Fired Up Obama Addresses Virginia Crowd

In the following video, Obama addresses cheering crowds of Virginians in Richmond Saturday night, after sweeping Tennessee, Washington, and Louisiana. This is a great speech, Obama really gets fired up and demonstrates why so many of us have put our hope in him.

Obama 2008

On the eve of super Tuesday, I must confess that I have forgone my former support of Senator Clinton and now find myself championing Obama. Granted, I still support Hillary and believe in much of her agenda, but her shortcomings on the character front have become very difficult to ignore, and will clearly handicap her in a bid for the White House. At the end of the day, I want to see a Democrat in the office, so it is pure pragmatism!

Besides, what's not to like about Obama? Other than his halting speech in debates, which appears to be more a delivery style than an indication of clouded thinking. He does make sense, although I often struggle to follow him on key points. BUT, at the end of the day I find myself really trusting Barack, and believing in his sincerity and depth of character. Also, his positions have shown increasing depth, allaying some early concerns that I have had about his lack of experience and poorly define positions.

Policy differences between Clinton and Obama are not as dramatic as they would have you believe, which in the end leads me to the candidate with a fresh face, optimism, and sincerity. I hope to see him take the majority of states tomorrow night, and fully expect that will happen. I am also thrilled to see McCain will likely by the Republican nominee (even though I predicted Romney some months ago), as he is the most progressive Republican in the race and also shows a depth of character often lacking in politics. This election it may be the "better of two good options" instead of the "lesser of two evils."

Here is a graph showing the huge bounce Obama received after his strong showing in South Carolina and Edwards subsequent departure.

From realclearpolitics.com
Click on image to enlarge

Huckabee Scares Me

As the results of the Michigan primary come in, I am very satisfied to see Mike Huckabee is a distant third place. His rapid rise to become a front runner for the Republican nomination has been very disturbing, as he holds many unusual, if not downright frightening ideas. For one Huckabee favors amending the income tax to represent a flat tax, instead of a progressive tax. This would be a huge boon to upper middle class and above, as the "tax brackets" would be disposed of. The entire premise of the tax brackets are that low income people cannot give up as large a percentage of their income without directly impacting their ability to provide for basic needs. The progressive tax has been away to bring equity to the system, and it certainly hasn't impoverished the rich, as the gap between the upper and lower classes continues to widen.

However, perhaps the scariest thing about Huckabee is his "faith based" form of politics. We have seen the results of this type of politics before, and we should be extremely wary to even consider going down that path again. Indeed, Huckabee is even more brash than Bush with regards to his religious views, stating that we should "amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." Folks, this is scary shit. At a time when we are trying to somehow rectify the animosity felt in the middle east toward perceived (or real) religious persecution, we have a presidental candidate who thinks this is a theocratic war, where it is us or them!

So it is with a great sense of relief that I see what appears to be early signs of the Republican core turning away from Mike Huckabee.

Truth is Useless

Jeb Bush: "The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money."

Spoken by Jeb Bush in conversation with Retired Naval Intelligence Officer, Al Martin, and Cited in Bushwhacked, by Uri Dowbenko, September, 2002

Ron Paul

I don't know that much about Ron Paul and his ReVolution movement, but I have to admit I am very intrigued by his message as relayed in the following video clip. The man talks a lot of sense IMHO. Even though I am most likely to vote for whichever Democratic candidate wins, I would sure like to see Ron Paul do well. New Hampshire's primary on Tuesday appears to be his best chance to get national recognition, lets hope he gets voters out!

Eve of Iowa Caucus

On the eve of the Iowa caucus and with politics very much on my mind, I thought I would post an interesting electoral map from the 2004 presidential election. It shows how population density plays a major role in determining which party an individual supports.

click to see larger image


HT: ESRI

Facism - Top Ten Signs

This is absolutely scary...



"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." George Santayana

John Bolton Defends War

Here is an interesting clip of American ambassador John Bolton defending the Iraq war, and some heated exchanges from an Iraqi citizen and Tony Benn of the UK. I think it demonstrates how flimsy the U.S. justifications for the Iraq war really are, and how strong the world opinion is against American unilateralism.



HT: CM

Elections 08 - Home Stretch

As we enter the home stretch for the 2008 presidential elections, things are very interesting indeed! On the Democrat side, Hillary and Obama are running neck and neck, with Obama having the momentum in the early primaries, but Hillary holding a solid lead in the national polls. On the Republican side things are even more convoluted, with five candidates still in strong contention! Clearly Huckabee has the most momentum, as his Baptist background is holding a strong appeal to party conservatives, however both Romney and McCain have shown recent gains, coming at the expense of the fading Giuliani and Thompson. See the national trends below from RealClearPolitics.com.




I am still holding to my original prediction that Clinton and Romney will win their respective parties nomination, but there has been some interesting developments in the weeks since I first made that call. On the democrat front, Obama has continued to develop momentum and now shows a real potential for overtaking Clinton and gaining the parties nomination. He brings a freshness and depth of character that seem to hold real appeal to the voters in the early primaries. The main concerns seem to center around his perceived lack of toughness, as he tends to shy away from the more vicious style of politics that are so often utilized in the highly polarized U.S. government. He seems to genuinely value discourse and consensus building over power plays and backdoor maneuvering. Many critics feel that this is a liability for him in the trenches, where idealism perishes as quickly as a snow cone in Texas! What do you think? Is Obama's approach to politics naive and a sign of in-experience, or is it a return to the very core of what a healthy political process should be about?

Here is a trend of the Democrat Iowa primary poll results, showing Obama's recent climb (again from RCP)



I am definitely interested in how Obama does in these early primaries. While the national polls still clearly show Clinton leading, things could change quickly if Obama pulls out some convincing wins. My personal opinion is that they are both strong candidates and would fare well in the general election.

On the Republican side, things are as hectic as I have ever seen in the run-up to a presidential primary. Typically by this point in the process the field of candidates is whittled down to only two, or at most three viable candiates. Clearly Fred Thompson has lost significant momentum, and can probably be ruled out of contention. Guliani, while still leading in the national polls, is also rapidly loosing steam and IMHO will not end up in strong contention. I just don't think his character and values line up well with the Republican voting base.

That leaves Huckabee, McCain, and Romney. Each has their handicaps. Huckabee is a relative unknown who has risen to popularity primarily on his Christianity and conservative morals, but questions surrounding his judgement and experience are starting to gather steam. McCain seems too crusty to win a popularity contest, but his unquestionable experience, integrity, and depth of character continue to keep him in the race. Some pundits predict that the top candidates will implode leaving McCain as the best viable candidate. Romney, my pick for winning the Republican primary, would be a shoe-in if it wasn't for his Mormon faith. It remains to be seen how much this will effect the primary, but he continues to look strong in several early primaries and may gain momentum if Huckabee stumbles in the weeks ahead.

Here is a trend of the Iowa Republican primary polls from RCP.



Who is your favorite candidate from the two parties?

Human Value

I have continued to mull some of the responses to the Texas Vigilante shooting in Texas, both on this blog and elsewhere in the blogosphere. I find it quit interesting that many people feel that since these two men from Colombia were here illegally and had criminal backgrounds they deserved to die. It appears that their value as human beings was reduced by both demerits, to the point that being shot in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun as they were fleeing is "justice." It is important to keep in mind that these men were unarmed and committing a burglary, they were not threatening the well-being of anyone. Even the neighbor was clear that he was "not going to let them get away with this," not a concern for his safety as much as a desire to mete out justice.

This sliding scale of human value seems to be everywhere today. For instance, most of us don't blink when we hear that 23 insurgents were killed today, but we likely pause if we hear 6 American soliders were killed by a roadside bomb. In fact, I would wager that no person truly values all human life equally! For instance, a parent is biologically predisposed to value the lives of their children over the lives of strangers. I wonder if the same goes for cultures? Are we programmed to instinctively value people who are similar to us over people who are different?

Of course the social manifestation of such a sliding scale has resulted in some of the worst acts of human history, including slavery and the holocaust. In both cases it seems that the underlying racism was based on perceived differences between the human value of each respective group. As soon as we have objectified a group of people to "insurgents", "japs", "n*ggers", "illegals", etc, we have removed our own moral barriers to acting inhuman to them. It seems this human tendency to objectify the "other" is one we must continually struggle against!

If I am wrong and human value really is dependent on some extrinsic factors, perhaps we should define a worth spectrum? For instance, 1 U.S. soldier = 75 Iraqi "insurgents" in overall human value, or 1 U.S. citizen equals 20 "illegal aliens," or 1 U.S. taxpayer = 5 people on welfare. If we could establish a tidy spectrum of human value, this would greatly aid our Country in making policy decisions, enacting new legislation, allocating budgets, deciding to go to war, etc. We could simply ask, what is the human value of the respective decisions? If we go to war with Albania, we might loose 700 U.S. soldiers, but gain natural resources that would benefit millions of Americans. If this resulted in the deaths of 20,000 albanians, but the U.S. to Albanian worth ratio was 1:25, clearly the decision would be prudent and justified.

Iowa NPR Debates

NPR hosted an Iowa radio debate last night, the full two hour broadcast can be heard here. For the most part it was fairly uninformative, with candidates breaking little fresh ground in the three areas of discussion: Iran, China, and Immigration. On the issue of China, former Senator Gravel (basically a no-show in the polls), had a great statement about the competitive approach the U.S. takes toward China, a country with rampant extreme poverty.

Clearly, none of [the other candidates] are running for China — president of China — because this amount of demagoguery is shameful.
Here, the Chinese people have a problem. And when we continue this rhetoric of beggar thy neighbor, where our interests always come first, there should be the interests of human beings, the interests of human beings...because when you have a foreign policy that's beggar thy neighbor, we all become beggars. And so when they talk about the currency of China, what about the — what manipulations we do? What about the American companies that dump things abroad?

I thought Mr. Gravel raised a good quote, that perhaps was more powerful in the audio version than in the text (see ~47:00 in the audio to hear his statement). Indeed, it seems so much of American policy is based on protecting American interests alone. Certainly you rarely hear any politician talk about China's interests. Of course, a government is tasked with protecting it's countries interest's abroad, but to what extent should this be balanced with concern for all humankind? By focusing on increasing America's prosperity, at the expense of others, we will cause inevitable long term conflict. So a government that truly sought to provide long term stability and prosperity for its people would seek to help other countries achieve the same, wouldn't you think.

Except for that little bugger called scarcity.... Now I know that scarcity is often overblown by fear mongers. The world currently has all the resources required to feed, cloth, and shelter every human being, with plenty to spare. The problem is that we are not satisfied with only meeting our basic needs, thus we engage in fierce turf wars to divide the world's riches. At what point will we in the United States repent of our gross overuse of the world's resources? At what point will we require our politicians to act in ways that value all human beings, not just the ones that happen to live within our border's?

Anyway, just ranting a bit this morning. As far as the debate goes, I don't think any candidate really separated themselves on the issues. It will be interesting to read the pundit analysis over the rest of the week.

Election Prediction

So I have been predicting for a couple weeks that Clinton and Mitt Romney will be the two presidential candidates in 2008, so I will formally go on record with this prediction. Romney is definitely a mixed bag when it comes to green politics, with some commendable interest in renewable energy, but scepticism when it comes to global warming and carbon emissions.

What do you think about my prediction? If I am right, does that mean the green vote will go to Clinton?

Democrat Candidates - Las Vegas Debate

I finally got a chance to watch a full debate last night between the Democrat presidential candidates. With so much press about Hillary's recent slide and gains made by both Obama and Edwards, I was interested to see how the night would play out. Things certainly started out quite fierce, with real fireworks between Edwards, Obama, and Clinton. The interesting thing was the the crowd really influenced the debate by loudly booing both Edwards and Obama when they went into attack mode on Clinton's credibility. This pretty much cooled their jets and I was relieved to see the debate move into questions of policy and away from the personal attacks.

Hillary showed remarkable poise all night, and gave solid answers to the questions poised by Wolf Blitzer, she was clearly well prepared for the night. Edwards, on the other hand, came across as petulant in the debate and really lost steam IMHO. I supported Edwards in the 2004 democratic primary, mostly because of his focus on alleviating poverty. Based on recent events, including last nights debate, Edwards no longer holds my interest as a presidential candidate, although I do think he would make an excellent VP.

Barack Obama was a mixed bag in the debate. At times show fantastic poise and a presidential demeanor, he at other times appeared unsure and halting. I think his inexperience continues to show itself in this primary, as other candidates demonstrate a better grasp of the issues. He is very likeable though, and I think he would do well in a general election against the Republican candidate, but I think he will need to hone his message and show more internal strength if he is to win the nomination.

The two badasses of the night were Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Senator Joe Biden. Kucinich was spot on with a majority of his comments, often correcting the presuppositions in Wolf's questions. A genuine liberal, in contrast to the rest of the candidates, Kucinich would be my top pick if he had a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election. Unfortunately he is too far from the general populace to even win the primary, much less the presidency. Pragmatism steers me away from Kucinich, even if I find my views are closely aligned with his (he was my closest match on the candidate calculator).

Biden was calm and relaxed all night, showing significant knowledge about the issues and an ability to connect with the audience. He may be a dark horse in this race, given additional national exposure I wouldn't be surprised if he moves up in the polls.

Governor Bill Richardson (NM) and Senator Chris Dodd gave unimpressive performances and are not likely to see a lot of traction from this debate. I was very impressed by Richardson's sensitivity to the immigration issue, as well as his expertise on energy. I really like Richardson, but he comes across in a grandfatherly way, instead of as a presidential leader. Dodd, on the other hand, is the Democratic version of John McCain. Very straight spoken, a bit crunchy, and not able to connect with the audience. I expect both of these guys to fall out of the race early in the primaries.

For a brief overview of the Democratic candidates, see the wiki entry.