I apologize for falling off the wagon, it's hard to maintain a daily interest in a new site when it gets basically no traffic at all. The big updates I was doing before took over an hour to do each day, some took even more because I would actually go out and read every link I was posting to see if there was anything of value there, and if there was anything I had to say about it so this was something more than just a link aggregator.
Also understand that most of the "news" I find every day is in reality several days old and consists mostly of local news affiliates or weblogs picking up on days and sometimes weeks old information. That isn't worth posting, and makes the job of sorting through it tedious. New solid news isn't very forthcoming on a regular basis this long before the 2008 elections also. That said, here's some stuff you may find interesting from the past 24 hours.
Although Hillary Clinton is leading in national polling and despite the fact she hasn't even filed to run -- filing to explore is not the same thing, people explore and drop out all the time -- John Edwards still has a very strong lead in Iowa, leading also-yet-to-file Obama 27% to 17%. Every early state you win gives you stronger numbers in every following state after the fact. More at DailyKos.
Again worth mentioning is that Senators Obama and Clinton have not filed to run for President yet, they have only taken steps necessary to allow them to begin raising funding, to "test the waters" if you will. I think the laws regarding exploratory committees are simply stupid, and just goes to show how our Presidential elections are nothing but popularity contests. People start these committees so they can start traveling the country (on their supporters buck) to find out if they are as popular as the other guys are. If not, that money is spent and they go back to earning $180,000 a year in Congress.
The Hotline has some notes on Edwards visit to the DNC Winter meeting.
Subtle Theme: I make you cry. I make your hearts bleed. So vote for me, because it doesn't have to be that way. I'm the only one of these turkeys who has guts. Hillary and Obama are calculating. I'm real.
True or not, it is true, as I just said neither of these two have filed to actually run yet and both of them carry significant baggage. Despite how it appears, Hillary is not as popular with Democrats as the media and national polling leads you to believe she is. Every Democrat I know is upset with her for refusing to say she was wrong to vote for the war in Congress, and today rubs it in our wounds by announcing that if she had been President at the time, she wouldn't have taken this country to war with Iraq.
This stands in total contrast to the fact that when she was a Congresswoman at the time she voted to authorize the President to go to war with Iraq. So you did take us to war Hillary, you caved like every other spineless weasel on Congress did, and you are going to answer for it with all of the Democrats that won't vote for you, just because of that.
As for Obama, I like the guy, but I wasn't nuts about voting for Edwards in 2004 because of his lack of experience in government. While it is true that he has no more experience now than he did before, it's not like many of his challengers do either, and don't get me wrong, it does still concern me. George Bush didn't have any real experience in government either and look where it got us.
The anti-tax Club for Growth is doing the things that unaccountable childish conservative groups just love doing, making unfair claims that can be easily shot down by a person who actually has a brain. Claims the site, "If elected president, John Edwards will tax you until you scream." They quote from a CBS story where Edwards is talking about the possibility of raising taxes to pay for universal health care (only the United States and Mexico now lack universal health care) and eliminating poverty in the U.S. For those who still can't balance their check books or comprehend simple math, I'll explain it for you. The federal government runs off of taxes, we pay for everything it does. If the government wants to spend five more dollars than it is taking in from taxes, then it has to raise taxes (overall) by five dollars.
Congress has been so notoriously irresponsible when it comes to spending that their acts of spending more than they take in from taxes has created a deficit (money we owe banks and other countries) if something like 1,800,000,000,000 dollars. In order to pay for all the things we love and enjoy like national defense, schools, the FDA that keeps you from dying when you pig out at McDonalds, they have to tax us. It's the way of life. If the Club got their way and significantly reduced taxes, it'd hurt you by taking away federal agencies that protect us. All of the subsidies that the government pays for medical treatment would disappear, we'd be screwing ourselves in effect.
If we want universal health care like every other G8 nation has, we either have to cut spending in other places, or raise taxes. It's called not living in a world where everything is free. It's called being an adult and paying money for what you want to have. Much of this money can be found by cutting programs we don't need and exist as an excess of a President and former Republican Congress that has never balanced a budget in their lives, like the missile defense shield that will probably never work, or those pesky unnecessary wars we keep getting into.
In all likelihood, these tax increases would come at the expense of the richest people in the country, the Paris Hilton millionaires and billionaires, not people who can least afford them.
Speaking of universal health care, UPI has this story on Edwards DNC appearance.
While he did not reveal a specific plan for coverage, he described the large number of uninsured as "victims of a healthcare system gone wrong where policies are driven by profits, not patient care."
Policies should be determined by the needs of working-class citizens, not other stakeholders, he said. "We have to stop letting the health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical concerns decide our nation's healthcare policy.
Many may claim that personal choice should trump regulation, but to them I would ask what reality are they living in? Companies have only one obligation: to make money. Doing things that are beneficial to the nation has never been a concern, nor should it really, they aren't the government, it's not their job to think about the people. Letting them set policy through lobbying laws that give them all the flexibility over our health care is letting them make sure that their bottom line is more healthy than we are.
In an apparent response to the tax-break-based plan President Bush unveiled in his State of the Union Address, Edwards ruled out any plan that offers healthcare access to only some of the uninsured.
"We have to stop using words like 'access to healthcare,'" he said, "when we know with certainty those words mean something less than universal care.
"Who are you willing to leave behind without the care he needs? Which family? Which child?"
President Bush doesn't care about any of this, he's simply jockeying to blunt the Democratic party from using these as campaign issues. Do you know how you can tell that's the case? Look at when each party talks about the issue. Bush trumps it in his State of the Union, and at no other time. Democrats talk about it all of the time. You decide who cares more about your health, and then vote your conscience in next years primaries.
Finally, we have those darn gays mucking up things for all these straight candidates. Damn them for being...what they were born! Why can't they just magically not be gay or something?
Edwards and Obama oppose same-sex marriage, but have said they want to expand gay civil rights.
Edwards is my guy (for now), but I have a note for the Senators: you do not support civil rights. Plain and simple. If you segregate gays from the rest of us when it comes to the law (yes, marriage has legal benefits or didn't you know?) then you are anti-civil rights, period.
Either you treat everyone the same, or you discriminate. Choose a side, because right now neither of you are on the right one.
