CBS News reports that the President Obama is still deciding on whether to issue a statement regarding the death of Michael Jackson. 

The stumbling block appears to be White House speechwriter Jonathan Favreau's inability to find a euphemism for "molester."

"It's a tough one," admits Favreau, "Rahm wants me to put lipstick on this pig, but, to be honest, I feel like I'm putting lipstick on an innocent child's teddy bear -- an act Mr. Jackson would refer to as 'foreplay'."

  

        

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The ObamaFest intern said it best, "When I'm President I'm naming Rachel Maddow the Bullshit Czar."

        

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During President Kennedy's administration, Democrats fought for working men and women by going after corruption in organized labor.  Here's another reminder that Camelot aint coming back:

California is on the ropes, and the state could run out of money in July.  The budget approved in Sacramento in February includes spending cuts and record tax increases.  While everybody is feeling the pain, President Obama wants to be the aspirin for the powerful Service Employees International Union and the SEIU members who have been asked to take pay cuts in the new budget:

"The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

The wages at issue involve workers who care for some 440,000 low-income disabled and elderly Californians. The workers, who collectively contribute millions of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees International Union and the United Domestic Workers, will see the state's contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per hour to a maximum of $10.10."

The back story is how corrupt the SEIU is in general, and how pervasive corruption is in this specific program:

"Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation.

Prosecutors and program administrators across the state say they are alarmed by the ease with which people are taking advantage of the program, In Home Supportive Services.

In one case, a social worker, her brother and her grandson in Los Angeles County are accused of bilking the In Home system out of $77,000 over three years, billing for care that was not provided. The social worker was simultaneously collecting pay for her full-time state employment. The case is awaiting trial.

In Fresno County, officials used $650,000 in county funds to create the state's only active In Home Supportive Services fraud investigations unit. Prosecutors say they routinely find cheating on time cards, prisoners reporting they are providing care while locked up and recipients of the service concocting disabilities to get relatives on the state payroll."

With a tough road ahead, America is closely watching which battles President Obama chooses to fight.  The ObamaFest Team is discouraged to see him taking care of political i.o.u.'s at the expense of a state teetering on bankruptcy.

        

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The Washington Post reports that this is a great time to be a relative of Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha. 

Yet last year, Murtech received $4 million in Pentagon work, all of it without competition, for a variety of warehousing and engineering services. With its long corridor of sparsely occupied offices and an unmanned reception area, Murtech's most striking feature is its owner -- Robert C. Murtha Jr., 49. He is the nephew of  Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has significant sway over the Defense Department's spending as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

The ObamaFest Team knows that Republicans will exploit the Democrats' tolerance for crooks like Murtha in next year's elections.  And they should.  Mr. Murtha has been saying, "Fuck You" to the American taxpayer for thirty years.  President Obama's agenda will rot from the inside unless Eric Holder and the Justice Department put Mr. Murtha where he belongs: in an orange jumpsuit.









 

        

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"Could we get Annie Leibovitz to shoot some
M1 tanks rolling down Wall Street?"


After a long career spent bumbling out of the spotlight, Louis Caldera finally managed to fuck-up in front of the whole world. 

The mastermind behind Air Force One's terror flight over Manhattan, Caldera represents everything wrong with a political system that rewards a man for his surname, rather than his accomplishments.

Caldera in a nutshell:

1)  Served in the Army on active duty for only six years, mostly based at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  This was good enough for President Clinton to appoint Caldera Secretary of the Army in 1998.  The ObamaFest Team likes our Army leaders to have real experience, preferably guys who have heard things like, "Incoming!" instead of, "Yo, I got your salute right here!"

2)  Served in the California Assembly for six years, chairing the Banking and Finance Committee, the Revenue and Taxation Committee, and the Budget Committee.  Caldera left California with the highest taxes in the nation and, amazingly, the biggest deficits.

3)  Took a high paying, do-nothing job as Vice Chancellor for University Advancement (?#!*?) for the Cal State University System, where they were happy to see him move on when the University of New Mexico needed a Latino to serve as its President. 

4)  Served on the board of directors for IndyMac bank, the bank created by Angelo Mozilo and his cronies at Countrywide Financial.  From Wikipedia: 

"IndyMac’s aggressive growth strategy, use of Alt-A and other nontraditional loan products, insufficient underwriting, credit concentrations in residential real estate in the California and Florida markets, and heavy reliance on costly funds borrowed from the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHL and from brokered deposits, led to its demise when the mortgage market declined in 2007."

Schemes like IndyMac rely on political influence, and Caldera was a well compensated part of the equation. 

Hindsight is 20/20, but Caldera is exactly the kind of guy you don't give an office in The White House.  But if you insist on a hire that gives you a little Latino window dressing, don't give the guy the federal credit card and the authority to spend $328,835 on a photo shoot. 

        

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Bushism / bushizem / n. 1 An act or statement, originating in the Executive Branch of American government, notable for its lack of nuance and common sense. 2 Preposterous blunder. 

        

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"Don't worry about me, Mr. President,
tomorrow I'm going to some youth in Asia."


The ObamaFest Team expected shit like this from Joe Biden.  He screwed over the dog world when he got his German Shepherd from a breeder.  Then, typical Biden bullshit, he promised to get another one from a shelter -- hasn't happened yet. 

But we took Mr. Obama at his word when he said he would go to a shelter where there are plenty of  "mutts like me."   Well, there's one little hypo-allergenic mutt still stuck in a cage because Mr. Obama went with a 6-month-old Portuguese water dog, a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy. 

Reports the Christian Science Monitor:

Abbie Moore of Adopt-a-Pet.com isn’t  forgiving. “This is truly a missed opportunity to set a pet-adoption trend among Americans. “If Obama had adopted a pet from a shelter, it could have been the turning point for the pet-overpopulation problem in this country. With pet relinquishment up 20 to 30 percent due to the poor economy, pets in shelters can use all the help they can get.”

While Dog magazine’s Ryan O’Meara says this is just more of the same. “When he was resoundingly elected to office we were promised change. But, it seems, true to type the new American president is a politician at heart so should we really have expected anything different?”

Even more pointed is the criticism by Dr. Jana Kohl:

"The author of “A Rare Breed of Love,” Kohl wrote the story of her poodle named Baby who she rescued four years ago. Baby not only had her vocal chords removed with scissors but lost a leg due to the years of abuse at the hands of a breeder.

So outraged was she at Baby’s story, she decided to write a book calling attention to puppy mills.

Her strategy was to get people with a microphone to appear in the book. So she set off to Capitol Hill and Hollywood where she found plenty of supporters. People like Paul Harvey, Steven Tyler, Bill Maher, Jim Cramer, and a host of politicians – Republican and Democrat.

One of those politicians that agreed to meet with her was then-Senator Obama. Touched by Baby’s story, he then agreed to a photoshoot and, according to a press release promoting her book, pledged to Kohl that when he brought a dog home for his family, it would be a rescue dog – not one from a breeder.

So, this weekend’s announcement that the president opted to accept a puppy as a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy (via a breeder) and not to go to a shelter or rescue center has left Kohl upset.

“I feel like he’s made a mockery out of the book and the things I wrote about him,” Kohl told the Vote Blog. “I read what I said about him and it makes me cringe.”

Kohl said that his decision is not only heartbreaking for her, but destructive because of what she sees as the domino effect.

“This will fuel the breeding industry which will fuel the puppy mill industry, which will increase homeless dogs at shelters, and increase the numbers of dogs euthanized every year,” she said.

“To add insult to injury, during these tough economic times it is incredibly insensitive and elitist of them to do this, ” she said. “People are tearfully turning in their pets to shelters because they can’t afford them anymore. We see it on news all the time.

“How can they be so out of touch?” she asked.

What about the fact that the president will donate to the DC Humane Society to make up for it?

“That’s baloney,” Kohl said. “It’s farcical. They’re donating money to urge people not to do what they did.”"

"Election's over.  Somebody get this mutt off of me!"

        

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Senator Mark Leno: "It's not fraud as long as I get my share."

Every so often California State Senator Mark Leno stops dying his gray hairs just long enough to say something imbecilic. 

Case in point:  The L.A. Times Evan Halper did a fine investigation of the rampant fraud in California's $5.5 billion program for in home health care for seniors:

"Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation.

Prosecutors and program administrators across the state say they are alarmed by the ease with which people are taking advantage of the program, In Home Supportive Services.

Government funds are flowing in so quickly, with such limited oversight, that prosecutors say it is common for the state to send paychecks to scam artists claiming to be caring for someone who is dead. Or claiming to be caring for a relative or friend faking a disability. Or claiming to be providing care during the same hours they are working elsewhere."

So at this point any politician with an ounce of integrity would say something like, "With all of the taxes that we require our citizens to pay,it is incumbent upon us to make sure that that money is spent wisely and honestly." 

But what does Leno say about the rampant abuses: "Seeing as we seemed to have misplaced $50 billion in the rebuilding of Iraq, it's an amazingly low figure."

The ObamaFest Team just barfed in our throats.  To call Leno a scumbag would be an insult to both scum and to bags.  His excuse for fucking over health care is cost overruns in Iraq?!?   Great non sequitur, douche face.

The real meat of the story, of course, is the union angle:

"Some critics of the program say politics has blocked efforts to combat fraud. The program has become a steady source of revenue for the Service Employees International Union, among the most powerful interest groups in the Capitol, as well as a second union, the United Domestic Workers of America.

Under the program, people receiving care are entitled to hire whom they wish at government expense. Most hire their relatives, because family members are often the most appropriate to provide the needed round-the-clock feeding, changing, bathing and other care. Wages range from $8 to $14.68 an hour, depending on the county. Those workers are required to pay monthly union dues that total millions of dollars. The SEIU, for example, collects nearly $5 million a month from its 223,000 In Home system members.

The unions donate heavily to the campaigns of Democrats who control the Legislature and organize get-out-the-vote efforts on their behalf."

Senator Leno should just come out and admit that there's nothing better than a program that, under the guise of helping...

...actually pads the bank accounts of:

...and eventually finances the re-election of:

        

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Wells Fargo posted a profit for the 1st quarter of '09.  The ObamaFest Team thinks Jim Cramer's ejaculatory praise is premature:

“This is a serious, serious game changer,” Cramer said.

The government’s stress test had been created to see which banks would most likely rebound if given federal help. Now that some banks are showing signs of strength, there is probably little need for Washington to inject more cash into struggling institutions.

Cramer predicted that Wells Fargo would earn between $2.30 and $2.35 a share in 2010, saying that the stock deserves an 11 or 12 price-to-earnings multiple. He thinks WFC will climb to $26.

"Cramer's analysis will go down," predicted the ObamaFest CFO,  "with Neville Chamberlain's claim of  'Peace for our time' after the British Prime Minister went to Munich and gave Hitler the Sudetenland.  Cramer learned absolutely nothing from his Daily Show beatdown!"

Our CFO points to the data compiled by Mr. Mortgage:

"NOTE – actual March foreclosures reported next week by the popular foreclosure services like RealtyTrac will show a sizable drop vs. Feb because foreclosures lag notices. Foreclosures in March are a result of NTS’s when many banks/servicers were on hold in Jan/Feb. But in March NTS’s surged — I will have a preliminary report out this week on the total statewide and national counts. BE CAREFUL - the popular reports released next week will also show a large increase in total foreclosure notices so total foreclosure activity may be relatively flat. Market reaction will be dependent upon how this is reported in the press.

The bottom line is that there is a massive wave of actual foreclosures that will hit beginning in April that can’t be stopped without a national moratorium — this wave is so big I would not put it past them trying it."

We aint seen nothing yet.


 

        

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Everybody is piling on President Obama for his "Special Olympics" gaffe.

The ObamaFest Team wants America to keep things in perspective.  What's in a man's heart is more important than the awkward phrases that slip from his mouth.  President Obama loves "those goofy bastards" as much as anybody:

 

        

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California Congressman Pete Stark fights the giggles
after eating a plate of tax-scam brownies.

Back in the 70's the only guy on Capitol Hill with better coke than Charlie Wilson was Pete Stark.  While he may have cleaned up his act, he still needs a sponsor to call when he begins jonesing for an illegal tax credit. 

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- A senior member of the U.S. House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee from California has been taking advantage of a tax break for a home in Maryland that he claims as his principal residence.

Representative Pete Stark, the second-ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means panel, in 2007 and 2008 saved a total of $3,853 in state and Anne Arundel County taxes on a Maryland waterfront home that he claims as his primary residence, according to Maryland tax disclosures.

As the ObamaFest Intern likes to point out, saving four grand must have warmed Mr. Stark's heart, making him nostalgic for the days when that kind of scratch could buy a public servant half a kilo of high society.

        

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Senator Dodd sends a message to the
American Taxpayer.


Any anger about the AIG bonuses should be directed at Senator Dodd.  From FOXBusiness:

"While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

Also, Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org."

The ObamaFest intern once asked how Senator Dodd can sleep at night.  Now we know: the man slumbers on a mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills.  

        

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By now some agency must have a wire up on Senator Dodd.   He's the Clay Davis of Capitol Hill. 

"Chris Dodd an honest man?  Sheeeeeee-iiiiit"

If the "Friends of Angelo" offense wasn't enough to warrant jail time (it was, btw), the newly revealed "Cottage-gate"  scandal should do the trick.  A quick summary of the facts uncovered by the Hartford Courant:

-In 1994 Dodd buys a third interest in an Irish estate valued at $160k.  William Kessinger bought the other two thirds.  Kessinger's business partner is longtime Dodd buddy Edward Downe Jr.  (In 1986 Dodd purchased a Washington condo with Mr. Downe).
-In 1993, Downe pleads guilty to felony crimes of insider trading and securities fraud.  In 1994 he pays the SEC $11 million in criminal penalties.
-In 2001, Senator Dodd successfully lobbies President Clinton to pardon Mr. Downe before leaving office. 
-In 2002, Mr. Kessinger sells his two thirds of the estate to Mr. Dodd for $127k, even though the price of homes in Ireland quadrupled in the eight years since they bought in - meaning the estate's market value is over $640k!

The Wall Street Journal sums up Cottage-gate thusly:

"Mr. Dodd is busy these days blaming everyone else for the real-estate bubble and financial meltdown. But he owes his constituents and the Senate an honest accounting of his Galway property over the past 15 years. If its value grew with the rest of the area, he needs to explain why Mr. Kessinger handed it over for a song, why that isn't an unreported gift under Senate rules, and what role Mr. Downe might have played as a middleman.

More broadly, Connecticut voters might want to know why their senior Senator has hung around for years with Mr. Downe, the kind of financial scoundrel Mr. Dodd spends so much time denouncing."

The ObamaFest Team loathes a system that allows the Bernie Madoffs and Chris Dodds of the world to walk among us.  Cuff 'em.

        

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Senator Richard Shelby (second from left) happily buries future generations
of Americans in massive debt.


Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama continues to use his ill-fitting dentures to bite away at the American Dream.

Last year Shelby opposed the Federal government bridge loan for US-owned auto companies, saying:

"We don't need government - governmental subsidies for manufacturing in this country. It's the French model, it's the wrong road. We will pay for it. The average American taxpayer is going to pay dearly for this, if I'm not wrong." However, foreign-owned auto manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai received approximately $788 million in government subsidies in the cities of Vance, Lincoln, Huntsville, and Montgomery in Shelby's home state of Alabama, according to analysis by Good Jobs First. Good Jobs First executive Director Greg LeRoy pointed out that "while proposed federal aid to the Big 3 would take the form of a loan, the vast majority of subsidies to foreign auto plants were taxpayer gifts such as property and sales tax exemptions, income tax credits, infrastructure aid, land discounts, and training grants."

This year Shelby abandoned common decency and supported the $410 billion spending bill once he was able to weasel 64 earmarks worth $114 million into the legislation.  Included is $819k for a catfish genome study at Auburn University. 

"Earmarks? I don't even
have ears!"

Shelby might spin his perfidious vote by pointing out it's small potatoes in today's spending environment.  But The ObamaFest Team reminds America that no snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche.

        

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"I love the smell of corporate largesse in the morning."


Wesley Clark's new gig shilling for Big Agra puts him at odds with planet Earth.  As co-chair of the lobbying group Growth Energy, Clark is trying to perpetuate and expand the ethanol hoax. 

Most of the ethanol in the U.S. is blended with gasoline to create E10 -- gasoline with 10% ethanol.  Clark is lobbying for a mandate of 20% ethanol. 

As with all Corporate Welfare, there are negative unintended consequences.  Ethanol drives down fuel economy and damages automobile engines and pollution control systems. 

Even more damning, ethanol takes corn out of the world's kitchens, driving up food prices and forcing poorer countries to destroy timber and rain forests in order to plant crops.  Global warming follows.  Deploying a battalion of lobbyists won't change these facts.

The ObamaFest Team says to Mssrs. Archer, Daniels, Midland and Clark, "Stand down." 

        

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Orszag testifies to the the size of the shit
sandwich Steny Hoyer is making him eat.


Obama's Budget Director Peter Orszag made his Sunday talk show debut and floundered under George Stephanopoulos's not-so-tough questioning.  Orszag danced awkwardly around every question, clinging to his talking points the way Jeff Van Gundy gripped Alonzo Mourning's calf.  Most embarassing for Orszag was his refusal to attack the pork-laden $410 billion spending bill making it's way towards the White House because it is "last year's business." 

Last year's business?  If it passes this year, if the President signs it this year, if it affects us this year and many years to come, how is it "last year's business?"  What we're really seeing is political cowardice in the face of a bristling Congress.  Leading the charge is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who came right out and said:

“I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do.”   And the majority leader was quick to point out that before he hit the campaign trail, Obama was serving the people of Illinois in the Senate — and obtaining federally-funded projects himself.  “The president, of course, had earmarks, as you’ll recall, not last year but the year before,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer said that members of Congress have a responsibility to provide funding for their districts.

“’Earmarks’ are a pejorative term,” he argued.

Rep. Hoyer reminds President Obama that whoring is
all Congress knows, adding "If you want to deal with
men of honor, Mr. President, you'll need to build yourself
a fucking time machine.  Build it in my district, by the way,
and I'll see that it's funded."

        

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Last summer, Senator Clinton withheld endorsing Senator Obama until she received Obama's promise to pick a running mate who is "Non-Presidential,"  meaning somebody who is either too old or too incompetent to run for President in 2016, criteria that fit Joe Biden like a pair of cosmetic surgeon's gloves.   This left Evan Bayh outside of the Obama tent, presumably a poor place to demonstrate leadership and to ready the world for a Bayh administration. 

BUT WAIT!

Senator Bayh fired the first salvo of 2016 today with his op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal calling for an Obama veto of the bloated spending bill making its way through Congress. 

"This week, the United States Senate will vote on a spending package to fund the federal government for the remainder of this fiscal year. The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 is a sprawling, $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largess.

The Senate should reject this bill. If we do not, President Barack Obama should veto it."

The ObamaFest Team welcomes any voice in Washington that advocates an end to business as usual, and we continue to hope that the loudest such voice will come from The White House.

        

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From William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal:

"Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama's new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position.

The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program -- and with it perhaps the Parker children's hopes for a Sidwell diploma.

Known as the "Durbin language" after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that's so handy when you don't want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines....

All of which leaves the First Parent with a decision to make: Will he stand up for those like his own children's schoolmates -- or stand in front of the Sidwell door with Mr. Durbin? It's hard to imagine white congressional Democrats going up against him if he called them out on an issue where they have put him in this embarrassing position. This, after all, is a man who has written of the "anger" he felt as a community organizer, when his attempts to improve things for Chicago school kids ran up against an "uncomfortable fact."

"The biggest source of resistance [to reform]," he (Obama) said, "was rarely talked about . . . namely, the uncomfortable fact that every one of our churches was filled with teachers, principals, and district superintendents. Few of these educators sent their own children to public schools; they knew too much for that. But they would defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before."

Let's just say that Sarah and James Parker -- and thousands just like them -- could use some of that same Obama anger right about now."

The ObamaFest Team is calling out Senator Durbin for being a union whore and for being on the wrong side of History, the wrong side of morality, and the wrong side of these kid's futures.

        

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Tom Daschle?  Talk about a political hack of no real accomplishment.  I mean, WTF, was Dick Gephardt busy? 

The facts on the ground:

The Washington Post reports that Tom Daschle earned more than $5 million in the last two years, including $220k lobbying for the health-care industry that he is being nominated to regulate. 

Tom Daschle CHEATED ON HIS TAXES.  He chose not to report $225k in income from 2005 through 2007.  To Hell with Tom Daschle. 

We shouldn't be questioning whether he deserves to be Secretary of Human Services, we should be discussing whether he deserves prison time. 

Goddammit, President Obama, we didn't hump through Iowa snowstorms to get you elected so that you could foist Tom Daschle on us.  TOM DASCHLE????  

You need a bigger rolodex, Mr. President.  Get out, see the world beyond Washington D.C.  Reconnect with some old classmates.  Tell Rahm to look through that stack of resumes on his desk.  There is no excuse for a Tom Daschle appointment. 



 

        

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It was a lost weekend in Washington D.C. for the ObamaFest Team. 

After striking out the first night we took the advice of an old cabbie who said, "Y'all need to stop aiming so high.  Lotta women got passable looks if da room be dark enough, and D.C.s got plenty o' dark rooms." 

He told us to call over to Senator Boxer's office where, "There always be a few gals hoping to be trotted out."

He was right.  What started out as drinks in Georgetown moved on to Foggy Bottom bong hits.  Everything after is a blur until we awoke Inauguration Morning in a suburban dumpster.  We asked a local hobo where we were.

"You done be in Bethesda.  Maryland."
"Bethesda?  Isn't there a hospital here?"
"You know they is."
"Can you take us there?"
He looked us over. 
"It done be a military hospital," he said,  "You fools don't look military far as I can see."
He was right, but we were desperate.
"We're military in the sense that we're feeling general weakness and private remorse."
He fished a couple of aluminum cans out of our dumpster and headed off.
"What you all got is a major drinking problem."

It was wisdom from the streets, and it was matched later by the wisdom from the oval office, where President Obama kicked off his tenure by freezing senior staff salaries and announcing strict restrictions on lobbying by departing staffers.  This affects a tiny percentage of federal workers, but we know what President Obama is up to.  He's walking the walk before he talks the talk and goes after the ethical cesspool on Capitol Hill.  We love it.

The ObamaFest has begun.

        

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The ObamaFest Team arrived in Washington D.C. today.  Good thing we packed a sweater.

Kudos to Penny Pritzker for securing our lodging.  We worried about being exiled to the suburbs but Penny set us up in a government owned housing project in Southwest D.C.  The furnishings are threadbare but we have enough padlocks on the door to feel safe at night. 

Initially, we were intimidated by the crowd hanging around the building (the ObamaFest Intern compared it to a scene from The Wire, but the rest of us don't get HBO).  Our neighbor, Mr. Daniels, gave us some good advice, "Crackers like y'all better buy something, coming and going.  Aint no fucking wit' customers.  Bidness."  So we're getting quite a collection of  eight-balls.

Also staying in our building is Jason, a roadie for Bruce Springsteen.  We asked him if Bruce was going to play "Badlands" or "Hungry Heart" (two of our favorites) at the inaugural, but Jason said no, The Boss is going to play some folksy Tom Joad bullshit.  Then why does he even need a roadie - dude can't carry his own harmonica?  Anyway, Jason said that Bruce will crank it up at The Super Bowl, so we got that going for us, which is nice. 

On tap today is a trip to Cork,  a left-leaning wine bar featuring old cabernet and young women.  We'll keep you posted.

        

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While there are few Joe Biden fans on the ObamaFest Team, we still pity the man for being slapped-down, in front of his wife and the Secret Service, by the kids working at the movie theater Saturday night. 

"Employees at the Regal Brandywine Cinemas say the vice president-elect and his wife, Jill, tried to attend the 7:45 showing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at the theater on Concord Pike but left after they were told the movie was sold out.

Inshirah Muhamut, an associate manager, said she closed her box-office line when she saw what appeared to be a Secret Service agent coming her way.

The man asked her about tickets for the movie, which stars Brad Pitt, then left.

A few minutes later, she said, the Bidens came into the lobby.

Jill Biden walked up to speak with Muhamut while Joe stood nearby.

"She was asking me about other shows, but they really wanted to see 'Benjamin Button,' " Muhamut said. "He was maybe five feet away, looking at her. He was standing with his other Secret Service men."

Remarkably, none of the other moviegoers appeared to notice. Employees said nobody mobbed Biden or called his name or asked for an autograph."

It's endearing that Mr. Biden, loyal consumer of hair plugs, veneers, chemical tans and so many face lifts that he's getting Ho Chi Minh eyes, had his heart set on seeing a movie about a man who ages in reverse.

We don't like the fact that Joe sent in the Secret Service, followed by his wife, to do his bidding.  What, he didn't have any grandchildren to deploy?  C'mon Joe, stiffen up, show some spine.  While you're stepping over empty popcorn boxes in a half-empty theater that's still showing "Bolt," the world shakes it's head in disappointment.

Cheney would have gotten in.

        

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Item #1 on President Obama's to-do list: restore the idea that in America you get ahead through hard honest work. 

We've become a nation of high-class grifters, everybody looking for an angle, a scam, a quick score.  From Washington to Wall Street to the serial refinancers on your street, abusers of the system need to be held accountable.  And by "held accountable" we mean "locked up."

And we don't just mean the high-profile crooks, the Ted Stevens and Christopher Dodds and Bernie Madoff's of the world.  How about this guy:  Philip Toyotome.  Philip Toyotome was the principal of a magnet school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.  He stole $178 thousand  from the district using a district credit card.  The district got lucky and discovered his crimes during a routine audit.  And what was Toyotome's punishment?  He paid the money back and resigned. 

A man steals $178 thousand from a cash-strapped school district that is entrusted with the welfare of our children, and he doesn't go to jail?   Typical bullshit for the era of George W. Bush.  Hopefully it won't be so typical for the Obama era.  The ObamaFest Team believes in symbolism, and a great symbol of the restoration of integrity in America would be a prison cell shared by Stevens, Dodd, Madoff and Philip Toyotome.   

***UPDATE***  March 6, 2009 - The LA Times reports that Toyotome was sentenced to a year in county jail.  Sounds fair.  We hope his tenure in jail is safe and that he finds a satisfying place in society upon his release. 

        

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Sometimes the good guy wins.  For two years, Senator Obama's opponents have wallowed in smear and innuendo, abandoning intellectual discourse in favor of character attacks and personal slurs.

We expect Mr. Obama to stay classy right through Tuesday night, heeding Winston Churchill's words, "In Victory, magnanimity."  Mr. Obama is all about moving forward and not hanging on to grudges and/or bitterness. 

Which makes him a better man than us.  The ObamaFest Team is petty and vindictive.  But in the spirit of self-improvement we're ready to forgive those who, during this long campaign, acted like dicks. 

Absolution is hereby granted to:

Senator Clinton - Forgiven for hanging on long after Senator Obama clinched victory, hoping for the scandal that never occurred.  And forgiven for her absurd sense of executive entitlement and her snide and dismissive tone epitomized in her 60 Minutes statement that Senator Obama is not a Muslim, "as far as I know."

Senator McCain - Forgiven for being stupid.  Dude, that $750 billion "rescue" bill was the miracle you were praying for.  A "NO" vote and you'd be winning the election.  It was a mistake for Senator Obama to vote for it, but it was the safe move for the guy in the lead.  90% of Americans thought this bill was a stinker and our instincts are being proved correct.  The same corporate and political vultures that feasted on Iraq war contracts are gorging on this legislation and a real "maverick" would have stopped it.  You're no maverick, you're a high-mileage political gremlin.    

Sarah Palin - Forgiven for not keeping it real.  You were the only "outsider" in the race.  You could have spoken up for individualism, opportunity, The Constitution and common sense in government.  Abe Lincoln should have been your role model, not Bob Dole.  You wasted everybody's time by yammering on about terrorists and community organizers.  Regarding world events, your lack of knowledge was unfortunate, but it was your lack of interest that was unforgivable.  Read a newspaper.

Joe Biden - Forgiven for not shutting up.  You're only on the ticket because the Clinton's insisted on somebody who will be too old to run for President in eight years.  Evan Bayh was a deal breaker.  So stop already with the gaffes, grab yourself an iced tea, sit on the porch and watch the grass grow. 


This election is about the good guy winning.  The smart guy winning.  The right guy winning. 




 

 

 

   

        

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The ObamaFest Team enjoys college basketball nearly as much as we love politics.  So it was with heavy heart that we watched the Lute Olson saga play out in Arizona:

Not the kind of exit befitting a great college coach.  The word "erratic" comes to mind.  Which got us to thinking about another Arizona septuagenarian, Senator McCain.  We'll say it: he's dotty, ten years past his elect-by date.  He's not sharp and he knows it.  Like many a senior, he compensates with crankiness.

He makes us uneasy.  Picture your kids strapped into the the Camry.  Now picture John McCain getting behind the wheel. How's your peace of mind? 

So how could you consider giving this guy the keys to the country?  The "Straight Talk Express" can't lead the free world with a constantly blinking turn signal.


Don't put this man behind the wheel of America.






    

        

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"McCain has hardly been alone in his campaign to hide the scandal."
- Sydney Schanberg

The ObamaFest Team was excited about an election where competing ideas were discussed and debated, where bright people from both parties said, "Here's what we believe and here's why we think we're right." 

Instead we get Senator McCain and Governor Palin scurrying from rally to rally like rats in a KFC, stopping just long enough to lob "palling around with terrorists" accusations and to foment hatred in gymnasiums full of overfed, uneducated lollygagers. 

So be it.  They've conceded the battle of ideas to Senator Obama in favor of a battle of character attacks.  They will lose that one, too.  The Keating Five scandal is merely an appetizer on McCain's buffet table of shame.   

Sydney H. Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, offers this damning look at the real John McCain and the brave men left behind in Southeast Asia:

FULL ARTICLE

        

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It's finally unanimous at ObamaFest.  Our Chief Technology Officer, Taryn Sefecka, finally passed her little kidney stone of love for John McCain. 

When asked why, Taryn explained, "I've always  had this Top Gun fetish and here was my chance to vote for a real Maverick.  I mean, I saw McCain as Tom Cruise in fifty years.  I was dying for him to start referring to Governor Palin as 'Goose.' 

"But what I really admired was Senator McCain's pledge to veto any pork-laden bill congress might send his way.  I wept when he said at the convention, 'The first big-spending, pork-barrel earmark bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. I will make them famous, and you will know their names. You will know their names.' 

"Then this so-called rescue bill comes along.  You could argue that it's $700 billion of pork.  Or maybe not.  McCain voted for it, so it must be pork-free.  He gets the benefit of the doubt because he was a POW.  But after the House defeated the bill it was loaded up with $150 billion of pork by anybody's definition.  I know McCain's going to vote no, I mean, he can't vote yes for a bill that he would veto if President, can he?  Turns out he can."

We were surprised by her calmness.  Later, however, after two server crashes and three Red Bulls, Taryn really let loose:  "I actually sent that cocksucker money.  I bought the bullshit he was selling.  Now I question his whole biography.  'American Hero'?  Why?  Because he was shot down?  You know, they teach pilots how to evade surface-to-air missiles.  Maybe if he hadn't finished last in his class at The Academy, gone to a few more lectures, he wouldn't have lost the American taxpayers a $20 million jet. 

"I'm done with politics.  I work twelve hour days dealing with the fuck-ups in this office.  That's all the aggravation I can stomach."

Later, the ObamaFest Intern spotted Taryn down at Lou's (the local dive bar that Taryn insists on calling "The Officer's Club").  She repeatedly played "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" on the jukebox while muttering, to nobody in particular, "Forgive him, Goose."

        

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Homer Simpson, the archetypal blue-collar Hillary-voter coveted by Senators Obama and McCain, has emerged from his Springfield estate to pull the lever for the candidate of change:

 

        

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The silver lining to the California budget crisis is that the state has been forced to spring thousands of inmates early.  This means that Rocky Petralia is free to live-blog tonight's debate.  Enjoy.
-Nate Jastrow


From Rocky Petralia:

Thanks Nate.  And say what you want about Charlie Manson, the man knows his Scrabble.


Let's see what's happening.  I'm tuning in to the CNN feed.

6:00 - Wolf Blitzer tells us that both candidates will have to show that they are on top of the financial crisis.  Jesus, is anybody on top of it?

6:01 - Jim Lehrer welcomes us.  Pronounces his own name "Lera."  Is he serious or just making fun of Stephen Colbert?  Says audience has promised to remain silent - like on "Wheel of Fortune." 

6:03 - Candidates on board.  Lera quotes Eisenhower, "Military Strength depends on Economic strength."  Where do you stand on bailout package?

6:04 - Obama goes right to stump speech "We are at a defining moment...We have to move swiftly but wisely."  "This is a final verdict on eight years of failed policies of George Bush." 

6:05 - McCain shout out to Senator Kennedy (which won't win him anything and he just lost the Kopechne vote).  Starts storytelling about going back to D.C. and meeting with House Republicans.  "We have a lot of work to do."

6:08 - Jim Lera asks question again.  Obama says we haven't seen plan (could have said that 5 minutes ago).  McCain says he will vote for the plan.  Takes us back to Ike and D-Day and accountability.  Says he will hold people accountable, mentions his call for the head of Chris Cox (doesn't mention ignoring crooks at Fannie and Freddie).

6:12 - Obama calls for accountability even when there is no crisis. 

6:13 - McCain says Main Street paying penalty for Wall Street.  Main Street always loses, even at Disney World where Fantasyland kicks its ass.

6:14 - McCain says earmarking is a gateway drug.  Tells same joke about study of bear's sex lives that he told in Republican debate (nobody laughed this time - save that shit for the right wing loons).

6:16 - Obama points out McCain's tax cut for rich, says we must grow economy from the bottom up. 

6:19 - Candidates going back and forth about taxes.  My eyes are glazing over and my mind is wandering.  Word to the wise: if you ever have to go to prison, don't ask the guy behind you if the orange jumpsuit makes you look fat.

6:22 - McCain wants Obama to define "rich."  Obama says if you make less than $250k, you won't pay more taxes.  Works for me.

6:23 - McCain points out he voted against pork-laden Energy Bill.  Thinking about pork and energy together makes me think about steaming hot baby back ribs. 

6:26 - Lehrer brings us back to financial rescue, asks what candidates will have to give up, if elected, because of $750B rescue package.  Obama says some things will be delayed, but launches into what will not be delayed -energy plans, health care plans, blah blah.  Lehrer should step in because Obama is going off on his whole platform. 

6:28 - Lehrer gives McCain crack at question that Obama didn't answer.  McCain not answering it either, goes off on tangent about military procurement process.  Wake up, Jim Lera and make these people answer the questions you ask!  Crap, now Johnny Mac is talking about Boeing...

6:30 - Lera calls them both out for not answering question - nice!  Obama acts like he's going to answer it but----doesn't.  Says we need to change the culture, blah blah.  Lehrer presses the issue.  McCain floats the idea of a spending freeze.  Obama says that's using an ax when you need a scalpel, but at least it's an answer. 

6:33 - Screw the ax, now McCain talks about 45 new nuclear plants in USA.  Light 'em up!

6:38 - You tried Jim, but it's time for a new question.

6:39 - McCain says for the second time that he was not elected Miss Congeniality in the Senate.  And he lost the swimsuit competition by appearing to be naked in a white speedo. 

6:40 - We're on to Iraq.  Candidates give well worn talking points "I said the surge would work" "We never should have gone".  You know the lyrics. 

6:42 - Obama says surge worked, but points out that it was a tactic to cover up four years of mismanagement.  Goes on nice attack about all of McCain's mistakes. 

6:45 - McCain says that two years ago he was in Iraq to talk to troops.  Says they all said, "Let us win, we don't want our kids to come back here."  Says it wasn't a tactic, but a strategy that is working. 

6:47 - Obama says there was no difference on supporting troops, difference was on timetable.   Let's end war responsibly and in phases. 

6:50 - Jim Lehrer moves to Afghanistan (not literally, though who wouldn't like to own a pied a terre in Kabul).  Obama says we need more troops there.  Lays out agenda, including dealing with Pakistan and poppy trade.  Safe havens in Pakistan must be eliminated.  I think he feeds the "Obama is a Muslim" conspiracy when he pronounces it "Pocky-stan."  Wish he would say Packy like the rest of us.

6:52 - McCain says a lot of problems go back to helping Afghans beat Russians and then turning our backs on them (rent Charlie Wilsons War if this is news to you). 

6:54 - Obama resents being called "un-presidential" by McCain for hinting of military action in Pakistan.  Obama says it's a weak attack from a guy who threatened extinction for North Korea and sang about bombing Iran. 

6:58 - McCain goes back to '82 and his vote against Reagan sending troops into Lebanon.  Says he was tragically right.  Says he supported Bosnia intervention.  And Kosovo.  And Somalia.  Mentions his town hall meeting in New Hampshire.  Got bracelet from mom of dead soldier.  Feels like he owes it to her.  Knows how it feels for an Army to lose, and "we will win this one." 

7:00 - Obama has a bracelet, too.  His mother of fallen soldier asked that no mother have to experience her pain.

7:03 - Lehrer asks about Iran.  McCain says Iranian nukes would be "existential threat" to Israel.  Apparently the Iranians are reading Kierkegaard.  McCain says with French, British and Germans we can affect Iranian behavior. 

7:05 - Obama points out that Iran's influence has grown because of the war in Iraq.  Agrees - No Nukes for Iran. 

7:08 - McCain gets worked up about meeting world leaders "without preconditions." 

7:09 - Obama says he will meet with anybody if it will keep America safe.  Points out McCain's adviser, Henry Kissinger, agrees that we should meet with Iran without preconditions.  Adds that meeting without preconditions is not like "inviting somebody over for tea."  I think it's more like sharing a pitcher of Pabst.

7:12 - McCain disagrees with Obama's Kissinger claim.  Fifty years after the movie came out and two presidential candidates are claiming the allegiance of Dr. Strangelove.

7:15 - Lehrer bring up Russia.  Obama says we have to affirm the aspirations of all the democracies in the region.  Rattles off all the countries ("the Estonians, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Poles and the Czechs" -sweet- George W. would have said "the Lavatories, the Lutherans... ). 

7:20 - McCain said he went to South Ossettia.  Saw billboards.  Has Ossettian cred.  Warns us to watch out for Ukraine (duh, we've played Risk.  We're also concerned about Kamchatka).

7:21 - Obama turns discussion to Energy Independence.  Outlines his plan. 

7:24 - McCain says he supported Nunn-Lugar back in the 80's!?!  Beats me, sounds like a German convent.

7:25 - Last lead question - "What is the likelihood of another 9/11 attack on U.S.?  McCain says it's less than it once was.  Says we still have a long way to go in our intelligence services.  We have to work harder. 

7:28 - Obama says we are safer in some ways but still have a long way to go, points out transit and ports as big threats.  Says we are spending billions of dollars on missile defense but not enough on suitcase defense.  We need to take out Samsonite.  Says we are less respected around the world because of the actions the last eight years. 

7:30  - McCain brings up Reagan and SDI.  Then segues back into surge working and timelines not working. 

7:34 - McCain taking nasty tone about Obama not having experience.  Says he loves the veterans and will take care of them.  They're like puppies.  Says he does not need any on the job training. 

7:35 - Obama takes us back to his father wanting to come to school in America because there was no other place in the world like America.  Wants to send a message to the world that America is again like no other place in the world. 

7:36 - McCain says he was sad when he got back from 'Nam and so how veterans were being treated.



7:38 - WE ARE DONE.  Handshakes.  Wives come on stage.  Candidates last competition - wife groping.  Give the nod to McCain for slipping a little tongue. 
 



 



 

        

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Senator McCain's call for a delay of Friday's debate may impress the folks down at the League Office, but the ObamaFest Team isn't fooled. 

We call on Senator Obama to ask himself "What would Jesus do?"

Strike back:

        

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Most voters are sheep.  They'll vote for their party's pick no matter how inept or corrupt.  We call these jerkies:  "The Base. "

Presidential elections are determined by the 20% of sophisticated voters with an awareness of the world's many shades of gray.  They're called "Swing Voters" and they are often ridiculed by The Bases.  "How can you not know who you are going to vote for?" the Bases cry out with pseudo-intellectual disdain.

How?  Because Swing Voters know that Democrats and Republicans in Washington are bought and sold by the same interest groups.  Swing Voters examine both candidates for a sign, a glimmer of hope that one of them may have the balls to in some small way make in dent in the corrupt status quo.  And in the absence of any sign the Swing Voter will stay home or make a "fuck you" vote.  Fuck you, George H.W. Bush for breaking your promises and raising taxes, we're voting for Ross Perot - enjoy your retirement.  Fuck you, Al Gore, for ignoring the environment and Social Security for eight years as V.P. and then claiming to be obsessed with both - we're voting for Ralph Nader and we hope it costs you the election (it did!).

In this election John McCain is chasing the Swing Voters by claiming to be a reformer.  Great.  Show us the goods.  Name names.  Expose your colleagues in Congress, especially Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, who enabled and benefited from the trillion dollar fiascoes at Fannie and Freddie.  Call out your pal Alan Greenspan for his loose money policies that led to the now-popping housing bubble.  Take a stand against working-class taxpayers bailing out millionaire CEOs.  Hell, point out some of George W. Bush's mistakes - there are plenty to choose from.  

Lots of meaty targets for a reformer.  So who does McCain go after?  SEC Chairman Christopher Cox - a lame duck bureaucrat in a lame-duck administration:

 "The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission, kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino," Mccain said. "They allowed naked short selling — which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground."     

This multi-trillion dollar international financial crisis was not caused by a few investors betting that certain stocks would go down.  McCain's attempt to blame Cox suggests that the Senator is either a political fool or a political coward, and we vote for coward given his track record.  McCain never called Bush out for the fuck-ups in Iraq, instead attacking the "failed strategies of Donald Rumsfeld."  Of course, it was all President Rumsfeld's fault.

Abraham Lincoln fired six Generals during the Civil War.  McCain's knack for blaming political soldiers and leaving the Generals alone makes him unworthy of taking up Mr. Lincoln's old residence. 
 

 



 

        

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The ObamaFest Team has been laboring for Senator Obama since January of 2007.  The challenges have gone from insurmountable to completely surmountable.  Now, however things are looking dicey and we are calling out the Democrats who could fuck this whole thing up for Senator Obama:

Joe Biden - What is the name for that stage of grief where the sound of Joe Biden's voice causes a minibarf in your throat?  When he starts mumbling about how Hillary Clinton might have been a better pick, he has officially entered Admiral Stockdale territory.  Who are you, Joe?  What are you doing here? 

Barney Frank - Yabba dabba do, Barn, nice job defending the structure and strength of Fannie and Freddie right up to the point where the U.S. taxpayers were put on the line for hundreds of billions of dollars.  Democrats are trying to establish themselves as the party with the fiscal smarts and there you sit as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, looking as befuddled as a monkey at an ATM.

Nancy Pelosi - The voters demanded change in 2006 but unfortunately the Dems put this glassy-eyed, Katherine Helmond lookalike in charge.  Get out of your NorCal hot tub, Nancy, and DO SOMETHING!

Harry Reid - The most crooked politician in America.  Trent Lott's long lost brother.

Lindsay Lohan - Our advice to Li-Lo: Lie low.

Susan Sarandon - Parroting the Move-on gag that "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor" does not help the cause, Suzy.  Go back to Ron Shelton for your material, like the lines he gave you in Bull Durham: "I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex."

You bozos have two months to pull your shit together.  If you're not up to the task then just get out of the way and shut up.

        

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The McCain campaign has shifted into full-buffoon mode.  Their phony outrage over Senator Obama's criticism of Bush economic policies ("You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years") is the latest proof.

McCain, in fact, has used the same colloquialism.  Last year while criticizing health proposals from the Democratic presidential candidates, he said Hillary Rodham Clinton's resembled the failed plan she offered as first lady during the 1990s. "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," McCain said of her proposal.

What the ObamaFest team finds most troubling about this kerfuffle is how it distracts us from a major problem in America: those lonely bastards who actually put lipstick on pigs and other animals in order to fulfill their own twisted cravings.

        

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The Presidential Campaign Enters the Home Stretch.

The ObamaFest Team took off the last two weeks to rest up for the dash to the finish line.

Plus we hate party conventions.  They're like high school pep rallies with booze.  And behind the phony smiles you can see the desperation on the delegates faces, all sucking up to the candidate's inner circle in hopes of consideration for the appointments and patronage jobs that come with victory.  L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa looked as pathetic as one of those guys picking up trash next to the Golden State Freeway.  Can't we just make him Secretary of Unfaithful Latinos now, or is there a vetting process that would include Henry Cisneros?  Hey Tony, shouldn't you be back home figuring out why over 50% of this year's LAUSD high school freshmen will drop out before graduation? 

We also worked through our funk brought on by the Joe Biden VP pick.  If America can survive trigger happy Aaron Burr and Dick Cheney, not to mention Doc Brown look-alike John Caldwell Calhoun, then we ought to be able to endure Joe "Bright and Clean" Biden. 

The final stretch begins with Senator Obama sparring with Bill O'Reilly.  On national security issues the Senator does a great job of explaining that it's not prudent for a presidential candidate to include "I will bomb Iran" in his platform.



Senator McCain, on the other hand, sings about it:

        

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It's a shame we couldn't have an Obama/Palin ticket. 

Talk all you want about Joe Biden's foreign policy experience, but between Biden and Palin, only Joe Biden voted for the war in Iraq. 



A lot of us boarded the Obama-train two years ago because he was a Washington outsider who was against the war. 

Now Obama picks as his running mate the ultimate insider (in the Senate since 1973!).  Christ, when Biden entered the senate America was still in Vietnam yet he still didn't have the good sense to vote against the war in Iraq. 

Plus Biden is a chronic plagiarist  and a jackass. 

Having said that, don't miss what's going on over at HelloRocky.  They've got the answers to life's deepest riddles (unless you're struggling with midlife crisis issues, in which case you should visit LifeTwo).

 

        

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Forget what the ObamaFest Team said earlier.  The more we've seen and heard from her the more we realize that the right pick would have been Kathleen Sebelius.  When Biden shoots himself in the foot and withdraws from the ticket, we hope Obama uses his mulligan on Sebelius. 

        

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From MSNBC:

"EMPORIA, Va - Barack Obama says he's decided on a running mate, but he won't say who. "I've made the selection, that's all you're gonna get," Obama told reporters while campaigning in Virginia Thursday. Obama didn't say whether he's informed his pick yet.

Obama is planning to announce his choice in a text message to supporters sometime before Saturday afternoon, when he's scheduled to appear with his pick in Illinois.

Asked by an Associated Press reporter when the text would be sent, Obama just grinned and said, "Wouldn't you like to know?""

How Junior High can we get? 

And you're sending a text message to your precious $2300 clique first?  Will this be concurrent with a status update on Facebook?  Or a mass poke?  Hey, don't forget Twitter - your VP can start this campaign as a tweet. 

Please, Senator Obama, don't blow this now.  The ObamaFest Team has worked too hard. 

Here's all you need to know:  There are Obama faithful and there are McCain faithful.  Don't waste time with either.  You are fighting over the great middle, swing voters who usually decide based on which candidate pisses them off the least. 

This "I've got a secret" game is a blunder.

        

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Newsweek's Howard Fineman is the latest to predict:

Barring a big surprise or last-minute change of heart, the choice is likely to be Sen. Joe Biden of Deleware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sigh.  While Biden didn't make the ObamaFest VP shortlist, we get why Obama might pick the long-winded Delaweenie as a running mate.  Senator Obama has been on the national scene for a short time.  He doesn't have a ton of buddies.  At least he's acquainted with his Senate colleagues.  It's like your first quarter in the dorms when you eat every meal with the guys on your hall.

        

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Senator Obama missed a great opportunity last week to stop talking and take a bold stand on the Fannie/Freddie bailout. 

Senator Jim DeMint offered an amendment to the bailout that would bar political donations and lobbying by Fannie and Freddie.  Makes sense.  "Unseemly" is too weak a word for a system where Fannie and Freddie tuck millions into Congressional wallets while Congressmen turn around and lob billions of working men and women's tax dollars back at Fannie and Freddie.  DeMint's amendment seems like a no-brainer.

But speaking of no-brainers, Senate leader Harry Reid wouldn't even allow a vote on the amendment.  The current system is just too sweet for incumbents, Republicans and Democrats alike. 

It will take a new voice to bring change.  Somebody who can articulate how this contributes to the stench of Washington.  Somebody with huge platform and built in audience who has built up enough good will to survive the arrows that will come his way.  Somebody like...Senator Obama!

But so far?  Not a peep.

DeMintFest anyone? 

        

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Shout out to Bob Redford for putting this election in perspective.  Speaking in Ireland, Mr. Redford pointed out:

"I think Obama is not tall on experience . . . but I believe he's a really good person. He's smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change.

"I hope he'll win. I think he will. If he doesn't, you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye. I think we need new voices, new blood. We need to get a whole group out, get a new group in."

Word.  Welcome to the world of ObamaFest, young Bob.  If Obama goes down then the Democratic Party remains in the hands of same old scoundrels and idiots, including:

-The Chris Dodds and Barney Franks, both taking favors from the U.S. banks they should have been regulating, and both now crafting taxpayer bailouts of said banks.

-The Hillary Clintons and Joe Bidens, both with the blood of 4,000 U.S. soldiers on their hands, yet both refusing to apologize.

-The Harry Reids and Steny Hoyers, both possessing the most awful combination of hatefulness and incompetence.

- The Nancy Pelosi's and Rahm Emanuels, squandering the mandate of the 2006 election that gave them the power to clean up Congress.  Thanks for the continued earmarks, kids, along with the continued war, deficits, housing crisis, and runaway government spending. 

- And all the fucking do-nothings who simply take their fat paychecks and cushy pensions while watching the country go down the shitter.  Were looking at you, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Kent Conrad, Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer. 

The point Mr. Redford is making, which we completely agree with, is that despite all of Barack Obama's electoral successes, there are not a lot of Barack Obama-types coming up behind him. 

These are the stakes of this election.

        

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Reverend Jackson forgot the old adage, "Don't cut off your nuts to spite your race."




And he said all this in the city he once called, "Hymie Town," an uncalled for dig at all the robotic secret agents that call Gotham home.


"99, I think he has even less of a pulse than Jesse Jackson!"

        

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"If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all."
Barack Obama - The Audacity of Hope

Senator Obama needs to get started on "Change we can believe in" by calling for the resignation of these two senators:


Conrad and Dodd reap a bountiful harvest from the
garden of hypocrisy. 


We find out now that Senators Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd received special loans from Countrywide Financial.

From MSNBC.com:

It is impossible to believe that the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committe (Conrad) and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (Dodd) did not know prevailing mortgage rates and were therefore ignorant of the special deals they received. 

These "Friends of Angelo" represent all that is wrong in Washington.  They present themselves as "public servants" who "humble themselves" for the good of the American People when they, in fact, are getting theirs while the getting is good.   The hypocrisy must end.  These two must go, if for no other reason than to remind the rest of Congress that business as usual is no longer acceptable. 

        

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Jim Johnson is part of the stench of Washington D.C.  Mr. Johnson made over $20 million running Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored but shareholder-owned company, and at the same time took special low interest loans from Countrywide Financial.  We can't figure out how this behavior isn't criminal.  But that's Washington.

Senator Obama erred in naming Johnson to his VP Search Team. 

Now that Johnson has stepped down, the ObamaFest Team is stepping in.  We'll give Senator Obama the short list he deserves.

We start with the usual suspects: Democratic Governors and Senators.  We're not going to go off the board with active or retired military personnel - that's how you end up with an Admiral Stockdale-type mumbling "Who am I?" during a national debate.

Some of our disqualifiers may seem petty, like nepotism or toupees.  But if you're in the same high office your father held, then your achievement is tainted.  And if you think that people won't notice that you've taped a rug to your head, then you are too delusional to be a heartbeat away from The Button.  And while we hate ageism in general, we do think that Senator Obama's opponent is too old to be President, and we therefore eliminate anybody older than McCain.

We'll start with Governors.

Governors Missing the Cut (reason in parentheses):
Mike Beebe – Arkansas (toupee)
Bill Ritter – Colorado (pro-life)
Ruth Ann Minner – Delaware (older than McCain)
Rod Blagojevich – Illinois (corrupt)
Chet Culver – Iowa (booze)
Steve Beshear – Kentucky (incompetent)
John Baldacci – Maine (tax-happy)
Martin O’Malley – Maryland (toupee)
Deval Patrick – Massachusetts (inexperienced)
Jennifer Granholm – Michigan (ineligible – Canadian born)
Brian Schweitzer – Montana (too cowboy)
John Lynch – New Hampshire (last name)
Jon Corzine – New Jersey (mistress problems)
Bill Richardson – New Mexico (dopey)
David Paterson – New York (more baggage than the carousel at La Guardia)
Ted Kulongoski – Oregon (climate change nutbar)
Christine Gregoire – Washington (haunted by fishy election decided by dead voters)
Joe Manchin – West Virginia (toupee)
Jim Doyle – Wisconsin (corrupt)
Dave Freudenthal – Wyoming (toupee)

Governors Making the Cut:
Janet Napolitano – Arizona 
Kathleen Sebelius – Kansas
Ed Rendell – Pennsylvania
Phil Bredesen – Tennessee
Tim Kaine – Virginia
Mike Easley – North Carolina
Ted Strickland – Ohio
Brad Henry – Oklahoma

Here are your Democratic Senators:

Senators Missing the Cut (reason in parentheses):
Sherrod Brown – Ohio (one-note protectionist)
Barbara Mikulski – Maryland (older than McCain)
Ron Wyden – Oregon (60 year old man with trophy wife and year old twins at home! No way to get the female vote.)
Mark Pryor – Arkansas (nepotism: father was a U.S. Senator)
Edward Kennedy – Massachusetts (nepotism & booze)
John Kerry – Massachusetts (The most sedated man in America.  Listen to him drone on while a kid gets tasered after asking Kerry a question.)
Robert Casey – Pennsylvania (nepotism – Father was PA Governor)
Barbara Boxer – California (Incompetent)
Dianne Feinstein – California (Loves her job so much she will probably die in office.  Problem is, who will notice?)
Debbie Stabenow – Michigan (Tainted by Indian casino money.  Plus husband’s hooker problem).
Carl Levin – Michigan (Danny DeVito-esque)
Jack Reed – Rhode Island (Big Government drone)
Sheldon Whitehouse – Rhode Island  (“A Sheldon can do your income taxes, if you need a root canal, Sheldon's your man... but humpin' and pumpin' is not Sheldon's strong suit. It's the name. 'Do it to me Sheldon, you're an animal Sheldon, be my VP big Shel-don.' Doesn't work.”)
Ken Salazar – Colorado (Alberto Gonzalez link)
Amy Klobuchar – Minnesota (farm subsidy addict)
Chris Dodd – Connecticut (Throw this Countrywide whore in jail!)
Joe Lieberman – Connecticut (lost his Joe-mentum)
Tim Johnson – South Dakota (toupee)
Joe Biden – Delaware (plugs, caps, face lifts, tanning bed – the George Hamilton of Capitol Hill)
Claire McCaskill – Missouri (personal baggage)
Max Baucus – Montana (Jack Abramoff link, voted for Iraq War)
John Tester – Montana (looks too much like Biff from Back to the Future)
Ben Nelsen – Nebraska (earmark abuser, possible criminal--steered federal pork to company his son works for)
Daniel Akaka – Hawaii (aloha)
Daniel Inouye – Hawaii (mahalo)
Harry Reid – Nevada (disoriented)
Patrick Leahy – Vermont  (a dim bulb in a dark closet)
Jim Webb – Virginia (toupee)
Dick Durbin – Illinois (owned by the farm lobby)
Bob Menendez – New Jersey (ethics problems)
Frank Lautenberg – New Jersey (older than McCain)
Maria Cantwell – Washington (too much coffee)
Evan Bayh – Indiana (nepotism – Senator’s son)
Jeff Bingaman – New Mexico (yawn)
Robert Byrd – West Virginia (older than McCain’s mother)
John Rockefeller IV- West Virginia (“you don’t have to be a Rockefella’ to help a fella”)
Ton Harkin – Iowa (hack)
Hillary Clinton – New York (honest Iago)
Charles Schumer – New York (While Dodd is in Wall Street’s back pocket, Schumer’s scratching things up front)
Herbert Kohl – Wisconsin (older than McCain)
Byron Dorgan – North Dakota (Abramoff stench)
Kent Conrad – North Dakota (Throw this Countrywide whore in jail!)

Senators Making the Cut:
Mary Landrieu – Louisiana
Russ Feingold – Wisconsin
Patty Murray – Washington
Bill Nelson – Florida
Blanch Lincoln – Arkansas
Ben Cardin – Maryland

Others Making the Cut:
Sam Nunn – Co-Chair of the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative).  Georgia Senator from 1972-1997.

This wasn't hard at all. 

Here it is, your 2008 VP Short List:
Janet Napolitano – Arizona 
Kathleen Sebelius – Kansas
Ed Rendell – Pennsylvania
Phil Bredesen – Tennessee
Tim Kaine – Virginia
Mike Easley – North Carolina
Ted Strickland – Ohio
Brad Henry – Oklahoma
Mary Landrieu – Louisiana
Russ Feingold – Wisconsin
Patty Murray – Washington
Bill Nelson – Florida
Blanch Lincoln – Arkansas
Ben Cardin – Maryland
Sam Nunn – Co-Chair of the NTI

Unfortunately for the ladies, Obama can't pick a woman.  He would be perceived, among females, as the guy who broke up with one of their girlfriends because he didn't want to get married, then turned around and got engaged to the next woman he met.   It sounds ridiculous, but it's true, and Obama needs to respect the way these broads think if he wants to be President. 

So Here is the True Short List:
Ed Rendell – Pennsylvania
Phil Bredesen – Tennessee
Tim Kaine – Virginia
Mike Easley – North Carolina
Ted Strickland – Ohio
Brad Henry – Oklahoma
Russ Feingold – Wisconsin
Bill Nelson – Florida
Ben Cardin – Maryland
Sam Nunn – Co-Chair of the NTI

At this point we offer two choices to Senator Obama, depending on what he wants from his Vice President. 

If he wants a man who looks good in the role of a President-in-waiting, he goes with Russ Feingold. 

If he wants a man who is a day-to-day working asset of his administration, he goes with Sam Nunn. 

Done deal.  We will forward this to Caroline.

        

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"...and I will be making no decisions tonight."


The ObamaFest Team experienced an emotional letdown on the night Senator Obama finally clinched the Democratic nomination for President.  

Partly to blame: Mrs. Clinton's creepy non-concession speech.  The junior senator from New York went all Carmella Soprano on us- she doesn't admit defeat, her husband knows people, favors are owed.  Too bad for her that Mr. Clinton went from being Capo di tuttie capi to a lumbering cafone.  And even with the help of his consiglieres and his big earners, she didn't have enough to go to the mattresses with Barack "Barry Oboe" Obama.

But our mood soared when, after two days of scouring the international press for worldwide reaction to Senator Obama's win, we found a pick-me-up in, of all places, Nigeria.  The words are from Prof. Pat Utomi in Lagos:

"Obama's victory must be opportunity for serious reflection. Seeing the grave irony of our House of Representatives rejecting the Freedom of Information Bill on the day a more open society saw Obama cross the tape of the Democratic Party nomination process should help us realize in Nigeria that "Urgency" of now" to use a Martin Luther King Jnr phraseology is a recognition, in kings own words that "when evil men plot, good men must plan". When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.  Where evil men should seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice."  Good men and women in Nigeria must arise, draw inspiration from this Obama moment and make our country rise from the ashes of corruption, poverty and mutual distrust into the glorious future that is its potential," he said.

On to November!

        

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Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico's in America!
   -lyrics by Stephen Sondheim



Congratulations to Senator Clinton for her victory today in Puerto Rico. 

While the ObamaFest Team normally opposes Congressional earmarks, in this case we'd like to see Mrs. Clinton show proper gratitude and send that tiny island its first limousine. 

Vote for the best in America,
No time to rest in America,
November test in America,
Obamafest in America! 

        

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Senator Obama's willingness to engage in talks with our adversaries has elicited accusations of "appeasement" and comparisons to Prime Minister Chamberlain and his accords with Hitler. 

Radio Host Kevin James made the mistake of wandering down this path on "HardBall," only to get smacked down by Chris Matthews when it turns out James knew nothing about Chamberlain, the Munich Agreement, or the meaning of the word appeasement.   James ends up yapping like an intellectual chihuahua, barking out from his living room window at a world he doesn't understand.

 

As Matthews points out, appeasement is "giving away things to the enemy, not talking to the enemy."

        

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"McCain says we should win in Iraq by 2013.   So we got that going for us.  Which is nice." 

Breaking News:

Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen.

Senator McCain's extended timetable is poignant news for these guys:



Eighth graders.  War in Iraq through 2013 means that these kids will get their chance to patrol hostile streets, disarm booby traps and expose themselves to sniper fire in Bush and McCain's war of choice. 

With all the sensitivity that Senator McCain has shown this election season, he has quickly become the Judge Smails of American politics:

        

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A Clinton precinct captain rushes a West Virginia voter to the polls.



What do you get when 32 West Virginians come together?  A full set of teeth.

Hillary Clinton is already spinning her impending victory in West Virginia as reason enough for her to stay in the race.  Dingleberries!  Winning the hillbilly vote is no great accomplishment. 

From Wikipedia:

West Virginia's GDP was $55.6B in 2006, which was a 0.6% increase from 2005. This makes growth rate for the state the 2nd lowest in the nation, behind only Michigan.

Even the ObamaFest intern, who hails from West Virginia, puts little faith in the electorate.  She points out the inherent dichotomy of West Virginia, "Despite their professed Christian faith, West Virginians could not find in their midst three wise men or a single virgin."

How many West Virginians does it take to eat a 'possum?  Two, one to eat it and one to watch for cars.

The ObamaFest Team apologizes to the small percentage of West Virginians with internet access who may be reading this.  Even though you have your monitors up on blocks we welcome you to the 21st century.

        

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From the film Philadelphia:

Joe Miller: What do you love about the law, Andrew?
Andrew Beckett: I... many things... uh... uh... What I love the most about the law?
Joe Miller: Yeah.
Andrew Beckett: It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done. That really is quite a thrill when that happens.

Tom Hanks felt the thrill for real today when he announced his Obama endorsement:




It would be great if more Hollywood A-listers joined the ObamaFest, but that will never happen.  As the ObamaFest intern likes to say, "Stupid is as stupid does."

        

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Senator Obama took time out from campaigning in Indiana yesterday to read (via satellite) Letterman's Top Ten list.  Given the turmoil of this past week, the list was surprisingly tepid and unfunny.  The blame rests with Letterman's writers who, for the last few years, have been phoning it in. 

We asked the ObamaFest Intern to suggest some better answers to Top Ten Surprising Facts about Senator Obama.  She quickly offered:

10.  Since running for president he still lathers and rinses - but no longer has time to repeat.
9.  Stopped watching "Real World" after the Las Vegas hot-tub orgy. 
8.  Once tried to sell Hope to America - on ebay - but reserve was not met.
7.  Started winning primaries after reading Oprah's copy of "The Secret."
6.  Supports home state of Illinois with subsides for corn, coal and - if SB1060 passes - stuffed pizza.
5.  Hopes to unite Democrats and Republicans but could care less about "those Peace and Freedom kooks."
4.  Actually likes baseball's Designated Hitter rule.
3.  Flummoxed that former pastor and former president are losing their marbles at the same time.
2.  He only eats arugula because it's so much fun to say "arugula."
1.  When asked what kind of president he will be, favorite answer is "Millard Fillmore on steroids."

        

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Roger Waters closed the Coachella Music Festival with the timely reminder that Senator Clinton is just another brick in the wall. 

INDIO, Calif. (AP) — Roger Waters brought Coachella to a close with an epic two-set performance that included playing all of "Dark Side of the Moon" and unleashing a giant inflated pig into the night sky.

The pig, which was led above the crowd from lines held on the ground, displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The other side read "Fear builds walls."

The underside of the pig simply read "Obama" with a checked ballot box alongside.

Rogers had already tipped his hand when, following the Texas primary, he politely referred to Senator Clinton as ghastly:

Of course, nobody sets out to be ghastly.  But sometimes too many harsh blows in life, too much betrayal, and your youthful idealism lies bleeding by the wayside:

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

        

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Ike and Dick share a chuckle when Julie asks, "Why can't a black man
be President?"


Senator Obama is not just blowing smoke up our kilts when he says he can unite Democrats with Republicans and Independents.  The latest proof is Julie Nixon Eisenhower who supported the Obama campaign with the $2300 maximum contribution. 

Clinton apologists are still not convinced.   Fine.  The ObamaFest Team will prove that Senator Obama is the ultimate uniter.  Our top intern has set out to find a supporter named Trudy Lincoln Reagan. 

        

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The ObamaFest Team has once again brought in Rocky Petralia from HelloRocky.com to Liveblog a debate.  His chronicling of January's South Carolina debate set the standard for seat-of-the-pants journalism.  Tonight's (4/16/08) Pennsylvania debate promises to be a dandy. - Nate


Thanks for having me back, Nate.  And speaking of dandies, nice sweater vest.

7:57 - Watching Wheel of Fortune while waiting for debate to start.   The finished the game early and are showing home video of Vanna's cat.  Merv Griffin just rolled over in his diamond-encrusted casket.

8:00 - Charlie Gibson setting the stage.  Introducing candidates.  Applause from crowd.  The seats all have bars - the audience looks like they are seated in a thrill ride.  Hands and arms inside, people.

8:03 - Obama opens.  Struck by decency of Pennsylvania people.  Mentions guy in Latrobe who can't afford gas to look for a job.  I've got an uncle like that, Senator - if you buy him gas he drives to a tavern. 

8:05 - Clinton promises to restore our standing in the world. 

8:05 - First commercial?!?? Four minutes in? 

8:07 - Charlie leads off.  Says candidates appeal to different constituencies.  Quotes Gov. Cuomo who wants candidates to pledge now to take the other as running mate.  Charlie wasn't sure whether to start with an absurd or a banal question.  He went with the banal.  No wonder I haven't watched ABC since they pulled Love Boat.  btw- both candidates dance around the question.  Nice waste of the first five minutes, Gibson. 

8:12 - Gibson brings up Obama's "bitter" quote.  That guy in Latrobe just popped open another Rolling Rock.

8:14 - Senator Clinton says she is granddaughter of bitter Scranton factory worker.  Says she can see why people would be offended by "bitter" remarks. 

8:16 - George Stephanopoulos finally speaks.  Asks Clinton if she thinks Obama can beat McCain.  She dances around the question like Gene Kelly with an umbrella.  George asks again and she says, "Yes, Yes, Yes" but that she could do a better job.

8:18 - Obama says Clinton could also beat McCain.  Adds that he is not condescending to people of faith because he is a person of faith.  And he listens to gun owners.  Early gun pander.  I get the feeling that everybody in Penn. is packing heat. 

8:20 - Clinton says she has 35 year proven record of results.  That means she's been bringing it since '73.  That puts her up there with Springsteen, who btw endorsed Obama today.


"Baby I got my facts learned real good right now..."

8:22 - Charlie now brings up Rev. Wright issue.  I guess Charlie prepped for debate by scanning a People magazine.  Stephanopoulos hasn't looked so embarrased for a colleague since Sam Donaldson got caught taking farm subsidies.

8:24 - Charlie now asks Clinton if she thinks all 8,000 members of Rev. Wright's church should have gotten up and walked out.  She mentions 9/11 attacks were on "her city."  Way to pick up the Guiliani indignation.

8:26 - George follows up on Rev. Wright and how Obama will handle Republican attacks on Rev. Wright.  I guess you play down to your colleague's level.

8:31 - Senator Clinton says Rev. Wright issue deserves further exploration.  Says "as leader's we have a choice who we associate with."  Brings up Farrakhan.  Charlie cuts her off before she can link Obama to Wesley Snipes tax evasion.

8:32 - George says six out of ten voters don't think Senator Clinton is honest or trustworthy.  Brings up sniper fire in Bosnia issue.  George must have read Charlie's People.  Where are the War on Terror questions?  Taxes?  Government waste?  Coal subsidies?  I should be asking questions, not sitting here wearing one sock.

8:34 - Snuffleuphagus asks Obama if he thinks Senator Clinton has been truthful about her past.  Obama says people make gaffes when they are recorded all-day, every-day. 

8:37 - Charlie runs tape of some Pennsylvania broad asking Senator Obama if he believes in the American flag.  Like it's the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot.  I don't know, all the pictures I've seen of the flag look grainy and doctored. 

8:41 - George brings up some Weather Underground guy who Obama knows.  He is a neighbor of Obama in Chicago and an English Professor.  In not so many words Obama tells George to pull his head out of his ass. 

8:43 - Senator Clinton jumps on this.  Says Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers.  Says "Republicans will raise this issue" - nice way to excuse yourself for throwing dirt by saying the Republicans will throw dirt.

8:45 - Obama mentions that President Clinton pardoned two members of the Weather Underground.   Well played, Barry.

8:46 -  Charlie says he is getting out of balance.  No shit, Charlie, go back to morning TV and interviewing the cast of Desperate Housewives.

8:48 - Commercial break.  So the first hour goes by without a single question on a substantative issue. 

8:49 - Verizon ad for wireless broadband. Like anybody with broadband would be wasting time watching ABC. 

8:51 -  Video question from Mandy Garber of Pittsburgh.  How do we get out of Iraq?  The scoreboard that tallies Good Questions reads: Mandy Garber 1; Chuck Gibson 0; Snuffleuphagus 0. 

8:52 - Clinton will start withdrawing in 60 days.  No more blank checks for the Iraqis. 

8:54 - Charlie asks her if she is saying she knows more than General Petraus.  She says that "nobody can predict what will happen as we withdraw" so there is no way she can be challenged on this.  I think she just gave herself a blank check.

8:56 - Charlie asks Obama if he really can get us out in sixteen months.  Obama reminds Charlie that the Commander-in-Chief sets the mission and the military executes the mission.  That's how we got in this mess and that's how we'll get out. 

8:59 - George turns to Iran.  Should we treat an attack on Israel as an attack on the U.S?  Obama says job one is to keep nukes out of Iranian hands.  Believes we can offer them carrots and sticks.  Why not just carrot sticks?

9:01 - Clinton talks about creating an "umbrella resistance" that goes beyond Israel.  Which is fine unless it gets real windy.

9:03 - ABC goes to side stage camera angle.  We see a booth above the stage with the "Deal or No Deal" banker. 
9:03 - Charlie puts down phone.  Tells Hillary that previous offer of Vice-President has gone down.  New offer: Secretary of Interior.  Hillary looks up at Gov. Rendell, Chelsea and Wesley Clark.  They are shaking their heads "no".   She declares, "No Deal."

9:04 - George turns to economy - says it's the number one issue on American's minds (which explains waiting an hour to get to it???).  Asks if economy is still weak in a year will she still raise taxes on rich people.  She says sure - people making over $250k will pay more.  Charlie Gibson looks queasy. 

9:05 - Obama says he will cut taxes on middle-income ($75k or less). 

9:09 - Obama says 50 hedge fund people made $29 billion last year.   That guy in Latrobe just switched to boilermakers.

9:10 - Obama believes in pay as you go.  Don't cut taxes unless you're eliminating spending. 

9:11 - Clinton says Bush has been good for rich people, but it was better in the 90's when everybody got lifted up.  Camera pans crowd of bored Pennsylvanians. 

9:12 - Charlie follows up strong on capital gains tax - will you pledge not to raise them?  When not reading People, Charlie has been talking to his broker.

9:17 - Charlie wants to go to a commercial but he brought up Social Security so both candidates have to get in their Social Security talking points. 

9:19 - Commercial Break -  what is this "Divided We Fail" celebrity ad about?  Aw, who cares.

9:20 - Some kid with allergies just sneezed on his mom.  Children's Benedryl ad.  Right, give your kids drugs.  God forbid they should sneeze once in a while.  And by the time that kid turns 40 he's going to need a new liver and not know why.

9:21 - Jamie Lee Curtis pitching yogurt.   "Hell yes, I'll sit on this couch and eat this yogurt that makes me crap."

9:23 - We're back.  Charlie says he would be remiss if he didn't mention one year anniversary of crazy Korean bastard at Virginia Tech.  Axis of Evil, people.  It's real.  Charlie turns to gun control. 

9:24 - Clinton keeps talking about "Mayor Nutter."  The Beavis in me wants to laugh.  Wants assault weapon ban, says cops are outgunned on streets.  My idea: Since you can't take away the assault weapons, give the cops bazookas. 

9:29 - Obama asked about individual gun ownership rights.  Obama says local governments have rights to regulate gun ownership.  Mentions legacy of hunting in America.  Is against criminals and retards having guns.  The criminal thing is a politically safe position, but the retard proposal alienates a lot of Texans.

9:30 - George asks Clinton if she supports D.C. gun ban.  She starts to dance away from question, George makes her answer question, she says she doesn't know the facts. 

9:32 - George does quick shift to affirmative action.  Asks Obama about rich black kids getting advantages.  Obama says he believes in affirmative action, but not quotas. 

9:35 - Clinton against No Child Left Behind.  For lower interest rates on student loans. 

9:36 - Questions coming quick now.  Charlie and George realizing they pissed away the first hour and a half. 

9:37 - Charlie asks about gas prices.  Clinton says markets are being manipulated.  Brings up windfall profit taxes.  Wonder if it would apply to the fifty New Yorkers who made $29 billion?

9:38 - Obama also calls for windfall profits tax.  Wants to raise fuel standards on cars.  Wants alternative energy strategy.

9:39 - George asks Senator Clinton how should would tap into President Bush once he is an ex-President.  She says it would take careful thought.  Obama says he would rather talk to Bush Sr. 

9:40 - Charlie says one more commercial and than a final question.  I wonder if anybody but me is still watching this turkey.  Even that guy in Latrobe has moved on to foosball.

9:41 - Hey!  The Geico caveman!  Wonder who he's going to endorse.  Dollars to donuts it's Nader. 

9:45 - Charlie - "minute and a half each - what do you say to undecided delegates?"  Clinton goes first.  Says she is going to make everybody feel like they are part of the American family again.  "I will tell everybody who listens that I am ready to be commander-in-chief."  She shouts out to the General Clark.  "You know that I will fight for you."

9:48 - Obama - "Americans had lost trust in their government.  I bet on American people being tired of politicians tearing things down....change starts from the bottom up....my bet has paid off, American people have responded in record numbers...."

9:55 - Debate ends.   Time for the "insta-polls" to see who won.  But I already know - the real winners are the those Americans who skipped this dud and watched HSN - btw, I bought Chef Todd English's GreenPans and they rock. 

Thanks Nate!

Rocky Petralia
HelloRocky.com

        

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Tho road to the White House goes down E Street. 

Bruce Springsteen today endorsed (via his websight) Senator Obama:

Dear Friends and Fans:

LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.

This comes on the heels of ObamaFest friend Rocky Petralia's recent blog about the Springsteen concert in Anaheim.  Rocky, whose spirits are constantly pulled down by a swirling undertow of pessimism, was guardedly pleased when he heard the news, quoting The Boss:

Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
you wake up in the night
With a fear so real
Spend your life waiting
for a moment that just don't come
Well, don't waste your time waiting

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood
and these badlands start treating us good.

        

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Not everyone has time to read Senator Obama's speech in Philly.  Some prefer political Pringles, those bite-sized quotes with just enough intellectual salt to satisfy their crude ideological palates. 

For them, we offer Senator McCain's words today on his Middle East swing through Jordan:



McCain in Baghdad, "very pleased" to be waving to a U.S. bound transport.


For those, however, who crave more intellectual and inspiring words, enjoy the following: (full text)

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. 

        

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Professional boxing is in the crapper thanks to champion inflation.  With all the governing bodies and all the weight classes, the amount of championship belts in circulation is right up there with the ten dollar bill.  Even the ObamaFesta accountant claims a share of something called the NorCal Senior "Super Light Welterweight" title.  

Contrast boxing with professional politics, which is as popular as ever, thanks in no small part to George W. Bush's long reign as the undisputed Biggest Moron on Earth.

He handily defended his title during his 2/28 press conference, first with his jabbing ignorance of gas prices followed by his hee-haw haymaker when he addressed Senator Obama's willingness to talk to America's adversaries:


Sure, that's it.  World leaders want to meet with George W. Bush so they can say "Look at me!"  That's the photo they all want to put on their Christmas cards.   Jackass!

And if we don't talk to tyrants than why does Mr. Bush spend so much time meeting with the Russians and the Chinese?  We know you liked what you saw in Mr. Putin's eyes, Mr. President, but we are curious how you'd react to a meeting with the Dalai Lama and to his story of ethnic cleansing in Tibet.

Tyrants are like cockroaches, Mr. President.  They don't scurry until you shine the light on them.



...or until you eat them.

        

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Showing typical union patience and waiting until he was on "golden time," Teamsters President Jim Hoffa announced his union's backing of Senator Obama. 

To put this endorsement in perspective,  the ObamaFest Team directs your attention to The Onion.

        

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Being called "The Dumbest Man in Texas" is kind of like being called the wettest guy in the pool.

But still, here's what Mark Davis, WBAP radio host and Dallas Morning News columnist wrote, after a week in which Senator Obama won his tenth straight primary election:

"As the Barack Obama Traveling Hope and Change Show pulls into Reunion Arena today, his campaign has to be looking for a change in the wind.

Hillary Clinton's prospects for winning our state March 4 are alive and well, partly because Texas Democrat politics and demographics favor her, and partly because Mr. Obama is having what professional observers call "a really bad week.""

So what made it a "really bad week?" (btw- since when did the shrill voices in Mark Davis's own head count as "professional observers?):

"First came the harmless but odd YouTube montages of peculiar fainting spells at his campaign events, with the candidate repeatedly offering water and presumptuous claims that the fainter "will be all right."

Guess they take their YouTube montages very seriously down in Texas - in sharp contrast to their distaste for libraries and anything too "high-fallutin'".

" Then came the sheepish admission of his theft of inspiring rhetoric from Deval Patrick's 2006 campaign for Massachusetts governor. Again, not a big deal, but an embarrassment an heir apparent to his party's presidential nomination does not need."

Senator Obama did not sheepishly admit to theft.  Deval Patrick works for the Obama campaign and gave the Senator the lines.  Obama admitted that he should have given credit (not that this would placate Davis, who couldn't tell his ibid from his op. cit., and who is known to parrot Rush Limbaugh - though without all the three syllable words that confuse Texans).

"The topper came as Mr. Obama's wife delivered the shocking insult that nothing in the last 25 years had made her proud of America."

Fine.  If this election is going to turn on spousal gaffes the Obama camp is in great shape as long as a certain former president keeps breaking his shackles to launch frothing tirades. 

        

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Hillary Clinton's communication director, Howard Wolfson, has accused Senator Obama of plagiarism, claiming that the Senator stole from a speech given by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

This episode plays out poorly for Wolfson, who ends up looking like the pontificating schmuck in "Annie Hall" who gets intellectually body-slammed by Marshall McLuhan. 

In this case, Governor Patrick does the body-slamming:


Finally, if there is any plagiarism at all, it is Wolfson himself stealing the iconic look of "Actor's Studio" host James Lipton.



"Your least favorite word?"  Lackey.

        

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The Los Angeles Times editorial board has endorsed Senator Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Reaction around the ObamaFest office ranges from mild surprise to outright flabbergassiness.   The new ObamaFest Intern, after spending a moment with her thesaurus, admitted to feeling "waylayed."

The ObamaFest Team chronicled the L.A. Times year's worth of snarkiness towards Senator Obama, including editorials, op-eds and elsewhere throughout the paper.

Thus today's endorsement leaves us flummoxed--in a good way.

 

        

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The ObamaFest Team celebrates another blow to the status quo:




StatusQuo.org, aka The Los Angeles Times, is expected to endorse Senator Clinton at any moment.



h/t: Independent Sources

        

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While major media remains myopically focused on breaking down the female, African-American, Latino and Evangelical demographics, one category has been shamefully overlooked: how are Hulkamaniacs going to vote? 

That was answered last night on Jimmy Kimmel as Hulk Hogan announced he would be tag-teaming with Senator Obama.

The ObamaFest Team doesn't hate Stallone for endorsing McCain.  We pity the fool.




UPDATE:  2/13/08 - Hulk backtracks on The View, says he's confused.  Translation: Producers of "American Gladiators" did not want a host with political views that alienate half the country.   When the man signing paychecks asks the Hulk to jump, he knows enough to reply "Off of which turnbuckle?" 

        

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Chivas Regal all around!  Today The ObamaFest Team has a designated blogger while the rest of the office celebrates Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Senator Obama.

"It is time now for Barack Obama," the Massachusetts senator and brother of the late President Kennedy added.

He stood with Obama, his son Rep. Patrick Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy before a screaming capacity crowd of students at American University in Washington, DC.

"Like you, we want a president who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American dream," he said.

"I've found that candidate. And it looks to me like you have too," he said.

While this election is not about the past but about the future, today we are making an exception and going back about twelve years, to the point in time when this elixir was concocted:

        

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Miss Teen South Carolina - such as she is.


While it's true that "some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and while our education, such as South Africa and the Iraq should help our education over here, such as in the U.S.," it is also true that South Carolinians put on their thinking caps for at least one night, mapped their way to the polls and gave Senator Obama a sweet victory:

Former Sen. John Edwards was third with 18 percent.

        

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Heads Up!  The ObamaFest Team has brought in Rocky Petralia from HelloRocky.com to Liveblog tonight's (1/21/08) debate from South Carolina (8:00pm Eastern on CNN). - Nate


ROCKY:
Thanks for having me, Nate.  This should be fun.

Wolf Blitzer has put on his game face - and he still looks befuddled.


8:00 (Eastern): Candidates coming out one by one.  Like start of an NBA game.  Where's the Salt n Pepa music?

8:02: Can already tell that the audience will be insufferable tonight.

8:04:  Suzanne Malveaux tells us people are suffering, afraid.  Candidates posing for pictures on stage.

8:05:  Joe Johns says economy and war will be issues.  Do ya think?

8:06: Housekeeping - Candidates should use circadian clocks in keeping answers to "a minute, minute and a half.

8:08:  Joe Johns asks Clinton, "How much money would your stimulus plan put in pockets of South Carolinians?"  Clinton: "$70B to deal with mortgage crisis.  Millions of Americans in danger of being homeless.  Give people $650 to pay energy bills.  Put money in clean energy jobs."  Then she mentions Congressional Black Caucus and MLK, just because.

8:11:  Senator Obama says King marched for jobs as well as justice.  Points out he was against Iraq war (didn't see that coming on economy question).  Suggests $500 tax rebate (we're glad he didn't weasel and call for $651 rebate to top Clinton). 

8:13:  Edwards not for rebate. Mentions MLK.  Was against Free Trade deal and NAFTA. 

8:16:  Obama says Dow may go down 5% tomorrow.  Get me Schwab!  Also calls NAFTA a mistake. Says Edwards vote for free trade with China was a blunder. 

8:17:  Clinton says worldwide markets crashing is "a wake up call."  Schwab!  Edwards says he can create Green Collar Jobs within 30 days.  Adds Peru to his shit list.  So it's China and Peru causing our problems - hopefully in that order.

8:22:  Suzanne Malveaux reads a Clinton charge that Obama says is untrue.

8:23: Clinton says Obama said Republicans had good ideas (which he didn't, he said they were the party of ideas, not that they were good).  Obama slams Hillary by pointing out he was fighting Reagan policies while she was on board of directors of Wal-Mart. 

8:27:  Getting nasty.  Now he accuses her of praising Reagan.  Let's see who hates Reagan more.  Take back control, Wolf.  Somebody wake up Joe Johns.  Hillary says Obama represented slum lords.

8:30:  Edwards steps back in.  "This kind of squabbling - how many kids are going to get health care because of this.. " Big applause line.  Picking up the Bill Richardson role of peacemaker.

8:35:  Joe Johns comes out of slumber.  Asks about African Americans being sold more sub-prime loans per capita.   Asks if blacks were targeted with these loans.  Edwards says yes.  Legacy of slavery, segregation, discrimination still keeping blacks down.  Wolf quotes Greenspan who says bailouts simply prolong the agony.  Clinton says she was calling for action since last March. (?)  She says her moratorium is "a work out, not a bail out."  Obama brings up Clinton's admission that she voted for Bankruptcy bill but hoped it wouldn't pass.  Wolf lets Obama explain slum lord charge.  Nicely played, Wolf.  Russert would have stumbled forward like the deaf dolt that he is.

8:41:  Clinton throwing out mud about Obama's record in Illinois legislature.  Obama is getting mad.  Clinton says Obama never takes responsibility for any vote.  Crowd actually boos her.  I change my mind about the crowd - they're cool. 

8:48:  Now Edwards picks on Obama for voting "present" in Illinois.  Obama explains it's a technical way to oppose a bill you might agree with but would like to see modified.  Why is this hard for Edwards and Clinton to understand?

8:50:  Suzanne Malveaux turns to health care.  Clinton says her plan would be comprehensive but not government run. 

8:53:  Joe Johns asks Obama if his plan covers illegal immigrants.  Obama says no.  Johns says why not?  Obama says because we have limited resources.  Okay Joe?  Go back to sleep.

8:55:  Edwards says Obama has taken more money from Drug Companies than anybody and Clinton has taken more insurance money than anybody.  Obama says it's from individuals, not PACs. 

8:59: Edwards is wearing a big honking wristwatch.  Looks like a hockey puck.

9:00:  Clinton says Obama's policy is not universal. 

9:02:  Joe is up again!  Asking Clinton about Iraq, "Are you planning to end this war or win it?"  She says there is no military solution.  Edwards says surge is not working. 

9:10:  Turns out they all want us out of Iraq.


Commercial Break:  Wolf is teasing us with promise of a new set and "no rules" when we come back.  He's giddy.

Sponsor turns out to be AMERICA'S COAL INDUSTRY.  Holy shit.  I guess we're not coming back to hard hitting questions about Obama's coal subsidies.

9:18:  We're back.  Sitting down.  Wolf asks Obama about Charlie Rangel supporting Hillary.  Obama says he looks forward to working with Charlie once he's President.

9:21:  Edwards mentions MLK again.  Hillary against poverty for children.  Also against poverty for black people. 

9:25:  Obama comes out against poverty as well.  It's unanimous.

9:29:  Edwards comes out against Bill O'Reilly.  Didn't see that coming.  Clinton or Obama better come out against Limbaugh. 

9:31: Joe Johns asks Obama if Bill Clinton was our first black president.  Jesus.  Obama says he would have to see Bill dance before calling him a brother.  Wondering what would have happened if Senator Obama  responded, "It's hard to call a man "our first black president" if he has never felt the sting of the word "nigger."  Probably would have made Joe Johns head explode.  All over Wolf Blitzer. 

9:34:  Hillary mentions MLK.  Says she is reminded of one of her heroes, Frederick Douglas, and quotes him.  Then quotes MLK.  Where the hell is the Harriet Tubman quote?

9:37:  Obama brings up inequalities in Justice system. 

9:38:  Edwards stakes out Southern roots. 

9:40:  Suzanne Malveaux asks Clinton if her husband should tone it down.  Hillary says he feels very strongly blah blah blah...and then adds question is ' who can lead from day one?'

9:42:  Obama says nice things about Bill Clinton, but points out that he's acting like a jackass.

9:45:  Edwards conceding Republican nomination to John McCain.  Says he can beat that old man.


COMMERCIAL BREAK #2


9:52:  Obama says he can beat McCain too.  And he is a proud Christian. 

9:53:  Hillary says she can beat any old white man the GOP puts up. 

9:54:  Getting hungry.  I just opened a bag of beef jerky and my dog ran in from the other room.  I had to close the bag and remain hungry. 

9:56:  Candidates arguing about who takes money from whom.  My dog doesn't care - I'm bored too.

10:00:  Wolf has one final question: If Dr. King were alive, why should he endorse you?  (Wolf, you stumbled at the tape). 
Edwards: "Because I met with MLK III and I fight poverty."
Obama:  "MLK would not endorse any of us.  He felt change does not happen from the top down, but from the bottom up."
Clinton:  "Dr. King cajoled."  She gives shout out to John Lewis and Jim Cliburn in the audience.  Still no mention of Harriet  Tubman or Maya Angelou.

Handshakes all around.  Wolf plugging future debates on  CNN.  Stay tuned for Anderson Cooper 360.



Thanks again to the ObamaFest Team for letting me Liveblog tonight's debate.  - Rocky Petralia

        

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And we thought Iowa was buggered up.

The buildup to the Nevada Caucuses included lawsuits, finger pointing, a frothing ex-President, and The ObamaFest Team rolling craps at the Mirage with Senator John McCain:


In favor of a chip surge.

Most of the turmoil within the Democratic Party was over how the culinary workers would be represented.  Why not?  Where better to put the future of The Republic than in the hands of that guy who keeps undercooking the eggs at the Rio buffet?

Caucus day found Senator Clinton edging Senator Obama in the popular vote, yet Senator Obama gathered 13 delegates to Senator Clinton's 12.  This is democracy in action?

And what is South Carolina's problem that they can't hold Republican and Democratic primaries on the same day?  Too hard keeping the ballots separate?  South Carolinians are the reason McDonalds had to install cash registers with pictures of the different burgers on the keys. 

Which state is going to rise up and restore order to the process?  God forbid it might actually be Florida.

        

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Senator Obama's knockout punch is his ability to inspire.  Finally, his trainers have convinced him to set up his opponents with some crisp jabs.  Speaking at a Las Vegas town hall meeting:

The ObamaFest Team applauds the use of the well-timed quip and we hope for more.  We caution the Senator, however, to stay within himself, stick to witty jests and avoid flailing wisecracks.  Our cultural landscape is littered with the carcasses of high-flyers who crashed while trying to be funny.  Lest we forget:
     - Don Imus
    - This idiot in Colorado just two days ago
    - The chick who works for The Golf Channel (and the Golf Week editor who was insane enough to follow her lead and put a noose on the cover of his magazine - just thank God these people aren't pilots!)
    - John McCain (btw- he continues to try too hard to be funny.  We predict a gag gone bad will end his campaign)
    - moveon.org
    - Fuzzy Zoeller
   
Comedy is not easy.  People get the wrong idea.  They watch Jay Leno - every night making the obvious jokes about the obvious headlines - and they think "I can do that."  Wake up people!  You don't have Jay's audience - busloads of Iowans whooping it up in Burbank, painting the town red with their government subsidy money.  And even they don't laugh all that much.  They applaud.  Jay tells one of his yawners and they think, "That sounded clever, I better clap."  Even Jay is sick of the whole sham.  His lifeless eyes indicate he needs to walk away now, not in two years.     
    
    
    
     

        

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Annoying claim by Senator Clinton: She is the only candidate who is " Ready to lead on day one."

She implies that Senator Obama would wander around the White House in his grubbies looking for a place to plug in his lava lamp.  Shut up already.  She's like the annoying person in the office who hears that you're going to Italy and has to drone on about her experience there - like she invented Italy. 

The ObamaFest Team is done with politicians who treat us like rubes.

        

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Leave Hillary alone!


By now Senator Clinton's tears have dried into crusty morsels to be displayed in her Presidential Library should she actually win this thing. 

The Obamafest Team is happy to take one final leak into the Piscataqua River before leaving New Hampshire for good.  Although the final vote count gives a slight edge to Senator Clinton, the real winner is Democracy.  The race is wide open.  After all the fuss, Iowa and New Hampshire, those twin collectives of pompous underachievers, settled nothing. 

The two major parties now open up their contests to the rest of the nation, where good hard-working people will be allowed to participate in charting the future of America using the power of 'one-person one-vote.' 


 

        

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Well there's one year out of our lives that we'll never get back. 

At least Senator Obama came out on top:

"The numbers tell us this was a debate between change and experience, and change won," said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider."

The ObamaFest Team is pleased that the absurd spectacle of would be world leaders crisscrossing Iowa--the oversubsidized, undereducated, soft-underbelly of the war on obesity--is finally over. 

Wake up Iowans!  The candidates, their sycophants and the slobbering press corps are done with your state.  Your only chance of seeing any of them inside your borders within the next four years is a jet crash landing in one of your cornfields. 

Once again you'll have your diners to yourselves to gather over your "Hungry Man Breakfasts" to gossip and show off your subsidy checks.

        

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The Establishment mouthpiece Los Angeles Times stoops to cherry-picking* some negative comments from readers of Oprah's blog in an attempt to tarnish the enthusiasm she has generated for Senator Obama.

From Times reporter Tina Daunt:

The article taps into the paper's history of deliberately sloppy reporting, omitting any mention of positive feedback and failing to put the above numbers into any sort of context (What are Oprah's total page views?  What if 12,000 people viewed the "Oprah is a traitor" rant while two million people looked at her recipe for sweet potato pie?  Wouldn't we want to know how sweet potato pie eaters are voting?).

FYI: Tina Daunt is the same reporter who wrote a celebratory piece titled "Hillary Clinton Enjoys Renewed Hollywood Clout."  Their candidate "enjoys clout" while the other guy is "shoved down our throats."  Add this to your "things to fix" list, Mr. Zell.


*You don't really pick cherries by stooping, unless they're on the ground, at which point they're probably not worth eating.  You do stoop to pick strawberries, but "strawberry picking" is not an accepted idiom.  Finally, it's every man for himself when it comes to rhubarb.   

        

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Clinton staffer reacts to recent Iowa poll numbers.


Job One for a politician is to find the voter's pulse.  That simple task can be almost impossible when, as Senator Clinton is finding out, you've lived a life of disdain for common people, keeping them at arm's length from you and your elitist circle. 

Latest example: ABC News reports that Senator Clinton has launched two new websites dedicated to attacking Senator Obama - Votingpresent.com and Votingpresent.org.

"The Clinton campaign intends to use these new Web sites to paint Obama as cowardly.

Clinton has attacked Obama for having occasionally voted "present" as an Illinois state legislator when it came to contentious legislation."

Given the mood of the American voter, the Clinton campaign is revealing itself as laughably out-of-touch and pathetically incompetent. 

Struggling to rationalize, they sink further into the electoral quicksand with:

"The Clinton campaign disputed the notion that its pending attack websites will be the first, noting that after it was revealed that Clinton had taken questions from supporters at events, Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, in November launched the short-lived website PlantsForHillary.com, purporting to be from various forms of flora supporting the New York senator, though that website was taken down after a day."

PlantsForHillary was a funny little gag (surprising, we know, for Senator Edwards) that the Clintons are using it to justify unfettered mudslinging. 

And there's more:

A Clinton campaign official argued that Obama's campaign has a website called HillaryAttacks.BarackObama.com, which catalogues criticisms Clinton has made about the Illinois senator.

HillaryAttacks.BarackObama is a well organized page that simply links to mainstream news reports of Senator Clinton's negative attacks.  So the Clinton camp accuses Obama of going negative by keeping track of Senator Clinton's negative attacks.  That type of illogical logic might work when you're berating your cadre of sycophants, but on the internet the words linger, like thought balloons in a comic strip, and contemplative Americans bear witness to just how cartoonish your campaign has become.    

        

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After a slow panning shot across the political landscape, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has endorsed Senator Obama for President. 

Burns concluded by asking viewers to call the number on their screen and pledge their support.

        

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Senator Clinton's effort to make an issue out of Senator Obama's teenage drug use has backfired, leading to the ouster of her New Hampshire co-chairman, Bill Shaheen, and giving many swing voters a case of the Obama-munchies.

Slate's John Dickerson points out:


Three weeks until the Iowa caucuses and Senator Obama is forging ahead.  What a long, strange trip it's been.

        

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Maybe it's a sign of global warming, but longtime observers marvel at how quickly Senator Clinton's lead has evaporated.  According to the Concord Monitor:
O-mentum.

        

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The truth may hurt, but it's still the truth.  Ryan Lizza's  New Yorker article contrasts Senator Obama's specifics with Senator Clinton's textbook vagueness:


"Vote for me, I can be whatever you want" may get you elected but, as Senator Obama points out, it limits your ability to effect change once in office:

        

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The Obamafest Team has returned stateside and rejoined the battle for a more righteous society.  Our international sojourn brought us greater appreciation for where America is today, along with a greater understanding of where we need to be tomorrow.  These last few months we have delivered a paucity of postings.  That changes now.  

The New York Times reminds us why we joined the fray in the first place, exposing the Clinton team's embrace of old-school slash and burn politics:

DES MOINES – Presidential campaigns have unlimited appetites for information about their rivals. They track their whereabouts, they study their records and they obsessively follow nearly every movement. By this point in the race, though, it would seem a candidate’s work history would have already been sufficiently combed through.

Apparently not.

If there was any question whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign was concerned about the rise of Senator Barack Obama, here is a fresh example: A deputy campaign manager for Mrs. Clinton sent an e-mail yesterday, trying to find out about Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer in Chicago.

The deputy campaign manager is Bob Nash, who served as White House personnel director in the Clinton administration. In March, Mr. Nash left his position as vice chairman of Chicago ShoreBank to join Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Here is the text of his e-mail, with the addresses redacted:

From: Bob Nash
To:
Sent: Sun Dec 09
Subject: BARACK

HOW ARE YOU ?? I AM FIGHTING HARD >

SECOND ARE YOU PEERSONALLYAWARE OF TH EWORK BARACK DID ON THE SOUTH
SIDE WITH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION S , ETC ./. BOB

WHAT DI DHE DO AFORE HOW LONG AND WITH WHO ??

PLS TELL BOB HELLO BOB

Bob J Nash
Deputy Campaign Manager
Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee
4420 N. Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203

—

Mr. Nash, 59, did not respond to an e-mail request seeking comment. A campaign official said he was unaware of the matter, but would look into it.

The Obamafest Team sends the following reply to Mr. Nash:

HLLO BOB,

RE: WHAT DI DHE DO AFORE HOW LONG AND WITH WHO ?? 

READ BARACK'S T WO BOOKS ABOUT WHAT HE D ID AFORE AND DEN U WONT BE SUCHA IGNUNT DIRT DGGING TOADY.

PLS ASK HILL 'SUP WIT ALL DAT?

        

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The NY Times Robin Toner discovered that women voters can be as thoughtful and intellectual as the candidate they support:

In the end, Ms. Lloyd-Jones said she finally decided that Mr. Obama was the more progressive candidate, and her progressive instincts trumped her feminist instincts.

Monica Fischer, a consultant to nonprofit groups in Iowa, described overcoming similar conflicts before endorsing Mr. Obama. Ms. Fischer added that on the weekend of the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, “We pulled together a group of 30 undecided women to have coffee with Michelle Obama, and you could just feel people going through the same struggle I did, and coming to the point of saying, ‘I feel O.K. about this.’”'

        

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It's no secret that Oprah likes Obama, and now Newsweek reports that  all 1,500 tickets have been sold for the Sept. 8 fund raiser Ms. Winfrey is hosting at her Montecito estate.  That's a lot of people for one house, especially given the way party-going folk always crowd into the kitchen.  But we're guessing that Oprah's pad (below) has more than one kitchen, along with a big yard for mingling, frisbee tossing and, given that this is Santa Barbara County after all, impromptu games of hacky-sack.

 


Stevie Wonder and BeBe Winans are set to entertain the O-listers, who include John Travolta, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and newly pregnant Halle Berry.  Not on the guest list: Quincy Jones, who is ensconced in the Clinton Camp, and the entire ObamaFest team, who will be honoring a prior commitment to a Solvang Traffic Court. 

        

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Confronted with the merits of Senator Obama's proposal to loosen restrictions on Cuba, the pro-Clinton Los Angeles Times did the following:

1.  Sat on the story for four days before printing a brief endorsement in the lightly circulated Saturday edition.
2.  Complained that the Senator's plan doesn't go far enough.
3.  Finished the editorial with the patronizing, "Score One for Obama:"

Obama's right on Cuba

The candidate's call to end the U.S. ban on travel and remittances to Cuba should go even further.

Los Angeles Times - August 25, 2007

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, determined to cast himself as the Democratic presidential candidate most open to new ideas on foreign policy, raised plenty of eyebrows recently when he proclaimed that he would be willing to meet personally with such rogue figures as Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. But that was nothing compared with the opinion article he published Tuesday in the Miami Herald saying Cuban Americans should have unrestricted rights to travel and send remittances to the island.

The other Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who portrays herself as the experienced foreign policy realist next to Obama's cowboy diplomat, wasted no time in rejecting Obama's proposal. Her campaign released a statement saying the U.S. stance toward Cuba shouldn't be altered until a post-Castro regime cleans up its act. Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani, meanwhile, said Obama's plan would only strengthen Castro's oppressive government.

The astonishing thing here is that after the U.S. has tried for nearly 50 years to force a regime change in Cuba by way of economic embargo with no success whatsoever, Obama is one of the few presidential contenders who dares to suggest that it's time to try something different. Some might consider Obama's move courageous given the political power of Florida's Cuban American community, which helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000 and has cheered his efforts to tighten sanctions on Cuba. But the minority of Cuban immigrants who vote Democratic is deeply divided on the travel ban and would like to be able to send more money to relatives at home, so Obama may not be staking out such a bold position after all.

Regardless of the political implications, Obama is clearly right -- the only problem is, his proposal doesn't go far enough. The travel ban should be lifted for everybody, not just Cuban immigrants. It is the height of irony that Americans can freely travel to countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which represent genuine threats to our security and economic interests, but not to Cuba, whose government is a threat only to its own people.The ban has done nothing to weaken Castro, but it does keep U.S. tourist dollars out of the hands of Cubans, who might be less inclined to heed their regime's anti-U.S. propaganda if Americans were helping to raise their standard of living.

The U.S. shouldn't lift all economic sanctions on Cuba until the island's regime makes progress on democracy and human rights, but policies such as the travel ban and limits on remittances are simply counterproductive. Score one for Obama.

The ObamaFest Team scored one for Obama when, in 2002,  he referred to the plan to invade Iraq as "dumb and rash."  And we have deducted one point from the other candidates for every flag draped casket. 

        

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Forget trying to figure out the heritage of a name like Zbigniew Brzezinski.  The former national security adviser (and potential Wheel of Fortune puzzle nightmare) is now a citizen of Obama Nation thanks to his endorsement of the Illinois Senator:

Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival Hillary Clinton.

Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world,'' Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's  "Political Capital with Al Hunt.''

"Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand,'' Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said. "He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.''

Brzezinski was born in Poland in 1928, but thanks to his diplomat father he lived in both Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930's and bore witness to the rise of Naziism and the Stalinist purges.  His family moved to Canada where he earned a B.A. and M.A. before going on to Harvard for his PhD. 

From Wikipedia:

During the 1960 presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern Europe. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis)...

And so on and so forth, advising presidents, formulating policy, and working with world leaders for the last 47 years.  His intellectual credentials and experience should at least partially offset the endorsement Senator Clinton received from Magic Johnson.

        

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Senator Obama visited The Daily Show and offered a dose of humility seldom found in the U.S. Senate:

Obama suggested that presidential candidates who have been governors have an advantage over those who have been in the Senate, which he described as "paralyzed" and "designed for you to take bad votes."

"A governor is more likely to set the terms of the debate," he said. "They can give a speech, they can say, 'This is my initiative, this is my proposal. I won't sign it unless I agree with it.' Dealing with senators, you end up, you know, having to actually vote on stuff that has no relevance whatsoever but can be used later on to attack you."

The ObamaFest Team wishes that the Senator had gone even further and pointed out that the majority of Senators are pontificating windbags in public, while behind closed doors they're focused on grabbing earmarks for friends and family back home.  Of course, Mr. Obama's segment was very short - but there's always  The Colbert Report.

        

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CNN, showing how dope cable news can be, digs deep to report that the hip-hop world is aware of Senator Obama and his campaign:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vibe magazine has dubbed him "B-Rock." He's getting shout-outs in some of the most popular hip-hop singles of the summer. He's even had a high-profile meeting with Ludacris.

Barack Obama might not be leading the Democratic presidential field in national polls, but the freshman senator has managed to capture the imagination of the hip-hop community, comprised mostly of rap artists, music industry professionals, activists and young fans of all races.

...Then there's "Say Something," a new track from the popular Brooklyn-based lyricist Talib Kweli, who raps: "Speak to the people like Barack Obama." 

"More than anything his name is a nugget of lyrical gold," said Kweli. "It sounds like a gunshot going off ... Obama rhymes with a lot of things."

Kweli told CNN that Obama, 46, is a "refreshing face like [Muhammad] Ali in '63" and that among Kweli's friends, Obama would win a presidential poll overwhelmingly....

Although there was no Ali until 1964, the ObamaFest Team digs Kweli's comparison of Cassius Clay in '63 to Barack Obama in '07 - two rising heavyweights set to topple the establishment's champion.  Clay was a year away from crushing Sonny Liston, just as Obama is a year away from...



 

        

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When a batter goes 0 for 45, you sit him down.  When a foreign policy goes 0 for 45 years, politicians who want to be President stick with it for fear of offending Floridians.  Until now.

Senator Obama has come out in favor of easing restrictions on Cuba. 

MIAMI - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the United States to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home.

Obama’s campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families.

“Senator Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. “His concern is that this has had a profoundly negative impact on the Cuban people, making them more dependent on the Castro regime, thus isolating them from the transformative message carried by Cuban-Americans.”

Senator Obama's position was made easier by the fact that the Cuban-American community is coming around to the policy of realpolitik.  Nonetheless, it is one more issue where the Senator is out in front of the other candidates, who must now check with their pollsters before deciding on an appropriate response. 

        

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As Jaap Van Ballegooijen is fond of saying, "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."  L.A. Times reporter Tina Daunt demonstrates that they shouldn't get in the way of a poorly-written story, either.

Here's the headline from Friday's article:

Hillary Clinton enjoys renewed Hollywood clout

An early infatuation with Obama's candidacy appears to be fading among the ex-first lady's Hollywood supporters. By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer

THE ARTICLE'S SHORTCOMINGS:

1.  It does not list one Obama supporter that has switched allegiance and fallen into the Clinton camp.  Its single claim of a possible defection is Steven Spielberg:

"Clinton's presidential bid has begun to regain momentum over Obama's in the entertainment industry.  In fact, it's become so strong that Steven Spielberg, once considered a solid supporter of Illinois Democrat Obama, is now believed to be leaning in favor of Clinton, according to longtime industry politicos. (Spielberg's political spokesman, Andy Spahn...when asked about Spielberg's political thinking  "We have nothing to announce")"

But Spielberg never endorsed Obama, and from the start has been open about his support for a number of Democrats.  When Spielberg participated in an early Obama fund raiser, Spahn made it clear:

"Spahn added that Spielberg "expects to be helpful to a few candidates during this exploratory phase," and may host fund raisers for Clinton and John Edwards as well. "Spielberg likes John Edwards and has a relationship with him -- those are the two who he also likes.""

2.  The article lets a Clinton flack peck away at Senator Obama without allowing the Obama camp to respond:

"Like Democrats across the country, Hollywood activists are still wondering whether Obama has the experience to tackle the country's problems in these dangerously troubled times. "Sen. Clinton continues to impress people, and the more times people see her and listen to her, the more they view her as presidential material, which she absolutely is," said consultant Noah Mamet, who represents Clinton loyalist Casey Wasserman. "She helps herself immensely every time she visits L.A."

Mamet thinks the industry's flirtation with Obama was just a passing fancy, a bit of what-if casting, as in, what if we could get Brad Pitt to play Albert Schweitzer?

"People were intrigued by [Obama], didn't know him, and came out to see and hear him for the first time earlier in the year," Mamet said. "He was like a big opening weekend for a film, which has a drop-off the next week.""

We're not sure what the "drop-off" is that Mamet refers to.  It certainly has nothing to do with the latest polls.

3.  The article tries to create hype where none exists. 

" The former first lady wowed crowds last week, said longtime Hollywood political consultant Donna Bojarsky. "There was a good turnout of Hollywood folks at Chernin's -- J.J. Abrams, Jodie Foster, Tobey Maguire, Brian Grazer -- and they all seemed pleased and receptive," said Bojarsky, who has not yet announced whom she is supporting in the race."

So in Tina Daunt's eyes, if you seem "pleased and receptive" you are in fact "wowed."  That being the case, I was "wowed" this morning by the banana my wife sliced into my Nut'n'Honey cereal, and I shall be "wowed" again later by the inevitable late-morning bowel movement.

The ObamaFest team has chronicled the L.A. Times work on behalf of Senator Clinton here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Yet despite the newspaper's work on behalf of the ultimate establishment candidate, Senator Clinton's poll numbers have been taking the same kind of hits as the newspaper's circulation numbers.  We expect both trends to continue and advise reporter Tina Daunt to take the package. 

        

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Matt Damon joins Oceans Thirteen co-star George Clooney on the ObamaFest bandwagon:

Shall we talk politics for a moment? I'm sure like most actors you're all watching the Republican field, just waiting for a candidate to get behind.
CLOONEY: I'm just hoping Gingrich gets in. Come on, Newt! Actually there's a really good field out there. I like Barack Obama a lot. I've spent some time with him.
PITT: You just cost him votes.
CLOONEY: I've actually had that conversation with him, just saying "Look, I'll give you whatever support you need—including staying completely away from you." Actors have done a lot of damage to candidates lately. My father ran for Congress in 2004, and it was "Hollywood vs. the Heartland!" My father was Hollywood.
PITT: I'm just hungry for some honesty and leadership. And I'm following them all—on all sides.
DAMON: I'm an Obama guy too. I think a lot of the problems in the world would be mitigated if he were the face of our country. I haven't ever met him or talked to him, but he's the first person in a long time who I've been inspired by.
CLOONEY: When other politicians stop and listen, that's how you know what charisma is. You can't teach that. He walks into a room and you go, "That's a leader."

It's good to have Damon on board.  The ObamaFest team gravitated to Senator Obama thanks to his sound judgment in opposing the Iraq war from the start.  Damon's monologue in Good Will Hunting sums up that fiasco better than we ever could:

Change "two-fifty a gallon" to "three-fifty a gallon" and the whole speech is Nostradamium.

        

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The only thing worse than a debacle is an open-ended debacle.  Senator Obama held his ground this week and voted against an Iraq spending bill that failed to include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops. 

"The way that we are going to show that we support the troops is by [starting to bring] some of them home," the Illinois Democrat told an international convention of more than 1,200 members of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. "That's our message to George Bush. That's our message to John McCain. That's our message to Mitt Romney. That's our message to the Republicans in Congress. It is time to bring this war to a close."

Romney and McCain reponded with the synchronized precision of a two-man luge team from Romney's Winter Olympics:

"I was very disappointed to see Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton embrace the policy of surrender by voting against funds to support our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," McCain said in a Friday statement. "This vote may win favor with MoveOn and liberal primary voters, but it's the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda."

Obama, meanwhile, pointed to the high level of security McCain needed for his recent visit to Iraq. "Sen. McCain required a flak jacket, 10 armored Humvees, two Apache attack helicopters, 100 soldiers with rifles by his side, so he could stroll through the market in Baghdad just a few weeks ago for a photo op," Obama said. "That's the truth in Iraq. The truth is this war has cost us thousands of lives and made us less safe."

In fairness to Senator McCain, it was more than just a photo op.  He secured a very fair price on a rug for his Georgetown Mansion.

Senator Obama was in the minority of the 80-14 Senate vote to fund the next two months of the war.  What is most surprising is that Senator Clinton, in the spirit of the ongoing America's Cup races off of the Spanish Coast, checked the political winds and joined Senator Obama on the losing side of the vote.  Dick Morris puts the NY Senator's vote in perspective:

The hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton in voting against funding is stunning. In 2002, she voted for the war. When we found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, she reaffirmed her backing for the war. Dozens of times she has stated and restated that she would never agree to a timetable for withdrawal and that she would never vote to cut off funding while we had troops in harm’s way. Now she has gone back on all her nevers and cast precisely the vote she said she never would.

As recently as January 17, Hillary said, “I’m not going to cut American troops’ funding right now — they’re in harm’s way.” She went on to say “I am not for imposing a date — certain withdrawal date.”

In the past 10 days she has not only voted for a withdrawal date, but also voted to cut off funding for the troops if no such date is included in the legislation.

What has changed? The polls. Surveys show Democrats support a funding cutoff and a date certain for withdrawal three to one. With John Edwards running to Hillary’s left, using her timidity in opposing the war as the raison d’etre of his candidacy, Hillary dared not vote her conscience or conform to her previous positions on the war. She had to back the left to prove her bona fides for the primaries.

Which is why the ObamaFest team, in response to Senator Clinton's call for a campaign song, respectfully suggest the Alan Parson's Project "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You."

        

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Rueters is reporting:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Barack Obama, a U.S. presidential candidate, said on Tuesday he backs centralizing federal loans for college students under the government and ending federally guaranteed bank loans for them.

The bank loans program is a lucrative business for many financial institutions including Sallie Mae, or SLM Corp. as it is now known, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp..

The ObamaFest Team tends to give the Senator the benefit of the doubt, but making loans is what banks do in this country, and their operations have been streamlined by the competative nature of financial markets.  We are skeptical about the chances of a government agency doing the job better, fairer or more accurately.  Imagine a country where your home loans or your car loans had to go through a Federal Agency.  Sounds troubling.  Why should we expect them to do a good job with Student Loans? 

The response might be that the student loans are guaranteed by the government.  But isn't that the problem, then?  No wonder the banks are playing fast and loose with the money and the rules - they have no risk.  The ObamaFest Team favors removing the Federal guarantees and forcing the banks to make prudent decisions and pay the price for poor loan policies. 

        

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The ObamaFest Team supports the Senator's presidential aspirations, but we reserve the right to disagree with him as need be.  This is one of those issues where we need be.




Call it an energy independence blitzkrieg, but working men and women will need to work a little harder to give Senator Obama the tax dollars he needs to subsidize big energy:

"A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including one presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), is pushing to provide federal loan guarantees, tax breaks and other subsidies to spur the production of fuel from coal.

But the process of turning coal into a liquid emits carbon dioxide, so much that each gallon of the fuel would create more greenhouse gases than gasoline -- unless the carbon dioxide released in production could be captured and stored.

Coal-to-liquids, or CTL, as the process is known, was developed in the 1920s by German scientists and used by the German military during World War II. It was later used by South Africa when its access to foreign oil was largely cut off in response to its apartheid policies.

Massive amounts of coal are heated at temperatures of 1,000 degrees, with water added to create steam. The coal becomes gasified, is run over a catalyst and transformed into a clear, yellowish-brown liquid that can be used as diesel or jet fuel."

From his website, BarackObama.com, "Barack Obama believes the U.S. must act decisively and creatively to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change."  I guess "decisively and creatively" means you call together your top thinkers and shout, "We don't have to reinvent the wheel, people.  Let's learn from the Nazis."

"UC Berkeley scientists concluded that making and using CTL created about twice the amount of greenhouse gases as petroleum."

        

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TimesOnline reports that prominent Republicans are joining the Obama movement:

"DISILLUSIONED supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation.

Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president's reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.

Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president's "my way or the highway" style of leadership - the first member of Bush's inner circle to denounce the leader's performance in office.

Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. "I think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole," Dowd said."

The ObamaFest team echoes the sentiments of Mr. Dowd. 

        

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Senator Obama has been assigned Secret Service protection for the duration of the campaign.

This comes as welcome news to the ObamaFest team.  We attended an Obama rally in L.A. and were startled by how easily a quirky looking group like ourselves could get next to the Senator. 

        

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Political savant Dick Morris explains how Senator Obama trumps his rivals at the first debate of the year:

"Hillary's advantage over Obama is rooted in the experience issue. But, as Nixon found out in his debate with John F. Kennedy in 1960, experience is a quickly vanishing asset in a presidential race. Having capitalized on his eight-year tenure as Eisenhower's vice president, Nixon's slogan was "experience counts." By the time his debate with Kennedy was over, it didn't. The young senator had shown himself to be just as adept, equally well informed and even more articulate than his more experienced rival.

So it was with Thursday's debate.

Hillary was her usual well informed and well prepared (but perhaps too scripted), and Obama showed that he was her equal. In fact, debating with a distinguished field that included his vastly more experienced elders -- Senator Joe Biden, Senator Chris Dodd, former Energy Secretary and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson and Hillary -- Obama proved that he could hold his own."

Of course, it's a long campaign - a marathon, not a sprint - but the ObamaFest team thinks that it's nice to get a little "O"mentum going into Spring.

        

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If this were a game of Monopoly, Senator Clinton's supporters would win $10 for finishing second in a beauty pagent.  Senator Obama's took First Place, according to The Hill:

"Jennifer Aniston loves Barack Obama. So do Ben Stiller, Tom Hanks and Eddie Murphy.

According to Washington, D.C. bible The Hill, Obama has a much bigger contingent of celebrity donors than Hillary Clinton. The list also includes Tobey Maguire and Ed Norton. (George Clooney told the Los Angeles Times he's on Team Obama, as well.)

Judging from The Hill's report, Obama's Hollywood faithful tend to be much younger than Clinton's crew, which includes Candice Bergen, Christine Lahti and Barbra Streisand.

The celebrities appear on the list because they've donated money."

And this report omits the endorsements Senator Obama has received from Norah Jones and Miss America.

Further, Senator Obama is tracking well in the unattractive community, garnering high praise from the two guys in My Dinner With Andre as well as the staff of Obamafest.

        

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Senator Obama called today for the permy-headed scalp of Don Imus:

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."

The ObamaFest team agrees.  We believe in Freedom of Speech but we also believe in a boss's freedom to fire knuckleheads.

        

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In California, McDonald's is testing a new burger - the Angus Third Pounder. 

What does this have to do with Senator Obama?  Both the Senator and McDonald's are based in Illinois.  Both face big tests in California - McDonald's is being tested right now while the Senator will be judged on February 6, 2008.  Success in California will determine the nationwide viability for both.  And both, in their respective fields, are resting their hopes on the belief that America is ready for a return to quality. 

The other candidates, with their 'been there, done that" McNuggetized talking points, face a rude, McMuffin-free awakening when Senator Obama walks off with the Golden State's super-size delegate count.  The ObamaFest team will continue to drive-thru the Senator's message.

        

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Despite the fact that it looks like Scottie Pippen - right down to the solid defensive stance - a papier mache figure of Barack Obama as Jesus is creating a buzz. 

"David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama has received since he first hinted he may run for the presidency.

"All of this is a response to what I've been witnessing and hearing, this idea that Barack is sort of a potential savior that might come and absolve the country of all its sins," Cordero said. "In a lot of ways it's about caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped.""

The response from the Obama camp was appropriately low key:

"Obama's campaign worked Monday to distance the Illinois senator from the artwork.

"While we respect First Amendment rights and don't think the artist was trying to be offensive, Senator Obama, as a rule, isn't a fan of art that offends religious sensibilities," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

The ObamaFest team is waiting to hear from Mr. Pippen, a man who served alongside a modern Christ-figure and witnessed many a public ascension:

        

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George Clooney rocks.  He loves Senator Obama and he is willing to stay away from the campaign if he feels his presence would be a negative.  Clooney understands that, in certain parts of the country, candidates can be attacked for having "Hollywood values."  

How about that?  A celebrity who puts the interests of the candidate above his own.  Contrast Clooney's attitude with that of schmendricks like David Geffen, vanity whores who want it to be all about the benefactor. 

Tina Daunt's article in the L.A. Times reveals:

"George Clooney can't decide what role he'd like to play.

This has nothing to do with his flourishing movie career and everything to do with the 2008 presidential campaign, where the involvement of even a widely admired star can be the subject of a serious dilemma.

On the one hand, the actor said in an interview, he would love to throw himself into campaigning for his friend, Sen. Barack Obama, a politician he compares to President Kennedy.

But Clooney is too shrewd a political observer to discount the negative effect celebrity can have on a campaign, especially in a red state. (Look what happened last year when industry favorite Rep. Harold Ford Jr. ran for the Senate in 2006. The Tennessee Democrat's foes called him "Fancy Ford" and portrayed him as a habitué of Hollywood's decadent soirees. It might have been what cost him the election in a close race.)

At the moment Clooney is playing it close to the vest, waiting to see if he can play a part without become a distracting sideshow. His quandary is a measure of Hollywood's growing political sophistication; celebs are beginning to understand that their support can be a double-edged sword."

"...a double-edged sword"  Or in the case of Geffen, a hari-kari knife. 

        

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The L.A. Times finds a new way to rain on Obama's campaign with Ronald Brownstein's creative editorial today:

"Obama's early support is following a pattern familiar from the campaigns of other brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform, from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Gary Hart in 1984 to Bill Bradley in 2000. Like those predecessors, Obama is running strong with well-educated voters but demonstrating much less support among those without college degrees...

Democratic professionals often describe this sorting as a competition between upscale "wine track" candidates and blue-collar "beer track" contenders."

In other words, Obama is headed to the wine-tasting room in downtown Loserville. 

Brownstein sees the world as a neatly arranged place where only two types of candidates exist: warriors and priests:

"Warrior candidates stress their ability to deliver on kitchen table concerns and revel in political combat. They tout their experience and flout their scars. Their greatest strength is usually persistence, not eloquence; they don't so much inspire as reassure. Think of Harry Truman in 1948, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and, in a somewhat more diluted fashion, Walter Mondale in 1984 and John Kerry in 2004..."

The priests, whose lineage runs back through McCarthy to Adlai Stevenson, present a very different face. They write books and sometimes verse. They observe the campaign's hurly-burly through a filter of cool, witty detachment. Their campaigns become crusades, fueled as much by inchoate longing for a "new politics" as tangible demands for new policies. In the past quarter of a century, Hart, Bradley and the late neo-liberal Paul Tsongas in 1992 each embodied the priest in Democratic presidential politics.

Some candidates transcend these divisions. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was a warrior who quoted Aeschylus. Bill Clinton blended a warrior's resiliency with a priest's promise of transformative ("third way") politics. But most Democratic candidates fall clearly on one or the other side of this divide."

Assuming you do buy into Brownstein's distinctions, Bill Clinton clearly rode the priestly promise of transformation to victory.  His "warrior's resiliency" was tested only after he was elected.  But wanting to make the point that Obama is a priest and priests are losers, Brownstein fudges Bill Clinton's resume to fit his thesis.  

And by not mentioning JFK at all, a victor who wrote books, quoted verse and offered the coolest and wittiest  detachment, Brownstein is guilty of fudging by omission.  At the L.A. Times, facts are little buggers to be ignored when they get in the way of making a point.  
 

        

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The L.A. Times, which for months has been sniping from the weeds at Senator Obama, is finally dropping the daisy-cutters.  In an editorial today, David Ehrenstein explains Senator Obama's popularity as being a product of white folks attraction to the mythical "magic negro,"

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.-wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic -- embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic." ...

Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders. It's the way he's said it that counts the most. It's his manner, which, as presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden ham-fistedly reminded us, is "articulate." His tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes.

The editorial is not only an attack on Senator Obama, but on the people who support him.  Linking Obama supporters to people who think the sappy Driving Miss Daisy is a great movie is a particularly low blow.  Nobody in the Obama camp is stooping to link Senator Clinton's supporters with the fan base for Charlie's Angels.

And once again, somebody is trying to turn Senator Obama's gift for clear-speaking into a negative.  But haven't we learned in the last eight years that jumbled speech is usually the result of a jumbled mind?  It is hard to be as articulate as Senator Obama when you're not speaking from the heart, when you're trying to present the reasons for unreasonable policy. 

Here at Obamafest, we didn't like Driving Miss Daisy, found Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to be a bore, and we left in the middle of The Legend of Baggar Vance.  But we still like Senator Obama, not because he is magic, but for a number of reasons, not least because he is the only leading candidate who does not have this on his resume:


To say that "Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record" ignores the reality of images like this.

 

        

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Consider this mashup on youtube an hors d'oeuvre, the first of many renegade videos that we will be treated to over the next two years. 

The San Francisco Chronicle took a nice look at the phenomenon:

It also dramatizes that today, political activists with the Internet as their ammunition have gone from being "just donors to the cause," he said, "to being partners in the fight. And they don't have to wait for permission."

But while the medium is clearly more grassroots, political campaigns have not been averse to having an outside or independent voice -- witness the efforts of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 presidential race against Democratic Sen. John Kerry -- delivering ads that are tougher and meaner than the candidates might launch on their own.

Eric Jaye, a San Francisco political consultant and key adviser to Mayor Gavin Newsom, said the sophisticated "Hillary 1984" effort is the "best example yet" of a crop of viral videos that have blossomed on the Internet over the past 18 months.

But Jaye predicted such efforts are bound to become attractive tools for political campaigns, which will "orchestrate these videos on the down low to communicate negative messages -- without having to own them in public."

Jaye noted that Obama's campaign -- even as it insists it has no connection to the production -- reaps a clear benefit from the mashup video: "They get to call Hillary Clinton a pabulum-spewing pseudo-fascist, without having to own it."

No ownership.  When you think about it, the internet is kind of like a rental car, and if you're Hillary right now, that Hertz a little.

        

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Senator Obama got back on track in Oakland, reminding voters of the single biggest reason his judgment exceeds that of his rivals:

`I am proud of the fact that I opposed this war from the start, that I stood up in 2002 and said this is a bad idea and is going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives,'' Obama told thousands who spilled out on Saturday across Oakland's City Hall Plaza.

``We are in the midst of a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and after spending half-a-trillion dollars and seeing almost 3,200 precious lives lost ... we are actually less safe,'' he said.

Without mentioning their names, he alluded to the fact that both former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton -- his main Democratic competitors, at this point -- voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq invasion. He told the crowd that a recent visit with a Iraq war veteran maimed and blinded in a combat explosion had reminded him of why he was running for president.

He also referred to recent reports of dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. ``We have an opportunity to get at least one thing and that is when they come home that we treat 'em right,'' he said. ``That when they come home they don't have mold on their walls and rats scurrying under their beds .... that when they come home they're not going through dumpsters looking for food because they've been forgotten.''

``Don't stand next to a flag and say you believe supporting the troops,'' he said, his voice rising into a shout, ``when you forget them when you come home. We can do better than that.''

        

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