deadissue.com

I keep hearing that Obama is too young to be president.  Rush Limbaugh and Geraldine Ferraro seem to think that if a 46 year-old white guy was running for office he would be laughed at as too “wet behind the ears”, OK I don’t think Limbaugh or Ferraro have used the that term but it seems to be what they are thinking.    Of course we all know that being black is a huge advantage when running for POTUS, that is why their have been so many black presidents. 

At 46 Obama is not that young, in fact the only reason he seems young is that his competition is pretty old.  Most people at the age of 46 are entering the prime of their carreers.  McCain on the other hand at 72, is at an age where most people retire.  After watching McCain on the campaign trail he looks like he might be happier on the golf course than trying to figure out the difference between Sunni and Shiite. 

If age is an issue it seems like McCain is on the losing end of it.

I am amazed that this has been controversial, this seems like a no-brainer, apparently both Bush and McCain are no-brainers:

…the new G.I. Bill has strong bipartisan support in Congress. The House passed it by a veto-proof margin this month, and last week the Senate followed suit, approving it as part of a military financing bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Senate version was drafted by two Vietnam veterans, Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. They argue that benefits paid under the existing G.I. Bill have fallen far behind the rising costs of college.

Obama should probably thank both Bush and McCain for giving him a winning issue during this election.

Looks like the market might work sometimes after all:

The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.

Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.

This has to be good for the enviroment and it seems like I am seeing a lot more people on bikes as well, which should lead to healthier people. Maybe the much dreaded in of the automobile era will be the beginning of a much better and healthier car free, or at least car less used, era.

The FBI is trying to recruit informants of the vegitarian variety:

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

The FBI’s attitude towards vegitarians might help to explain the nations farm policy.
The entire article can be seen here

Looks like someone is trying to buy a few superdelegates.

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post

At some point people are going to start asking who has been taking money to support Hillary Clinton and what the doners/ bribers expect in return. The sooner the Clinton sideshow ends the better it will be for all Democrats.

After reading this article it is hard to see how the meat packing industry can function without cheap labor. At the same time it is not fair for the immigrants who come here, like this guy:

At St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, Eduardo Santos, 27, who came from Guatemala and lost two of his fingers working at the factory, said the raid was “fair . . . but it’s bad for everybody. There’s no work.” He plans to go home.

Workers are losing appendages in unsafe factories, probably while earning low wages. Americans in these conditions would want to unionize or would refuse to work in the factory at all. Where undocumented workers are willing to suffer through thse conditions and if they try to get better conditions the factory owners can have them deported very easily.
All this probably does lead to cheap meat but at the cost of worker safety and probably food safety as well.

Looks like the Clinton and Obama camps are starting to come together

Aronchick said that in his own discussions, he emphasized the need for the senator from Illinois to stop describing Clinton and her backers as representing the politics of the past.

“They need to understand how corrosive that has been among her supporters,” Aronchick said. “For this to work, they need to correct any impression that he thinks we represent the old ways of doing things or Washington Beltway ways of doing things.”

The article also had this part about possible VP choices:

“There’s gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket,” said one Obama ally in Washington. “You hear the names [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland, [Indiana Sen. Evan] Bayh, and [retired general] Wes Clark almost constantly, and it’s no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom.”

The next few weeks should be pretty interesting to watch for political junkies.

The latest farm bill definitely has some pork to it.

Ok He has a alot of problems but a big one for him is how does he keep the republican base of right wing cultural conservatives while still appealing to moderates. Kevin Drum says he can’t.

McCain and the Republican Party obviously have big problems this year. McCain in particular is caught between a rock and a hard place: the core of his appeal is to crossover moderates, which means he can’t afford to play culture war games, but if he abandons culture issues entirely he’ll forfeit the support of a religious right base that’s already suspicious of him.

This should be a good year to be a Democrat

The Iran-Contra scandal sounds pretty interesting. McCains role in the scandal also sounds pretty interesting.

Another thing, it  seems that the only country that has benefitted from the invasion f Iraq is Iran as basically they now have a friendly Shia country on their border where they used to have a secular rival.  Maybe one of the lobbiest on McCains campaign is working for Iran or something.

Pretty much the day after surgery I started watching season 2 of The Wire and I just finished season 4 last night.  Season 3 was probably the best, one of the funniest scenes had to be Snoop buying the nail gun.

Season 3 was also good in that it showed the potential if you legalize or at least decriminalize drugs.  Season 4 was good as well although in a more Marlo is a sociopath sort of way.  I see why people like Omar he is a great charactor.  Too bad they killed him off as you could almost see a movie being made around him. 

Hopefully something good happens to Bubbles in season 5, and Halce is an asshole.

Ezra Klein looks at how we got Bushed and asks if the country has learned its lesson. My guess is “no”. Conservatives like Grover Norquist and other architects of Bush’s failed administration will never admit that conservitism is a failure. I think it was Rudy Guiliani who kept spouting off about the need for further tax cuts to reduce the deficit. Conservatives seem to believe that tax cuts are some sort of revenue machine so of course they spend while in power, why not they can magically generate money by cutting taxes.
Almost all the thinking behind the conservative movement involves some sort of magical thinking, “if we remove regulation businesses will suddenly do the right thing, and cut prices at the same time”. “If we invade a country and destroy most of the infrastructure a functioning democracy will magically appear”.
Most conservatives argue tht Bush failed conservatism, it seems more like conservatism failed Bush.

For a while now people have been talking about rising food prices. I wonder how much of price increase can be attributed to stronger enforecment of US immigration laws. It seems like many jobs that involve food production also use a lot of immigrant labor. If Republicans ever get their fence I wonder what that will do to the cost of food.

Mattew Yglesisias takes on the electibility argument This part here makes a lot of sense:

This business of Travis Childers winning an extremely Republican district on the heels of two other Democratic special election wins drives home how infuriating the idea of even having an extended “electability” argument about “who can win” is at this point. The reality is that given current conditions, either Clinton or Obama is very likely to win. That, I assume, is why Clinton is fighting so hard. There’s no need to join David Corn in reaching for esoteric explanations, she’s fighting hard for the prize of the nomination because it’s a very good prize to have.

I think he is basically right on this, but if anything is going to motivate republicans to come back to the polls it is a presidential election, especially if the Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton. Either nominee can probably win and that probably does explain a lot of Hillarys behavior to this point, she knows this should be an easy win, if she can get the nomination. I wonder if the Patriots didn’t feel the same way when they got through the AFC championship game, after all the NFC seemed to suck.

I got this via pandagon.net

Albert Einstein described belief in God as “childish superstition” and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they “have no different quality for me than all other people”.

It is interesting that a guy who really understood how the universe works had no problem imagining it without a creator.

The Clinton campaign has been mostly kept afloat by loans from the Clintons(Bill and Hillary) for quite some time now, she has loaned herself over $11 million. This money mostly came from Bill Clintons income as a paid speaker.  The question becomes how much of his speaking fees were paid by people who knew that money would go to help Hillarys campaign.  In effect, it is possible that the Clintons have been able to finance their campaign by only using a few donors that paid hi speaking fees, these fees would go to Bill Clinton who could then “loan” all the money he wants to his wifes campaign.  

This is similar to the issue John McCain faces where he opted into public financing and then out of it with personal loans.  This is a very effective issue against John McCain as he probably violated his own campaign finance law.   However, if your choice for VP violated the same law, or even appeared to violate the law, it would not be an issue that can be raised.  At least not without looking like a hypocrit.

I don’t think the unity ticket is that serious of an idea any way, but it would be a bad idea if anyone is seriously considering it.

It sort of feels like you’ve been kicked in the nuts, other than that it is not too bad

In her latest incarnation Hillary Clinton has decided to become a working class hero. Her latest argument is that the white, working class loves her and they will support her in such droves that she is the only democrat who is electable.
As a member of the white working class, I pick up animal poop for a living, I wonder what world she lives on where the working class loves her. Most angry white guys are going to vote for McCain, I know this, because I know quite a few angry white guys and they are all McCain supporters. For some reason illary decided that if she could knock back a beer and a shot all the angry white guys in America would say “she is one of us”. It didn’t work for John Kerry when he shot a couple of birds and it wont work for Hillary either.
If you know a white guy with some college ask him who he supports for president, I will almost guarantee it is not Hillary. The working class persona is not going to work for Hillary any better than any of the other personalities she has used during this election season, the sooner she and the democratic party learn this the sooner the real election can begin.

On a related note:
I think that you will see enough super-delegates come over to Obama that he gets to 2025 delegates after his pledged delegates are added from the primaries on May 20th. This way it will look like he won the nomination on pledged delegates. I think this thing ends on May 20th. I have predicted the end a few times before, but this time I may be right. If all else fails the broken clock is right twice a day rule may finally catch up to me at some time.

At some point this starts to look like a genocide where the weapon is a natural dissaster, although my guess is they are trying to get rid of some poor people rather than a specifc race:

Myanmar’s junta seized U.N. aid shipments Friday meant for a multitude of hungry and homeless survivors of last week’s devastating cyclone, forcing the world body to suspend further help.

The aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

“All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Risley said.

This is reminiscent of Katrina only the indifference to suffering seems even greater.

It’s about time someone started looking at the problems caused by drug ads:

“It appears that we need to enforce significant restrictions on DTC (direct-to-consumer) ads to protect American consumers from manipulative commercials designed to mislead and deceive for the profit of pharmaceutical companies,” said Stupak, head of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel.

The Michigan Democrat said Congress should consider whether ads promoting medicines should be allowed to continue to target consumers in the United States, the only country that allows such marketing except for New Zealand.

Restrictions on pharmacutical advertising would not only improve health it would probably cut health care costs signifigantly.  It might also cut into Rush Limbaughs ad revenue if Viagra stopped sponsoring him.

After reading this it is hard to blame Obama for the demise of Hillary Clinton, one way or another Hillary and her band of merry pranksters were going to blow the election, better she did it in the primaries and not the general.

Everybody is down on this guy for acting like a college student.  Tyler Hansbrough has probably brought millions of dollars into to the school, given they are not paying him, he should be allowed to act like a student when not on the court.  Students do things like jump out of balconies into pools, get over it.

After last night it seems extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.  If last night had gone differentely and she won both North Carolina and  convincingly won Indiana, I probably would have admitted that Obama could not overcome Jeremiah Wright or that maybe people really did want a gas tax holiday, or maybe people really want to obliterate Iran.   If  somehow Hillary had got the nomination, I know what I would have wanted to see from her to make me support her. 

Mostly I would have wanted assurance that she was going to end the Iraq war and that she was not going to start any more wars of choice.  For me the turning point with Hillary was her support of Kyl-Lieberman amendment.  She would have to convince me that she was not a war monger.  I think that the main reason Obama is going to be the nominee and probably the next president is his opposition to the war in Iraq.   Also, I would have wanted to see Hillary promise some fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget in the near future.  Getting out if Iaq would go a long way towards balancing the budget so in the end it would have been pretty easy for her to get my support, as a one-hundrd year war McCain is not an option if you care about ending the war.

My question: What do Hillarys supporters want out of Obama?  I think this is going to be a problem for Obama as I don’t think he can take over any of her “big issues” without contradicting his vision for America.    If any Hillary supporters read this blog I would like to know what Obama can do that will make them support him.  My guess from conversations I have had with Hillary supporters is that the answer would be something to the effect of “he could wait his turn and they will support him in eight years”.   At this point that is not an option so what can Obama do to unite the party?

Preachers say stupid things all the time. Jerry Falwell after 9/11 blamed America for the attacks, I think he said something to the effect that 9/11 was gods punishment for homsexuality. I think it was McCains main man John Hagee who blamed hurricane Katrina on Mardi Gras. These are not rational people, but until now it has been hard to critisize them without being called anti-christian.  Obamas preacher Jeremiah Wright is also a nut job, but until Hillary called him out on it, no one with any stature had the guts to critisize a religious figure. Yes, I am going to give Hillary credit for having political courage, sure it was mostly the product of desperation but in the end she has done someting useful.

Until now anything a religious person says has been given a certain status that it does not deserve, mostly because of the high regard most Americans have for faith.  People can always say “god made me do it” this excuse didn’t work for Andrea Yates and it should not work for Hagee or Wright.  The excuse might work for Falwell as if their is a hell I am sure he is discussing what god made him do at this very moment.  I know that many religious people point out the good things that religious groups do like feeding the homeless, sponsoring orphans and a whole host of other good deeds, but that doesn’t excuse the child molestors in the Catholic church or the blame the homosexuals crowd like Falwell.  The good deeds could still happen without molesting children. 

Hillary made it OK to critisize Jeremiah Wright, a man of the cloth, and it seems to be making all religious figures fair game.. I have been pretty critical of Hillary but on this point she may have done some good.

I have been trying to understand the Hillary gas tax holiday, I know it was McCains idea and then Hillary decided to make it her own.  Bill Clinton was a master at taking good ideas and making them his own, Hillary seems to be a master at taking bad ideas and making them her own.  The other part of Hillarys tax holday measure calls for a windfall profits tax on oil companies.  That seems pretty unfair, why should we tax some businesses more than others when they are successful?  The other problem with a windfall profits tax is that it wold probably be passed on the to the consumer, which would probably erase any savings of the gas tax holiday. 

It seems that the main purpose of the windfall profits tax is to show those oil comapnies that we don’t like them and by taxing them at a higher rate we are somehow standing up for the little guy.  In reality the oil consumers are paying the same amount for fuel, oil companies are making the same amount of money after tax, but somehow we feel better.  I remember reading somewhere(I think it was at right thinking.com) that all those renewable energy credits would just go to big oil companies as they were the ones who had the expertise to devolope new energy.  The author seemed to think that was a bad thing.  Anything that creates cleaner energy(especially if it does not involve corn) is a good thing regardless of who gets the money for it.

Populism seems to have become movement that believes if your neighbors home burns down yours looks better.  The real situation is that after the fire you live next to a burned out wreck that drags everyones values down.