A Republican blog to suport John Edwards' candidacy for President has launched. The blog has posts about Edwards' visit to NY for Martin Luther King day, his position in the minimum wake hike that just passed the House this week by a veto-proof margin (meaning lots of conservatives voted for it), and a message we should all be sending to our representatives in Congress: no funding for escalation.
An editorial in the Stanford Review says that Edwards should think twice before supporting new taxes on Big Oil to support his platform of eliminating poverty in America, pointing to California prop-87 as an example why. Unfortunately for its readers, the staff writer doesn't even take the time to tell people what prop-87 is or or where you can find out more information, which makes the entire argument questionable at best. Citing something that supports your argument without explaining where or what it is -- in fact giving no information about it at all -- is a well treaded fallacy that allows you to make an argument, claim that something supports it, and then move on without as if you've been vidicated in some way.
That just doesn't cut it for me, so I looked into prop-87, and here is what I found.
Proposition 87 was a ballot initiative that would have increased taxes on oil producers within the state in order to fund programs that would reduce energy depdenance on oil, and increase use of alternative energy sources, at a cost of about $4 billion. According to Wikipedia, the proposition had strong backing from politico's who are known to be pro-environment, such as former President Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barak Obama, and Jack O'Connell.
Accordingly, "Most of the "No on 87" campaign was funded by petroleum companies, more than $95,000,000 in contributions was received for the No on 87 Campaign, Chevron Corporation ($30,000,000) and Aera Energy ($27,000,000), more than any other proposition in history. The majority of the remaining contributors opposed to 87 were other oil production companies."
The measure was voted down by the public, sadly, but that doesn't mean it was wrong. Big Oil has been enjoying disgustingly large windfalls over the past few years, such that California's measure that would have cost them $4 billion only amounted to 40% of the profits of Exxon Mobil in 2005, when Exxon set the world record for largest corporate profit ever.
If prop-87's failure is the evidence the author suggests it is, I'd be more than comfortable with Edwards taking his chances by running on such a platform. Exxon made $9.9 billion in profit in 2005, I think they can afford this one.
John Edwards is going to be in New York to honor Martin Luther King, according to the New York Daily News.
Edwards backs Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy's bill to block an escalation of the war, and his Harlem speech will mark the 40th anniversary of MLK's anti-Vietnam war speech.
It is going to be very hard for Hillary to win against anti-war candidates. The country wasn't as anti-war now as it was in 2004 and we all saw how powerful the anti-war message can be in what Governor Dean accomplished. Dean went from nobody to leading the pack because he had the guts to say what he believed, while Hillary doesn't. That really is the biggest knock against Senator Clinton, if there is one admirable quality she hasn't inherited from former President Clinton, it's balls and honesty. It's hard to believe that she isn't against the war as the rest of us Dems are, but she doesn't have the guts to come out and say it; to condemn Bush for this unnecessary war and the new McCain Doctrine.
I think the anti-war stance is what will win the day for the Democratic nominee, but we'll have to wait and see. There is a chance that Bush could begin pulling troops out of Iraq sometime in the middle of next year, for no other reason than to deflate Democrats who plan to campaign on the issue. Bush is a lunatic that will do anything -- even sacrifice American lives -- just to push people around.
Here is an old video from when John Edwards was on the Hardball college tour.
And finally I have a couple of quotes here, one from the Charlotte Observer on the McCain Doctrine; "The failed Iraq policy lies squarely on the shoulders of the people who make that policy -- the president and his Cabinet -- and Sens. McCain and Graham know that," Edwards said. "Sen. McCain should ask Sen. Graham to apologize to the men and women of our armed forces."
Replied Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop: "If John Edwards is trying to win a nomination, Lindsey Graham is trying to win a war."
Another Edwards quote I found here serves as the best retort: "It's time for America to be patriotic about something other than war."
Senator Edwards and the rest of the nation are trying to get us out of an unwinnable and unnecessary war, Lindsey, only fools such as yourself are still trying to win the game after it's over. Let it go man, we screwed up. All that is left now is to bring our troops home.
In his January 12 Washington Post column, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer again distorted former Sen. John Edwards' (D-NC) 2004 comments on stem cell research, claiming that Edwards "starkly and egregiously" claimed that if Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) were elected president in 2004, "Christopher Reeve will walk again."
What John Edwards actually said:
Christopher Reeve just passed away. And America just lost a great champion for this cause. Somebody who is a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through the tragedy. Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country -- the work we will do when John Kerry is president -- people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.
Krauthammer was also caught in the past of supporting the exact thing that H.R. 3 proposes to do: limit stem cell lines to those that would otherwise be disguarded and destroyed from fertility clinics. It doesn't matter if you think destroying these things is equivalent to killing a human being, because they are going to be destroyed no matter what. We can either take them and use them for the benefit of medicine, or lose them anyway. I choose to use them, as does John Edwards. How about you?
It seems that a number of people have been writing to the News & Observer complaining that John Edwards is getting too much positive coverage from the paper. Seems a little strange, since this is a large North Carolina newspaper, Edwards' home state which he represented for six years in the United States Senate. According to the numbers gathered by one of their staff writers, the truth doesn't really bare out such a conclusion.
I looked back over the N&O's coverage of Edwards for the last several years. The paper wrote 62 stories that mentioned Edwards last year, up from 45 in 2005. By comparison, there were 407 stories in 2004, when he was a candidate for president and vice president; and 286 in 2003 and 124 in 2002, when Edwards was in the Senate. Of the 62 Edwards stories in 2006, five were on the front page. Two were in the last week of the year, when Edwards announced his candidacy from New Orleans.
I don't read the Observer because I generally find local news to be quite boring, and I don't even see any kind of problem here. Edwards had already run for president once, served the state as a Senator and is obviously very well known here; I don't think it's all that unreasonable for the local papers to report on what he's been doing over the past few years, especially when it's been clear that he was going to run again.
As Christensen says, The N&O is never going to satisfy the hard-core anti-Edwards sentiment, which is virulent in a state that voted for Bush-Cheney over Kerry-Edwards in 2004. But you should look for more, not fewer, Edwards stories as the campaign cranks up. And The N&O, as the home-state newspaper, should lead in bringing to bear the scrutiny that this presidential candidate needs to face in a national campaign.
Oddly, North Carolina helped Democrats take back control of the House by turning over a couple of seats previously held by red staters. Another couple of seats were within 5% of flipping, and Elizabeth Dole isn't exactly the most popular person around heading into 2008. And to be fair, a lot of states voted for Bush in 2004, that's why he got reelected. It was a mistake obviously and has hurt the country over all, but NC can always make amends by doing the right thing and voting blue in two years.
There isn't a whole lot going on in the world of Presidential Campaigns right now, given how long it is until the general election you can expect things to stay pretty quiet for a while yet. Mass. Governor Romney has filed papers to run, and Giuliani let his papers get out so we know he's in. There are far more Republicans ready to replace President Bush right now than there are Democrats vying to sweep the government back.
National Journal thinks that Obama is going to jump into the race at some point, and suck all of the air out of the room, hurting Edwards. That's interesting in that it is exactly what happened to John Kerry and the others when Howard Dean burst onto the scene, and Dean was the favorite all the way into the beginning of the primaries, but it was an illusion. Dean got beat up in Iowa and NH and never recovered, and the same is likely to happen Senator Obama.
I like the guy and what I see, but that's the problem. We all like what we see, but is that enough to give the guy the keys? I'm not there yet. Meanwhile some liberal strongholds see something bright in the way Edwards has tied Senator McCain to the troop escalation, calling it the "McCain Doctrine." I'll tell you what, McCain was smart to take up the cause because most conservatives seem to look upon him as weak, yet they know how popular the man is. On the other hand, it's probably the worst cause you could jump on to ride. It is the proverbial double-edged-sword, and Edwards and others are intent on offing him with it.
In other news, Democrats officially ascend to the majority in Congress in just a few minutes from now. The time of abusers and the Republican culture of corruption has come to its end.
WorldNetDaily expounds on how evil Senator Edwards is for trying to divide the nation between rich and poor people, and all the bad things that can happen with big-government, like no more FEMA/Katrina bungles. Wait, what?
Former Sen. John Edwards has announced that he's once again running for president, where he rallied the crowd by asking them to shout ''yes'' if they want him to be president and/or have suffered a neck injury from a passenger-side airbag. The announcement was made in New Orleans, home to what pro-big government bureaucracy Democrats say is proof of what gets bungled when big-government bureaucrats are in charge of things. Despite this built-in paradoxical reason not to vote for a Democrat, Edwards is primping and ready to go. .. The message that has been sent by the left, and was sent again today by Edwards, is dizzying in its doublespeak, but not shocking. The government failed, so the only way to combat that is by throwing money at that failure until it succeeds.
The problem with this narrative is that while the New Orleans disaster happened for many reasons, what happened afterwards was entirely the fault of not just the government, but ultra-conservative hero George W. Bush. You see, FEMA was given a makeover by President Clinton because it was under funded, mismanaged, and unguided. They were mostly bystanders when natural disasters struck, and Clinton knew they could actually do something to help people other than hand out checks. All of Clinton's progress was rolled back when President Bush took office and he put a horse show manager in charge of federal disaster management.
To compound things, FEMA was rolled into DHS, stripped of critical funding, and smothered by a new layer of bureaucracy that made it impossible for the agency to act own its own -- precisely what it needs to do during emergencies. The man who ran the show had never so much as put out a brush fire in his back yard, much less marshaled a federal agency into action during one of the countrys worse disasters in history.
Yes, throwing money at FEMA is part of the solution, because the retards in Washington under funded it in the first place. Yes, we're pro-government, minus the 'big'. We like FEMA, we want FEMA. FEMA helps people when it isn't massively dysfunctional. So yes, I'll take a 'big-government' bureaucrat over a Texas oilman who thinks it's better to appoint your friends to positions like the head of FEMA than someone with actual experience. You guys can have Michael Brown.
From John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and on down, Democrats, who have rarely met a government program they didn't like, have crawled out of the woodwork complaining about how the government failed the people during and after hurricane Katrina.
I notice that no where in this article does Powers tell us how the government didn't fail everyone in New Orleans and other gulf-state regions. So how is our complaining bad? The government totally dropped the ball and a Republican led Congress issued a report that condemed FEMA and the administration for what happened. Democrats boycotted the report for the most part believing it was just going to be another rubber stamp, but it turned out to be a flame thrower pointed directly at FEMA and the White House.
Before you think Edwards is finally starting to ''get it,'' consider the reason the problem is being brought to our attention: so Edwards can apply his solution. The ''solution'' is that monstrous programs simply aren't adequately funded, nor are there enough of them.
Yeah, because it's not like Senator Edwards hasn't been in New Orleans before he decided to run again, right? Whoops..I guess he's been there a multitude of times, even establishing a foundation around his efforts. This is spin, moving on..
Edwards' making the announcement of his '08 White House bid in New Orleans is proof positive that he plans to continue using the ''two Americas'' mantra in an attempt to part America as skillfully and evenly as his hair.
Damn it! Why won't those poor people stop trying to take money from us? Won't don't they just go away? Sheesh, you'd think they were starving to death or something.
Are there really ''two Americas?'' For Edwards there certainly is. As just one example, there is one America without health insurance, and another America that has made a fortune driving insurance costs so high that the astronauts on the orbiting International Space Station may have to be sent out to retrieve the operating budgets of insurance companies and health-care providers.
I'll tell you a little something about health coverage, and I have to apologize for dragging a family member into this, but I think it's important to talk about. A member of my family was sick recently, and we didn't know what was wrong. She was nauseous with constant diarrhea. Anything she drank, anything she ate was gone from her system in minutes. I had the unfortunate pleasure of driving her from a doctors office to a hospital emergency room to get IV's because of how dangerously dehydrated she was. This went on for a month straight, and near the end, she took a trip to a gastroenterologist and had two procedures done, an endoscopy that goes down the throat, and another in a much more unpleasant place. I mention this because the combined bill for these things were just about $2,000.
Yeah, that's two thousand dollars to have a camera on the end of a long tube stuck down your throat, amongst other places, and the kicker is neither one of these revealed what was wrong with her. I'm sure you must be a fairly well trained and very knowledgeable doctor in that specialty to do these things and I'm sure the equipment isn't cheap, but two thousand dollars to have a camera look at your insides through your throat is absolutely ridiculous.
This person had medical insurance through where she worked, and I think she only ended up having to pay $80 for that visit, but in the end was still hit with a bill in the $500-1000 range. Think about that for a while. Her medical insurance means she had to pay $80, and we got to keep our electricity on for a month+ and still eat at the same time. Now think about this:
Approximately 46 million Americans, or 15.7 percent of the population, were without health insurance in 2004 (the latest government data available).
The number of uninsured rose 800,000 between 2003 and 2004 and has increased by 6 million since 2000.
Nearly 82 million people - about one-third of the population below the age of 65 spent a portion of either 2002 or 2003 without health coverage.
The percentage of people with employment-based health insurance has dropped from 70 percent in 1987 to 59.8 percent in 2004. This is the lowest level of employment-based insurance coverage in more than a decade.
Millions of workers don't have the opportunity to get coverage. A third of firms in the U.S. did not offer coverage in 2004.
It just goes on and on. This is not a small issue, or a wedge issue, or a liberal issue, this is a large portion of your fellow Americans who are sick and simply can't afford to go see a doctor, and it has nothing to do with having low paying jobs. The cost of this stuff is insane, and by comparison to other places, unconscionable. You can walk into a hospital anywhere in Britain or Canada, get anything you need done, and walk out without paying a dime. Universal health coverage, because it's already in their taxes. And what do we have?
A man in a committed relationship with another man stood up and asked a question of Senator Edwards at the New Hampshire town hall meeting from a few days ago. Pandagon.net/Pam Spaulding posted a note from one of their readers about what happened.
Edwards indicated that this issue was the “single hardest social issue” for him and that he had engaged in a lot of “personal struggles” over this issue. He believes that same-sex partners in committed relationships should have civil rights and should be afforded the dignity and respect to which they are entitled. He struggled with the question of “how we achieve this? Whether it is through civil unions or partnerships.” He indicated that he is certainly for all of the non-discrimination and equal benefits provisions.
However, he said that it was a “jump for me to get to gay marriage? I am not there yet.”
Senator Edwards needs to get there, or be left behind I'm afraid. The younger you delve into the generational gaps the more you're going to find people demanding equal rights for everyone, and it saddens me that we still aren't there yet. You'd have thought that this separate-but-equal nonsense had run its course with the African American civil rights era, but now we're getting the same load of bull in civil unions and finding that certain people still just don't get it. You don't have the right to regulate other peoples lives in such a way that they become a separate class of citizen. The constitution doesn't allow it, your conscience shouldn't allow it, and the upcoming generations won't tolerate it.
I'm past the point of applauding these types of responses as steps in the right direction. You're either doing the right thing, or you aren't, it's that simple.
Google Alerts are a handy thing if you want to keep on top of am important or interesting subject, but man, they pile up like you wouldn't believe if you don't tend to them often. I have 12 alerts in my inbox that have between one and five links each in them. If you figure the average is somewhere around 3 each, then I have a little under forty waiting for me to look at here. Alrighty then, here we go.
California Notes has some pictures of the town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada. Forbes has an AP piece that's not all that interesting and devoid of any real new information, expect maybe for this funny bit that Governor Tom Vilsack said on Fox News Channel of all places, where Vilsack answers a question about him polling third in his own state. His response was that "polls show he would win his state's caucuses if they included individuals who may become Democrats just to attend the caucus meetings."
This is wrong on so many levels, not only did he acknowledge being knee deep in his own state, but his only retort is that his numbers might improve when people who amount to being party crashers show up for the free beer. Also, I wish I could be an AP writer. I'd just look up the generic fluff from Wikipedia and watch cable news 24/7 like they did.
Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were on ABC's This Week today, and the transcript is up today. I don't really watch this show and certainly slept through this one (two days of moving = ouchie) so I can't give highlights, but I think it'll probably be worth a read.
sfgate.com has a piece of up with this interesting bit about impeachment.
Edwards said the Republican-led impeachment of former President Clinton was driven by politics and damaged the nation. "I don't think the way to correct that mistake is by another mistake," Edwards said. "We don't have to get in the mud with pigs."
<rant>Edwards is playing nice and I appreciate the need to do that when running for President, but it is too early to being saying things like this. He doesn't need to bring conservatives over to his side when the primaries are still a year away. I also take issue with the comparison between President Clinton's and President Bush's actions. The accusations against Bush are of violating FISA and the United States Constitution, far more serious than anything lobbed at Clinton.
Those are not politically motivated, and if the members of Congress decide the man should be impeached by trial, then that is exactly what should happen. Not because I want it or because I think it would be what he deserves, but because that is the legal right of the Congress as a means of legally prosecuting a person who is virtually immune from the law under all other circumstances, and impeachment proceedings do not guarantee a guilty verdict.
There is a difference between what happened in those instances where Republicans were seeking to punish Clinton because they didn't like him, while we're seeking justice because Bush didn't just break the law, he violated the basis of all law, the constitution.</rant>
A local NBC station has a small blurb on the Senator's visit to Reno, and the always-cool crooksandliars.com has video from the Senators appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Christ Matthews. Here is a funny quote they have:
Matthews: President Bush in his last press conference last week said that his idea was for America to go shopping. He literally said that. What do you make of that? As a way to engage the public in our national cause.
Edwards: What planet is he living on? I have absolutely no idea. This is the man who is in charge of this war in Iraq.
Just found the transcript for Edwards appearance on CNN's The Situation Room, so check that out, I heard the hosts were dicks to Edwards but that's hardly unexpected. These 24/7 "news" cable channels are still used to playing for the Republicans and giving them softballs and passes left and right, it will probably take a couple of more years for them to remember what the words unbiased journalism mean.
Meanwhile Steve Garfield actually got to "meet" the Senator in something of a blogger-meet-the-candidate meeting that only lasted a handful of minutes, and he wrote up about the event could have gone a lot better. He makes some good points as it sounds like the event was poorly planned, maybe things will get better as the campaign goes on.
Conservative rag Human Events had this to say about the Senators message.
Democrats know (or at least, I think they know) that their success in the 2006 midterm election was largely a function of their best efforts to imitate Republicans. It was the conservative Blue Dog Democrats who were the tail successfully wagging the entire Democratic dog.
I'm sorry to break the news to you guys, but you lost because you did a horrible job running the country, and the people were sick of your incompetence. You couldn't satisfy the religious extremists on your right, couldn't fix the mess in Iraq that you were told was a bad idea to begin with, couldn't make the country a better place to live with a total majority in Washington, couldn't avoid abuses of power and the all too familiar sex scandals. In summary, the GOP couldn't do anything right. Want proof of the delusion that conservatives are still living under?
For starters, he wants to cut and run from Iraq.
This talking point hurt Democrats during the 04 elections and were killing us for years, right up until the people realized there is a difference between weakened surrender, and giving up on a lost cause that will do nothing but consume and destroy you. Resolve is an admirable trait, stubbornness in the face of the impossible is not; that's called insanity.
The days of the talking-points-majority are over, grown ups are in charge now. We'll look hard at the mess and figure out the smartest way to withdraw, because that is the only sane option left to us.
Found this personal attack on Senator Edwards, care of Arkansas Republican Assembly.
John Edwards tried to cozy up to America's poor by announcing (his presidential candidacy Thursday in the Lower Ninth Ward of Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. It's doubtful that any on hand live in splendor comparable to the $3.1 million mansion the former senator and vice presidential candidate is building in North Carolina. Edwards, worth upwards of $30 million thanks to a career as a personal injury lawyer, is building the home on a 100-acre estate outside Chapel Hill, the New York Post reported. The 10,700-square-foot mansion boasts 10 rooms, 6 1/2 baths, two garages, and verandas with sweeping views of the surrounding countryside.
I'm not sure how promising to help the poor people in this country -- ones Republicans love to pretend don't exist -- or bringing their plight into the public eye is ever a bad thing, but leave it to people like this to call it out like it is. I also find the implication that being wealthy means you can't care about a particular subject hilarious. Does ARA really believe that you have to be poor to have a legitimate interest in bringing others out of poverty? I find the notion laughable. During the GOP's 12-year-reign in the House of Representatives, the only act of charity we got from them were gifts to the richest 10% of the nation in the form of tax cuts. These people should be ashamed.
In the 2004 campaign, Edwards often spoke of "Two Americas," one wealthy and privileged and the other struggling to survive. There's no doubt which America Edwards belongs to.
And there's no doubt what matters most to ARA: personal attacks against people who are actually interested in helping the poor rather than ignoring them in favor of tax cuts for the rich. The days of patting yourself on the back and giving out freebies to the people who need them least are over, America has put responsible adults back in charge for a while and conservatives need to get used to it.
