John Edwards For President

Media Obsession With John Edwards' Hair Continues

2007-07-09T15:08:00.000-05:00

I received a note from Justin Cole at Media Matters about 20 minutes ago, letting people know about two new articles they published relating to the mainstream medias unending obsession with John Edwards' haircut. I thought it was amusing at first, but now it's become downright disturbing in light of all the serious news happening in the world, and the also-serious issues that Edwards is campaigning on.

Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) broke with President Bush recently on the Iraq war, embracing withdrawal without committing to a plan of any sort. He likes the idea, he just won't sign onto it yet, it seems.

Media Matters decided to break out a stopwatch and find out how much time each of the 24-hour news networks spent talking about Domenici's break over the war, and time spent discussing Edwards haircut. I expected Fox to bury the Domenici story because it doesn't fit with their narrative. Neither does the public polling showing 70% of the country supporting at least timed withdrawal.

As expected, Fox News topped the list, spending 16.4 minutes talking about Edwards haircut during prime time on July 5th, a story that wasn't even a story when it happened but was incessantly repeated and written about by Ben Smith of the Politico - repeatedly linked to from the front page of the Drudge Report - and laughed about from the pillars of News Corp for weeks on end.

It didn't matter what was going on in Congress, the West Wing, in in other parts of the world. The number one story coming from the right over the past few months has been Edwards hair. You can speculate endlessly about the reasons why, I personally believe that the right fears John Edwards more than any other candidate. In what typically is the typically solidly red state of North Carolina, my current home, John Edwards leads all Republican presidential candidates in head-to-head matchups, often leading by margins exceeding those of Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.

Fox News only spent 1 minute and 40 seconds on the Domenici story, second only to MSNBC's 1 minute and 20 seconds. For their role in all of this, MSNBC appears to have been calling plays directly from the GOP's play book, spending virtually the same amount of time on Edwards as did Fox, playing the role of beauticians for 15.4 minutes.

Tucker Carlson, MSNBC's lowest rated host spent the second most time talking about Edwards' hair, about 5 minutes, coming in just behind Hannity & Colmes, who went for 5 1/2 minutes on Edwards while spending no time whatsoever on Pete Domenici's defection.

The heroes of this story appear to be CNN, who collectively spent 11 minutes talking about Domenici, and just 45 seconds Edwards.

Apparently, this latest gossip disgrace was inspired by a Washington Post editorial by John Solomon. The divergence in talent at the Post couldn't be more stark when you have Solomon writing 1300 words regurgitating a fluff story from the far right that happened months ago, and the superb reporting by Dana Priest over the past two years, winning a Pulitzer prize for her reporting on the CIA's "rendition" program which flew enemy combatant's from United States custody to overseas countries where they were allegedly tortured.

I find it likely that Priest will win another Pulitzer for her reporting on the unsanitary conditions of the Walter Reed Army hospital.

Solomons claim to fame is scoring an interview with the person who cuts Edwards Hair, according to Media Matters - I refuse to read Solomons piece so I have no idea what was done or said.

This is what I've come to expect from Fox, and the Politico, but I really thought MSNBC would be above such a ridiculous circus. A day doesn't go by when more American soldiers and Iraqi civilians are slaughtered in Iraq, and a staunch Republican Senator switching sides to oppose the war is big news, even if Domenici is simply jockeying for a tough coming reelection campaign in light of his involvement with the U.S. Attorney firings - a deeply unpopular scandal with voters.

Resources: The Haircut siren song; MSNBC, Fox News devoted far more time to Edwards' haircuts than to Domenici announcement

Topics: John Edwards, Fox, MSNBC, Washinton Post, John Solomon

Conservative Blogosphere Falling Behind

2007-05-22T14:05:00.001-05:00

Found this great post over at MyDD about the inherent weakness of the conservative "blogosphere", which is something I've been thinking and writing about lately. I went off on a rant a few weeks ago on Newsvine about all of the thinks I was sick of with conservatives, and then asked any conservatives readers to make their own list.

I thought at worst it would be amusing, though it might provide some valuable insight into what conservative voters didn't like about the way things are done in this country, something that would help us adjust our campaign messages and strategies to shore up conservative support and fulfill the commitment of elected politicians to serve the people, not serve only the people in their own party.

Not surprisingly, not one of them took the opportunity, but it got me thinking, how often did do you see conservatives reach out in any given community and tussle around? I know on Newsvine in particular, it's very common for liberals to show up in the comments of articles written by conservatives to keep them honest, but you basically never see the opposite.

I suppose it's just a fundamental difference between the two groups of personalities, where liberals to a degree are simply more interested in affecting change in the world for the better while conservatives are mostly content to sit still and cry about it louder than most everyone else.

That theme seems to match up with what Chris Bowers wrote yesterday, and I suppose there's nothing of real value there, but it's still interesting.

Moving from theory into practice, the Googlebomb campaign took place in the final weeks of the 2006 elections, and resulted in successful a search engine optimization project targeting 52 of the closest House and Senate races in the country. Over the final two weeks of the 2006 election, the Googlebomb campaign allowed negative information on the local Republican candidate--all from trusted local news sources--to reach 700,000 voters inside each relevant district (or, about 5% of the electorate in those districts). The total cost of the campaign was a piddling $350.

Predictably, the right-wing blogosphere freaked out when we did this, and the hate mail poured through my indox. However, it was a perfect example of what I predicted would happen sixteen months earlier. The greater size of the left-wing blogosphere, its far more pronounced bent toward direct activism, its independent, bottom-up communities, and its superior internal communication networks made a project like the Googlebomb campaign an incredible success. Utilizing Scoop platforms and private emails lists for volunteer recruitment and article research (click here to see how it all happened), progressive bloggers around the country were able to put the plan into motion in just three days. Then our vast size simply took over, once again with a huge assist from community building tools like personal signatures on Dailykos. By way of contrast, lacking both widespread implementation of effective community blogging software and a readership heavily engaged in direct online activism, there was no conceivable means for the smaller conservative blogosphere to match our efforts. As such, their counter Googlebomb was, in the vernacular of search engine optimization, a miserable failure (and a rip-off to boot).

Sorry for the large blockquote, but there's still plenty to read over there. I just wanted to point out that what I noted a few weeks ago is endemic of the GOP as a whole, where they simply are not interested in doing the grunt work to get what they want out of politics. If you take away the significant money advantage and the tendency to be sensationalistic little hate mongers, they'd probably have no national party either.

I keep hearing about this vaunted GOP technology machine that is decades ahead of what Democrats have but perhaps the reason for that disparity is the money involved, not really it's necessity or our lack of trying. And what has that machine gotten them recently other than a blow out in 2006?

You can argue, and I think I would argue, that the losses that Democrats were racking up before '06 were due more to the state of the country and the pervasive unfounded fear of terrorism and a casual complacency amongst Democrats with eight good years under Clinton than they ever did better organizational skills and activism interests.

It's a good read, go check it out.

Topics: MyDD, Activism, Netroots, Blogs, Blogosphere

Hillarys Campaign of Subterfuge

2007-05-22T12:00:00.001-05:00

Chris Bowers thinks the Democratic campaigns are blurring their messages intentionally to avoid having to answer tough questions, or at least I think that's the gist of it.

I dug up this quote as a way to expand upon Matt's question from Saturday, where he asked why Clinton seemed to be gaining support within the progressive blogosphere and open left. Matt's instincts are the same as mine, that "all the campaigns are blurring their messaging," and so "if everyone is pretending to be the standard wordprocessor, why not just choose Microsoft Office?" Blurring is very much a problem other candidates are facing right now, and the Mark Penn quote shows that blurring is actually a key component of Clinton's strategy.

Hillary of all people should be losing ground instead of gaining it with progressives, since she steadfastly refuses to admit her vote for the war was wrong. There is precious little integrity in Washington and most of it starts with the inability to admit errors in judgement.

Part of that is the media having turned from news broadcasters into 24/7 entertainment channels, and there just isn't enough news to fill the air 24 hours a day. So they find a nugget and blow it up until it's roughly the size of Ralph Nader's ego, and then play it until people can't stand it anymore.

Politicians aren't afraid of the people (they should be) they are afraid of the media, so they've morphed from honest people who make mistakes to jerks who can't ever admit being wrong.

Let's be absolutely clear: this country got to where it is today because people ran on the GOP side that weren't shaped by this culture, but were born to it and thrive in it. Bush has probably never taken responsibility for anything in his entire life, so this who deal is second nature.

We don't need more of those people, we need less. Hillary strikes me as someone who doesn't want to be that, but is exactly that anyway.

Democrats have the advantage and all they can do between now and 2008 is blow it themselves. Let's not hand this one away by playing typical beltway games with the truth and reality.

Funny how people like taking shots at John Edwards for being wealthy, but not any of the other millionaire candidates (virtually all of them on both sides)
The Politico's Ben Smith is obsessed with John Edwards' hair cut. Maybe Edwards isn't the one you should worry about, Ann.
AmericanThinker writes a cheap hit piece of Edwards using his 2004 campaign staff to create the Center for Promise & Opportunity, the exact same thing Gov. Howard Dean did after his failed presidential bid when he created Democracy for America. Leave it to wingnuts to try to paint creating a center to fight poverty as a bad thing.
Take a look at John Edwards' education policy plan. There are some things more important that war, you know?
Edwards is doing a webcast tomorrow (23rd) to talk about U.S. foreign policy.
I commend the Senator for his plans to protest the illegal Iraq war on Memorial Day, and unlike others, I could think of nothing more apropos. What better way to remember service members of past who have given their lives to protection this nation than to demand we bring home todays service members who are stuck in an unwinnable foreign civil war?
The Senator will be in Alabama campaigning and meeting with state legislators Thursday (23rd.)

Edwards Leading Iowa Poll

2007-05-22T10:15:00.001-05:00

First of all, national polling this far out doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Forget the embarrassing moments on TV that can take a campaign that was dominating everything in sight to a bow out in about 24 hours, we're simply talking about how sentiment can change over the course of god knows how many moneys until the first primaries.

Still, if any polls out there matter, it's still (like it or not) Iowa and New Hampshire. Other states (tons) have moved their primary dates up (good) but these states still get the first crack. A win in any other early states can take a national candidate running third to the front in a hurry, and can likewise destroy a front runner that has a poor early showing.

So where is John Edwards in Iowa's most recent poll? Leading the pack of course. He's also a regular winner of the DKos straw polls as well, which means he's got staying power with both early voters in IA and NH, and the netroots base.

Presidential candidate John Edwards leads rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a new Des Moines Register poll of Iowans likely to take part in the Democratic caucuses.

The Iowa Poll shows Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina, is the first choice of 29 percent of those who say they definitely or probably will attend the January caucuses, which kick off the nominating process for the nation.

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, edges out Clinton for second place in the poll — 23 percent to 21 percent.

Former Governor Mitt Romney is leading the Republican field by an ever larger margin, 30% to second place Senator John McCain's 18%. Poor Ron Paul, probably the best guy in the entire field all around doesn't even register.

It'll be interesting to see how long Edwards can keep his lead, since I'm pretty sure he's had it ever since he announced his candidacy. He spent a lot of time in Iowa after the 2004 loss building this thing, it's no surprise it's paying dividends already.

Topics: Polls, Iowa, New Hampsire

Edwards Gets Endorsements

2007-04-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

John Edwards has picked up a respectable number of endorsements from Georgia state legislators and others from around the state.

According to the official campaign website, Edwards is going to speak on the Don Imus fiasco sometime today. You can check out the podcast and well as others on the Edwards podcast page.

A note from the far reaches of the right-wing fringes of the Internet where they are apparently increasingly bored out of their minds. Newsbusters is a site labeling itself as "exposing and combating liberal media bias." One would note that you can hardly be an objective revealer of bias when your stated intent is to get involved in the story. Beyond that, the news that is being "busted" today is John Edwards' haircut, the manufactured story from the right designed to keep the media from talking about important issues such as John McCain singing and laughing about bombing Iran.

So there you have it, todays liberal media bias being busted consists of the conservative obsessions with a mans hair. Oh, how can they not possibly see the irony? They mock him for caring about his hair, but who is the one obsessing over it, Edwards in a year old video, or right-wing bloggers dragging the story out for weeks on end?

Other posts from this blog: Newsbusters, Don Imus, Georgia

Media Still Drooling Over GOP Propaganda

2007-04-20T10:59:00.001-05:00

Glenn Greenwald wrote recently on how the supposed "press" has been eating from the hand of conservative "issue" manufacturers over the Edwards hair story and how damaging it is to everyone who takes the bait when there are so many other more honest and important things to be reporting and writing about. I've woken up to a dose of it this morning while reading my news alerts, take this one for example from an Idaho newspaper.

First, Edwards' construction of a $5.3 million, 28,000-square-foot mansion in North Carolina made news that surely put him out of touch with Middle America voters struggling to meet mortgage payments and hold on to jobs that are vanishing overseas.

To insinuate that wealthy people are out of touch with middle America simply because of their social status is ridiculous, and if it had any merit, virtually every president and member of Congress in the past 30 years would be wandering bafoons.

John Edwards may have made a fortune as a very successful trial lawyer fighting for the victims of medical malpractice, but he's got nothing on President Bush, and unlike Edwards who earned his wealth on his own, Bush had everything he has given to him on a silver platter.

Does that mean Bush is hopelessly out of touch with middle America? No, even though he is, it's not because he's rich, it's because he's stupid. It's a dishonest personal attack that has no relevance on Edwards' interest in helping the poor get out of poverty. And I might add this is something Edwards is campaigning on, something Bush has never addressed in his life.

Now we're somehow supposed to believe that because Edwards is rich, that he doesn't care about the poor, even though he's campaigning on the issue unlike the entire wealthy and apparently uncaring Republican field? I don't know of a single top tier candidate on either side that doesn't have a million dollar home somewhere in the country, so this lame accusation makes them all incapable of addressing poverty.

Uh, no...not so much.

To me, it's rather like saying I can't identify with the problems women face because I'm not a woman (sexist) or African Americans because I'm white (racist.) They don't have a term as far as I know for the prosperity divide, but it's equally disingenuous.

Meanwhile, the Internet is alive with a videotape spoof of Edwards combing his hair with background music, "I Feel Pretty."

Created and consistently spread by right-wingers who want the obedient media to focus on this instead of Edwards plan to decrease poverty, create universal health care, and end the Iraq war. They want this because those are issues they can't win on. Just like during the 2006 elections, conservatives are scurrying to avoid having to debate the real issues because they aren't interested in solving real problems. They want power, period. War is the ultimate way to express that power which is why you don't find Republican anti-war candidates. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, it's all about who has the power.

They want it. Will we give it to them?

Other posts from this blog: Media, Poverty

Edwards Campaign Hires Joe Trippi

2007-04-20T08:59:00.001-05:00

Joe Trippi was the campaign manager for Governor Howard Dean, and was pretty much responsible for being the first in turning the Internet into a fund raising machine. Unfortunately, he also has the distinction of being blamed for Dean's poor showing in New Hampshire and Iowa for not spending enough money and other resources on the ground game. Either way I don't think it matters what it comes to fund raising because everyone is sucking the 'net dry these days.

According to the Times, Trippi is coming out of retirement because he believes there is too much at stake to fail now.

Mr. Trippi has worked in presidential politics nearly every four years since his first campaign in 1980, when he was an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. But his rise to prominence, particularly among Democratic loyalists in the blogosphere, came during the Dean campaign, where he developed something of a cult following.

For Mr. Edwards, Mr. Trippi will be an adviser on media strategy and the Internet.

By integrating social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.com with traditional political campaigns, he said, the Web is shaping the 2008 race in far greater ways than it did four years ago.

Well, that's debatable. Having 1,000,000 friends on MySpace (50% of them are spammers, 25% are girls, the rest are guys pretending to be girls) doesn't mean anything unless you are converting them into voters first, and campaign volunteers second.

If that's all Trippi does, then I'm sure he'll be a great help the campaign. However, if there was a lesson to be learned from 2004 above all else, it's that the established practice of say nothing at all rather than the wrong thing is not something people want to get from their leaders. I suppose you could say that for nearly every race, but maybe this time they are finally getting a clue.

The Hotline has some quotes from the team on Trippi's arrival.

Other posts from this blog: 2008 Elections, Campaign News

Green is the New Pink

2007-04-16T11:00:00.001-05:00

There are more tangible benefits to going green than cleaning up the environment that we all have to live in. More money means more research means more efficient technology. Cheaper for consumers, cheaper for energy producers, and better for the planet -- we all win.

The planet has gotten nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter over the past 30 years and will get another degree hotter due to greenhouse gas pollution already in the atmosphere. The ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990.

Translation: it only takes a 1 degree rise in ocean temperatures to kill off almost all coral, which is the bedrock of all ocean life. Without it, we see a mass die off along with a significant drop in oxygen generation. Trust me when I say we don't want that to happen, and that the consequences are far graver than losing a pretty place to rec-dive.

On top of releasing his health care plan to the public so people can read for themselves what his plans are, also proving that he actually has plans and ideas once he gets into the White House, Edwards is ramping up other plans and letting people have a go at them. Speaking of health care, here is a message from Elizabeth Edwards that was sent out in February. Health care is extremely important when the richest nation on the planet has half its population unable to get medical insurance and go to a doctor when they really need it. Some candidates don't care, but we do.

Invest in Weatherized Homes and More Efficient Buildings and Appliances: Upgrading home furnaces, ducts, windows, and insulation can cut energy bills by 20 to 40 percent, year after year.

Good for consumers, not so good for profiteering utilities. On the other hand, states such as California that are reaching demand that outstrips supply could really benefit from this.

Reduce the U.S. Government's Energy Use by 20 Percent and Make the White House Carbon Neutral. The U.S. government is the nation's single largest energy consumer, with a $15 billion energy bill in 2005. However, its investments in energy efficiency have been cut in half since 2001. Edwards will overhaul federal buildings and vehicles to emphasize efficiency, reducing the use of energy by 20 percent, and expand the government's use of renewable sources. After taking energy efficiency steps at the White House, he will purchase carbon offsets to make it carbon-neutral. [DOE, 2006; Alliance to Save Energy, 2007]

That is a something that can be a huge difference, and a large portion of it can be done by order of the President without having to wade through Congress. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world though if Congress wanted to take the lead on this issue. *Hint* *Hint*.

Read more on Edwards plan over at the official blog. Tons of solid ideas over there, go read!

Other posts from this blog: John Edwards, Energy Policy, Global Warming, Campaign News

Voters Considering The Subject of Cancer

2007-04-16T09:00:00.001-05:00

According to Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin, cancer isn't quite the taboo that it used to be. Via AP:

"The way voters respond depends very much on the specific illness involved and the extent to which they tend to think of it as being a risk to the candidate's long-term health," Garin said.

In the case of Democratic candidate John Edwards, the former senator and his wife, Elizabeth, called a news conference to announce that her breast cancer had returned in incurable form and spread to other parts of the body, but that it would not slow his presidential campaign.

This of course is a subject because of the recent announcement made by the Edwards' regarding Elizabeth's recent change in condition, though I'm not sure why that would influence anyone's vote one way or another, since she isn't the candidate. Maybe it plays to a persons honesty, who knows. Also recently diagnosed are Republican Senator Fred Thompson and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

I haven't been up on this issue since I was away when it was announced, but I would note that incurable doesn't mean untreatable -- that's very important to understand. The last I heard, the news was even worse for Snow, and even though I think the guy is a giant weasel (a requisite for being the Press Secretary) and hypocrite, amongst other things, I'm very sad to hear about this. Though misguided on any number of issues, I'm sure he is a genuinely nice guy, and I'd hate to see any of these people have bad things happen, and cancer is pretty bad no matter how you look at it.

"The interesting question that remains to be answered is: How are the people who vote going to look at this?" said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who keeps a cancer blog on the Internet. "How all this plays out remains to be seen. I think it shines the light on a very important fact, which is that we have many more cancer survivors today."

Lichtenfeld, who is 60, recalls being smacked as a child for daring even to mention cancer to an aunt who had the disease.

I find the prospect of any disease being so taboo that it not be spoken of to be abhorrent. How can you possibly come to terms with something so deadly and misunderstood when people are literally abusing their children to keep them from speaking of it? How much more primitive can you get? Let's just take the next logical step and move back into caves for crying out loud.

Cancer is a top killer in the world and of all the things we could be doing to fight it and raise awareness for early testing, to have the possibility that we dare not even speak of it is just appallingly.

Other posts from this blog: John Edwards, Cancer, 2008 Elections

Edwards Comes Out For Net Neutrality

2007-04-15T13:00:00.001-05:00

I'm not very keen on the issue. On the one hand I think the companies that own the backbones really ought to be able to do whatever they want with their property, yet it doesn't make sense in our society to allow one company to charge another for something when they have no active business relationship. It's kind of like a toll booth that not only charges cars to pass through, but also a company such as Dell, who owns the cargo in the back of a semitrailer that is passing through the booth.

The toll booth and Dell have no business relationship, but they want to charge Dell because their cargo represents 80% of the long haul traffic going through the gate. Yet they are already making money from the people who own those trucks, so how does such a wild idea make any sense?

Well, it doesn't, and that's what net neutrality is all about. AT&T can charge their own customers whatever they want, but they shouldn't be allowed to charge Google for sending traffic through their pipes when Google is already paying for that traffic with whoever is providing them with bandwidth.

Quotes from savetheinternet:

"Information vehicles like YouTube, the Internet at large, blogging, video blogging, all these things are ways for democracy to flourish. They're ways for ordinary Americans to participate in the process," he said.

Let me do a bit more explaining. You request a video from YouTube, which is sitting on their servers. Your ISP is Comcast, while YouTube is getting their Internet access through Level3, but your ISP doesn't have a direct connection to Level3, so how does the traffic find its way through?

Big providers like Level3 and AT&T have agreements called peering, where AT&T will say "I need to connect to you, and you need to connect to me." So long as the amount of traffic flowing between the two is roughly equal, they will make these connections and often will do it for free, because it benefits them both. That's the deal, they both win. Then they both have their own customers that connect exclusively to them, and that's where they get their money. But now they have this bright idea that if tons of traffic originates from somewhere else on the Internet, but must traverse their own pipes, they'll charge the owner of the traffic since they can't charge their own peers.

"This goes to the heart and soul of democracy. Because, if Democracy is going to work in this country, then we want people to be well informed and we want a wide variety of diverse voices to be heard. And that's what is at issue with these media conglomerates … We really have to stay on top of this because what we see flourishing at the grassroots can be stomped on if we're not careful."

That's not what I want to hear on the issue, but it's a step in the right direction. The integrity of the network must be maintained at all costs, or it'll stop working altogether.

Other posts from this blog: John Edwards, Internet, Net Neutrality, Savetheinternet

John Edwards Wants Greenhouse Gas Tax

2007-04-15T09:44:00.001-05:00

The campaign hit a significant rough spot while I was gone, one that saw a recurrence of Elizabeth Edwards cancer and the possible pullout of this sites candidate. Thankfully it looks like Elizabeth's illness is another step in the battle, not a movement "downward." Nobody, regardless of ideology, wants to see another person in pain or to have health problems.

Everyone ought to know by now that John Edwards isn't going to pull out of the race at this point, though it remains a distinct possibility should Elizabeth's health take a downturn in the future. I'm sorry I missed the deal, and I wish her a speedy recovery.

The last time I checked, Edwards was the only person to actually release a health care plan to the public from our side. Most candidates talk a good game, but it doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot compared to something like that. Health care is such a hit-or-miss deal in this country that not everyone who has cancer can get the treatment they need to stay alive. Edwards wouldn't say something like this, or use it as an issue, but I have no problem saying that if you ever wonder whether or not the expensive health care reform Democrats like John Edwards are always floating are worth the cost, just think about your wife, or your mother, father, brother, whomever.

Imagine if they found out they had cancer, and ask yourself if they could afford a couple hundred grand or more in medical costs. Ask yourself if they could afford the $2000 medical cans just to find out if they even have it or not, and then then you'll have your answer.

Not one to sit still for any length of time, I see that Edwards is moving on to pollution regulation. This is something that caught my attention in another capacity a few days ago, where I read that the Superfund was no longer collecting fees from industrial polluters. What this means obviously is that tax payers are now funding the cleanup of industrial toxic pollution instead of the companies who made the mess in the first place.

Edwards plan seems to revolve around taxing greenhouse gas polluters by the amount of gas they generate, with the intention of using those funds to advance clean energy technology.

Via ABC/AP:

"People ought to have to pay that want to generate greenhouse gases," Edwards said at a global warming rally that was part of a nationwide day of demonstrations. Edwards said charging polluters could generate up to $40 billion to invest in clean technology to "get us off our addiction to oil." He also said the United States should

That is no joke, if you stop and ask President Bush or practically any Republican what their solution to the problem of oil dependence, their answer is to stop being dependant on Middle Eastern oil. That's right, their solution is to stop getting oil from people that don't like us, rather than developing alternative energy technology that would get us off oil altogether.

The former North Carolina senator, who was John Kerry's running mate in the 2004 presidential election, said the U.S. needs to put a cap on carbon emissions, and should achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.

We could take billions of tons of greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere (or rather not put it in there in the first place) by putting new fuel efficiency standards on the auto industry. It's understandable that Republicans don't want to do this because it will cost the auto industry money, and they are under intense pressure from foreign manufacturers as it is, but that's not the point.

We're killing our planet at a rate that accelerates every single year that we don't do the things we know we can do to start rolling back these problems. If we don't stop, the coming climate shift is going to kill off the auto industry anyway because half the continent will be buried under ice and snow. If cleaning up our planet means putting a hurt on an entire industry, then that's a hit we'll just have to take and deal with. Killing off our ecosphere is not worth increasing profits and competition, it just isn't.

Other posts from this blog: Taxes, Elizabeth Edwards, Pollution

House Parties!

2007-02-26T19:07:00.000-05:00

John Edwards hit up New Hampshire over the weekend pushing his message on universal health care for all Americans, and I have to tell you this is like the only consistent news piece over the past month. The manufactured blog scandal came and went within a week, while another attempt at making scandals instead of breaking them -- this one regarding a month old statement on Israel -- has so far failed to get any attraction. I guess it wasn't sexy or dirty enough.

This is a problem, not just for John Edwards, but for all the candidates from both sides. There just aren't a whole hell of a lot of facets to presidential campaigns, not enough to stretch out for this length of time. The primaries don't start for another 10 months, and there are like two messages out there: Iraq bad, health care good! Not cutting it.

I can report on things like this whenever Edwards makes a stop someplace to campaign, and give you the inevitable quotes on the same old story like this.

"Honestly, if you don't bring up Iraq, I'll bring it up," the former North Carolina senator told about 150 people gathered in a state senator's living room and kitchen.

That's all well and great, except there is about a .001% chance that it won't be brought up by someone, no matter where he goes. The failed war gets worse almost on a daily basis, like today when I just heard that a failed assassination attempt on the Iraqi VP killed 20 and injured another 40. You wouldn't know it though, since the talking heads are obsessed with Anna Nicole, who wouldn't have commanded five seconds until she died mysteriously.

Was it even a mystery though? Not a good one. Her son just died from drug abuse, and they found a ton of drugs in her room. Some mystery that is. But now that I've been drawn off-track..

Edwards also brought his health care plan, which would require health insurance for everyone but also provide subsidies to help lower-income families afford it. He also touted proposals to cut energy subsidies to the energy industry, reduce global warming and address homelessness.

Edwards' work on anti-poverty causes since his last run brought Pat Harris to the event. She said she sees a bit of her political hero in Edwards.

"He's a Jimmy Carter-kind of guy," said Harris, who housed 20 John Kerry volunteers in 2004 but hasn't decided who will get her support in 2008. "I'm very impressed. I had questions. But the questions I had, he answered."

I'd like to see concrete plans for doing more than just reducing the deficit. Don't get me wrong, reducing the deficit and maybe even creating a budget surplus is fantastic progress that this country has only seen during Bill Clinton's presidency, but it's kind of like spending 12 years promising everyone that you are going to stop getting fatter. Good, but what about all the junk you've collected in your arse since before you learned how to do math?

We've racked up something like $8,774,000,000,000 in debt so far. The only thing gained by balancing the budget will be us not making it any bigger, and that's not good enough. What the hell is everyones plan to eliminate the eight trillion dollar national debt? Still waiting for that one, Mr. Senator.

This, on the other hand, is what I want to see.

In recent visits, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who top the polls, have held auditorium-sized events attended by sign-toting crowds and bookended by abbreviated glad-handing. They've talked in generalities about a new direction for the nation and of their desire to have "conversations" with the voters.

Yesterday, there was no campaign music or "town hall" discussion. There was no podium. Just John Edwards in a button-up shirt, squeezing through a packed living room in Nashua, standing on a chair to see over a crowd in a Concord home and talking in front of a Salem fireplace to people sitting cross-legged on the rug about the policy initiatives he's honed since he began his campaign in 2003.

"This is what New Hampshire campaigning is supposed to be about," he said at each place.

This is the difference, this is what killed Howard Dean. He had the people on the 'net which paved the way for everyone else, but he didn't have the people on the ground. If you ask people to vote for you with an e-mail and a smile, you'll get coin flips or people making decisions for retarded reasons like "well he's a farmer and I'm a farmer and we can trust our own."

Give me a break.

While it's probably true that most of the people that attend these house parties are Dem's that are going to vote for Edwards anyway, that isn't always the case, and the point isn't always to turn the crowd. If you can energize the people you already have, you can turn them into vote turners by pumping them up on the message and showing them that you care as much as they do. If any of these people go to work on Monday and turn just one or two people onto the message, that's powerful stuff. That's how you get votes in this country, you get off the throne that Bush is crapping on and you talk to them about what matters the most.

About the donor dust-up between Clinton and Obama, come on guys, you are embarrassing us. You'd think this was an Internet fight or something.

tags: John Edwards, Health Care, Iraq, House Parties, 2008 Elections, Budget Deficit, Poverty

Republicans Don't Care About Health Care

2007-02-25T12:50:00.000-05:00

Pushing Rope has a video of John Edwards talking universal health care, though I'm not sure where it's from or when. There's a note in there about how Republicans were more interested in using health care legislation as a weapon against Democrats while Bill Clinton was President, and showed absolutely no concern for all the Americans that needed that coverage back then, and all of the Americans that need that coverage right now. Somewhere in this country, there are thousands and thousands of Americans that need to go to a hospital, but can't afford it. Many of them are suffering, and some of them will probably die long before they ever should.

The (health care) plan, he wrote in the memo, is a “serious pol- itical threat to the Republican party,” and its demise would be “a monumental setback for the President.”

While John Edwards and other Democrats both now and in the past push to end this travesty, Republicans fight against it. They don't care about you, or your kids. No, the party of "family values" only cares about your well being when it comes to who you're sleeping with and what you're doing in the privacy of your own home. If you're sick and need a doctor, oh well **** you then, because there's nothing they can gain from that. We all know where they stand on this and they can't run from it. We won't let them.

No one who plays partisan political games with Americans health deserves to hold public office.

There's new polling data out that I've seen in the last two days, but I'm not going to even bother posting it here since the first primaries are so far way. We're talking about a political climate where one screwup can tank your numbers permanently in roughly 24 hours. These numbers mean absolutely nothing. It's like using todays temperature to forecast what it will be nine months from now. Anyway, most of these little polls are just that -- little. I see no value in what 600 people think compared to the 300,000,000 others (half of which of course won't bother to vote) that will exercise their constitutional rights to reject the party of zero accountability and the mud slingers and the liars in 2008.

Republicans have serious problems right now and they are well aware of it. Their top three candidates all have baggage that are keeping them from gaining the support of the religious right; extremists like Jerry Fallwell. The GOP has universally acknowledged that this is the weakest group of candidates they've had in quite some time, and it's not like their party is popular right now either. The '06 mid-terms were a collective kick in the shins that showed the countries general discontent with the whole party, not just the White House. It's only going to get worse for them, and that's the bed they made when they got us into an unwinnable war.

tags: John Edwards, Health Care, 2008 Elections, 2007 Primaries, Democrats, Republicans

Vilsack Ends Campaign

2007-02-23T12:07:00.000-05:00

Governor Tom Vilsack is announcing right now that he is ending his 2008 campaign for President. Vilsack's primary reason was the vast amount of money required to run in modern days and that he simply cannot compete with the other super stars in the field. Let me restate that -- he can't even get enough money to stay afloat, much less compete.

I find it incredibly pathetic that a person has to end their campaign just because they can't raise tens of millions of dollars just to get some TV air time. There is something deeply wrong with the system we have when you have to be connected at the hip to extremely wealthy people juts get going.

Is this really a democracy, or is it democracy light where only the rich get to run now?

tags: Tom Vilsack, 2008 Elections, Democrats

Edwards Most Connected Candidate? Hitting The Core Issues; Israel Non-Story

2007-02-22T15:16:00.000-05:00

Ian Douglas for the Telegraph seems to think so.

All of the candidates have well-polished websites with opportunities to take part in or contribute to the respective campaigns. They all have things they call blogs except for grumpy old Dennis Kucinich, but it's John Edwards who takes the prize for most networked presidential hopeful...the list of social websites he's established profiles on is staggering.

I just hope that these campaigns realize that this stuff doesn't equal votes. It takes no effort to join some social networking group for a candidate you support, but not all of the people that do are going to actually go out and vote, and even fewer are going to go out and knock on doors to turn other voters. I'd also like to see a higher level of integration between all these disparate sites.

Campaigns need to find a way to connect the blog commenter's with the Second Life players with the MySpace friends and have set goals to accomplish. 1,000,000 friends on MySpace is cool, but not if they aren't doing anything. You need to get them to spread the message and get other people into the movement, otherwise it's all for naught.

More morons out there are trying to warp the Senators statement on Middle East tensions regarding Iran's nuclear weapons development into an anti-religious attack on Jews. I just don't see how people can be any more obtuse unless they are doing it on purpose. Israel has threatened more than once to attack Iran if their nuclear weapons program isn't halted, and that could bring the entire region into a state of chaos.

How is that anti-Semitic? I mean honestly, I think the term has been so abused over time that some people think any statement they can link to Israel that isn't proactively supportive must then be negative, derogatory, and apparently anti-Semitic since Israeli's have no other facets than their faith.

They have a term for that, it's called a victims mentality.

Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and Israel has threatened to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. These two are itching for a fight and if nukes are involved -- and by the way Israel does possess tactical nuclear weapons -- then all hell is going to break loose over there. That's not anti-Semitic, it's reality.

Nuclear armed countries that hate each other, I'm sorry to say, present an infinitely greater threat to the region than terrorists and an unstable Iraq do. Even if a terrorist cell managed to acquire and detonate a bomb, that's *1* bomb. Israel is estimated to have nearly 100 warheads with sea-launch capability, Iran aims to be able to produce as many as 20 warheads per year by the end of the decade. Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal and is known to have contributed technical support to Libya and Iran. India is armed and doesn't exactly have the best relations with Pakistan right now. None of these countries have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and China has a dog in the game as well as the Russians.

The most immediate threat is Iran's accelerated program encouraging Israel to destroy said program, end of story.

counterpunch.org has a piece on the various Presidential candidates health care plans, which is kind of funny since I'm not sure any of then have actually put a plan on paper other than John Edwards.

"Romney's bill was written by Blue Cross," Woolhandler said. "Romney was saying he was going to offer health insurance starting at $200 a month. And of course, that was a hoax. No insurance policy in Massachusetts comes in at $200 a month. When Blue Cross was asked to produce the policy, it turned out the policy was going to cost $380 a month for a policy that had a $2000 deductible. So, you are going to tell this poor bloke who is earning $29,400 a year that he has to go out and spend $4,000 a year on an insurance policy. And if he gets sick, he doesn't even have any coverage until he has spent $2,000. And that's not family coverage. That's individual coverage."

Wow, I'm not sure I even have to say anything about that. Romney's plan pretty much destroys itself without anyone else's help. Good job Mitt! Unfortunately, it's not very high on the Senators plan either.

"Edwards plan is not going to work," Woolhandler says flatly. "We know there is not going to be fair competition between Medicare and the private plans. You have to take on the private health insurance industry and tell them you are out of here. This is an entitlement program like traditional Medicare or Social Security. We are going to get the administrative efficiencies you get from running it as a single program and use that to expand coverage."

It may not work in the end, but any improvement is better than what we have going on right now, and it's a heck of a lotter better than the pro-business plans that Republicans are touting which do nothing but make the big private providers more profit, and life for poor even more impossible. That is going backwards, not forwards.

Edwards is meeting with unions today in Tennessee to talk fair living wages.

Vanderbilt workers, many of them members of Laborers Local 386, have been attempting to persuade the university since last year to pay a living wage of $10.18 an hour. Currently, the lowest paid workers earn $7.55 an hour, well below the poverty level. Vanderbilt - whose chancellor is paid $1.3 million a year - continues to refuse to grant a living wage for employees.

It's funny when you think about it, how the rich are always the most greedy. You'd think someone who needs every dime that they earn just to pay the bills and put food on the table would be the most desperate to protect the money that they have, and fight hard to get even more of it, but you'd be mistaken. The rich hoard their fortunes like you're trying to rip their arm off. They want more of it and few have any intention of sharing. There is no excuse for people to be working for the University below the poverty level while the chancellor is pulling over a million per year.

Think about this for a minute, $10.18 an hour at 8.5 hours per day is only $20,767 per year. The chancellor is making enough money to give 62 people a raise to $10.18 per hour, all by himself. Unbelievable.

tags: Edwards, Health Care, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Unions, Social Networking

Manufactured Scandal Machine Pumps Out Another One

2007-02-21T22:01:00.000-05:00

Presidential campaigns seemingly exist for a single purpose: so talking heads can talk. If there isn't a big scandal going on for them to pontificate about, then they'll take anything you say and generate one, usually by distorting what you really said into something that they can attack, e.g. they'll straw man you. Today, they did it to John Edwards.

The heads aren't happy that the manufactured blogger controversy is already dead and buried, so now they're making a big stink over what I think is a very reasonable and historically accurate assessment of just how unstable the Middle East is right now. As is to be expected, someone desperate for attention and ready to say anything so long as it is sensationalist will come out of the woodwork to claim that "situation x" has just cost "candidate x" the "party x" nomination. Cue wonkette.com.

Handsome boy John Edwards blew it by mentioning Israel in a possibly not-100% flattering light at a Hollywood talent agency meet & greet last month. Peter Bart mentioned the incident in a January 19 column on Variety.com, but it took the brave Israel defenders at National Review Online to blog it up today.

Imagine that, a minor statement made over a month ago was dug up by red-staters and blown up into a thing, when has that ever happened?

Consider for a moment that while the Jewish lobby is incredibly powerful in the United States, they only account for less than 2.5% of the electorate. A statement like this isn't going to matter to people who aren't artificially hypersensitive about all things Israel, and by that measure the general electorate just won't care. That isn't to say it isn't important, or inflammatory, but there is basically zero chance that something this small is going to end anybody's campaign.

You can tell pretty easily because the only place that picked this up in over a month is a red site that is notorious for generating scandal where there is none. There's no story here.

Moving on..

What would you have done to cause Saddam to dismantle and give up the WMD, once and for all?

A realistic, concrete answer is called for — especially because Mr. Edwards implicitly, if not explicitly, has criticized Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for not stating she made a “mistake” in voting for the resolution. (Sen. Obama, it must be said, has not taken any shots directly at Sen. Clinton on this issue — as contrasted to John Edwards, although he reminds audiences that he was opposed to the war resolution, albeit while he was an Illinois state, not U.S., Senator.)

There is little point in posing such a question since you're now trying to judge someone on a fictional scenario that never happened, and it's pointless. John Edwards made a mistake when he voted to authorize the war, as did everyone in the Senate. There were a lot of people that knew the intelligence could only be described as weak -- even in the best light -- and knew better than to trust an administration whose chief evidence was "trust us."

I knew the intelligence was weak and any war based on it was wrong, and I never had the benefit of seeing the faked evidence that they did. How could I possibly accept excuses from them when even I knew better?

The realistic concrete answer has been given. President Bush faked the intelligence to get the war he wanted to execute for personal reasons, and all the suckers in Congress bought it. One of them has said he was wrong, and that his vote was wrong, and that man is John Edwards. There is nothing else out there to wring out of it. We were all lied to, and the focus today should be two fold: holding "the decider" responsible for lying to America, and electing an honest and responsible person to be our next President so that this never happens again.

A right-wing rag called gopusa.com is slandering an entire swath of the political spectrum, making me wonder just what limits -- if any -- these people have on who they will viciously attack and Swift Boat. Talk about wallowing in the mud, this is pathetic.

But what Edwards' hesitancy does demonstrate, says Bauer, is that Democratic presidential candidates are "scared to death" of left-wing activists operating websites like MoveOn.org and the Democratic Underground.

"On these sites you'll find an unbelievable hatred of Christians, of Evangelicals, of Jews, of conservatives in general, of the president," he explains. "And the people who go to these websites are often the volunteers, the doorbell-ringers, the envelope-stuffers, and the donors that unfortunately the National Democratic Party has come to rely on."

The truth is the GOP are the ones that are absolutely terrified of the grass roots Democratic activists, not for the reasons they lie about, but because we're not mindless drones they can control through spin and talking points. Nobody on this side hates or discriminates against any religious faith, but we do take it personally when people of faith start trying to replace real law with religious law and dogma. This group has become very powerful over the past five years, and they are scared to death of what it will do to them in the 2008 elections, and after what it did to them last year, who can blame them?

Well, I'll blame them, for slandering people whose only sin is being engaged in politics instead of standing idle why they are preached to, people who want to think for themselves and are willing to get off their rears and do something about it.

tags: John Edwards, Iraq, Israel, 2008 Elections

Edwards on The Situation Room

2007-02-20T11:57:00.000-05:00

Michigan for Edwards has a video of John Edwards appearance on The Situation Room plus a transcript. They talk Iraq, and Edwards support for Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

Well, the lesson -- you learn lessons in everything you do in life, including in political campaigns, Wolf -- is we're entering a brave new world with the net and the blogosphere. And it's a powerful world. It's a world that's going to have, and should have, a huge impact on the way we do politics in America. Because the net and the blogosphere is grass roots politics at its best. But candidates can't control what people say.

We believe in free speech in this country. This is a democracy. People have a right to express their opinions.

Conservatives who believe dissent and disagreement ought to be a crime: smacked down. Feeling frosty today: damn skippy.

Dean Barnett wrote about Amanda's apperance on MSNBC which I sadly didn't hear about, so I missed it. Sounds like it was a short deal where MSNBC was trying to milk more out of the story than still exists in order to fill dead air time. I have a suggestion, how about you guys report some actual news for a change? Just a thought. Anyway I hope she gave them a mouthful.

A post on the official blog about Elizabeth Edwards fight with cancer during the 2004 elections, something I don't recall ever hearing about.

Elizabeth's recent fight with Breast Cancer is an inspiration to anyone diagnosed with cancer. Elizabeth was diagnosed with invasive ductal cancer, the most common form of breast cancer, at the end of the campaign in fact her and John went directly to Massachusetts General Hospital after he gave his concession speech. Despite being told several days earlier that a lump in her breast could be cancerous, she stumped through 5 states for the campaign before she found out for sure.

It must take some real guts to continue through to the end of a Presidential campaign with something like in the back of your mind, but I wouldn't be surprised if it helped get her through the tough times either. Keeping yourself busy -- and I can't imagine being more busy than that -- helps keep you from dwelling on the worst-case-sceario, but it also bottles it up somewhat and when there isn't anything left to do but think about it, the dam bursts.

I'm glad she is still with us and it'll make it double sweet when Edwards wins it all in '08.

The AP has a piece on the Senator taking President Bush to task for continually fouling up opportunities to negotiate with Iran to resolve the nuclear weapons issue, instead of simply threatening them like a barbarian would. Here's the thing, nobody disagrees that the way we got played by North Korea should be a stern lesson in how to deal with nuclear weapons proliferation in the future, lessons that can and should be directly applied to Iran. We get it, what we tried before didn't work and now we've got to deal with an impossible scenario, two rather hostile nations being armed with tactical nuclear weapons.

That tacit recognition doesn't mean however that the only option left to us is to cross our arms and get ready to fight. I am so incredibly tired of the GOP's "do what what I tell you or it's war" attitude towards the world. The United States did not become a super power by throwing our weight around like some neophyte colonial power bent on dominating and then resettling every territory that disagrees with us. There are far more effective things we can do that don't involve force.

Something I heard either from the Senate or the House the other day -- I can't remember which -- some Congressperson said that as an example of what we could and should be doing is leveraging our capability to do just about anything we put our minds to, and some of these things are really not all that difficult to do and would actually help us in the process. Iran from what I understand is in the top four for oil exports in the world, yet imports nearly 50% of its gasoline from other countries because it simply cannot process the oil into gas for its own needs.

Think about what it would mean to Iran to be able to go from a gasoline importer to a gasoline exporter in terms of money and greater world influence, and we could help them do that...if they play ball on the nukes. See that? Everybody wins, because when you sit down and use the brain you were born with instead of grunting like a cave man and grabbing the biggest stick you can find, good things tend to happen.

Honestly, deals like that are not capitulation either, it's making a compromise where everyone gets at least some of what they want. That's what makes the world go around.

"The way for America to engage them on this issue is to use the economic tools available ... to make it clear if they are willing to give up their nuclear weapons we are willing to make nuclear fuel available to them," he told the AP.

If all Iran is interested in is safe nuclear power, we can help them with that, but I don't really think that is their only interest at this point. I hope it is, but honestly, having a capable nuclear arsenal means being virtually immune from foreign invasion. Do you think Bush would have hesitated to steam roll North Korea if they didn't have nuclear weapons already, or that he would have invaded Iraq, had they had tactical nukes?

The best thing about nukes -- and this is a grade school lesson from the cold war -- is deterrence. Iran doesn't really want nukes so they can use them against regional enemies, they know just as well as the rest of us that if you actually use them, then everybody loses. No, they want nukes to deter the United States, who is constantly threatening them, from invading. The faster they get them, the sooner we won't be able to touch them without glassing over the entire country, and they know that.

When George Bush was running for President the first time, and his response to how he would handle complex foreign policy such as this with absolutely zero experience and understanding of the global political climate, was to shrug his shoulders as if he'd just figure it out as he went along -- that's how we get into messes like this. Let's not do it all over again.

The rest of the fluff having been censored and/or sanitized for your wholesome protection, I'm signing off.

tags: John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, Iran, Health Care, Amanda Marcotte

Message on Health Care from Elizabeth Edwards

2007-02-19T20:44:00.001-05:00

Dear friends,

(To those of you whom I'm writing for the first time: Hello! And welcome to the campaign!)

As you know, this month John announced his plan to guarantee every man, woman and child in this country the top-quality health care we all deserve.

But changes this big simply can't come from just the top down. That's been tried before, and it doesn't work. To get this done right, we've got to build support for universal health care in every city and town in America - and we've got to start today.

So this morning, I'm writing a letter to the editor of my local newspaper to share why I personally support John's plan for universal health care - and I'd like to ask you to write one too.

You can write and submit your own letter to the editor of a local newspaper using our online tool, and it only takes a few minutes. Just click the link below:

http://johnedwards.com/r/5953/792215

There's no need to be a policy expert - just speak from the heart.

Here's the letter I'm sending to the Chapel Hill News, my hometown paper:

Dear Editor,

I'm writing to share why I strongly support John Edwards' plan for universal health care, besides the reason that he is my husband.

America has the best health care in the world; we know this because people with complex and intractable problems, the most desperate patients from around the world come to America for treatment. But for too many Americans, that same high quality treatment is not available. Under John's plan, it would be.

John's universal health care plan guarantees every American health care, preserves freedom of choice and shares responsibility among individuals, employers and the government. But these broad principles don't tell the real story. The real story is personal and poignant, the stories of people who do not have health care coverage at all, like a young breast cancer patient I met from Alaska, or the people for whom a pre-existing condition means their coverage doesn't cover their most dire medical needs, like a woman I met in Ohio.

I'm one of the lucky ones. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had health insurance coverage, and I could afford care. When I found a lump in my breast, I never had to think about whether I could afford treatment. I simply got the treatment I needed. That should be true for every one of us. A nation that prides itself on equality cannot have me getting the best treatment available while a woman I met from Greensboro, N.C. has to depend on the kindness of strangers for her treatment.

It is not just that John's universal health care proposal will make our health care coverage system more efficient - though it will. It is not just that it will boost our economic productivity - though it will. It is not just that people stuck in jobs they do not like because they cannot lose their health insurance will now be free to change jobs or start a business - although they will. It is not even that it will provide pressure to stop the spiraling health care costs - though it does that, too. It is that the lives of the woman in Alaska, and the mother in Ohio, and the Greensboro breast cancer patient will be better.

And that's why I will work hard every day to make sure John's plan becomes a reality. And I hope you'll join me.

Please take a few minutes to write and send your own personal letter about why you support John's plan. Together, we can make universal health care a reality.

http://johnedwards.com/r/5954/792215

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Edwards

tags: John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, Health Care

"I wanted to fight back the day it started"

2007-02-19T16:37:00.000-05:00

If you care about NASCAR, then click this. Otherwise I'll open this with a brief sighting of John Edwards in an Iowa restaurant yesterday.

I waited on Senator John Edwards last night. He was in town (Davenport, IA) along with Senator Mcain for some sort of convention. I work at an upscale Italian restaurant in the downtown area. He was very nice and polite, even when dealing with a nearly constant stream of admirers interrupting his dinner and asking for autographs and swooning. also, he wore these trendy black framed glasses I've never seen him wear before. Funny because I was wearing almost the same glasses last night.

See the thing I like about this is that people standing in front of a microphone or a TV camera is going to act on their best behavior to give people a good impression of who they are and what they're about. Everyone running for office looks nice, but that doesn't mean they actually are. I know celebrities have to put up with a rude public all the time when they go out to eat and some handle it better than others. If a constant stream of people bugged me while I was trying to eat, I'd be pretty pissed. I mean was the general public raised in a barn or something?

Anyway, it looks like Edwards kept his cool even with people rudely interrupting his dinner, so good for him.

There's a story that ran in the Boston Globe yesterday that is rehashing the same tired accusations from the 2004 campaign that John Edwards refused to engage the Swift Boaters in partisan mud slinging, and that Edwards is apparently lying when he says he actually wanted to take the gloves off and go after them, but was held back to Kerry's retarded staffers.

The only person who knows which of these two accounts is true is Edwards himself, but one big point that needs to be made here is that there is a difference between aggressively defending the campaign, and turning into a garbage trawling dog only interested in hate and negativity, e.g. the Swift Boaters. See here's the thing, the SB's only attacked and disparaged people, they never contributed anything positive to the elections at all. People like that are of absolutely no value in life, and Edwards I think was smart enough to know that.

"Edwards refused to play the traditional role of a running mate -- being the person whose delivering the negative message on the opponents," said one former senior campaign official who was involved in the discussions between the Kerry and Edwards staffs. The official no longer works for Kerry and is not affiliated with any of the 2008 presidential candidates.

"He just wouldn't do it," the campaign official said of Edwards. "He wouldn't do it on Swift Boats, and he wouldn't do it on any other issue."

Perhaps the real problem here isn't that Edwards wasn't willing to engage their attackers, but that he wasn't interested in playing a tradtional role at all. I mean is this anonymous coward really complaining that Edwards refused to be Kerry's pit bull in a fight that already had far too many to begin with? Does this person see actual value in having someone who responds to mud slinging with more mud?

Look, if there is one thing that President Bush has ever been right about, it's that there is value in standing up and fighting for what you believe in, but that isn't a free pass to start hitting below the belt, lying, and cheating your way to a win. The axiom of winning at all costs is precisely how people end up shooting themselves in the foot and always ends up winning nothing at all.

"I wanted to fight back the day it started," Edwards said. "The decision was made not to do it, and I did not agree with that decision." In a new book, "What a Party!", Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman, said Edwards made a similar statement to him. "Terry, they wouldn't let me" attack Bush, McAuliffe quotes Edwards as saying in December 2004. "I wanted to go after the Swift Boat guys. I wanted to go after Bush. They wouldn't let me."

So I really don't see a point in hashing this out right now. Kerry isn't running and if John Edwards can't respond to the coming diarrhea storm the conservative attack dogs are surely to spew at him, then he's done no matter what happened in 2004.

Edwards had prided himself on his positive campaign style during the 2004 primaries. He credited that style for his late surge in the Iowa caucuses, which enabled him to finish second to Kerry.

I am far more interested in a candidate that will raise the level of debate in this country beyond these cock-fights than one who is willing to sling mud to win it like it's a popularity contest. It's only boils down to that when we let it.

Onward..,

Ms. Fleming had no answer to that question, but I do. On the far left, Christian bashing is totally acceptable and rarely are any consequences imposed. The only reason these two women are not working for John Edwards right now is that he didn’t want to take the heat my program was giving him.

Yes Bill'O, just like racism, anti-gay bigotry, and misogyny is a staple of the radical right, aka religious fundamentalists, aka the same people complaining about a story that's already long dead.

This entire shoddy episode has badly damaged Edwards in my opinion, but it also points out that American culture, especially in the swampy blogosphere, is extremely tolerant of Christian-haters. Again, this could never have happened to any other religious or minority group.

It happens to blacks and gays all of the time, from your side of the fence, retard. If anything O’Reilly, the only difference between you and those you accuse is that they spew their hate on the Internet, while you spew yours on television. Honestly, the damage down to Edwards is miniscule, and the saddest thing about all of this is the hypocrisy -- the real bigots calling other people bigots. Incredible.

I'm not sure about the what or why, but here is a mini-bio on John Edwards that just popped up on my radar.

As a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Edwards worked tirelessly for a strong national defense and to strengthen the security of our homeland. He authored key pieces of legislation on cyber, bio, and port security.

Whoops, so much for Democrats being weak on national security. I guess we're kind of in charge of all those important intelligence oversight committees now, aren't we. We're all doomed.

The Senator hit up Sin City over the weekend looking to woo crowds in a state that will now have a hand in the early primary season next year.

Edwards was welcomed with enthusiasm at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Hall. Edwards noted his brother, an electrician, was an I.B.E.W. union member. He told members that number one on his agenda is universal healthcare.

With 47 million uninsured Americans, including 437,000 in Nevada, our health care system is broken, says Edwards. Edwards outlined a plan to get affordable health care to all Americans over the next five years. A proposal with a price tag of $90 to $120 billion dollars a year.

"The way I would say it, we're just going to get rid of George Bush's tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year, and that's the way we're paying for it," Edwards said.

I think it's plainly obvious that anyone making over $200k per year can afford to pay some higher taxes right now. Seriously. This country has people -- entire families -- living on $16,000 per year that have absolutely no health insurance at all. Think you might have something seriously wrong with your digestive system? A colonoscopy runs about $1,000 these days, which only costs you about $40 if you have health insurance. If not, you can kiss 1/16th of your yearly salary (pre-tax of course) bye-bye just to have a camera shoved up your ***.

Yeah, those $200k earners can eat a tax increase. Sorry, but that two-week vacation to the Bahamas will just have to wait until everyone else can visit a hospital when they really need it the most.

Finally, I found a pretty good piece on Edwards by Kenneth T. Walsh highlighting his coming struggle against new comer Obama and Hillary "I'm-against-the-war-but-I'm-still-glad-I-voted-for-it" Clinton.

Edwards, reflecting the growing impatience of many rank-and-file Democrats nationwide, derides the nonbinding resolution now before Congress, which opposes President Bush's "surge" of 21,500 additional troops into Iraq. "Nonbinding resolutions don't stop the escalation of this war," Edwards told U.S. News. "It's time for Congress to use its power [over spending] to stop the escalation of this war and to keep this president from making another huge ... ego-driven mistake."

That's damn right, but with the obstructionist party (Repubs) blocking debate on the nonbinding resolution in the Senate, I don't see what could possible be done right now. Repubs are scared ****less of even talking about the war right now, much less taking a firm stance on anything. I just don't know John Edwards expects Democrats in Congress to be able to do.

Whether we like it or not, the Constitution gives command of the military to the President, and ours is currently insane enough to keep them in Iraq even if Congress did stop all funding. Let's put an end to that scary possibility by electing a real leader in 2008, and even if it isn't John Edwards, anyone is better than Bush.

tags: Iraq, John Edwards, Health Care, 2008 Elections, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Bill O’Reilly, Congress, George Bush, Catholics, Bigots, Christians, Religion

Edwards on Bill Maher, More Blogging Stuff

2007-02-18T12:42:00.000-05:00

John Edwards was on Bill Maher's show (no, not that Bill Maher) to talk about his candidacy for President, and his vote to authorize the Iraq war. I was personally disappointed with the Senate when he did this, especially since he was supposedly representing my state in the Senate. I felt that ultimately he was representing his own fears, not me, but Edwards has more than made up for it by admitting that his vote was just plain wrong. Via newsbusters.org,

“I was wrong” means – I’m only speaking for me – means that I take responsibility for making a serious mistake on a vote that was probably the most important vote I cast in the United States Senate. I think we desperately need leaders in this country who will admit when they were wrong. We’re all human. All of us make mistakes. Admit when we’re wrong, change course, take responsibility for being wrong. I don’t think you can have the foundation for leadership, the moral foundation for leadership, if you don’t start by telling the truth. And, at least for me, this is the truth.

Yeah, I edited that a little from what you'll find on Newsbusters, because when you transcribe stuff like this, you don't write in pauses or non-words for crying out loud. "uh" is not a word, k? Also, I have a bone to pick here, because I've never heard of Newsbusters before, and their title banner says "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias." Excuse me for a moment while I throw up on your shoes.

There, I feel better now. The news today is overwhelmingly conservative and has been pretty much since September 11th when it became cool to look like a patriot without actually being one. Waving a flag in a crowd, and hanging one from your porch is one thing, but waving it over your little news logo while reporting on a war that your country is involved in isn't patriotic, it's a violation of journalistic integrity that makes you a bitch to the cause.

Being a patriot simply means loving your country, it's not something to be used to place yourself morally above other people, and it's not possible to be a bigger patriot than someone else is. If you want to tackle bias, then have fun getting the entirety of Faux News Channel taken off the air, and do it right now. Until then, bugger off I say.

You can get video of some of that appearance over here.

A quickie from a local news affiliate in Virginia an another endorsement picked up by John Edwards,

The chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party has endorsed former North Carolina senator John Edwards for president. Former state legislator Dick Cranwell has announced his support for Edwards two days after officials with close ties to Governor Tim Kaine said the governor will back Democrat Barack Obama for president.

Good for Obama, but bad for the country. I feel like Obama let the celebrity go to his head instead of letting his head lead him to the correct conclusion that the best leaders are inevitably ones that never wanted to be leaders in the first place. If you want it, then you're probably the worst person in the world to have power. You know, kind of like President Bush.

Here is some wingnut stuff about "that blogging thing" that needs addressing,

Of course, John Edwards should have removed the bloggers for their profane, vehement and vitriolic anti-Catholic bigotry, because to do otherwise is to assent to a disturbing bias against more than 60 million Catholic citizens in our country, where he aspires to serve as president. The historian Will Durant observed that no nation in history has survived without a strong moral code informed by religion.

I'm always a little amused when I see statements such as this, because it's barely short of saying that all morals descend from religion and that without religion, there are no morals at all. Only religious fundamentalists (Christian and Islamic extremists) really believe this as far as I know, because it's just a silly statement on its face. Religion at best isn't but about 5000 years old while moral sensibilities can be traced back along the lines of human evolution for tens of thousands of years.

The only person who was deeply upset about what Marcotte and McEwan wrote was Donohue, a self-professed bigot and hate monger in a league all by himself. The rest was just a rally cry for the right to get upset about nothing instead of having to talk about real issues that effect all Americans like health care and the Iraq war. The right will do anything to avoid talking about the tough issues that require sacrifices and real effort to resolve. Also, I don't think those 60,000,000 Catholics would appreciate such a narrow minded person speaking for them. I have seen a number of Catholics that wrote letters of support to Marcotte ane McEwan that had no problem with them being free to speak their minds, and realized that people can separate their personal views from their professional jobs. People do it all the time.

There is plenty more of this hypocritical crap going on, but it just doesn't deserve a link nor the attention of anyone with a brain. If you want to read these liars, just turn on Rush for a while. Or stick your head in the same. Same effect.

tags: Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwan, John Edwards, Health Care, Iraq, Iraq War, Bush, Virginia

Spineless Republicans Refuse to Debate Iraq

2007-02-17T14:42:00.000-05:00

Republicans filibuster debate on Iraq
resolution, 56-34.

Republicans in the Senate have blocked the resolution supporting our troops from even being debated by a 56-34 vote. (60 were required, because the *Republic party is filibustering.) We're not talking about voting on passage of the resolution, these cowards won't even open debate on the resolution. This is what happens when you elect people that have no spines and or integrity. Blood thirsty conservative Republicans got us into an unnecessary war with Iraq and now that it is inarguable that it was wrong, and that it has become unwinnable, they don't have the courage to even debate the issue with their peers.

I have often called the *Republic party the party of zero accountability, because no matter what they do wrong, nobody has to answer for it. This is a perfect example of why Republicans were stripped of power in the Congress last November, and this should be a plenty good enough reason to finish the job and strip them of power in the White House two years from now. They have gotten 3,100 soldiers killed for no good reason, plan to send another 21,000 into the fire, and they can't even suck it up long enough to debate the surge which also supports our troops. I guess they don't want to support our troops after all, I mean, they are filibustering debate on a resolution that expresses our support for them. Nice.

I would like to say that there were seven Republicans that did vote to proceed to debate, and to them I would say you have my respect. You did the right thing, but your party has dishonored themselves and their country today. The American people will not forget this.

*Almost all Republicans in the House referred to the Democratic party as the Democrat party during their speeches this past week. Either they were being purposefully disrespectful and immature, or they are just plain old illiterate. Either way, I'm more than willing to give it right back.

tags: Iraq War, Iraq, Senate, Troop Surge, McCain Doctrine, Escalation, Republicans

Edwards Against Free Trade with South Korea

2007-02-16T20:44:00.000-05:00

John Edwards released a statement urging President Bush not to sign a free trade agreement with South Korea. From the official campaign blog.

Thousands of American autoworkers learned this week that they will lose their jobs because of ill-conceived and poorly enforced trade agreements - and what is the Bush Administration doing? It's working overtime to sign a trade agreement with a country that refuses to open its market to American cars.

Enough is enough. President Bush should shut down all trade negotiations with South Korea until they prove their willingness to open their market to American automobiles and other U.S. products and agree to trade fairly.

The huge loss of jobs announced this week by DaimlerChrysler should be a wake-up call for this president: one-sided trade agreements hurt working families.

There is a little more, so head on over if you'd like to read the rest of Edwards' statement.

As I expected, news if running a little light today. In fact there isn't any news, just blog hits. bivingsreport.com hits on the social networking presence of the Edwards campaign, which seems to be the hot thing this cycle, but I'm not buying into it. Some people may find it impressive that Barak Obama garnered over 1,000,000 "friends" or whatever on facebook.com, but the real question that we should be asking right now is do any of those people leave their house on a regular basis, much less vote?

It's a heck of a lot easier to start a grass-roots fanclub online than it is getting those people to get off their lazy rears on a cold rainy day. I'd be supremely impressed if even ten of them went out to campaign for their "friend" in a year. Heck, I'd be surprised if any of them are still logging into facebook or MySpace a year from now. From what I understand, most people sign up once and never come back to these sites.

Yours truly showed up in todays Google Alert for Edwards news in the blog section, which is good in that it means content from this blog is showing up in Google blog search now. It's bad in that there were only 5 things on the list today, and yesterdays post on the campaigns presence in Second Life was one of them. Okay then, we move on...

More Second Life reporting over here from a site apparently dedicated to the game/simulator/whatever, a blog roundup on the official campaign blog which totally ignores me, and finally an NRO writer talks up Amanda Marcotte's essay on why she got fired that was posted on salon.com. It's not a bad piece really, there is some common sense in there. Worth a read if you've got the time.

tags: John Edwards, Amanda Marcotte, Free Trade, South Korea, Blogging, Second Life, MySpace, facebook, Social Networking

House Officially Rebukes Bush on Troop Surge

2007-02-16T15:30:00.000-05:00

The United States House of Representatives has voted 246-182 to pass the Iraq War Resolution that condemns President Bush's plan to temporarily increase troop levels in Iraq by as many as 21,000 active serviceman, which could include another 20,000 in support personnel.

It was a forgone conclusion that the Iraq resolution would pass in the House of Representatives, given the superior number of Democrats and limited Republican support from across the aisle. The time for debate in the House had just come to an end just a little after 3PM EST.

Suffice to say this probably won't garner a significant amount of attention since it has been in the news for pretty much the past two weeks solid.

Harry Reid is going to call the Senate into session this Saturday in an attempt to get a vote on their version of the resolution, and even though there are enough Republicans willing to vote in favor of the resolution at this time for it to pass with a veto-proof majority, none of them are willing to let debate begin at this time.

Democratic attempts to initiate debate on the resolution have thus far failed, meaning no debate has even taken place in the Senate, while there has been over thirty hours of debate in the House with close to three-fourths of the members having a chance to speak.

Todays resolution is non-binding, meaning it has no force of law and is essentially an expression of the opinion of the House. As many as ten to twenty Republicans are expected to vote in favor of the House resolution.

The House has passed a number of smaller bills during morning business over the past four days, including -- and I am not joking -- whether or not to name a post office somewhere in Texas. There was nearly unanimous bi-partisan agreement that the House should name that post office, and it was quickly dispensed with.

With the inevitable passage of the House resolution, Democrats in the Senate, including John Murtha, are threatening to introduce bills that would repeal the previous Congressional authorization for the Iraq war, and would attach a number of strings to the $100 billion funding bill the President has requested for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though these bills would be certain to raise objections from President Bush, they could be attached to must-pass spending measures such as funding for the Iraq war itself, or overall omnibus spending bills that fund the federal government, making them extremely difficult to stop.

One of this strings would be the defunding of permanent bases in Iraq, and a requirement for a timetable of troop withdrawal.

The final vote was 244 Democrats and 182 Republicans in favor of the Resolution.

tags: Iraq, Bush, Iraq War, Congress

Edwards Campaign Gets a Second Life

2007-02-16T10:05:00.000-05:00

This seems to be the theme of the current news swirling around the John Edwards campaign in the past twenty-four hours. Sure, there are still a couple of mumblings about the manufactured blogger controversy, but that's all but now that both Marcotte and McEwen have resigned. I'm not sure that's really what the people on the right wanted though. They are both unleashed again to spew all the anti-Catholic stuff they want and are no longer constrained by representing a Presidential campaign.

So first a bit of background on this thing called Second Life" from the always-right-but-sometimes-wrong Wikipedia.

Second Life (abbreviated to SL) is an Internet-based virtual world which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. Developed by Linden Lab, a downloadable client program enables users to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse.

If this is the thing I remember it to be, then it's a virtual world simulator of sorts that takes all of the fun aspects out of MMORPG games and leaves you with essentially a second virtual world to live in. The client used to be written in flash if I remember correctly, and the world itself features some of the most primitive and horrible graphics I've seen since before Doom hit the streets.

Apparently, the Edwards campaign setup a shop/office/building/presence of some sort within Second Life, and so I guess that's worth talking about when the first primaries are over a year away still.

Here is a blurb from a Mass. blog, short but sweet, my favorite kind. ZDNet probably has the best coverage of the deal, but webpronews.com has a bit as well. From ZDNet,

I started by asking what relationship, if any, he had with the official Edwards campaign. Rote explained that while he was doing this as a volunteer, he's in regular contact with Edwards' team and has their full support:

"… think of this as a scouting mission… it is unofficial in that the campaign is not spending money, and I am not paid, however the campaign is aware that we are organizing in Second Life, and cooperating as much as they can. I keep them updated on what I have learned, and they let me know things that will be helpful."

Rote says he expects his efforts to be incorporated into the official campaign within a month.

I just don't get Second Life. The graphics look 15 years old, it's not a game, and you still have to pay to use it. Where is the entertainment value?

tags: John Edwards, Second Life, 2008 Elections

Melissa McEwan Resigns

2007-02-14T05:03:00.001-05:00

The right got what they wanted, slandered, beaten, bloody and shamed, both Marcotte and *McEwan have quit the campaign. I sincerely hope that John Edwards learns a lesson from this, that people on the right will do literally anything to avoid talking about the issues. This should be a rallying cry from within the campaign to triple all efforts to get out the messages that these people fear, messages of hope and of new ideas, because those are the things that threaten them the most.

I'm sad that both of these women gave in, but let's remember that they didn't exactly surrender. They sacrificed their jobs so that the campaign can move past this, and one hardly need imagine all the hateful mail, accusations, and death threats they have endured over the past few weeks to sympathize with what has happened. I don't doubt that the harassment will continue for some time, and that's a real shame. It really puts an exclamation point on what a giant scumbag Donohue is, and all of the retards that made such a stink over nothing. I mean really, you'd think these people just now discovered that you can say anything you want on a blog and with that freedom inevitably comes things you don't necessarily want to hear.

You can read Melissa's message on resigning over here. Now, on with the news.

Because the manufactured controversy has finally come to a conclusion, unless there's a very good reason for doing so, I won't be linking to anymore blogs or news pieces about this. Maybe one or two here and there, but not like I have been. There probably won't be much news otherwise, so expect light posting for a spell.

Tom Eley writes on Obama's entry into the Democratic candidacy pool for 2008, and of course you should read all about it if you're interested in Obama, but I'm going to nitpick a little here with something I think is disingenuous.

For example, John Edwards-John Kerry's fervently pro-war vice presidential candidate in 2004-has, with considerable media assistance, rather incongruously attempted to stake out an "anti-war" position, calling on his rivals in the US Senate to cut off funding for Bush's escalation, a measure the Democratic congressional leadership has already rejected out of hand.

Couple points here, first being that "incongruous" means lacking in harmony, compatibility, or appropriateness. I don't see how the word applies at all, because John Edwards didn't stake out a position at all, he simply stated that his vote for the war authorization was just plain wrong. That by the way is something no other Democratic candidate has had the guts to so thus far.

Don't even bring up Hillary, please, she's been dancing around the war for far too long and has absolutely no credibility on the issue at this point. "If I were President, I wouldn't have blah blah"? Give me a break here, when she had the opportunity to act, Senator Clinton voted for it. I'm not going to call her an outright liar here, but you simply cannot have it both ways. If the intelligence was baked, then you were a fool for accepting it. If you knew it was baked, then why did you vote for it? It's lose/lose. The only way out is to admit you were wrong.

It's also important to note here that it doesn't matter how spineless Democratic leaders are when it comes to cutting off funding. For one it would be filibustered into oblivion by Republicans in the Senate, so it would be a waste of time, and I readily acknowledge that. But it would also force Republicans into a de facto support of keeping us in that war indefinitely. Something like that would be of tremendous advantage heading into late '08, so let's not jump to the conclusion that just because its off the table today, that doesn't mean it's off the table next year.

Obama has this advantage over Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Edwards: unlike the other leading candidates, all of whom as senators voted in favor of granting Bush authorization to illegally invade Iraq, Obama publicly opposed the invasion while still a state senator in Illinois.

So did Howard Dean, and we all know that while it got his foot in the door, it didn't really give him any kind of advantage. It helped, sure, because virtually everyone else in the race still tacitly supported the war, but that isn't the case today. All Democrats are against the war, and Obama has problems of his own to worry about.

But as I said, this is a soft piece on Obama, so read it with an eye towards that and you'll be fine.

Americanchronicle.com has a piece up supporting Edwards for President, and The Boston Globe has a bit on the campaign hiring a new state campaign manager for New Hampshire.

That's all I've got from the last 24 hours, when you ignore the bloggate stuff, so smoke 'em if you got 'em.

I apologize to McEwan, I've been spelling her last name wrong all this time.

tags: Barak Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwan, Hypocrisy, Pandagon, Shakespears Sister, Iraq, War, Iraq War, 2008 Elections, New Hampshire

Marcotte Quits

2007-02-13T03:28:00.000-05:00

The title says it all, really. They harassed her and the campaign until she felt the negative attention was doing far more damage than she could do good. I personally disagree, I think what all of this did was show how petty the right has become and how unwilling they are to address Democratic campaigns on issues that voters really care about like health care, sane national defense, and of course those evil taxes.

Says Marcotte,

Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.

The letter written by Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice in support of Marcotte and McEwen is a breath of fresh air. I know there are a lot of people of faith out there that can be reasonable about these things, and this is certainly one of them. You can read Amanda's entire announcment at pandagon.net.

Amanda did the honorable thing by leaving the campaign, but I don't think it was the right choice. Edwards keeping them on staff sent a strong message to the fundies that nearly made them choke to death on their own bile, and as many noted, was the first real instance of someone standing up to the swift-boat tactics and shooting them down as nothing but inane screaming by people intolerant of others who have different views on the world than they do.

With Amanda quitting, I think -- to steal a stupid term from Republicans -- the whiners and the hypocrites have just been emboldened in ways we won't begin to realize for sometime. Now they know (even though it's illegal for them to do so) that they can interfere with elections without punishment from the law that they richly deserve, and now they know they can actually get what they want if they yell loud enough.

I hope that McEwen sticks with it for the duration and still lets her personal feelings and thoughts be known to the world in places more proper than the campaign blog. Let 'em have it.

tags: John Edwards, 2008 Elections, Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwen, Hypocrisy

Three Days in News

2007-02-12T06:12:00.000-05:00

News from around the blogosphere
Paul Krugman, reprinted from the NY Times on the official campaign website.

What a difference two years makes! At this point in 2005, the only question seemed to be how much of America’s social insurance system — the triumvirate of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the Bush administration would manage to dismantle. Now almost all prominent Democrats and quite a few Republicans pay at least lip service to calls for a major expansion of social insurance, in the form of universal health care.

Funny thing about it, more and more people go without insurance every year and so the interest in universal health coverage in practically the only economically wealthy country without it increases as well. Conservatives hate the idea of the government paying for anything other than an obscenely large military, and you all know what the result of that is. It's time we try this a different way and see how it works, because believe me when I say that even if it fails, it won't be the end of life as we know it. Conservatives really need to stop fearing new ideas.

Greenwald on the "controversy" that wasn't, and the rise of the scandal obsessed culture. Read this.

For the last 15 years or so -- since the early years of the Clinton administration -- our public political discourse has been centrally driven by an ever-growing network of scandal-mongers and filth-peddling purveyors of baseless, petty innuendo churned out by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, various right-wing operatives and, more recently, the right-wing press led by Fox News. Every issue of significance is either shaped and wildly distorted by that process, or the public is distracted from important issues by contrived and unbelievably vapid, petty scandals.

I read Drudge a couple of times a day because that's where the news is and despite what other people think, it seems to me that Drudge's only crime is one of it's virtues: it lets people decide what the big new controversy is. It's a price you pay be only as long as you let it effect things.

Then there is this hysterical piece of junk.

If anything disqualifies John “The Hair” Edwards from the presidency of the local Kiwanis club — let alone the United States — it’s his decision this week to keep on bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

Yes, it's his decision on keeping a couple of bloggers rather than his plan to revamp health care to provide guaranteed coverage to every citizen in the United States. It's not his interest in getting us out of an illegal war, or in helping 30,000,000 America's poor get out of poverty. Nah, it couldn't be for a substantive reason related to the actual job of being President, it has to be about two writers to occupy a small part of a campaign that will likely go back to their day jobs when the elections are over.

Good grief, do people like this not understand the real issues swirling around the early campaign fracas like the war, or do they simply not care? I wonder if this person has any intention of even voting. I swear to whatever God you may believe that I desperately hope people like this just butt out of the elections in '08. This country has enough trouble with stupid candidates and politicians, we don't need stupid voters too.

More on the manufactured controversy from tiara.org.

At some point, people need to call out so-called “Christians” on their involvement in politics while still happily claiming 501(c) status as non-profit, non-political organizations. I fully support your right to worship in any way you want. But legislating religious morality on others, such as the display of the Ten Commandments, outlawing gay marriage, promoting abstinence-only education and campaigning against the HPV vaccine, goes far beyond personal spirituality.

A couple of people have raised the point that Donohue was likely flaunting federal laws prohibiting tax-exempt churches from interfering with political campaigns, and in fact by calling for the Edwards campaign to fire Marcotte and McEwen, he seems to have done just that. Of course you don't hear about that from the other side, but "that's not the point." Sure it isn't.

Now I'm sitting here reading this post on the official campaign blog and I'm wondering after all the flak they've taken over Marcotte and McEwen why they would allow someone to say this on the campaign site, much less on the official blog.

Among others. They are demanding a specific response to assholes who do not merit a response.

BUt it is our job as the Senator's supporters to go out and defend him. So go to these posts and let it be known that the Edwards campaign cannot be bullied by either side and will act when it is appropriate.

This kind of untargeted rant serves no purpose, nor does the swearing or the lack of proof reading. There is something to be said for keeping your mouth clean when you're speaking to the public from the official website of a presidential campaign, and I'm quite bothered that they aren't doing a better job with this. Maybe I'm being as pointlessly nitpicky as the red stater's are, and maybe this just a 140 uneducated rant by one of the "angry leftists" that we're being labeled as.

Maybe they're right, because this kind of crap doesn't need to be on a campaign blog.

The so-called News
Commentary from the Statesmanjournal.com on John Edwards health-care plan.

Edwards would repeat the mistake that was at the heart of Hillary Rodham Clinton's misadventure in trying to fix a health insurance system that was then, and is now, so out of whack that it manages to cover fewer and fewer Americans at higher and higher cost.
[..]

He wants insurers to cover everyone, no matter how sick and expensive they are. He wants employers to continue to carry on their ledgers a cost that is ever more burdensome to them and to their workers, onto whose shoulders more of the health-insurance tab is being shifted.

I still haven't read the plan myself so I don't know how true this interpretation is, but I'm not sure I see the problem here. Big changes take big sacrifice, and if getting every human being in this country medical insurance takes dismantling the private insurance industry, then it was what was broken in the first place, not our federal system. Our system has been contorting itself for so long to appease greedy insurance companies that the time to put them back in the box and see how things shake out. With all of the corporate tax breaks that Republicans have been dumping on America over the past twelve years, I think they can probably afford to take a couple of hits right now.

And honestly, the other side of "fixing" this system had its chance to "fix" it when they had complete control over Congress, and they came up short. Risks or not, it's time to try something else.

This stupid stuff over John Edward's house also needs to stop. The man is a trial lawyer, all of those guys are filthy rich. So what? Almost every member of the Senate is a millionaire. President Bush is rolling in money, so I say again, so what? The tax cuts that Bush has been pushing his entire federal political career benefited people like Bush, like Edwards. Do you think Jon Tester, the farmer from Montana who beat Conrad Burns for a Senate seat last year benefited from those cuts? Laughable. If you want to know someone for being unapologetically rich, look to Bush, who cut his own taxes every year he's been in office.

This person said it best.

"Stuff like this comes with the territory," said Jennifer Palmer, an Edwards adviser. "It's all a part of the game of the presidential campaign. I don't think that voters are that interested."

Finally a bit of actual news from the Washington Post, wondering about just how much support Edwards can expect from trial lawyers this time around.

In the last presidential election, John Edwards had the powerful support and deep pockets of the nation's trial lawyers behind him. But when the lawyers gather for their winter conference today in Miami Beach, it will be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) delivering the meeting's keynote speech.

Edwards, a trial lawyer who became a senator and now a presidential candidate, will be there, too. But the North Carolina Democrat no longer has a lock on the backing of the lawyers. This time around he will be battling it out with others in the Democratic field, who are seen as sympathetic to plaintiffs and their attorneys.

Nothing wrong with that, people should always consider all of their options.

More on the health care plan from Seacoastonline.

It's also likely to attract and scare Americans in equal numbers -- with a price tag of an estimated $120 billion per year that will be paid, in part, by an elimination of Bush tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year and a number of reforms guaranteed to draw opposition from every interest group with a stake.

So yeah, some of the people paying for this will be the ones making over $200,000 per year. They can afford it, and it benefits sick people who simply cannot pay to get better on their own. Forced humanity sucks, but it's better than no humanity at all.

I lied, this is two days in news. The rest is mostly about the blogging stuff and I'm done with that crap. Adios.

tags: John Edwards, 2008 Elections, Health Care, News and Politics

Marcotte and McEwen Sticking Around

2007-02-12T04:28:00.000-05:00

I'm subscribed to a Google Alert for web, blog, and news updates daily which is how I find 99% of the things I post here. Very handy, especially since the three categories are nicely separated when you get them via daily digests. My problem and the reason for the last of posts over the past four days is that almost all of the new news articles are about old news, primarily Edwards health care plan. Different people come across this stuff over time so you keep getting the same old stuff every day, and I won't post redundant material.

While the blog posts tend to be more unique, they've all been stuck on the manufactured paid-blogger controversy lately. Not all of it is constructive or worth talking about. In fact, I don't think a lot of this crap deserves to be repeated here, or anywhere. On the other hand, I'm bored, so I shall expound for a moment. Just scroll past this stuff if you're only interested in news links.

I don't know if the entire site is this way, but I keep getting alerts from townhall.com which amount to biased rants from conservatives that just love to apply their "rigid" morals selectively to people they didn't really like in the first place. I guess they are just as bored as I am, because they keep writing about it, and they keep missing the point.

As one looks back at John Edwards and his Potty-Mouthed bloggers, that's the question that keeps springing to mind. What circuit misfired in the Edwards campaign that led him to hire two of the blogosphere's most notoriously bilious, hate-filled and obviously controversial denizens?

To which I would reply, there was no controversy until the leader/spokesperson of a private religious group started complaining as loudly as he possibly could. Not so much because these two bloggers aren't eight-years-old and know that swearing isn't going to be ending the world anytime soon, but because he perceived them to be anti-Catholic. Problem is this guy and his organization happen to be anti-gay and anti-choice. The latter is a debatable issue for another place and time, but come on, let's be open and honest about all of this. We're talking about a professed bigot calling other people intolerant. Just because the man doesn't swear (in public anyway) doesn't sweeten the stench coming from his side of the fence in the least. Hate speech and intolerance don't recognize party lines and nobody can claim morals as their own.

That has been said over and over but you don't hear it in the media, or from the conservatives, because intolerance is only bad when it comes from liberals when it concerns the right, and the media just doesn't care. If there is something they can run with to get attention, they'll do it.

This manufactured controversy is over all ready because the campaign has decided to keep both bloggers on their payroll for the time being, which I think is entirely proper given that they haven't done a single thing wrong since being hired. If they step out of line, then they need to go, nobody will argue against that. If they should be fired for what they did in the past however, then I fully expect these guys on the right to start writing a half dozen exposé's on the Catholic hypocrites and drag it out for a couple of weeks like they have this story. That's only fair.

Also, I'm calling out Dean Barnett for lying about these two being fired. This was dated the 10th, two days after Edwards personally announced that he was keeping Marcotte and McEwen. Note to the Senator: There is nothing wrong with being anti-Calothic per say, there are over 40,000,000 anti-Catholics in the United States and another billion world-wide; they are called Atheists.

Edwards acted promptly. He fired Marcotte and one of her colleagues in potty-blogging. His campaign, however, maintained a curious radio silence pertaining to the terminations. Other than a background notice to Salon that alerted Salon alone of the firings, no one knew exactly what was going on at Edwards HQ.

Neither person were fired, and no proof of this exists outside the imaginations of the right. I'm sure they'd love to believe they had some effect on the deal, but all they've done is blown up nothing into even more nothing. Marcotte and McEwen are still happily employed by the campaign, and that doesn't figure to change anytime soon.

But after his ill-advised hire, Edwards had the choice to offend the blogosphere or to offend the "godbags." He chose to offend the "godbags." Since the country is composed of 98% "godbags," this was a decision every bit as short-sighted and idiotic as was the original hire that kicked off the controversy.

It must be very liberating to just make up statistics, but I can tell you based on information I gathered for a recent article, it just ain't true. A person of faith once stated that America was a strong majority of believers and that it wasn't ever going to change. The statement on face is silly since everything in nature is subject to change, but this particular thing I figured was only getting stronger over the past few years, so it was worth looking into.

What did I find? I was wrong.

If you bundle all of the various sects of Christianity together, and compare it with the combination of atheism and agnosticism, the difference is quite striking when compared to Barnett's uneducated guess. The non-believers in America accounted for nearly 15% of the population six years ago, and was the fastest growing category in a measure of faith. Christianity has in contrast lost nearly 24 million faithful between 1991 and 2001 and only accounted for 79% of the faithful in this country, a drop of 8.5% over that span. All other religions combined only amount to 1.7% of the total population, so it's not even close.

As wrong as the "98% godbags" statistic is, I'm sure Barnett would be even more horrified than what Marcotte and McEwen are saying to find that the vaunted religious establishment in the United States is actually beginning to fade away.

That said, I'm hoping the stench from this manufactured crap will roll out of here soon as we can get back to real news like the thirteen million men all claiming to have impregnated the late Anna Nicole Smith.

Note: Given how much I ranted on the above stuff, I'm dropping the news into another post.

tags: John Edwards, 2008 Elections, Blogging, Blog, Weblog, Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwen, Catholics, News and Politics

AP picks up Marcotte story

2007-02-06T22:01:00.001-05:00

I touched on this subject a day or two ago where it seems that a number of people are unhappy with the Edwards campaign hiring Amanda Marcotte to write for their official blog. It didn't seem like that big of deal, and it still may not be, but the pressure is coming up now with the AP reporting that the Catholic League of Religious and Civil Rights is throwing a hissy fit over this.

"John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots," Donohue wrote in a statement. "He has no choice but to fire them immediately."

Pretty strong words for someone who claims to be a supporter of civil rights, after all, the freedom to speak unpopular views cannot be considered anything less than the foundation of civil rights. How else could the struggle against inequality take place when one is chastised for speaking about it?

It gets worse however when you consider the war that Catholics are raging against same-sex marriage, and smacks of hypocrisy beyond the pale. Civil rights in these peoples minds only applies when they agree with what you are doing it seems. One could easily make the argument that Catholic-sponsored hate against gays is more vulgar than a few naughty words tossed about in a good Internet scuffle, but I leave that up to you to decide.

The important thing to remember here is that Amanda is not going to be posting her own thoughts on the official blog, though that would probably do more for Edwards campaign than simply giving an amusing slant to dull news. You can damn well bet there won't be any swearing or controversial but true personal statements appearing on that blog anytime soon, and understand that this is nothing but pissing and moaning by a group that is on the record as being gay-hating bigots themselves, and they are actually proud of it.

Something to think about.

tags: John Edwards, Amanda Marcotte, Blogging, Catholics, Gay Rights, Civil Rights, Hypocrisy, Bigots

Edwards: I was wrong

2007-02-06T08:23:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton would gain a lot of momentum if she would just utter these three little words, regarding her vote to authorize the Iraq war. Former Senator John Edwards voted for it, and he's not mincing words when it comes to his mistake.

I am sure that Russert will pose the Iraq "gotcha" question to all presidential candidates who were Senators at the time they enabled President Bush to take us to war. And, in politician fashion, I am assuming we will hear a lot of answers that we've already heard, like, 'I would have voted differently if I had had all the information,' or 'I didn't really think President Bush would use the authority we gave him.' But you've got to admire the character of a person who is willing to just step up to the plate and accept responsibility for a mistake and admit they were wrong.

She's right in that I think the American people can be very forgiving to people who make mistakes, especially when it's coming from politicians because it's so rare. Such a thing doesn't absolve a person from the responsibility of their actions nor should it allow us to forget what happened in the first place, but it does mean something that a person can admit their errors. Had Republicans taken to the people and simply apologized for everything they had done before the November elections, whether they felt it was necessary or not, I think there is a fair chance that voters from their own camp would have forgiven them and the era of unnacountability for the White House would continue for another two years.

Ezra Klein has posted his take on John Edwards recently released health plan summary.

Where the Edwards' plan takes a big step forward is in mandating, along with the private options, that HMs offer "at least one plan [that] would be a public program based upon Medicare." And the intent is explicit: "Health Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it. Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan."

I haven't read this overview yet so I can't really comment on this, other than to say that competition is great for consumers and bad for companies. Companies have to constantly undercut each others prices in order to get the most customers, or be squeezed out of the market. Bad for them, good for us, because it means cheaper products and services with the companies going the extra mile because they are desperate to get and then keep us. Republicans hate that because they think it is unfair to companies, and I never quite understood why anyone would act like that. Companies may fill your campaign war chests, but they don't elect you and you aren't answerable to them, you're answerable to the people. Why would you ever screw them over, the people you represent -- actual human beings -- in favor of an inanimate thing?

The plan will cost between $90 billion and $120 billion a year, and according to Edwards, taxes will have to be raised to pay for it.

Well gee wouldn't you know it, I think we can just about cover that by cancelling our ongoing wars in the Middle East. Moving on..

There is drama brewing over the Edwards campaign hiring of an outspoken blogger to head up their official campaign blog. I don't know the story but it seems to revolve around her support for the defense in the Duke rape case that now has completely fallen apart. It was clear to some, including myself, that the case was extremely weak from the outset, and I said as much the first and pretty much only time I've written about it. The defense had some decently persuasive evidence in its hands, and the prosecutor looked like he was playing the case up for everything it was worth rather than being low-key and doing his job: getting a conviction.

Nifong is off the case now, has complaints pending against him, and it has just all gone to the dogs, so I could see how something like this could turn personal very quickly. It's hard as hell to defend a sinking ship when it was taking water over the side before it even left the docks and it'll suck you in for the long run. Things like that can warp peoples views of you unfairly, they become so polarizing that you can't escape the struggle to come to reason. If she can be fair, honest, and stick to her job, then I'm sure she'll do just fine.

Here is an article on Medical News Today about John Edwards new health care plan, and a look from the other side of the Amanda Marcotte controversy. It all looks rather like sour grapes and no substance to me, so take it with a grain of salt here. I think whats-his-name over at AmericaBLOG could stand watch his mouth and stop ranting so much, but I go there every day and find a lot of my political news over there so what do I know. It's mostly personal, or if you feel like it, professional style. As long as you tell the truth and stay away from silly things like logical fallacies and general mean spirited behavior -- something people like Malkin absolutely cannot do -- then it doesn't really matter, does it?

tags: John Edwards, 2008 Elections, Health Care, Amanda Marcotte, Blogging, Blogs

John Edwards Addresses the DNC, Race May Expand Soon

2007-02-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Health Care, Same Sex Rights, Gay, News, 2008 Elections, DNC, Democrats, Taxes

Republicans for Edwards, Taxing Big Oil

2007-01-14T15:12:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Big Oil, Environment, 2008 Elections, GOP, Republicans, Politics, California, MLK, Pollution, Global Warming

John Edwards in NY for MLK holiday

2007-01-14T13:45:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Iraq, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections, War, Lindsey Graham, McCain Doctrine, Escalation, Martin Luther King

MediaMatters takes on Charles Krauthammer over distortions

2007-01-14T10:43:00.000-05:00

What Krauthammer said (via mediamatters.org):

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?

More good stuff from Media Matters.

tags: John Edwards, Stem Cells, Washington Post, Media Matters, H.R. 3, Democrats, Medicine, Science

News & Observer Responds to Criticism on Edwards Coverage

2007-01-07T12:04:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Democrats, 2008 Elections, Bush, Politics

Will Obama Overshadow John Edwards?

2007-01-04T11:56:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, 2008 Elections, President, Barak Obama, John McCain

WorldNetDaily: Big-Government, Health Insurance Bad

2007-01-01T07:50:00.000-05:00

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?

tags: John Edwards, Health Care, Katrina, FEMA

Edwards on Same-Sex Civil Rights

2007-01-01T07:01:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Gay, Gay Rights, 2008 Elections

Repubs Cry, Edwards and Dems Talk Progressive Future of Hope

2007-01-01T01:56:00.000-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Tom Vilsack, Democrats, Politics, Impeachment, Iraq

Shame On Edwards For Being Wealthy, says Arkansas Republican Assembly

2007-01-01T00:31:00.001-05:00

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.

tags: John Edwards, Poverty, Hypocrisy, Republicans

S.C. and N.C. Town Halls today, More News

2006-12-30T05:17:00.000-05:00

Sorry I missed the information about the town hall meeting in Reno that happened yesterday, I didn't realize there were going to be two of them on Friday. I wasn't home anyway, off helping family move and again today, but hopefully not all day. The next town hall is in West Columbia, South Carolina, doors open at 1pm EST. Later in the day there will be another in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at 4pm.

There is a blog entry here talking about the Senators use of YouTube for his early campaign activities and a couple of other places that are following the campaign around and vlogging on the town hall meetings. The AP is reporting that Edwards has resigned as the director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity to focus on his run for President. I'm sure they'll miss having what the Senator brought to the table, but they know he can do a heck of a lot more for the cause as President of the United States. Meanwhile, Newsday talks up the differences between Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

In the short run, however, the silver-tongued former senator from North Carolina poses serious tactical challenges for Clinton, especially with the addition of two Edwards-friendly states to the early 2008 primary calendar, analysts say.

Getting Nevada was huge for Edwards chances, and South Carolina definitely helps with a taste of the under appreciated South. It is long past time for Iowa and New Hampshire to stop deciding who our candidate is going to be and return to the fold as an equal voice in the primaries instead of dictating the outcome for the rest of the country.

All that centrist goodwill won't ensure her success in early Democratic primaries - especially Iowa - which tilt left. She finished fourth in a recent Iowa primary poll with 10 percent; Edwards and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama took first with 22 percent each.

I think that Obama figures to be a lot like Howard Dean in that he's popular now because he's unknown to everyone, sadly that is his greatest appeal. When it comes to voting in the primary, people are going to go with who they think can best do the job. Perhaps some day that will be for Obama, but I'm not ready to hand over the keys to the country to a guy that hasn't even served one full term yet.

Clinton's advisers refuse to comment about future match-ups on the record, but privately say polls simply reflect Edwards and Obama have been politicking in Iowa and Clinton hasn't. "Once she's on the ground, those numbers will change in a hurry," a Clinton staffer said on condition of anonymity.

I'm worried about that too. Maybe we'll get lucky and Hillary will stay put for the time being. I like her and all, but people who play coy just piss me off. If she wants me vote, she needs to come out and ask me for it, and convince me that she deserves it. Edwards already did that once so he gets a free pass, she doesn't.

"His message is 'I'm me - take it or leave it,'" said one Democratic operative. "Hillary doesn't have a message yet, except 'I'm the front-runner.' That will have to change if she's going to have a chance."

Pretty good stuff, check it out.

Here is another vlog from a site that supports Edwards in Iowa, and what appears to be an online magazine post about what Edwards will be up against fundraising in New York. If Hillary enters the game, then it shouldn't really matter because she is going to get those bucks anyway, and New York isn't a deciding state in the primaries quite like Iowa and New Hampshire are. Now I'm from New York, and yet I still can't stress how important I think it is that the DNC convention not take place there. There is absolutely nothing to gain in that state that Democrats don't already have or need that amounts to anything but taking small percentages.

Going there will just give ammunition to conservatives who love to cry themselves to sleep about the ultra-liberal Northeast corridor, and we really don't need to be helping them with that. Denver is a plenty good choice amongst the ones out there and we'd be stupid to throw that party at home.

From redstate.com:

Steph was on the offense from the get-go: "Back in 2004, you criticized President Bush for exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 by having his convention in New York City. Aren't you exploiting Katrina by announcing your candidacy in New Orleans?"

Edwards didn't respond directly to the exploitation allegation, asserting only that he was seeking to draw attention to New Orleans's plight. And not to himself? At the risk of reading too much into every jot and tittle, I'd say that Steph's formulation "aren't you exploiting?" is considerably more accusatory than would have been "are you exploiting?"

That's a fair and tough question that the media completely ignored when we wanted them to ask Republicans about it, but one that has an easy answer for us. Bush did exploit 9/11 by having the convention there (the site of a large and disturbing illegal detention of protestors for the RNC deal) because that's the only thing he was actually doing in New York. Edwards has been in and out of New Orleans ever since Katrina ravaged the city, helping out any way he could. That kind of work is a central theme to his campaign and it's natural for him to be there. We should all be there.

tags: John Edwards, New Orleans, vlogging, politics, democrats

Iowa Town Hall Videos Up

2006-12-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

Videos from yesterdays Town Hall meeting with John Edwards are up on YouTube and available on the official site. It's split into three parts and I won't have time to watch it until later tonight, so get there first and comment on happened! Here is part 1, go here for the rest.

tags: John Edwards, YouTube, Iowa, Election 2008

Edwards in New Hampshire, on Hardball, and News

2006-12-29T06:46:00.000-05:00

Good morning, afternoon, evening, or whatever suits you when you happen to be reading this update. According to the campaign site blog, Senator Edwards is going to appear on MSNBC's Hardball "tomorrow" at 5pm EST, with a repeat at 7. Unfortunately, that was posted at 1am EST on the 29th, which would mean this episode of Hardball would be airing on Saturday, which it doesn't do. I'm going to tack into the wind and suggest that you hook up with Hardball tonight at 5pm EST, that's Friday the 29th.

The Senator will also be appearing on The Situation Room on CNN sometime during its 4-6pm EST airing, though it doesn't really say when specifically. You can hit up the post here.

I'm looking around the site to see if there will be archives of the town hall meetings the Senator is doing over the next few days, but I'm not finding any. If you want to check them out, you'll either have show up, or tune in live when the site has their stuff setup. The next event is tonight in Portsmouth, NH, with the doors opening at noon. I believe you need to get tickets ahead of time through the page I just linked you to. The town hall meeting in Iowa started at 6pm with the doors opening at 4, so you can probably expect the NH event to get under way sometime around 2pm, but check Edwards main site for updates on this because I'm just guessing here.

For news, there is a new article in The News & Observer that went up early this morning. It centers around the Senators interests in eliminating poverty within the United States.

Edwards, who is the son of a mill worker and who became a millionaire trial lawyer, has linked himself to the issue of poverty. He has made three previous trips to New Orleans to help residents with rebuilding projects. During his 2004 campaign, Edwards emphasized his Two Americas theme, highlighting the inequalities in the nation.

In 2005, Edwards created the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has compared his stance to that of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, who ran for president in 1968. But addressing poverty, rather than the problems of the struggling middle class, can be tricky politically.

"It's clearly not the main mover of most voters," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York. "People are interested in the war in Iraq. The question is whether he can talk about the quality of life for Americans as part of the specialized focus on people who are poor."

Yeah, it's not a huge vote getter issue, but it's still pretty damn important when the richest and most powerful nation in the world has starving children living in the streets. You can turn to the ideologically popular issues that drive the base, and other universally popular issues such as education, but that only goes so far. Everyone wants to improve education and help old people cross the street, but it's the tough issues like poverty that can't be solved with tax cuts or taking away peoples rights to make choices. These are significant societal issues that will take new ways of thinking and new institutions to improve, and it's long past time we got to work on this.

There's another piece pointing out that Edwards voted for the Iraq war, but now regrets it. "It was a mistake and I take responsibility for that," Edwards said. It's nice when people can admit their mistakes, but I'm still not happy that it happened in the first place. Hopefully he's done something the recently disenfranchised GOP hasn't been capable of: learning from those mistakes.

tags: John Edwards, Eleection 2008, poverty, New Hampshire, Iraq

Edwards Launches 08 Bid

2006-12-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

Am I fashionably late? Probably not, but I'm here dug in and ready to fight through the crud to bring you the information you need. Or maybe it's just the information you want. Or maybe I'm talking to myself because this site didn't exist 24 hours ago and nobody knows it exists. Either way, I might as well start off with some hot links to those so-called professional outlets that covered the event, yet managed to tell us pretty much nothing we didn't already know to begin with. Thanks MSM!

The unusual nature of announcing a Presidential bid in place such as New Orleans was not lost on Times writers Adam Nossiter and David Stout.

The 'formal' announcement of his candidacy today was, by design, anything but formal. Mr. Edwards wore work boots, blue jeans and a thick blue shirt against the chill. His announcement contrasted sharply with more traditional launchings of White House bids, which have often been made in the United States Capitol. Asked on Wednesday whether he thought enough was being done to help New Orleans recover from the crippling hurricane and floods of 2005, he replied, "Anybody who's not concerned about the rate of recovery is not paying attention." (Times)

New Orleans is still a complete mess. They can't take any more hits from hurricanes without flooding all over again. "Parts of the city most severely damaged still have irregular city services; in some areas, next to nothing has been done in the way of rebuilding. As residents return to the devastated areas, attempts are being made to restore city services; however, there are still well over 200,000 New Orleanians who are unable to return." (Wiki)

I'm not up-to-date on what Edwards has been doing in New Orleans, but I'll get on top that and see what information I can find. I know he's been there for more than just this announcement, and he's proven that New Orleans is still a very serious concern to him, and the cities residents would surely appreciate someone in government that understands that they still need help. Here's an NPR interview from back in March about the work Edwards was doing in New Orleans at the time.

Here is a link to AMERICAblog's post which is really just a quotation from the Times page above, but they get a ton of comments so there might be something worth reading over there. DailyKos is playing it cool since it's been pretty obvious for a while now that Edwards was going to take another shot at this. I'm not sure I like the idea of them using Edwards announcement to take a quick shot at the Iraq war, but it's worth looking at because it also happens to be true.

I found a neat link over at Kos with a blog post by John Edwards himself.

Hello. I'm in New Orleans, and getting ready to head to Iowa for our live town hall this evening.

I wanted to stop by to talk about my announcement this morning and to hear your thoughts and reactions.

Also I wanted to invite you to attend the Iowa townhall online tonight -- go to JohnEdwards.com for more info on that.

I've got til about 11:45. John

Not much there but the town hall should be pretty cool, the information he referenced is right here, and the doors opened four hours ago. There are a series of these events scheduled over the next few days in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and North Carolina. Hit the campaign website and look on the right side under "upcoming events". There are some pictures before things got rolling on BlueNC that you might want to check out. More info as I find it.

tags: John Edwards, Politics, 2008 Election, New Orleans

Notes on Site Features

2006-12-28T07:18:00.000-05:00

I just claimed this blog on Technorati, so you can add it as a favorite if you wish, or you can subscribe to the sites RSS feed to keep up to date with things.

You can even subscribe to this site via e-mail and get updates in your inbox, just look to the right side of the page for the input box that helpfully says "type your email here". I'll probably miss making a post about Edwards' announcement this afternoon, but I'll round up the news and opinions and let you digest it at your own speed this evening.

Edwards in New Orleans, Poised to Make Announcment

2006-12-28T07:07:00.000-05:00

It can hardly be considered a secret that former Senator John Edwards is going to announce today that he is going to take another shot at running for President, starting now. The truth is though that Edwards isn't starting now, he actually got moving right after he and running mate John Kerry lost out to the lowest polling President in the modern era, George W. Bush.

Edwards has been setting things up with multiple visits to Iowa and New Hampshire over the years, along with trips outside the United States in aid and humanitarian projects. The title photo on this blog has a story to go with it I'm sure, but it's not one I have any knowledge of. It was a photo I found on flickr that was licensed under the Creative Commons "attribution" license, which allows for free use -- even commercial -- so long as proper attribution is given. Consider it so, the link above will take you to the page where I got the picture from.

Perhaps I will fire off an e-mail to the photographer this week and see if he'll share the pictures story. It'd be nice to know, don't you think?

I voted for Kerry and Edwards in the previous election, though they were not my first choice. Because of the silly way we have our primary system setup, the only two people still on the ballot when North Carolina's turn came were Kerry and Edwards. Since they came together in common cause when it was clear that Edwards wasn't going to win, I never even bothered to vote in the primary.

I wasn't happy back then, because of what had happened to my guy, Howard Dean. In the end though I'm proud of what the Governor did. Rather than stewing about his poor showing, he created a new organization to support the party and move us all forward in Congress, eventually coming to chair the DNC and help lead the Democratic party to a new majority in Congress.

Though he wasn't my first choice, and for all I know may not be again this time around, for the time being John Edwards will have my support. Even if I decide to support somebody else when the elections near, that will be with my vote, and not this blog.

I'd like to provide information on the former Senator that will help people decide if he is the right person to lead this country after Bush has left under a cloud of shame and defeat. I'll report the news, find information the average joe might not have time to find, and maybe I'll even harass his campaign to see if I can score some free buttons that I can use to fling at Republicans.

This place is new, and empty, but it won't be that way for long. If Edward's announcement is coming later today like I've heard that it is, then like Edwards, maybe I too can find the best place to serve -- right here.

tags: John Edwards, Politics, 2008 Election