I was just reading eve's diary about a woman she called in West Virginia. The woman has an illness that will be terminal and is immobile and her husband helps as best he can but loses hours everyday commuting to his job. Wonderful caring eve did her best to help from long distance by finding and providing this family with phone numbers of people who may be able to help.
Reading the diary and some of the comments is heartbreaking as everyone, regardless of their station in life or political persuasion, deserves better. I couldn't help but compare their circumstances with those of my parents in Canada and it's shameful that American families can't expect the same treatment. More of their story after the jump.
I read this article some time ago and thought it was a very interesting take on Obama's philosophy. It was written back in early January but in light of the recent hullabaloo about Trinity United and Reverend Wright's message, it's a good time to go back and revisit it. Called The Church of Obama: How He Recast the Language of Black Liberation Theology into a Winning Creed for Middle-of-the-Road White Voters, it gives us a lot of information and insight into what is preached week after week in this fine church. Needless to say, the doctrine of Reverend Wright and Trinity United is nothing at all like the racist church the right wing is attempting to paint. Hell, not even just right wing idiots, but plenty of Barack's Democratic foes are happy to impugn him and Reverend Wright just for cheap political points too.
There's a new story on Barack Obama in the March 31 edition of Newsweek. It's a long one, seven pages long, and generally positive but in spite of what they say is two recent interviews with him, there's not too much new information on him and his life that most of his supporters who have delved into his history didn't already know.
They relate a couple of anecdotes from his life in Indonesia that flesh out his mother a little more and give us a better idea of how warm and generous she was.
He moved there with his idealistic mother—whom he has described as a "lonely witness for secular humanism"—when he was 6. The Asian archipelago was an eye-opener for a child who had been raised in the relative comforts of Hawaii. He didn't know what to make of the leper who came to his door, who had a hole where his nose was supposed to be and made a discomfiting "whistling sound" as he asked for food. He had to learn how to deal with street beggars of all types. Obama's bighearted mother gave easily.
Barack Obama continues to roll up the endorsements from a wide variety of people and sources. Not only have dozens of stodgy old newspaper editorial boards given him their seal of approval, now he's also getting the nod from younger hipper media. This time it's Rolling Stone magazine whose readership reaches a good demographic for Obama. They call their endorsement article A New Hope and what a glowing endorsement it is.
...along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary.
Dixville Notch, a teeny town way up north in New Hampshire near the Canadian border, holds the first primary in the state at midnight. Thirteen people were present to vote and there were four absentee ballots which were determined to be the total number of voters registered for that precinct and thus the vote was complete.
In this week's cover story, Newsweek calls Obama "An icon of hope". They say "he won't 'kneecap' his foes. But Obama knows what it takes, and how to win."
In an op ed written today by Thomas Houlahan in the Middle East Times, he is astonished at Hillary's lack of basic knowledge about Pakistan's parliamentary system. Now, the Middle East Times may not be the most credible paper around (it's owned by the Unification church and its content is apparently controlled by the Egyptian Ministry of Information though it does publish stories censored by the ministry on its website), but the writer is an expert military strategist, newspaper writer and published author. He is a former Army officer, a Republican former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and is the director of the Military Assessment Program of the William R. Nelson Institute for Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia so he definitely has his bona fides.
The Union Leader has an editorial today that questions one of Hillary Clinton's loudest messages, that she is the most electable and should be the choice in the primary to take on the Republicans.
An electable Democrat: Who says Obama isn't one?
NEW Hampshire Democrats voted for John Kerry in the 2004 primary in large part because they viewed him as the most electable candidate. They've had buyer's remorse ever since.
Now they are making the same calculation about Hillary Clinton. That math might well produce the same answer it did last time.
At a news conference yesterday reported in the NYTimes political blog, 32 year Senior Iowa Senator Charles E Grassley predicted Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would win their respective Iowa caucuses.
And even though Mr. Grassley has decided — for the first time apparently — not to endorse anyone in the Republican caucuses, that didn’t stop him today from offering up his predictions: Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the Democrats and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts for the Republicans.
Barack Obama is scheduled to give a major speech on national service in Mt. Vernon, Iowa today. Mark Halperin at Time is reporting that Harris Wofford, a JFK aide, Peace Corps pioneer and Clinton pal is going to appear with Obama and endorse him. the page @ time.com
Wofford has extremely impressive credentials. He graduated from University of Chicago in 1948 and got his law degree from Yale and Howard University Law Schools in 1954. He was a legal assistant at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and then a law professor at Notre Dame Law School. After coordinating civil rights for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign he became a special assistant to President Kennedy in the area of Civil Rights and assisted in the formation of the Peace Corps and subsequently was associate director.
