According to CNN.com, Senator Ted Kennedy, the Senate’s second most senior member, was diagnosed with a brain tumor today after going to the hospital due to an apparent seizure.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.
Run, Hillary, run.
Run in Guam, run in North Carolina, run in Indiana. Run in each and every one of the nine contests that are left.
Then make some states do their contests over.
Should Barack Obama’s victory in Vermont really count? I don’t think Vermont is actually a state. I think it is technically a socialist republic. Have somebody check this out.
And Obama’s victory in Alaska? Are you kidding me? They let caribou vote in Alaska.
And do some other stuff that levels the playing field: Raise the voting age to 65 in all the remaining contests, for instance.
You do great with this group, Sen. Clinton. Younger people don’t really care about who becomes president anyway. All they want to do is go on this World Wide Interweb thing that they keep talking about.
And while you are at it, Senator, cap all salaries at $50,000 a year, take away all college degrees and give everybody a gun. The demographics are clear: That is your base vote.
Also, no men get to vote unless they have a note from a woman saying they are mentally competent. (Good luck with that!)
And, Sen. Clinton, keep portraying yourself as a sympathetic underdog. That works much better than when you were the inevitable overlord.
In Haverford, Pa., last Thursday, you told the crowd: “Just knock on the door and say, ‘You know, she’s really nice.’ Or you could say it another way: ‘She’s not as bad as you think.’”
It is a theme that worked in Pennsylvania and will work elsewhere. I can see the billboards now: “Hillary Clinton. Not as Bad as You Think.”
But do not give up the kitchen sink stuff, Senator. Make it a Good Hillary/Bad Hillary kind of campaign.
Good Hillary talks about the dreamy, gooey, feel-good stuff, like when, in your victory speech from Philadelphia Tuesday night, you said: “We are, in many ways, all on this journey together to create an America that embraces every last one of us. … I believe with all of my heart that together we will turn promises into action, words will become solutions, hope will become reality.”
But Bad Hillary can’t go away. You have to have the Hillary who says Obama is “elitist” and “demeaning,” and you have to keep running ads that portray him as the guy who won’t be able to protect us from the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, long lines at the gas pump, Osama bin Laden or ringing telephones.
And speaking of Osama bin Laden, isn’t he a Muslim? And didn’t Bad Hillary say Obama was not a Muslim “as far as I know”? Keep up that subtle stuff. It is gold.
And then, of course, bribe the superdelegates. These are the 794 party insiders who have one standard for all their decisions in life: “What’s in it for me?”
So offer them something. You know how many interstate rest stops there are? They have to be named for somebody. And promise the holdouts that they will be appointed ambassador to Bermuda. It doesn’t matter that they all can’t be ambassador to Bermuda, because we don’t have an ambassador to Bermuda. (Say it was Bill’s idea.)
And even if you can’t get ahead in the delegate count, don’t stop running!
Go to the convention in Denver and chain yourself to the front door of the Pepsi Center and refuse to leave unless every resident of Florida and Michigan — not just the rogue delegates but all 26 million residents! — is seated inside and gets to cast a ballot for you.
What’s the worst that could happen? Howard Dean comes out and bites you on the ankle? Forget about it. I could carve a tougher guy out of tofu.
But most of all, Sen. Clinton, never give up, never surrender.
And remember: There’s always 2012.
Recently I have come to the conclusion that modern life, for better or for worse, is being controlled by technology. I don’t just mean that it affects the way we communicate, I think it honestly impacts us on a much deeper level. The generation of kids who grew up with cell phones and video games and the internet are actually changing the way we see each other.
For example, after meeting a person for the first time, I immediately get on their Facebook and friend them. Not only just to be their friend and keep that connection, but also to see their worth as a friend. We almost keep tally in our head of how many things on their page we disagree with.
Are they in a group that supports Huckabee? 1 point against.
Are they friends with someone you can’t stand? 1 point against.
Is their favorite movie Meet the Spartans? Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
It’s like we try to get to know people before we get to know them.
And, it doesn’t just stop at facebook. If they have a YouTube account, and they actually post videos, you make judgements of them there.
It’s almost if all of this technology has forced us to become judgmental assholes. And even worse, it’s probably making us communicate less.
If we didn’t have pre-conversation access to a person’s favorite presidential candidate or favorite movie, we would actually have to talk about it at some point. It wouldn’t be just some thought in the back of our minds. It would actually have to be brought to the table then actually discussed. Not just swept under the rug and ignored.
Imagine a world filled with people who actually conversed about things and talked through their disagreements. Imagine not feeling like you already know a person before you’ve actually talked to them. Imagine not having to tiptoe around subjects because you already “know” it could be awkward to talk about because *gasp* you have differing opinions.
Imagine that, then forget it. Because, until we can bring ourselves to be friends in real life before we’re friends online, it’s not going to happen.
The one thing that is certainly undeniable about Senator Barack Obama is his incredible ability to inspire people. It’s truly exceptional because it doesn’t seem limited to any one class or type of person. To make older Americans believe once again in the greatness of America, the unlimited potential that their “can-do” generation once saw first hand, but has had trouble recognizing in modern times. To make younger Americans believe that this really is a “land of opportunity” and they can do anything, be anyone, reach for the stars and achieve their dreams. To spread that kind of hope, so consistently, so potently, so broadly, is an impossibly impossible task - and yet, it is one that Senator Obama has done, seemingly effortlessly.
The rallies with tens of thousands of people gave us an inkling over a year ago - but it was easily chalked up to good work by his staff to turn people out to events and sheer curiosity on the part of the public. It wasn’t until those record turnout numbers, first in Iowa, and then all across the country, that we realized it was a real tangible thing. This “hope” Senator Obama has been peddling is catching on in a way that cynical politicos dream about, but never really expect to see materialize. It is, as a fellow campaign hack put it, “the reason we got into this in the first place.”
According to a recent CNN poll, wine drinkers are more likely to vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton than John McCain in a general election match up. However, beer drinkers are more likely to vote for McCain than a Democrat. Oddly enough, Obama does much better than Hillary when getting the the beer drinker vote.
I’ll leave you to read into the poll what you wish.
Karl Rove on liberal bloggers:
….the left, when it comes to their channels of persuasion, are unpersuasive. They are, most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred. And it may be good for reinforcing those who are already true and tried, but it’s not good for reaching out to people who are up for grabs who might be going to the internet to find a source of information.
His absurd accusation that liberal bloggers are all full of anger and hatred fills me with so much hate that I might just let fly a few obscenities myself. No, wait. That would play right into is hand…
If liberal bloggers have been angry in the last few years, its been righteous anger based on the so called “leadership” that has been displayed by the Bush presidency.
Later he was asked why there are more liberal blogs on the net:
“I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things,” Rove said. “The idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something [conservatives] really do.”
Obviously, liberal bloggers are all lazy, bigoted, and potty mouths. If Karl Rove says it, it has to be true, right?
Overnight, Barack Obama dealt a blow to Hillary Clinton’s nomination hopes by picking up the support of the nation’s only hispanic Governor, Bill Richardson of New Mexico. This could be a key endorsement for Barack since it may help to shore up his apparent weakness with the hispanic vote. The Governor had this to say about Obama:
“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world….
As a presidential candidate, I know full well Sen. Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”
