Keith Olbermann tells is like it is...

Olbermann calls both Clinton and Ferarro on their divisive, race-baiting bullshit:



(Full Transcript)

I LOVE this man!

Numerical holes in the "big states" argument...

On last Sunday's "Meet the Press", PA Governor Ed Rendell rehashed the Clinton camp's ridiculous argument that despite the fact that Obama has won more contests, votes, and pledged delegates, Clinton somehow deserves the nomination because she won the "big states"...



I'm not giving that ludicrous line of thinking a shred of credibility, but for the sake of argument, lets take a look at a factor the Clinton camp conveniently ignores... Vote margins...

First up, Clinton's wins. All numbers are from CNN, except where otherwise noted:

Arizona: 51-42, 9 point difference

*California: 52-43, 9 point difference

*New Hampshire: 39-37, 2 point difference

New Mexico: 49-48, 1 point difference

Oklahoma: 55-31, 24 point difference

*Texas:
Primary: 65-61, 4 point difference
Caucus: Obama wins 56-44 (source Daily KOS) 12 point difference
Delegates: Obama 98, Clinton 95
I would argue that these numbers give Obama the win in Texas, but I'll go with the "conventional wisdom" and give it to Clinton.

Arkansas: 70-26, 44 point difference

*Massachusetts: 56-41, 15 point difference

Nevada: 51-45, 6 point difference
Delegates: Obama 13-Clinton 12

*New Jersey: 54-44, 10 point difference

*New York: 57-40, 17 point difference

*Ohio: 71-59, 12 point difference

Rhode Island: 58-40, 18 point difference

Tennessee: 54-41, 13 point difference

Total number of contests won: 14
Total number of contests won by more than 10 points: 7
Total number of contests won by more than 20 points: 2
Total number of contests won by less than 10 points: 6
Total "big states" won by more than 10 points: 3
Total "big states" won by 10 points or less: 4


Now for Obama's wins:

Alabama: 56-42 (primary), 14 point difference

Connecticut: 51-47 (primary), 4 point difference

D.C.: 75-24 (Primary), 51 point difference

Georgia: 67-31 (primary), 36 point difference

Idaho: 79-17, 62 point difference

Iowa: 38-29, 9 point difference

Louisiana: 57-36 (primary), 21 point difference

Maryland: 60-37 (primary), 23 point difference

Nebraska: 68-32, 36 point difference

North Dakota: 61-37, 24 point difference

South Carolina: 55-27 (primary), 28 point difference

Utah: 57-39 (primary), 18 point difference

Virginia: 64-35 (primary), 29 point difference

Wisconsin: 58-41 (primary), 17 point difference

Alaska: 75-25, 50 point difference

Colorado: 67-32, 35 point difference

Delaware: 53-43 (primary), 10 point difference

Hawaii: 76-24, 52 point difference

Illinois: 65-33 (primary), 32 point difference

Kansas: 74-26, 48 point difference

Maine: 59-40, 19 point difference

Minnesota: 66-32, 34 point difference

Missouri: 49-48 (primary), 1 point difference

Vermont: 59-39 (primary), 20 point difference

Washington: 68-31, 37 point difference

Wyoming: 61-38, 23 point difference

U.S. Virgin Islands: 90-8 (Primary) Source: politico, 82 point difference

U.S. Democrats abroad: 65-32 (Primary) Source: Huffington Post, 33 point difference

Total number of contests won: 29
Total number of contests won by more than 10 points: 23
Total number of contests won by more than 20 points: 20
Total number of primaries won: 16
Total number of primaries won by more than 10 points: 13
Total number of primaries won by more than 20 points: 9
Total number of contests won by less than 10 points: 3

What do we make of this?...

Obama has won more contests by landslide margins (higher than 20 points) than Clinton's total contests.

Of those, 9 were primaries (I mention this because Clinton's camp tries to claim that Obama only gets big wins in caucuses).

In fact, Obama has won more primaries than Clinton's total contests.

Most of Clinton's "big state" wins were by very close (lower than 10 points) margins, indicating that there was essentially a split decision among democrats there.

One of those "big states" (Texas) is technically in Obama's column.

Twice as many of Clinton's wins were by very narrow (lower than 10 points) margins as Obama's.


So much for a "big state" argument.
The people have spoken.
Obama is the clear winner.

My friend Elf Sternberg (a conservative Republican who supports Obama, incidentally) made the point that Clinton has to win 63% of every contest from here on in order to beat Obama's pledged delegate lead.

News from the front: Questionable voter experiences in Ohio

Several voters in Cuyahoga County have reported that streets were blocked in front of many voting precincts.

On March 5th, art_house_queen wrote:

I went to vote yesterday in Cleveland, and of course, I was super AMPED to finally voice my support for Obama.

What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the crazy ride down Chester and Euclid after seeing humongous ROAD CLOSED signs blocking both entrances to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

Imagine this: I'm driving with my two sisters in tow, trying to get at a parking space for the Board Of Elections, and I see two looming signs:







On one side, the roads simply said: ROADS CLOSED. On the other side it said: ROADS CLOSED: Local Traffic Only. Signs lined the other side of Euclid Avenue, where the street to BOE is actually on.

But what was "Local traffic" supposed to mean? This is Cleveland, where those silly street cameras take pictures of your car and charge you 100 for going 5 miles over the set speed limit. This is the city where a great many police officers are corrupt and will pull you over for minor offenses and charge you major fees, even if you've made a mistake.

If you don't follow the rules in Cleveland, you get fined. Massively. So, understandably, people were stopped at the road, saw the sign, then drove off, obviously confused as to what to do.

The officer in the car just sat inside, looking as cars stopped, waited, then sped away.

I drove around for a couple minutes, trying to find a spot somewhere close, to no avail. All the streets were filled with cars and people and dogs and snowy, nasty mud...but there was not a poll worker or police officer in sight to direct us would-be voters to the right path to the Board Of Elections.

My sister, I'll call her Eagle-Eye, spotted up ahead that a car drove around the cop car, the sign and rushed down the street.

I decided to follow suit.

We made it through the street, and parked in the University parking lost. We hopped out and took the short walk to the BOE.

Inside, a security guard was talking with a police officer.

"There are not really that many people here," he said softly, "I think it's because you guys have the streets blocked off."

My sisters and I looked at eachother. The police officer grumbled a reply that I couldn't hear. He saw us staring, and pointed us to the elevators.

Upstairs, I went to get my provisional ballot and I asked the poll worker at the desk why the roads were blocked off in that manner.

She only stared at me, shocked, "What? They ARE?"

I nodded.

She left me for a moment, then came back with my sign-up sheet. "Fill out the form, please."

And no mention was made of the semi-blocked off streets.

I don't know why the streets were blocked off in that manner. I just don't understand why there were no visible signs or people directing us where to go, where to park or what route we should take to get to the Board of Elections.

It obviously affected the turnout, in my opinion. It may seem simple in hindsight, but in a city that notoriously has had problems with its government, and with the disdain many officers hold for the common people, I assure you the reality is a lot heavier.

Strategy and computer security consultant Jon Pincus, formerly at Microsoft Research, backs up her story in his blog, Liminal States:

They ran out of ballots in Sandusky County and Franklin County; voting machines broke down in Montgomery County and no doubt elsewhere; a dozen computer memory cards spent the night in the back of a sherriff’s van in Lucas County before being counted; in Obama stronghold Cuyahoga County, voter privacy was compromised and huge numbers of provisional ballots still haven’t been counted.

The Secretary of State is “very pleased”, highlighting improvement over 2004. Business as usual in Ohio. Nothing to see here, move along, move along …

Except …

This time there may be a new wrinkle. Scott Isaacs has been following the issues in Butler County, and broke an interesting story: under Ohio law, Republicans who followed Rush Limbaugh’s call to hold their nose and vote for Clinton appear to have committed election falsification, a felony, punishable by six to twelve months in prison and a fine of up to $2,500.

(Full Article)

Jon Pincus helped organize a panel on dependable software and voting sytems, when he was on a National Academies committee and was on another voting panel at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2005 looking at voting databases.

Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee endorses Obama...

Clinton questions Obama's readiness on national security?

As reported on Business Wire:

Today, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, endorsed Barack Obama for president, citing his judgment on the Iraq war and national security issues, and calling him the right candidate to lead our country during a time of instability at home and abroad.

Senator Rockefeller said, “Today, I’m proud to lend my support and strong endorsement to Barack Obama and his candidacy for President of the United States. Barack Obama is the most qualified person – Democrat or Republican – to lead our country in the face of enormous challenges – the very real threat of terrorism, economic uncertainty, and instability at home and abroad.

“As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am all too aware that the threats we face are unconventional. They are sophisticated. They are constantly changing and adapting. And they are very serious. What matters most in the Oval Office is sound judgment and decisive action. It’s about getting it right on crucial national security questions the first time – and every time.

“The indisputable fact is Barack Obama was right about Iraq when many of us were wrong. It was a tough call and the single greatest national security question, and mistake, of our time. Today, we remain a country at war, and countless mistakes over the last six and a half years have made us less safe. The stakes have never been higher, and that is why we must take a stand.

(Full Article)


MSNBC reports:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) of West Virginia introduced Obama at a small gathering of local business leaders here at Hocking College this morning, testifying to his strength on national security and his ability to inspire.

"I've been around a while. I grew up in the '60s; there was a ton of hope. Times were a lot better then. Now the economy is sinking into a very bad situation. You see this everywhere. How come then that I feel more hope and more optimistic and more confident in our future than I ever have before? Because of Barack Obama," Rockefeller, who recently endorsed the Illinois senator, said.

Lending weight to Obama's candidacy from his perch as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rockefeller claimed that no other candidate running for president had better judgment than Obama on national security.

"Not to be obnoxious about it," Rockefeller said, "I know what's going on in every part of the world all the time. It's grim… That's why another reason I have confidence, of all the candidates running, primary or general, there's only one person who really has the capacity as strong and as necessary to make the judgments, nuanced judgments to create a foreign policy that tells you when you are to be strong, military if that comes, but also how to take a situation to break it down and look at it," he said.

(Full Article)


'Nuff said.

Associated Press does a fact check on Clinton and Obama regarding NAFTA

Calvin Woodward writes for the AP:

Thanks to past equivocations, the Democratic presidential candidates have left themselves open to the criticisms and misrepresentations they are now turning against each other as they scramble to dissociate themselves from a trade agreement they once praised — with qualifications.

The root of their ambivalence is their shared belief in "free and fair trade," which, on the surface, almost anyone can subscribe to.

The problem is that "fair" trade means restrictions on "free" trade, a gloss-over that allows politicians to have it both ways when saying where they stand on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and similar deals.

In picking apart the other's this-but-that position, they are seizing on the "this," and ignoring the "that," in the interest of winning voters in the primary next week in Ohio, where the trade deal is blamed for lost jobs.

The dustup spilled into the streets Tuesday when dozens of protesters who oppose free trade gathered outside Clinton's office in New York City. Several apparently shackled themselves to a front door of the building before police came.

THE SPIN:
Obama on his position: "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have."

Obama on her position: "She was saying great things about NAFTA until she started running for president."

Obama campaign mailer in Ohio: "Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was a 'boon' to our economy," and "Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA."

THE FACTS:
Obama has been consistently ambivalent.

In his 2004 Senate campaign, he said the U.S. should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for U.S. workers.

"We need free trade but also fair trade," he said, taking the dodge.

Obama is correct that Clinton has praised NAFTA in various ways, but he leaves out the qualifications she's expressed along the way.

And she did not say NAFTA was a "boon," as the mailer states on its ominous cover, depicting a locked factory gate. "Boon" was a newspaper's characterization of her position, which is reprinted inside the mailer.

THE SPIN:
Clinton on her position: NAFTA was "negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and it was passed during my husband's presidency. But I was always uncomfortable about certain aspects of it, and I have always made that clear."
Clinton mailer on Obama's position: "Ohio needs to know the truth about Obama's position on Protecting American Workers and NAFTA."

THE FACTS:
Her implication that NAFTA was simply a spillover from the first President Bush and passively made law under President Clinton ignores the fierce lobbying Bill Clinton engaged in to get the deal ratified by Congress. Hillary Clinton helped him in that effort.

President Clinton used his faith in free trade as a core issue to distinguish himself from Democratic orthodoxy and establish a "third way" between politics of the left and right.

Hillary Clinton counted NAFTA among her husband's leading accomplishments, despite her publicly expressed misgivings about parts of it.

In 1996, when the pact was three years old, she said the trade deal with Mexico and Canada was giving U.S. workers a chance to compete. "That's what a free and fair trade agreement like NAFTA is all about," she said. "I think NAFTA is proving its worth."
In a speech to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 2002, she said this of her husband's record:

"The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady bill. Family leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets....

"All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves."

The Clinton mailer accurately quoted news stories from 2004 describing Obama's call for more NAFTA-like agreements and his belief that the deal has brought benefits to his state. But the mailer was strikingly selective, leaving out qualifications he emphasized at the time, and were closely linked in the news stories.

In one such example, he said: "The problem in a lot of our trade agreements is that the administration tends to negotiate on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."

(Full Article)


No matter how you slice it, Clinton has been more positive about NAFTA than Obama.
Score: Obama.

Why the right-wing wont destroy Obama...

Glenn Greenwald writes for Salon.com:

By far, the most significant pattern in how our political discourse is shaped is that the right-wing noise machine generates scurrilous, petty, personality-based innuendo about Democratic candidates, and the establishment press then mindlessly repeats it and mainstreams it. Thus, nothing was more predictable than watching the "Obamas-are-unpatriotic-subversives" slur travel in the blink of an eye from the Jack Kingstons, Fox News adolescent McCarthyites, and Bill Kristols of the world to AP, MSNBC, and CNN. That's just how the right-wing/media nexus works.

Far more notable is Barack Obama's response to these depressingly familiar attacks. In response, he's not scurrying around slapping flags all over himself or belting out the National Anthem, nor is he apologizing for not wearing lapels, nor is he defensively trying to prove that -- just like his Republican accusers -- he, too, is a patriot, honestly. He's not on the defensive at all. Instead, he's swatting away these slurs with the dismissive contempt they deserve, and then eagerly and aggressively engaging the debate on offense because he's confident, rather than insecure, about his position...

(Full Article)

Obama: 1, Hillary: 0...

Obama has just released this brilliant counter to Hillary's sleazy attack ad in Wisconsin...

The devil is in the details...

An ordinary citizen (who wishes to remain anonymous) compares Obama's health plan to Hillary's and finds that Clinton comes up short.
(Reposted with permission from a friend's LiveJournal)


My choice is Barack Obama. Here is why.

My #1 issue this year is universal health care. It's a personal issue for me. It was a terrifying experience for me to be pregnant and slightly above the income level Medicaid. Since I was unemployed during Babygirl's birth and most of my pregnancy, I had to have health insurance. And the only thing available to me was to continue my employer's plan through COBRA, which was difficult to apply when I moved to TX, and whose premiums were incredibly expensive. Now, with Babygirl to cover, I'm spending $600 a month to cover both of us monthly. And that's before co-pays, deductibles, and lab fees. With no income (my mom has graciously paid most of my COBRA premiums). I'm usually on the phone at least once a week with my insurance carrier getting bills adjusted, and I'm convinced the the system is utterly broken. I loathe going to the doctor because I know it means I'm going to have to spend a couple hours on the phone with the insurance company in two months to get the visit paid for. Husband, who is working full-time as a contractor right now, has not had health insurance for about a year and remains uninsured.

I've been on the fence about both candidates for some time, and I finally decided to compare their health plans to make my decision. I'm thrilled that both Democratic candidates are committed to universal health care. It's time for this ridiculous field day for HMOs and pharmacorps to end, and I would like to move as close to socialized medicine as possible (ah, Europe! Canada! You have it where it counts!). Neither candidate offers that, but both are trying to at least ensure that all Americans have health insurance.

Here's what I found. Both Obama's and Clinton's plans are pretty similar: they cover everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions or employment. They both offer you the choice of opting into the Federal Employee's Health Plan or Medicaid if you don't have coverage or if you don't like your current health coverage offered by your employer (if you work for the state of Texas, for example, there is only one plan you can get--no choice).

Where they really differ is in how one is to pay for the coverage. Hillary says that she will make premiums affordable by offering those with lower incomes a TAX CREDIT so that they can afford high-quality health care plans. I think this is crap. If I have cancer now and I can't afford to pay my deductible and my monthly premium and whatever percentage of the treatment I'm responsible for under my plan, then having a tax credit in April of next year is not going to keep me from going bankrupt. It's basically the government saying, "You can have the health plan, just pay out of the nose now and we'll hang on to that money for you until next summer while it earns interest and then we'll give it back to you then, OK?" Hillary's plan also proposes limiting premiums to a percentage of a family's income, but none of her literature says what that percentage is (I did quite a lot of digging on her website and found no concrete numbers on the subject). So basically, we'd be at the mercy of whatever Congress thinks is a reasonable percentage of income to pay, and what is that? Half of one's income? A third? Seeing that I believe that the government should be paying 100% of our health care and drug costs, you can see where my beef is.

Obama, on the other hand, suggests that families who fall in that don't-qualify-for-Medicaid-but-can't-afford-regular-premiums (a.k.a. me and a lot of other working and middle class folks) qualify for GOVERNMENT-SUBSIDIZED payment of premiums based on income. In other words, if you can't pay the premiums, based on your income, the government helps you out now by paying for it. Given, this is a far cry from my ideal of socialized health care, but I think it's a step in the right direction. If you can't pay, the government helps you then and there instead of next April. As I read through Obama's health care plan, I was impressed by his goals of taking pharmacorps and HMOs to task, as well as his commitments to HIV education and prevention. Admittedly, these are painted in broad strokes, for which I know some of you will criticize him. But I still feel like Obama better represents what I'm hoping from health care reform. Clinton may be more specific about her ideas, but I don't feel they substantially address the problem or help families with their immediate health care crises. Obama's plan requires a little more work on behalf of our government, but his plan directly addresses what's going on with families now.

So that's it. I'm voting for Obama. That's still doesn't get those of you Hillary-haters off the hook for jokes about pantsuits and PMS, though.

CNN strikes back at Bush's Obama distortions...

As seen on Crooks and Liars:

N*gga please!

A blog called The Political Beat, which purports to be written by an African-American, has recently insinuated that Black people are voting for Obama solely on the basis of race (which he, in a leap of logic, likens to "selling out").

If we accept the above definition of selling out, then the question we face when we consider this phrase is "What is the best interest of the group?" since selling out is working against this interest. I submit that a political candidate who has a similar pigment does not necessarily have similar values or similar definitions of what is good for the whole. South Carolina voters, by and large, have not queried Mr. Obama on his position on commonly held issues such as affirmative action, the preservation of historically black colleges and universities, the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on the Black community, abstinence education, the mortgage crisis, social vs capital welfare, the federal commitment to state level higher education, and the emphasis on standardized testing in the K-12 system.

These issues impact the daily lives of Black Americans more than the War, more than the lack of "Vision", and rhetoric about "Change."

Has Mr. Obama been vetted? What is his position on each of these issues?

If you, as an individual Black voter, are voting for this man without knowing the answers to these questions then you are not merely giving away your vote; you are selling out. You are not voting for the good of the race, for the good of South Carolina, for the good of your children. You are voting because of pigmentation, not policy articulation. You are voting because it makes YOU feel good to have a viable Black candidate. You are voting because YOU want to see a Black man sitting in the Oval Office. It matters not whether or not this is the right Black man, it only matters that it is A Black man.

This is tremendously insulting to African-Americans on a number of levels, not the least of which are the assumptions that we are...
a) A monolithic block of sheep-like drones who all vote the same way for the same reason.
b) The only group of citizens that doesn't take a candidate's character and record into consideration when making voting choices.
and c) Apparently incapable of doing even the simplest of online (or otherwise) research to find the answers to the questions we have of the candidates.

The simplest of Google searches (not to mention just going to Obama's official site) answers his queries...

http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Barack_Obama.htm
http://obama.senate.gov/news/070907-the_swamp_obama/
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#mortgage-issue
http://obama.senate.gov/issues/education/
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

I'm quite sure the voters of South Carolina have done this and more.

And, for the record, I am Black.

Distortions and lies...

Washington Post Fact Check debunks Hillary and Bill's false claims about Obama...

Clinton vs Obama on CNN: Debunking Hillary's "slum lord" attack.

Bill the Attack Dog: Debunking Bill's attacks on Obama's Iraq war position, alleged strong-arm tactics in Vegas, and comments on Reagan.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez responds to the NY-Times on the "Latino vote"...

Obama and the Latino Vote in the NY Times

There are many things to admire about the New York Times. A complex and nuanced understanding of the vast diversity of Latino America is not among those things.

In a story on page A1 of the Times yesterday, reporters Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer stated that Latinos are not going to support Senator Barack Obama in his bid for the White House because, “in Obama’s pursuit of Latinos, race plays a role.” In other words, they said that Latinos would not vote for a black man, and backed it up with nothing other than a couple of anecdotal quotes from random Latinos in Los Angeles.

The sloppy, inaccurate story goes on for 32 agonizing paragraphs, using the terms “black” and “Latino” as though they were mutually exclusive – which they are not. Historians estimate that 95 percent of the African slave trade to the Americas took place in Latin America.

To this day, the vast majority of people in the African diaspora live south of the U.S. border, in Latin American countries from Brazil to Colombia to Cuba and, yes, even Mexico. The song "La Bamba," in fact, was brought to the Veracruz region of Mexico by Africans enslaved to the Spanish. The song likely has roots in the Bembe (Bantu) culture from what is now the Congo. This is only a stone's throw, geographically, from the Kenya of Obama's father's birth.

How quickly we forget in this country. How brutally we refuse to learn.

The New York Times not only ignores completely the African history of Latin America by positioning "blacks" against "Latinos" as if none of us were both. To do so is enormously irresponsible because it dissolves from public consciousness the fact that African slavery was a crime committed all across this hemisphere, by colonial Europeans who spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The story also erroneously portrays Latinos as a race unto themselves - an error egregious enough to be stated in our own census bureau's definition of Hispanic as a person "of any race". Including "black".

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Barack Obama Fact Check

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Debunking chain emails, Part 2

In addition to debunking the false claim that Obama belongs to a racist church, factcheck.org (as well as snopes.com) also debunk the false claim that Obama is secretly a muslim.

From factcheck.org:

Readers have also asked us about an oft-forwarded e-mail falsely claiming that Obama is a Muslim and suggesting that he is part of an Islamic plot to take over the U.S. "from the inside out" with "one of their own." This screed reads like the outline of a bad remake of the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate, in which Frank Sinatra unravels a Communist plot to make "one of their own" the president.

There is little excuse for those who continue to circulate this one. The most audacious falsehood it contains (of several) is a claim near the top: "We checked this out on 'snopes.com'. It is factual. Check for yourself." Anyone who actually does that would quickly find that Snopes.com, the respected debunker of urban myths, judges the message to be "false." And yet we continue to receive examples sent to our readers by others who either don't take the time to check, or who don't care that they are repeating false and damaging statements."

Links: Factcheck.org debunks false chain emails about Obama, Snopes.com debunks false chain emails about Obama